David Koresh had sex with girls as young as 12 and was obsessed with violence, according to court documents filed in a custody case involving a girl removed from Koresh's armed cult in Texas last year.
The girl's mother, Sherri Jewell, is believed to be one of the dozens of Branch Davidian sect members holed up with Koresh at the group's compound in Waco, Texas.The cult has been surrounded since a shootout between cult members and federal agents Sunday in which four agents and a reported 10 cult members were killed.
Last September, the girl's father, David Jewell, won a court order giving him custody of his daughter and returned her to Michigan. He declined to discuss the case Friday.
But Jewell argued in court documents that his daughter had been threatened by Koresh, who allegedly had sex with young girls often and said the Bible entitled him to 140 wives.
The arguments were supported by a 10-page affidavit filed by former Koresh confidant Marc Breault, who said the weapons Koresh was stockpiling in Texas were "a serious accident waiting to happen."
Breault also said Jewell's ex-wife had become one of Koresh's many "wives," had sex with him regularly and was beginning to prepare the couple's daughter to become a Koresh wife when Breault left the cult in 1989.
During the three years he spent with the cult, Breault said, he saw Koresh spend hours discussing sex acts in graphic detail during "Bible study" classes at which children were present.
Koresh also confided in him that he had sex with a 12-year-old girl, Breault said, and told the entire cult he'd fathered a child by a 14-year-old.
Sherri Jewell's attorney, Paul Jancha of St. Joseph, told The Herald-Palladium of Benton Harbor-St. Joseph that when he spoke with her last month he had an indication things were not going well at the compound.
"They felt all along they would be attacked," he said.
Jancha said he had spoken with Koresh and found him to be a "very bright man who knows his Bible like no minister I've ever met."