Cult Group Controversies:
Testimony of Ronald N. Loomis
in support of House Joint Resolution 22May 25, 1999
Members of the Task Force
William T. Wood, Esq., Chair, Appointed by the Governor
Araceli G. Carrigan;
Sowmya Murthy;
Patricia Rausch;
Andrew A. Rittler;
Charles B. Saunders, Jr.;
Roberta J. Thomas;
Frantz C. Wilson;
William T. Wood, Esq., Appointed by Senate President;
Paul G. Pinsky;
Ida G. Ruben; Appointed by House Speaker Emmett C. Burns;
Sharon M. Grosfeld; Joan Marionni, designee pf the Chancellor, University System of Maryland;
Warren Kelly, designee of President, University of Maryland, College Park;
Nina Hopkins, designee of President, Morgan State University;
Eric P. Kafka, Ph.D., designee of President, St. Mary's College of Maryland;
Maitland W. Dade
Ronald L. Loomis is Director of Education for the American Family Foundation. Mr. Loomis did not submit a prepared text of his comments. This is an unofficial transcript from the proceedings. The tape from which the transcript was prepared was copied from the official taping of the proceedings. With the exception of unauditable materials, the transcript is complete from the beginning to the conclusion of Mr. Loomis' presence before the Task Force.Mr. Loomis was introduced to the Task Force by Mr. Franz Wilson, a member of the Task force.
Mr. Wood: ...what we are now going to do is Mr. Wilson, who is chair of the Subcommittee on Outside Resources, is going to explain what he has done briefly since our last -- since we’ve last discussed this.
And then, he is going to introduce several speakers who will address the task force and their comments will be made a matter of record in that these microphones record so that there will be a permanent record of all that is said before the task force.
So I’ll now turn the meeting over to you, Mr. Wilson. And if you could tell us a little bit about what you have done and then introduce your speakers, and then we’ll proceed to listen to them.
And I would also like to add that we’re going to -- because we have a full day today, as you can see we have a lot of people here, we’re going to have to stick to the time constraints that have been provided strictly. So we will ask to please observe the time limitations that -- that Mr. Wilson will explain and -- and we will then go forward. Mr. Wilson?
Mr. Wilson: At our May 11th the task force meeting Chairman Wood asked that I take the lead in carrying out the two-fold assignment. First, to arrange to have someone with expertise on defining cults to speak to the task force. And the second was to prepare some recommendations on how best the task force can go about developing basic information on cults.
And so to address the first assignment the -- with Pat Rausch and other members of our small group, we have arranged to have some speakers, the ones that you see on your agenda to present today.
And in order to stay on the schedule, I’m asking that the speakers for the most part introduce themselves but just to say a word about Dr. Ron Loomis who is going o be the first speaker. Ron is an international expert on cults and mind control who has been studying the cult phenomena and educating others for about 20 years. This past president of the Associated Colleges Unions has 35 years of professional experience in college unions and student administration activity. And he’s going to tell you the rest.
The other persons on the program that you see there, Doris Quelet who will be here this afternoon. Doris is an active member of the Baltimore Cult Awareness Network with intimate knowledge about numerous cults including activities on Baltimore campuses including Towson University.
Dr. Sidney Gulick, most of the University of Maryland people know him as Denny, is a professor of mathematics and chairman of the faculty senate and is well known for his cult involvement education -- for his involvement in cult education on the campus of College Park for over 14 years.
And after the business session, we’re going to have two students, and I notice on the agenda that their names are not there although I seem to think that that was by intent in case they want to remain as private as possible. [Inaudible] feel free [inaudible], will do so. So at this point, we’re going to turn the program over to Ron.
Mr. Loomis: Thank you. Let me say first of all that I want to compliment your Maryland state legislature and the various elements of the Maryland higher education community for establishing this task force in the first place.
I know of only one other state that has undertaken as broad and comprehensive an effort to study the cult phenomenon and to develop recommendations for its public campuses. And you are to be commended for having done that. And I’m delighted to have an opportunity to assist you in that effort.
Frantz already gave you a little bit about my background. I’ll tell you that I hold a bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut. And I have back at Dr. Gulick’s home where I’m staying with the hat that I bought when our men’s basketball team won the NCAA championship this March. I wear it always now.
My undergraduate major was sociology, a minor in psychology, and I did graduate work at the University of Minnesota in educational psychology. As Frantz said, I spent 35 years in student union and student activities administration at four different campuses.
The last 23 years in that phase of my life as the director of student unions and student activities at Cornell University in upstate New York. I am a past president of the Association of College Unions International and a member of their committee on minority programs for 37 years.
And of all of the Maryland public campuses, I have spent more time at Morgan State than at any other because we frequently have our committee meetings and workshops there. I learned about cults while I was at Cornell in the late 70s.
I recognized that like virtually every other campus in the world, there were cults active at Cornell and attended a day-long workshop on that subject that was organized by our director of Religious Affairs.
And it was from that point on that I began educating our students about cults. And that led to my involvement in a couple of national cult awareness organizations. I was the national president of the former Cult Awareness Network for four years.
And I now serve the American Family Foundation, a research and education organization, as director of Education. For them, I organize conferences, workshops, seminars that are designed to educate people about various aspects of the cult phenomenon.
I also present lectures and workshops at colleges and universities and thus far have spoken to approximately 100 campuses in higher education associations and organizations throughout North America. And I’ve now been invited by four cult awareness organizations in Great Britain to cooperate with them in doing a lecture tour of British universities sometime next year. The cult phenomenon is as present there as it is here.
I’m going to start by giving you a little bit of philosophical background of what principles under gird my educational work and also the work of the American Family Foundation.
Our purpose and the purpose of my programs is to educate the general public regarding the harmful effects of mind control and psychological manipulation as used by destructive groups.
Our goals are to help the general public understand cults better than they do, to assist families who have a loved one in a cult, assist them in getting that person out. And I will talk a little bit about how we do that. And our focus is to describe the harmful techniques that cults use. So what we’re about is preventive education.
I’m willing to bet that every single Maryland public campus now offers preventive educational programs in a number of areas including alcohol abuse, drug abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, and so forth. And we recommend that cult awareness education is preventive education in that same genre.
Many of the groups that we need to be concerned about are religious. But we never discuss or criticize their religious beliefs or their spiritual practices. We don’t believe that’s any of our business in this country. However some of those groups are involved in either unethical or illegal activities, and in some cases both. And that is an appropriate basis of criticism in any society. And so it’s that aspect of cults that we focus on.
