Shawano Cult: The Samanta Roy Institute (SIST) and Rama Behera — A Documentary Investigation

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:11]It's a small town called Shauno.

[00:00:14]>> We lived in a very much like the 1984 George Orwell, the big brother society.

[00:00:19]>> Lawsuits and bankruptcy to an alleged hit list of town officials.

[00:00:24]>> No private life was allowed. He preached every week for a long time on private life. we could we're not allowed to do anything without getting an okay from Rama >> Hitler the church and the media all worked together to destroy and kill the Jews that history is repeating itself in Shauna Wisconsin >> so the very concept the very word love the very concept of love was erased from this gospel from our his doctrine from our way of life >> usually quiet not very public group from the Shauno area has a bold message tonight claiming it is being targeted for religious persecution Where does Shauno go from here? That's the question many people in the city are asking.

[00:01:02]>> When I used to think of cults, I used to think of small, insidious groups in big cities hiding away under the cover of common religious names. In these cities, cults can easily originate, branding themselves as a church of our savior or Jesus Christ or our Lord's mercy or other ambiguous phrases that are often unbeknownst to the cult members. Not tied to any sort of legitimate Christian church denomination or governing body.

[00:01:35]But the more research I do, the more I realize that these cults don't need big cities and overloaded legal systems to rely on. In fact, they often happen in slow rural areas. They happen in Midwest towns just as often as they do in Los Angeles or New York or anywhere else for that matter. Perhaps those living in the sleepy small towns are more at risk to find meaning in these types of groups and supposed spiritual connection. I went to college on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin. And frankly, I've never driven through an area with the exception of the Amish areas that are complete with horse and buggies and women in full like dress and bonnet and 90° heat. I've never driven through anywhere else and felt a culty vibe. And looking at the small town of Shauno in Wisconsin, that area containing a cult truly never even crossed her mind. This group is located in a town about half an hour west of Green Bay, Wisconsin. The town is called Shorto. It's a pretty It's a smaller town. It's not like Chicago or Minneapolis. And members lived in M Minnesota, uh Wisconsin, and South Dakota. And they would come from these states every weekend. um and have meetings in Shauno at Rama's compound on the outskirts of Shauno.

[00:03:01]>> Now, if you're not from the Midwest, you probably will have never heard of Shauno before. And if you live in the Midwest, you still probably don't know about Shauno. But the absolute normaly that is this small dairy farming town of Shauno, it honestly is the perfect cover for a cult. It sits roughly 35 miles northwest of Green Bay and it barely reaches 9,000 in terms of population. It's not some big booming city center.

[00:03:29]>> It's a small town called Shauno. Sits less than 120 miles from Madison, Wisconsin. Shauno is only about 6 square miles wide and has about 8,000 people.

[00:03:39]And the group's relationship with the town of Toronto has been strained over the past few years. There have been several bizarre twists, including everything from lawsuits and bankruptcy to an alleged hit list of town officials. And the actual cult, it's a compound that is allegedly guarded around the clock. And their guarding isn't just for show. Local residents have reported that they've been chased or even videotaped by security for crimes such as just being lost in the area or even driving past the compound too slowly. For more than 50 years, the Samantha Roy Institute of Science and Technology, or SIST, has existed quietly as one of America's strangest and least covered cults. To truly understand the cult, you have to understand its origins. The Samantha Roy Institute of Science and Technology was founded in the 1970s by someone who was named Rama Bahara. Now, it's confusing, so pay attention. But Rama Beera and Samantha Roy are the same person. Okay, this person, the cult leader, they changed names the entire time throughout, which is super common with cult leaders. The group was apparently started back in the 1960s. The primary figure is this man, known in Baltimore as Aram Cohen. He is apparently the same man as Rama Bahara who founded the group called the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ in the mid 1960s in the town of Shauno, Wisconsin. For more than 20 years, the group held religious services in this house in the town of Shauno. But after members of the group began to leave in 1990, Rama Beha changed his name to RC Samanta Roy and the group's name changed to the Samantha Roy Institute of Science and Technology or Cyst for short. Some name changes seem personally driven while others seem to be primarily spiritually driven. And throughout this video, I'll let you know about the name changes, but I'll be referring to Rama throughout as the cult leader or Rama based on the allegations against the group just to keep things kind of simple. The cult leader was a man born in a small village in India who moved to the United States to attend Colombia University in New York City, which is pretty pretty prestigious. In 1973, he purchased a house in Shauno, Wisconsin, which became the compound or the home base for the alleged cult to this day.

