[ot] cult influence and power, 1988-2018

[Undiscussed Groomed for Male Slavery, One Victim of Many]

Chapter 6–Courageous Survivor Stories

				Many people involved with destructive cults may have some
experiences that are too painful to remember. Even after counseling,
ex-members may not wish to communicate their experiences to anyone but
the closest people in their lives. Others realize that the world at
large needs to understand their suffering while under mind control,
and overcome their fear of speaking out, publicly.

				While I certainly understand the reticence of those who wish to
guard their privacy, I admire the courage of those who come forward
and tell their stories. Such people can make us all stronger for being
able to share their personal experiences. They give us an invaluable
insight into the dynamics of recruitment, life in a destructive cult,
and the stress of leaving. They are role models to others in the
groups they escaped from, proving that there _is_ life after the cult.

				There are millions of former members all over the world. One of my
deepest hopes is to de-stigmatize mind control involvement and to
encourage them to speak out.

				I wish I had the space here to tell the stories of the literally
hundreds of courageous men and women I have come to know who have
overcome their programming, escaped to freedom and worked to help
others.[96]

				I am delighted to share a few of these stories.


				Jon Atack and Scientology

				Jon Atack left Scientology in 1983 and became one of the few
outspoken critics of the group at that time—at great personal risk. He
authored the must-read book, _Let’s Sell These People A Piece of Blue
Sky_, which was published only after a fierce legal attack by
Scientology. This book is the first objective history of any post-war
cult. It became a bestseller, and is the foundation for all subsequent
work on Scientology.

				Jon and I met in the late 1980s and we have remained friends ever
since. He is one of the most talented people I know, and has an
encyclopedic mind. Aside from his decades of work helping people
understand Scientology, he is an accomplished drummer, painter, poet
and author of numerous books.

				Jon encountered Scientology when he was 19, after the abrupt end
of a romantic relationship. Desperately searching for help to resolve
his distress, he read a book by Scientology’s creator, Ron Hubbard,
and was impressed by what appeared to be a rational therapeutic
approach. There was no mention of the supernatural beliefs he would be
expected to adopt once he had joined.

				Jon asked both a doctor and a vicar about Scientology. Neither
knew anything, even though a UK government inquiry had condemned the
cult only three years earlier.[97] The Scientologists at the local
“Mission” were young graduates, all dynamic and friendly. Jon eagerly
took up the study of Scientology. After the first few inexpensive
courses, the prices spiraled out of his reach, but, unlike many other
recruits, he rejected the frequent offers to join the staff. It costs
about half a million dollars to complete Scientology’s “Bridge to
Total Freedom.”

				At the hard-sell urging of Scientology registrars, Jon borrowed
money and studied Scientology, full-time, for a year. In his nine-year
involvement, he completed six counseling courses, becoming a Class II
and Dianetic “auditor.”

				By the time he escaped, Jon was on “OT V,” the 25th of the 27
available levels of the cult’s systematic indoctrination. According to
promotional literature, Jon should have achieved supernatural powers
by this time, but, as all Scientologists find, the technology just
induces euphoric states and heightened suggestibility. Despite many
boasts, to date not one Scientologist has taken up James Randi’s
million-dollar challenge to perform a psychic feat.[98]

				When one of Jon’s close friends was expelled from the cult,
without justification, Jon followed the cult’s complaint procedure
exactly. After six months, Jon received a letter, purportedly from
Hubbard, saying only, “Your letter is on my desk.” He refused to sever
communication with his friend—called “disconnection” by the group—and
spoke to other so-called “Suppressives.” Jon found that 11 cult
officials, including Hubbard’s wife, had been jailed in the U.S. for
burglary, breaking and entering, theft, kidnapping and false
imprisonment. Horrified by this and other evidence, he resigned from
the cult.

				Jon was briefly at the center of a burgeoning independent
Scientology movement in the UK, but soon realized that Hubbard’s
claims to have been a war hero, a nuclear physicist, and a student of
Oriental gurus were bogus. He also realized that the cult’s
“technology” was designed to reduce followers to unthinking
compliance.

				After leaving, Jon was harassed under the cult’s “fair game”
doctrine, whereby critics can be “tricked, sued, lied to or
destroyed.”[99] A stream of false reports was made against him to
authorities, including a charge of child abuse (a standard accusation
against critics). He was “noisily investigated” by private detectives,
who visited his family and friends all over the world, saying they had
uncovered his dreadful “crimes.” His private confessions were
published. Leaflets were distributed to thousands of households. Jon
was accused of being a drug dealer, a rapist, a heroin addict and an
attempted murderer. Scientologists picketed his house and academic
conferences where he spoke. Their placards accused him of being an
“anti-religious hate campaigner,” even though his work was supported
by every mainline Christian church. Jon worked on hundreds of media
pieces and earned former members over $14 million in settlements,
although he received almost no compensation for his assistance.
However, he was bankrupted by litigation fees from a raft of cases
brought by numerous Scientology organizations and individuals.

				After 12 years of daily harassment, Jon retired from the scene.
The cult continued to litigate against him for four more years. He
returned to the work in 2013, because he realized that most former
Scientologists simply do not recover from the intense hypnotic
procedures and humiliating treatment they received in the cult.

				Jon blogs at Tony Ortega’s Underground Bunker (tonyortega.org).
His work has been endorsed by over 40 academics from around the globe.
Recently, Jon has been working on the review board of the Open Minds
Foundation (OMF), an organization which seeks to educate the public
about undue influence and reduce its impact.”
				
				
				Rachel Thomas and Sex Trafficking

				Rachel Thomas has a master’s degree from UCLA and is cofounder of
Sowers Education Group, an educational organization dedicated to
prevent human trafficking. We were introduced to each other by Carissa
Phelps in the summer of 2013. Carissa’s organization, Runaway Girl,
was conducting human trafficking trainings for the Joint Regional
Intelligence Organization (JRIC.org) of Southern California. As an
outgrowth of that experience, I asked Rachel to be part of a panel on
trafficking as a commercial cult mind control phenomenon. The video of
that program is on our website.[100]

				Rachel was an all-American girl from an upper-middle-class home in
southern California. While she was a junior at Emory University in
Atlanta, Rachel was approached by a well-spoken modeling agent with
business cards, a nice suit, and a charming smile. He told her that he
wanted to invest in her modeling career by paying for her first photo
shoot and set of comp cards (i.e., a model’s resume). Rachel accepted.

				At the photo shoot, everything was professional and seemingly
legitimate. A few days later, Rachel received a phone call from the
agent. “Hey, beautiful! Guess what? You’re already booked for your
first gig!” Excited and impressed by his fast work, Rachel showed up
to the gig—a music video for a Grammy-award-winning artist.

				At the end of the shoot, the agent informed Rachel that she had
earned $350 for her work that day and asked her to complete a W-9. She
filled out the form, including her permanent address (her parents’
home address in California), her current address (the apartment she
shared with her best friend near campus), her social security number,
and other information.

				In the next three weeks, her agent used his connections throughout
the city to secure her another paid modeling gig and an audition for a
major magazine. To finalize their working relationship, the agent
asked Rachel to sign a contract in which she agreed to pay him a
regular retainer fee. She signed the contract.

				During her fifth week with the agent, Rachel first saw him slap
another model on her face in an instantaneous, unpredictable fit of
rage. A day later, she tried to cancel her contract. The agent not
only refused, but forced her to have sex with a stranger, threatening
to kill her parents if she didn’t obey.

				From that point forward, she was caught in a web of force, fraud
and coercion, regularly experiencing physical and psychological abuse
from her trafficker. He threatened to hurt her, her roommate, and her
family if she ever told anyone or tried to call the police. Then, once
the fear had taken root and she had abandoned any hope for escape, the
agent began to mentally manipulate her, to reinforce her acceptance of
her new identity as his slave. He gave her a new name and told her to
wear a wig. He made her verbalize and repeat that she had chosen this
situation by signing the contract. Knowing that her father was a
deacon and that she was raised a Christian, he used Bible verses to
justify her submission to his authority. He set up a system of rewards
and punishments based on her obedience and feigned enjoyment of her
servitude. He taught her a specific hand sign to use when she and his
other victims were in public.

				Almost a year into this situation, Rachel received a call from the
Atlanta Police Department. They had been given her name and number by
another of the trafficker’s victims. Shortly afterward, this man was
arrested, and later sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.

				The effects of the experience stayed with Rachel long after the
trial. She moved back home to California to be near her loving family,
but she still endured years of self-blame and isolation, in part
because she didn’t have much understanding of sex trafficking and knew
no other survivors.

				It was not until she read an earlier edition of this very book,
and found a helpful church, that she began to experience true healing.

