The mothers of two missing US women who are believed to have taken their young children and joined a cult run by a convicted child molester, have appealed to them, five months after they disappeared.
Police in St Louis, Missouri, think Ma’Kayla Wickerson, 25, and her three-year-old daughter, Malaiyah, are among six missing people who have become followers of Rashad Jamal, a former rapper-turned-online guru who was jailed last year for molesting a child.
Ms Wickerson’s mother, Cartisha Morgan, told KSDK, part of Sky News’ US partner, NBC News, her daughter, who she last had contact with in August, was “suffering from postpartum depression”.
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Her child, she said, was “meeting these people online, and they just preyed on her weakness”.
Shelita Gibson, the mother of Gerielle German, 26, and grandmother of her three-year-old son, Ashton Mitchell, told KSDK she would like to know the pair were OK “so that I can get a good night’s sleep”.
“I would like to know they’re not hungry, they’re not cold, that no one is making her do things that she would have to pay for in the long run.”
They, along with the other two missing people, Naaman Williams, 29, and Mikayla Thompson, 23, were last seen at a Quality Inn near St Louis Lambert International Airport in August, Major Steve Runge, of Berkeley Police, said last week.
The six had all been living in a rented house in Berkeley, a St Louis suburb, before they disappeared, police said.
Jamal was jailed for 18 years for child molestation and child cruelty in Georgia in August.
The website for the University of Cosmic Intelligence, which he runs, said it is “GEARED TOWARDS ENLIGHTENING AND ILLUMINATING THE MINDS OF THE CARBONATED BEINGS A.K.A YOUR SO CALLED BLACK & LATINO PEOPLE OF EARTH.”
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Jamal, whose real name is Rashad Jamal White, last week denied being a cult leader.
In a phone interview from prison with the St Louis Dispatch-Post, he insisted he was innocent, and said the molestation charges stemmed from a child custody dispute.
He also said he didn’t know the missing people.
A self-described spiritual guru and prophet, he has released two albums after starting out as a rapper in Chicago before becoming disenchanted with the music industry, the Dispatch-Post said.
Jamal’s most popular song on his YouTube channel is God Talk, which has more than 300,000 views.
