Chapter 1–My Work as a Cult Expert Finally, a chance to relax, forget about work, and enjoy some social time with my friends. Maybe meet some new people at this party. “Hi. Nice to meet you.” (I just hope no one asks me to talk about work.) The question: “So, what do you do?” (Oh no, not again!) The dodge: “I’m self-employed.” “Doing what?” (No escape.) “I’m a cult expert.” (Here come the 50 questions.) “Oh, really? That’s interesting. How did you get into that? Can you tell me why…?” Since February 1974, I have been involved with the problems caused by destructive cults. That was when I was recruited into the “One World Crusade,”[1] one of hundreds of front groups of the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies. After two and a half years as a member of that cult, I was deprogrammed after I fell asleep while driving a fundraising van, and smashed into a tractor trailer truck at 80 miles an hour. Ever since then, I have been actively involved in fighting destructive cults. I have become a professionally trained therapist and fly anywhere my help is genuinely needed. My phone rings at all hours of the day. My clients are people who, for one reason or another, have been damaged emotionally, socially, and sometimes even physically, by their involvement with destructive cults. I help these people recover and start their lives over. My approach enables them to make this transition in a way that avoids the trauma associated with the often-illegal abduction method Ted Patrick called deprogramming. My work is intensive, totally involving me with a person and their family, sometimes for days at a time. My approach is legal and respectful. Usually, I am able to assist a person in making a dramatic recovery, accessing and reclaiming their authentic identity, or, at least, understanding that they have a better life ahead of them if they decide to leave the group. Only a handful of people in the world work with members of destructive cults. This book reveals most of the significant aspects of my approach to this unusual profession. This is work and a way of life that I never imagined. I undertook it because I thought I could help people. Having seen how destructive cults deliberately undermine basic human rights, I also became an activist. I am especially concerned with everyone’s right to know about how destructive cults recruit, keep control of and exploit highly talented, productive people. My life as a cult expert often makes me feel as though I’m in the middle of a war zone. All kinds of incredible cases and media situations come my way and I do the best I can to help. Even though I try to manage the number of active cases and see only a reasonable number of clients each week, unexpected emergencies sometimes command my attention. Here is one such story: I came home late one Friday evening after a night out with friends and checked my phone messages. There were four calls, all from the same family in Minnesota. “Call us any time—day or night—please,” said a woman’s voice. “Our son Bruce has gotten involved with the Moonies. He’s going on a three-week workshop with them in Pennsylvania on Monday. He’s a doctoral student in physics at MIT. Please call us back.” I called right away and talked with the mother and father for about an hour. They had heard that their son had become a member of an organization called the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (C.A.R.P.) They had done some investigation and discovered that C.A.R.P. was the international student-recruiting arm of the Unification Church.[2] I had started a branch of C.A.R.P. on the Queens College campus, so I knew all about it. We agreed there was no time to lose. After some discussion, we decided on a course of action. They would take a 6:45 a.m. flight to Boston, the next day. They would go to their son’s apartment, take him out to a restaurant, and assess his situation. Their success or failure would depend on Bruce’s close relationship to them, and on how far the Moonies had already indoctrinated him. Had they gotten to the point where they could make him reject his family as “satanic?” His mother and father assured me they would be able to talk to their son. I wasn’t so sure, but agreed it would be well worth the attempt. From my experience with the Moonies, I felt that if Bruce went to the three-week indoctrination, he would most very likely drop out of school and become a full-time member. The next step would be for the parents to persuade Bruce to talk to me. I was worried about whether they could. The Moonies do a very thorough job of convincing people that former members are satanic and that even being in their presence could be dangerous.