Nuwaubian leader convicted
By Terry Dickson
Morris News Service
www.onlineathens.com/stories/012304/new_york.shtml BRUNSWICK -- A federal jury convicted cult leader Dwight "Malachi" York on 10 counts of child molestation and racketeering and forfeited his property, including a house in Athens, to the government.
The nine-man, three-woman jury deliberated about seven hours over two days before returning its verdict that the head of the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors transported minors across state lines to have unlawful sex, hid cash transactions from the government and ran a continuing criminal enterprise.
Depending on the outcome of a pre-sentencing investigation, York faces from 20 to 30 years in federal prison, said Maxwell Wood, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. The case was moved to Brunswick from Macon because of extensive publicity there.
York sat impassively as the verdict was read and his defense lawyer, Adrian Patrick, said later that York was upbeat, relieved that the case is over and looking forward to an appeal.
"This is Mr. York's first step toward freedom," Patrick said. "It was a miracle for us to have the jury contemplate the case for as long as they did."
York's victims testified that he had begun molesting them as children in New York and that the abuse got worse after he moved his flock to a 440-acre farm near Eatonton in 1993.
Fourteen victims, ranging from teenage boys to women, said York had molested them and compelled them to watch others have sex. In addition to the testimony, prosecutors introduced exhibits including pornographic tapes and comic books and a stuffed Pink Panther doll with male genitals sewn on.
Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills expressed relief that a case his office has investigated since 1997 was finally over.
"This has been an ordeal, not just for me personally but for my office, my staff and the people of my county," he said. "The people of this county have sent away not a savior but one of the most heinous criminals in the history of this nation."
Wood was especially emotional as he spoke of York's cowardice in calling the young son of followers as a witness.
"He sent a 9-year-old boy in to testify and he didn't have the guts to testify himself," he said.
And he lashed out at York's practice of calling himself Malachi Z. York, master teacher and leader of the Nuwaubian nation. York has also called himself Isa Muhammad, Isa Al Haadi Al Mahdi, Baba and most recently, Black Thunder Eagle, chief of a Creek Native-American tribe, as he jumped around religious philosophies to include Judaic, Islamic, Babylonian, Sumerian and Egyptian.
Wood said York is none of those.
"He's Dwight York, a con man out of New York," Wood said.
Dawn Baskin, an assistant district attorney for the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit, said York is an amazingly smart pedophile who ran his religious organization in a way to avoid detection.
By pulling Nuwaubian children out of public schools, he avoided their making contact with teachers and counselors who could detect the abuse, she said. His religious practice of separating men from women and children from their parents prevented children from telling their parents about the abuse, Baskin said.
And York fathered some of his ardent supporters.
There was testimony that York had multiple wives and had fathered numerous children outside of marriage.
During a raid on the Eatonton compound, investigators found a chart and photos of the women York had impregnated and their children, Sills said. A conservative estimate says York likely fathered at least 100 children, Sills said.
There had been some apparent hope for York about noon Friday when the jury foreman sent out a note saying that a juror had cited a case in which someone had been convicted of child molestation and later found innocent. As a result, the juror was refusing to deliberate those charges, the note said.
The other jurors said asked that the juror be replaced with an alternate, but U.S. District Judge Ashley Royal instead called the jury back into the courtroom and again read them a portion of his charge to deliberate in the case and consider only the evidence.
After the verdict was returned, the juror who had complained confirmed she that voted for the guilty verdicts.
Forty-five of York's followers heard the verdict read in a third floor courtroom where they have watched the trial via closed circuit TV. At the reading of the first guilty verdict on a charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering, a woman caught her breath sharply but there was not another sound as they heard nine more pronouncements of guilt.
The jury acquitted York of only one count of transporting minors for unlawful sex. The jury also found him guilty of racketeering, conspiracy to transport minors for unlawful sex, two counts of transporting minors for unlawful sex, traveling interstate to engage in unlawful sex and three charges of structuring cash transactions to avoid reporting requirements.
Among the rows of somber followers, a few men sat with their heads in their hands and a few women wiped tears. One woman who had been in court all 15 days left with tears in her eyes.
Some of the defense witnesses had testified that they still live "on the land," as they called the compound with its 19 acres of dwellings.
On the day of the raid, there were about 100 people there, more than half of them children, Sills said. The number has dropped every time York had a legal setback until there are very few left, according to Sills.
Although the jury ordered York's assets forfeited, the government can't just take ownership immediately, Wood said.
York has transferred ownership of the compound to two of his followers and the legality of that and other issues must be considered, Sills said.
Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Friday, January 23, 2004.
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