				Today Rachel travels the nation, raising awareness about domestic
sex trafficking. She asked me to be part of a team including Carissa
Phelps and D’Lita Miller, to develop a curriculum called _Ending The
Game_. Together we created the first national sex trafficking
intervention curriculum, which focuses on resisting and recovering
from psychological manipulation and coercion.[101]


				Masoud Banisadr and MeK, an Iranian Terrorist Group

				I first met Masoud Banisadr at an International Cultic Studies
Association (ICSA) meeting in Barcelona, Spain in 2011. We spent hours
together. I was fascinated to hear the story of his cult involvement,
as I had never met a former member of an Islamist terror cult before.
At the time, I remember thinking that my experience of mind control
was like that of a kindergartener next to his—a college graduate. I
was only in two and half years. He was involved for twenty years. His
indoctrination was so much more extreme than mine. I was gratified
when he said that my book had helped him understand mind control.

				Masoud wrote his story in the 2004 book, _Masoud: Memoirs of an
Iranian Rebel_. Since then he has dedicated his life to intensive
scholarly study of cults and terrorism, culminating in the publication
of another book, _Destructive and Terrorists Cults: A New Kind of
Slavery_, in 2014. In this book, Masoud paints a gripping portrayal of
the dynamics of cults and their megalomaniac leaders.

				Here is a short summary of his story.

				Masoud Banisadr was born into a prominent, educated, and
liberal-minded Iranian family. He was 25 years old, in the final year
of his mathematics Ph.D. in the UK—happily married, and the father of
a two-year-old daughter—when he attended a political meeting organized
by the Iranian revolutionary organization, Mojahedin e Khalq, or MeK.
It was during the Iranian revolution and he supported what he thought
was the group’s purely political cause. Iran had finally overthrown
the dictatorship of the Shah. It didn’t take long for Masoud and his
family to be sucked into the mind control of the group. Soon he had
transformed into an obedient cult member, sacrificing everything he
had to the ambitions of the group’s leader.

				MeK was originally a political organization that mixed Islam with
Marxism. MeK played a prominent part in the mass demonstrations and
paramilitary activity that led to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of
Iran. To recruit new members, especially young students from schools
and universities, MeK’s slogans focused on democracy, freedom and
human rights. After the revolution, as an aspect of recruitment, MeK
supported Ayatollah Khomeini and the new establishment.

				Over time, MeK changed from a small guerrilla organization into a
mass political movement with the support of hundreds of thousands of
young students. On June 20, 1981, Rajavi, the leader of the group,
felt he could follow Lenin’s Bolshevik takeover of government. He
demanded his supporters to pour into the streets to overthrow the new
revolutionary government and make him the new Iranian leader.

				The attempt failed. It also cost many lives, especially among
young students.

				After this futile endeavor, MeK changed dramatically. It became a
clandestine terrorist group, turning some of its young members into
human bombs. A young member (perhaps the first female “suicide
bomber”) blew herself up inside a mosque. A month later, Rajavi, and
many high-ranking members fled to France.

				After Rajavi sided with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, during the
1980s Iran-Iraq war, he lost almost all his support, both inside and
outside of Iran. In 1985, in an attempt to hold on to its remaining
members and supporters, MeK followed a more totalistic destructive
path and initiated the process of _Ideological Revolution_. This
process of mind manipulation escalated with the announcement of the
marriage of Rajavi to Maryam, the former wife of his close aide and
friend Abrishamchi.

				In 1986, Masoud Banisadr was made the representative of MeK to
United Nations’ agencies and human rights organizations, and later its
representative in the United States, meeting well-known politicians.

				By 1990, all members of MeK were intensely brainwashed, and forced
to divorce their spouses and accept celibacy for the rest of their
lives. A year later, in order to destroy any remaining family ties
within the group, members were forced to surrender their children, who
were adopted by other supporters in Europe and America. Masoud
divorced the “love of his life” and was unable to see his children.
Finally, in 1994 all members were forced to go through the final stage
of _Ideological Revolution_ called “self divorce”—total loss of their
individuality and personality, and to act only through blind obedience
of their cult identity to leadership.

				By 1996, after almost 20 years in MeK, Masoud began to wake up, as
if from a very bad dream, and was able to find a way to get away. He
experienced extreme, crippling back pain, which forced him to distance
himself and receive care. There were other ex-members of the MeK and
his family who still dearly loved and missed him.

				By then, almost all members of the group were living in camps in
Iraq, isolated from the rest of the world, collaborating with the
government of Saddam Hussein against their own country, Iran. In the
largest of these, Camp Ashraf, cult leaders Masoud and Maryam Rajavi
had created their own imitation Iran, complete with a
pseudo-parliament and a replica of the Tehran bazaar. Their members,
by now transformed into devoted, unquestioning slaves, helped the two
leaders to live out their failed fantasy of being the only true
leadership of Iran.

				In 2009, Camp Ashraf was seized by American forces, and MeK had to
surrender all its arms and munitions.

				In August of 2014, I was invited by Richard E. Kelly of AAWA
(Advocates for Awareness of Watchtower Abuses) to teach a workshop in
London. I invited many of my friends and contacts to come attend. A
press conference was also organized about terrorism as a mind control
cult phenomenon and many important statements were given by
colleagues. The videotape of the press conference can be found on my
website.[102]

				While in London, I was fortunate to be able to spend time with
Masoud, even meet his ex-wife, who has remarried, and his wonderful
daughter and son. It was a heartfelt experience being a part of a
healing that continues to unfold. Masoud is dedicated to sharing his
life experience to help prevent people being recruited into extremist
cults and to develop programs to help those afflicted to exit and be
rehabilitated. He is a respected and dear friend. His website is
http://www.banisadr.info/

				Josh Baran and Shasta Abbey, A Zen Buddhist Cult

				Josh Baran owns and operates a highly successful company, Baran
Communications in New York City. He does strategic communications,
crisis management, publicity and public affairs. Josh has been a
friend and ally since the late 1970’s. It was then that he founded
_Sorting It Out_, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people who had been
harmed by spiritual groups, gurus, and cults. He was my counterpart on
the west coast—and my go-to person whenever I had a case involving an
eastern religious cult. Over the years he has helped bring media
attention to many important cult mind control stories. I am proud to
call him my friend.

				Josh became a spiritual seeker in his early teens. He was very
attracted to Asian religion and meditation and, when he was in his
20s, living in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s, he would
attend presentations by visiting meditation teachers and spiritual
masters from around the world. He was a regular at Stephen Gaskin’s
Monday Night Class, and one of the first Americans to be given a
secret Transcendental Meditation (TM) mantra.

				Zen especially attracted Josh because it focused on meditation and
on direct, personal mystical experience. According to Zen, nirvana is
here and now; and all you had to do, according to Zen stories and
teachings, was wake up and see for yourself.

				Then, in San Francisco, Josh met an Englishwoman in her 40s named
Jiyu Kennett, who had lived in Japan, Hong Kong and Malaysia for six
years. There she had become a Soto Zen nun, gone through the basic
training, and been certified as a teacher. She was the first European
to receive the ‘transmissions’ of a Zen master and be given permission
to teach. She was charming, very accessible, friendly and charismatic.

				Kennett, along with two western disciples, had set up a small Zen
center in a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco. Josh started
meditating with the group and enjoyed the practice very much.

				Kennett wanted her serious disciples to become official Buddhists,
shave their heads, and be ordained as monks. Josh became a monk when
he was 20.

				A year later, the group moved up to Mount Shasta, near the Oregon
border, where it had purchased an old motel with many small cabins.
With the approval of her master, Kennett wanted to westernize Zen and
liked using Christian terminology, so she named the organization
Shasta Abbey.

				Shasta became a fairly isolated country Zen monastery. Josh became
its guest master, then its chief cook, and eventually its president.

				For the first few years, Josh found the meditation and discipline
important and valuable. In retrospect, he said, it “really did help me
clear away some of my own inner fog. It also helped me grow up, become
more mature, and led to what I often call spiritual adulthood.”

				After a few years, Josh received “dharma transmission”—a formal
endorsement to teach Zen—and was named one of Kennett’s “dharma
heirs.” Josh noted, “I could set up my own Zen center if I wanted, but
it was also obvious to me that I wasn’t enlightened. Maybe I was a
tiny bit enlightened. I was a little bit more than a beginner, but,
frankly, at most, I was an advanced beginner. I wasn’t any kind of
master. I wasn’t a guru.”

				After those initial years, Kennett changed. She was suffering from
chronic illness, and her friendly manner disappeared. She became
authoritarian and self-aggrandizing. As Shasta Abbey grew, so did her
grandiosity.

				Eventually, she demanded absolute loyalty from everyone. No one
was permitted to question or challenge her. “I think she was frankly
stressed out and didn’t know what to do,” Josh observed. “The way I
saw it was that she came to the end of what she knew how to teach. She
only had three or four years of experience in Japan and a very limited
insight…In her mind, she had to be this fully enlightened Buddha.”

				Not surprisingly, the group changed as well. It became more
institutional, hierarchical, and rigid.

				Eventually, loyalty became the group’s absolute value. Even the
slightest questioning of Kennett would provoke an extreme reaction.
Monks would be yelled at, punished or demoted. However, Kennett’s
rages were seen as skillful, ego-busting Zen teachings. The only
acceptable response was to bow and accept the emotional attack.