[3] I mentally reviewed the possibilities. There were a number of ways things could go badly: Bruce could refuse to meet with me, or meet with me and walk away before we had enough time. He could later tell the Moonies his parents asked him to meet with me, in which case he might be whisked away and given deep phobias about Satan working through his family. He would have come to believe what I believed while I was a Moonie. I was programmed to fear my family and cut off personal contact for over a year. For the moment, then, all I could do was wait. The next morning I was interviewed for a television show on cults, something I do frequently all over the country. After the taping, I canceled all my appointments for the day. Bruce’s parents called from the Boston airport. They were about to leave for their son’s house. We reviewed our strategy one more time. I crossed my fingers. Two hours later the phone rang. They had managed to bring Bruce to a Chinese restaurant not far from my house. Bruce had agreed to meet me. I grabbed whatever I thought I might need to show him—file folders, photocopies of articles, and books—and threw them into the car and drove to the restaurant. When I arrived and met the family, the parents’ faces were full of worry and concern. Bruce tried to smile at first and shook my hand. But it was clear to me that he was thinking, “Can I trust this guy? Who is he?” I sat down in the booth with them. I asked Bruce about himself and why he thought his parents were so concerned that they flew from Minneapolis. Within an hour, after asking him enough questions to get a good handle on his state of mind, I decided to “go for it.” “Did they tell you about pledge service yet?” I asked. He shook his head and looked surprised. “What’s that?” “Oh, that’s a very important ceremony members do every Sunday morning, on the first day of every month, and on four holy days the group observes,” I started. “Members bow three times with their face touching the floor before an altar with Sun Myung Moon’s picture on it and recite a six-point pledge to be faithful to God, to Moon, and to the fatherland—Korea.” “You’re kidding!” At that moment I knew Bruce would be all right. I could see that he was not yet fully under the group’s mind control. I thought he would respond well to hearing more information about the group’s leader, multimillionaire Korean industrialist Sun Myung Moon. I began telling him facts about the Moonies unrelated to mind control—Moon’s felony tax fraud conviction; the Congressional report on the Moonies’ connections to the Korean CIA; and their suspected illegal activities. “You know, I’ve been looking for someone like you for a few months,” Bruce said after hearing me out. “I went to the priest at MIT to ask him for information. He didn’t know anything.” Bruce was still thinking for himself, but in my opinion, he had been on the verge of being inducted into the cult. The three-day and seven-day workshops he’d been through had set him up for the 21-day program. When I was a member, it was common practice after this latter program to ask recruits to donate their bank accounts, move into the Moonie house, and become full time members.[4] Bruce and I spent the next couple of days going over more information, watching videotapes, and talking about mind control and destructive cults. Much to his parents’ relief, he finally announced he wasn’t going to the workshop. He spent a lot of time photocopying stacks of documents and wanted to try to talk to the other students being recruited at MIT. He went back to the priest and told him about his close call. A week later the priest called to see if I would conduct a briefing session for college administrators. That case was an easy one with a happy ending. The family had been quick to spot their son’s personality changes, discover that C.A.R.P. was a front for the Moonies, and locate me. Their fast action enabled them to help their son easily and quickly. The phone calls I receive are usually variations of the same plea for help. A son or daughter, sister or brother, husband or wife, mother or father, boyfriend or girlfriend is in trouble. Sometimes he or she is just being recruited; other times the call is about someone who has been in a cult for many years. It is relatively easy to deal with someone not yet fully indoctrinated, like Bruce. Most people who call me, though, have had a longer-term problem. Some cases can be resolved quickly; others require a slower, more methodical approach. Emergencies like Bruce’s are tricky because there is little or no time to prepare. Nonetheless, I have learned that fast action is often necessary. If someone is being worked on in a mind control environment, sometimes even a few hours can be crucial. For some unknown reason, the calls for help seem to come in waves; only a few a day for a while, then suddenly ten or fifteen calls. Although I have traveled overseas to help people in cults, I spend most of my time traveling all over the United States and Canada. More than once in my travels, I have found myself on a train or plane sitting next to a dissatisfied member of a destructive cult. During the encounter, I have discovered that the person wanted more information about how to change his or her life. I freely offer this information. These “mini-interventions” can help plant a seed or actually turn on a “light bulb” of awareness—enabling the person to reclaim his or her