A clergy person friend of mine who also does educational programs puts it much more succinctly by saying we are concerned with deeds not creeds.
I will talk later about how we assist families in getting loved ones out of the cult. But for now, I want you to know that the only basis on which we encourage people to do that, is one where it is voluntary on the part of the cult member, the loved one that they are trying to free. And I will explain a little bit more about how that is done later.
We see the groups that we are concerned about -- the harmful groups breaking down into seven different categories. There are religious cults. And I’m willing to bet that most of you know that -- well, all of you knew that before you came in here.
But I’m willing to bet that most of you assume that any group that was labeled a cult was therefore by definition religious, and that is not true. There are mass therapy meditation groups, there are political groups, there are new age groups, there are commercial business groups, there are patriot, para-military white supremacist groups, and we put gangs and skin heads in that category. And then finally, there are satanic and ritual abuse groups.
Now those sound like very, very different types of groups, and they are. But the one element that they all have in common and the reason that we focus on them is that they all use mind control and deception and manipulation and other psychological techniques to get control of the lives of the people that are in them. And that is the basis of our concern.
How widespread is the cult phenomenon? Experts estimate that there are somewhere between 3 and 5,000 cults in North America today, and that as many as 20 million people have been impacted adversely by cults. There’s even been some representative sampling done of the U.S. population which indicates that at any point
in time somewhere between 1 and 2 percent of the U.S. population is involved in cults.
Well, that sounds like a small number, so why should we be concerned? Well, it’s a big country. That means there are between two and five million people involved in cults right now. And as I alluded to, this is not a problem that’s limited to the United States.
AFF is in touch with cult awareness education organizations in 29 other countries. And all of these are national organizations in their countries, some commissioned by their governments, some our national but operate independently of government.
We just held the AFF annual conference in the Twin Cities in Minnesota two weeks ago, and it included approximately 160 experts on cults and people concerned about cults, including about 25 people representing about 12 other countries who came all the way from as far away as China and Japan to attend this conference on cults. So this is a literally worldwide problem.
Yes, sir?
Mr. Wood: Mr. Loomis, I apologize for interrupting you but I have one question. I’m think it will be very helpful for us to know your definition of a cult. We’re hearing what you’re saying trying to get a sort of a specified idea what you would call a cult. I think that would help us understand your testimony better.
Mr. Loomis: Your timing is absolutely perfect. The very next item that I was coming to was the definition of a cult.
Mr. Wood: Okay. Thank you very much.
Mr. Loomis: And this definition was developed at a national conference in 1995, which brought together about 50 experts on the cult phenomenon from a variety of different perspectives. There were clergy, there were law enforcement people, there were attorneys, counselors, a very broad-based perspective.
They came up with this definition of a totalistic cult. And that is -- and by the way, I have brought enough copies of the handout that I do for my campus presentation, so I’m going to leave that with you when I’m done. So you don’t have to try to write this down. You’re going to have copies of everything that I’m working from, including a lot that I’m not going to able to get into today. So there are lot of places where I’m going to speak superficially in an area, but you will have the complete written background that I’m working from. And it includes this definition:
A totalistic cult is a group or a movement exhibiting excessive dedication to some person, idea or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control -- that’s a long way of saying mind control -- designed to advance the goals of the group’s leaders but, in actuality, they are detrimental to the members, their families and the larger society.
Now you notice there's not a hint of religion in that definition. But it is broad enough to encompass religion and the other six types of cults that I mentioned earlier. Another way to identify cults is to list the characteristics that they have that distinguish them from other groups in our society.
And there are seven characteristics that we focus on. The first is charismatic leadership. The leaders of these groups always have been blessed with -- with charisma. Charisma obviously is not a bad thing. Charisma has been wonderful gift in -- in the minds and hands of some of the great leaders throughout history in government and religion and politics and even sports.
The problem is that these leaders and these destructive groups abuse the gift of charisma and use it in evil ways to get control of people’s lives. The second characteristic is that all cults use deception. They lie. And I’m going to give you some examples of how they do that in a couple of minutes.
Third is all cults use mind control or psychological manipulation or coercive persuasion. There are a half dozen terms that we can use interchangeably that pretty much describe that same process, but mind control is the term that I would will use for the rest of the -- of my time.
The fourth is that all cults alienate their members from their families and the larger society. Fifth, cults view themselves as having -- the term we use to identify it is exclusivity. Religious cults will claim that they are the one true church of God and that only they have the answer in terms of religion and spirituality.
Other kinds of groups -- therapy groups or political groups will claim that they have the answer -- in the case of mass meditation or therapy groups, they will claim they have the answer for how human beings can develop the skills and talents that are within themselves and achieve unbelievable success. But only they have that answer -- nobody else, no other group or even religion has that.
The sixth characteristic is that cults exploit people. They exploit the members always emotionally and psychologically, frequently spiritually, obviously, in the case of the religious groups. Often sexually. Always financially. And all of that is for the benefit of the leaders, a very small number of people at the top.
And then the seventh characteristic is that cults have what we describe as a totalitarian world view. It’s this notion that only they have the answers, only they have the right to achieve a great success or in the case of a religious group, Heaven. And everybody outside of this group is evil.
And in the case of religious groups, they might even identify everybody outside of the group as being satanic. And if you think I’m exaggerating, most of you are old enough to remember the standoff between the Branch Dividians and the ATF and the FBI.
Remember what you heard through the media that David Koresch was saying. At various times, he claimed to be God and then a few days later Jesus, but always was sending the message that everybody inside the compound was perfect and wonderful and that everybody outside the compound, including other Christians, was evil. That’s what we mean by this totalitarian world group.
In my presentations on campus, I go through a list of 16 different techniques of mind control that cults use, and it’s in the packet that I’m going to leave with you. I’m not going to take the time to go thorough all 16. I’m going to pick just a couple to highlight, to give you a flavor of the kinds of things that cults use -- do.
One I’ve already mentioned, and it’s one of the most harmful dimensions of this, and that is the isolation of members from family and friends. Now I’m not talking about preventing somebody from seeing their family every week or every month.
I work with a support group for parents, all of whom have loved ones in a group that we call the Robert’s Group because the name of the leader is Jim Roberts. The group has no name even though it’s existed for 35 years. It is a nomadic Christian group that travels all around the country.
They shun material things. They survive by scavenging food from dumpsters behind grocery stores and restaurants and fast food chains. The media nicknamed them "the garage eaters." And I’m the one that’s pressing to call them the Robert’s group because I want people to focus on the evil.
