December 9, 2003The Brainwashing Defense, by Carlin Flora, Psychology Today Magazine (Lawyers for accused sniper Lee Boyd Malvo are using an insanity defense that claims John Allen Muhammad, 42, indoctrinated Malvo, 18, into a "cult of two," such that Malvo could not distinguish right from wrong. Malvo is on trial for last year’s Washington D.C., area sniper shootings and will face the death penalty if convicted. Psychologists and legal experts are skeptical about the insanity-by-brainwashing defense, though some cult experts are adamant that the youngster was, in fact, brainwashed...)
December 7, 2003Margaret Singer, a Leading Brainwashing Expert, Dies at 82 - by Anahad O'Connor, The New York Times (Dr. Margaret Singer, a leading expert on brainwashing who testified in several high-profile cases contending that various groups inappropriately manipulated their members to control their behavior, died on Nov. 23 in Berkeley, Calif. She was 82...
...Dr. Singer went on to testify as an expert witness in dozens of cases against groups she described as destructive cults...
..."Her testimony would help people understand the clinical impact of a cult's manipulation and exploitation," said Dr. Richard Ofshe, a sociology professor at the University of California at Berkeley who worked with Dr. Singer for 20 years. "There was a constant stream of people who would go into these organizations and end up in psychiatric emergency rooms."...)
December 6, 2003Over Objections, Expert on Cults Is Witness for Sniper Suspect by ADAM LIPTAK, The New York Times (CHESAPEAKE, Va., Dec. 5 — An expert on cults testified on Friday at the trial of Lee Malvo, the younger suspect in last fall's sniper attacks in the Washington area. Drawing parallels to the brainwashing of prisoners of war in Korea, to the Jonestown mass suicide and the Branch Davidian siege in Texas, he suggested that John A. Muhammad, who has been sentenced to die for his role in the shootings, may have come to control Mr. Malvo's mind and free will.
"They can change their moral values," the expert, Paul R. Martin, said of people who have been indoctrinated. "People can start to engage in crimes. People can kill when they are under this sort of mindset."...)
December 2, 2003Margaret Singer, Christopher Reed, The Guardian, United Kingdom (UK) (Brainwashing expert who assessed Patty Hearst and Charles Manson
As one of the world's leading experts on cults and their brainwashing techniques, the clinical psychologist Margaret Singer, who has died aged 82, learned the hard way about the mentality of her subjects. Her home in Berkeley, California, was the target of intruders and assaults, including an invasion of rats. She received death threats, hate mail and menacing telephone calls, and her lectures were sometimes picketed...
...With Janja Lalich, she co-wrote the admired book Cults In Our Midst (1995)...)
November 27, 2003Professor Margaret Singer dies at 82, by Katherine Pfrommer, Staff Writer, Oakland Tribune, California (BERKELEY -- Margaret Singer -- a professor, psychologist, champion of free thought and world-renowned expert on cults and brainwashing -- died Nov. 23 at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center after a long illness. She was 82...
..."She was so helpful, so willing to give her time," said colleague Hal Reynolds, student affairs officer and director of cult awareness program at UC Berkeley. "It was like having a wonderful resource -- who was also warm, witty and tough at the same time. She did a lot for UC Berkeley."...)
November 25, 2003Margaret Singer -- expert on brainwashing, Steve Rubenstein, Chronicle Staff Writer, San Francisco Chronicle, California (Margaret Singer, the soft-spoken but hard-edged Berkeley psychologist and expert on brainwashing who studied and helped authorities and victims better understand the Peoples Temple, Branch Davidian, Unification Church and Symbionese Liberation Army cults, has died.
Professor Singer, 82, died Sunday after a long illness at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley.
"She's one of a kind, the foremost authority on brainwashing in the entire world," said lawyer Paul Morantz in an interview last year. Morantz led the effort against the Synanon cult in the 1970s. "She is a national treasure."...)
Psychologist Margaret Singer, an expert on brainwashing and cults, has died. She was 82.
Singer, who studied the Peoples Temple, Branch Davidian and Symbionese Liberation Army among other groups, died Sunday after a long illness at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley...)
November 2, 2003 Cults target school party, Queensland Sunday Mail, Australia (EXTREME religious cults plan to target vulnerable schoolies recovering from end-of-year drinking binges, experts have warned.
Social workers, university researchers and friends of cult victims agree that the Schoolies festival, starting on November 21, will coincide with a recruiting drive by cults...)
October 21, 2003Cults on Campus: The appeal, the
danger - Texas A&M University, College Station (Ron Loomis is a member of the American Family Foundation. Loomis is an expert on cults. He will discuss the surprising
prevalence of cults on college campuses and cult prevention and warning signs...)
