December 30, 2004Sparsely, Sage and Timely - By David V. Mitchell, Point Reyes Light, Point Reyes Station, California (...1978 when the added expense of investigating the Synanon cult..
...Even after The Point Reyes Light, won a Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service in 1979 for its long-running exposé of the cult...)
December 12, 2004Beyond belief, The Observer, UK (United Kingdom) (...Wellspring Retreat, a rehab centre for ex-cult members in the US. Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center is ‘a residential treatment facility specialising in the rehabilitation of victims of cultic abuse'...)
By DENNIS YUSKO, Staff writer, Times Union, Albany, New York (ALBANY -- The U.S. Supreme Court denied without elaboration an appeal to review a case involving a Colonie human potential training company, free speech and the Internet.
The top court refused this week to hear from Nxivm, which hired the Washington law firm Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood to have allegations that the company is a cult struck from the Web site of cult researcher Rick Ross...
...Nxivm (pronounced NEX-ee-um) claims in its lawsuit that dissemination of confidential material caused the company to lose prominent members, thousands of dollars a day and more. But Ross' Albany attorney Thomas F. Gleason has portrayed the postings on Ross' Web site as Internet free speech...
...Nxivm -- originally Executive Success Programs -- trains people in Raniere's "Rational Inquiry" theory on New Karner Road...)
- By Jim Phillips, Athens NEWS Senior Writer, Athens News, Ohio
For almost two decades, a small clinic in rural Albany has been quietly helping people from all over the world break their dependence on brainwashing cults.
While the Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center goes about its business with little local fanfare, its work has earned attention from major media, including "CBS 48 Hours," "NBC Nightly News," "The Montel Williams Show" and the Chicago Tribune...
...Wellspring has treated nearly 800 residential patients, and consulted with thousands of others, as well as doing "extensive research" on the topic of cults...
October 13, 2004Death in the Family, AN SF WEEKLY SPECIAL REPORT BY LESSLEY ANDERSON, San Francisco, California (...That November evening marked the beginning of what would become one of the most sensational child abuse cases the Bay Area has seen. In the investigation that followed, it was revealed that the four women...were part of a mom-and-pop cult led by a dreadlocked, self-styled mystic named Winnfred Wright...) (Profanity and photos included.)
October 4, 2004Interfaith council hosts talk on cults, By GLENN BLAIN, THE JOURNAL NEWS, New York (Asking tough questions and not being afraid to say no are the best ways for people, especially children, to avoid becoming members of cults, a specialist on such groups said yesterday...)
Fall 2004Demystifying Cults, by Marion Harmon, Chico Statements, California State University, Chico
An insider's theory on why normal, intelligent people follow charismatic cult leaders
Thirty-year-old Janja Lalich came to San Francisco in 1975 after completing an undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin and a Fulbright fellowship in France. Smart, well educated, and strong-willed, she was also looking for something important to get involved in, something greater than herself that she could devote her talents and her passion to. She found it-or thought she had—in the Democratic Workers Party...
...In Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults (University of California Press, 2004), Lalich develops a new approach for understanding how charismatic cult leaders are able to dominate their devotees...
September 18, 2004 Biblio File Book Review: Chico State professor writes about cults, Chico Enterprise Record, Chico, California (...In an effort to better understand the dynamic at work between a potential cult member and the cult group and its leadership, Lalich has drawn on her own experience as a member of a political cult (the Democratic Workers Party) in the 1970s and '80s, as well as analysis of other cults (most notably Heaven's Gate), to propose a new theory. The result is "Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults"...)
September 8, 2004Death Sentence Upheld Again, By Kim Rahn, Staff Reporter, Korea Times, South Korea (Court Orders Execution of Doomsday Cult Member for Murders
...The Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling to hand down capital punishment to 62-year-old Ra Kyong-ok, a follower of the religious cult Yongsaenggyo, for orchestrating and committing the murders of the six fellow members on an order of the cult's leader, Cho Hui-song. Cho died in June of heart disease.
The court also sentenced three other members who assisted in the killings to jail terms ranging from 12 years to life imprisonment...)
September 3, 2004Editorial: Free Speech for Groups, Daily Californian, University of California, Berkeley (...There are also programs that student groups have probably never heard of, such as the "cult awareness" resources the Office of Student Life has....)
September 2, 2004Cult experience shapes book, By Marisa Demarco, Daily Lobo, University of New Mexico (Margaret Hollenbach dropped out.
She abandoned her master's degree in cultural anthropology and joined The Family, an apocalyptic cult that believed its members were the vanguard of the revolution.
Hollenbach wrote Lost and Found about the three most intense months of her life when she left her name and possessions to join a marriage commune in Taos in 1970...)