Some of you saw a segment that "Prime Time Live" did on this group last spring. They re-aired it last summer and then again this March. Well, among the families that are part of the parents support group that I’m working with are one couple who have had no contact with their daughter for 27 years, and other -- many who have not had contact with their children for 15 or 20 years. You saw some of those families on "Prime Time Live." That’s what we’re talking about with isolation in the extreme.
Another example is a technique that they use in recruiting on campuses. And it’s a technique that’s called "love bombing." We did not make up this term. The term "love bombing" originated with the Unification Church, the Moonies. It’s their term. Another group that’s active in -- on many Maryland campuses, the International Churches of Christ, also uses that term. I’m going to refer to them, by the way, as the ICC in the interest of time.
What is love bombing? It’s a recruiter approaching the student and doing everything that the recruiter can to make the student feel special and unique. They’re quickly trying to convey the message that I am your new best friend. And they will fake mutual interests in order to give the impression that they share many things in common.
And this process is done through typically several visits without it ever being identified that there is an agenda, that, in fact, the person is a recruiter, that they are representing a group, and that their real purpose is to get that student into the group.
And they usually try to find a student who shows the outward signs of being vulnerable, of being alone, of maybe looking like they’re kind of sad. I had one former member who spoke with me. I always try to get former members from the local area to come with me when I do lectures.
And I’d thought I’d heard it all in terms of the length to which recruiters will go to find vulnerable people, but she told -- described to an audience of several hundred students something that I hadn’t heard before. She said her group, a well-known national group, trained the members that the best place to recruit people on campus was to stand outside the entrance to the student counseling center. At least two of you identified yourselves as representing counseling centers. This group trained its members to stand outside the doors of your center and study the faces of students that are leaving who are probably coming from an appointment. If they’re crying, if they’re avoiding eye contact, if they’re looking down and sad, then you walk along side that person and you strike up a conversation about the weather, about what’s going on campus, check out the books that they’re carrying and quickly pretend that you are also taking the same course or took it.
Do anything to make a connection because that person is going to respond to you more typically than a student who you might find sitting with six other people in the student union snack bar laughing and having a good time. Those are the kind of techniques that they use and love bonding is a part of the way they approach those people.
Sleep deprivation and fatigue is an integral part of cult indoctrination. They want the new members to be tired. They know that the human mind does not function effectively when we’re tired.
Another technique -- mind control technique that is used by cults is confession. Confession is used by responsible religious denominations. Well, that isn’t the way it’s done in these groups.
Let me talk about the ICC again and the way they use confession. The person who is your primary source of power and control in the group and probably the person who recruited you is called your discipler or your discipling partner. And after you’ve been in for a little while your discipler takes you aside -- by the way, you meet with your discipler every day and typically more than once a day.
And the discipler may say to you, I’ve been praying a lot about you because although you were developing spiritually at an incredible rate when you first got involved, you seem to have hit a plateau and you just don’t seem to be developing the way you were. And perhaps in answer to my prayers, it’s occurred to me that there may be something from your past that is blocking your continued spiritual development.
One of the things that may help you is if you talk to God about those things in your past and kind of give them up, get rid of them. And I’ll -- I’ll be here with you while you do that. And -- and let’s see if maybe that will help you regain the kind of spiritual energy that you had before. Well, the new member is definitely anxious to become better spiritually and so, they jump at the opportunity to try anything. And so, they start listing things in their past that they’re embarrassed about or ashamed of, awful things that they did to their siblings during childhood, maybe some shoplifting, maybe some cheating on tests, maybe sex with a romantic partner of a friend. Who knows. And what they don’t notice is that their discipler is writing down everything that they’re saying. And what they don’t know is that their discipler, after the process has been completed ,goes back and meets with the other leaders and they discuss the information and they use it to strategize other means. Now they understand some areas of particular vulnerability for this person. And they use that to further control them. We know this now because former leaders of the groups have come out and told us. This is again not something that we’ve made up, and it’s documented.
They also will manipulate as mind control techniques of basic human emotions like guilt and fear. If a member is showing any doubts and is maybe even articulating that they’re thinking of leaving, then the -- the leader -- the elder -- the discipler will say something like, well, you know, you told us before that you know we are the one true church of God or the group that has the best meditation answer.
And you’ve also told us that you know that unlike anyone else in your family or any of your friends, you’ve been given this gift by God. If you leave this group, you’re not really leaving an organization. You’re leaving God. You’re turning your back on God. Do you really want to do that? Well, that’s a powerful way to get somebody to rethink their earlier decision to leave. But if that’s not enough, they will then move up the scale of human emotion to fear and will indicate that, you know, if you leave, you have to understand that you are abandoning God. God is vengeful. If you leave and abandon God’s work, God will make sure that something awful happens to you or someone close to you. That is another powerful way to keep somebody in the group. The induction of fear is one of the most powerful mind control techniques that cults use.
And then the final one that I want to mention is the financial exploitation that I alluded to earlier. I told you that I often work with former cult members as I give lectures around the country. And again I’m going to focus on the ICC as the example. Every single ex member of that group has told me how they were financially devastated by their time in the group. They are required to tithe a percentage of their income, and in the case of students, scholarships are considered income by a cult. But then they have special contributions several times a year. And you are expected to make a contribution over and above your tithe.
Well, students say to their discipler, I don’t have anymore money. I can barely manage to pay for my food and -- and the other expenses at school. I wasn’t able -- I had to buy all used books the last three terms. And the discipler says, well, you know, have you noticed the credit card companies send students mailings and offers of free credit cards? Use those.
So you have people who finally do exit a cults after taking on all kinds of college loans and now they’re burdened with -- with having maxed out two or three credit cards and having to pay those off as well as the college loans. This is very typical of the former members that I’ve talked to.
So far I’ve been talking about things in a kind of general way. There is considerable research that substantiates everything that I’ve been saying and it is summarized in the packet that I’m going to give you. Let me just mention a couple. Dr. Michael Angoni (sp), who is the executive director of the American Family Foundation, a Ph.D. in psychology and a clinician, has done extensive research with -- on cult -- about cults, typically with former cult members.
In one study he gave a checklist to former members of the ICC and on it were listed a number of beliefs or actions that they were then asked to check those that they believed or were told they must do when they were in the ICC. And in the packet that you get, you’re going to have complete list. Here are a couple of the summaries.
