INTERVIEW WITH 21-YEAR-OLD BRANCH DAVIDIAN KAREN DOYLE
(From NACRO:) Among the various TV shows covering the Waco story, we thought you might be interested in this particular transcript:
Narrator: Although most of the followers of David Koresh are now dead, the story is not over. Some of his disciples survive and remain fanatically devoted. When government agents began their assault on the compound in Waco, Karen Doyle was not there. She and a handful of other followers were returning home to California after celebrating Passover outside the compound.
This house in LaVerne, California, was once the home of David Koresh; in fact, three of his followers still live here. It is the only property left in the Koresh holdings. And ironically, one member who still lives here, Karen Doyle, says she would have rather been at the compound at the time that it burnt to the ground than here. She contends that those who died in the fire along with David were the lucky ones.
Karen: I wish I had been there from the very beginning. My wishes were that I was inside with the rest of my friends and family.
Interviewer: You wish you had been in the compound when it burnt to the ground?
Karen: Yes, I do.
Interviewer: You would have burned to death!
Karen: I suppose I would have, but you know, we don't look at physically losing this body as a tragedy or....
Narrator: It's no surprise that 21-year-old Karen Doyle believes so strongly in the teachings of David Koresh. She was, after all, born and raised inside the compound that once stood in Waco. But what is surprising is the way in which Doyle looks upon the deaths of Koresh and her fellow members, one of the victims having been her own younger sister.
Interviewer: Your sister perished!
Karen: So to speak, yes.
Interviewer: Are you sad by that?
Karen: No, I'm very happy for her. I mean, I know I will see her again. So....
Interviewer: But one would ask, burning to death is not a nice way to die.
Karen: No, it is not, but I don't believe that she suffered. So, you know....
Interviewer: You're more happy for her.
Karen: I'm very happy for her, yes.
Interviewer: What about the 17 children? These young kids who were inside the compound who perished in this horrible fire, how do you feel about them?
Karen: I'm very happy for them. I know that I will see everyone again. It's not a matter of your own sadness or anything like that, because I have faith and I know that God has everything in control, and I'm just very happy for them.
Interviewer: You're not worried at all that those 17 little kids may have literally burned to death?
Karen: Like I say, I don't believe they suffered at all, so I'm not worried, because they were under God's protection.
This is not the end for us as a people, it is only the beginning of new and better things.
Narrator: Hard to believe. Although Karen Doyle did lose her sister, her father survived. He was in the compound and was one of the few who got out of the fire. He suffered burns, but he'll live. (end of interview)
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MAMA'S COMMENTS ON KAREN DOYLE'S INTERVIEW!
Maria #197 DO 2860 4/93
1. This girl's testimony is going to be used to "prove," of course, that children in new religious movements grow up completely crazy, completely irrational, and are willing to die at the drop of a hat. They'll try to use this to prove all the negative things that they can, but mostly, of course, that she's completely crazy, which is obviously their view of things.
2. The ironic thing about it is that all Christians everywhere are supposed to believe exactly the same things which she stated! The Scriptures say over and over and over again that there's a better place, and "if in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable" (1Cor.15:19). The Christian's hope has always been to go to Heaven and be with the Lord. This life is pretty difficult and gets pretty intolerable sometimes, and Christians all down through the ages have sung about and written about and longed for the time when they would go to be with the Lord. This is as logical and Biblical as anything, and all Christians are supposed to believe exactly the same thing that she believes!--And not just Christians, but almost all religions look forward to a better world beyond this one! Paul said that "to depart and be with Christ is far better" than this life, and that "we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house (body) which is from Heaven" (Phil.1:23; 2Cor.5:2).
3. So it just shows how anti-God, anti-Christ, anti-religion, anti-faith--any kind of faith--the U.S. has become!--When they dismiss this girl as crazy just because she's stating that she's thankful that her friends and relatives are in a better place after being tortured and tormented and hounded and burned, and saying that she wishes she could be with them. Even Systemites who have lost their loved ones say, "Oh, I lost my wife, I lost my children. I love my family and I wish I would have gone with them." When you lose everything you've loved and you've cared so deeply for, of course you want to be with them!
4. But people don't think! They're so brainwashed and so propagandized against cults that all they can see is, "This girl must be crazy! She wanted to go with them!"--When, if they had an ounce of rationality themselves, they would see that they would have said the very same thing if all their friends and family had perished.
