Guyana , 1978 . On the grounds of the People ’s Temple Agricultural Project , men , womanhood and small fry are lining up to get a drink . Within five minutes of swallowing the nitrile - lace up concoction , they ’re dead . More than 900 citizenry kick the bucket over the line of the solar day in the large single , non - natural exit of American lives prior to Sept. 11 , 2001 [ source : Miller ] . The People ’s Temple Agricultural Project is well jazz as Jonestown . If you ’ve ever wondered where the phrase " drinking the Kool - attention " comes from — this is it .
The People ’s Temple was take form during the ethnical upheaval of the sixties and ' 70s . The radical ’s charismatic loss leader , Jim Jones , preach a fusion of racial integration , socialismand ghostlike awakening . Jones attract a sizable following and enjoyed democratic backing from political leaders around the U.S.
But political science investigating into the inner works of his governance led Jones to relocate his operation to a outback corner of Guyana in 1976 . There , convinced that his group was under threat from outside force , Jones arranged rehearsals of mass self-destruction .
Anxious relatives of some project members lodged complaints against Jones in court of justice and in the metier , head U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan to visit Jonestown in November 1978 . After a short visit , Ryan leave behind with a generally favorable vista of the projection . But he fill with him a figure of the great unwashed who had chosen to entrust the group . As he was preparing to set forth from a nearby airstrip , phallus of the project ’s Red Guard film and killed Ryan and several others .
This event spark Jones ' conclusion to carry through with the long - planned great deal suicide that has since become known as the " Jonestown Massacre . "
In the backwash of the calamity , a group called the Cult Awareness connection ( CAN ) was take form . The service CAN provided was called " deprogramming . "
Programming Deprogramming
Jonestown was just one of many countercultural mathematical group that emerge during the societal and political fermentation of the sixties and ' 70s . Around the country , G of alienate young masses were joining communities organized around social and apparitional principle that were often at betting odds with the large beau monde .
Some of these groups hang on , most dissolve after a light time and a small-scale minority took the form ofcults . For mainstream parents , now scare - stricken by the deaths in Jonestown , it was sometimes hard to recite whether their wayward children had connect a harmless cooperative venture or adangerous personality cult .
The full term " fad " is tricky . It has several meanings . In its most traditional form it refers to the fear of a especial person , often a angel . veneration to the Virgin Mary , for instance , is sometimes referred to as the Marian Cult . Christianity itself start as a furore give to Jesus .
Today , humble religious communities that coalesce around a single charismatic leader are frequently referred to as cults . And in that context , " cult " has come to have negative connotations in the democratic imagery . When we hear the Good Book " cult , " many of us conceive of brainwashed devotees of some megalomanic , self - appointed messiah figure who , at any instant , might egg on dangerous behavior .
It was with this notion in mind that the Cult Awareness internet start offer its service after the Jonestown Massacre . For a cost , concerned parent could hire the web to get their children out from under the influence of their choose religious cult and Diamond State - brainwash or " deprogram " them . The hope was that , once deprogrammed , the former cult members would return to their pre - cult ways and reintegrate into mainstream gild .
However , many so - call cult followers professed to have freely take their lifestyles and CAN could n’t simply persuade them to leave their chemical group . From the get - go , the meshing adopted the practice of kidnapping the very people they ’d been hired to serve . They would then isolate them and begin the deprogramming process . Their method soon prove highly controversial .
Theory & Practice
The founder of the Cult Awareness internet was Ted Patrick , a high - school dropout who was among the first to evolve deprogramming techniques . There were a few others who place themselves up as deprogrammers , but Patrick was , by far , the most outstanding of the crew . Patrick was self - instruct ; he first developed his technique when convinced his son had beenbrainwashedby a furore . He had no formal training and created his deprogramming method from loot .
depart in the former seventies and working for fees as high as $ 25,000 , Patrick would hire muscle to abduct target and impart them to an detached fix [ origin : LeMoult ] . There , he woulddeprive them of rest , berate them incessantly with question and accusations , institute in congener to question and exclaim at them , and state them that all this would keep on until they recant their unacceptable beliefs and practices . In some font he used strong-arm violence to get results . unusually , law and other authorities seldom intervened because of a widespread fear that the deprogrammers were doing what they had to do in edict to counter the scourge of a suppose brainwashing conspiracy . It was fear that the goal of this allege confederacy ( possibly Communist in bloodline ) was to deprive young Americans of their innocent will [ source : LeMoult ] .
What deprogramming amounted to , of course , was a form of forced doings modification . It was , itself , brainwashing . Patrick , and the parents who hired him , assumed that cult member must have been brainwash , and therefore it was necessary to brainwash them , in reverse , so as to give back them to " N . " Parents reverse to Patrick and his like because even if they were to somehow extract their nestling from a cult , unless deprogrammed , these child were likely to give to their strange Modern community , like zombie . But as John LeMoult pointed out in his 1978 sound subject field of deprogramming , there ’s no evidence that furore members were ever brainwash . Rather , they had converted to a new Seth of beliefs . And the formula of a person ’s beliefs , however strange , is protect under the First Amendment .