				Josh thought the Buddhist teachings were great, and he still liked
some of what Kennett taught. But he was dogged by questions. _Why is
this place so toxic? Why is Kennett abusive and cruel and cold? If
she’s so enlightened, why is she such a bully? Is this genuinely Zen,
or is it a complex and confused mess of half-baked Zen, monotheism,
occultism, and self-adoration—a very strange personality cult?_

				Eventually, in 1976, Josh knew it was time to leave. At the time,
he was president of the organization, the Order of Buddhist
Contemplatives.

				There weren’t any prohibitions against leaving, but senior members
who had left earlier were invariably vilified as failures and losers,
too weak to follow the Soto Zen path.

				But in Zen there is something called _angya_, a kind of pilgrimage
or walkabout in which longtime practitioners go away for an extended
period. Josh told Kennett that, after much personal meditation and
reflection, he felt that it was time to do an extended _angya_.

				She acquiesced, but she was obviously not happy—and from that day
on, she tried to persuade Josh to cancel or delay his trip. But Josh
held firm to his decision.

				A week before his departure, Kennett invited Josh to tea. She said
she wanted to give him a “going-away present.”

				At the meeting, she tried one last time to talk Josh out of
leaving, but he stood his ground and explained that he would be
departing on schedule. Kennett then gave Josh her promised gift—three
small folded pieces of paper. Each one, she said, contained a dime.

				On the first tiny package, Kennett had written the word _JAIL_.
Kennett said, “Here is the first dime. (This was obviously when there
were still public “pay” phones). After you leave the Abbey, when you
get arrested, use this dime to call me from jail and I’ll come and
bail you out.”

				Then she gave Josh the second package, on which was written
_LOONEY BIN_. “After you leave Shasta,” she said, “when you fall apart
and end up in a mental institution, use this dime to call me, and I’ll
come to get you.”

				The “The third package said BROKE. Kennett said, “When you totally
run out of money and have nothing, use this last dime to call me, and
I’ll come and rescue you.”

				Her underlying message was clear: _Leave me and you will go crazy.
Without me, you have no personal power or integrity or sanity. Without
me, you will fail. Without me, you will lose the Buddha’s Way. Without
me, you are doomed._

				Now Josh was more certain than ever that it was time to break free
.
				Josh left on schedule—and never returned. He did not end up broke,
in jail or in the looney bin. He lives in Manhattan, where he runs
Baran Communications, a successful strategic communications and public
relations firm, working for non-profit organizations, documentary and
feature films, and special campaigns. Josh predicts that meditation,
especially “mindfulness” as it becomes more “mainstream,” will foster
a whole new wave of destructive cult leaders.

				Yves Messer and the Lyndon LaRouche Political Cult[103]

				Yves Messer is a very talented artist, designer, architect and
portrait painter who currently lives in England.[104] He is
courageous—one of those rare former members of the LaRouche
organization who dares to openly and publicly expose the group. We
found each other over the Internet in 2008 and were able to meet in
person in London, in 2014.

				Yves was recruited into this political cult in 1983, when he was
22, and remained a member until 1994, based mostly in France and
Germany. He was attracted by the group’s apparent liberal political
platform. “LaRouchies,” as they are called, claimed to stand for
economic progress and to be anti-war, pro-third World, in favor of
science and the arts, and investment in infrastructure and high
technology. They position themselves in a centuries-old tradition of
humanism—that’s how they catch idealistic people’s interest.

				At the center lies Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., a bizarre personality.
He ran for the U.S. presidency eight consecutive times, but almost no
one, apart from his members, voted for him. Most people do not take
him seriously, and might pass him and his followers off as
gadflies—you may have seen LaRouchies in airports with signs like
“Nuke Jane Fonda” or near post offices or grocery stores with posters
depicting President Obama with a Hitler mustache.

				But there is a deeply sinister side to the man and his
organization. LaRouche exhibits the personal traits of a narcissistic
psychopath—lack of empathy, delusions of grandeur, entitlement,
paranoia, and a willingness to engage in criminal behavior. At least
two deaths, first of Jeremiah Duggan, in 2003, and the suicide of
Kenneth Kronberg, in 2007, have been linked to the group.

				In fact, LaRouche and his followers believe themselves to be “at
war.” Like many cult leaders, LaRouche paints the world in black and
white: us versus them, good versus evil. He talks about a “cosmic war”
between two secret elites—the evil and the good—the outcome of which
will decide whether or not civilization survives. He claims the world
is about to be plunged into an abyss, variously described as a “New
Dark Ages,” World War III, total economic collapse and a great
pandemic. A self-professed economist, he has predicted a financial
crash nearly every year for the past 40 years. LaRouchies believe that
saving the world from Armageddon is their ultimate goal, their cause,
their reason for living—and that physical force may be justified.

				A pacifist Quaker in his youth, LaRouche turned to violence in his
50s, moving away from the far-left towards the far-right and even
associating with neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.

				Young and naïve, when he joined in mid-1983, Messer dedicated
himself to the group and was promoted two years later as their
so-called “Executive Intelligence Review” correspondent in Paris. He
was sent to a “secret” training camp, which turned out to be
LaRouche’s mansion in Germany, where he learned to use guns, shooting
live bullets at targets, against the backdrop of lush woods. The
purpose of this weekend training was to ensure LaRouche’s security
during his European tour.

				In October 1986, hundreds of law-enforcement agents raided
LaRouche’s headquarters in Leesburg, Virginia. Two years later, he was
sentenced to 15 years in prison for scheming to defraud the Internal
Revenue Service and defaulting on more than $30 million in loans from
supporters. He was paroled after serving five years of his 15-year
sentence. Like many followers, Yves initially believed that LaRouche
had been the target of a “political vendetta.”

				In 1992, in the Alsace region of France, Yves helped set up a
citizens’ aid convoy to help refugees of the genocide in
Bosnia-Herzegovina during the war in the former Yugoslavia. The
Alsace-Sarajevo aid convoy, as it was called, set off on February 17,
1993 with more than 60 vehicles and 130 people. The mission was a
success—it actually saved lives—but some leaders in the group
chastised Yves, for failing to prominently attach the LaRouche name to
the convoy. Messer was surprised but, by then, he’d already become
suspicious of the group’s motives, which seemed largely designed to
cater to LaRouche’s vanity.

				It happened that Yves was in contact with someone outside of the
cult who had started a hunger strike to protest the atrocities in the
former Yugoslavia. Yves spent several days with him, discussing all
kinds of things including what they called “mind manipulation,” going
so far as to design seminars—along with Yves’s partner at the time—for
a hypothetical “Research Institute on Mind Manipulations.” One day,
several LaRouche leaders arrived at his home to, in their words,
“debrief” him but it was clear they were checking out his loyalty.
Yves decided to quit the group. He left with his then-partner, in
1994, thinking it was just a disappointing political movement. It took
them years to realize that the LaRouche organization was a cult, one
that controlled its members by keeping them from feeling that they
ever achieved anything real and significant. “What is essential is to
preserve the LaRouche doctrine over reality,” Yves said. “The doctrine
is the real, superior, and the _only_ reality.”

				Forbidding children to members was another key way to control
members. The policy of enforced abortions left hundreds of couples
without any children.[105] Yves and his then partner, who are now
separated, adopted a little girl from China, and moved to Britain,
where he eventually joined with Erica Duggan, whose son died in the
group, to expose LaRouche and his organization. Members of the
LaRouche Youth Movement left the cult en masse, in 2012, inspired in
part by reading my book and reading Yves’ website,
http://laroucheplanet.info/ and his efforts. Yves is still involved,
through his websites and other activities, in combating cults and mind
control.
				
				
				Hoyt Richards and Eternal Values[106]

				Hoyt Richards was one of the world’s first male supermodels and is
a writer, actor, producer and filmmaker. He is also an outspoken
former cult member willing to give interviews and even help people to
leave destructive cults. We were introduced to each other by a woman
who had been mind controlled by a gypsy “psychic” in the summer of
2011.

				During the late 1980s and 1990s, Hoyt traveled the world, walked
the runways of Paris, Milan, and New York; graced the covers and pages
of high-fashion magazines; and appeared in hundreds of commercials.
However, throughout his entire 15-year career, he was a member of
Eternal Values, a destructive cult that began in midtown Manhattan.

				Eternal Values was founded by Freddie Mierers, a native New
Yorker, who grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. In the
seventies, Mierers, a former model and interior designer, reinvented
himself as “Frederick VonMierers,” a new-age astrologer and guru who
focused on attracting wealthy WASPs as members.[107]

				When he was 16, Hoyt met Von Mierers on the beach on Nantucket,
where Hoyt’s family vacationed every summer. Hoyt developed a
friendship with Von Mierers over the summers. While attending college
at Princeton, where he studied economics and played football, he would
occasionally visit Freddie in Manhattan.

