Back story of Ponchatoula tent church for True Detective Season 1?

The one on hwy 22 by pumpkin center/Springfield?

LINK

Here you go.

I went to high school in the area during that time. Lots of stories involving rape, murder and animal sacrifice.

Edit- better link

NY Times

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Lots of stories involving rape, murder and animal sacrifice

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That is insane. How am I just hearing about this?

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Did they ever find any physical evidence or just was it the testimony from all the crazies? It was quite a crazy case at the time.

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Most of it was unfounded and ultimately they only found proof of a few men in charge at the church molesting their own children.

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I've read a lot about what happened in the years following that and have some definite opinions if anyone's interested.

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:wellwe'rewaiting.gif:

From being around the pastor, I understood the poor man just wasn't a sharp individual. I don't think he should have even been pastoring. I'm sure he had gifts in other areas, but I just don't think he was gifted to lead a congregation. His father founded that church and I think it thrived under his leadership. But I believe the father had passed away and the son had taken over and was in over his head.

That sets the tone for the rest. From what I've been able to read and put together, the church declined. As is often the case, when there is a leadership void people will begin to step into that void to fill it. There apparently was a lady in that church who began to use her role to manipulate people. I've seen this before being as our church has a charismatic history. I've been around a long time and seen a lot of spiritual wackiness and abuses of spiritual gifts. Bottom line- people can be weird.

From what I've read, that lady began to control the people who were left in the church under the guise of spiritual authority. It got very weird and very freaky. The pastor, being very passive, let her dictate to him how he should act and what he should do. I know it sounds extreme but even to the point of saying he'd done some things I don't think he even really did. Even confessing these things to law enforcement as if he'd actually done them. Because according to her, he'd thought them (I doubt it) and thinking is good as doing.

In my opinion the biggest thing he's guilty of is being weak and simple-minded- and that's being kind. I know it can be hard to understand unless you've seen some of this nonsense in a church setting. That's about the most drastic case I've heard about, but I could see how it could go that far in a perfect storm of weirdness. Satanic occult? Mass child abuse? No. I don't believe so. Just weird, simple minded and manipulative people playing weird , life altering spiritual games. Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Sad story.

A confession will do you in man. Sometimes the truth isn't nearly as "juicy" as the rumors. There was really not much if any actual evidence that anything went on. Just a guys dumb and in my opinion- misguided confession.