August 11, 2004Inspiring young heads, Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia (THE hottest ticket at The Grange College is a seat in teacher Lauren Wouda's psychology class...
...We look at group development topics like brainwashing and cults...)
August 12, 2004The power of cults, By Devanie Angel, Chico News & Review, California (How Chico State Prof. Janja Lalich went from cult member to author-expert
...They controlled her income and cut her off from her family...
... the Democratic Workers Party. Prominent in San Francisco politics in the 1970s, the DWP was reported on by the mainstream media, which exposed it as a cult...
...Lalich's theory goes beyond the "brainwashing" buzzword to focus on what drives decisions made by people in cults or cult-like relationships...)
August 10, 2004TAKING ANOTHER LOOK AT CULTS, University Communications & Public Relations, Northeastern University, Massachusetts
BOSTON, Mass. – According to Susan Setta, a Northeastern professor of philosophy and religion, cults and sects have gotten a bad rap. In her popular fall course, "Cults and Sects," students take a fresh look at religious movements that are usually labeled as fringe...
August 10, 2004New Book Offers Insight into Behavior of Cult Members, Chico News, California State University, Chico - Chico State (Sociologist Janja Lalich's book "Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults," has been released by the University of California Press. Lalich, a professor at California State University, Chico, is a writer, consultant and specialist in the study of cults and psychological manipulation and abuse.
Since the 1990s, Lalich has been sought by the national and local press...
...Lalich's theory of "bounded choice" suggests that intelligent and "normal" people who enter groups that often offer the promise of a more perfect world slowly give up their autonomy and choice under the influence of a charismatic leader...)
August 1, 2004How brainwashing came to life and thrived, Jeff Stryker, San Francisco Chronicle, California (...The Army conducted shipboard interviews with more than 4,000 returning American prisoners of the Korean conflict. Robert Jay Lifton, one of the psychiatrists who conducted the interviews, analyzed them in his 1961 classic book, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism."
Lifton concluded that the Chinese interrogation techniques were merely time-honored methods of psychological coercion: isolation, humiliation and the repetition of propaganda...
...The question of whether religious cults were brainwashing adherents kept the notion alive through the 1960s and '70s. Brainwashing was claimed as a defense in a number of American court cases...)
July 28, 2004Mind control: More than just a plot point?, By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY, (...But "mind control" is a different matter. "If you polled psychologists about whether people can exert psychological influence over others, most would likely say yes," Hassan says. Cults, for example, typically impose gradually increasing limits on behavior, information, emotions and thinking in members to control their lives...)
July 26, 2004A Manchurian Candidate in Our Midst?, By Denise Mann, WebMD Feature (The movie's brainwashing premise is still fiction, but it may be possible, experts say...)
June 2004 Campus chaplains: cult training and perceptions - (PDF Version) by Russell K. Elleven, Kimberly J. Greenhaw, Jeff Allen - College Student Journal, Mobile, Alabama (This article examines the perception of 43 college chaplains across the United States with regard to cult training and perceptions of college and university cult activity. Campus chaplains are in a unique and challenging position on college campuses to assist students and confront cult issues. The results of the survey indicate that most campus chaplains have had surprisingly little formal training with regard to cultic groups and often perceive faculty, staff, and students as requiring additional education regarding cult issues on college campuses...
...The question of college student involvement in cults on campus continues to be a subject that merits examination...)
June 2004Center gives ex-cult members spiritual help, By Jennifer Woods, Science & Theology News, Massachusetts (...Since September, Birdwell has been living with her two sons in Lakeville, Mass., at MeadowHaven, a recovery center for people who have left high-control cults.
MeadowHaven, which opened in 2002, offers a long-term program to help ex-cult members regain their independence with counseling, group therapy, seminars and other resources to explore their spirituality and heal psychologically.
The Rev. Robert Pardon and his wife Judith, who run the center, said ex-cult members typically suffer from symptoms such as depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, flashbacks, nightmares, sleep disorders, anxiety and phobias...)
June 11, 2004Cults active in Alberta, CBC Edmonton, Canada (Edmonton - A professor at the University of Alberta says cults are active in the Edmonton area.
A conference on cults involving experts from all over the world is underway at the university.
Stephen Kent warns some groups are targeting foreign students on the university campus.
He says the cults invite students into the group under the guise of helping them improve their English skills...)
May 27, 2004Warning about high pressure religious groups on campus, Maggie O'Mara, Idaho's NewsChannel 7 - BOISE -- Before you send your child off to college, you warn them about drinking and drugs. But have you ever considered warning them about high pressure religious groups? A local family says their kids were targeted on the BSU campus and they want you to know what to look out for...