[00:06:11]in a small town called Shauno, which is near Green Bay, Wisconsin. I was in this group from 1975 until November of 1999.

[00:06:21]When I came upon this group, I had no intention of joining a cult. I was very much into artwork. I was very a very qualified and capable woodworker and furniture maker and an artist. Uh I had received good recognition at Manito State College where I went to uh on my domework. I was in the college quarterly magazine. You know, I had several things going for myself. Before the meeting started, we sat down in the room. The people there, the men all had um buzz haircuts, you know, white shirts, ties on, uh slack pants. The women had long dresses down on the floor. The long hair was wrapped up in a bun behind their head. And they were all singing hymns.

[00:07:05]What he brought to the table as a cult leader wasn't a great new religion or spiritual insights from God himself.

[00:07:13]Instead, he brought cult leader charisma and the completely out ofplace confidence that we do so often see in high control religious groups.

[00:07:22]>> But I sat through the singing and then everybody somebody said, "All rise." And we stood up and this small man came walking in, had dark skin and had a bit business suit on and took his shoes off, got down on the floor in an eastern kind of way, put his head to the floor and prayed. And he stood up, stood behind the podium, slamming his fist against the podium, his eyes were bugging out, veins coming out of his forehead, and he started talking about the Lord Jesus coming back very soon, and that this country was going to go down because of the hypocrisy and immorality. It was gonna be 200 mph wind and there was going to be plagues and famines and droughts and all kinds of things because of judgment on this country for all the sin that it had that it was doing. And he was saying that there was the interstate commerce would be shut off that people there'd be riots in the streets for a piece of bread and kept on going for a couple hours with these kind of predictions. And then as the time went on, he started pointing to different people in the crowd and started telling them about things about their life. When he came to me, he pointed to me. He said, "Son, I see you wandering here and there trying different things." He said, "Unless you give your life to Jesus Christ, you'll wander forever and never find the answer." And even though that's kind of a general statement, people tell me that now. At that moment, it hit me very very specifically because I was I was searching around. But let's get into what the whole cult was about. Like most cults, the Shauno cult was structured from its inception around complete and unfaltering obedience to the cult leader Bahara and the group's ideals. The cult leader named his followers publicly the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, which borrows other cult tactics of using widely accepted religious language to normalize their beliefs in their group mindset. I didn't know what the heck I was supposed to believe in when I was in there cuz it's all very confusing. But the main thing was we were supposed to live this clean lifestyle and never sin. and if we sinned, we were going to damn to hell unless we begged for forgiveness. And many times that didn't work.

[00:09:34]>> Internally though, they had a different name. They called themselves the Brethren, which is arguably much weirder. And it makes a lot more sense to me why they had a public relations approved name for the public and then had this real name that they used on the inside.

[00:09:50]>> How many hours can you read the Bible when you're, you know, when you're first getting started on this thing? How many hours can you pray? Um, we would go out into the field or out into the woods or into a park in the afternoon after we got done with work and walk around and pray and sing songs out there and we come back to our house. We'd eat some supper and maybe one or two of the brethren would come over and we would kind of talk, but we weren't supposed to have small talk. We weren't supposed to just chitchat. So any talk, everything had to be turned into a testimony. So we would say how the Lord had blessed our work today or how the Lord had had helped us find our keys which we had lost. And you know everything was had turned into this had to have a connotation of something to do with the Lord otherwise we couldn't talk about it.

[00:10:30]>> The cult leader arranged marriages for people. He created dress codes for female members and he even banned certain foods, things like peanut butter or he just really had kind of a hatred for Italian food. And he even told people in the group what types of cars they could or could not buy. houses have been bought out by members of the group.

[00:10:53]So we had um you know 10 12 families sleeping in the basement of these couple houses that were right there. So we had wallto-wall children and mothers. The men had to sleep out in their cars.

[00:11:05]There's no Rama would not let us use the bathrooms at Rama's compound. So we had to go to these two neighbors houses. So we were talking a couple hundred people going to two different bathrooms in these two houses. Some of them wet their pants right there on the floor. Other people would run out of the room, you know, and have to sit dance around as long as they could out in the outer room try wait holding themselves wanting to go to the bathroom and eventually adults even were were wetting their pants, you know, and this is so humiliating. It was unbelievable. So the absurdity of daily life is, you know, just beyond.

