Greetings and much Shalom
The following little guide has been collated and edited from several studies, books, and periodicals and after many years of hard-won field experience. The guide is primarily for our own use but we thought there were points in it that may be of interest to you and perhaps help you better understand the children :
A GUIDE ON CULTS AND HOW TO COMBAT THEM.
Imagine if you will, the following scenes:
Saffron-robed men on street corners dancing and chanting with cymbals and drums. Bedraggled teenagers running from car to car selling flowers in the pouring rain. High-strung men in suits and ties confronting people in airport lobbies for money to quarantine AIDS victims and build particle-beam weapons. Over nine hundred people -men, women, and children; white and black - lying face down in the mud at Jonestown, Guyana.
Mention "cults" to someone and these are the images you will evoke. Many of us have seen such images ourselves, either through personal experience or through the mass media.
Yet these images do not represent the overall destructive cult phenomenon as it has become today. They are only its most visible aspect.
Imagine then, a different set of images:
Business executives in three-piece suits sitting in hotel ballrooms for company-sponsored "awareness" training, unable to get up to go to the bathroom. Housewives attending "psych-up rallies" so they can recruit friends and neighbors into a pyramid sales organization. Hundreds of students gathering at an accredited university being told they can levitate and "fly" through the air if they only meditate long enough. High-school students practicing satanic rituals involving blood and urine directed by an older leader who claims he will develop their personal power. Hundreds of people of every description paying huge sums to learn cosmic truths from a "channeled" spirit.
These are some of the forms the destructive cult phenomenon is taking today.
Do you know anyone who has undergone a radical personality change of an involvement with such a group? The odds are that someone you know - someone in your family, one of your friends, someone from work or school - has been affected by contact with a destructive cult. If not, it is probably just a matter of time before this happens.
In the past twenty years the destructive cult phenomenon has mushroomed into a problem of tremendous social and political importance. It is estimated that there are now approximately three thousand destructive cults in the United States involving as many as three million people. They come in many different types and sizes. Some cults have hundreds of millions of dollars, while others are quite poor. Some, however, are clearly more dangerous than others. Not content to exercise their power simply over the lives of their members , they have an agenda to gain political power and use it to reshape American society - and, in the case of some of them, even the world.
Considering how well destructive cults have been able to shield themselves from public scrutiny in the past few years, it might seem alarmist to regard them as a threat to individual liberty and society as a whole. Yet they are influencing the political landscape by extensive lobbying efforts and electioneering for candidates. Some are attempting to influence United States foreign policy by lobbying covertly for foreign powers. The Moonies have been found to be a major supplier of money and guns to the contra forces in Nicaragua. They also invested between $70 million and $100 million in Uruguay, perhaps in an attempt to turn that country into the cult's first theocratic state - a springboard from which to pursue its declared goal "to conquer and subjugate the world".
In the United States, cults exert tremendous economic clout by buying up huge blocks of real estate and taking over hundreds of businesses. Some enter corporations under the pretense of offering executive leadership training, while harboring a covert agenda to take over the company. Some seek to influence the judicial system by spending millions of dollars annually on top attorneys to try to bend the law to their will.
Since all destructive cults believe that the ends justify the means, they believe themselves to be above the law. As long as they believe that what they are doing is "right" and "just", many of them think nothing of lying, stealing, cheating, or unethically using mind control to accomplish their ends. They violate, in the most profound and fundamental way, the civil liberties of the people they recruit. They turn unsuspecting people into slaves.
What right do we have to call a group a destructive cult, anyway? Our right to freely express our opinion short of libeling someone is, of course, guaranteed by the United States Constitution. Yet, when we call a cult "destructive" we do so because it meets the criteria. In brief, it is a group which violates the rights of its members and damages them through the abusive techniques of unethical mind control. Not all groups which might be called "cults" because they appear to incorporate strange beliefs and practices are necessarily destructive. A destructive cult distinguishes itself from a normal social or religious group by subjecting its members to persuasion or other damaging influences to keep them in the group.
