Let this sad mother's story be a lesson to you all. The Boodist cult presents itself as a bunch of sweet, smiling bald headed chinks...but BEWARE! They are actually a band of vile scum, ready to rob you blind and kidnap your children!
The violent Boodist cult must be wiped out! Keep your children safe! Answer to Christ only!
A mother’s grief: ‘The cult guru who turned my son into a zombie’
Primary school teacher Rita Van Gordon is going through the sort of anguish any mother does when she loses a child.
Her eyes brim with tears as she remembers what a lovely boy her eldest son, William, was. She finds it painful to talk about the potential his life held: four A-levels, a university degree, the £50,000-a-year job he secured at just 23.
What makes Rita, 51, different from other grieving mothers, however, is that her son is not dead. William, now 28, has simply cut her out of his life - in the most extraordinary of circumstances.
Three years ago, then happily engaged, William was befriended by a man who described himself as a Buddhist monk.
From the start, Edo Shonnin exerted a remarkable influence on the young retail manager, encouraging him to convert to Buddhism and convincing him to think again about every aspect of his life.
First her son quit his job, then he split up with the woman he had wanted to marry. He shaved his head and donned the robes of a Buddhist monk. He became distant — “odd”, says his mother — and often fell into weird trances. He started speaking in a strange accent, a cross between Dutch and South African, even though he was Cheshire born and bred.
Today, William lives with Edo in the Welsh countryside, where the pair have set up a Buddhist retreat.
But his mother believes he has been coerced into this life — trapped in some demonic brainwashing cult by a man who is, at best, someone who likes to reinvent his own life; at worst, a dangerous conman with a talent for deception.
“We have seen our son change from a bright, enthusiastic, confident young man, devoted to his family, to a hostile, closed-down, brainwashed zombie.
“Whenever I phone William on his mobile, Edo answers and says: ‘He’s busy.’ We are not allowed to visit.
“Occasionally I get through to William, but he often says: ‘How did you get this number? Don’t call here again.’
“It’s just unbelievable, but we’ve consulted a True Christian™ cult expert and much of it is a recognised form of satanic brainwashing.”
Soon Edo came to stay with William in the house he’d bought with Helen in Manchester. He was welcomed.
“We all felt sorry for Edo because he told us he had cancer,” remembers Rita. “He’d had a terrible life. He said, too, that he’d lost his parents, wife and children in a car accident.
“At first he seemed everything you’d expect from a Buddhist monk. He wore long brown robes and constantly stroked beads around his neck.”
In time, though, alarm bells started jangling. First there was the food: although he claimed to be a strict vegetarian, Edo tucked into roast dinners during his visit to Manchester. “He said that he would politely accept whatever food was put in front of him,” says Rita.
“But he smoked quite heavily, too, and was very fond of gin, wine and Guinness. This struck me as odd for someone so supposedly spiritual. Odder still was that he managed to eat with such gusto when he supposedly had throat cancer. Another weird thing was his accent. He spoke with this odd foreign accent, even though he is Scottish. I guess it made him more authentic.”
Edo was supposed to stay with William and Helen for a week. After a month passed, Helen became concerned. “He kept talking about what an amazingly good person Edo was, how money didn’t matter to him, how sound his values were. He claimed he had become ‘enlightened’ by him, but when I asked what he meant, he couldn’t tell me. Once, he even said Edo could make himself disappear. He was already under Edo’s spell.”
Once Rita started questioning aspects of Edo’s life story, the whole thing seemed to unravel. “He claimed to be a surgeon and a psychiatrist, and to have worked extensively in war-torn countries for Medicines sans Frontieres, but when I asked him about his time in Iran - where I have been twice - he clearly had never been there.
“He said he had studied at Yale and Cambridge, and had written 32 books. But it didn’t stand up to the mildest scrutiny - he couldn’t tell us what the books were or what college he was at at Cambridge.”
William, though, would not hear a word against his friend. “By then we were convinced Edo was just after William’s money, and told him so,” Rita says.
“William started saying things like, ‘I’m so enlightened that even the flowers smile at me,’” Rita recalls.
“We wondered if he was on drugs, but I think it’s more likely that he was just hypnotised by this monk and the Boodist cult.”
“The next thing we knew, Edo had moved in with William. From there, it all went downhill. They became sodomite lovers.”
It was at this time that Rita employed a private detective to find out more about Edo’s past. She discovered that his real name is Edward Penny and that he has been twice married to British women.
“One of his ex-wives said that Penny was evil and that the mere mention of his name made her shudder with fear,” Rita says.
“We also spoke to his sister, Suzanne Richardson, who hadn’t seen Edo for more than 20 years. She said her mother was still alive - so the car crash he talked about was clearly a lie.”