5. If they would stop and think sanely, they would realize that the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims, or followers of virtually any religion all look for a better life too! If they had put themselves in those poor Davidians' place, after being hounded and tortured and traumatized and persecuted for 51 days the way they were, they would be thankful that they had gone on to a better world too! They're the ones who are irrational and crazy and ridiculous!
6. To dismiss that girl as crazy just because she expressed basic Christian doctrine and logic and sanity shows how insane they are! It just makes me furious! It's almost unbelievable!--Except it's not unbelievable because you know how clever the Devil is at duping people and deceiving them and brainwashing them, which is what he's done to the System. It just makes you furious, though, that they're going to use this basic Christian testimony and rational thinking, this completely logical way of looking at things, as "proof" that "not only is this girl crazy, but all the members of her group are crazy. And not only are they crazy, but all cult members are crazy! And all of their children are in danger of growing up in this horrible way! So we'd better get the kids out of all cults as fast as possible, because they're growing up with this crazy, irrational way of thinking that they would rather live in a better world than this one! And how could any world be better than this one?! And not only that, but every aspect of their life is crazy and irrational, and how could the mothers not send their children out?" (They probably couldn't even get out, for one thing!) "And how can they bring them up quoting Scripture and not quoting anything else, not quoting the latest TV shows and rap songs?"
7. The System is hitting on everything religious and turning it into something evil and something crazy, when we're the ones who are rational, we're the ones who are sane, because what we're doing is based on Scripture, and it's God's Word! The System is the one that's insane! So it's our word against theirs, their word against ours. But it's actually God's Word against theirs, and it's God's Word against the Devil's word!
8. Systemites don't know where they get their crazy doctrines from, which of course they get from the Devil, right straight out of Hell! But we can point to where ours come from in no uncertain terms. We have God's Word and we don't have to look to Freud or to Dr. Spock or to who knows what author, or to people like Margaret Singer [an anti-cult psychologist] to figure out what we believe. We've got the Word and we know where it is and we know what it is, and we can show it to people. We know what we believe and we know it's the truth. They're just floundering around listening to all the evil ideas of the Devil, and they all end up sounding pretty much the same because they're all on his track and doing his bidding.
9. Thank God people can take death like that girl took it! Her sister died, and her father got burned but didn't die. Almost everyone dear to her is dead, her father is evidently badly burned, practically all the rest of the Branch Davidian members that are alive are in jail, so she's almost by herself now, almost on her own. It must be so traumatic for her. Thank God she can take things so peacefully and so beautifully! What a jewel! What an exception to this world's crazed attitude towards death.
10. The problem is, however, that because the System is so corrupt and evil and they can't understand the things of the Spirit (1Cor.2:14), her good is going to be evil spoken of by them.--The words she says, her attitude, her peace and calmness, everything! To us, who might in the future be called upon to testify to our faith under severe persecution, it would be good to see in retrospect where she might have been able to not only speak to them on a spiritual level, but to appeal to their carnal minds as well--their natural reasoning.
11. When the interviewer asked her, "You wish you had been in the compound when it burned to the ground?" Karen says, "Yes, I do." She could have added, "If you had lost everyone dear to you--your mother, your father, your sisters, your brothers, your wife, your children, your aunts, your uncles, all your friends--would you want to live alone without them?" Even if the interviewer couldn't comprehend such a thing, any listeners who have gone through the same thing would totally relate and understand the feelings of the one left behind in the initial stages of bereavement.
12. When Karen says, "We don't look at physically losing this body as a tragedy," she could have added, "How would you feel if for 51 days you had been shot at and hounded and harassed and persecuted and deprived of all of your human rights? What if you hadn't been able to sleep or live normally; you'd been under house arrest, unable to go outside your home; you'd been under siege by the U.S. government and all their soldiers and tanks; subjected to the psychological warfare of continuous 24-hour horror noise and bright lights all night long? What if you were deprived of basic necessities such as electricity and water, unable to have contact with the outside world--and with no prospect of things getting any better, only years of imprisonment and months of trials and sentencing and being separated from each other, and permanently separated from your children? If you saw that God in His mercy was taking you out of this horrible, unbearable world to a better place where you would be loved and accepted and free at last, wouldn't you be thankful?"
13. They're not going to necessarily agree, since they haven't gone through the hounding and the torture and the persecution, but it may stop them in their tracks and make them think of things from a different perspective; plus you get across your message of religious persecution and of a better hope with the Lord.