Methods of operation are what make cults destructive. How a group recruits and what happens during membership determine whether or not it respects people's rights to choose for themselves what they want to believe. If deception, hypnosis, and other mind control techniques are used to recruit and control followers, then people's rights are being infringed upon.
"Cults" are not new. Throughout history, groups of enthusiasts have sprung up around charismatic leaders of every possible description. But in recent years, something has been added: the systematic use of modern psychological techniques to reduce a person's will and gain control over his or her thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
While we usually think of "cults" as being religious (the first definition of "cult" in Webster's Third New International Dictionary is "religious practice: worship"), actually they are often completely secular. Wester's also defines "cult" as "a usually small or narrow circle of persons united by devotion or allegiance to some artistic or intellectual program, tendency, or figure (as one of limited popular appeal)". That second definition begins to come close to the meaning of a modern cult but falls a bit short. Modern cults have virtually unlimited popular appeal. For the sake of brevity, we will refer to many groups from now on as simply "cults". You may assume, though, that we use that term only for groups which fit the criteria for being destructive.
In times past, cult or sect leaders could be very compelling, often abusively so. Charges of mind control against them have a long history. But the leaders gained their dominance over followers in a relatively hit-or-miss way, learning as they went along. Cult leadership was an art practiced by the very few. In some cases, groups which were originally considered cults in their earliest days have grown to become respected, mainline religions, such as Christian Science, which came into prominence around the turn of the century. Yet even mainline religious organizations can have destructive aspects and can have elements shared by newer destructive cults.
In our time, mind control is becoming more of a science. Since World War II, intelligence agencies around the world have become aggressively involved in mind control research and development. The CIA admits to having performed drug, electroshock, and hypnosis experiments since the early 1950s under the code name MK-ULTRA. Research has expanded into other areas since then.
A generation ago, the human potential development movement in psychology began to experiment with procedures to direct individual and group dynamics. These techniques were developed with the best of motives: to force people out of debilitating mental ruts and show them how truly different they could become. During the 1960s, a form of group therapy known as a sensitivity session became popular. In such a meeting, people were encouraged to speak about their most intimate personal matter with other people in a group setting. One technique widely popular at the time was the "hot seat", whereby a member of the group sat in the center of the circle while other members confronted him with what they considered to be his shortcomings or problems. Needless to say, without the supervisions of an experienced therapist, such a technique opens up considerable possibilities for abuse.
Another development which began to affect many people was the popularization of hypnosis, in particular through the system known as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Increasing numbers of people were introduced to certain techniques for inducing hypnotic trance, but often without adequate consideration of the ethical aspects of working with the subconscious mind.
Originally these group process methods were used only on willing participants, and positive experiences were reported by many of them. Soon, though, some of these techniques percolated out into the general culture of pop psychology, where they became available for anyone to abuse. Unscrupulous persons began using them to gain money and power by manipulating a group of followers. The "hot seat" in particular is used in a number of destructive cults, according to former cult members.
Many members of pop psychology groups drifted from one organization to another, carrying the styles of group dynamics with them. Sect leaders of all types began realizing the success that the new methods of cult management could bring. The modern cult phenomenon was under way.
Because of increased media coverage, people in the United States began to become aware of the new cults in the middle of the late 1970s. Who can forget the spectacle of Patty Hearst, the daughter of one of the country's most powerful newspaper publishers, William Randolph Hearst, transformed into "Tania", a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a left-wing terrorist cult?
As public awareness of cult membership began to grow, we saw the birth of deprogramming. Professional deprogrammers like Ted Patrick hired by a cult member's family would forcibly abduct the person and, often in a secluded motel room, try to reverse the cult's "brainwashing". Thousands of cult members were indeed "de-brainwashed" permanently, and they gave dramatic public testimony of how cult mind control worked. Many other deprogrammings failed, and members and cults sometimes brought lawsuits against families and deprogrammers.
