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Friday, September 1, 2006

Controversial Gentle Wind Back in Business


By CHLOE JOHNSON
Staff Writer
ljohnson@...

DURHAM — The disbanded Gentle Wind Project is back in business with
a new website and reorganized leadership.

The group this month settled a lawsuit brought by Maine's attorney
general, agreeing to disband their Kittery operation and losing
their nonprofit status in Maine.

Gentle Wind, which describes itself as a spiritual healing group,
was based in Kittery. Several of its leaders live in Durham, and the
group also is registered in New Hampshire.

Gentle Wind's leaders vowed to continue operating elsewhere even as
they agreed to dissolve. Mary Miller, the group's past president,
this week confirmed the group still offers the "healing instruments"
central to Maine's suit.

"There's a lot of people involved in keeping it going," she said.

Gentle Wind said the instruments — principally hand-held laminated
cards and plastic pucks — improve emotional, mental, and physical
functioning. Maine's AG argued there was no scientific proof to back
such claims, calling them fraudulent.

Longtime member Mary Ann Hale, of Bass Harbor, Maine, who signed as
Gentle Wind's president on the settlement's consent decree, issued
in York County Superior Court on Aug. 10., said she had "no
comment."

The group's redesigned website, www.gentlewindproject.org, lists an
address in Sparks, Nev. Miller would not say whether the
organization is relocating.

The site says the group is now an "all volunteer" organization.

"We are not a nonprofit nor are we a profit making company," the
site says. "We do not accept donations or payment in any form."

The group is suing former followers Jim Bergin and Judy Garvey, of
Blue Hill, Maine, alleging defamation.

Bergin and Garvey's website, www.windofchanges.org, details what
they say was the more than 15 years they spent as part of the group,
which they say was cultlike and practiced mind control.

Miller said this week that the two initiated a "cyber smear
campaign" against Gentle Wind.

Garvey has said stories on windofchanges.org are written to warn
others about the group, which she said conned her into group sex
rituals that were to help the leader, John Miller, invent the
healing instruments.

"We have a right to talk about our lives and an obligation to tell
the truth," Bergin said.