It’s hard to believe it has been 30 years since the siege at a religious compound in Waco, Texas. That siege ended in disaster, as the compound was burnt down, and many people died.
There is now a special on Netflix soon to be released that follows the life of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. It wasn’t just the fact that 86 people died when the compound was burned, it’s the fact that there were so many things going on behind the scenes before the siege ever even began.
What many people don’t know about David Koresh is the fact that he was sleeping with the wives of cult members. He would tell the men that they had to be celibate, but then he would sleep with their wives.
Adults and many children were killed when law-enforcement officers were putting the religious compound under siege. It got started when a search warrant was obtained by the US alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosive agency.
Eventually, the Waco siege was started, and the new documentary on Netflix is telling the story.
Koresh had a difficult upbringing after being born in 1959. He had a teenage mother, his father was not around, and his mother had an abusive lover. He was sent to live with his grandmother for a number of years and put into special education.
When he was 19, he also had a relationship with a 15-year-old girl and was kicked out of his own church for saying that God told him that he should be with the pastor’s daughter. It wasn’t long after that he found the Branch Davidians and he worked his way to the top quickly.
One of the ways in which he gained access to the top of the sect is with the prophecy that the last days were about to come. He said that they had to be ready for a fight so they started stockpiling weapons.
As the leader of the cult at the time, he was accused by his followers of sexual abuse of a number of children, instigating marriages with married women and statutory rape. Husbands in the cult were not allowed to masturbate or have sex but Koresh would have sex with their wives.
People continued to follow him and thought that he was anointed by God, and all of the women in the cult, including married and single women belonged to him.
One of his followers wrote to the books: “He gave me a personal Bible study.
“The feeling was so comforting, [like] my God speaking directly to me.
“Sex was just part of it.
“The sermon made every touch not feel like sex at all, just a culmination of my relationship with God that I’d had all my life.”
Koresh also told the husbands that they were God’s guinea pigs. He said that he was the one to procreate and they were the ones to tolerate. He also said that he got all of the women and asked them if they were jealous.
He ended up with 17 children by 11 women in the sect before the warrant was given to search the Mount Caramel Center and arrest him. They resisted, using their weapons, and a 51-day siege was started.
On the last day of the siege, February 28, 1993, the compound was set on fire. Nobody knows why it happened, but dozens of people died, including 28 children and Koresh. Some of them died from gunshot wounds, and others from the fire.
The documentary, Waco: American Apocalypse is on Netflix starting March 22.