October 21, 2003 Cults on Campus: The appeal, the danger - Flyer
Event - Wednesday, September 24, 2003Cults on Campus: The appeal, the danger, The SAO BULLETIN BOARD, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana via Google (The Purdue Student Union Board is proud to sponsor a presentation by Ronald Loomis...The talk will educate the public regarding the harmful effects of mind control and psychological manipulation as used by cults and related groups...Admission is FREE to the public. This program is in collaboration with the Office of the Dean of Students and University Residences...)
by Dave Stephens, Features Writer, The Exponent, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana (Cults are on campus and they're targeting students.
That's the message that Ron Loomis, an internationally recognized expert on cults and mind control, is bringing to Purdue. At 7 tonight in Stewart Center's Fowler Hall, Loomis will discus the harmful effects of mind control and psychological manipulation as used by cults and other related groups. Admission to the talk, which is sponsored by the Purdue Student Union Board, University Residences and the Student Activities and Organizations Office, is free.
"There are cults that are actively recruiting students on every major campus in the U.S. and Canada, including Purdue," Loomis, who's been delivering lectures about cults for more than 25 years...)
September 24, 2003Ethical Issues in Religion Forum: Cults, High-Pressure Groups & New Religious Movements - Rutgers College Programs, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (Panel discussion featuring guest speaker, Deborah Layton, a People's Temple mass suicide survivor in Jonestown, Guyana. A regular lecturer at Stanford University and author of a first hand account of the tragedy, Ms. Layton will be joined by representatives of RU Campus Ministries and faculty members to discuss cults and high-pressure groups and the issues that characterize these types of "religious" groups. For more information, contact...)
...I'm wondering if this group might be a cult. How would I know? What can I do to help my roommate if she is involved with a cult?
...As you know, many people join groups when they are in college. However, there are some groups that may not be very positive.
College students are particularly vulnerable to cults because many students feel they have no direction
and are looking for some place to belong...)
August 24, 2003Freshmen get invitation to believe, by Chris Richards, Staff, Arizona Daily Star via MSNBC (Mixed in with the usual deals on pizza and new bank accounts greeting University of Arizona freshmen this semester are a large number of offers to connect with God...
...Campus religious groups are not supposed to proselytize to students who are already involved in a different faith, said First United Methodist Church's Rev. Dan Hurlbert...
...Hurlbert said the interfaith group works together to ensure the covenant against proselytizing is followed, and also that there's no cult activity...)
August 24, 2003 Freshmen get invitation to believe, by Chris Richards, Staff, Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Arizona (Mixed in with the usual deals on pizza and new bank accounts greeting University of Arizona freshmen this semester are a large number of offers to connect with God...
...Campus religious groups are not supposed to proselytize to students who are already involved in a different faith, said First United Methodist Church's Rev. Dan Hurlbert...
...Hurlbert said the interfaith group works together to ensure the covenant against proselytizing is followed, and also that there's no cult activity...)
August 14, 2003Religious Sect Members Admit Killing 9 Followers, by Yoon Ja-young, Staff Reporter, Korea Times (...According to the prosecution, one of leaders of the group, identified only by his surname Kim, admitted to the slaughter of nine believers, including a man identified by only his last name Ji who has been missing since August 1990. Ji's remains were found yesterday, buried at a hill near Kumkwang Reservoir in Ansung, Kyonggi Province, where investigators are also searching for another victim, identified by only his last name Chon.
The prosecution arrested Kim, along with the founder of the sect, identified by only his last name Cho, and another member Chong.
The organization was founded in Puchon, Kyonggi Province by Cho in 1981. Its main dogma is that eternal life can be obtained by observing Cho's 131 commandments, which include avoiding sexual relations during marriage...)
August 2003 "I got sucked into a cult," Seventeen Magazine (Carrie Andreson, 21, got lured into a mind-control hell...)
July 31, 2003 Cult worries surround Bible group, by Carmen Greco Jr., Daily Herald Staff Writer, Daily Herald via Yahoo! News, Chicago, Illinois
Amy Young was a freshman at the University of Illinois-Chicago in 1992 when a smiling woman approached her on campus one day...
...The woman who approached Young was a recruiter for University Bible Fellowship, an international evangelical Christian group that has become a fixture - in some cases, a controversial one - on college campuses...
...Young and other former members, who say the group's practices are heavy-handed and border on cult-like, have petitioned to ban University Bible Fellowship from holding the conference, which is expected to draw 1,000 members from around the Midwest...
...Ronald Enruth, a sociology professor at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif., was one of the experts the college contacted before approving the conference.
Enruth, who has written extensively on cults, cited the fellowship in his 1992 book, "Churches that Abuse."
"Based on my knowledge of them in the early 1990s, I would not want to call them a cult outright," he said. "But I would say they are ... potentially spiritually abusive."...