[00:11:38]>> This is to say that his control, yeah, it it it extended to things as severe as marriage, but it also went as minuscule to the types of things that they would purchase. In a letter from a former member which was read aloud in court, it was described that members became brainwashed into thinking that the cult leader represented God himself and had powers beyond that of the rank and file religious leaders. Once trusted and feared as their spiritual leader, Rama regularly engaged in various physical and emotional abusive behaviors, all of which were used to obtain and maintain full control over his members spiritual and personal lives. end quote. His control was not a gentle one.

[00:12:22]Allegations include punishments like beatings, electric shocks by cattle prods, and prolonged torture as means of discipline. My earliest memories in the cult are of extreme physical abuse.

[00:12:38]The whippings consisted of being hit by 2x4s, being hit by housewire, and being hit by steel rides. My parents' marriage was arranged by the cult leader. They didn't know each other at all. Uh at one point Rama said at the end of the meeting, the Lord has made known that Matthew and Anne should be married. And they both just sat there just kind of looked around. Um who's Matthew? Who's Anne? They had no clue. And they really they only met for about 15 minutes before they actually joined together uh in the same um house and started their marriage >> type of position with our hands across our uh laps folded. We had to sit there for hours this way on a cement floor. At first we got to use blankets and then later years we didn't even get to use blankets. But there was this one old man who got to sit in a chair in the back of the room and on that morning he was gasping for breath for about the length of the meeting. It was like 2 and 1 half to three hours something like that. And Rama was talking to him during the meeting a couple times and said to him, "Brother, it's better for you to to die among the brethren than to go to the hospital." And he died. And it was there. We ate one meal a day for 4 days a week, three days a week, we fasted. So that's all the food that I got. And yet I was working 17 to 20 hours a day, getting 3 to four hours of sleep a night at best. Some nights I didn't sleep at all. I went straight through to the next day. He would turn something that would be which which should have been horrifying into a sadistic laughing insanity that we became a part of. Whip, beat, put children in barrels, do all these insidious type of things to the children.

[00:14:23]>> These punishments and disciplines targeted children in particular and any adults who were a perceived threat to authority. One survivor even said that they had been tortured for 8 years after questioning the leader at age 12. 8 years. Some former members alleged that Bahara punished them for perceived infractions by applying an electric cattle prod to sensitive parts of their bodies like inside of their mouths or their genitals. If all of that wasn't horrific enough, children were even reportedly locked inside of barrels, and the brethren had their heads shaven and were spat on by fellow members as punishments. Just so we're all clear, spitting on someone is seen legally as assault. Uh, another physical punishment was the cattle prod. I asked this girl if she knew when the meeting was going to end. I was around 5 years old or something. And Rama saw that and he didn't like it because I wasn't paying attention to him in the meeting. And so he told me to uh go inside and park afterwards. After he was done doing some things with the other brethren outside, he came in and hauled me to the back room and uh stuck the caliprod uh in various places in my body, sensitive areas, under my arms, uh on my teeth and my mouth. um be uh under my knees and between my legs and a cow pride. I was just I remember the feeling of this electrical electric shocks going through my body. Um I remember my body bouncing up and down. I could still feel the pain shooting through from my head down to my feet.

[00:16:03]>> So all of the all of the discipline, all the yelling and all of the teaching that Rama did about being strict on your children totally came to a head in total chaos. It didn't work. It it it only you know like when I look when I just it buzzes through my mind all the different children who ran away all the different children who I've met with now that I'm out these children are all destroyed they can't they do not know how to cope they do not know how to keep they can't keep a job because when when the employer or another worker starts yelling when there's a conflict the flashback that triggers of Rama yelling at them they just walk off the job they can't keep a job they can't keep a relationship of boyfriend girlfriend or you know there not many of them that have gotten married yet but the ones who do the marriages don't work the relations don't work you know this is all goes back to the things that you know the abuse came so this group became so out of control that even Rama could not control and the children started doing things which were out of control I mean totally out of control he could not the parents couldn't control them anymore because they wouldn't listen to them anymore they realized that this whole thing was a big farce or game, you know, inside their being.