				Hoyt explains, “My early memories with Frederick in New York were
going to Studio 54. Frederick could get me and his troupe of
attractive followers whisked right through the large crowd out front
of the club. It was a crazy scene. Celebrities and beautiful women
were everywhere. I was only 18 and it all seemed like a fairy tale. At
the end of the night, we’d gather a group of hip club goers and go
back to Frederick’s apartment for his version of ‘high tea.’ We’d have
these long spiritual conversations until dawn. I found it all terribly
exciting and harmless, or so I thought. I remember, at the time, even
feeling like _I_ was taking advantage of _him_.”

				During Hoyt’s sophomore year, a chronic shoulder injury worsened
and he found himself in a dilemma. Doctors told Hoyt that he would
need major surgery to both shoulders if he wanted to continue to play
football, with no guarantee that the surgeries would be successful.
The alternative was to give up football. “For me, it felt like an
identity crisis. I had played football all my life and my closest
friends were my teammates. I really felt lost. This is when Frederick
swooped in to ‘my rescue’ and suggested I give modeling and
commercials a try,” Hoyt said.

				Hoyt agreed and met with early success. This led to more trips to
New York City for auditions. When he graduated with a degree in
economics, Hoyt moved in with Von Mierers’ group. The group was
largely made up of younger yuppie types—Ivy League lawyers and
architects and a smattering of actors and models.

				Von Mierers’ main theme was apocalyptic—he predicted that by the
turn of the century, a cataclysmic geological event, known as a pole
shift, would occur and most of the planet’s population would perish.
Only certain pockets of humanity would survive in secret “safe
places.” Highly evolved souls, like Von Mierers and his followers,
would be lifted off the planet by space aliens, trained, and brought
back to Earth in the aftermath, to lead the building of a new-age
utopian society.

				Hoyt lived with the group for 15 years, during which time he broke
from his family. He didn’t see his parents for 12 years. After Von
Mierers’ AIDS-related death in 1990, the group relocated to the Blue
Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. This was one of Von
Mierers’ designated “safe places.” Von Mierers had been the only
person with supposed access to the space aliens, so the group became
more survivalist in nature. They built a large compound outfitted with
bunkers, and stockpiled weapons and a four-year supply of
vacuum-packed food.

				Hoyt escaped the group in the summer of 1999. “I wish I could tell
you I woke up one morning and had the realization, ‘Yikes! This is a
dangerous cult and I need to get the hell out of here!’” he said.
“Actually it took me three attempts to escape before I actually did.
My self-esteem was so beaten down. I was constantly being told that I
had let down the group and however hard I tried to improve, it was
never enough. I had resigned myself to accepting the truth that I was
a hopeless cause. I felt I was unfixable and unworthy.”

				Earlier that year, he had voiced doubts about Von Mierer’s
apocalyptic prediction. At the time, he was traveling 300 days a year
around the world modeling. “I guess you could say I still had one foot
somewhat in reality. However, I paid heavily for expressing my doubts.
Even though I was the group’s primary source of income and had given
them many millions of dollars over the years, I was instructed to move
to their North Carolina compound. I was told I couldn’t model
anymore—they shaved my head weekly so I couldn’t work even if I wanted
to. I was quarantined to the premises and given every type of slave
labor they could think of ‘to teach me humility.’ I had to be the
first one up and the last one to bed. I was forced to live in the
garage with the dogs on a mat. I was literally and figuratively in the
dog house,” he said.

				“Luckily, I can laugh about it now. But it was a horrible period
in my life. I even contemplated suicide. But the crazy part was, as I
much I hated being in that situation, I also felt like I deserved it.
Even though leaving the group felt like such an act of cowardice, I
felt like dead weight—that I was holding them back. I honestly felt
that I was wasting _their_ precious time and goodwill. My primary
drive to leave the group was not because I thought they were bad or
abusing me, but rather to relieve them of the burden of my
uselessness.”

				Fortunately, Hoyt did escape. He experienced PTSD, as many would
expect. After about 18 months away from the group, he finally had the
clarity to consider a new idea. “I was so convinced when I left
Eternal Values that I was evil and cursed—that I had failed Frederick
and even mankind. I felt I was doomed to a life of tragedy for
betraying the cause. But I finally got to the place where the thought
occurred that maybe the way I felt was not just because of me and my
endless failings, but perhaps the _group I had been involved with had
something to do with it_,” he said.

				“For years, people had been saying I was in a cult but I would
never believe that. I just couldn’t accept that I would ever do that.
I was convinced that things like that didn’t happen to people like me.
I would never join a cult.”

				Desperate to find answers, Hoyt went on to the Internet and
discovered an earlier edition of this book. “I bought the book because
it was the bestseller on the subject. But my true intent was to
reassure myself that my group wasn’t a cult. Of course, I was wrong.
The book was the first step for me in accepting the truth of what my
experience had been. It also gave me the tools and inspiration to move
toward the road of recovery.”

				Once Hoyt was well into his recovery, he went on the offensive and
sued Eternal Values and won, thereby effectively ending the group’s
existence.

				He remains active in raising cult awareness and, at times, has
assisted me to rescue others from cults or mind control situations. He
explains our work together: “We share a common goal of wanting to
demystify the overwhelming preconception that cults happen to a
particular kind of person or profile—naïve kookoos, weirdos, damaged
people from broken families, etc. I don’t fault anyone for that point
of view. It was the same one I held, until I went through what I went
through. I’m living proof that it is just not accurate. In being open
and transparent about my experiences, I also hope to demonstrate to
other cult victims that there is no need to hold any shame around the
experience. We are all survivors and we should be proud and hold our
heads high.

				“I’m delighted to say I’m working on several film and TV projects
to help build awareness of how cults operate and understanding of mind
control. Coming forward and telling our stories is one of the greatest
gifts we can give to others.”


				Gretchen Callahan and the Truth Station

				Some destructive cults are tiny in comparison with organizations
such as the Unification Church and Scientology. Yet, small groups can
do just as much harm to individuals as big ones.

				Certainly this was true of Gretchen Callahan’s involvement in a
small fundamentalist Bible cult in southern California called the
Truth Station.[108] Its 30 members were led by a man who was convinced
that he was in direct communication with God. The group lived in a
house together and spent much of their time being indoctrinated. They
believed that they were the only people on Earth living as true
Christians. They also believed in the practice of faith healing. Yet
Gretchen had a personal experience of a faith healing that failed—with
fatal consequences.

				The group would routinely have long meetings in a crowded living
room. The leader would spend hours putting members on the hot seat,
verbally humiliating them, while everyone else watched. No one was
allowed to get up and go to the bathroom. They had to stay and be part
of the process.

				Members were led to believe that the sin in each of them had to be
“brought into the light” and destroyed. No one knew whose turn on the
hot seat would come next, and each person would sigh inwardly with
relief when another member’s name was called.

				Questioning the leader’s authority was called “giving place to
satanic spirits.” Being fully committed to the infallibility of the
leader and his interpretation of the Bible was seen as the mark of a
true believer. People would go to great lengths to demonstrate that
they were, indeed, true believers.

				David, a young man in the group, felt the subtle power of the
group pressuring him to become more “spiritual.” To prove his
commitment to the group and be more accepted, he decided to stop
taking insulin for his diabetes, believing that God would heal him.
The members applauded his faith and his decision to throw away his
insulin.

				In a matter of days, David’s health deteriorated. By the end of
the week, the leader ordered around-the-clock prayer teams. Gretchen’s
team was on when David took his last breath; yet the group, spurred on
by the leader’s anxious exhortations, was convinced that David would
be resurrected. They prayed for 15 hours over his body. David’s
father, at that time a group co-leader, beat on his dead son’s chest,
rebuking Satan and the angel of death, while David’s mother had to be
removed from the room because her grief and anguish were viewed as
spiritual weakness. Gretchen held David’s hand much of the day, as his
body turned blue and became stiff.

				Even after the police arrived and the coroner took away the body,
the group members continued to believe that the young man would
return. For three months following his death, a place was set for him
at the table, and members (including young children) had visions,
dreams, and prophecies concerning his resurrection.

				A few days after David’s death, Gretchen’s parents called her from
their home in Jamaica, because they had heard about the incident.
Gretchen succeeded in convincing them that the young man was not
actually dead. The leader had told her it would be a great miracle
when he awakened, and nonbelievers would flock to the group.

				Two years after David’s death, Gretchen was kicked out of the
group for her “spirit of rebellion.” She just couldn’t take anymore.
She had given and given to the group, and it was never considered
enough. “I guess you could say I was burned out,” she told former
members of other groups during a meeting of an ex-cultist support
group. “Something inside me just turned off. Even though I was still
frightened of doing the wrong thing or being ‘out of the Spirit,’ I
just couldn’t feel repentant any more for the ‘sins’ they had
fabricated about me. I noticed that no one was happy and smiling
anymore. Everyone was afraid to talk to one another because they might
not be speaking ‘in the Spirit.’ Yet, even after I was thrown out, I
still believed they were right and held the exclusive key to
salvation. It wasn’t until my parents had me deprogrammed that I
started to understand that I’d been struggling with the mind control
abuses, not with my relationship with God.”

