Every organization eventually encounters members who behave abusively. No organization can guarantee that serious misconduct will never occur. The real test is not whether such situations arise, but how the institution responds when they do.
The case of Adam is the clearest example of how O.T.O. responds to such situations I witnessed during my decade as a member. I observed much of it firsthand and participated in parts of the disciplinary process. It revealed less about the actions of one individual and more about how the organization itself functioned under stress.
The First Institutional Test
Adam is a 6th degree member of Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) in the United States. At the time of these events, he had been a member for about 20 years, had served a full 11-year term on the Electoral College of United States Grand Lodge, and was serving as Master of my lodge.
In the spring of 2017, Adam experienced an acute personal crisis after believing his girlfriend was about to leave him. His texts to her and posts on Facebook led people to believe he was contemplating harming himself. At one point he posted a picture of his arm with cuts on it to Facebook.
This led to an immediate response from the local community. The police were contacted. Members checked in with Adam’s girlfriend (who was at that point staying at a hotel). Other members went to Adam’s, where they found him in an extremely inebriated but non-life-threatening state. For the next two weeks, members of the community sat with him in shifts 24/7.
The first response from the national organization came when Sabazius, the head of O.T.O. in the United States, requested Adam remove the picture of his cut up arm from Facebook. Adam complied with this request.
Then, at the request of an upper degree member of the community, Sabazius and the President of the Electoral College put Adam’s deputy, Liam, in charge of the lodge.
A few days later, when Adam found out he had been replaced, he contacted the President of the Electoral College and said he wanted to be put back in charge of the lodge. The President restored Adam to the position. Later the President said he felt it “would be good for Adam” to run the lodge again.
Thus, while members of the lodge were working in shifts to ensure Adam’s safety during an acute crisis, the organization’s senior leadership restored him to his role as Master, making him once again responsible for leading the local body.
This was not simply a mental health crisis. It was also a governance crisis. O.T.O.’s senior leadership had to decide whether someone experiencing an acute personal crisis should continue exercising authority over a local body. Their decision was to restore Adam to his position within days, while members of the community were still maintaining a 24-hour watch over him.
Members Raised Concerns
Over the next few weeks, the immediate crisis subsided. Members were no longer sitting with Adam around the clock. His girlfriend moved out and eventually ended the relationship. Adam stepped down as Master, and Liam assumed leadership of the lodge.
Over the course of that summer, Adam continued sending occasional messages to his former girlfriend implying he was going to harm himself. On one occasion, Liam had to go to Adam’s in the middle of the night to get him to stop sending these texts — going so far as to climb in through the window when Adam wouldn’t answer the door.
The following day, I asked Liam whether he intended to address Adam’s continued harassment of his former girlfriend. He gave no indication that he planned to do so.
I also spoke directly with Adam about the effect his behavior was having on the community. He was unapologetic. When I suggested his actions could have organizational consequences, he replied, “the Order doesn’t get involved in personal matters.”
That summer and fall, concerns were raised with Liam that Adam was making women in the community uncomfortable by expecting them to spend time with him at his home and reacting negatively when they declined. To my knowledge, Liam neither confronted Adam nor referred these concerns to any governing body.
As the complaints accumulated, I sought guidance from the local Rose-Croix Chapter and O.T.O.’s ombuds. Everyone I spoke with seemed to recognize the seriousness of the situation. What they could not identify was a clear institutional response. At one point, I was told that O.T.O. might not even have mechanisms for addressing a case like Adam’s.
By this point, the central problem was no longer Adam’s behavior alone. It was the organization’s inability — or unwillingness — to respond to it.
Liam clearly cared about members of the lodge. He had personally intervened during Adam’s crises, even climbing through a window to stop him from sending suicide threats to his former girlfriend. Yet when the issue became one of exercising institutional authority, he did not act.
The same pattern extended beyond the local lodge. The Rose-Croix officers and Grand Lodge representatives I consulted all recognized that something was wrong. Yet none could identify a clear process for addressing it. As the seriousness of the situation increased, responsibility became less clear.
When Formal Action Finally Began
In the winter of 2018, a prospective member contacted me to say Adam’s behavior toward her was making her uncomfortable. She described him as possessive of her attention and time and said she suspected he had spiked her drink.
Around this same period, I spoke with another woman who left me with the clear impression that Adam had sexually assaulted her.