personal autonomy. My work entails two parts: counseling individuals and alerting the public to the cult phenomenon. I believe that sensitizing the public to the problem of mind control—or undue influence—is the best way to counter the growth of these groups. It is fairly easy to advise people about what to watch out for. It is much harder and far more complicated to help someone leave a cult. That’s why the best way to deal with this problem and damage done to people in destructive cults is to “inoculate” people through education about cult mind control—particularly helping people learn how undue influence works. People’s resistance is higher when they are aware of the danger. To this end, I give lectures and seminars and appear on television and radio shows wherever possible. And I write books such as this one. Cults: A Nightmare Reality Had someone told me when I was in high school that I would one day become a cult expert, I would have thought the idea bizarre. I wanted to be a poet and writer. I thought I might like to teach creative writing and possibly become an English professor. If that person had added that my clients would be people who had been systematically lied to, physically abused, separated from their families and friends, and forced into servitude, I would have accused them of borrowing images from George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell depicted a world where “thought police” maintain complete control over people’s mental and emotional lives, and where it is a crime to act or think independently, or even to fall in love. Unfortunately, such places do exist right now, all over the world. They are mind control cults. In these groups, basic respect for the individual is secondary to the leader’s whims and ideology. People are manipulated and coerced to think, feel, and behave in a single “right way.” Individuals become totally dependent on the group and lose the ability to act or think on their own. They are typically exploited for the sake of the group’s economic or political ends. I realize that this entire field is fraught with controversy, and I invite readers to consider that some people object to the word “cult” and some deny the reality of mind control. They are entitled to their opinions. But whatever we may call these things, they are real and often play decisive and, too often, destructive roles in people’s lives. I have lived it and I see it all the time. Throughout this book, we will delve more deeply into these issues and determine what is or is not a cult. But for our immediate purposes: I define any group that uses unethical mind control to pursue its ends—whether religious, political, or commercial—as a destructive cult. The popular view of cults is that they prey on the disaffected and the vulnerable—losers, loners, outcasts, and people who simply don’t fit in. But the truth is very different. In fact, most cult recruits are normal people with ordinary backgrounds—and many are highly intelligent. The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four was a far cry from the typically middle class American world of my childhood. I grew up in a conservative religious family in Flushing, Queens, New York, the youngest of three children and the only son. I vividly remember helping my father in his hardware store in Ozone Park. My mother, a junior high school art teacher, raised me in a warm, loving, unconditionally supportive way. Compared to many families, mine was boringly normal. My parents didn’t smoke, drink, gamble or have affairs. We lived in a humble attached row house near Union Turnpike, across the street from St. John’s University, for my entire childhood. My folks remained married for over sixty-five years. I look back on my childhood and remember myself as an introvert, not a joiner. While I always had a few close friends, I preferred reading books to going to parties. The only groups I really belonged to were a basketball team and a sixth grade chorus. I was an extra-honors student and was able to skip eighth grade. I graduated high school when I turned seventeen and turned my father down when he asked me if I wanted to take over his hardware business. I decided to pursue a liberal arts education at Queens College, which is where I first encountered the cult recruiters who conned me out of my dreams—and out of my faith—and turned me into a disciple of Sun Myung Moon, one of the most notorious cult leaders of our time. Collectively, we were known as “the Moonies.” We were as proud to call ourselves Moonies as the cult leader was that his followers had adopted the societal nickname. Before we get any farther into our story, let me say since I was a member, the Moon organization waged a successful public relations campaign, culminating in 1989 claiming that the term “Moonie” is one of religious and racial bigotry. It has since fallen into general disuse. So much so, that when I speak to college classes, few have even heard of the Moonies. But I remember when we wore tee shirts in the style of “I Love New York”—but emblazoned with the slogan: “I’m a Moonie and I Love It!”