By Guy Page

42 years after the Vermont State Police raided their home in Island Pond and removed children on suspicion of child abuse, the Twelve Tribes community is still active in the Essex County town – and other locations.

The June 22, 1984 raid was widely reported in the local, state, and Vermont press. It was the subject of much discussion covering issues of religious freedom, parental rights, and protecting children from abuse. 

A timeline of the growth of the community, the raid and the aftermath can be seen on the Twelve Tribes website. In June, police arrested seven church leader, seeking information about alleged child abuse related to discipline of children. State officials were acting on claims made by former church members. The leaders refused to cooperate and were released three days before the raid.

At 5 AM on June 22, state police – acting on child abuse reports from state officials – raided the church community in Island Pond and removed children. Judge Frank Mahady ordered the children released, citing a lack of evidence. The families were reunited by 11 PM that night, according to the timeline. 

This morning, VDC called the phone number on the website. When community member (“just a servant”) Rod Frandino came to the phone, VDC asked how the 40-odd member community is doing. 

“We’re here. We’re still rejoicing,” he said. The community operates a Yellow Deli (no connection with the Yellow Mustard Deli in Montpelier) in Island Pond and a sugarbush in Norton.   

In some ways the raid strengthened the religious commitment and growth of the Twelve Tribes, elder brother James Cleveland told VDC after he was handed the phone by Frandino. 

“I think personally in our own faith, that kind of opposition, for those of us who receive it, can cause us to grow personally,” Cleveland said. “But it’s based on how individuals receive it.”

The Twelve Tribes, which had relocated from Chattanooga Tennessee to Island Pond, now has about 30 communities and Yellow Delis on five continents. 

Some of the children who were seized by state police still live in the Twelve Tribes community in Island Pond, Cleveland said.

Cleveland several times invited VDC to visit the Yellow Deli. He said Island Pond is a great hiking destination, with Bluff Mountain overlooking the pond. 

The Twelve Tribes preach a gospel of faith-filled farms and communities. “Just as he promised, whoever gives all shall receive a hundred times, now in this present age — houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions — and in the age to come, eternal life.

This describes a nation of communities; homes and farms full of families and single people together. A radical new society with a spiritual cultural identity. A holy, or set-apart nation, distinct from, yet among the nations of the earth,” the website says. 

In this degree of separation, at least, the Twelve Tribes community resembles the Mennonites and Amish, living separately in rural, self-sufficient communities who members adhere to strict rules of lifestyle and interacting with outsiders.