In 2024, a man calling himself Van of Urantia warned in a Facebook post that Planet Nibiru, a celestial body “seven times the mass of the Earth,” was headed our way. He predicted “mass destruction,” he wrote, “with increased and larger earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, and sinkholes.” This was one of the last of many doomsday predictions made by Van, leader of the Global Community Communications Alliance (GCCA), who died in August 2025. Now, due to two recent inflammatory court filings — alleging forced labor, sexual abuse of minors, fraud, and racketeering — GCCA itself faces potential destruction.
Currently numbering about 100 members and operating as a tax-exempt public charity on a fenced-in campus in Tumacacori, Arizona, GCCA has shape-shifted over the years. So did its leader, Van of Urantia, who was born Anthony Delevin in Pittsburgh in 1948. In 1987, Delevin was in Arizona, when, according to his autobiography, he received contact from a cosmic being from the Pleiades, who was “in charge of a vast spacefleet command of thousands of vessels called the Ashtar Command.” Then, for two and a half months in 1990, he and his third wife lived in a tent with three children under the age of two.
By the 1990s, he was calling himself Gabriel of Sedona, and had amassed around $1 million in his Aquarian Concepts Community in Sedona, Arizona, where close to 100 followers lived. They called it the new Garden of Eden, staffed Delevin’s six businesses, and were told to give over everything they had in exchange for food, housing, clothing, healthcare, and education. Delevin told them he believed UFOs would save them if doomsday arrived. In 2008, they began relocating to Tumacacori, 20 miles from the Mexican border.
Much of the group’s cosmology derives from The Urantia Book, a mishmash of Christianity, metaphysics, and esoteric spirituality, that was purportedly written by celestial beings and published anonymously in 1955. Jerry Garcia claimed to have read the 2,097-page tome cover to cover. Jimi Hendrix carried a copy with him always, along with Bob Dylan’s songbook. Stevie Ray Vaughan is said to have owned a copy, while other rumored fans include Carlos Santana and Elvis Presley. Delevin’s honorific, Van of Urantia, comes from a character in the book, who’s the “titular head of all superhuman personalities functioning on the planet.” Members were required to bow in Delevin’s presence.
He also went by Gabriel of Urantia, Prince Melfax, and for a time, as the musician TaliasVan. His Spotify page (now under Van of Urantia) hosts 16 releases produced by his label, Global Change Music Label. GCCA followers would perform in his band and sing his songs in the group’s choir. In hidden-camera footage from a 1998 Dateline investigation, Delevin channels a cosmic being who begins its message by complimenting Delevin’s music — and then sings one of his songs.
According to the recent court filings, members are coerced to provide all of the labor in the GCCA compound without compensation. One is a lawsuit on behalf of Jane M. Doe; the other is a Court-Appointed Advisor’s Final Report in a custody case between a group member and former member. The father in the battle is Daniel Steinhardt, son of billionaire philanthropist and retired New York hedge-fund manager Michael Steinhardt. Daniel, who according to a court filing currently holds a status just below leadership level in the group, joined around 1998 and quickly became a golden child of sorts. (In the Advisor’s report, Daniel claims he is compensated for his labor, but only earns $75 a month because he donates the rest to GCCA.)
Several former members, including Delevin himself in the Dateline piece, have explained that followers are required to turn over all assets upon joining. They are then given new names. The lawsuit and Advisor’s report further allege that members must cut ties with their families, children are removed from their parents’ homes, and couples are often encouraged to split up after joining. The legal documents also allege that internet use requires supervision, members are encouraged to apply for government assistance, and permission to see outside doctors and dentists is rarely granted (and only through a formal application process to leadership). Members, the docs claim, are surveilled and allegedly encouraged to snitch on one another. In the strictly patriarchal organization, reports the Advisor’s interviewees, husbands and fathers commonly scream at or hit their wives and children. Delevin required total submission of women to men. He also taught that sperm could spiritually heal women.
According to the filings, all members, including children as young as six, are required to work, typically for 14 to 18 hours a day and without compensation. Children allegedly do most of the cleaning, cooking, gardening, and child and animal care. “Children’s primary role at GCCA was forced labor,” reads the lawsuit on behalf of Jane M. Doe. “Schooling was minimal and sporadic, and when it did occur, it consisted primarily of indoctrination into GCCA doctrine.” Meanwhile, adults manage and teach the children, and work for the organization’s many associated businesses and non-profits; documents suggest there are at least 10, including a real estate company, where Daniel is a licensed agent, a lodging and rentals company, a spa, and multiple agricultural operations.
Some of the group’s tactics were crafted by Linda Cunningham, according to the complaint, who joined Delevin following her time in Synanon, the famed addiction-treatment-center-turned-cult, where she worked from 1973 to 1989. According to the documents, she is still a member of GCCA leadership.
Karen Barth Menzies, part of Doe’s legal team, tells Rolling Stone that children in GCCA are groomed for “forced labor” (a phrase the lawsuit uses more than 20 times). “It’s a way to condition those kids,” she says. “This is what they know, this is all they know, and they have no idea that this is unusual in the outside world.”
The lawsuit alleges that when Doe was four, around 1999, she was deemed clinically malnourished, weighing only 25 pounds. This is only known because her grandparents initiated a neglect proceeding, according to Menzies, which led to a doctor’s evaluation. The case alleges that Doe’s caretakers force-fed her in the days leading up to the visit. Doe says she was sexually abused 20 to 30 times between ages four and seven by a boy 12 years her senior, and alleges leadership knew he had been expelled from his previous school for such behavior. He later admitted his abuse of Doe, who claims he was not disciplined and was still given access to children. (Menzies tells Rolling Stone that he’s no longer in the group.) When she was 14, she says he tried again, after which she approached leadership, who told her she was being punished for sins of her past lives and accused her of seducing him. In June 2015, Doe, then a teenager, climbed over the compound’s wrought-iron fence and ran into the Arizona desert, where a former member was waiting to pick her up and take her to safety.
The Advisor spoke with several alleged victims, and noted in the report that every individual “who disclosed sexual assault while living in the GCCA compound said that the counselor told them the sexual assault was their fault. They each said that they were told they had been rebellious in a former life and this assault was foreseen and deserved punishment for that rebellion.” Some said they were additionally told by Cunningham that the assaults resulted from their “seductive” behavior.
Doe’s legal team is approaching the group as a business enterprise and pursuing racketeering and RICO claims, among the case’s 21 counts. “The legislation is so much better now at recognizing that these aren’t just isolated events,” Menzies explains. “It’s systemic across the organization. In fact, it’s the purpose of the organization.” (A representative for GCCA tells Rolling Stone of plans to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in the coming weeks.)
Two of Delevin’s own children escaped the compound some years ago, one of whom died in a house fire in March at age 36. Two others remain and are primed to take leadership roles. “This is set in place to continue to function well beyond [Delevin’s] death,” Menzies says. His son Amadon, 35, is the heir apparent.
But the group’s future is certainly uncertain, considering Doe’s lawsuit exceeds $7.5 million in damages. As for the Advisor’s report, it recommends that the mother, who is no longer part of the group, and whom Rolling Stone has chosen not to name, be the “primary parenting-time parent” of the two minors in question and that both live primarily with her. (A representative for her declined to comment, citing ongoing legal proceedings. A representative for Daniel did not respond to a request for comment.)
Beyond financial compensation, Menzies says her team wants accountability. “For survivors, recognition that what happened to them was harmful goes a long way in the healing process.”
Correction: Delevin was born in 1948, not 1947; the group moved to the Arizona border in 2008, not 2007.