[5] Even though others no longer use the term, I still do and I want to explain why. I recognize that hateful people can turn any term into an epithet. This is especially so for members of religious, racial and other minorities—as those of us who identify as Muslim or Jewish can attest. I experienced such abuse when I was a Moonie, and there is no excuse for anyone to be treated in this way. But when I was a Moonie, Sun Myung Moon and his empire embraced the term—but only much later decided that it was inconvenient—and used the PR campaign as a bludgeon against critics, particularly reporters. To me, the Moon organization will always be The Moonies, although I understand that other people may choose other terms, and undoubtedly for the best of motives. I hope they will extend the same courtesy to me. Either way, I will not be silenced. Who Are The Moonies? The Unification Church (whose formal name is The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity) was once one of the wealthiest, most influential, most visible, and most destructive cults operating in the United States. The organization was completely dominated by its absolute leader, Sun Myung Moon,[6] a Korean-born businessman. In 1982, Moon was convicted of felony tax fraud and served 13 months in the federal penitentiary in Danbury, Connecticut.[7] During the 1970s, the Moonies were a well-known feature of most American cities, especially college towns. They stood on street corners selling flowers, candy, puppets, and other small items. They also actively recruited young people from colleges and universities. Generally clean-cut, courteous, and persistent, they proliferated for years, gaining unfavorable media attention almost everywhere. As far as the media were concerned, the Unification Church and its followers faded away in the 1980s. The truth is that the Moon organization became more sophisticated, expanding its many religious, political, cultural, and business front groups. Because the Unification Church keeps its vital statistics secret, there have never been any reliable figures of church membership in the United States. Church officials have claimed to have 30,000 members here (and some 3,000,000 in the world), but the numbers are undoubtedly much lower. There are probably some 4,000 Americans and another 4,000 foreigners (many married to American members) working for the cult in the United States today.[8] Another aspect of the Unification Church, still insufficiently recognized, is that members justify the use of deception to recruit people.[9] When I was a Moonie recruiter, we also used psychological pressure to convince members to turn over all their personal wealth and possessions to the church.[10] Members are subjected to workshops that thoroughly indoctrinate them in church beliefs,[11] and typically undergo a conversion experience in which they surrender to the group. As a result, they become totally dependent upon the group for financial and emotional support, and lose the ability to act independently of it. Under these conditions, members are required to work long hours; exist on little sleep; eat boring junk food, sometimes for weeks on end; and endure numerous hardships for the sake of their “spiritual growth.” They are discouraged from forming close relationships with members of the opposite sex[12] and may be married only under arrangements made by Sun Myung Moon himself or his proxy.[13] They are sometimes asked to participate in political demonstrations and other activities which aid causes, candidates, and public office holders supported by the Moon organization.[14] If they snap from the pressure and begin to challenge their leaders’ authority or otherwise fall out of line, they are accused of being influenced by Satan and are subjected to even greater pressure in the form of re-indoctrination. I know these things are true. I was a leader in the Moon cult. What Is Mind Control? There are many different forms of mind control. Most people think of brainwashing almost as soon as they hear the term. But that is only one specific form. Mind control is any system of influence that disrupts an individual’s authentic identity and replaces it with a false, new one. In most cases, that new identity is one the person would strongly reject, if they had been asked for their informed consent. That’s why I also use the term undue influence—“undue” because these practices violate personal boundaries and human integrity, as well as ethics and, often, the law. That said, not all of the techniques used in mind control are inherently bad or unethical. The intent, the methods used, and the end result need to be part of the evaluation. They span a continuum from entirely ethical to grossly unethical. It is fine to use hypnosis to stop smoking, for example—but it must be used ethically, to empower the person, not for manipulative, exploitive ends. The locus of control of one’s mind and body should always remain within the adult individual, _never_ with an external authority. Today, many mind control techniques exist that are far more sophisticated than the brainwashing techniques used in the Chinese thought reform camps and the Korean War. Some involve subtle forms of hypnosis or suggestion; others are overt, and are implemented in highly rigid and controlled social environments. In this book, I discuss many groups I characterize as destructive cults that use mind control techniques. When I identify an organization in this way it is only after thorough research and close examination. I would never slap unfair labels on unpopular or controversial groups. Any designation I may give them is well earned. For example, I have no qualms about referring to the Unification Church as a _destructive cult_.