One hundred percent of the people who completed this list indicated that they were told to imitate their discipler and the other leaders. Ninety-five percent said they believe that anyone not a member of the ICC is satanic. Ninety percent said that they came to believe that leaving the ICC was the same as leaving God even if you went to another Christian church.
Eighty-eight percent said that they came to believe that disobeying the directions of the leader was equivalent to disobeying God. Eighty-percent said that they came to believe that anyone not in the ICC is not a Christian. Eighty-five percent said that they were told to sleep less. That’s how they could get more time to do recruiting and fundraising for the group. And sixty-five percent indicated that their grades dropped significantly during the time that they were in that group.
Another study that I want to mention was conducted at the direction of the International Churches of Christ, which in its original configuration was called the Boston Church of Christ, and it’s also referred to as the Boston Movement.
A number of years after they were founded in the mid 70s, they were subjected to lots of public criticism by families and former members. They hired a psychologist who had absolutely nothing to do with the group named Flable Yankley (sp) and asked him to do study to disprove the statements that were being made by critics of the group.
[Inaudible] personality characteristics over time. There was absolutely no significant -- no change of significance during the times these people had been involved in their religious organizations. He then administered it to 180 people that had been involved in six different groups that are widely recognized as being cults and 900 members of the what was then called the Boston Church of Christ. This is before they changed their name to the International Churches of Christ. In those two populations, he found what he describes as unhealthy personality change. And he says,
"The data in the study, however, does prove that there is a group dynamic operating in that congregation, the Boston Church of Christ, that influences members to change their personalities to conform to the group norm. To the extent that the members responded after pressure, the observed changes in psychological type scores are likely to become, or have already become, actual changes in the personality that is manifested."
What all this means is that the Boston Church of Christ is producing in its members the very same pattern of unhealthy personality change that is observed in studies of well known manipulated sects, the six manipulated sects that showed the same pattern as we were observed in the study of the Boston Church members. So I think that’s also very persuasive.
I want to say a little bit more about deception which I mentioned earlier. And again, I want to give some examples. The most flagrant kind of deception that these groups use that you’re going to find on colleges campuses is the use of front men. In many cases they have received a lot of publicity through the media and some people in the general public are aware a group called the International Churches of Christ or the Unification Church are viewed as harmful. And so, what these groups have done is change their names when they come to your campuses.
Here are some examples. Here are some examples of front names used by an internationally recognized cult that has been very active on your own campuses for number of years: Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles, CARP is the acronym; Students for an Ethical Society; World Family Movement; Holy Spirit Association; Women for World Peace. Pure Love Alliance is the name that group is currently used on the College Park campus. I wonder if any of you know the real identity of that group? CARP has been on the College Park campus also for many, many years. It’s the Moonies, the Unification Church. Here are some other -- and by the way, an organization called Ex Moon has studied this phenomenon among the Moonies for many many years. They’ve been tracking the front names that the Moonies use.
And I have a document they produced as of 1996 so this data is a couple of years old, but as of that point, they had identified 1,252 front names that the Unification Church has used in various settings. Not all on campuses, but in many other settings as well.
Here are some front names used by another group: Alpha Omega; Campus Advance; Campus, Christian Association; Christians Reaching Out Serving Students, the acronym is CROSS; Daring Dreamers of Destiny; Helping Other People Everywhere, HOPE is the acronym for that one; the Upside Down Club. Those are names used on campuses by the International Churches of Christ.
And I have a complete list. I’m keeping track, and I’m now up to about 18 front names that I’ve been able to identify they’re using, and those are just on campuses. So that’s one of the reasons why when you ask university administrators, campus chaplains, even student government leaders, are there cults on your campus, in most cases they’ll tell you no.
A, because they probably aren’t the people that would know. And I mean no disrespect to high level university administrators in saying that. But they’re really kind of removed from the front line of campus activity. But the other reason they don’t know is because there’s probably cults on the campus that are using names that sound innocuous like the ones I just shared with you.
When I was asked to go to the University of Wyoming a couple of years ago, it was because they had discovered after four years that the group that had called itself the Campus Christian Association and that most faculty and staff and students assumed was the main Protestant denomination at the university was in reality the front for the International Churches of Christ and had been recruiting Wyoming students into that cult for years. So one of the things they wanted me to do was to help educate students and expose that.
People want to figure out what kind of individual is recruitable into a cult. And our bias, our prejudice is that there must be some sort of a personality profile that we can identify that will help us distinguish cult recruitable people from others. Well, there is no such profile.
After many, many years of work with former cult members and in hard research such as some of the studies that I quoted, what we’ve learned is the key to whether or not someone is recruitable into a cult has to do with vulnerability. And it is usually a temporary condition of vulnerability that is brought about by -- by their life status at that particular moment. And those times fall into two broad categories. Either the person is in a time of transition in their lives. Examples. College freshman. Clearly somebody involved in a transition. But that’s not the only time that a college student is vulnerable to cult recruitment.
There’s one other time in the life span of a college student when they’re also vulnerable. Anybody want to guess when that is? Seniors. Again they’re going through a transition. They’re about to leave the protection of the campus where they’ve been comfortable for four years, and now they are facing the hard, cruel, outside world, not sure they can get a job, not sure if they want to go to graduate school, not sure they can get funding.
These days they’re looking around at friends of their parents who are being downsized out of jobs in their 40s and 50s. And now they’re supposed to go out with a major in philosophy or art history and get a job.
I can’t tell you how many former cult members I’ve met -- and by now I’ve met hundreds maybe thousands -- and many of them have told me that they were recruited either during the senior year or right after graduation.
The other life experience that makes people vulnerable is a traumatic event that the person has not fully recovered from at the time they happen to be approached by the cult. Loss of a loved one or a close friend through death or illness or accident. And with college students, it's particularly devastating if the person lost is someone their age, a close friend or -- or a sibling. But obviously, if it’s a parent or grandparent or aunt or uncle that they were close with, that’s also very very difficult. Breakup of a romance at the initiative of the other person at a time when you’re feeling very loving towards them. Divorce. Either your own divorce, or in the case of students, parental divorce.
I can’t tell you how many students I’ve worked with in my 36 years in higher education who desperately needed counseling because shortly after they came to Cornell, their parents sent them what was intended to be a loving letter informing them that now that they were in college their parents were getting a divorce. And as you know, the children of divorce immediately blame themselves. That throws a college student for a loop and might be the kind of thing that would make them vulnerable to cult recruitment.
Other things. Deterioration of performance, either in school or at work. And everybody goes through a period when they’re having trouble either on the job or in school. Those are the kinds of things that will make somebody vulnerable.