July 10, 2003Religious sect's leader visits local church site, by KELLY SULLIVAN, The Chariho Times, Rhode Island (HOPKINTON - He called himself a swami and wore the robes of a Hindu holy man. He took sacred lifelong vows of celibacy and eventually amassed a group of followers, but all was not as it seemed with the founder of the Ananda Church of Self-Realization.
James Donald Walters - Kriyananda as he dubbed himself - was charged and found guilty in 1998 of using his spiritual authority to exploit women. And last week Walters visited one of the sites of his Ananda Church, this one on Tomoquag Road in Hopkinton.
In 2000, the Ananda Rhode Island community was established on a wooded piece of property in the village of Ashaway. Walters, who now resides in Italy, visited the church there on Tuesday and Wednesday. Several devotees attended the $75 per day event, to hear their "Swami" speak.
"Cults are created by narcissists," said former Ananda Church member Donald Price of California during a telephone interview...
...Both Walters and members of his church were found by the court to have committed "constructive fraud", "intentional infliction of emotional distress" and "malice and fraudulent conduct" in a 1998 California court trial...
...Yet, many continue to follow him. To defend him, even worship him.
"[Walters] was always very respectful toward both men and women," said Karen Rider, who runs the Ananda Church in Hopkinton with her husband, Larry, in a January interview. "The testimony in court didn't describe the person I had known. When I moved to Ananda in 1988, it was the only place in my life I'd ever felt safe. I feel heartsick over the accusations."...
...The Ananda Church in California was supposedly based on the teachings and principals of Paramhansa Yogananda, an Indian Master. Ananda Churches eventually sprang up in Nevada, Palo Alto, Portland, Ore., Sacramento, Seattle, Europe and Rhode Island...)
July 6, 2003Counselor helps cult survivors, Story by Anne Cumming, Greeley Tribune, Colorado (Tiffany Hawkins didn't know what to do when she and a college friend started drifting apart...
...Since last fall, Hawkins has been a counselor at Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center in Albany, Ohio...
...Hawkins used to think only people who are weak emotionally and psychologically succumb to cults.
"I was wrong," she said. "Most of the people we see have average or above average intelligence. A lot of them lead normal lives. You'd never know they were in a cult."...)
June 27, 2003Bob Pardon to the rescue, by Chris Wright, Boston Phoenix, Massachusetts (...According to Steve Hassan, a Somerville-based cult researcher, those who scoff at cult victims are taking a simplistic view of the phenomenon. "They don’t understand that these groups use manipulative, deceptive techniques," he says. "They think, 'Oh, these people must be stupid.' But the people who join these groups are, for the most part, highly intelligent, well-educated people who were situationally vulnerable." Hassan himself was once lured into the Moonies — the church of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon — following a messy break-up with a girlfriend.
"With deception and manipulation," he says, "you can get very intelligent people to go along with very stupid things."...)
July 25, 2003CULT FAVORITE, Letters to the Editor, Boston Phoenix via Google's cache (I read your article about cults ["Bob Pardon to the Rescue," News and Features, June 27] with great interest, because I had a friend, Mark Laxer, who spent many years in the cult of Frederick Lenz, or Rama...)
June 24, 2003 7:30 PM Cult vs. Religion on Feature, WNYU Radio, New York University (Guests Include: Steven Hassan, author of Combating Cult Mind Control...Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults...Hassan will discuss what defines a cult and how to escape one if an individual is immersed in it...)
June 17, 2003Activist lawyers up for honors, by Josh Richman, Staff writer, Alameda Times-Star Online, Oakland, California (...A few other Bay Area attorneys were nominated as finalists as well. Ford Green of San Anselmo was nominated along with three Southern California attorneys for their work on a 22-year legal battle to collect a multi-million dollar jury verdict for a man who had claimed he was psychologically and financially ruined by the Church of Scientology...)
June 11, 2003Joyce Brothers: Test your knowledge about mind control, by Dr. Joyce Brothers, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Do most people have built-in resistance to thought control or brainwashing? Is our ability to resist it directly related to our intelligence? Is timing important to mind control?...)
Excerpts from June 5, 2003Political groups not to approach students, by Ananda Y. Ilcken, Times Staff Writer, University Times, California State University, Los Angeles (Supporters of presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, who typically set up their information table along Cal State L.A.'s main walkway, have been approaching students hoping to gain new boosters...
...They come everyday and have a talk with Dave [McNutt]," said William Lopez, a student assistant in the public affairs office.
According to Lopez, the LaRouche supporters have received permission from McNutt, director of public affairs, to be on campus each morning...
...2001 issue of the Pasadena City College Courier, PCC Chief of Campus Police Philip Mullendore complained of constant phone calls inviting students to meetings. Many who did attend the meetings soon dropped out of school to promote LaRouche's ideas full time...)
June 5, 2003New 'Discovery Seminars' aim to make transition easier for freshmen, by Tiesha Fields, The Daily University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (To make the transition from high school to college easier for incoming freshmen, the UW has started a new program. The University will offer classes called Discovery Seminars between summer and fall quarters...