Many families with members in destructive cults found kidnapping repugnant, the financial burden great, and the threat of lawsuits intimidating. It they didn't want to try a forcible deprogramming, they had no choice but to be patient and wait for something to happen. The family members of friends of many people remained in cults throughout the mid-1970s. Then something happened to change the way the whole nation perceived destructive cults: the massacre at Jonestown.
Above Jones's throne was affixed a sign which read "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it". While no-one can explain why Jones chose that saying from George Santayana as his motto, the truth in that message, ironically, is relevant to us today as we examine the recent history of cults and think about the implications..
When most people begin to search for ways to release friends or relatives from cults, they know little or nothing about mind control, the characteristics of destructive cults or how to go about rescuing somebody in a cult. Sometimes the only available option is "deprogramming", without knowing that deprogramming involves forcible abduction of the cult member, a fee of from $18,000 to $30,000, and lengthy sessions intended to restore the person to himself. We endeavor to solicit charity funds to reduce the burden on those who do not have the means for this possibly very expensive task.
Non-coercive ways to help now exist. Exit-counselors are now using therapeutic techniques that are well established in the mental health profession, along with the latest techniques in counseling. In addition, at present almost all exit-counselors are themselves former cult members.
By the late 1970s, the question of cult mind control had become intertwined in the public eye with the issue of forcible deprogramming. This occurrence was partly the result of public relations campaigns financed by certain major cults to discredit critics and divert the debate from the cults themselves.
The propaganda labeled deprogramming as the "greatest threat to religious liberty of all time". Deprogrammers were falsely portrayed as beating and raping people to force them to recant their religious beliefs. Influenced by this campaign, at least one movie portrayed the deprogrammers as money-hungry thugs who were just as bad as cult leaders.
For the record, we know of no instance of deprogramming (and we have met hundreds of deprogrammees) that involved any physical abuse such as beating. No family we have ever met would go to the extreme of rescuing a loved one through deprogramming and allow anyone to harm their child in anyway.
Nevertheless, the truth is that deprogramming is extremely risky in legal terms and often emotionally traumatic. IN a classical deprogramming, a cult member would be located and physically snatched off a street corner, hurled into a waiting car or van, and driven to a secret location, perhaps a motel room. There the security team would guard him twenty-four hours a day, while the deprogrammer, former cult members, and family members present information and argued with him. Windows would be nailed shut or barricaded, because members had been known to dive out of a second-storey window to avoid the so-called "faith-breaking" process. The member would sometimes be accompanied to the bathroom in an effort to prevent suicide attempts. He would be held for days, perhaps weeks, until he "snapped out of " the cult's mind control or, in some cases, pretended to do so.
In the deprogramming s we have executed, the cult member was usually confronted while visiting home rather than grabbed off a sidewalk. Even so, when the cult member was told he or she couldn't leave, there was almost always a violent reaction. We have been punched, kicked and spat on; had hot coffee thrown in our faces; and had tape recorders hurled at us. Cult members are indoctrinated to behave that way: to stay "faithful" to the group no matter what. At first the cult member often becomes even more convinced that his family, which has resorted to such extremes, is the very embodiment of evil.
In such situations the cult member's anger and resentment can take years to dissipate, even if the deprogramming is successful. We knew one woman who, several years after she was deprogrammed from a short-term membership in the Moonies, rejoined the group for over a year and then quit on her own - as if, she told us, she had to prove she could do it by herself. Unfortunately, during that time in the group she was paraded around, denouncing deprogramming all over the United States.
There is nothing so terrifying as being held prisoner thinking you are about to be tortured - the experience that cult leaders drill members to expect in a deprogramming. As you can imagine, good counseling in such a situation is difficult at best. The member immediately clams up, chanting, praying, or meditating to shut out any external influence. It may be hours or days before he sees that the cult leader was wrong - that he isn't going to be tortured, that the deprogrammers are caring, sensitive people, and there really are legitimate questions to be looked at. Only then does he start to respond.