				A few months after Gretchen left, the group began to use physical
beatings, especially on women and small children, to eradicate
“satanic spirits.”

				“It has taken me years to fully understand how deeply they
controlled my emotions and thought processes,” Gretchen said. “If I
hadn’t received good counseling, I probably would have kept trying to
return to the group.”


				Gary Porter and Soka Gakkai/ Nichiren Shoshu

				Gary met and fell in love with Ann, a woman involved with Soka
Gakkai, formerly known as Nichiren Shoshu of America (NSA). The
organization originated in Japan and claims Buddhist lineage, although
members of some other Buddhist sects question its authenticity. Under
both names, this cult has been active in the United States since the
early 1970s. They own and operate Soka Univeristy in California.
Members believe that if they chant the words _nam myoho renge kyo_
repeatedly in front of a rice-paper scroll called a _gohonzon_, they
will gain the power to get whatever they wish.

				Ann had been involved for over two years when she began to chant
_nam myoho renge kyo_ for hours a day, in order to meet and marry a
doctor. “People would chant for parking spaces, a new job, good grades
in school, whatever,” Gary told former members at a ex-member support
group meeting.

				Gary, who had grown up as a Methodist, was at a low point in his
life when he met Ann. “I was burned out from four years of
chiropractic college. My best friend was killed in a car accident. My
siblings were pressuring me to go home and take care of my mother, who
was ill. I was a sitting duck for anything that promised the keys to
solving life’s problems,” he said.

				At first, Gary thought the group was weird, but he agreed to try
the chanting. It gave him an incredible high. He bought a devotional
scroll, a _gohonzon_, and married Ann—after all, he did have a doctor
of chiropractic degree—and remained in the group for over five years.

				NSA used its celebrity members such as Tina Turner and Patrick
Duffy for recruiting and for confirming members’ commitment. Its other
big selling point was “working for world peace.” NSA made members
believe that only their chanting would save humankind from
destruction. But, other than march in NSA-sponsored rallies, which
were shunned by most mainline peace groups, members did little to
promote peace. The NSA marches did, however, dominate members’ time
and energies. “We used to have to go to group meetings three or four
times a week, not to mention the hours we would spend each day
chanting,” Gary said. The voices of doubters were muffled and
conformity was rewarded.

				Eventually, Gary had several confrontations with his leaders in
NSA and was threatened with expulsion. Deep down, that was exactly
what he hoped for. He was tired of the pressure and manipulation, and
his chiropractic work was suffering, because of all the time and
energy he was putting into NSA.

				Gary and Ann were eventually kicked out of the group. Ann spent
the next year on a couch, thinking she was dying of terminal cancer.
In fact, she was not ill at all, only acting according to her
indoctrination. She, like other members, had been taught that if she
ever left NSA and stopped chanting, terrible consequences would
follow.[109] Once Gary and Ann started to study material on mind
control and destructive cults, they realized that NSA was using the
same techniques as groups such as the Peoples Temple and the Moonies.
It took them several years to piece their lives back together.


				Born Into The Group

				When this book was published in November 1988, the overarching
thrust of the book was directed toward people, like me, who were
deceptively recruited into a destructive cult.

				Soon after the book appeared, I began receiving calls and letters
from people who had been born into groups. One of the most memorable
was a letter and a follow up call from Randy Watters, a former elder
at Watchtower’s Bethel, who ran FreeMinds.org. He said, “I loved your
book! But can I ask you, why didn’t you mention the Jehovah’s
Witnesses?” I remember being startled by his question, and immediately
responded, “Why, are they a cult?” He laughed and said, “Are you
kidding? I underlined the entire book!” I responded, “Really?” He told
me, “Absolutely!” and I responded, “Teach me.” He told me to come to
California and he would get a group of former Witnesses together—many
of whom were born into the group. I could teach them about mind
control and cults. They would teach me about Jehovah’s Witnesses. And
so my education began.

				It was extremely interesting for me to learn that my book was
being read by hundreds of people who were raised in the Watchtower, a
group I’d encountered many times in my life, and especially while a
Moonie. They would try to recruit me and I would try to recruit them.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are a high-control group that absolutely
denigrates former members and forbids contact of any kind, including
reading anything they write. What was so interesting was that because
I _hadn’t_ written about them in the first edition, I was not on their
index of banned books.

				The Moonies were very high profile and Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs)
knew they were a weird cult. So reading a book by a guy who was an
ex-member was a curiosity for them. They would read the book expecting
to learn about the Moonies and other cults, and wind up realizing they
were in a cult.

				I remember talking with my colleagues in the counter-cult world
about my realization that Jehovah’s Witnesses were a mind control
cult. I met total resistance. I was told things like, “They’ve been
around too long” and “They’re too large!” My reaction was, “Since when
have those been criteria for evaluating a mind control cult? I thought
mind control was the criterion!”

				I started working not only with people recruited into the
Watchtower Society but also people who were born and raised in the
group, and I received hundreds of letters and phone calls. Most of the
folks who had read my books wanted to know, “What if I don’t have a
pre-cult self to go back to? How do I get well?” I knew that I needed
to begin addressing the issues for those who had been influenced from
childhood by a totalistic group.

				Through my investigations and experiences, I have come to believe
that human beings are all born with an authentic self as well as a
desire for love, fairness, truth and meaning. It is something that no
group can program out of a person and therefore there is always hope
for real healing. A subsequent chapter focuses on recovery strategies
and a future book will be written on this subject.[110] However, I do
wish to make a special note about courage. People who choose to exit a
group where they know they will likely be cut off—shunned,
disconnected from by all of their family and friends—face incredible
suffering, pain and hardship. The level of pain is unimaginable for
the average person. If those trying to exit do not succumb to the
pressures to return to the group, they can become resilient and
strong. They often become staunch atheists or strong believers in the
Bible, God or some Higher Power.

				People kicked out of these groups are most at risk for serious
emotional breakdown, addiction, suicide and other major public health
issues. Research must be done to ascertain what I believe is a
monumental drain on our health care system by destructive cult
involvement. Mental health professionals, unless sensitized and
trained, do not know how to even do a proper intake when it comes to
involvement with undue influence. However, I am working on a
forthcoming book and a training curriculum to help address this
profound need.

				Over the decades, people who were being born into large cults—the
Moonies, Scientology, Hare Krishnas, Children of God,[111] TM—began
coming of age and started to question their group’s programming. With
the creation of the Internet, online discussion groups and support
communities sprang up. These have been very helpful for people raised
in cults.

				I am pleased to share the stories of a woman raised as a child in
TM, two former Jehovah’s Witnesses, and a former Mormon. I understand
that these organizations are very high profile and that the public
generally does not think of them as psychologically harmful. The
Watchtower Society and the LDS Church have been around since the 19th
century and have millions of members worldwide and enormous resources.
I understand that I risk being put on enemies’ lists, though I hope
their leadership has more foresight than to do this. My hope is that
the leadership will actually read this book and take steps to reform
the policies of their organizations.

				Gina Catena and Transcendental Meditation (TM)[112]

				Gina Catena is a Certified Nurse-Midwife (CNM) and Nurse
Practitioner (NP), writer and courageous former member and activist.
After she understood the commonalities between covert methods of TM
and other exploitative cults the International Cultic Studies
Association first invited her to present her story at their annual
meeting in 2006. In 2010, I met Gina when I became enthralled by her
presentation about the Beatles’ involvement with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
and Transcendental Meditation.[113] She writes and speaks on a
volunteer basis to raise awareness of the risks of involvement with
TM, so that the loss of those who suffered or died in the group is not
in vain. “My conscience dictates that I reveal the insanities I lived,
so that others might be spared recruitment to TM’s underbelly,” she
says.

				Gina Catena was raised in Transcendental Meditation (TM), an
organization founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his followers. Her
parents were drawn in during the 1960’s. As a teenager, Gina’s parents
sent her to live with the TM Movement, in 1974, when they established
their permanent university and community in Fairfield, Iowa. Gina and
her brother were raised to believe that they were in a spiritually
privileged class—“children of the age of enlightenment.” They
participated in private initiation ceremonies, called pujas, each
receiving a secret mantra that supposedly could induce an altered
state of consciousness, release stress, free creativity, and
ultimately cure all ailments. Like many TM children, Gina raised
herself—her parents were often away meditating or traveling to
expensive advanced training courses.

				Still, Gina loved the close-knit TM community and recalls the
feeling she received as a kind of “social heroin.” Members were deeply
entwined by their shared lifestyle and their goal to “save the world”
through meditation. As she grew older, Gina became increasingly
troubled by certain behaviors, in particular the group’s habit of
blaming individuals for their own problems, such as poor health,
financial woes and relationship issues. These problems were chalked up
to “bad karma,” but in fact, they were often caused by the group’s
practices.