For those of you that are on campuses, what are the warning signs -- can you tell if somebody is getting involved in a cult and maybe identify it early enough to make some sort of intervention? Yes, you can.
And in the packet I’m giving you a very detailed list of the warning signs that you would see in someone who is in the initial stages of getting involved in a cult. Again, I’m not going to go through the whole list. I will cite just a couple.
Probably the first you will see is that they are going to be engaged in proselytizing on behalf of the group excessively. One of the first things new recruits are directed to do is to recruit everybody that they can and, of course, they start with the people closest to them. So they start trying to recruit all of their relatives, all of their friends, their classmates, all the other students on their floor, and so forth.
You will also note that the group is now controlling that person’s life in every respect. And the person that you used to get together with informally to go to the movies or to go bowling, when you now ask them, hey, it’s Friday night, let’s go to a movie and then go out for a few beers afterwards. Gee I’m not -- now the response is going to be, I’m not sure I can go. I have ask my discipler. And when they come back, the answer will always be, no, I’m sorry, I’ve got to read the Bible, or I’ve got to meditate or I’ve got to do something else.
You may also -- they’re also going to be spending an excessive amount of time in group activities. You may see physiological symptoms of deterioration and certainly you will see some psychological symptoms.
So it is possible to identify somebody who’s being involved in a cult without their telling you. What are some of the things that campuses have done, and can do, to deal with this problem? I want to focus on again the ICC because they are the cult that is on most college university campuses all over the country and in Maryland. And there’s a dynamic that’s happened with them I think is a pretty good indication of how significant a problem they are.
Mr. Wood: May I interrupt?
Mr. Loomis: You may.
Mr. Wood: I’m sorry, Mr. Loomis, when you say "at Maryland," "they are at Maryland," are you referring to a particular campus or was that a statewide use of the word Maryland. In our state, we have a lot of things that fall within the --
Mr. Loomis: I am aware that the ICC is active on several campuses within the Maryland state system, College Park, Morgan State, Towson State, and others that -- that some of the other people who will be speaking later can speak to more knowledgeable than I could.
In your packet I’ve given you a list of 37 campuses in 14 states and three countries that have banned the International Churches of Christ from their campus. I’ve given you the complete list. Here are just a few examples: Boston University, Brown University, University of California at Berkeley, UCLA, Emory, George Washington University, Georgia Tech, Harvard, University of Kansas, University of London, MIT, University of Miami, Smith College, University of Southern California, University of Texas in Arlington, Stanford, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.
So you will see, they are public institution as well as private, and by the way, it also includes some historically black campuses. I don’t remember which ones, but there are a couple of campuses in the Atlanta area that have banned them. Black campuses. Why have they been banned? Typically, it’s for one of three reasons.
The most typical is that they have violated the campus regulations against proselytizing in residence halls. And that is a regulation that is designed to protect students in their home away from home from being harassed. And the rules, frankly, were put in place to protect them from salespeople. But they also obviously are designed to protect them from [inaudible] who may be wanting to come into their room and persuade them to get involved into the group. And you -- typically, they’re warned. They’re called in after students file a complaint. They’re called in by campus administrator given another copy of the regulations, which they were given initially, And then it’s after repeated violations that they are kicked off the campus.
The second reason is for fraud. They will lie about their name and their affiliations when they apply for recognition as a campus organization. They’ll use a front name as I indicated earlier and most campus now in the registration process ask, are you affiliated with another organizations off this campus, in this state or this country? And the ICC has consistently answered no to such questions, and then a few months later, it becomes clear to university administrators that in fact Campus Christian Association is not their real name and that they are affiliated with a group off campus. And so again, they go through a campus judicial system.
Most campuses have regulations against fraud, and on some campuses they have been booted for that. And the third reason is the one that I want to encourage the most and that is individual students who have been recruited repeatedly by these groups will file charges of harassment with the university judicial system. And again, most campus rules and regulations include harassment as an activity that is not permitted. And the ICC has been banned from several campuses for that reason.
In the packet, I’ve given you a list that has been developed by the Reverend Richard Dowhower (sp) who is a Lutheran minister in Bowie, Maryland. He is very, very well respected as a clergyman who has studied the cult phenomena and has assisted many former cult members in getting out and in recovery.
Yes, sir?
Mr. Wood: Sorry to interrupt again, Mr. Loomis. We do not have the packets yet.
Mr. Loomis: Right.
Mr. Wood: Did you want to circulate those or wait?
Mr. Loomis: I thought I would give you those materials when I’m done.
Mr. Wood: Okay.
Mr. Loomis: Reverend Dowhower's list compares cults with religions in various individual ways. And I’m just going to cite a couple. Religions respect autonomy, cults enforce compliance. Religions encourage questions, cults prevent questions. Religions view money as means, cults view money as an end. Religions cherish the family, cults view the family as the enemy. And I urge you to look at that list. And I hope perhaps at some future time you can invite Reverend Dowhower to came and speak to you. He knows a great deal about cults and I’m sure could provide you with very helpful information.
I want to end by saying a little bit more about how we can get people out of cults. The process that is used now and has been the predominate process for approximately 20 years is called "exit counseling." Now another term is being used to refer to the same process. It’s called "thought reform consultation."
And very briefly, the way it works is that the family is put in touch with an exit counselor. The exit counselors are almost always former cult members themselves. And most of them have gone on after coming out of the cult to get advanced degrees in psychology or social work or even psychiatry. So they’ve added to their own personal cult experience by academic credentials.
They work with the family to get background on the person's conditions in life before they went into the group and to get information about the family dynamics and how the cult member relates to the parents, to the siblings, to the aunts and uncles to friends, and so forth.
And the family is educated by the exit counselor about the dynamics of mind control and deception and psychological manipulation that have been used on their loved one. And then at some point, a member of the family is coached by the exit counselor, and through family planning, a person is selected as the one to approach the cult member.
And they basically explain to the person that the family is very concerned about them and the changes that they’ve gone through while they’ve been in group, and the family would like them to meet with the members of the family and someone who will be able to give them information about what was done to them.
And in the vast majority of cases that approach is successful, and the cult member voluntarily agrees to participate in the process. Frankly, they’ll often do it because they're confident that they’re going to be able persuade the family and whoever they’re bringing in that they’re wrong.