[00:17:16]Even though Rama talked about Jesus being God and it was a very Christian fundamental thing and read the Bible all the time, these children had no concept anymore what God was. The very concept of God had been destroyed by living their life in this squalor in this poverty and in this insanity that the parents lived in to a point where the children started having sex among themselves among among brothers and sisters. the they started sneaking out, going to movies, the immorality and all the things that we were taught against these children openly or privately just snuck out away from their families. Many of them ran away from home. There was to the at this point there's probably not one family that is really intact where the husband and wife had much to they may be still married but there is no respect for the husband and wife. Mo in every family. Some of the children have run away. In many of the families, either the husband or the wife have left.

[00:18:10]>> As insider information about the cult slowly leaked into the public eye, and as concerned family members started digging, they had to do something. Their family members had been brainwashed by a cult leader of a thousand names and were likely being abused. They couldn't just stand there. Beyond that, they had essentially already lost their lives, their connections with their real families, their friends, or their careers that they had poured so much into. Families started hiring what was called deprogrammers. These were private individuals hired by desperate families to essentially kidnap their family members from the cult compound and to force them through psychological reverse brainwashing. I have no clue, you guys, what kind of certification or educational background could actually prepare you for the variety of hats that kidnapping someone from a cult compound illegally and holding them illegally while brainwashing them back to normal, like what how many hats would that entail? A lot. The horrific abuse and the fear from desperate families though did lead to repeated kidnappings by deprogrammers throughout the 70s and 80s. The group filed a lot of lawsuits over these issues and the ton of Shauno was kind of overrun with these whispered rumors and upset families. Finally, in the 1980s, Rama told his followers to begin researching the Catholic Church. I know this sounds fairly unproatic, but this time period coincided with the group's worst run-ins with the deprogrammers.

[00:19:50]And the more the the group became fearful of outsiders and tried to lock themselves down and isolate, the more people tried to get in, the more that kidnappings were attempted, the more they shut down. to talk about their theology to the extent it can be called a theology at all is really driven by this research into the Catholic Church.

[00:20:14]They had the idea that the Catholic Church is the root of all evil, like all evil ever in all of human history. As the brethren would see things, the Catholic Church had been responsible for essentially what is every major war and atrocity in human history. A pretty large wrap sheet in their holding only the Catholic Church accountable. One board member stated pretty clearly that Christianity is a false evil religion that was fabricated and that their cult participants, alleged cult participants, repeatedly argued that historians have identified the Catholic faith as being the dirtiest, filthiest, and most dangerous cult in human history. It's kind of crazy. There were culted businesses that distributed literature that alleged that the Vatican had control over the government and that basically what they were going through themselves personally as a cult was similar to the horrific atrocities committed during the Holocaust. When the group's businesses began failing and the city of Shauno came to their door to ask them about the violations and all of their unpaid taxes, they blame their financial issues on the mayor and local officials, referring to them as Catholic beasts and neo-Nazis, saying that the mayor was basically just out against their group. since began buying businesses and property in and around Shauno and Wisconsin with purchases ranging from a gift shop and fudge store, gas stations, a restaurant, a hotel, and even this a racetrack that features car, motorcycle, and go-kart racing. But in around 2006, the relationship between the town and cyst began to change. Shauno officials took action against the group after many of their commercial properties were vacant and that taxes were not being paid on others. The city began proceedings to collect back taxes and then the group began putting out video against the mayor and the city.

[00:22:09]>> Now SIST is in another financial dispute with the city. This time over about $15,000 in unpaid taxes. Fox 11's Lou Hillman has the latest.

[00:22:20]>> When property taxes are not paid on time, many cities sent out a reminder in the mail. In Shauno, the letters went out four weeks ago.

[00:22:28]>> Right. Like I said, there were 200 letters that went out and actually I call it courtesy because a lot of people did forget and then the interest doesn't calculate so fast for him.

[00:22:39]>> Two of those letters were sent to properties owned by SIST. SIST then sent two letters back to the city clerk and apparently a number of highranking government officials. The letter was carboncopied to President Barack Obama, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel. The list goes on and on, 16 names in all. In one of those letters, SIST makes the claim again that city officials are trying to conspire against the organization.