I filed a formal complaint with Liam. I did not include the sexual assault allegation, because it had been shared with me in confidence. But I summarized the pattern of Adam’s behavior over the previous year and described its growing effect on attendance and on prospective members’ willingness to participate in the lodge.
Liam deflected. He said we had a busy weekend in front of us, and he would address it the following week.
Concerned that the matter would again be delayed, I forwarded the complaint directly to the Rose-Croix Chapter. The High Priestess immediately forwarded it to Sabazius. Sabazius suspended Adam without delay.
The speed of the response suggested that the organization had possessed the authority to intervene all along. What had been missing was not the ability to act, but the willingness to do so.
The Committee Meeting: A Microcosm of O.T.O. Decision-Making
In April 2018, I was invited to attend a meeting of the Committee of Four, a committee of the local Rose-Croix Chapter, to discuss the Adam case. Although Chapter meetings are normally restricted to 5th degree members and above, I was invited as a 4th degree because I had spoken with several of the witnesses.
Going in, I expected something a lot more formal and professional than what I found.
I was surprised when I walked in and found more than four people. I could not determine why several of those present had been invited. They had no apparent disciplinary authority, had not interviewed witnesses, and did not appear to have played any role in investigating the allegations.
Rather than focusing on the allegations themselves, parts of the discussion veered into gossip about Adam’s personal life. Another attendee and I repeatedly redirected the conversation to the issues relevant to the complaint and declined requests to share confidential information witnesses had entrusted to us.
I later learned that the Committee of Four has no disciplinary or governing authority within O.T.O. Its role is primarily to organize social functions within the Chapter. Looking back, it remains unclear to me why this committee was convened to address allegations of this seriousness.
A lot of the meeting was spent trying to figure out what complaint to file and to whom. We took a vote and eventually decided to send the complaint to the Executive with a request for expulsion. As it turned out, the Committee of Four had no authority to file such a complaint, and those procedural defects later became part of Adam’s appeal.
One other moment in the meeting stood out to me. During the meeting, several participants describing the allegations said things like, “Adam has sexual intercourse with women who are too intoxicated to say no.” I raised my hand and asked why we weren’t just saying, “Adam sexually assaults women.”
This was objected to, not because this was definitionally wrong, but because if we accused Adam of something that was a crime, the Executive would come back and say it was a police matter.
Looking back, this meeting revealed several organizational dynamics that I would continue to encounter over the following seven years.
First, responsibility for the case was unclear. Even those present seemed uncertain who actually owned it.
Second, informal influence appeared to matter as much as formal authority. Some of the most active participants had no obvious investigative or disciplinary role, while those with formal responsibility often appeared hesitant.
Third, procedural questions increasingly overshadowed the underlying allegations. Much of the discussion focused on how to frame the complaint rather than how to investigate what had happened.
At the time, I regarded these as isolated frustrations. Years later, I came to see them as recurring features of how O.T.O. handled serious internal conflicts. (See The Experiment That Changed My Mind About Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.).)
The Politics of Accountability
Sabazius referred the case to the Grand Tribunal, the governing body responsible for resolving disputes and complaints that have not been settled by local Chapters or Lodge Masters.
Because the case had moved into the Grand Tribunal process, I was no longer directly involved. It soon became apparent, however, that the allegations had not been organized into a coherent evidentiary record.
During the summer of 2018, the President of the Grand Tribunal contacted me several times seeking clarification about the chronology of events and the relationships among the various allegations. It became clear that the governing body responsible for deciding the case was struggling to understand the record before it.
The whole process went on until the end of 2019 — almost two years after I had filed my initial complaint. The GT gave Adam indefinite membership suspension, his reinstatement conditioned on him getting psychotherapy.
In early 2020, Adam used his personal connection with someone on the Electoral College to appeal his verdict. The case was then sent to the Areopagus, an international appellate body.
In early 2022, the Areopagus overturned part of the GT’s decision, saying Adam should be restored to active participation. Negotiations between the international organization and Sabazius took place, and it was decided a “manager” would be appointed with the absolute authority to deny or grant Adam participation in O.T.O. events anywhere within the jurisdiction of USGL.
An individual who I will call Robert was assigned to be that manager for the next 10 years.
In spring 2022, Robert met with our Rose-Croix Chapter to get a better sense of where we were at. Members of the Chapter spent several hours describing the history of the case, the allegations that had accumulated, and the evidence that had never reached the Grand Tribunal.