				“Meditating every day for hours and hours drove some members to
psychosis,” she told me. Treating health conditions with expensive
questionable herbal concoctions produced by Maharishi Ayurvedic Health
Products International, or with costly mystical prayer ceremonies
called “yagyas,” instead of seeking professional medical help
threatened the health of members and in some cases may have caused
their deaths.[114] Donating thousands and even millions of dollars for
Maharishi’s schemes to create a perfect world through advanced
meditation programs pushed many toward financial ruin. Some actually
committed suicide.

				Meanwhile, ‘Mahesh’ and his inner circle resided in luxury—in
Swiss palaces and mansions and later in a custom built private enclave
in the Netherlands.[115]

				Gina observed other problems. TM markets itself heavily, drawing
on pseudoscientific research to tout the health benefits of their
brand of meditation—calling it a cure for everything from PTSD, ADHD,
sexual exploitation, stress and poverty. In fact, it is a method of
self-induced trance which can, in some people, produce anxiety and
other adverse reactions. Instructors make light of these reactions,
calling them a form of “un-stressing,” and urging more meditation to
release stress even further. It is important to differentiate TM’s
meditation method from other forms of legitimate meditation. In TM,
the practitioner is given a single word, their secret _mantra_—often
derived from the name of a Hindu diety—which is repeated until a
trance state is achieved.

				Though TM’s marketing and front groups have changed names over the
years, recruitment occurs largely through the _David Lynch
Foundation_[116] and the _Center for Wellness and Achievement in
Education_[117]—recruitment remains the same step-by-step process.
Someone signs up for a beginner TM course. They are then encouraged to
attend regular support meetings, where they are warmly welcomed, and
given “suggestions” about which advanced courses they might take. Many
people stop with the introductory course but some choose to go on.
Eventually, they may sign up for the TM-Sidhi program which promises
to teach mystical powers, such as yogic flying, for a mere $5,000 or
more. Decades ago, a friend sponsored Gina to learn yogic flying. “It
involved energetic butt-bouncing on high-density foam,” she said.

				In 1976, Maharishi promised devotees that if they could get the
square root of 1% of the world’s population to practice the TM-Sidhi
program at the same time daily, they would create a “Maharishi Effect”
of global peace, prosperity, perfect weather and health for the world.
Many true believing TMers continue to devote their lives to practicing
the TM-Sidhi program[118] for four to eight hours daily, in the belief
they will positively affect the world. Some become addicted to the
state of self-induced trance. They are dubbed “space cadets” by other
TMers. Many of those same devotees struggle with cognitive dissonance
as they decline with age despite Maharishi’s promises of immortality.

				Despite her growing doubts, Gina stayed in the group, married
twice—in each case to a TMer—and had three children. In 1980, Gina
left for India to attend a one-month course in “Vedic Science.” She
returned to Fairfield, Iowa, but something had shifted. “I never again
attended a course. I still lived in the town but I conducted my own
life as if I were living elsewhere,” she said.

				Finally, in 1988 she convinced her husband to move the family to
California. They were both 30 years old. Gina enrolled her kids in
public school and began taking courses at the local community college
“My husband initially could not function. He played video games for
about 15 hours daily—truly just another way to dissociate,” she said.
“He began following Sai Baba (another problematic Indian guru). I
didn’t follow anyone. I was too busy working (in retail), taking
college classes and raising three children.” The pair eventually
divorced. Gina would go on to earn three degrees and currently works
as a certified nurse-midwife at a major medical center.

				“I still didn’t realize it was a cult until 2003, 15 years later.
I was 45,” she said. A coworker told her about the work of Margaret
Singer. “I had the ah-ha moment—‘Oh shit! I was raised in a cult! My
whole family is in a cult! That’s why our lives are so screwed up!’
Only then did I begin searching online for cult information, reading
everything I could to self-counsel. I found a therapist who knows
about cult recovery.”

				As a medical professional, she has devoted herself to exposing the
ways in which TM can adversely affect a person’s health. She maintains
close relationships with other former members and with families who
have been adversely affected by TM. She blogs at tmfree.blogspot.com
and ginacatena.com and speaks and writes on a volunteer basis to raise
awareness of the risks of involvement with TM.

				Lee Marsh and Jehovah’s Witnesses[119]

				Lee Marsh is a former Jehovah’s Witness, a retired Canadian
counselor and is the president of Advocates for Awareness of
Watchtower Abuses (aawa.co), a nonprofit group that helps educate the
public about the group’s violations of basic human rights, especially
toward women and children.

				When Lee was eight years old, her mother abandoned the family, and
Lee was forced to live with her father. Shortly after that, her father
began sexually molesting her. The crime was reported to the police
when she was 11, and her mother, whom Lee had not seen in three years,
was awarded custody. Her mom was then living with relatives and
studying with Jehovah’s Witnesses.

				When Lee was 12, her mom’s common-law husband sexually molested
Lee and her teenage aunt. When this was reported to an elder at the
Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall, the elder advised the family to keep
it secret. When it happened again, the elders decided that it should
not be reported to the police. Lee’s aunt was sent to live with other
family members, while Lee was placed in a foster home for the next
three years.

				At age 16, Lee went back to live with her mother, who was then a
baptized Witness. A year later, Lee was baptized and encouraged to
marry a Witness, a man she hardly knew. They had two children, and she
remembers the enormous pressure on her to be a good example to others
in the congregation. Meanwhile, her husband—who appeared to be a fine
and upstanding Witness—sexually and emotionally abused her.

				However, she carried a secret. On the outside, their family life
looked good. But inside she was depressed and suicidal. She had never
received counseling for her childhood abuse, and the emotional and
sexual abuse in the marriage only exacerbated many of the long-term
effects of abuse that she only realized later on.

				_The Watchtower_, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ prominent magazine,
counsels Witnesses to be wary of therapy and counseling, as they are
supposedly ways for the Devil to destroy their faith. But after
struggling for years with bad _Watchtower_ advice, Lee received
permission from the elders to get counseling. However, she was
forbidden to tell her counselor that she was a Jehovah’s Witness.

				After two sessions, Lee realized what was happening in her life,
that her husband was a repetition of the abuse she endured as a child.
She realized she needed to get out of the marriage. She also knew that
this would not be easy, as there were only two acceptable ways to make
that happen among Witnesses—death or adultery.

				After talking to the elders about the situation, she was granted a
trial separation. But Witnesses believe that a wife’s role is to
provide sex to her husband. So despite the fact that they were
separated and her husband was living elsewhere, he believed he had the
right to come to her house for sex. Understandably, she could not deal
with sex-on-demand, and the only approved way to stop him was to
commit adultery, so that is what she did.

				After she told her husband and the elders about this once-only
incident, she was “disfellowshipped,” and everyone in her
congregation—even her mother—was obligated to shun her. Her husband
convinced their kids to live with him, and soon Lee was homeless.

				She filed for divorce and it was granted. She needed to support
herself, but had few marketable skills, because of the Witness taboo
against college.

				Lee went on public assistance and made the brave decision to
register for college. She did well in her first two courses and
decided to study full-time. In that environment, she began to thrive,
ask critical questions, and challenge assumptions—none of which is
permitted in the Witness world.

				Lee graduated with honors, formed a small nonprofit organization
to help incest survivors, and provided counseling for over 600 people
over seven years before she retired, due to ill health.

				Counseling others had helped her turn past childhood abuse into
something positive. But it was now time to investigate her Jehovah’s
Witness experience. Using the Internet, she found a wealth of
information about the Witnesses and cults in general, and the methods
used to unduly influence members. When she finally proved to herself
that Jehovah’s Witnesses were a cult, it pinpointed many cult-induced
phobias and fears that had lingered with her for years. She has since
come to learn about the detrimental effects of the Governing Body’s
policies on child-rearing. This includes corporal punishment of
children. Most repulsive is their organizational failure to call
police when children were being raped by pedophiles in the
organization. A number of high profile lawsuits have recently been
brought against the Watchtower and several perpetrators. We can only
imagine how many more victims will be coming forward.

				Lloyd Evans and Jehovah’s Witnesses

				When I first met him, Lloyd was blogging on the Internet under the
name John Cedars, as he was buying time to develop an exit strategy
from the Watch Tower Society. He has a huge online following and is
responsible for helping thousands of people reassess their obedience
to this aberrant Christian group.[120] Their Governing Body’s policy
against blood transfusions, established in 1945, is a non-Biblical and
erroneous interpretation of passages of the Bible that has led to
countless deaths and needless suffering.[121]

				For all the victims of Watchtower ideology, Armageddon is a real
event that could strike at any moment. It is a time when divine forces
will be unleashed to kill pretty much everyone who isn’t a Jehovah’s
Witness, and the idea that Armageddon is “just around the corner” has
been instilled in Witnesses of all ages for decades. The level of
phobia indoctrination of this group, bolstered by their numerous false
prophecies over the decades, restricts members from higher education,
sports, voting, Christmas and birthday celebrations, and promotes
total dependency.