[15] The group’s record speaks for itself.[16] Of course, members of this and many other groups would likely be offended and deny that destructive mind control is happening. It is also true, however, that although many people sincerely believe that they had a fair choice in joining—and always have a fair choice about leaving—that is, sadly, too often a delusion created by the cult itself. The Many Faces Of The Unification Church How did this group start out? One of the best summaries is in the Fraser Report, published on October 31, 1978 by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations. Chaired by Rep. Donald Fraser, a Democrat from Minnesota, the committee unearthed many astounding and previously unreported facts about what they called the “Moon organization,” out of a recognition that it was not just one, but many moving parts working towards common ends, under the direction of Sun Myung Moon. Among the investigation’s findings was the Unification Church’s intimate involvement with the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA). The investigation revealed that the Unification Church was not merely a body of believers but also a political organization with an active political agenda. Here is what the Fraser Report documented: In the late 1950s, Moon’s message was favorably received by four young, English-speaking Korean Army officers, all of whom were later to provide important contacts with the post-1961 Korean government. One was Bo Hi Pak, who had joined the ROK (Republic of Korea) army in 1950. Han Sang Keuk…became a personal assistant to Kim Jong Pil, the architect of the 1961 coup and founder of the KCIA. Kim Sang In retired from the ROK army in May, 1961, joined the KCIA and became an interpreter for Kim Jong Pil until 1966. At that time, [Kim Sang In] returned to his position as KCIA officer, later to become the KCIA’s chief of station in Mexico City. He was a close friend of Bo Hi Pak and a supporter of the Unification Church. The fourth, Han Sang Kil, was a military attaché at the ROK embassy in Washington in the late 1960s. Executive branch reports also link him to the KCIA. On leaving the service of the ROK government, Han became Moon’s personal secretary and tutor to his children. Immediately after the coup, Kim Jong Pil founded the KCIA and supervised the building of a political base for the new regime. A February 1963 unevaluated CIA report stated that Kim Jong Pil had “organized” the Unification Church while he was KCIA director and has been using the Unification Church as a “political tool.”[17] Journalist Frederick Clarkson, who has written widely about the politics of the Moon organization, adds these insights: Though the Fraser Report noted that “organized” is not to be confused with “founded,” since the Unification Church was “founded” in 1954, the Fraser Report goes on to state that “…there was a great deal of independent corroboration for the suggestion in this and later intelligence reports that Kim Jong Pil and the Moon organization had a mutually supportive relationship, as well as for the statement that Kim used the Unification Church for political purposes.”[18] It is remarkable that in the 1970s, and thereafter, so many people were deeply involved with the Moon organization, blindly believing the stories they were told by leaders, knowing almost nothing about its real history. Certainly, if I had learned that the Moon organization, as Congressional investigators called it, was connected with the KCIA, or that in 1967 Moon had forged an organizational link with Yoshi Kodama, a leader of the Yakuza, the Japanese organized crime network,[19] I would have never become involved. [20] While the story of the Unification Church’s theology is too involved to detail here, the most important feature of it is the Church’s position that Sun Myung Moon was the new Messiah and that his mission was to establish a new “kingdom” on Earth (he actually died in 2012). Yet, many ex-members, like me, have observed that Moon’s vision of _that_ kingdom was distinctly Korean. During my two-and-a-half-year period in the church, I understood that the highest positions of membership (closest to Moon) were available only to Koreans, with the Japanese coming in second. American members, myself included, were on the third rung of the ladder. Members of the Unification Church believe, as I did, that their donations of time, money, and effort are “saving the world.” What they do not realize is that they are the victims of mind control.