The non-coercive approach we have developed attempts to accomplish with finesse what deprogramming does with force. Family members and friends have to work together as a team and plan their strategy to influence the cult member. Although the non-coercive approach will not work in every case, it has proved to be the option most families prefer. Forcible intervention can be kept as a last resort if all other attempts fail.
The non-coercive approach requires excellent information in order to succeed. At the first phone call, the information-gathering and information-disseminating begins.
THE BELIEFS UNDERLYING OUR APPROACH.
Since cults lure people into what amounts to a psychological trap, our job as exit-counselors is to show a cult member four things:
First, we demonstrate to him that he is in a trap - a situation where he is psychologically disabled and can't get out.
Second, we show him that he did not originally choose to enter the trap.
Third, we point out that other people in other groups are in similar traps.
Fourth, we tell him that it is possible to get out of the trap.
While these four points might seem very obvious to people outside the cult, they are not all immediately apparent to anyone under mind control. It takes someone who really knows what it means to be caught in the trap of a destructive cult to convey this message with the necessary strength and determination. This last reason is why former members, especially former cult leaders, make the best exit-counselors.
Our approach rests on several core beliefs about people. One is that people need and want to grow. Life is ever-changing, and people inherently move in a direction that will support and encourage growth.
It is important that people focus on the here-and-now. What has been done in the past is over. The focus should not be on what they "did wrong" or "didn't do", but on what they can do now. The past is useful only insofar as it provides information that may be valuable to the present.
It is also our observation and belief that people will always choose what they think is best for them at any given time. In our experience, people will always do what they believe is best for them on the basis of their information and experiences. The member permitted himself to be indoctrinated in the first place only because he believed that the group was wonderful and that he had something to gain from it.
We also believe that everyone is unique and that every situation is different. Each person has a special way of understanding and inter-reacting with reality. Therefore, our approach is totally client-centered. We adjust ourselves to fit the client's needs. We do not expect him to fit our needs. In our approach, the counselor's job is to understand the person thoroughly - what he values, what he needs, what he wants, and how he thinks. We have to be able to step inside his head - in a way, to "be him", in order to understand and help him do what he wants to do. Our approach depends on having faith that deep, deep down, even the most committed member of a mind control group wants out.
Last, our approach is family-centered. When someone is recruited into a destructive cult, everyone he knows and loves is affected. Family members and friends are vital in most successful cases. They can be trained to be maximally effective whenever they communicate with the cult member. In this way, emotional and personal leverage can be used to gain his cooperation.
Of course, this way of working demands a lot from the family. They must be willing to learn new ways of communicating, and to deal with troublesome issues that may be lying dormant. It there are any significant family problems, they are best addressed and, it is hoped, resolved before an intervention is attempted.
When the focus is kept on the family, everyone changes. The cult member becomes aware that positive things are occurring outside the group. Family members learn how to build up rapport and trust, and how to plant questions in the cult member's mind.
A family's love is a much stronger force than the conditional love given by cult members and leaders. A family's love supports one's right to grow into an autonomous adult and make one's own life decisions. A cult's love attempts to keep a person forever as a dependent adolescent - threatening to be withdrawn if the person makes his own life decisions that differ from the leader's orders. When family members learn how to interact effectively, they do a great deal to help the individual come away from the group. During the intervention, this factor becomes crucial.
When we counsel a cultist, we never try to take the group away from him or him away from the group. If we did he would only feel threatened, and rightly so. Instead, we always look for ways for him to grow by offering different perspectives and possibilities. We help people to see choices they didn't know existed, then encourage them to do what they think is best for them. We do whatever we can to let them feel in control.
