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AFF 2002 Annual Conference

Understanding Cults and New Religious Movements

June 14-15, 2002

Crowne Plaza Hotel Orlando (FL) Airport

An Exchange of Ideas

As it has been for more than two decades, the AFF 2002 Conference was an open exchange of ideas and views from a variety of perspectives on issues that continue to engage our professional interest and personal concern. The quality and diversity of presentations in Orlando revealed the continuing growth and sophistication of research and education on cultic processes in the last quarter-century, a process in which AFF has played a major role. The Conference was also distinguished by a sense that we increasingly appreciate each other’s viewpoints and more willingly modify our own as we together seek understanding.

The Conference brought together families and ex-group members and scholars, helping professionals, and experts in a variety of fields, including law and government, from the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Switzerland, Norway, China, Spain, Mexico, and Japan.  This stimulating variety of attendees is a distinguishing hallmark of AFF conferences.

Videotapes of the conference are available – see below. Many contributors to the programs below wrote papers that will soon be published in AFF’s Internet journal, Cultic Studies Review.

This report was prepared by Dr. Robert Schecter, News Editor of Cultic Studies Review (CSR) and long-time editor of AFF’s Cult Observer, which was merged into CSR in 2002.

Workshops

A full day of pre-Conference workshops was designed especially for former members and parents harmed by cult involvement, and for professionals who help families deal with the experience.

Workshop for Former Group Members

More than 70 former members participated in this preconference workshop, which was led by thought reform consultants Carol Giambalvo and Joseph Kelley. (Ms. Giambalvo, a former group member, is the author of Exit Counseling: A Family Intervention, and co-author with Mr. Kelley of “Ethical Standards for Thought Reform Consultants.”) Many participants commented that the sharing of experiences during this workshop enabled them to develop or strengthen relationships with others, thereby enhancing their capacity to benefit from the conference proper.

Workshop for Family Members

Led by Livia Bardin, M.S.W., a therapist and clinical social worker who specializes in cult-related cases, and thought reform consultant Patrick Ryan, a former member himself and a contributor to AFF’s Recovery from Cults, this workshop gives families conceptual tools to help them deal with a loved one’s cult involvement. The session aimed, among other things, to “demystify” the cult experience so that relatives of those in cults feel more able to become involved in helping. Ms. Bardin’s Coping with Cult Involvement: A Handbook for Families and Friends, was inspired by nearly 10 years of these family workshops.  The book is a required text for the workshop and an indispensable resource for families.

Workshop for Mental Health Professionals

This workshop included guidance from Roseanne Henry, M.A., L.P.C., a psychotherapist from Denver who specializes in the treatment of cult survivors and their families; Lorna Goldberg, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., a member of the faculty of the New Jersey Institute for Training in Psychoanalysis and co-leader of an ex-member support group for the past 25 years; William Goldberg, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., a therapist in private practice, Director of the Community Support Center of the Rockland County (NY) Department of Mental Health, and co-leader of an ex-member support group for the past 25 years; and Josep Maria Jansa, M.D., a researcher and clinician who has worked since 1984 with AIS (Assessment and Information on Cults) in Barcelona, Spain.  After an overview lecture by Ms. Henry the participants described and discussed clinical cases that they have worked on.

Parent Discussions

Parents with Little Contact with Loved Ones

A Discussion Group for parents who have had little contact with group-involved children provided advice on how to regain and increase such contact from Arnold Markowitz, C.S.W., Director of the Cult Hot Line and Clinic of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services in New York City, and Dana Wehle, C.S.W., a psychotherapist at the Cult Hot Line and Clinic. This

Parent Support Networks

Organizing Parent Support Groups was the title of a conference panel coordinated by Ronald Loomis, a cult educator and former President of the Cult Awareness Network. The panelists, who also joined with Mr. Loomis to present a session on The Roberts Group Parents Network (TRGPN), included: James I. Foster, co-founder of the Jim Roberts Parent Group, a former Interim Director of Spiritual Counterfeits Project, and the father of a Roberts Group member; Larry W. Wilcox, whose book From Dean’s List to Dumpster: Why I Left Harvard to Join a Cult, is about his son’s involvement in the Roberts group (where he remains); and Joseph Szimhart, a researcher and exit counselor.  TRGPN is a model on which future parent support networks may be based.

Exit Counseling as a Family Change Process

Exit counselor Steven Hassan, author of Combating Cult Mind Control and Releasing the Bonds (both available from AFF), discussed his “strategic interaction approach” to counseling, and contrasted his emphasis on the process of change with what he described as a traditional exit-counseling model that, he said, stresses pure content or information. The focus of counseling for him, detailed in Releasing the Bonds, is “on the growth of the entire family and support network, as well as on the cult member.”

Development of a Counseling Group — RITIRN

Steve Dubrow Eichel, Ph.D., Roberta C. Eisenberg, M.S.W., and Linda Jayne Dubrow, Ph.D. told of their backgrounds, and how they first came together twenty years ago to found RITIRN (Re-entry Therapy Information and Referral Network). At the time, Steve Dubrow Eichel had already done psychological research on cultic processes under Professor Arthur Dole, at the University of Pennsylvania. Ms. Eisenberg, whose husband was for a time involved in a cultic group, had become a counselor and educator in the field for the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services in Philadelphia. Dr. Dubrow had done research on the psychology of group pressure. It was only natural that they might gravitate to similar venues professionally, and so it was that they connected through Ms. Eisenberg’s appearance with her husband on a television panel concerning cults, where Dr. Dubrow Eichel was also a panelist.