				Lloyd Evans got his first taste of this when he was a child. As
part of his family-worship evening, his parents orchestrated a fake
phone call, reporting to Lloyd and his sister that the Great
Tribulation (the prelude to Armageddon) had started. Lloyd ran
upstairs to pack his vital belongings, because the family had to flee
with other Witnesses to escape the authorities under Satan’s control.
Only when panic-stricken Lloyd came back downstairs could he tell from
the smiles on his parents’ faces that this had been some sort of
macabre joke.

				By the time Lloyd was 20, he had started to see glitches in this
high-control pseudo-religious group. But this formative awakening was
put on hold when Lloyd’s mother died of cancer in 2001, when he was
21.

				When Lloyd was 25, he fulfilled one of his mother’s dying wishes,
by attending a two-month course designed to train young Witness men to
better serve the organization. Within three years of graduating, he
was promoted to the position of elder in his local congregation.

				A year later, in 2009, Lloyd withdrew as an elder and decided that
he and his wife would move to Croatia, to be near her parents. For the
first year Lloyd attended the local meetings and tried to settle into
his new congregation. However, due to the language barrier, he could
no longer understand what was being taught at the meetings and
gradually unplugged from his indoctrination. And he started to ask
himself, “What do I believe?” Doubts from his youth began to
resurface.

				It wasn’t long before Lloyd realized he no longer believed
Jehovah’s Witnesses were God’s organization.

				The more Lloyd awakened from his indoctrination, the more curious
he became. He visited websites set up by ex-Witnesses. Though he had
been taught to intensely fear so-called “apostate” websites, he found
many of them informative and not spiteful, as he had been led to
believe. He also read the book _Crisis of Conscience_, by former
Governing Body member Raymond Franz, which convinced him that
Jehovah’s Witnesses were being deceived by their leaders.

				Curious to find out how others felt, he set up the website
jwsurvey.org to survey current and former Witnesses for their
opinions. After three years, he learned that almost all Witnesses who
did objective research disagreed with the teachings of their leaders.

				Lloyd and his wife have since formally disassociated themselves as
Witnesses, which prompted many of their family members to shun them.
Though they admit it is extremely painful, Lloyd and his wife take
comfort in knowing their daughter will grow up without experiencing
the heartache of being shunned by her parents for ideological reasons.

				Tom Hopkins and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS)

				Tom Hopkins is a father, a humanitarian, a composer, a music
producer and a guitarist. He was a faithful member of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—more commonly known as the
Mormons—for most of his life. He grew up in a loving, active Mormon
family, and at 16 became a priest. He served as the assistant to the
bishop, and he proselytized, influencing and baptizing several people.
Later, during his mission work in Thailand, he averaged at least one
convert baptism per month.

				After returning from Thailand, Tom converted and baptized a woman
who he later married. Together, they raised four children.

				Tom became a Gospel Doctrine teacher, a scoutmaster, a high priest
and second counselor in the bishopric, a counselor in the Sunday
school, and stake mission presidency. He was also a faithful home
teacher who tithed and made regular offerings.

				Despite all this, certain doctrines and aspects of his Mormon
faith never felt right to Tom. Like other faithful members of the
church, he accepted some things on faith, expecting that someday,
perhaps after he died, it would all make sense. Though he studied
literature that answered many anti-Mormon arguments, he didn’t give
his own concerns, questions, or negative feelings much energy or
credibility.

				Tom was taught to believe that the Mormon Church represented
everything in life that was good and true—and the only way to eternal
happiness. He was also taught that anything contrary to the teachings
of the church was false, evil and of the Devil—and, of course, would
lead to unhappiness.

				Tom loved his parents, his family, and his Mormon friends. They
were good people, and Tom wanted them to love him, accept him and be
proud of him. To Tom, this meant not taking seriously his doubts about
the church. He felt stuck—like he had to play the game, believe in
extraordinary events and theology and dedicate his life to the church.

				In his late twenties, one of Tom’s guitar students, a lawyer and
former missionary, told him some very disturbing facts about the
Mormon Church. Some he’d heard before; some he hadn’t. Some of what
Tom was told made sense, rang true and disturbed him more than any
other discussion about the church that he’d had previously.

				That night, after he came home, Tom cried in secret, seriously
wondering for the first time in his life if Church doctrine might not
be true.

				But he didn’t want to look into any of the things he’d been told
that day. Instead, he pushed them aside, and redoubled his efforts to
increase his testimony and his faith. For the next 15 years, he lacked
the courage to investigate what his student had told him.

				Meanwhile, the more perfectly Tom practiced his Mormon faith, the
more he lived in a world of guilt and shame, always seeking
forgiveness. He became obsessed with trying to be worthy, in order to
have “the spirit” with him.

				The routine of daily prayer, scripture study, church activities,
seminary and institute classes, regular temple attendance, weekly
sacrament meetings, priesthood meetings, and Sunday school constantly
indoctrinated Tom and reaffirmed his faith. When he took the
sacrament, or went to the temple, he made covenants to be obedient to
the strict commandments of God and Church standards. But he also knew
that, even as he made those promises, he—like everyone else—would fall
short of perfection, and would need to repent over and over again.
This routine often led to shame, hopelessness, two-faced hypocritical
behavior and a habit of breaking commitments. This can be the perfect
recipe to create addiction.

				Yet Tom was determined to be a man of integrity. With help, he
eventually came to the point where he felt that he would rather lose
everything, face public humiliation and die with his integrity intact,
than to live without it. Integrity became more important to him than
his need to believe in the Mormon Church.

				Armed with this new courage to be completely honest, and to follow
his own convictions no matter what the cost, he was finally willing to
deeply investigate his questions and concerns about the Church.

				The more he studied, deliberated and prayed, the more clear it
became that the Mormon Church was not what he had believed it to be.
He found that it was full of ulterior motives and deception. This
confirmed his own experience: he had known people in the Church who
were power hungry or greedy.

				To this day, Tom doesn’t feel that the Mormon Church or its
leaders are intentionally malicious—but that they do harmful things,
because they believe that the ends justify the means. The church’s
leaders and followers are indoctrinated to believe that the Mormon
Church is _the_ true religion, and they cannot stand the idea of their
friends and family suffering, or going to hell, or attaining a lower
degree of glory, because they are not active in the Church.

				Tom’s story is online at iamanexmormon.com and he wishes to add
his voice to those of other courageous former members at
exmormonfoundation.org. I was invited to speak to their annual
conference in 2008 when I explained the BITE model. For me, meeting
two hundred and fifty former LDS people was quite an intensive
education. I had helped people exit the Fundamentalist Latter Day
Saints (FLDS) cult of Warren Jeffs but, until the conference, I was
not clear on just how much the mainstream organization was
problematic. The talk I heard at that conference given by Ken Clark, a
former LDS CES Institute Director for 27 years, entitled: _Lying for
the Lord: Deception as a Management Tool of the LDS Church_ was an
eye-opener for me.[122]


				The people who were willing to share their stories in this chapter
represent just a fraction of the amazing human beings I have come to
know since my own exit from the Moon cult. There are so many other
people whose stories deserve worldwide attention.

				The Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) is the largest
polygamous cult in the U.S. and is far more extreme and destructive
than the modern day LDS organization.[123] There have been many
excellent books and documentaries on this cult. Rebecca Musser,
ex-wife of “prophet” Warren Jeffs, published her biography, in
2013,The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult
Leaders to Justice.[124] Carolyn Jessop, with assistance from Utah
Attorney Generalhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shurtleff, had gone
into print ten years before. [ibid] Carolyn became the first woman who
left an FLDS community to be awarded full custody of all of her
children. She wrote the best-seller, _Escape_, in 2008. Her cousin
Flora Jessop, who is an incredible activist helping victims of FLDS,
published _Church of Lies_, the following year.

				Special acknowledgment goes to my friend Tory Christman, an ex-30
year Scientologist, OT VII, who has made hundreds of video blogs and
has helped me many times to assist people involved with Scientology.
Please visit her on her ToryMagoo44 Youtube page.
Exscientologykids.com is a website maintained by Jenna Miscavige, the
niece of top leader David Miscavige, along with several of her
friends. She published the book _Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside
Scientology_ and _My Harrowing Escape_, in 2013.

				Donna Collins, born into the Moonies, has been an amazing force to
help her family and friends exit the cult. She was featured in a BBC
documentary on the Moonies, _Emperor of the Universe_, which is
online.[125] If you wish to understand the Moon cult better and what
they believe, watch this documentary! For an active ex-member site on
the Moonies, please visit http://howwelldoyouknowyourmoon.tumblr.com/,
and take a look at the Moon page on freedomofmind.com, which lists all
of the Moon-owned entities around the world. This list is maintained
by Private Investigator, Larry Zilliox, who has been helping me with
cases for decades. In future editions of this book, I will add many
more stories of courageous former members. I would like to include: a
multi-level marketing survivor, a former member of a Large Group
Awareness Training, a former member of a Jewish cult and a survivor of
FLDS.

