Jonestown. Most of us who were alive during that time remember something. I was only two and a half in November of 1978, though that did not stop me from having nightmares involving “the scary dark haired man in sunglasses.” Deborah Layton’s Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the People's Temple, published over a decade ago, gives a first hand account of what The Peoples Temple, Jim Jones and the nightmarish Jonestown were like, followed with her means for escape, and her eventual reporting of Jones.
Layton, only 25 at the time, worked as a “high ranked official” under Jim Jones, and spent over five months living in Guyana, hating every minute of it. Jim Jones originally formed his church and gained his early following in Indiana, and he was known for his passionate orations, as well as non-segregated services. He then moved his church and followers to California (when some objected to his ‘radical’ nature), where he gained many new members ranging from the very poor to the wannabe hippy privileged types, like Layton. Jones, an avid believer in socialism, eventually promised his followers a “utopia” in the jungles of Guyana, where they could supposedly live in harmony and raise their children in a racist and classist-free world.
All of this might sound ideal, save for the fact that Jim Jones was a nut who eventually forced over 900 temple members to drink grape flavored “flavor aid” laced with cyanide. This “revolutionary suicide,” as Jones called it, coupled with the death of congressman Leo Ryan, and several NBC members, made this event one of the most talked about items in 1978 and years following.
In my own reading up on Jones and Jonestown, I often wondered how people could be so dumb? Jones preyed on the very vulnerable and weak, used mind tricks and fear, sleep depravation and “suicide drills” as a means of gaining his members’ loyalty and trust. He worked hard in convincing his members that the U.S. government was out to kill them, so much so that many believed it, as well as believing he himself was god.
Layton’s book provides some interesting detail, though I admit I am still having a difficult time understanding why she, as well as hundreds of other members, went down to Jonestown to begin with. Jones had raped her on several occasions, tested his members’ “loyalty” by telling them they were drinking poison (as a means of seeing just who would do it willingly and who would cause a stir), beat his members regularly in front of the church (including Layton herself), made them strip down in front of the whole congregation, told them that all men were homosexuals (save for Jones) overworked them till they were ready to collapse from loss of sleep - and all of this was before they even went to Guyana!
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