Rita clings to the hope that when she does get see her son again, she will be able to get through to him. She wants him to come back to Jesus.
Primary school teacher Rita Van Gordon is going through the sort of anguish any mother does when she loses a child.
Her eyes brim with tears as she remembers what a lovely boy her eldest son, William, was. She finds it painful to talk about the potential his life held: four A-levels, a university degree, the £50,000-a-year job he secured at just 23.
What makes Rita, 51, different from other grieving mothers, however, is that her son is not dead. William, now 28, has simply cut her out of his life - in the most extraordinary of circumstances.
Three years ago, then happily engaged, William was befriended by a man who described himself as a Buddhist monk.
From the start, Edo Shonnin exerted a remarkable influence on the young retail manager, encouraging him to convert to Buddhism and convincing him to think again about every aspect of his life.
First her son quit his job, then he split up with the woman he had wanted to marry. He shaved his head and donned the robes of a Buddhist monk. He became distant — “odd”, says his mother — and often fell into weird trances. He started speaking in a strange accent, a cross between Dutch and South African, even though he was Cheshire born and bred.
Today, William lives with Edo in the Welsh countryside, where the pair have set up a Buddhist retreat.
But his mother believes he has been coerced into this life — trapped in some demonic brainwashing cult by a man who is, at best, someone who likes to reinvent his own life; at worst, a dangerous conman with a talent for deception.
“We have seen our son change from a bright, enthusiastic, confident young man, devoted to his family, to a hostile, closed-down, brainwashed zombie.
“Whenever I phone William on his mobile, Edo answers and says: ‘He’s busy.’ We are not allowed to visit.
“Occasionally I get through to William, but he often says: ‘How did you get this number? Don’t call here again.’
“It’s just unbelievable, but we’ve consulted a True Christian™ cult expert and much of it is a recognised form of satanic brainwashing.”
Soon Edo came to stay with William in the house he’d bought with Helen in Manchester. He was welcomed.
“We all felt sorry for Edo because he told us he had cancer,” remembers Rita. “He’d had a terrible life. He said, too, that he’d lost his parents, wife and children in a car accident.
“At first he seemed everything you’d expect from a Buddhist monk. He wore long brown robes and constantly stroked beads around his neck.”
In time, though, alarm bells started jangling. First there was the food: although he claimed to be a strict vegetarian, Edo tucked into roast dinners during his visit to Manchester. “He said that he would politely accept whatever food was put in front of him,” says Rita.
“But he smoked quite heavily, too, and was very fond of gin, wine and Guinness. This struck me as odd for someone so supposedly spiritual. Odder still was that he managed to eat with such gusto when he supposedly had throat cancer. Another weird thing was his accent. He spoke with this odd foreign accent, even though he is Scottish. I guess it made him more authentic.”
Edo was supposed to stay with William and Helen for a week. After a month passed, Helen became concerned. “He kept talking about what an amazingly good person Edo was, how money didn’t matter to him, how sound his values were. He claimed he had become ‘enlightened’ by him, but when I asked what he meant, he couldn’t tell me. Once, he even said Edo could make himself disappear. He was already under Edo’s spell.”
Once Rita started questioning aspects of Edo’s life story, the whole thing seemed to unravel. “He claimed to be a surgeon and a psychiatrist, and to have worked extensively in war-torn countries for Medicines sans Frontieres, but when I asked him about his time in Iran - where I have been twice - he clearly had never been there.
“He said he had studied at Yale and Cambridge, and had written 32 books. But it didn’t stand up to the mildest scrutiny - he couldn’t tell us what the books were or what college he was at at Cambridge.”
William, though, would not hear a word against his friend. “By then we were convinced Edo was just after William’s money, and told him so,” Rita says.
“William started saying things like, ‘I’m so enlightened that even the flowers smile at me,’” Rita recalls.
“We wondered if he was on drugs, but I think it’s more likely that he was just hypnotised by this monk and the Boodist cult.”
“The next thing we knew, Edo had moved in with William. From there, it all went downhill. They became sodomite lovers.”
It was at this time that Rita employed a private detective to find out more about Edo’s past. She discovered that his real name is Edward Penny and that he has been twice married to British women.
“One of his ex-wives said that Penny was evil and that the mere mention of his name made her shudder with fear,” Rita says.
“We also spoke to his sister, Suzanne Richardson, who hadn’t seen Edo for more than 20 years. She said her mother was still alive - so the car crash he talked about was clearly a lie.”
Rita clings to the hope that when she does get see her son again, she will be able to get through to him. She wants him to come back to Jesus.

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