				There is another book I hope to do about sexuality, cults and mind
control. Hal Lanse’s _Erasing Reason: Inside Aesthetic Realism - A
Cult That Tried to Turn Queer People Straight_ is an important book
that is a window into the power of mind control. Straight people being
convinced to be gay. Gay people being indoctrinated to believe they
are straight. Heaven’s Gate members mind controlled to believe they
are aliens and eight men happy to have their testicles surgically
removed. Transgender pioneer ex-cult activists Kate Bornstein[126] and
Denise Brennan[127] speaking out after so many years in Scientology,
being told by the cult they were not who they knew themselves to be.
Inspiring!

				Please come to the Freedom of Mind Facebook page and share your
stories. There are also many groups in the Freedom of Mind group
database: some are online, but most are not due to lack of resources.
So if you do not see a group listed, do not assume we do not know
about it or that the group you are investigating is not controversial.

				Hopefully, I will do a book dedicated to telling the remarkable
stories of former members I have had the privilege of knowing over the
decades.

				Hearing people tell their stories is a deep experience that can
help inoculate the public to the dangers of undue influence and
destructive cults. It is my profound hope that more people will be
willing to share their stories and the stories of friends and family
members who have been involved with this global epidemic of mind
control. If you have a story to tell, please share it!


Chapter 6 Endnotes
				96.  One amazing thing is that with the Internet and some
dedication to searching for them, their information and their efforts
can be found. The Wayback Machine is a valued resource of past
Internet sites, especially of former members who were eventually
silenced by cult harassment.
				97.  Enquiry into the Practice and Effects of Scientology, Sir
John G. Foster, KBE, QC, MP; Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, by order
of the House of Commons, 21 December 1971.
				98.  http://web.randi.org/the-million-dollar-challenge.html
				99.  Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, 18 October 1967,
issue IV, Penalties for Lower Conditions.
				100. Video of Trafficking Panel (2014) at ICSA is at
https://freedomofmind.com//HumanTrafficking/HumanTrafficking.php
				101. Why Ending the Game? Pimps call what they do—enslaving people
to sell sex—“The Game.” So we chose our course name to let people know
they can only win by leaving the game. The web site for the program is
endingthegame.com.
				102. The Video of the Press Conference In London about Cults and
Terrorism is on https://freedomofmind.com//Info/terrorism.php
				103. See Dennis King’s book Lyndon LaRouche and the New American
Fascism (1989) for LaRouche’s connections to neo-Nazis and the
KKK.Regarding “physical force may be justified” I can safely refer to
his 1973-74 “Operation Mop-Up” use of violence against CPUSA:
http://www.publiceye.org/larouche/Mop-Up.htmlOn Kenneth Kronberg’s
suicide: http://www.kennethkronberg.com/kk/On Jeremiah Duggan’s death:
http://justiceforjeremiah.yolasite.com/On the Youth movement massive
departure in 2012, here is their (long) document
http://laroucheplanet.info/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Library.LYMwhyweleft
“Why we left”BITE model applied to LaRouche
http://laroucheplanet.info/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Cult.BiteYves’s role in
the aid convoy to Sarajevo :
http://artwithconscience.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/my-story-of-1992-93-alsace-sarajevo-aid.html
				104. http://messer-art-design.com/
				105. Scientology is also notorious for enforcing abortions on
live-in members.
				106. A thorough article was published about the cult. See East
Side Alien by Marie Brenner, Vanity Fair, (March 1990, Volume 53,
Number 3).
				107. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. WASP is sometimes considered
to be a detrimental term but it was one Hoyt used to describe the
cult’s recruitment focus.
				108. Doug Johnson, “Former Truth Station Member Tells of Secret
Practices,” Victor Valley Daily Press (March 5, 1981), A1.“TV Producer
Charges Kin Abused by Religious Cult,” Oxnard Press Courier (March 5,
1981), 2.
				109. Michael Kelly, “A Couple Still Hearing the Chant,” Cult
Awareness Network News (Jan-Feb 1985), 3.
				110. Take Back Your Life, (Bay Tree Publishing1994, 2006) by
Lalich and Tobias is a very helpful text on recovery.
				111. Miriam Williams, Heaven’s Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex
Cult, Eagle Books, 1998 and Something Somebody Stole by Ray Connolly
(2011) and ex-member resource page is at
http://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Main_Page
				112. Cult or Benign Cure-all? Life in Transcendental Meditation’s
Hidden Society -
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2014-10-20/cult-or-benign-cure-all-life-transcendental-meditation%E2%80%99s-hidden-societyhttp://www.papermag.com/2015/03/fairfield_iowa_maharishi_transcendental_meditation.php
				113. 2010 ICSA Conference handbook is online at
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4dmoPK1tYNjanFOQkZ6azg5UjA/edit?usp=sharing
				114. Yagyas http://www.maharishiyagya.org/ Maharishi Ayurvedic
Products (MAPI) latest site(2015): http://www.mapi.com Scientific
basis under “Our Story” section: Maharishi was unyielding when it came
to the authenticity of these ancient formulations and their purity. In
the early days of Maharishi Ayurveda, Maharishi, surrounded by the
greatest Ayurvedic experts in India, rejected formulas due to minor
deviations from the ancient original texts or due to lack of purity in
the formula. This is the foundation of vpk® by Maharishi Ayurveda:
Authentic, Pure, Effective and Safe. - See more at:
http://www.mapi.com/our-story/our-story.html#sthash.iCxtzXMk.dpufWikipedia
references show lack of science on MAPI products. Wikipedia has a
senior editor assigned to TM-related pages to keep the pro-cult trolls
in check:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharishi_Vedic_Approach_to_Health
				115. Source of Swiss palaces and private enclave in The
Netherlands —my life. But here are the
links:http://www.meru.ch/index.php?page=kurse-in-seelisberghttp://www.ayurveda-seelisberg.ch/index.php?page=home&hl=fr_FRhttp://www.globalcountry.org/wp/full-width/links/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharishi_Peace_Palacehttp://www.peacepalaces.com/home.htm
				116. David Lynch Foundation: http://www.davidlynchfoundation.org
				117. Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education: http://cwae.org/
				118. links TM-Sidhi program :
https://www.mum.edu/about-mum/consciousness-based-education/tm-sidhi-program/https://www.mum.edu/core-skill-departments/development-of-consciousness/learning-the-tm-sidhi-program/http://www.amazingabilities.com/amaze9a.htmlExpose
links TM-Sidhi Program
:http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/secrets/sutras/http://www.suggestibility.org/sidhi.shtml
				119. MACLEANS January 5th, 2015 Against Their Will: Inside
Canada’s Forced Marriages by Rachel Browne
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/against-their-will/(Courtois,
Healing the Incest Wound. 1988)
				120. Walter Martin’s book, The Kingdom of the Cults, Bethany House
(1965), has a chapter on Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watch Tower
Society and critiques them theologically. It was important for me to
understand that the Bible JWs use deviates substantially from those
commonly endorsed by scholars. For example, the New Testament in their
Bible has “Jehovah” inserted where the Greek text would have said
“Lord.” As Bible scholar Bart Ehrman notes: “The divine name ‘Jehovah’
doesn’t belong in either Testament, old or new, in the opinion of most
critical scholars, outside the ranks of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
That’s because Jehovah was not the divine name.”
http://ehrmanblog.org/
				121. The Hebrew Bible does direct people to observe the dietary
law of Kashrut and drain the blood of animals they cook and eat. See
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/practices/Ritual/Kashrut_Dietary_Laws.shtml
However, I have asked numerous Christian and Jewish scholars about the
Watch Tower policy. Not one thinks there is a shred of legitimacy to
the Governing Body’s policies on blood transfusion. In fact, the
Jewish religion is always in favor of saving life! Please see
http://ajwrb.org/ for detailed information about the changing policies
on blood by the JW Governing Body over the years.
http://ajwrb.org/children/my-child-is-deadis a heartbreaking story.
For a summary of the blood issue, explaining the Watch Tower history
of the doctrine, and why it is not based on sound Scriptural
reasoning, please visithttp://www.jwfacts.com/Watch
Tower/blood-transfusions.php.
				122. The talk I heard at that conference given by Ken Clark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKt7ozdKeBk&list=PLA92A1F6CFEA252A2.
Richard Packham’s 2013 talk,“Truth Will Prevail: All About Proof,
Evidence, Fallacies and Lies” is worth your time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXl1FjwSMBQ
				123. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-Day_Saints
				124. (Grand Central Publishing, 2014). The Witness Wore Red: The
19th Wife Who Brought Polygamas Cult Leaders to Justice.
				125. BBC’s Emperor of the Universe is online at
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2967341
				126. Kate Bornstein, A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The true story
of a nice Jewish boy who joins the Church of Scientology, and leaves
twelve years later to become the lovely lady she is today, (Beacon
Press, 2012).
				127. Larry Brennan, The Miscavige Legal Statements: A Study in
Perjury, Lies and Misdirection. Self-published. Posted on
WhyWeProtest.net Activism Board.   Please watch my video interview
with Denise when she came out and her final interview before passing
away: https://freedomofmind.com//Media/video.php?id=53.