May 14, 2004Cults targeted at campus security conference, by Ryan Smith, University of Alberta, Canada (University students are often vulnerable recruitment targets for potentially harmful groups, says Dr. Stephen Kent, a sociology professor at the University of Alberta.
"Students are often seen as ideal targets for a variety of reasons," Kent said.
In particular, undergraduate students are often in transitional phases of their lives...)
"I had just broken up with my girlfriend, and three attractive women approached me and asked if they could sit at my table. They got me into a conversation and eventually invited me over for dinner."
Hassan, who spoke to the Forward during an interview from his office in Somerville, Mass., described this encounter as the beginning of his journey into the world of cults.
It would take more than two years for Hassan - who was raised in a Conservative home - to discover the ulterior motives behind the seemingly harmless invitation. The women were not students; they were members of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church (a.k.a., "The Moonies"), and he was "hooked."...
..."Not surprisingly, cult groups have been very unhappy with my work," said Hassan, now a licensed mental health counselor and the author of the highly successful "Combating Cult Mind Control" and "Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves."...
..."People can go to sites like my own freedomofmind.com to find out information that will help them avoid cults," he said...)
April 26, 2004Cult banned from K-State sues Minnesota, Joanna Rubick, Kansas State Collegian, Kansas State University (A cult that was banned at K-State over 20 years ago has shown its face again on a different campus.
The group is commonly known as Maranatha, and it has re-emerged at the University of Minnesota. It is suing Minnesota because the university is not allowing it to become a student group...
...Maranatha was banned from K-State in 1983. The investigation at K-State was part of a two-year investigation from 1982-84 that was taking place at many universities across the nation, Macinstad said...)
Many college students join extracurricular activities and groups that give them a sense of belonging and allow them to escape from the stresses of academic life. But college administrators are urging students to be wary of groups that may seem a little too eager to expand their membership.
Cults have not recently received the media attention they have in the past, but that does not mean they are no longer a problem on college campuses, said cult expert Steve Hassan of the Cambridge-based Resource Center for Freedom of Mind...
March 15, 20049 bodies unclaimed in Fresno massacre, / Coroner pleads for relatives to help ID victims - Meredith May and Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writers, San Francisco Chronicle, California (Fresno -- Coroners performing autopsies on the nine victims of a family massacre pleaded Sunday for the surviving mothers and relatives to come forward to help identify the bodies that were found entangled and piled atop one another...
...The family silence following the deaths does not surprise cult expert Janja Lalich, a sociology professor at California State University at Chico and author of "Women Under the Influence: A Study of Women's Lives in Totalist Groups."...)
March 4, 2004Brainwash victims get help putting pieces back, by Dave Wedge, Boston Herald, Massachusetts (Ex-cultist Karen Robidoux is just one of several mind-control group escapees recovering from a life of brainwashing at a unique Lakeville deprogramming center.
"It bothers me terribly that people are used and abused in the name of God," said Robert Pardon, director of the nonprofit New England Institute for Religious Research and the Meadow Haven safe house.
Meadow Haven has eight beds currently occupied by defectors from the Moonies, the Twelve Tribes and Baruch Ha Shem...)
February 28, 2004 - Washington, D.C.Cults on Campus: The Appeal, the Danger - Sharing Our Stories, ACUI's 84th Annual Conference - Association of College Unions International
February 20, 2004Cult expert speaks to students, By Michelle Springer, The Etownian, Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania (This past Wednesday-at-11, Elizabethtown College welcomed Rick Ross to Leffler Chapel where he presented "Destructive Cults: The Risk Factor for Young Adults."...)
February 2, 2004Doomsday Cult Leader Given Death Penalty, by Kim Rahn, The Korea Times, South Korea (A doomsday religious cult leader was on Monday sentenced to death for ordering his aides to kill six followers between 1990 and 1992.
The Suwon District Court handed down the death penalty to Cho Hui-song, 72, chief of the Yongsaenggyo cult, who had been arrested on charges of plotting to murder his own believers who tried to challenge his doomsday theory or threatened to reveal his wrongdoings...)
January 24, 2004 Facts about cults, Harvey Shepherd, Montreal Gazette, Canada (Understanding group dynamics is the most important step in preventing abuse by groups, Info-Cult leader says...
...The book uses the bloody and well known histories of three groups to make its point: the saga of Roch (Moïse) Thériault and his followers in Quebec and Ontario between about 1978 and 1990, the Solar Temple murders and suicides in Quebec, France and Switzerland in 1994, 1995 and 1997 and the suicide of 39 members of the Heaven's Gate group in California in 1997...)
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