Alien Cloning Clowns?

In what many now believe to be nothing but a gigantic con (deception) and publicity stunt, the Raelians, described by some as the ‘conning clowns of cloning’, have managed to capture extensive world media coverage – all on the claim have having produced the first human clone.

The Raelian company Clonaid, with a staff of ‘between five and 20 people’, according to one of its vice presidents, Thomas Kaenzig, supposedly produced the world’s first successful human clone, ‘Eve’, born by Caesarian section to a 31-year-old American woman on December 27, 2002. A second cloned baby was supposedly born to a Dutch lesbian couple in early January 2003.  By February 4, 2003, Clonaid claimed that birth had been given to its fifth successful human clone. With massive publicity, Raelian ‘Bishop’, Brigitte Boisselier, the director of Clonaid, had earlier promised to provide unambiguous scientific proof of their successful efforts at human cloning, but it has never been produced.

Supposedly started to sell human cloning services to all customers, Clonaid opened for business in 1997 with donations of several hundred thousand dollars by a West Virginia couple whose 10-month-old son had died during heart surgery. Some four years later the couple pulled out of the venture, informing the media that Boisselier seemed more interested in getting the Raelian movement more media coverage than actually setting up a proper laboratory. Information on the company’s operations has since been almost impossible to obtain.

Raelians are followers and believers of the claims of Claude Vorilhon, who calls himself Rael. Vorilhon was born and brought up in the village of Ambert, in the mountainous region of Auvergne in central France. For reasons that are unclear Vorilhon was rejected by his mother, Colette (twice widowed and now 85) and he was brought up by his aunt, Therese (now 87). The two octogenarian sisters still live near each other in the village, but won’t talk to each other.  As a child Vorilhon went to the local Roman Catholic Church and sang in the choir. Then in his teen years he experimented with pop music and enjoyed the attention and the money, but he wasn’t good enough to continue and dropped out of the music scene at the age of eighteen.  He then went in for racing cars and ultimately writing.  He wasn’t too successful at those either.

Around 1970 Vorilhon married Marie-Paul Cristini, who divorced him after 15 years of marriage. They had two children: daughter Aurore (now 30) and son Ramuel (28).

Three years after their marriage, when Marie-Paul was pregnant with Aurore, they visited Vorilhon’s home village of Ambert where he apparently climbed to the rim of an extinct volcano.  After that things were never the same.  Vorilhon came as Rael, claiming he had met an alien; had been taken aboard a spaceship to another planet; had met there with Jesus, Moses, Buddha and others; was given a scented bath by female robots; told that humans had been created through cloning and DNA technology; told that aliens WILL return – in or before 2035; and told he was responsible for setting up an embassy for their welcome in Jerusalem.

He also began to attract young women amongst his followers, and brought ‘hundreds of them home for sex’ (according to Marie-Paul).  His wife and children were expected not just to tolerate this, but to accept it as his right. They had to put up with nude gatherings in the family living room, and were treated as servants to care for him and his ‘Angels’.

With anger and disgust, even trembling with loathing, Marie-Paul recently expressed some of her bitterness: ‘He destroyed my life and our children’s lives. They were so young and innocent. They should never have been exposed to the debauched and wicked things that went on in our home…The kids believed him . . . they’d had it drummed into them since before they could talk. What he did to them was hateful - he devastated their lives. No child should be expected to witness adult nudity and exist in an environment so close to people having orgies… He is a very cynical, manipulative and charismatic man…He was only at home for about half of our marriage. The rest of the time he was travelling the world preaching and gathering disciples. When he was at home he slept with hundreds of women - a new one every day, all pretty young devotees who thought he was some kind of god…I thought I had married a fairly ordinary, if slightly egotistical, man. Not a freak… the whole Raelian movement was a trick to have more sex and to satisfy the enormous ego and need to be worshipped…I think he is devious, crafty, manipulative and very, very clever.’

After being banned from France, Vorilhon moved to Spain and then later to Canada. He now lives in a compound called: ‘UFOland’ in Quebec, near the border with the US State of Vermont. It has been claimed (but not confirmed) that Vorilhon has some 55,000 followers in 84 countries.  Australian membership seems to be relatively small – though new members continue to be drawn to the movement around the world, some as a result of all the publicity, others as a result of Internet exposure to the group, and still others through personal invitations by friends.

Followers are expected to meet regularly, often listening or watching taped/videoed message from Vorilhon; expected to pay 11% of their income to the movement (especially for the building of the alien ‘Embassy’ – for which it has been claimed the group is holding approximately [Aus]$20 million in international bank accounts); expected to wear the gold six-pointed star symbolizing ‘infinity’; read Vorilhon’s books and materials, such as: ‘Let’s Welcome Our Fathers From Space’,  ‘The Message Given By Extra-Terrestrials’, ‘Yes To Cloning’ and more. Some of their meetings are conducted in the nude.  There are no moral restrictions on sexual relationships.