[21] It is impossible to gain a full picture of Moon and his influence in the United States by only looking at the Unification Church, although there is plenty there to see. Moon and his colleagues developed a complex organization that—even today—embraces both business and non-profit organizations in his native Korea, in the United States, and in many other countries, on every continent. The Moon organization comprises enterprises ranging from ginseng exportation to the manufacture of M-16 rifles.[22] In the United States, perhaps the most visible Moon controlled entity is _The Washington Times_—a newspaper which has enjoyed considerable influence both in Washington and internationally.[23] Former President Ronald Reagan said it was his favorite newspaper and that he read it every day.[24] When the _Times_ celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2007—former President George H.W. Bush was the headliner.[25] Han Sang Keuk and Bo Hi Pak have both been top executives of the Times. It is reported that the Moon group spent some $2 billion on a newspaper that has never returned a profit. Until recent years, a thread running through all of Moon’s myriad organizations was anti-Communism. To put it simply, the Moonies believed that Christians and the citizens of the non-Communist world were locked in a mortal struggle with the satanic forces of materialistic Communism. To the extent that America and other countries did not fight Communism, they would grow weak and fall. The world’s only salvation lay in Moon and in the establishment of a divine theocracy, so God could rule the world through him and his minions. This may seem a bit absurd to Americans today, now that Communism is limited to North Korea and Cuba (though it understandably seems less absurd to South Koreans). It is also true that Moon’s organizations have moved significantly away from their anti-communist stance over the past two decades. The fall of the U.S.S.R. and the adoption of capitalism by China were major factors behind this—although, interestingly, Moon claimed to his followers that _he_ was the reason Communism fell apart. The Moon empire went on to invest millions in enterprises in China and North Korea, two countries he had previously deemed deeply satanic. Had it not been for the Congressional Subcommittee Investigation and the work of Rep. Donald Fraser, Moon would very likely have increased his power. I was glad to give Fraser’s investigators my collection of _Master Speaks_, a set of internal, unedited Moon speeches. These documents were available only to Unification Church leaders and were submitted as evidence in the investigation. The report of the Fraser investigation quoted from a 1973 speech, in which Moon declared, “When it comes to our age, we must have an automatic theocracy to rule the world. So we cannot separate the political field from the religious…Separation between religion and politics is what Satan likes most.”[26] True believers still believe that the world’s only salvation lay in devotedly following Moon’s wife, Hak Ja Han and her sons, and in the establishment of a divine theocracy. They actually believe what they have been told: that Sun Myung Moon is working in the “spirit world” with his wife and heirs so that God can rule the world through him and his minions. Moon’s belief in the necessary fusion of religion and politics underscores his organization’s involvement in a wide variety of extreme right-wing groups. While there have been many such involvements over the years, his political arm in the 1980s was an organization known as CAUSA,[27] which was founded in 1980 after a tour of Latin America by Moon’s right-hand man, Bo Hi Pak. The organization spread to every continent in the ensuing years and was very active in the United States, providing seminars for people in leadership positions. “The general thrust of CAUSA,” Frederick Clarkson wrote at the time, “is anti-communist education from a historical perspective. The CAUSA antidote to communism is ‘Godism,’ which is simply the Unification Church philosophy without Moonist mythology.” Through the late 1980s, the Moon empire continued to expand its power and influence. Moon attempted to buy legitimacy, lending and giving millions of dollars to conservative causes in the U.S.[28] But it’s hard to gain legitimacy when you’re making big profits from selling schlock while doing “spiritual sales.” A major newspaper investigation in 1987 reported that “door-to-door Moonie salesmen (in Japan) using illegal high-pressure sales tactics bilked buyers of their cheaply-made religious artifacts, charms and talismans out of at least $1 billion by defrauding over 33,000 victims.” [29] The victims were predominantly “women who have had an accidental death or fatal illness in the family, are widowed or divorced, or have had a miscarriage.” They allegedly at times paid more than $100,000 for urns, pagodas, and other charms that would, Moonie salesmen persuaded them, “ward off the evil spirits affecting them.” It seems probable that much of this money was funneled to the United States to underwrite the famously unprofitable _Washington Times_. The paper sought to be a conservative flagship newspaper. And while it is debatable if it achieves this end, the _Washington Times_ has never been just a newspaper. It has enabled Moon’s organizations unusual access to the power brokers of American politics, and influenced people and even governments around the world.