Very few new religious movements have been examined at length in open court by a judge with full access to their internal literature. This one has, and the resulting document is the single most useful source about it.
The case came before the English High Court as a wardship dispute over a child whose mother belonged to the group, and it was heard by Lord Justice Alan Ward, who delivered judgment in 1995 after months of evidence. The judgment runs to several hundred pages. Ward read the movement's own publications from the 1970s and 1980s, took evidence from former members and from scholars, and found that the sexual teaching promulgated in that period had in fact resulted in the abuse of children, notwithstanding the leadership's later position that the practices had been discontinued.
His disposal is what makes the judgment unusual. Rather than simply removing the child, he made the outcome conditional: the group's leadership was required to acknowledge the abuse and to disavow the teaching that had permitted it, in terms he specified. The movement complied.
The other document that defines its later history is not a judgment at all. In January 2005 Ricky Rodriguez, who had been raised inside the group and presented in its literature as a model of how its children should be brought up, killed a former member and then himself, leaving a recorded statement. The two together are why the group has been studied more closely than almost any comparable movement of its size.