[00:23:08]>> This letter says that we stole their money and properties and illegally changed the locks and destroyed properties. Those are outrageous accusations. It all comes back to about $15,000 in unpaid property taxes on these two apartment buildings. SIST claims it's no longer in control of the properties. The group says the finances are supposed to be handled by a court-appointed attorney. SIST also claims the situation is part of the city's quote attempt to financially oppress us and rob from us. The group's CEO, Naomi Isacson, declined a request for an on camera interview for this story. Shauno city officials say the letters are upsetting.

[00:23:48]>> It's just a shame that we have to spend time dealing with these types of of uh outrageous accusations. We have so many better things to do.

[00:24:00]>> The city says it just wants the taxes paid, but SAS claims it's not responsible for the bill.

[00:24:07]>> But there's more. In March of 2009, the group filed for bankruptcy protection, owing creditors more than $13 million.

[00:24:13]But a federal judge threw out their bankruptcy protection after the group's founder, RC Samantha Roy, who is now known as Aram Cohen, donated more than half a million dollars to a Baltimore County school. Now, the city's lawsuits, including liel lawsuits by the mayor and other city officials, are now going forward. The Southern Poverty Law Sensor eventually designated cyst to be a hate group. Finally, in 1990, he had changed his name and decided that he was going to build the Samantha Roy Institute of Science and Technology, which was originally intended to be a college providing Americanstyle education to people in India. I'm sure that that genuinely was their kind of cult expansion plan, but fortunately, the school was never built. The paranoia around the cult really peaked in 2009, and for good reason. I don't like to really call it paranoia because the concern was truly validated and based in survivor testimonies or existing case documents across the street from work at a compound. Then in 2008, a Canadian businessman says he was contacted by members of the group and wired more than $175,000.

[00:25:23]He was allegedly given a list of about 60 names reportedly from members of CIS to kill the top officials in the town with the mayor Lorna Marquart at the top of the list. An investigation by the FBI resulted in no charges against that group. At around the same time, RC Samanta Roy had his name legally changed in Maryland to Avim Cohen and is the person who owns this house in Pikesville where a woman was allegedly assaulted.

[00:25:46]County police will not say if Cohen is involved in this incident.

[00:25:51]In 2009, a Canadian businessman named Bob Cameron contacted police saying that he had been hired by them as a hitman.

[00:26:00]He had been tasked with taking care of people on a list provided by the group.

[00:26:06]And in true ridiculous fashion, the cult had apparently even labeled the top of the list inconspicuously with red rum, which is obviously murder spelled backwards. Like, shout out to The Shining Guys. Great work. Authorities say they found a list with the names of 60 people from the Shauno community on it. That list was titled Red Rum, which is murder spelled backwards. At the time, authorities suspected SIST, also known as the Samanta Roy Institute of Science and Technology, may have played a role. We're told an FBI investigation is still ongoing, but no arrests have ever been made connected to the list.

[00:26:41]The hitman said that he was paid $175,000 to murder 60 people in Shauno on the list, including the mayor and the police chief. Doing some quick math, that's less than $3,000 a person, which seems like a ridiculously low number for 60 people. I'd contact the police, too.

[00:27:03]Robert Cameron, Bob Cameron, this hitman, decided he was in way over his head. And so instead he went to the police in Shano. The FBI warned the 60 named individuals on the red rum list and some of them were even put into protection. Federal prosecutors ultimately declined to file any charges saying they didn't have sufficient evidence. But it was clear everyone believed it was true.

[00:27:29]Where does Shauno go from here? That's the question many people in the city are asking after learning no one will be charged in connection to an alleged threat list. Many say that threat list has loomed over the city ever since it was announced.

[00:27:42]>> Wish something would have been done because it totally upset lives. Um those were my friends that were on the hit list.

[00:27:51]>> The federal government investigated.

[00:27:53]There's not a basis for criminal action and it should be left at that. Last November, Shauna law enforcement officials said the threat was connected to a secretive sect known as the Samantoy Institute of Science and Technology or SIST. At the time, the group claimed the list was made up by city officials to run them out of town.

[00:28:13]>> City officials scared by the thought of being exposed rushed to start a scandalous security alert propaganda campaign against SISD by creating a hit list to rouse, inflame, and terrorize the public to bring about our demise.

[00:28:27]City officials call the claims ridiculous. SIST has been at odds with city and county officials for a number of years. The disagreement stem mainly from the organization's business operations. SIST is hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes.