And we don’t care what their -- what the rationale is as long as they agree to do it. The exit counselors and thought reform consultants that we work with at the start of the process present the member with a contract. And both the member and the exit counselor sign the contract before getting into any serious discussion. And the contract basically says that the cult member is saying I’m here of my own free will and the exit counselor is saying that you can leave at any point if you feel moved to. And you know what? That’s a lot more powerful than what happened 25 or 30 years ago when, in desperation, parents were kidnapping their kids and holding them against their will while they were being educated.
We do not encourage or condone that and will do everything we can to dissuade a family from doing that if they seem to be inclined to do it. The process -- the thought -- the voluntary process rarely takes more than a couple of days and the success rate is extraordinarily high.
It’s very difficult to get hard numbers on this, but my sense from talking to former members and families and the exit counselors that the success rate is in the 90 percent or maybe even a little a higher. And the rate of recidivism, that is, people going back into groups, is extraordinarily low, less than 5 percent.
What - what I'd like to see this task force recommend to all of the campuses in Maryland, it -- there are a lot of things, but the overarching thing is preventive education. I want to see your campuses develop a coordinated program that goes on throughout the academic year of educating key people on the campus about cults.
Certainly, the general student population but faculty and staff also need to be educated about cults because they’re in a position to influence students and assist students. I’d loved to assist in that effort and I do get a fee for my campus presentations.
But you -- there are people on your campuses now who could develop the cult awareness educational programs that are needed, and I’ll be very happy to assist them. I always make my materials available after I’ve been to a campus and encourage people in student affairs and counseling centers and other places on campus to use any of my materials that they will find helpful.
And there are videotapes and books that are available. AFF produces a lot of those. And, in addition to my handout, I’m going to give you -- AFF has provided for every member of the task force a copy of a book that we published called "Cults on Campus, Continuing Challenge." And there’s one particular chapter in that book written by the vice president for student affairs at Louisiana State University that we have bookmarked. And we hope that -- we hope you read the whole book -- at least scan the whole book, but please do read the chapter written by Dr. Blemley (sp).
We’ve also given you a copy of a resource guide that AFF has developed called "Cults and Psychological Abuse, A Resource Guide," and it includes a lot of information about materials that will be helpful to you. I want to end by saying a little bit about why I do what I do. I had a great job at Cornell University, and after being there for 23 years, I had a pretty good salary.
And initially, I thought that I would spend the rest of my life there and retire there. That’s where my four children grew up. And I think it’s because of those four children that I do what I do. I told you about some of the families that I work with.
I cannot imagine being separated from one of my children for -- even a few weeks of no telephone contact, let alone months or years, of no telephone contact or no visits. I’m working with families who have been deprived of seeing their grandchildren. I’ve now got five grandchildren. I look forward to every possible visit I can because, as some of you know, the growth and development of grandchildren is just a phenomenon. It is powerful to see it.
And you will also probably know that there’s a special relationship that develops between grandchild -- grandparents and grandchildren. And when my three-year old granddaughter while sitting on my lap while I was reading to her looked up at me in the middle of the book and first started stroking my beard, which was very distracting, then said to me, "Gampa, I 'uv you," I want to be with her every chance that I can get.
So I want to help other people who have loved ones in groups have the kind the of relationship with their loved ones that I’ve got. And I want to prevent other families from going through the pain and agony that they’ve gone through. I’ve intentionally left some time for questions. I think we’ve got about 15 minutes left in the hour that I was allotted and I’d pleased to answer any questions that you have.
Mr. Wood: Mr. Loomis, what we’re going to try to do here is we will first see if any members of the task force have any questions and then we will -- we have, like you say, 20 minutes to go, so we will take 10 minutes maximum of questions from the task force and then we will permit another 10 minutes of questioning from the audience. So do you want to hand out your materials now so that the task force members can have them?
Mr. Loomis: Well, rather than disrupt the -- group, why don’t we do that after we’re done with my segment.
Mr. Wood: All right. Fine. Any questions? Senator Ruben?
Sen. Ruben: You indicated that the ICC has been banned from a number of universities throughout the country. Has any other cult been banned from the universities?
Mr. Loomis: Not that I’m aware of.
Sen. Ruben: Do you have any reason why they haven’t or they haven’t --?
Mr. Loomis: I think other groups -
Sen. Ruben: [Inaudible] or they are not aware of what they do or what?
Mr. Loomis: -- I think other groups have been more careful not to violate campus regulations. The ICC recruiters, disciplers are so -- under such enormous pressure to produce quotas that -- each member is required to make a certain number of contacts each day, recruitment contacts. And they are required to produce a certain number of actual members each week and each month. So they are driven to achieve those goals and, in their zeal, they cross the line to an extent that apparently other cults do not.
Sen. Ruben: But you indicated that there were other factors in determining whether or not someone had been approached or has been recruited into a cult that would show change in them. Has that been evident?
Mr. Loomis: It's been very evident. But the sad reality is that manipulating someone, lying to someone, making false promises are not against the law and are not against campus regulations. So that degree of deception and manipulation and psychological abuse, even though campuses know that it’s happening, you can't reach that through campus regulations or even state and federal laws. So it’s really only when they go so far as to cross the line and violate campus regulations that you then have a basis for bouncing them.
One of the things I’m working on with campuses in my capacity as director of education of AFF is encouraging them to develop a contract with religious organizations that is based on a code of ethics for religious proselytizers that was developed jointly by the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, which is a responsible Christian denomination, and the American Family Foundation.
And it basically shows respect for the previous religious or current religious affiliation of the person. And in the course of proselytizing, that it’s a two-way street. Of course, cults don’t operate in those ways. So what we’re encouraging campus religious organizations to do is develop a contract that all denominations would be required to sign.
The Episcopalians and Roman Catholics would also have to sign it but also require the ICC and the Unification Church and the other religious groups on campus to sign that contract. That could then provide more basis on which students could file complaints and the campus could take action against the group.
Sen. Ruben: There's no state laws that anyone been able to define that could be passed to address this issue, question mark?
Mr. Loomis: It would be extraordinarily difficult, because we must also respect the First Amendment and the freedom of religion. And remember, I’m not criticizing these groups and campuses are not banning them because their beliefs and practices deviate from mainstream religion thinking. That would be grossly inappropriate and I would be the first one to criticize any campus that -- that banned a group on those grounds.
It’s focusing on the violation of campus regulations and the lack of respect for individual autonomy and the respect of individual rights that we need to focus on.
Sen. Ruben: Thank you
Mr. Wood: I have a question.
Mr. Loomis: All right.
Mr. Wood: Was there a suit that came out of the banning of the ICC from any campus?