[30] In addition to the Church and the _Washington Times_, Moon started a number of think tanks and organizations over the years, to engage the culture in every possible sphere, staging scientific, academic, religious, media and legal conferences and cultural interchange programs—which have served to build its network for power. The empire that Moon built is gridlocked by lawsuits, among members of Moon’s large, extended family and between the family and outsiders. It will take years to sort through the legal claims and power struggles. But the myriad entities of the Moon empire live on. Currently the empire’s primary organization is the Universal Peace Federation (UPF). Here are a few of the Moon empire’s current projects and institutions that are just the tip of the iceberg of its involvement in American public life: The UPF owns the University of Bridgeport, a private university in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and has used it to facilitate recruiting some people into the group by offering them a scholarship to come to study in the U.S. The Moon empire has substantial holdings in the fishing industry on the east and west coasts, as well as the Gulf of Mexico, especially the fish used in sushi, such as shrimp. Kahr Arms, a handgun manufacturer, is also part of the Moon network. Kahr’s corporate headquarters is located in Blauvelt, New York, while production and assembly operations are located in Worcester, Massachusetts. For up-to-date information on the Unification Church and many other Moon family organizations, see my website[, freedomofmind.com]. • • • The Unification Church is a destructive cult _par excellence_. However, many other groups in this country also espouse strange doctrines and have members who engage in practices which, to many people, might seem downright bizarre. Are all these groups “destructive cults?” Not by any means. The United States of America has always been a land where freedom of thought and tolerance of differing beliefs have flourished under the protection of the First Amendment of the Constitution. As difficult as it may be to believe, in recent decades we have seen the rise of organizations in our society that systematically violate the rights of their members, subject them to many kinds of abuse, and actively diminish their capacity to think and act as responsible adults. People who stay in these organizations suffer not only damage to their self-esteem, but to their whole sense of identity and their connection with the outside world. In some cases they completely lose contact with family and friends for long periods of time. If they leave, those born into destructive groups are often shunned as evil and as “unbelievers” or “apostates”. Often, they are vilified and lies are told about them to members to keep them “faithful” and afraid to speak with defectors to hear their side of the story. Family members and friends are typically ordered to reject them and often have no contact with them. The damage from living in a cult may not be readily apparent to family members or friends or even—in the early stages—to someone casually meeting such a person for the first time. But many forms of violence, from the gross to the very subtle, are the inevitable result. Some members of destructive cults suffer physical abuse during their involvement, in the form of beatings or rape, while others simply suffer the abuse of long hours of grueling, monotonous work—15 to 18 hours a day, year in and year out. In essence, they become slaves with few or no resources, personal or financial. They become trapped in the group, which does everything it can to keep them, as long as they are productive. When they fall sick or are no longer an asset, they are often kicked out. Nowhere is this more evident today than human trafficking. Many mind control groups appear, on the surface, to be respectable associations. Their members talk convincingly about how they exerted their own free will in deciding to become involved. Many are very intelligent and seem to be happy. This may seem like a contradiction. It is also important to recognize that there are different kinds of cults and they often operate quite differently. Different cults appeal to the many different human impulses: such as desire to belong; to improve oneself and others; to understand the meaning and purpose of life. Religious cults are the most well known. They often have a charismatic leader and operate with religious