Deprogramming is a controversial tactic that seeks to dissuade someone from "strongly held convictions" such as religious beliefs. Deprogramming purports to assist a person who holds a particular belief system—of a kind considered harmful by those initiating the deprogramming—to change those beliefs and sever connections to the group associated with them. Typically, people identifying themselves as deprogrammers are hired by a person's relatives, often parents of adult children. The subject of the deprogramming is usually forced to undergo the procedure, which might last days or weeks, against their will.
The Cult Awareness Network (CAN) was an anti-cult organization founded by deprogrammer Ted Patrick that provided information on groups it considered "cults", as well as support and referrals to deprogrammers. It operated from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s in the United States.
Eileen Vartan Barker is a professor in sociology, an emeritus member of the London School of Economics (LSE), and a consultant to that institution's Centre for the Study of Human Rights. She is the chairperson and founder of the Information Network Focus on Religious Movements (INFORM) and has written studies about cults and new religious movements.
Steven Alan Hassan is an American writer and mental health counselor who specializes in the area of cults and new religious movements. He worked as a deprogrammer in the late 1970s, but since then has advocated a non-coercive form of exit counseling.
Cult is a lay term for a group perceived as requiring unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices which are considered deviant outside the norms of society. Such groups are typically founded or led by a charismatic and self-appointed leader who tightly controls its members. It is in some contexts a pejorative term, also used for new religious movements and other social groups which are defined by their unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or their common interest in a particular person, object, or goal. This sense of the term is weakly defined – having divergent definitions both in popular culture and academia – and has also been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study.
David G. Bromley is a professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, specialized in sociology of religion and the academic study of new religious movements. He has written extensively about cults, new religious movements, apostasy, and the anti-cult movement.
The anti-cult movement, abbreviated ACM and also known as the countercult movement, consists of various governmental and non-governmental organizations and individuals that seek to raise awareness of cults, uncover coercive practices used to attract and retain members, and help those who have become involved with harmful cult practices.
Anson David Shupe, Jr. was an American sociologist and author noted for his studies of religious groups and their countermovements, family violence and clergy misconduct.
Galen G. Kelly is a "deprogrammer", associated with the Cult Awareness Network. He served as CAN's "security advisor." Prior to this he was a director for the Citizens' Freedom Foundation, a precursor to the CAN. Kelly was raised in Accord, New York.
Ronald M. Enroth was an American professor of sociology at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, and an evangelical Christian author of books concerning what he defined as "cults" and "new religious movements" and important figure in the Christian countercult movement.
Misunderstanding Cults: Searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field is an edited volume discussing various topics related to cults, including the scholarly field itself, the concept of brainwashing, and the public perception of the groups. The book was edited by Benjamin Zablocki and Thomas Robbins, and was published by University of Toronto Press on December 1, 2001. It includes contributions from 12 religious, sociological, and psychological scholars, in 14 essays.
Theodore "Ted" Roosevelt Patrick, Jr. is an American deprogrammer and author. He is sometimes referred to as the "father of deprogramming."
The Unification Church of the United States is the branch of the Unification Church in the United States. It began in the late 1950s and early 1960s when missionaries from South Korea were sent to America by the international Unification Church's founder and leader Sun Myung Moon. It expanded in the 1970s and then became involved in controversy due to its theology, its political activism, and the lifestyle of its members. Since then, it has been involved in many areas of American society and has established businesses, news media, projects in education and the arts, as well as taking part in political and social activism, and has itself gone through substantial changes.
Rick Alan Ross is an American deprogrammer, cult specialist, and founder and executive director of the nonprofit Cult Education Institute. He frequently appears in the news and other media discussing groups some consider cults. Ross has intervened in more than 500 deprogramming cases in various countries.
The Jason Scott case was a United States civil suit, brought against deprogrammer Rick Ross, two of his associates, and the Cult Awareness Network (CAN), for the abduction and failed deprogramming of Jason Scott, a member of the United Pentecostal Church International. Scott was eighteen years old at the time of the abduction and thus legally an adult. CAN was a co-defendant because a CAN contact person had referred Scott's mother to Rick Ross. In the trial, Jason Scott was represented by Kendrick Moxon, a prominent Scientologist attorney.
Cultists Anonymous (CA) was a British anti-cult organization made up of ex-cultists from Family, Action, Information, and Rescue (FAIR), Britain's largest anti-cult organization. CA formed in 1985 but rejoined FAIR in 1991. CA's leaders generally remained anonymous to avoid intimidation from new religious movements (NRMs). However, George D. Chryssides, a British religious studies scholar, believes that Lord John Francis Rodney, 9th Baron Rodney (Lord Rodney) was the leader of the group.
Martin Faiers is a British deprogrammer and former official in the Unification Church in Canada. He was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire. His family members are publishers of This England, a quarterly magazine about small-town and country England. According to scholar Elisabeth Arweck, Faiers lives in southern France and works in the Spanish deprogramming "market." In addition to being a deprogrammer, he also organized for several years a UK organization called Council on Mind Abuse.
The People's Organised Workshop on Ersatz Religion (POWER), also called the People's Organised Workgroup on Ersatz Religion, was a British anti-cult organisation founded in 1976 based in Ealing, London. Some believe that POWER is a front organisation by large new religious movements (NRMs) meant to delegitimise other anti-cult organisations like Family, Action, Information, Rescue (FAIR). POWER functionally disappeared in 1977 but caused major controversy within its roughly one-year lifespan. The organisation published a brochure called Deprogramming: The Constructive Destruction of Belief: A Manual of Technique, which advocated for mass deprogramming of cult members, including methods like sleep deprivation, food deprivation, forced nudity, kidnapping, and "aggressive sex".
Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare is a 1981 nonfiction book by Anson D. Shupe and David G. Bromley about the "cult scare" in America in the 1970s. It was published by Beacon Press in Boston. Shupe and Bromley analyze six specific new religious movements (cults) – the Unification Church, the Church of Scientology, the Children of God, the Divine Light Mission, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, and the Peoples Temple – in order to partially dispel myths about them.
Let Our Children Go! is a nonfiction book by Ted Patrick with Tom Dulack about Patrick's experience with cult deprogramming. It was first published in 1976 by E. P. Dutton, but was republished by Ballantine Books in 1977. The book alternates between sections written by Patrick and Dulack in describing encounters with cults including the Children of God, the Love Family, the Hare Krishna, and the Unification Church.
