Cults Inside Out: How People Get in and Can Get Out Read online

  CULTS INSIDE OUT

  How People Get In and Can Get Out

  RICK ALAN ROSS

  Copyright © 2014 Rick Alan Ross

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 149731660X

  ISBN 13: 9781497316607

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014905061

  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

  North Charleston, South Carolina

  FOR HAO HUIJUN AND HER DAUGHTER, CHEN GUO

  I met Falun Gong survivors Hao Huijun and her daughter, Chen Guo, after attending an international cultic studies conference in China. Their painfully acquired insight, wrought by a horrible Falun Gong–inspired self-immolation, which took place at Tiananmen Square during 2001, is both compelling and inspiring. They quite literally bear the scars of their experience and are icons of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance. This book is dedicated to Hao Huijun and Chen Guo and all former cult members who have moved on to find freedom of mind.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 Growing Cult Awareness

  Chapter 2 Small but Deadly

  Chapter 3 Family Cults

  Chapter 4 Defining a Destructive Cult

  Chapter 5 “Cult Brainwashing”

  Chapter 6 History of Cult-Intervention Work

  Chapter 7 Assessing the Situation

  Chapter 8 Coping Strategies

  Chapter 9 Preparation for an Intervention

  Chapter 10 The Intervention Process

  Chapter 11 Bible-Based Group Intervention

  Chapter 12 Falun Gong

  Chapter 13 Falun Gong Intervention

  Chapter 14 Scientology

  Chapter 15 Scientology Intervention

  Chapter 16 Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT)

  Chapter 17 LGAT Intervention

  Chapter 18 Abusive, Controlling Relationships

  Chapter 19 Abusive, Controlling Relationship Intervention

  Chapter 20 Guru Group Intervention

  Chapter 21 Amway Intervention

  Chapter 22 Failed Interventions

  Chapter 23 Moving On

  Postscript

  Acknowledgments

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  FOREWORD

  My work has placed me in legal settings, and I have been qualified as an expert in courts of law. I know firsthand what is considered the state of art within this field. I have a PhD in psychology and have worked with current and former cult members as a licensed counselor for over twenty years.

  In this book Rick Ross describes situations in which a current cult member could be persuaded that he or she needs a replacement for his or her current or former cult leader. This is one reason why we must proceed with caution and due diligence when educating former and current cult members and their families.

  This book is unique among the books written about cults. My hope is that people will carefully read it. The author has firsthand knowledge of the subject and is qualified to explain cults based on his many years of experience.

  We don’t know how many cults actually exist, but we have witnessed the harm they have done. Critics of the term cult generally object to its standardized application, claiming that it denigrates “new religious movements.” But since many cults are not religious, this objection seems misplaced. Any meaningful investigation into the nature of cults must forego specific beliefs and instead focus on the practices that make a group or relationship harmful. Whatever the cult, there is almost always sustained deception. This fact raises the issue that there is an absence of informed consent.

  Ross’s decades of inquiry and work related to cults have provided him with knowledge of their pernicious attributes. This background has provided Ross with the tools and ability necessary to recognize their true nature. Not afraid of controversy, he tries to find that delicate balance between exposing cults and encouraging the freedom of undeterred choice.

  Cults employ secretiveness, because most people would otherwise not knowingly affiliate with them. Neither intelligence nor family background precludes being tricked and caught by a cult. People who have been caught weren’t necessarily “seeking” or looking for “something.” This book doesn’t unfairly stigmatize cult victims; instead it thoroughly discusses the real history of cults and how they trap people. Telling the truth about cults based on facts and research, not speculation, is important.

  This is not another book about counseling cult members, though some recovery suggestions are appropriately discussed. We don’t know whether everyone in a cult has been traumatized. We do know that many have had very difficult and painful experiences. We don’t have the data to support the contention that every former cult member needs professional counseling. But we do know that education about cults has been helpful and is an important facet of recovery, which often alleviates the confusion and suffering of former cult members.

  Professional counseling is, by its very nature, a persuasive process. Education focused on critical thinking, the power of persuasion, deception, and indoctrination practices with the support of research is, in my opinion, a better choice to assist former or current cult members.

  My concern is that reliance on counseling rather than on education has the potential to create dependence on an authority figure and doesn’t necessarily nurture the autonomy and knowledge one needs to make decisions in a rational and systemic fashion. This book is designed to provide its readers with important information that can lead to genuine independence and freedom.

  Over the years Rick Ross has established the single-largest website devoted to the topic of cults and their associated practices. This book is a type of capstone to his long-standing work. Ross is effectively in the information and education business. He has labored tenaciously toward providing educational tools for others to help them deal with the ongoing and often misunderstood world of cults.