This becomes even clearer when view event like that of English prof Sarah Wirth , a civic rights and anti - atomic activist . Wirth ’s female parent was so disturbed by her girl ’s political science that in 1980 , she rent Patrick to do some deprogramming . Patrick ’s collaborator grab Wirth off a street in San Francisco and hustled her into a expect vanguard . cuff her to a bed for virtually two weeks , the abductor used food , drink and slumber deprivation in their endeavor to change her political view . It did n’t put to work [ source : Rusher ] .
In another example , the parent of Stephanie Riethmiller of Ohio believed their daughter was sleeping with her female roommate . Accordingly , they paid Patrick $ 8,000 to remediate the situation . Patrick ’s accomplices snatch Riethmiller from her doorstep and drove her to Alabama where , she subsequently alleged , not only was she deprived of food and sleep , but also raped with the intention of return her to heterosexuality [ source : The New York Times ] .
Riethmiller process Patrick , and although ( implausibly ) the panel conduct him in that lawsuit , there were other , standardized bill of indictment and some conviction , with one result in his incarceration [ source : Armstrong ] . Cases against other deprogrammers were also mount up , and by the early 1990s , the whole idea of deprogramming was in hassle .
De-deprogramming
Such was the fear of cult in the seventies and ' LXXX that parents could apply for something called a " conservatorship , " which would grant them and , by extension , the deprogrammers they hired legal self-confidence over their adult children . Typically , conservatorships are granted only in case where a person is deemed to have severe genial health issues . But when it get to deprogramming , conservatorships were often granted with no attempt to chance on the mental state of the grownup child in question . For civil libertarians , this was a readable breach of individual rights .
As betimes as 1977 , before Jonestown , before the geological formation of CAN , American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU ) Executive Director Aryeh Neier was already voicing fear about other efforts at " deprogramming , " stating that it was a " grave trend . " The Rev. Dean Kelley of the National Council of Churches consider deprogramming to be " the most serious violation of spiritual liberty in this country in this coevals " [ author : Nashua Telegraph ] .
It took another 20 years to in effect bring the recitation of deprogramming to an end . In the mid-1990s , three deprogrammers named Rick Ross , Mark Workman and Charles Simpson kidnap a man named Jason Scott , lend him to a remote region of Washington State and held him there for days against his will . There they physically abused Scott in their efforts to force him to will theUnited Pentecostal congregationhe’d fall in . The three men had been hired by Scott ’s female parent to deprogram her Word . She ’d been referred to them by none other than the Cult Awareness connection [ source : Shupe and Darnell ] .
The deprogramming effort break down , and Scott brought a courting against Ross , Workman , Simpson and CAN . The jury found in Scott ’s favour , and the fine they imposed on CAN drive it into failure in 1996 . Many consider this the end of deprogramming as a common praxis [ source : Shupe and Darnell ] .
De-culting
But what about Jonestown ? In other watchword , what about those anomalous communities that really do stupefy a threat to their members ? Even if their small fry are grown up , should parent just stand by if they distrust disastrous moment ? What if they discover that their grandchild are being subject to questionable psychological or physical intervention ?
Although for - net profit deprogrammers exaggerate the scale of the threat flummox by supposed brainwashing , they owed their cosmos to veridical anxiousness in the civilization at large . To assist cope with these anxieties in the wake of deprogramming ’s dying , a raw , modified methodology issue , commonly referred to as " exit counseling . "
No organization regularise the use of the term " passing counseling , " but in general it refers to a non - coercive , dialogue - based intervention that involves all stakeholders . In other words , all concerned parties , including the religious cult member and her family and friends , fulfill voluntarily with an exit pleader for an agreed - upon duration of time . During these meeting , exit counselors might bring home the bacon educational material about a give cult , facilitate a discussion of family matters and attempt to assess relevant identity issues . allot to such models , takings such as unresolved family job , take disabilities and small self - regard can be among the reason why an individual might bring together a problematic religious radical like a craze [ source : Kent and Szimhart ] .
With all this in psyche , it credibly go without say that outlet counseling bears a much greater resemblance to addiction counselling than it does to deprogramming . As with addiction counseling , family members and exit counsellor sometimes spring a surprise interference , but any follow - up counseling must be entirely voluntary .
Not all exit counselors are the same : Some use a therapeutic approach , some a rationalist one and still others come at the site from a religious position . monetary value for the servicing of an exit counselor can deviate widely , but in 2002 it was estimated that the average cost is $ 1,000 per day [ source : Kent and Szimhart ] . Exit counseling has its skeptic who argue that person have the right hand to their beliefs withoutintervention , voluntary or otherwise . But others feel that in some cases intercession is warranted and necessary .
For those who are worried about their nearest and near but do n’t have a supernumerary $ 1,000 to spend on exit counseling , there ’s also the waiting plot . pass on time and disillusion , your loved one might just do what every religious cult drawing card fears most — get bored and leave .
Lots More Information
This was a very tricky field to write about . Open interrogative sentence plague the whole thing — what ’s the difference of opinion between a cult and a " new " religion ? Should parents find justified interpose in their grownup child ’s aliveness pick ? As a parent , I know it would be nearly impossible to stand by if I felt my kids were being manipulated and mistreated . On the other handwriting , of course , I would n’t enjoy ingest my parents poke their nose into my business concern . But if minors are under threat or self - impairment is imminent , doing nothing does n’t seem like an choice .
