Unmasking Jared Gustafson: A Statement of Support for Safe Redlands Schools

For the past three months, Southern California resident Jared Gustafson has led a group of anti-maskers known as the Inland Empire Liberty Coalition to protest at Redlands Unified School District board meetings. But these have been far more than protests. Jared and his group have harassed and terrorized the public using racial slurs, threats, intimidation, and bringing weapons to meetings, culminating in September 14th’s school board meeting where Jared publicly disclosed a school board member’s home address with the ominous promise to “make this personal.” Safe Redlands Schools, a group of parents and concerned citizens, has begun circulating a petition asking RUSD to take seriously the danger Jared Gustafson poses and condemn the threats he has made to the public and elected officials.

I am writing today in support of Safe Redlands Schools, and their petition, based on my personal experience of being abused by Jared Gustafson.

My Background

Redlands is my hometown. My grandparents and parents grew up there, and I lived in Redlands throughout my life, especially from 2009 to 2014. I am living in South Carolina today as a direct result of Jared Gustafson’s abuse.

I attended Jared and Seth Gustafson’s Redlands-based house church, “Monday Nights,” from 2011–2013. While attending, I became concerned and increasingly alarmed at Jared’s behavior. What began as doctrinal disputes — Seth encouraging the mens’ Bible study group to get naked to “experience intimacy” (two young men did) to Jared teaching there was “no such thing as sin” and “we’re already perfect” — became Jared manipulating and controlling others using his charm. After expressing my concerns, the Gustafson brothers labeled me a “slanderer” and convened three secret meetings with our church to declare my concerns to be evidence of mental illness (gaslighting). They put me on Trial in May 2013 where the Gustafsons, and the church supporting them, presented me with a Contract to recant my concerns or face the consequences of shunning by the group, their family members, and other house churches in the area. I refused to sign, believing this to be spiritually abusive and cult-like, and so the Gustafsons carried out their threat by excommunicating me from their church.

The Gustafsons threatened the members of the church with more shunnings if anyone remained my friend and shut down any attempt at truth-telling or reconciliation.

In 2016, I and nine other witnesses and survivors of Jared and Seth‘s abuse compiled our testimonies into a document and published it, appealing to church members and the Redlands community at large to hold the Gustafsons accountable. I was beyond disappointed that our warnings and pleas went unheeded, with indifference being the only answer to the injustice I and others experienced. Yet the dignity of Jared’s victims are not up for debate. I moved on and tried to build a new life.

Meanwhile, the Gustafsons continued their misinformation campaign, which endures to this day, attempting to smear truth-tellers and conceal the facts of what they’ve done.

My Concerns

Having survived Jared Gustafson, in my opinion, I regard his latest antics as troubling for two major reasons.

First, his leadership over an anti-mask group demonstrates his desire to build a platform and aggressively deny reality. His ability to lead others into conspiratorial fictions is profound.

Secondly, Jared bullies, intimidates, and threatens those who disagree with him, and ever since he was able to abuse me and others with impunity, he has only grown bolder — as doxxing a school board member demonstrates.

Jared’s leadership style has metastasized into patterns of cruel efficiency — beginning with stonewalling all questions and concerns, he meets challenges and dissent by barricading himself behind the human shields of his followers and writes passive-aggressive social media posts claiming he’s being persecuted for his beliefs. Yet Jared Gustafson’s accusations of persecution are his confessions.

The fruit of Jared’s ministry is apparent: Upon my banishment in 2013, the house church that “love-bombed” me and once called me a family member embraced Jared’s teaching of there being “no such thing as sin” and turned a blind eye to a member committing adultery, enabled drug use and drunkenness, encouraged each other to post naked photos on social media, and ignored any attempts from the Gustafson’s many victims to seek reconciliation — among other things.

With the vacuum of accountability Jared enjoys, it was only a matter of time before he grew bold enough to do something reckless in public. With me, he could hide behind his house church. But in a public meeting over masks, Jared’s predatory nature was revealed for anyone willing to see.

In 2014, when I enrolled at my university, everyone had to attend a course on abuse and predators. By the end, I was heartbroken, because the course described Jared and Seth and what they do to their followers. “Abuse” is a word that can sometimes be carelessly used. I define abuse as isolation, deflection, manipulation, and intimidation. Jared and Seth Gustafson admitted to me that they target outsiders and discontented people, and “love-bomb” their targets until they become followers. Once under their influence, these followers are used by the Gustafsons for the love and affection these brothers crave or until these followers are discarded.

It is vital that Redlands parents know that the Gustafsons are extremely dangerous. They isolate the vulnerable (often young people), deflect any criticism, manipulate reality, and intimidate uncooperative people until compliance and control are theirs and theirs alone.

The community of Redlands should hold these men accountable and not allow them to manipulate or harm young people anymore.

It is my hope that the Redlands Unified School District understands Jared’s history and considers it when tempted to overlook or downplay what he has done to too many of us.

Ryan Ashton

It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering… In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization.

— Judith Herman
from Trauma and Recovery, p. 7–8

Originally published on Medium on September 30, 2021, this statement can be found here.