...Class sizes are limited to 25 students, and freshmen are limited to one seminar. Some of the 25 seminars include ..."Sects and Violence: Cults, Religious Innovation and Social Conflict,"...)
April 17, 2003Cult Expert Janja Lalich Offers New Theory on Brainwashing, INSIDE Chico State, California State University, Chico (When NPR's Morning Edition and Fox's The O'Reilly Factor, along with radio stations and newspapers, needed an expert to comment on the dramatic return of Salt Lake City kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart and her possible "brainwashing," they turned to California State University, Chico sociology professor Janja Lalich.
An expert on cultic behavior and charismatic leaders, Lalich asserted that Smart may have bonded with her captors because of indoctrination daily to their reality, until she forgot the reality of her normal life. Such indoctrination may explain why she denied her true identity when confronted by police and why she did not try to escape.
Calling brainwashing a "misunderstood concept," Lalich prefers the term "bounded choice," one she coined for the way a "true believer" is constrained (or "bounded") in terms of choices available, making choices which may seem extreme or crazy to outsiders but are understandable within that environment...) (Photo of Janja Lalich included.)
March 20, 2003Brainwashing: Not just in wartime by RAY SIDDONS, Redlands Daily Facts, Redlands, California (Although the concept of "brainwashing" is usually associated with prisoners of war, there are examples in our everyday world, Kidnappings, cults, and domestic violence raise issues about victims and their ability to fight off or recover from brainwashing.
Brainwashing occurs when a person is overwhelmed physically and psychologically while under the control of the aggressor. The victim loses individual responsibility and decision making ability as the aggressor uses subtle or direct force to gain more and more dominance...)
March 15-16, 2003Healing Workshop for Former Members of undue influence groups (cults) - A two-day Workshop with Steven Hassan at the Ramada Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles, California.
Watch a June 2002 interview with Steven Hassan and Randall Watters on this subject (15 minutes) on RealVideo
March 11, 2003Rick Ross on Cults April 2, Etown News, Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania (What really is a "cult?" Could one exist on a college campus today? Nationally recognized "cultbuster" Rick Ross will answer those questions and more at Elizabethtown College...Ross will visit the College’s Leffler Chapel and Performance Center Wednesday, April 2 at 11:00 a.m. Admission is free, and the public is welcome to attend...)
Rick Ross, an internationally known expert on destructive cults, controversial groups and movements, will speak at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 7, in Hitchcock Auditorium on the Central Oregon Community College Bend campus. The event is free, and the public is invited. Ross will lead a panel of local professors and clergy to discuss
religious cults.
The conversation will examine the difference between
religions and cults while tackling other philosophical questions about why people join cults...)
February 18, 2003Researcher Finds His Place Among The Cults, by Christine Bai, Daily Nexus, University of California, Santa Barbara (...Published last December, J. Gordon Melton's seventh edition of the Encyclopedia of American Religion documents the existence of over 2,000 religious groups throughout the world...
...Melton said many Christians, secular apologists and countercult professionals disagree with his work and often attack him.
The Christian website "Apologetics Index" calls Melton a "cult apologist," and says many cults use his works "in their crusade against the anticult and countercult movements."...)
February 13, 2003Are there cults at St. John's? There could be..., by Thomas Winegar, The Torch, St John's University (Campus Ministry recently began distributing flyers alerting students to the dangers of high-pressure religious groups.
The flyers, which are available through Campus Ministry and Campus Activities, list warnings signs of high-pressure groups and offer ways to deal with them...
..."The purpose of the flyer is simply to educate students to this reality, which is nation-wide, and secondly, to let them know that if they are trapped that there are people they can talk to."...)
January 23, 2003Speaker to explore appeal, danger of cults - Lectures, Pennsylvania State University (Ron Loomis, cult awareness educator and consultant and education liaison with the American Family Foundation will present two talks on "Cults on Campus: The Appeal, the Danger" on the University Park campus...)
January 19, 2003From deprogramming to strategic interaction - Interview with Steven Alan Hassan, Religioscope (Steven Alan Hassan, M.Ed LMHC, has been a familiar name among those involved in the "cult controversies" for over twenty-six years. A former member of the Unification Church, he had originally been recruited into the Moon organization at the age of nineteen while a student at Queens College and spent twenty-seven months in the group. After leaving it, he has become over the years one of the leading figures among experts counseling people away from groups that they consider destructive. His impact goes beyond the United States. He has often been invited abroad. He is also the author of books translated into several languages: Combatting Cult Mind Control (1988, translated into Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Polish, Czech and Japanese) and Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves (2000, translated into Polish, Russian, and Chinese). A licensed mental health counselor, he is the director of "FreedomofMind.com", which is a web site and a resource center...)
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