14. When the interviewer states, "Burning to death is not a nice way to die!" and Karen says, "No, it is not," she could have added, "But neither is being shot to death by government gunmen, or tortured to death, or seeing your children and infants gassed, having your food and water and electricity cut off, and being subjected to bright lights and hideous noises all night long."
15. Where Karen said she was very happy for her younger sister, she could have said, "I'm thankful she's out of the terrible torture and deprivation that she had to endure, and the separation from all those she loved that she would have faced when the social services got ahold of her."
16. Where she said she was very happy for the 17 children who had perished in the fire, she could have added, "Because they've gone to Heaven to be with Jesus, where He can now protect them from the terrible things that the System was doing to them, and the horrible child abuse they were enduring at the hands of the FBI, who were fighting them with psychological warfare, incarcerating them in their home, smashing all their bikes, cutting off their water and electricity, endangering them by shooting into their home, and worse yet, demolishing their home with tanks and endangering their lives by toxic tear gas, and finally being responsible for setting them on fire!"
17. She could have gone on, of course, to say she was very sad for herself, that she's left alone now and she's not with them, and what a horrible tragedy the government perpetrated, and how God was going to hold them responsible for their horrible, violent persecution of her family and loved ones!
18. Where Karen says, "This is not the end for us as a people, it is only the beginning of new and better things," instead, in order to identify with all people of faith, she could have reworded it slightly to say, "As with all Christians, and even those of other faiths, we believe that death is not the end. It is only the beginning of a new and better life, after enduring so much pain and persecution in this one."
19. In the course of the interview, she could have, in an emotional outburst, blasted the System, yelling that they had murdered her sister and burned her father and that it was an atrocious act, and but for the grace of God she would never be able to forgive them! She should be enraged and rail against the System which has so hounded and persecuted them, even to their death! She should have been willing to show her sadness and her grief and rage at the vicious, insane enemies who could have done such a thing to innocent people who were just trying to live their faith in the best way they knew how.
20. As Christians, even though we have the peace of the Lord and the calm that He gives and the hope of seeing our loved ones, we still feel our losses greatly. Our heart breaks and we need to also show this side to the public so that they will see that we are human beings and that what they do to us hurts us deeply, but that with God's supernatural power, we can have peace and calm in the midst of storm, and have hope that some day all wrongs will be righted and that God will mete out justice to all, and judgment to the evil. You must also show your outrage at the Devil and his people for doing this kind of thing to your loved ones. She could have also mentioned that they were martyrs and died for their faith, like those long ago who were burned at the stake because they wouldn't renounce their faith.
21. God bless this precious girl! I think she did a beautiful job considering she probably had not been prepared for this interview, and she was just stating her faith and not trying to convince anyone. But in retrospect, we see that she could have made a stronger statement if she had tried to not only present her faith on a spiritual plane, but relate to her audience at the level of their carnal reasoning. Even that is pretty hard to do since so many people's minds are already made up, but it's worth a try, and some people do respond to the truth if the "cookies are on a low enough shelf."
22. You also have the problem that antagonistic producers will edit what you say in the worst light possible. You also don't have very much time to say much. What you say has to be short and concise to get your point across quickly, as they usually don't let you have time to preach a sermon on TV. Of course, it won't hurt you to tell it to the interviewer. Maybe he will be open to the truth and it will result in more fair coverage of your message. And who knows? They might use more of your interview than they were expecting to, if the Lord wants the public to hear it.
23. Obviously they must have been doing something pretty right for the Devil to have attacked them like that!--Because there are a lot of other people in the world who claim to be prophets or Jesus or Gabriel or Napoleon or all kinds of other departed people. Why should they go after David Koresh with such a vengeance just because he says he's Jesus?--In other words, just because he's crazy, to their way of thinking. There are millions of crazy people in the world, so why attack him? He had already been cleared of child abuse charges a year before, and the American constitution is supposed to ensure a citizen's right to bear arms. And neither does the excuse that they thought they were going to commit mass suicide hold water either, since all the experts the government consulted assured them that whatever else these people were, they were not suicidal.
24. The real reason behind it all, of course, is that the Devil is out to get the Christians and he is starting with the cults! The Antichrist campaign against the cults has resulted in strong sentiment against them by the public, as well as ridicule, fear and hatred. Anyone with a strong faith is now considered a fanatic, and his turn will come. God have mercy on His people and judge their tormentors!--And He will!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family