As we have said before, cult mind control never really succeeds in erasing a person's core self ("John-John"). It does impose a dominating cult identity ("John-cultist") that continually suppresses the real self. A Unification Church member thought that he had successfully "died to himself". Steve Moonie thought that the old Steve Jones was dead. Yet the core "him" woke up during his deprogramming. He had been there all along. He was able to remember all the contradictions, conflicts, and broken promises of Moon that he had experienced - but not acted on - while a member. That realization enable him to leave.
Successfully connecting with a person's core identity is what enables me to help someone walk away from a cult. If the core identity is happy and content with the cult involvement, there is little we can do. Such a person must not be mind controlled at all. He has just chosen to be there. But such people rarely come to my attention. Families call because they observe something terrible happening. And we have discovered that when somebody in slavery is given a free choice, he or she does not choose to be enslaved - not when he could be making decisions for his own life, having unrestricted normal relationships with people, and pursuing his own interests and dreams.
Along with these core beliefs, our approach has some very distinctive features. First, we focus on the process of change. What this means is that how people come to change is more important than what or why they change. Since we believe that people are interested in growing and learning, our approach is also educational. We do a lot of teaching - about psychology, communication, mind control issues, and other destructive cults, as well as a lot about the particular group's history, leadership and doctrinal contradictions.
DIFFICULT CASES: THE COVERT INTERVENTION.
When a cult member refuses to speak with people who can offer him "the other side of the story", or walks out of an intervention and returns to the cult, all is not lost. Communication about key issues has at least been opened. He might feel badly about he treated his loved ones and agreed to talk at a future date.
The timing of the intervention may have been poor. Perhaps it happened right after the person can from an intensive re-indoctrination experience, or just got married in the group, or received a promotion. Timing can make all the difference. Naturally, the best time is when the member is in a "down" period. There are cycles of emotional ups and downs in a cult member's life as with anyone else.
After a failed intervention, it might take several weeks or months or years for a family to re-establish a relationship with the cultist. At that point they have two choices. They can back off, telling the member they've done all they can and that when he wants to look at the information or talk to former members, they'll be happy to accommodate him. Or they can choose to attempt a covert intervention.
A covert intervention is the most difficult to accomplish successfully. It is an attempt to counsel the cult member without his knowing that the family is trying to help him re-evaluate his involvement. It is tricky to find a pretext for us to meet the individual and gain enough time to do much good.
Someone observing the preparations for a covert operation would be reminded of the Television Program "Mission Impossible". A team is assembled. The target's psychological profile is scrutinized for vulnerabilities, interests, and patterns of behavior. A plot is hatched to meet him and get him involved enough to enable the mission to be carried out.
A covert intervention may be necessary if the cult member's relationship with family or friends is severely damaged. Such cases frequently involve long-term members whose families long ago passed their limits of frustration and pain, and said or did things that severed the relationship. Covert interventions make me uncomfortable. However, we are not trying to make someone into our follower. Once our job of presenting information, laying out alternatives, and counseling is accomplished, it is up to the individual to make use of the experience.
From our own experience we have learnt the incredible lengths to which people will go for a cause they believe is great and just. We have also learned that nobody wants to sacrifice his time, energy, and dreams for a cause that is harmful and untrue. Once the phobia against leaving is addressed and we can make contact with a person's true self and let that person know what has been done to him, he almost always chooses to be free, because people will choose what they believe is best for them.
Finally, it is important that former cult members and their families not view everything that happened in the cult as negative. We always encourage people to remember the good and take it with them when they decide to leave. Still, there is no question that belonging to a destructive cult changes you forever. You realize how many things you've taken for granted: family, friends, education, your ability to make decisions, your individuality, your whole belief system. Cult withdrawal affords a unique opportunity to sit "naked" with yourself and analyze everything you ever knew and believed in. Such a process can be liberating and also quite terrifying. It is a chance to start your life all over again.
HOW TO HELP A CULT MEMBER CHANGE AND GROW AS A PERSON.