dogma. Political cults, often in the news, are organized around a simplistic political theory, sometimes with a religious cloak. Psychotherapy/educational cults, which have enjoyed great popularity, purport to give the participant “insight” and “enlightenment.” Commercial cults play on people’s desires to make money. They typically promise riches but actually enslave people, and compel them to turn money over to the group. None of these destructive cults deliver what they promise and glittering dreams eventually turn out to be paths to psychological enslavement. Destructive cults do many kinds of damage to their members. I will illustrate this with several case histories, including my own. It is not easy to recover from the damage done by membership in a destructive cult, but it is possible. With the right help, almost everyone can recover. My experience proves that some definite steps can be taken to learn how to help anyone return to a normal productive life after taking the exit to freedom. I believe that people want to be free. They want to read what they want to read, and they want to form their own opinions. They want honesty and do not like being lied to or exploited. They want trustworthy leaders who are responsible and accountable. They want people they can look up to, and who provide good role models. They want love and respect. In my experience, many people eventually walk away from cults, even those who have spent their entire lives inside one. They crave the freedom to be themselves. Chapter 1 Endnotes 1. Report of the Subcommittee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, Oct 31, 1978 (also known as Fraser Report), 338-348. 2. Fraser Report, 316. 3. Steve Kemperman, Lord of the Second Advent (Ventura, California: Regal Books, 1982), 13. 4. Gary Scharff, “Autobiography of a Former Moonie,” Cultic Studies Journal (Vol. 2, No. 2, 1986), 252. 5. Frederick Clarkson, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle for Theocracy and Democracy, Common Courage Press, 1997. 65-66. 6. Moon’s original name is Yung Myung Moon, which means “Thy Shining Dragon.” Cited in “Honor Thy Father Moon,” Psychology Today (Jan 1976). 7. “Jury Finds Rev. Moon Guilty of Conspiracy To Evade Income Tax,” The Wall Street Journal (May 19, 1982). Lyda Phillips (UPI), “Rev. Moon free after year in prison for tax evasion,” The Boston Globe (July 5, 1985). 8. Frank Greve, in “Seeking Influence, Rev. Moon Spends Big on New Right,” Philadelphia Inquirer (Dec 20, 1987), states the numbers to be even lower. 9. Sun Myung Moon, “On Witnessing,” Master Speaks, (January 3, 1972). James and Marcia Rudin, Prison or Paradise, (Fortress Press, 1980), 25. Robert Boettcher, Gifts of Deceit–Sun Myung Moon, Tongsun Park and the Korean Scandal (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980), 175-176.Gary Scharff, “Autobiography of a Former Moonie,” Cultic Studies Journal (Vol. 2, No. 2, 1986), 252. 10. Michael Warder, “Bribemasters,” Chronicles, June 1988. Gary Scharff, “Autobiography of a Former Moonie,” Cultic Studies Journal (Vol. 2, No. 2, 1986). Douglas Lenz, “Twenty-two Months as a Moonie,” Lutheran Church of America Partners, February 1982. Barbara Dole, “Former Member’s Story,” The Advisor, Feb/March 1981. Michael Lisman, statement about his membership, 1981. 11. Sun Myung Moon, “Completion of Our Responsibility,” Master Speaks (October 28, 1974, 8. 12. Sun Myung Moon, “Relationship Between Men and Women,” Master Speaks, (May 20, 1973). 13. Sun Myung Moon, “Moon Tells How He Regulates Sex,” San Jose Mercury, (May 27, 1982). 14. Fraser Report, 338-348. Fred Clarkson, “The New Righteous Plan a Third Party,” The Washington Herald, (February 8, 1988). 15. Laura Knickerbocker, “Mind Control: How The Cults Work,” Harper’s Bazaar, (May 1980). 16. Fraser Report, 311-390. 17. Fraser Report, 354. 18. Fred Clarkson, “Moon’s Law: God is Phasing Out Democracy,” Covert Action Information Bulletin, (Spring 1987). 19. Ibid., 36. 20. See Frederick Clarkson, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, Common Courage Press, 1997; Jon Lee Anderson and Scott Anderson, Inside the League: The Shocking Expose of how Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League, Dodd Mead, 1986; David E. Kaplan, Alec Dubro, Yakuza: Japan’s Criminal Underworld, (University of California Press, 1986). 21. Douglas Lenz, “Twenty-two Months as a Moonie,” (Lutheran Church of America Partners, February 1982), 13-15. Josh Freed, Moonwebs, (Dorset Publishing, Inc., 1980), 191. 22. Fraser Report, 326, 366. 23. (UPI) “Ousted Editor Says Church Controls Washington Times,” The Boston Globe, (July 18, 1984). 24. Fred Clarkson, “Behind the Times: Who Pulls the Strings at Washington’s #2 Daily,” Extra!, (Aug/Sept 1987). 25. James Ridgeway, “Bush Sr. To Celebrate Rev. Sun Myung Moon—Again: Ex-president’s keynote speech at Washington Times bash this month is latest link between Bush and Unification Church founder,” Mother Jones magazine, (April 29, 2007). http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/04/bush-sr-celebrate-rev