By Zach Benoit
Billings Gazette
August 19 2010
http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_658c3778-ab1d-11df-bd98-001cc4c002e0.html
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| Terrill Dalton, president of The Church of the Firstborn and General Assembly of Heaven, told stories in March about receiving a vision that he was the Holy Ghost and the father of Jesus Christ. At left is Geody Harman, the co-leader and first counselor of the church. The group lives in a home along the Bridger-Fromberg Road. |
The co-leader of a Fromberg church that fled Utah and Idaho before landing in Montana and believes one of its leaders is the Holy Ghost and the father of Jesus Christ was arrested Wednesday morning on a rape warrant out of Utah.
The U.S. Marshals Service arrested Geody M. Harman, 37, before noon in Fromberg without incident, acting Montana U.S. Marshal Rod Ostermiller said. Harman was arrested on a $250,007 warrant out of the 3rd District Court in Salt Lake City. He is charged with felony first-degree rape.
The charging documents allege that Harman raped a then-15-year-old girl in Utah sometime between 2005 and 2006. The documents say that Harman, who is the First Counsel of the Holy Ghost of the Church of the Firstborn of the General Assembly of Heaven, “had an impression from God that (the girl) was to have sex” with him.
The girl told investigators that another church leader, Terrill Dalton, encouraged her to do so because Harman was God. She reported that she had sex with Harman once “because she believed she would be blessed.”
The U.S. Marshals Service received a warrant for Harman from Salt Lake on Tuesday night.
“Due to the nature of the crime and the bond amount set, this is obviously somebody who was a priority,” Ostermiller said.
Harman was booked into the Yellowstone County Detention Facility and is being held on a $250,007 bond.
An arrest warrant for Dalton, 43, the church’s president, was issued out of the Salt Lake court charging him with two felony counts of first-degree rape. Ostermiller said officers went into Fromberg planning to arrest both men but only found Harman.
Dalton is accused of raping the same girl as Harman once after telling her “that if she had sex with him three times, (she) would be blessed,” according to the affidavit. He allegedly also said God wanted them to do so.
In a March interview with The Gazette, Dalton said the church had different views about about sex but that “what happens between adults is not my business” as long as it’s not against the law.
The church, which was profiled in a March 26, 2010, Gazette article, began moving to Fromberg from outside of Pocatello, Idaho, in September 2009.
They initially fled to Idaho from a Salt Lake City suburb after federal and local law enforcement officials raided their headquarters to investigate claims of child sexual abuse and alleged assassination threats against President Barack Obama, former President George W. Bush and the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Thomas S. Monson.
The church left Idaho in the fall of 2009 after the Shoshone and Bannock Indian tribes rejected its plans to build a large housing building on the Fort Hall Reservation.
“We all prayed about where to go next, and a lot of people had the same feeling that we ought to go to Montana, somewhere nigh unto Billings, not the city, but nearby,” Dalton said in March.
Harman estimated that there were 16 members who moved to two homes in Fromberg. There were about 30 members in Idaho and an estimated 50 when the church was located in Utah.
Dalton said that he grew up as a member of the LDS church and began receiving spiritual messages that its leaders had drifted from its core principals.
He said that in 2004, he received a revelation to start a new church and, a short time later, had a vision of Jesus Christ that told him he is the Holy Ghost and the father of Jesus Christ.
Harman also described having revelations of his own.
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