During this meeting, Robert also shared that the Areopagus’s decision had been “second-guessed at the highest levels.” Another attendee with knowledge of the situation described it more bluntly, saying Sabazius had strongly protested the Areopagus’s decision.
Having carefully reviewed the case file himself, Robert said the Areopagus had made factual assertions in its written opinion that, in his view, were simply untrue. “It was mind-boggling,” he said.
Robert explained that the Adam case had already led to procedural changes within USGL. Complaints involving sexual misconduct would now be sent directly to the Executive rather than entering the Grand Tribunal process.
At one point, while I was describing Adam’s humiliating treatment of a female member, Robert broke down and began to cry. He said he realized how badly both the victims and the community had been failed by the organization and expressed his intention to correct the mistakes.
That day, Robert did something I had never seen another senior officer do: he decided to act first and worry about institutional politics later.
He decided to carry out his own investigation into what happened in 2017 and 2018.
Over the next several months, Robert interviewed approximately 20 people. As additional accounts accumulated, he concluded that the similarities among several of the allegations made it increasingly unlikely, in his view, that they represented isolated incidents or fabricated claims.
During this period, it also came to light that a Grand Lodge officer had failed to forward a witness statement to the Grand Tribunal. In this statement, a woman reported Adam having sexual intercourse with her while she was too intoxicated to consent.
Robert told me that as he interviewed additional women, similarities between their accounts became increasingly difficult for him to dismiss as coincidence.
In July 2022, Robert forwarded his findings to Sabazius.
And then we heard nothing.
When I finally heard back from Sabazius in November 2022, he told me that all the information Robert had sent him had already been considered earlier that year, after the Areopagus had overturned the GT decision. Sabazius implied there was no new information in Robert’s report — which conflicted with what Robert had personally told me about the scope of his investigation and the evidence he had uncovered.
Sabazius also claimed that Adam had been “effectively neutralized,” and that the decision to require a “manager” “effectively render[ed] him harmless”.
When I pressed Sabazius on this, he eventually said “I’m fighting an internal political battle with this case. There are important members of the Areopagus who have taken [Adam’s] side. I’ve already been dealt one significant and humiliating defeat, and I have had to get creative in order to guard the camp, as I see it.”
Around this same time, Robert shared another detail that took on new significance in light of what Sabazius had told me. He said that Adam himself had claimed to be receiving support and assurances from Grand Masters in other jurisdictions. This was significant, as the Areopagus committee that had decided Adam’s case had been appointed by those same Grand Masters. Robert said that at the time, he had not appreciated the significance of Adam’s claim. But now, in light of what Sabazius had said, he found himself unable to let it go.
Until that point, I had interpreted the delays primarily as organizational dysfunction. These conversations suggested that internal political considerations had become an important part of the story.
By the time I left O.T.O. in 2025, I was told that Adam had resumed attending events in the United States under the supervision of his assigned manager. After eight years of complaints, disciplinary proceedings, appeals, renewed investigations, procedural reforms, and internal political conflict, this was where the case stood.
Conclusion
Looking back, I no longer think the Adam case primarily revealed the danger of one troubled member. Every organization eventually encounters people who behave abusively. The real test is whether the institution can recognize the problem, investigate it competently, protect its members, and learn from its mistakes.
The tragedy was not simply that Adam remained in the organization for years. It was that warning signs were repeatedly minimized, responsibility diffused across multiple levels of authority, investigations proceeded without a coherent evidentiary record, procedural questions eclipsed the underlying allegations, and internal political considerations ultimately shaped the outcome.
The Adam case did lead to important procedural changes. Complaints involving sexual misconduct are now handled differently, reflecting an institutional acknowledgement that the previous process had been inadequate. I regard those changes as improvements. At the same time, they do not alter the broader organizational dynamics this essay has described. The failures exposed by this case were not limited to one committee or one procedural rule. They included hesitation to exercise authority, uncertainty about institutional responsibility, informal influence, and the intrusion of internal politics into decisions affecting member safety.
Those dynamics ultimately convinced me that O.T.O.’s problems were institutional rather than incidental. More broadly, they convinced me that organizations should be judged not by whether misconduct ever occurs, but by whether they are capable of responding to it honestly, competently, and in a way that protects the people who place their trust in them.
Many of the broader organizational dynamics discussed here are examined in more detail in my essay on why I regard O.T.O. as a high-control group.
See Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.): An Analysis of a High-Control Group for more.