Sweat “Box” Survivor Steps Up to Tell Her Story

Dr. Beverly Bunn, an orthodontist from Texas who gave a series of interviews about what occurred at Sedona, talked to Harry Smith of The Early Show this morning. I’m shaking my head at this writing. What stuck with me was her pronouncement, James Arthur Ray abandoned us.

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He wouldn’t let them out.

“If the door was closed, you couldn’t leave,” she said. “If the door was open, you could leave. But the fifth round, a woman passed out and she was taken out. At the sixth round, they’d said that she passed out, she isn’t breathing, but they yelled it out and stuff and by the time that they had actually said that and announced it, the door was closed. No one can leave when the door is closed,” Bunn said on The Early Show.

Bunn said that when she finally left the sweat lodge she could see several people lying unconscious on the ground outside. Some had mucus coming out of their noses and mouths; their eyes were rolled back in their heads.

The Dream Team–Ray’s acolytes; I’d call them enforcers–kept interfering with her efforts to organize and monitor the survivors, and to perform CPR on Kirby Brown. Many doctors and dentists are able to try to resuscitate people in distress regardless of their specialty. From ABC News:

Bunn, trained in CPR as part of her medical credentials, said she repeatedly tried to perform the life-saving measures on her friend, but was continuously rebuffed by Ray’s employees known as the “Dream Team.”

“I told them about 10 times, ‘I know CPR, I know CPR,'” she said. “They kept pulling me away and pulling me away.”

She said that Ray stood over the expiring bodies of Kirby Brown and James Shore, and then took off and never returned.

So when they’re dead by his hand and he can’t get any more money from them, that’s when he doesn’t “care” about them any more?

Some “leader.” He’s a murderer.

The Associated Press said:

The 43-year-old told the AP in a series of interviews this week that by the time the sweat lodge ceremony began, the participants had undergone days of physically and mentally strenuous events that included fasting. In one game, guru James Arthur Ray even played God.

Within an hour of entering the sweat lodge on the evening of Oct. 8, people began vomiting, gasping for air and collapsing. Yet Bunn says Ray continually urged everyone to stay inside. The ceremony was broken up into 15-minute “rounds,” with the entrance flap to the lodge opened briefly and more heated rocks brought inside between sessions.

“I can’t get her to move. I can’t get her to wake up,” Bunn recalls hearing from two sides of the 415-square-foot sweat lodge. Ray’s response: “Leave her alone, she’ll be dealt with in the next round.”

By that time, Bunn had already crawled to a spot near the opening of the sweat lodge, praying for the door to stay open as long as possible between rounds so that she could breathe in fresh air.

At one point, someone lifted up the back of the tent, shining light in the otherwise pitch-black enclosure. Ray demanded to know who was letting the light in and committing a “sacrilegious act,” Bunn said.

It was 140 degrees in there.

Dr. Bunn began calmly, but she began to collapse into tears before the interview concluded.

You can’t make shyt like this up. Or improve upon it.

You be the judge of James Arthur Ray.