Commune sex shocker

Secrets of the S.I. 'gunshot' hippie haven

New York Post/June 4, 2006
By Heather Gilmore

A hippie-style, hilltop commune on Staten Island has turned the '60s peace-and-love philosophy on its head, pressuring members into sex, green-card marriages, pill-popping and wacky sex sessions with a shrink, two ex-members claim.

Those who refused were shuffled into the worst lodgings and pressured to leave, the defectors said.

Ganas, where a co-founder was ambushed and shot six days ago by a former member of the commune, has become a virtual paradise lost.

"They say they are all about peace and living in harmony, but they are really the evil-doers," said Walter Enquist, a former freelance journalist who said he left the hippie haven in 1999 after a 21/2-year stint.

"I never felt comfortable there - it wasn't your typical hippie way of life."

The Monday-night shooting of Ganas co-founder Jeff Gross has turned the glare of public attention on the kooky collective as cops continue the hunt for alleged shooter Rebekah Johnson, 43, a former Ganas member.

Ganas was founded around 1978 by 12 hippies, including Gross and George Hunt, 51, who reportedly invested his considerable wealth in the Staten Island estate. The sprawling complex includes 10 neighboring houses interconnected by lush garden pathways.

Currently, about 90 residents share meals, cars and supplies while paying dirt-cheap rent - or working at the commune's for-profit businesses.

It's the city's longest-running commune experiment, but Enquist and another ex-member, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Kenba, say life there is a freaky mix of weird characters, sexual shenanigans, prescription-drug use and harebrained psychology.

In an explosive 1999 lawsuit - later dropped - fugitive Johnson alleged she was ordered to "sleep with the midgets" living at the commune and to engage in lesbian sex.

Enquist said he was shunned and then pressed to leave after rejecting repeated requests to have sex with members who were sometimes 30 years his senior.

Kenba said she became disenchanted after being asked to marry a Brazilian seeking citizenship. The final straw came when her 14-year-old son overheard conversations about devil worship, she said.

Enquist's horror stories also include a recollection of meeting Johnson. Enquist remembers her from his stay at 45 Scribner Ave., a run-down, brown clapboard house, one of the 10 owned by Ganas in Tompkinsville.

"She was a young girl, very naive, with a malleable personality," he recalled. "She had lots of energy and was willing to please. I believe she was passed around from one lover to another.

"She was caught in their web. I think she just woke up one day and realized she was doing nothing good in her life."

Enquist said he witnessed members passing out anti-depressants like Zoloft and Paxil to residents almost every day.

The pill-pusher would knock on the back doors of each of the houses and hand over cups containing the drugs.

"They were diagnosed and told they needed them, and they would be told to take these pills every day," he said.

Founder and commune guru Mildred Gordon, 83, and Susan Grossman, the wife of the shooting victim - who remains in critical but stable condition in St. Vincent's Hospital - refused to discuss the bombshell allegations.

"We're overwhelmed with what's happening," Grossman told The Post. "And we've had quite enough of reporters for now."

Kenba, a social worker in her 50s, said she ended her yearlong stay in October 2000 - but recalled a happy start to the experimental living arrangement.

She said she loved her two-bedroom home that backed onto the communal yard where members grew vegetables and flowers. But she and her son were then moved to a rickety and unlocked attic space after an electrical fire in May 2000 that destroyed everything they owned.

"Things got a little seedy," said Kenba, who shelled out $160 a week for herself and son Al-Mahdi, now 20. She said life got uglier after a senior member repeatedly asked her to marry a visitor from Brazil.

"[Al-Mahdi] didn't want to be there; we had no privacy, and they were getting pushy with us," Kenba recalled. "We had come there just because we needed a place to stay.

"I didn't want to be anybody's ticket to New York, so I said no," she said of the green-card proposal. "I wasn't offered any money to do it, but I got the impression [the Brazilian man] was paying Ganas for the privilege."

Enquist, also in his 50s, said he heard of several "contractual agreements" for international visitors to marry Ganas residents for their citizenship privileges. One foreign woman "married a guy because she wanted to stay [in the country]," he said.

"They would solicit someone from the commune and reimburse you in some way. They acted like a dating service handing out marriage contracts."

Enquist said that during his Stay, he refused repeated requests for sex from Gordon - 30 years his senior. Gordon moved to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, with her fifth husband - 38-year-old David.

Enquist claims he was also asked - and refused - to have sex with several new members of the commune.

"A lot of the women were on psychotropic drugs, and they would have these therapy sessions with Mildred and others. Basically it's legal sex for money," he said.

Mildred "kept on asking me to sleep with her, then she would introduce me to each new woman and say they were willing," he said. "I had my own social life - I just didn't want to be a part of it."

After refusing, "I had 50 or 60 people leaning on me to leave. When they realized I wasn't going to play any of their games, they shunned me."

Kenba, who now lives with her son in an apartment near her work at a Staten Island clinic, began feeling uncomfortable when Al-Mahdi heard people talking about Satan worship, and she heard people discussing black magic.

She said the group lived in the room next to her in the last place she and her son were moved - a larger yet more run-down home on Corson Avenue.

"I didn't like it at all. We stopped going downstairs to eat and we didn't feel welcome anymore," she said.

One commune member called the ex-members' allegations, "completely and utterly untrue."

"There were a few people who left here disgruntled," said Melissa, who did not want to give her last name.

"[Walter and Kenba] are a few crackpots . . . we're a bunch of normal people - we like living in a way that is more environmentally sustainable."

Gross helped start the commune with his wife, Susan Grossman, a kidney specialist who works at St. Vincent's.

Enquist claims "Big Love"-style hijinks have a long tradition at the commune: Gross and Grossman allegedly swapped partners with fellow founders Richard and Peggy Wonder, 46.

"Jeff is now with Peggy, who is married to Richard. Richard is now seeing Susan," he said. "But really, they're all one big happy family."