[00:28:42]The group also owns a number of downtown properties that sit vacant. Hopefully, uh, we can see something happen with those properties now and, um, become available on the market so we can get some businesses in there.

[00:28:56]>> Last week, the group's bankruptcy cases were dismissed from Delaware federal court. That means those who lent the organization money can now go after SIST in court. All told, SIST owes more than $13 million.

[00:29:10]>> It's exciting to see that it's moving forward. um and knowing that there's going to be foreclosures and someone's going to be able to move into the space and bring town back to life.

[00:29:23]>> The group, however, has said it will fight to stay in business. SIST's attorney declined to comment for this story.

[00:29:31]>> Now, many of those named on the implied threat list say they're angry that no charges are being filed. They've been told the FBI is planning to meet with them at some point to update them on the investigation. But some say they have doubts about how seriously investigators took the threat.

[00:29:47]>> If it took them a year to to investigate and it takes somebody less than 5 days to say that their year's job is zero, I think something's wrong. And I personally think that they never investigated.

[00:30:01]>> This understandably the the lack of charges or anything being done really to date fueled the public panic. People didn't just see the group as a cult-like religious group anymore. They people didn't just see the group as a cult-like religious group anymore that had a lot of rumors. Now they could read the news and feel certain that their loved ones lives were at stake. Throughout the 2000s, the group purchased businesses throughout Shauno. These businesses included a gas station, motorsports complexes, a hotel, restaurants, and even a gift shop. Most of these businesses have gone bankrupt and closed and I would imagine that their reputation precedes them in such a small town.

[00:30:47]>> End of business for SIST's gas stations, hotels, retail shops, and racetrack. On Tuesday, a federal judge dismissed the organization's bankruptcy cases. That means those who lent SIST money can now go after the organization in court. All told, SIST owes more than $13 million, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional unpaid city and state taxes. The judge in the case cited a complete lack of progress and SIST's abuse of the bankruptcy process as reasons for throwing out the cases. He says SIST continues to lose money and has yet to come up with a legitimate business plan to pay back its creditors.

[00:31:24]The organization also owns a number of empty buildings in Shauno. We're all relieved that finally something will happen with those vacant structures. I mean, some of them have been vacant for five or more years.

[00:31:37]>> City officials say SIST will likely be ordered to sell its properties in order to pay back its debts. Shauno City Administrator Jim Stadler says it will be a needed boost for the city. It'll be a relief to hopefully work with um new businesses in those buildings that recognize they have an obligation to pay their taxes, pay their uh utilities.

[00:32:01]>> Business owners downtown agree.

[00:32:03]>> Well, when you get several businesses that are sitting empty, it's less of a draw for the residents or even visitors to come down Main Street.

[00:32:11]>> ST's bankruptcy attorney says he will not comment on the case. The first nail in the coffin was in 2013 when the group's federal taxexempt status was revoked for a failure to file the requiredformational returns. The businesses that they had were never really about adding thriving local businesses to the community or even just making a couple dollars on top of that. They were about embedding the cult into the community very deeply. a community it viewed as outsiders, as danger, and as evil. It was also about generating a lot of money and the community needing to eventually rely on those businesses as a small town. They wanted to become a community staple with high visibility while also maintaining a facade as a community nonprofit. Members were expected to work long unpaid hours for their labor. We started working two jobs, three jobs, and for myself, um, I was able to keep the same job, but just put in more hours. So, we were up to the 17 and the 20 hours or the 24 hours of working. Um, and basically that consumed our lives. Reports describe members surrendering personal assets to the group with the leader allegedly living luxurious life while directing communal labor in businesses like sweet shops or even theme parks with no compensation in their savings being drained. There were a lot of members that had to just mentally force themselves to behave the way he wanted. There wasn't really an easy way for them to leave.

[00:33:52]>> At home, we pretty much led somewhat normal lives with the exception of we always called Rama up for just about every decision. You call Rama up if to change the oil. You call Rama to find out if you could take the day off from work. Um you would call to go to the hospital or if we went to the hospital at the time. Things change from year to year, from um era to era. Sometimes we weren't allowed to go to doctors.

[00:34:20]Sometimes we were pushed to go to doctors.

[00:34:23]>> Whether it be changing our oil, whether it be uh making a job appointment, anything, we had to get an okay. We were all on the phone with Rama at least once a day, if not two or three times a day.

