Aikido in the bad news

There was some sort of family massacre in Fresno, CA today, in which a guy called Marcus Wesson killed 9 family members. Apparently he was involved in polygamy and incest, fathering two of the victims with his own daughters. Details are sketchy in the news still.

But it appears the guy was into Aikido and required his male children to reach shodan in order to leave home when they reached manhood, according to Florian Tan, the sensei at the dojo the boys had attended.

Bizarre and tragic.

I just read that in the news story, and it made me flinch a little.

Wow. That's messed up. I can't think of anything else to say about that right now. Anybody know this guy?

Aikido, like anything else, has a dark side too. Perhaps it is good to be aware of it, to keep the balance true. Each aikido practioner should consider himself/herself a missionary, an educator. This is basic buddhism, and also basic common sense. It helps to keep this in mind with all things.

mm, i don't think the focus should be on aikido. The man was obviously mad, and coincidentally he does aikido.

Unless if he went mad because of his aikido training.

What! Where did you hear/read this?

I read a story a while back about a thing (I won't call it a man, woman, sensei) who had a sleep over at his dojo for kids and molested a few of them. This was somewhere in Europe back in like 1993.

Men of any study or faith can do horrible things. Blame the men, not the faith.

Story was featured in our (norwegian) newspapers yesterday. The Aikido link was not mentioned. I am wondering though, whether the senseis at his club must have noticed that something was very odd about this character...?

Ma'a el Salaam,

Sigurd

wow

http://www.fresnobee.com/breakingnew...-9120549c.html

I came across this yesterday but hesitated in regards to posting it. The guy was clearly a nut and decided, for whatever reason, that his kids should take aikido. To me, aikido is kind of incidental unless some of those murdered were aikido students. I mean, the guy could have fixated on aikido for any of a thousand different reasons. As near as I can tell from the article this guy was not an aikido practitioner and the only quirky thing was that he wouldn't let his kids attend seminars.

Florian, the couple of times I've met him, always seemed like a pretty decent guy and if I read him correctly he's definitely into the spiritual side of the art.

The story has been in the news but this is the first I've heard about a Aikido connection. But like any other thing we humans create Aikido can be used for good or evil.