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Harrisburg rapist to be released from prison by CARRIE CASSIDY, The Patriot-News Saturday August 09, 2008
She lived in a world where parents willingly gave up their children to a man who declared himself “The Light of the World.”
A world where children were beaten for letting anyone but fellow cult members see them, and their genitals were pierced with a lock to be controlled by this so-called prophet. It was a world unimaginable to most people, but it was her reality for seven years, from the time she was 5 until her mother broke free of George Feigley’s grip.
Three decades later, that world still haunts her through dreams occasionally featuring Feigley and his flock of followers. She was shocked to learn from a reporter that the man who beat her, made her call him “Master,” and photographed her in graphic sexual poses would be released from prison this week.
“He’s not a man who should be out with society,” said the woman, who asked to be called “J.” The Patriot-News has a policy of not identifying the victims of sexual crimes. “He preys on — at least he did — the people who believed in him.”
And he could do it again, said J, other victims and prosecutors.
On Friday, Feigley, 68, will leave the State Correctional Institution at Laurel Highlands, a minimum-security prison near Somerset, a free man. He will not be on probation or parole, and he will not have to comply with Megan’s Law when he returns to his home near 13th and Derry streets in Harrisburg.
He will have served the maximum time to which he was sentenced for rape convictions in 1975, and subsequent convictions for escapes and conspiracy to commit a sex crime while in prison. [...]
Feigley, who was a rare-book dealer, denied that the Neo-American Church he started at his Harrisburg home was a sex cult. He also denied abusing the girls and told a newspaper reporter in March 1984 that his conviction and charges filed later against the women in his group were part of a conspiracy to destroy the religion.
His victims and his prosecutors, however, have the scars and the evidence to prove otherwise.
Basing his description on personality tests given to Feigley after his conviction, a psychologist described Feigley as a “very bright, imaginative, self-centered, self-seeking, grandiose, highly motivated, but confused man” who was seemingly guilty of a “neurotic need for continuing support and love.”
Words written by Feigley, whose IQ is above average, to his flock of at least 20 show the power he wielded even from prison:
“I require total devotion to my desires. You may not have a will nor desire of your own which do not project my wishes. I expect this complete commitment from my wives, my concubines and my children … Make yourselves my delight. If there is discord among you, I will have you whipped.” [...]
Feigley wielded fear like a conductor’s baton. He forced the children to obey his commands for sex with him and other cult members, often with onlookers and to be photographed using sexual devices.
One of the cult children contacted for this story declined to be interviewed out of fear, even though only a few cult members, including Feigley’s wife, remain.
Some of the cult children, who are now grown, have moved away from the Harrisburg area, but one, a girl known as “Sunflower,” continues to associate with them.
Fear is one way psychopaths like Charles Manson and Jim Jones keep a stronghold on the people they victimize, said Mark Safarik, who spent 22 years as an investigator in the FBI’s behavioral sciences unit.
Safarik can’t say for certain whether Feigley is a psychopath, because a person must be tested for that, but he concluded after reading about the case that Feigley possesses many psychopathic traits.
What makes Feigley so dangerous, Safarik said, is his charismatic personality and his ability to identify those, particularly those with low self-esteem, who would be receptive to him. Then he grooms them.
People like Feigley can’t be changed in prison, he said.
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