[00:34:34]Um there was a rule and a regulation for every aspect of our life. Which toothpaste to use, how to soap up our washcloth, how long to take a shower, you know, for the women, what tampons to use. uh for the married couple what sexual position we could use and and all the negative things about sex. There was I mean our most intimate and private parts of our lives were not private. We we were told what to do with every part of our life.

[00:35:00]>> Leaving takes money especially for those who didn't come from Shauno originally.

[00:35:06]There's not exactly a bus out to the cities and yeah without money you're kind of stuck. So where is the group today? There have never been any official criminal charges brought against the Samantha Roy Institute of Science and Technology despite former members speaking up to all, including the Shauno County deputies about the alleged abuse.

[00:35:30]>> These flyers showed up on the windshields of cars in Milwaukee and Madison. flyers bear the name of SIST's CEO Naomi Isacson and alleged conspiracy by Shauna officials and the media to ruin the group. Now, we contacted Isacson to see if she wrote this flyer, but she never responded. Then, earlier this week, we tried to contact her again for a follow-up story on the group's financial situation. This time, Isacson did respond with this two paragraph email that claims SIST is the victim of a conspiracy. The email alleges that quote Shauna Mayor Lorna Markwart the church and you the media have been working together to destroy SIST and its Indian president. Markwart declined to respond for this story but in past interviews has said the allegations are ridiculous. Isacson's email goes on to say contrary to what you keep broadcasting SIST is not a secretive religious organization and does not have any members. She says SIST is a secular school which neither practices nor supports any religion as SIST has no members. You did not speak with any former members. We showed Isaxson's email to Alina Lane.

[00:36:41]>> I think it's insane.

[00:36:42]>> The 31-year-old says she used to be a member of the group.

[00:36:45]>> I was there in the beginning when Cyst was formed and money I put money in the bucket to help the organization start. Lane says her family was one of dozens that would travel from Minnesota to Shauno nearly every weekend. They came to hear the religious sermons of the group's leader, then known as Rama Bahara.

[00:37:04]>> I think it's ludicrous how they they say that CIS doesn't have any members. Well, who's working at all the businesses?

[00:37:11]You know, and what was cyst founded on?

[00:37:15]And the man who is the president of cyst is the same man that all these people look up to and consider to be their prophet.

[00:37:23]>> While Isacson denies SIST is a religious organization, she does claim it's being targeted for religious persecution. She even compares the group's plight to the Jews in the Holocaust, saying quote, "Hitler, the church, and the media all worked together to destroy and kill the Jews." That history is repeating itself in Shauno, Wisconsin. As one local police chief put it, there have always been suspicions or allegations, but nothing that law enforcement has ever been able to substantiate.

[00:37:53]I mean, no disrespect by this, but could we try harder? Could we pull somebody else in who maybe has like they're a little more qualified to look into cults because the the abuse is egregious and it cannot be legal. Um it there have been a lot of people that have said that they believe the local government may be kind of working with the group because they have never pressed charges, but we're running out of time to really find any semblance of justice. Rama or Abraham or whatever he goes by today is getting older. From the absolute best of my research, it seems like he hasn't spoken to the media since ' 82. drama.

[00:38:32]Abraham seems to be living out his life quietly in Maryland while his followers in Wisconsin carry on in his name and with his remote leadership. There's somebody else that's kind of ahead now and it is ongoing and that is a terrifying thought. Um just that you're sinning and you're ruining your life and you're and if you had a family you're ruining your family's life. Um the one of the main beliefs is that whatever you did was going to uh Rama preached that it's going to visit your children and your children's children down to the third and fourth generations. There's really no telling where this group will continue in the future. The group's current executive director insists that the Samantha Roy Institute of Science and Tech is not a religious organization at all. They claim that those who call them a hate group or a cult are simply part of a Vatican conspiracy back to the Catholic thing orchestrated by the former Shauno mayor and her followers.

[00:39:32]It's the grinding, the decadesl long regularity of all of this behavior. It's the fact that the police have never once stepped in to do something. It's the fact that it is a highcrol religious group hiding in plain sight in smalltown Wisconsin selling fudge, dodging taxes, writing red rum hit lists, and yeah, like making people shave their heads.

[00:39:58]They're just very strange. But they're ruining lives to the point that in Shauno they are planning a cult recovery nonprofit to be set up for abuse victims across the country, but especially those impacted in Shauno.