The three at first informally consulted one another on cult-related issues, but then founded RITIRN so that they could work as a team to help individuals and families deal with cult involvement. They abjured “deprogramming” in the belief that understanding family dynamics was the key to re-involving and reuniting cult members with their close kin. They did not become experts in this or that cult, but rather approached particular cases from the perspective of general psychological principles, and their growing understanding of extreme psychological and social influence. They also continued to do follow-up work — as they still do — with individuals after exit counseling, in some cases still maintaining a connection with people who remained in the cult. Five years ago, RITIRN began a support group for former members; it meets monthly at no charge. (Dr. Dubrow noted that people who had been in therapy cults, which typically milk victims of a great deal of money, were understandably reticent to pay for legitimate therapy.)

Reports on Particular Groups

Church Universal and Triumphant

Joseph Szimhart, a researcher and exit counselor who was himself once a member of the Church Universal and Triumphant, reported on CUT’s history, its decline to only a few thousand active members since 1993, when leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet began suffering from dementia, and its “exposure” by ex-members in 400 Years of Imaginary Friends, by Kenneth and Talita Paolini.

International Churches of Christ (ICCC)

This session opened with Carol Giambalvo, exit counselor and author of Exit Counseling: A Family Intervention, describing the cultic characteristics of the International Churches of Christ (formerly known as the Boston Church of Christ Movement and the Crossroads Church of Christ Movement) based on her first hand research. She noted, among other things, its pyramidal structure, the exclusive view of scripture claimed by the leader, the total control of members’ lives, the isolation from outside influences, systematic induction of phobias to prevent apostasy, and unhealthy personality changes.

Ms. Giambalvo, who also co-edited (with Herbert Rosedale) The Boston Movement: Critical Perspectives on the International Churches of Christ, presented a case study illustrating how she worked to educate and otherwise prepare a family to persuade a daughter to leave the ICCC. She concluded by discussing the many grave problems that former members frequently have in regaining personal stability and adjusting to life outside of the group.

Thought reform consultant David Clark, the chair of AFF’s Video Education Committee and contributor to AFF’s Recovery from Cults (W.W. Norton) gave some general background on the group, offered advice, as an exit counselor with more than 20 years experience, on what families can do, and described the exit counseling process.

Former ICCC staff member Kathy Kelly, M.A., now a thought reform consultant, concluded the panel by recounting how “the ICCC drew me into their web . . .  reeled me in with God, friendship and ‘unconditional’ love . . . and held me tight with guilt and fear.” She also related her “awakening,” and told about the intervention that led to her leaving, and about her life since then.

Unification Church — “Growing Up in the Moonies”

Social anthropologist Flore Singer Aaslid, speaking of her upbringing in the Unification Church, said that the most enduring “side effect” is the “relentless, almost haunting, yet mostly exasperating feeling of never quite fitting in — anywhere.” Her parents were missionaries and she never lived in one place for more than two years, and always with “caretakers,” while her parents did the church’s work of “saving the world” and treating her, in her mother’s words, as “a sacrifice for the greater good.”

Constant moving, learning new languages, making new friends — Ms. Aaslid says she was good at this. She joined the Girl Scouts, the swim, club, the ski club, the glee club, wherever she happened to be — only to be torn away to repeat the process over and over. This made her feel like a “misfit,” without a sense of belonging and identification with family or community.

Nor did she feel a strong sense of belonging to the “inside world” of the church, which involved 21-day fasting, “hysterical” praying for days on end, and fundraising, all motivated by a continuous struggle to pay “indemnity” for Eve’s original sin. Worse, Ms. Aaslid was considered an “unblessed” child because she had been born out of wedlock. Excluded from certain rituals, in many ways socially marginalized, and often reminded of her inferiority, she grew up to feel like “an outcast, a recluse, a misfit.”

Ms. Aaslid says in retrospect that she had two options. First, risk her “fragile psyche” and continue to believe that she was inferior. Second, the option she chose, believe that she was “surrounded by a group of gibbering morons.” She tried to ignore church beliefs, and to keep the “inside” and “outside” worlds separate. She was unable psychologically to achieve this fully, however, and the attempt was often a terrible strain.

In choosing this direction, says Ms. Aaslid, she was perhaps better off than the “blessed” children born to married Unification Church couples. Saving the world depended on these “special” kids, and they knew it. “My guess is that it is much harder to disregard and block out positive affirmations that build self-esteem and make one feel like a Very Important Person than it is to ignore a belief system that ultimately makes one feel like a little piece of poop. In other words, I was blessed to have been unblessed. (Life is funny that way.)”

Donna Collins, who also grew up in the Unification Church — her parents were leaders in Britain — coordinated the session, which included Prof. Eileen Barker, of the University of London, who has studied the Unification Church for many years. Prof. Barker noted that the appearance of a second generation raised in the group has led to important changes in its organization that involve less “experimentation” with child rearing.

Discussant Steve Dubrow Eichel, Ph.D., a clinician from Philadelphia, reviewed a set of characteristics he sees in cult leavers: identity problems, shifting moods, affective disorders, difficulties with certain thought processes, and a conflict between magical and logical thinking.

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