  Some who have encountered the main content of research used in this book in an intervention, counseling, or a legal setting have criticized it. Criticism and dissent are good; they make our theories better. There are no theories that are absolutely proven in science. Some research is better supported than other research. Ross has chosen some of the most familiar models, and they are not without limitations. Good research acknowledges that it needs more ongoing support.

  By the end of her life, Dr. Margaret Singer had provided a rich body of work and insight into cult formation. It is impossible for anyone to operate in the realm of cultic studies and not know about Drs. Margaret Singer, Robert Lifton, and Richard Ofshe. However, we must still continue to look for more models of education that can be helpful. This book is a step in the right direction. Instead of merely repeating various theories without attribution, this book is carefully footnoted and offers rare insight into how these theories actually work in real situations with real people.

  Contained within the book are illustrations and examples of cultic histories, interventions, and statements about the problems associated with cults. This book will not disappoint, but rather it will provide insight and understanding.

  We can all be students, academics, and adventurous seekers of the “truth” and overcome adversity. But as seekers we must recognize that some organizations are harbingers of danger. Finding the truth is a process that is ideally transparent, engaging, and respectful of each person’s unique human spirit.

  Cathleen A. Mann, PhD

  Lakewood, Colorado

  October 2013

  INTRODUCTION

  My work in the field of cultic studies began rather suddenl
y and serendipitously in 1982. People associated with a controversial religious group that targeted Jews for conversion infiltrated the paid professional staff of a Jewish nursing home where my grandmother was a resident. A person associated with the group tried to recruit my grandmother. When that attempt failed, the encounter quickly escalated into a hateful confrontation. When I arrived to take my grandmother out for lunch that same day, she was still quite upset about the unsettling experience. She was eighty-two years old at the time and nearing the end of her life.

  This covert activity aimed at the elderly angered me. My grandmother had the right to expect privacy, not to suffer the intrusion of an unwanted group bent on somehow exploiting her. In the years since this disturbing encounter, I have learned that destructive cults frequently target and exploit the elderly.

  Volunteers often provide meaningful help in nursing homes. There were many volunteers who regularly visited my grandmother’s nursing home. Some came specifically in response to requests residents made. But the idea that a group deliberately circumvented the usual process for entry and planted people in the nursing home staff to pursue a hidden agenda was deceptive and unethical.

  At the time I had no interest in cultic groups. My only purpose was to make sure my grandmother was as comfortable and happy as possible. She had survived enough hardships during her life and had the right to receive respect and live what was left of her life with dignity. I immediately reported the incident to the executive director of the nursing home. We then worked together, and the people who had surreptitiously infiltrated the nursing home staff, were exposed and summarily dismissed.

  My work with the director of the nursing home came to the attention of the organized Jewish community in Phoenix, Arizona, where I had grown up and lived at the time. Suddenly I became an activist. I served on various committees locally, nationally, and internationally.

  Within those committees we came to a consensus concerning ethical boundaries for proselytizing or recruitment efforts. We agreed that targeting a particular group, such as Jews, was unethical; that minor children shouldn’t be approached without prior written parental notification and consent; that privacy must be protected at hospitals and nursing homes; and that any group trying to recruit new members must do so honestly without misrepresentation or deception.

  Working with the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix, I helped to develop an educational pamphlet, which was widely distributed throughout the local religious community. The publication, which most of the religious leaders in Phoenix endorsed, was titled “What in God’s Name Is Going On in Arizona?”

  A national committee I served on for the Union for Reform Judaism produced an educational video titled You Can Go Home Again, which is a study of cults as seen through the eyes of former cult members and their families.

  I once told a rabbi who served with me on committees in the early 1980s that I certainly didn’t consider myself an authority on the subject of cults and that personal interest had drawn me to the issue. The rabbi said, “In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king,” citing an old adage attributed to the scholar Erasmus. What he meant to say was that at that time cults were still largely a mystery and often misunderstood.

  After the publication of the pamphlet about proselytizing, someone brought to my attention that cults and hate groups were targeting Jewish prisoners in the prisons and jails of Arizona. In response I began a Jewish prisoner program. That program was later incorporated into the services provided by Jewish Family & Children’s Service (JFCS), a social service agency in Phoenix. I served as the staff coordinator for that program at JFCS.

  In the following years my efforts included opposing hate groups, cult recruitment, and unethical proselytizing within and outside prison walls. My work included teaching a course about destructive cults for the Bureau of Jewish Education of Greater Phoenix. The curriculum was used to inform young people before they entered college. At that time I also began my cult-intervention work, which was then commonly called “cult deprogramming.” Typically families would contact me at the social service agency regarding cultic problems, and I would facilitate an intervention. All these efforts were on a voluntary basis and took place either at my office or at a family home with the consent of the cult-involved adult.