It may seem that getting a cult member to go through a personal change is the long way toward getting him out of a cult. After all, isn't it most important to get him physically away from the people who practice mind control on him? While a certain degree of impatience is understandable, it is vital to recognize that the only permanent way of getting people out of destructive cults is to help them get back in touch with their real selves, and help them start growing towards meeting a new personal goal that means something to them.
Keeping the long-term objective in mind, then, everyone concerned with helping a cult member should focus attention on three main short-term objectives. The first is building rapport and trust. Without trust nothing you do will be effective. The second objective is gathering information, specifically information about how the cult member thinks, feels, and views reality. The third objective is using specific techniques and skills to plant seeds of doubt about the cult and promote a new perspective.
BUILD RAPPORT AND TRUST.
When you first become aware of a problem with a cult member, try to act as though you do not know he is in a cult. Don't tip your hand. Don't tell the member that you are in contact with sources of anti-cult information or personnel. If you do, the result will be breakdown of trust.
A curious yet concerned posture is the most effective stance anyone can take in relating to a cult member. It is relatively easy to elicit rapport and trust when you are acting curious because all you are doing is asking questions in a non-judgmental way. You care about the person, therefore, you want to know everything that is important to him.
Show approval and respect of the individual and his ideals and talents. However be careful to show only conditional approval of his participation in the group. Let him know that you are withholding final judgment on the group until all the facts are in. In some cases, it might be appropriate for you to tell him you have a feeling in the pit of your stomach that something is not right about the group, but you are not sure. If the cult member tries to give credit to the group for good aspects of his life, like not using pot or alcohol anymore, tell him you think that is great, but remind him that he deserves the credit for the good things, not the group.
Evaluate your present relationship with the person in a cult. Do the two have a great deal of rapport and trust? If not, start thinking about ways you can rebuild the relationship. Remember the more people he feels connected to who are outside the cult the better off he will be. He will always be closer to some people than others, but everyone should be making a natural effort to get closer to the person. Coordinate the flow of communication to him. It wouldn't seem natural if ten people wrote him at one time. You don't want him to get suspicious.
Avoid sending money, particularly cash because it will most likely be turned over to the group. It is far better to send clothes, pictures, books, and other objects with a more personal and long-lasting meaning. Grandma's home-made cookies go a long way towards establishing rapport and are much better than a card and a check.
Ask a member what you can do to get closer to him. Try to get him to be specific. Try your best to accommodate his needs, but act sensibly. If he asks you to read one of the group's books, tell him that you be willing to do a swap and ask him to read a book you recommend. If he tells you he wants you to stop criticizing the group, ask him how you can communicate your questions and concerns without his getting defensive.
People have done many creative things to help build trust and rapport. They have written poems and short stories, put together elaborate photo albums, and painted pictures and portraits. They have sent shoes, winter jackets, and tickets to performances that they know the person will love. Some people have even invited the cult member to go with them for a trip overseas, and in some cases were able to induce the person to be away from the group long enough to be counseled.
COLLECT VALUABLE INFORMATION.
Once rapport is established, information gathering will become much easier. The more information you collect, the better will be your ability to know what is going on inside the mind of the member. Communicate as regularly as possible. If you can see each other, try to do it one-on-one. It is nearly impossible to get anywhere while tasking to two or more cult members at a time.
Expect at some point that you will be invited to a talk with older members or leaders. Stall for as long as you can. Tell the person that you care about him and trust him. You are not interested in talking with strangers. You want him to explain everything to you. If he says that he doesn't know the answers to your questions you can gently point out that you are concerned that if he doesn't know the answers, he may have made a commitment to the group before he was ready to do so. Suggest that he take a step back, and spend a few weeks researching the group objectively. If the group is legitimate, what does he have to lose?
Information can also help one understand just how fully indoctrinated a person is. If a family can determine what a member knows and doesn't know, then that makes the exit-counselor's job much easier and raises the chances of success.
DEVELOP SPECIFIC SKILLS TO PROMOTE A NEW PERSPECTIVE.
