Saturday, August 23, 2014

Fred Dattolo's Role in PCG Tragedy

Recently the COG blogosphere was shocked to learn from Exit and Support Network that Janet De Gennaro, a PCG member, committed suicide on July 20, 2014. What a terrible tragedy this is!

Now Dan De Gennaro, her father, has released a testimony regarding how his daughter was isolated from the family and how they had practically no contact with their daughter for two years until she returned in a coffin after her death by suicide.

As a former follower of LCG I am particularly disgusted and horrified with the fact that Fred Dattolo, who used to be in LCG, participated in isolating Janet De Gennaro from her family and causing her immediate family members to be cast out of PCG. According to this testimony it was Fred Dattolo who first "suspended" Janet De Gennaro's brother from PCG for an "inappropriate" comment on Facebook. Gradually the family was lost PCG's favor and were cast out, even though Dan De Gennaro was a Deacon. My word! Even Deacons are not safe from such oppressive acts within PCG.

I well remember reading Fred Dattolo's articles in LCG's recruitment magazine, Tomorrow's World, before he jumped ship to PCG in 2001. In the May-June 2000 issue he wrote an article extolling the role of the father in producing a happy family. Yet here Fred Dattolo is exposed as causing Janet De Gennaro to be cut off from her loving father and her family.

In one particular encounter Fred Dattolo says the following horrifying words.
Fred Dattolo looked at her and said, "I see this crying all the time." While this experience was obviously a normal occurrence for Fred Dattolo, we were taken aback and totally shocked by his callous attitude. He was brutal, cold and showed no concern. A true minister of God would have shown mercy, love and compassion and opened the scriptures to direct us. None of this happened.
Alas, it appears this sort of dividing of families is quite common within PCG and PCG ministers seem quite used to this sort of thing.

Back in 2007 PCG Information posted an in depth paper, Reign of Error, discussing PCG's practice of shunning unwanted persons. Part of it was directly addressed to Fred Dattolo. It is clear that Fred Dattolo continues to live in the cocoon of privilege and power as one of the overlords of PCG. Clearly such warnings had no affect on him. For his income from PCG he is clearly willing to sacrifice the happiness of any PCG member in order to stay in favor of those above him and to keep getting his income.

Gerald Flurry always seemed to have a peculiar obsession with getting his followers to separate themselves from "Laodiceans".
If the work to the world is basically finished - most of what remains to be done is separating the Laodiceans and the Philadelphians (Mal. 3:17). That should not take very long - but it will be painful! Very painful - in some cases it will break up families. (Gerald Flurry, Malachi's Message, 1990 edition, p. 78.)
These words were printed twenty four years ago. Clearly Gerald Flurry was wrong when he said this separation "should not take very long".

It also needs to be stated that this non contact policy does not appear to apply to Stephen Flurry. As noted in a previous post Stephen Flurry conducted a telephone interview with UCG's Aaron Dean in 2005 while writing his (deeply flawed) book, Raising the Ruins. This was well after PCG's no contact policy began to be enforced. According to PCG Information this policy became the rule in 2000. So it appears that this draconian rule is by no means applied equally. Higher ups like Stephen Flurry seem to have no need to fear breaking this rule.

And as for the others named Cal Culpepper has been gaining attention for apparently quite oppressive behavior as may be seen here, here and here.

As for Tim Oostendarp I have seen his name pop up while looking through Trumpet articles. But I had not heard much about him.

Also it is worth noting that when Janet De Gennaro married the marriage was not registered.
We later found out that Janet and David Privratsky were not legally married. They were only married in the eyes of the PCG ministry. Once again, the scriptures were ignored (1 Pet 2:13, Titus 3:1). Because they were not legally married, Janet was buried as my daughter, Janet C. De Gennaro.
One cannot help but wonder if this is part of a trend within PCG to not have their marriages registered. If so it only further shows PCG's tendency to isolate themselves from the surrounding society and to treat the word of PCG ministers as though it was the law.

How very tragic this is.My thoughts go out to them. They do not deserve this.

People need to know the truth. The family are to praised for bravely saying what happened in this tragedy.

[Update: August 23, 2014: Banned by HWA has now reported on this matter.]

[Update: October 10, 2014: For anyone who wants to read about this serious topic I would suggest the following:

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