Mr. Loomis: There has been.
Mr. Wood: Could you tell us the results of that?
Mr. Loomis: I can. The -- after several years and maybe 38 campuses, the State University of New York College at Purchase banned the ICC from the campus because a discipler in the course of indoctrinating a new recruit so limited that person's freedom of movement, actually through persuasion prevented her from going home for the family gathering for her father’s birthday, which had been family tradition throughout her life, that when the student came back from the religious retreat that they were pressured into going to by discipler, she went to her residence home and wrote out a suicide note.
And fortunately, that fact was discovered by a resident assistant and the student who had written the note was quickly given access to counseling and the suicide was prevented.
The campus banned the -- expelled the discipler for violating campus regulations, and they identified a campus regulation that she had violated, and banned the ICC from any further activities on the campus. For the first time, the ICC initiated a suit against the campus. And the result of the suit was that the expulsion of a student was upheld, but the judge ruled that the group should be permitted to return to campus.
That’s happened very recently and it is not yet clear whether any aspect of that suit will be appealed. The suit was brought on behalf of the State University of New York College at Purchase by the New York State Attorney General’s office, and I assisted the assistant attorney general and did provide affidavits regarding that action.
Mr. Wood: I would like to request Mr. Davis or Maitland if we could get a copy of that opinion?
Mr. Loomis: I could have a copy sent to you.
Mr. Wood: Very good. Thank you, that would be very helpful. Mr. Wilson?
Mr. Wilson: Ron, the second part of our assignment is [inaudible] help us to try to come back with recommendations on how best the university can develop the information it needs to really satisfy the resolution requirements. Where do you suggest that we go for information, to know about the research results, know about the kinds of stories that we hear? What can we do to go beyond that?
Mr. Loomis: To get more information about cult activity on campus?
Mr. Wilson: On campus.
Mr. Loomis: Okay. As I indicated earlier, I don’t think that - that high level administrators are likely to have accurate information about that. In my experience, the best source of information is students. Students -- and I’m talking about average, typical students. If you can find a way to just have conversations with individual students, they are probably being approached by cult recruiters or they know of friends or colleagues who are being approached.
A particular group of students that I would encourage to communicate with are resident advisors or resident assistants. These are peer counselors. They’re regular students who have been interviewed and selected by the department of residence life.
Typically, there’s one on each floor and they’re designed to be the peer counseling link between a student on the floor who might be having some difficulty and a counseling center of more senior residence life staff, chaplains, others on the campus that can assist them. Now in talking with RAs, you must keep in mind that cults know that RAs are in that marvelous position that I was just talking about. So they know what cults have done. Of course, they make sure that a number of their members apply for and are accepted into RA positions.
And it is not at all unusual to find a very high percentage of RAs to be active members of cults and that creates some real problems.
Mr. Wood: Okay, we have time for one last question and then we’re going to go to the audience. This gentleman had his hand first.
Male Participant: Mr. Loomis, I just wondered when you spoke of the existence of cults at College Park, I wondered if you were familiar with the materials, the Brochure of Friends are everywhere, as I understand provided to all new students at College Park as well as the training materials which are provided for resident assistants?
Mr. Loomis: I am. I’ve seen those materials and, in fact, I assisted in the development of the Friends Are Everywhere brochure a number of years ago. And that is something that I encourage many campuses to do. And in my capacity as director of education for AFF, I have now gathered some 12 or 15 such brochures from various campuses, and I make copies available to other campuses that want to do something similar.
I’ve seen the material that's used for RA training. I’m delighted to know that that’s going on. That’s one of the key populations that needs to be educated. But there are also other populations.
I don’t know to what extent other key groups are being educated at College Park or the other campuses, but other groups that I think should be so educated would include all residence life staff, senior residence life staff as well as RAs, counseling center staff, student activity staff, staff in offices like the dean of students, faculty advisors are people that are in a key position to be aware of changes that are going on the life of a student.
And sometimes students who have been in a cult and come back to a campus will want to do something to educate other students and help them avoid getting involved. I’m aware, for example, of a College Park graduate who had been involved in a cult early in her time at the university and left the campus for awhile. But after being exit counseled and then returning, she and some other former cult members and other students who were concerned about cults formed a student organization that was intended to educate other students about cults.
I forget exactly the name but it was something like student -- the acronym was SEAM, S-E-A-M. And it was something like Students Educating against Mind Control. And as -- these students were very na�ve but incredibly energetic. And I do remember this student telling me -- one of the programs they did involved my coming to -- to do a presentation at College Park.
And she did tell me that when she went to people in the university administration, seeking support and assistance, she felt like at every turn she was beating her head against a brick wall. And the student group was left very, very much on their own with absolutely no support from staff to try to get those programs mounted.
So one thing campuses could do is take advantage of the energy and the interest that is within the student population and support it. Just encourage them, advise them as I and my staff did at Cornell when we work with student organizations. Don’t exclude the cult awareness organizations from those resources.
Mr. Wood: Thank you, Mr. Loomis. We’re now going to go outside the task force. And does anyone have a question who’s seated in the audience and, if so would you please stand and identify yourself and if you are affiliated with any organization, would you please tell us the organization.
Mr. Colby: My name is Alex Colby. I’m from Glen Burnie, Maryland. I’m a member of the Unification Church, have been for a long time. I have two kids who are also both members of the Unification Church in the public schools in Maryland. One of them is a sophomore in Glen Burnie High School.
She’s top of her class and going this week to the National [inaudible] in Chicago. I’m just saying that so you know we are a normal family.
Mr. Wood: Let me just say this now. Are you going to be speaking today?
Mr. Colby: No, I’m not.
Mr. Wood: You’re not. Okay.
Mr. Colby: I just wanted to ask a question.
Mr. Wood: That’s fine. Thank you very much. Ask Mr. Loomis.
Mr. Colby: I’m a graduate student at the University of Baltimore with a master’s degree in legal studies, master degree in divinity and currently working toward a doctorate in communications. Dr. -- I’m sorry, it’s not Dr. You have a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
Mr. Loomis: Right.
Mr. Colby: Mr. Loomis, are you aware that the American Psychiatric Association and American Sociological Association since 1997 are -- have stated that theories of mind control and brainwashing are not the view of the scientific community in the social sciences? [cross talk]
Mr. Wood: If you just ask -- what we’re going to try to do here -- we have a number of people -- if you have a question -- is that you’re question?
