Former Member Of Brother Julius' Cult Describes Life Of Manipulation, Fear, Abuse

The Hartford Courant/August 5, 2018

By David Owens

The arrests this week of two men in connection with the 2004 killing of Paul Sweetman, the self-proclaimed “chief apostle” of a cult headed by the late Brother Julius, has brought back to the forefront the central Connecticut cult that was active in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.

For Sarah Ficca, who was the first child born into the cult called “The Work” in 1972 and who was a member until she was thrown out at age 20 in 1992, the news had dredged up emotions and memories of the abuse she endured as a child and teenager.

Now married and living in a Connecticut River Valley community, Ficca is eager to talk about her time in the cult and to expose how its leaders harmed members. She describes how good people became involved and were eventually brainwashed by Brother Julius, whose real name was Julius Schacknow and who referred to himself as Julius Christ and insisted he was the messiah.

Ficca, 45, still knows people involved with the cult. And as a child, she was friends with Sorek Minery, one of the men charged in Sweetman’s killing.

“All of us kids knew each other quite well,” Ficca said.

New Britain police have charged Minery, 42, of Burlington, and Rudy Hannon, 72, whose most recent address was a Nevada prison, with murder and felony murder in the July 2004 killing of Sweetman, who was 70. Both men are being held in lieu of $2 million bail.

Police and prosecutors believe Paul Sweetman was killed at the direction of Joanne Sweetman in a struggle for control of what was left of the cult and its assets after Schacknow’s death in 1996. She died in 2011, and has been described as his wife, although there is no evidence they were married.

In his statement to New Britain police, Minery said that Hannon worked for months to convince him that Paul Sweetman had to die because he was hurting Joanne Sweetman. Minery told police he respected Joanne Sweetman and “looked up to her as a high religious figure” and that “because of this, he began believing Rudy Hannon and believed Paul Sweetman needed to die.”

Ficca said that it is conceivable to her that Minery was manipulated into participating in the killing of Paul Sweetman. Joanne Sweetman held tremendous sway over cult members she said.

“We were told she was the holy spirit incarnated in a body,” Ficca said. “She was a charismatic, manipulative person.” And she and Paul Sweetman were the leaders of the cult, Ficca said.

“I see this as two awful people eating each other alive,” she said.

Ficca described Minery as “a very sweet, kind person,” who like all of the children in the cult were taught the end of the world was near and that the cult leaders were divine.

“I know the kind of mental abuse he endured because it was directed at all of us,” she said. “So when he talked about respecting [Joanne Sweetman] as a religious figure he believed she had power and control over his soul. She was the holy spirit.”

Ficca said she does not seek to excuse Minery for the crime he is accused of committing, but to provide some degree of context for people who have difficulty comprehending the control the cult leaders had over members.

“I could see someone whispering in his ear and how it could twist him up,” she said.

At the time of Sweetman’s disappearance in 2004, Ficca said, Joanne Sweetman told members that Paul Sweetman had received a vision from Brother Julius to travel the world and to proselytize. Ficca said she learned of Joanne Sweetman’s explanation from members with whom she stayed in contact.

Joanne Sweetman also reported Paul Sweetman missing to Southington police.

The crime might have gone unsolved had a coyote not dug one of Paul Sweetman’s legs from a shallow grave near the New Britain Reservoir. The leg, discovered in New Britain about a month after Sweetman’s disappearance, was not linked to him until 2016.

The investigation led to cult members Minery and Hannon, both of whom made admissions, but pointed the finger at the other.

Paul Sweetman was killed, both men said, then loaded into a freezer. Minery said he believed Sweetman was still alive when he was put in the freezer. Days later Minery returned to his workshop in Plainville and used an electric saw to dismember Sweetman’s body.

The head and legs were buried on the reservoir property and the arms and torso were buried beneath a shed in the backyard of what was then Minery’s home in New Britain.

Ficca said her parents joined the The Work after hearing Brother Julius preach at the Thomaston Dam. The charismatic preacher with the mesmerizing green eyes did not claim at first to be Jesus reincarnated, but said he’d gotten a vision from Jesus, Ficca said.

Others who joined The Work had struggled with drug problems and claimed Schacknow helped them get clean.

It is easy to dismiss those who got involved in the cult as dumb or weak, but that is not fair or accurate, Ficca said. Many were searching for something spiritually, and Brother Julius offered what they were looking for, she said.

Schacknow was able to convince people he was divine, that he could see into their souls. Ficca recalled an incident where Schacknow placed his hands on her head. She said it felt like electrical current was passing through her body.

“I believed this guy was God almighty,” she said. “I believe any moment the apocalypse would come and we’d be filled with his spiritual power and rule the world.”

Ficca said she always carried a folding knife and trail mix with her so that she’d be prepared for the apocalypse. The children of cult members were taken into remote areas for survival training. They spent two or three days learning to build shelters and to find edible plants.

“We did it without proper gear because the whole point was you had to be able to do it at a moment’s notice,” Ficca said.

But mostly, Ficca remembers living in fear of Schacknow and the other leaders — of Schacknow’s violent mood swings, of the physical and psychological abuse she said all cult members endured, and of sexual abuse inflicted by Schacknow on young women and children.

At least two women, including a stepdaughter, accused Schacknow in separate lawsuits in 1986 and 1988 of having sexually abused them when they were children. Their civil suits were settled out of court for undisclosed sums. No criminal charges were ever brought against him.

Other women have told The Courant over the years about Schacknow’s sexual appetite and how young girls were delivered to him. Ficca said she has a vivid memory of being sexually assaulted by Schacknow.

Ficca attended public school until her freshman year of high school, when Schacknow decided all cult children should be home schooled. Education and free thinking were not compatible with cult life, she said.

As a teen, Ficca said, she began to question some of what Schacknow preached and what the cult believed. Although conflicted, she was still deeply under the cult’s spell, she said.

Cult members were encouraged to keep journals, which would then be read by their “personal apostles.” When Ficca revealed she was struggling with her faith and questioning Schacknow, it made him angry.

Still, Ficca said, she believed Schacknow was God.

At age 20, she was thrown out of the cult even as her parents remained believers. Schacknow told Ficca that her soul was cursed, that she would get sexually transmitted diseases and that she would be mangled in a car wreck.

“He would curse you with all of these things and send you on your way,” she recalled.

Many who were thrown out of the cult would go groveling back, ceding more power and control to Schacknow, she said. But an old friend who left the cult years earlier took Ficca in and she never went back.

“People were very kind and patient with me,” Ficca recalled. They helped rather than ostracize her. And they would not confront her when she invoked what the cult had taught her.

In the years after the cult, Ficca went to college, married, became an artist and produced documentaries.

But she says she’s not completely psychologically free of cult. She sometimes questions whether she is to blame when bad things happen. And she still struggles with the trauma of the experience and has difficulty trusting people.

Ficca said the cult is still active and estimates there are as many as 75-100 members. At its peak, there were about 300 members, who worked in the cult’s multimillion dollar real estate and construction businesses, which crashed in the late 1980s.