Many Suspect Cult To Blame For Disappearances Lawyers Hope Probe Will Solve Mystery Of Missing Family

The last time a lawyer tried to take on the Aum Shinri Kyo religious sect, he and his family disappeared.

That was six years ago, and the lawyer, Tsutsumi Sakamoto, his wife and 1-year-old boy, have not been heard from since. Now, partly in memory of their friend, Yoshiro Ito and four other lawyers have taken on his cause, becoming virtually the only legal team that is bold enough to challenge the sect in court.

“I hope that the police raids will turn up some clues about the Sakamoto family,” Ito said. “But I’m doubtful. It’s been such a long time.”

Two days after the nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subways, police raided 25 branches of the Aum Shinri Kyo sect beginning Wednesday, and found tons of chemicals that can be used to make nerve gas.

Although Aum Shinri Kyo has denied involvement in the subway attack or the disappearance of the Sakamoto family, a harsh spotlight has focused on a number of bizarre practices of the highly secretive cult.

Several hundred families have now turned to the legal team, in desperation after their sons and daughters joined the sect and were then missing for months.

In some cases, parents have not seen their children since 1989, when Aum Shinri Kyo - which means “Sublime Truth” - became licensed as an official religious organization by the government.

In one court case, four fathers sued Aum for custody of their children after their wives had taken the children into the sect. They won, according to information provided in a pamphlet published by the legal team, called the Lawyers Group on Behalf of the Victims of Aum Shinri Kyo.

Aum asserts that all its members join willingly, but lawyers and Japanese news reports say the sect uses sophisticated methods of mind control geared toward leading the victim into believing that he or she is acting entirely voluntarily.

Lawyers also say the sect operates on fear, threatening that the end of the world is near, and warning that Aum members are being attacked from the outside.

But the sect clearly has a powerful attraction to its 10,000 members in Japan and 30,000 overseas, and many members remained loyal even during the police raids that began Wednesday. Aum representatives declined to be interviewed.

It is unclear what activities members specifically engage in once they join Aum, but bits and pieces have emerged from Japanese news reports, from neighbors who live in the vicinity of the sect quarters and from the lawyers for the family members and former sect followers.

Neighborhoods in which the sect followers hold religious activities have grown so bitter toward the sect that they have organized against it, and one district hung stickers and placards all over, saying: “Aum, keep out! I reject all pamphlets or bills from Aum!”

According to the reports, the training of new recruits is rather strenuous and exhausting, sometimes involving bizarre techniques. In one such method, called a “cleansing” technique, trainees drink large amounts of water and then vomit it up.

To become a monk or nun, a member must renounce all ties to a family and donate all his or her assets to the sect. Lawyers say such trainees are sometimes given drugs, like LSD, morphine or stimulants, in an effort to influence the recruit’s thought processes.

Often what goes on behind the closed doors of the sect appears strange and bizarre from the outside, the neighbors say. That is especially true, they say, when sometimes the only sounds that can be heard are those of Indian music tapes or lectures by the sect’s leader, Shoko Asahara, a 40-year-old Japanese who was born in Kumamoto Prefecture in southwest Japan.

When Aum bought a site two years ago in Kameido, in the eastern part of Tokyo, the neighbors noticed the members carrying in a giant boiler, more than five yards long and 1.5 yards high. They also carried in a new cooling tower, equipment for air conditioning.

Then steam started spewing out of the tower and a foul smell filled the surrounding air. Small birds died, plants wilted and dogs and other pets became sick.