When you are able to establish a good rapport and accumulate a good deal of information, the last step is actually developing the skills and strategies or undermine or side-step the mind control used by the group. Too many people try to jump to this step before they have accomplished the first two. This is a big mistake. Only when you have laid the groundwork can you really be effective.
Remember that you want to connect with and empower the person's real self and not his cult self. Reminding him of earlier positive life experiences is the most effective way to do this. For example, a friend calls up the member and says "Hi! It's been a long time. You know I was down visiting the old school today and I remembered when you and I used to go early, so we could play handball on the school wall. Do you remember the time when the gym teacher chased us across the field demanding the ball because we accidentally cracked his window?"
A father could try an approach such as this: "You know, son, I was flipping through the channels on TV the other day and I saw a show on bass fishing. We haven't done that in years. I sure would like to go back up to the lake sometime with you, just you and me and the fish". Evoking these kinds of feelings and memories can be a powerful way to undermine the cult programming. However be cautious about overusing this technique and arousing suspicion.
By being in close contact with the member and pooling information gathered by family members and friends, you can give strategic messages. For example, if the member tells one of his old friends that he really misses skiing, and that friend tells the family, then they can plan a family ski trip and invite the friend along. The cult member may think it is coincidental or perhaps even spiritually destined. Even if he isn't allowed to go, it will help to stir a strong desire within him.
Whenever you communicate, make sure to concentrate on just one or two points each time. It is better to make one point thoroughly than to try a "shot-gun" approach. Again the follow-up is critical. For example, if you write the member that you saw one of the leaders of the group on television saying that members could come home to visit whenever they wanted to do so, you might mention that you remember a conversation with him just a few months earlier when he told you that he "had to ask permission to visit". If he neglects to answer that point in the next letter or phone call, ask him about it. Ask him gently, but firmly, why there seems to be a contradiction: "Was the leader lying? Were you the one who was lying? Help me to understand because I am confused". Too many people make really good points but don't follow up after them. Perhaps they find it difficult to ask the follow-up question in a non-threatening tone - one that forces the cult member to have to think about the contradiction.
Don't send unsolicited articles. Such information actually does more harm than good. If you feel your rapport is very good with the member, try to have a personal discussion. If it will be some time before you can see the person, talk with him on the telephone, first about the article and what it says. If he expresses an interest in seeing it, tell him you will send it, -if he promises to go over it point by point with you. Too many people do not get the person's permission first, and then if they do, they do not follow up on it.
Remember to stay in your normal character. The member will be suspicious if you are very different from your normal self. Also, do not worry about making mistakes. If you feel you must weigh every word and action you will incapacitate yourself. Keep learning from your mistakes, and over time you will become effective.
******
Since every situation is different, it is very difficult to cover everyone's particular needs. Under ideal circumstances, someone who recognizes that a friend or loved one will immediately seek out professional assistance. The important point is this: do not delay.
If you know of someone who has been in a cult for many years, start to work now. What would you do if you received a call tonight from the cult member and he told you he wanted to come home for a long visit tomorrow? As surprising as it is, this kind of sudden event (perhaps an appeal for help) happens time and time again.
To continue to paraphrase cult-buster Steven Hassan, as destructive cults and mind control come to be better understood , the social stigma attached to being a former cult member will begin to dissolve. Former members will come to realize that they were not to blame for their involvement. People will see that they have a lot to give back to society, if they have a chance. Many of our former clients and friends have gone on with their lives and become happy, productive citizens. They are doctors, lawyers, dentists, chiropractors, psychologists, architects, artists, teachers, mothers, fathers, and social activists and rabbis. Whether you are in need, or have something to give, or both, we urge you to take a positive step. You do make a difference.
In the words of Edmund Burke: "All it takes for evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing".
"You shall pursue true-justice that you may live and inherit the land which HaShem Your God gives you" (Devorim-Deuteronomy 16;20).