  By 1986 I felt the strain of simultaneously being pulled in two directions, between my work related to cults and the program for Jewish prisoners. I decided to focus all my attention on cultic studies. My reasoning was that unlike Jewish prisoners, who had done something wrong, cult members had done nothing to warrant the punishment they received.

  At this juncture my work expanded beyond the Jewish community and began to take me first across the United States and later around the world as a private consultant, lecturer, and cult-intervention specialist. Most often the requests for help I received came from parents, but there were also calls from spouses and at times from the adult children of cult members. Over the past thirty years, I have done hundreds of cult interventions, working within almost every state in the United States. My work has also taken me across Canada and to China, England, Ireland, Europe, Israel, India, Australia, and Thailand.

  At one time I agreed to cooperate with parents to do what has been called “involuntary deprogramming.” This involved the physical restraint of an adult cult member under the supervision of his or her family. The use of such restraint guaranteed that the family would have time to adequately address their concerns without cultic interference. Repeated court rulings regarding the involuntary deprogramming of adults have effectively ended this form of cult intervention in the United States. I no longer recommend that any family consider such an approach due to the legal consequences.

  In involuntary deprogramming parents often hired people to serve as security guards to ensure that an adult cult-involved child couldn’t leave until parents determined that the intervention had concluded. This is unlike a voluntary intervention, which is based on the willing cooperation and consent of the cult-involved individual, who is free to leave at any time.

  In fairness I feel obligated to point out that families felt involuntary deprogramming was necessary because cults trained and sometimes urged their members to run away rather than talk to their families in an intervention. Successful interventions require substantial time allotted for discussion and exchange of ideas. Concerned families used restraint to guarantee them that time.

  A form of temporary conservatorship was once used in the United States to address the concerns of families about cults and enable them to legally intervene on an involuntary basis to help an adult cult victim.

  The courts, however, later eliminated this legal option. Temporary legal authority or conservatorship over an adult cult member was ruled a violation of the US constitutional provision for freedom of religion.

  At this point it is important to note that many groups called “cults” are not based on religion. For example, cults can be based on some form of training, therapy, business plan, philosophy, diet, or exercise that forms the outer facade a group uses when the general public sees it.

  My limited involuntary deprogramming work with adults ended more than twenty years ago. I do only intervention work on a voluntary basis unless the cult-involved individual is a minor child. Under certain circumstances minor children may be mandated to participate in an intervention under the direct supervision of a custodial parent or authority figure. These are the legal boundaries regarding cult-intervention work today in the United States.

  In voluntary interventions adult cult members are free to go at any time. Most cult members willingly stay and agree to participate due to the expressed concerns of family members, friends, and others. Most of my intervention cases have been successful—that is, at the conclusion of the intervention, the cult-involved individual decides to leave the group that has created concern.

  Public education about the dangers of destructive cults is the best deterrent. Destructive cults have historically targeted
college campuses for recruitment. My lecture work has included universities and colleges in the United States, such as the University of Chicago, Dickinson College, Carnegie Mellon, Baylor, Rutgers, and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. My experience has taught me that a cult can potentially recruit anyone regardless of his or her education or social background. No one is invulnerable or somehow immune.

  Cults have been a focus of interest for the US judicial system. My work has included expert testimony regarding cultic groups in ten states within the United States, including US Federal Court. This legal work has involved both civil and criminal cases, such as the prosecution of homicides and civil actions concerning child custody and personal injuries. I have also worked with local police departments across the United States, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives (BATF), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Justice.

  The media have often been the means of exposing destructive cults that have become a global phenomenon. My media work, both in the United States and internationally, has been extensive. Publications and wire services, such as the Associated Press, Reuters, New York Times, London Times, China Daily News, South China Post, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, and Forbes, have often quoted me in press stories.

  Over the years my radio work has included more than one hundred interviews across the United States through such US outlets as National Public Radio, CBS, and ABC as well as internationally on the BBC, RAI in Rome, CKO National Network of Canada, and the Australian Broadcast Corporation.

  My work through television has included virtually every national network in the United States and most of the major news programs, such as ABC’s Nightline and Good Morning America; NBC’s Dateline, Today Show, and Evening News; CNN; FOX; and MSNBC. The issue of destructive cults isn’t limited based on geography, a demographic, a nationality, or one’s political ideology; rather it is an issue of human welfare, which transcends such boundaries.