Mr. Colby: That’s one question. [cross talk]
Mr. Wood: Let’s let Mr. Loomis answer that.
Mr. Colby: -- the scientific community has not only not accepted but has rebuffed it and distanced themselves from the theories that have been presented here today.
Mr. Wood: Okay, Mr. Colby. Please understand this is as question to be asked of Mr. Loomis. [cross talk] And that’s the purpose of this particular segment.
Mr. Colby: And I’m asking if he is aware of that?
Mr. Wood: Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Loomis: I am aware of that, but perhaps you are not aware that subsequent to that a task force of the American Psychological Association published a report indicating that that was not the position of the APA. And so that has now been rejected. Perhaps you are not aware of that. And I can provide documentation for both of those actions to the task force.
Mr. Colby: And I will provide documentation because it was in response to the task force that the American Psychiatric Association and the United States courts took that position. And if the top expert for your organization, Margaret Singer (sp), her testimony was denied entry in the United States court system because of the position of the psychiatric association.
Mr. Loomis: That was true for a short time. Subsequent to that, she has testified as a certified expert witness in numerous other cult-related trials. And I would just like to add, I am frankly delighted to hear about your family and I have no doubt that yours is a wonderful family as you describe it.
But I need you to know that your experience is very atypical for families in the Unification Church. And there are hundreds and even thousands of former members of the Unification Church who describe a very different process. [cross talk]
Mr. Wood: Mr. Loomis?
Mr. Colby: [inaudible] the attorney -- the attorney’s position that the state of Maryland is taking a position favoring one religion over another. I object to the fact that I’m here -- a member of the Unification Church having my church being attacked and being attacked personally and being told that something that I’ve said is not true.
Mr. Wood: All right. Let me say this. I want --
Mr. Colby: There are lots of families like us.
Mr. Wood: Hold -- let me try to explain one thing. Give me a moment now. Let me just try to put things in perspective. We are calling a number of speakers on this subject of cults. Mr. Loomis is only one of a number of speakers. Mr. Loomis does not represent the position of this task force. Mr. Loomis is providing information to be considered and digested by this task force. He is one of many people that we’re going to hear from. We do not draw any conclusions from Mr. Loomis’ comments. We simply absorb the information that he has provided to us and we’re going to listen to both sides and what everyone has to say about this issue before -- before any decisions are made by the task force and before any recommendations, if any, emanate from this task force.
The purpose of this segment of this meeting, and this only one of many meetings that we will have, is to question Mr. Loomis. So now I want to move on to the next task force --
Mr. Colby: I want to recommend that --
Mr. Wood: But I want to ask Mr. Loomis to do this. You have referred to some studies and some documents, would you produce those to us?
Mr. Loomis: Absolutely.
Mr. Wood: Get those to Maitland Dade so we can have information in the record --
Mr. Loomis: Yes.
Mr. Wood: -- that you’ve referred to in your testimony. Okay, next questioner, please. Yes. Would you please state your name and any affiliated organization?
Mr. Miller: Certainly. Nicholas Miller and I’m an attorney with the Council on Religious Freedom based in Rockville, Maryland. Question for Mr. Loomis. I was very interested in the seven categories of the cults that you listed and you indicated that only one of the seven was related to religious cults.
But as I went down the list it seemed at least three or four of them had religious implications. You mentioned new age as a group, therapy mediation as a group, satanic ritual as a group. Those seem to me to be fairly religious as well.
My questions is as a practical matter what percentage of the -- your former or present cult members that you deal with are part of what you would describe as religious cults as a opposed to the non religious secular cults?
Mr. Loomis: The categories we have developed in order to help the public understand the breadth and scope of the cult phenomenon. And there are groups as you suggest that could be placed in more than one category. There are groups that kind of overlap several categories.
So the categories are really for the convenience of understanding and certainly are not intended to be any kind of rigid classification. I can’t really tell you within any degree of confidence the percentage -- I guess I would say the majority -- I’d say more than 50 percent of the former cult members that I have dealt with have been people that were involved in religious cults. But that’s very vague and -- and not precise at all.
Mr. Miller: Could you give an example of a political cult?
Mr. Loomis: Yes. The National Labor Federation, a group with the nickname of NTLFED (sp), was well-known as a political cult headquartered both in Long Island and California. And there have been a number of books written by former members of NTLFED who clearly identify it as a political cult. And in that case the ideology that was at the core of the group, instead of being religious or therapeutic, was political.
Mr. Wood: All right. I’d like to say this. We’re running out of time. However, I notice that I have 15 minutes on the program after lunch and I’m going to yield 10 minutes of that time so that the other observers may have an opportunity to ask questions.
If you would please try to ask a question, not make a statement, that’ll be helpful to us to move through this. Does anyone else have any questions outside the task force? No other questions. All right. Thank you.
Mr. Loomis: Yes, sir, thank you.
Mr. Wood: Yes we do have one task force member that has a question so I -- we'll take that.
Male Participant: I read something in some of the paper we’ve gotten already about online. And then it just seems like a new way -- and a new complication to the whole issue. And being as campuses are very computerized and thinking that way a lot, how has that -- that new form of communication, organization, etcetera played into this whole thing and how has it complicated it?
Mr. Loomis: Well, you’re absolutely right that it is a dynamic and phenomenon that has had a profound effect on this whole arena. And -- but the interesting thing about it is that at the same time it is both the worst enemy of those of us who are concerned about cults and -- and people being recruited into them, but at the same time it is one of our greatest assets because we can use the internet to -- as another vehicle for educating people about cults.
There is a very substantial amount of recruitment that is being done by cults through the internet. And I have not -- now I’m beginning to meet former cult members who tell me that they were recruited into their group through the internet interactions on a web site leading to interactions through electronic mail. So you are absolutely right.
It’s being recognized by the cults as a another vehicle for them to use for recruitment. But we also recognize the power that it has. And in the resource guide that I’ve given you that AFF has produced, you will have the address of our web site, and it is an extraordinary resource.
It consists over a thousand pages of information about various aspects of cults. It also includes links to over a thousand other web sites that relate to particular cults. And what we’ve intentionally done is we’ve made sure that among those links are links to web sites that have been put up by the cults.
And we’re careful to identify, you know, the source and whose it is. But if, for example, you want to get more information about the International Churches of Christ, you go to that section of the AFF web site and there’ll be a list of perhaps a dozen or 15 web sites that relate to the ICC.
And two or three of them are web sites that have been put up by the ICC. But the rest of them are web sites that have been put up by either former members --
[End of tape 1]