According to “Storyline” (Rawstory.com) reported on July 30, American cult research expert Rick Ross discussed how a cult follower escaped from the bondage of a cult and successfully escaped, thereby telling the public about The method and process by which he helped the former believer to break away.
“People’s Temple” charismatic leader Jim Jones
For a year and a half, Elizabeth has been living in a dangerous cult with a high degree of control over its followers, the notorious South Korean “Religious Church” founded in the 1970s and 1980s, whose founder was convicted of sexual assault. . Lying on a hospital bed under the watchful eyes of her mother was Elizabeth’s greatest torture. She is about 1.78 meters tall and weighs less than 90 pounds. The weight loss and daily panic attacks are so severe that even her roommate, who is also a believer, cannot control her. Reluctantly, they asked her mother to take her to the emergency room, where the attending doctor found that without medical help, Elizabeth was at risk of heart failure.
Elizabeth (whose surname has been withheld for security reasons) had been recuperating at her parents’ house for several weeks when her uncle came to visit. Walking behind her uncle was an unfamiliar man in a suit and briefcase, the cult expert Rick Ross, whom her mother had paid for secretly.
Rick Ross is a distinguished expert on cult aversion in the United States and the director of the Cult Education Institute. This is a non-profit library that collects information about cults. Over the past 40 years of his career, many family and friends of cult followers hired Ross and with his help persuaded their loved ones to successfully leave the cult. Ross has published multiple books on breaking away from cults, testified as an expert in dozens of court cases, was sued by NXIVM sex cult leader Keith Lanier, stalked, and was featured on David Koresh’s “enemy list”. He has performed more than 500 interventions around the world with a 70% success rate. With the growing number of cults, he is recognized as an expert in the field. The International Cultic Studies Association estimates that there are now 10,000 cult groups in North America, up from 5,000 in 2003.
There was no indication in the early years of Ross’s underlying interest in helping people break free from cults. Growing up in Phoenix, USA, where his father was a Jewish plumber and his mother worked at a Jewish community center, he was an intelligent but restless truant as a child. He skipped school so often that his father had to send him to a military academy.
After a muddled experience, Ross began to visit his grandmother in a nursing home every week. It was during those visits in 1982 that Ross found the motivation to pursue a lifelong career—doing something to be proud of for his grandmother. Ross discovers that a fringe sectarian group is targeting grandmother’s nursing home, and these “missionaries” are hired to threaten Jewish residents, many of whom have been persecuted in Europe before, threatening that they “if they don’t convert, will burn in hell.”
An angry Ross demanded that the fringe denominational group be stopped and launched a campaign to bring the group to the attention of the local Jewish community and family. He wrote a pamphlet on the phenomenon of cults in Arizona, USA. A year later, Ross began working at the Phoenix Prison System’s Jewish Family and Children’s Services Center, providing social services to Jewish prisoners. Here, Ross finds that prisoners are also “primary targets of the cult.” He began designing curricula and teaching activities about destructive cults through the Phoenix Jewish Education Bureau. In 1986, Ross left the agency to become a full-time personal consultant and cult apostate.
“Photography”
The Religion to which Elizabeth is a member is a cult that Ross is very familiar with and has been following for some time. Essentially, the “Religious Church” is a cult founded by Zheng Mingxi, a former member of the “Unification Church”, which cultivates followers into his “spiritual brides”, forcing believers to sever ties with their families and adhere to strict teachings – they are deprived of Sleeping, restricting diet, following a strict work schedule, and being asked to stay slim and dress appropriately. The cult has more than 100,000 followers worldwide and has been operating in Australia since 1997, where Elizabeth was recruited. Former members of the Religion Church reported that in order to “purify,” the sect encouraged new female believers to have sex with the leader.
At a bookstore, 18-year-old Elizabeth first encountered a young woman who said she was part of a Christian painting group. She emailed Elizabeth with photos of the paintings, encouraging Elizabeth to join the group. Elizabeth then joined the so-called “painting group” and was well-received by the members. Elizabeth became good friends with them, eating and drinking coffee together and attending their Bible studies. Elizabeth later recalled that it was a process of her “gradual adaptation to this particular denomination.”
Ultimately, Elizabeth was convinced that the cult was “the ultimate truth” and that she needed to dedicate her life to it. She moved into a three-bedroom Sydney home with nine members immersed in the “religious” lifestyle.
“The cult manages its members extremely strictly: we limit our food intake, our sleep is drastically reduced to around 4 hours a night, we have to work while studying to pay rent and food. We have to pray for hours, Evangelism in the streets, various denominational services, various extracurricular activities, and the cult uses these activities as a cover to try to recruit more members,” Elizabeth said.
Elizabeth recruits believers by running a fake model business. When Jung Myung Suk was finally released from prison, she recalled, she became “one of the women who belonged to the leader.” In fact, the cult told believers that the leader was imprisoned because of “persecution by Satan”, and Elizabeth had flown overseas to visit Zheng Mingxi in prison.
intervene
Before beginning the intervention, Ross instructed Elizabeth’s family not to discuss the “Province” or its beliefs until he arrived. Ross explained: “Elizabeth’s mother had an argument with her about her joining the Church of the Proctor. I have to deal with this very carefully.”
When Rose walked into Elizabeth’s home for the first time, her inner alarm bell went off immediately. “He introduced himself very politely and said he was here to discuss the group I was a part of. I was horrified and realised it was an ambush,” Elizabeth said. She left her home immediately, “I remember my mum holding me tightly before I left, and I could hear her say ‘please don’t run’ in a trembling voice.”
Elizabeth wanted to run away, but didn’t know where to go. “I was deeply convinced that the cult was the ‘truth,’ and was equally terrified of leaving, and I came to the conclusion that I had to go back and maybe die. But even then, leaving the cult was not an option for me,” recalls Elizabeth. “I was afraid of fighting. Calling the cult and being afraid to go back, I thought maybe I could put up with this conversation.” But Elizabeth couldn’t predict how long it would take.
Rick spoke all day, for hours without interruption. He knew he couldn’t budge.
Over the years, Ross has developed an intervention program that includes four basic discussion modules: defining a destructive cult, discussing the cult’s methods of coercive persuasion and influence, disclosing and discussing the specifics of the cult and its leader, and talking about family issues. The whole process usually takes 3 to 4 days, with continuous discussions for 6 to 8 hours per day. During this time, family members are present and they can observe and pay attention.
“We usually start by discussing cults and then delve into the cult’s means of coercive persuasion and influence,” Ross explained, “with the aim of stimulating Elizabeth’s critical thinking.”
“He started talking about similar cults first, not the one I was involved in. I didn’t realize that this approach opened my mind and he made me realize that my organization is not unique in its approach and beliefs.” Elizabeth Tried to get out of her mind and muffled what he said through prayer. But through this information, she discovered a loophole in the logic of her sect, and the effect began to show. She thought she was going crazy. She drove to a parking lot far from home and screamed in the car. She texted the team leader of the Religion, who immediately tried to book a red-eye flight to hide in another city.
“Hours of information started to break through my psychological defenses. At this stage, I was both afraid of going back to the cult and staying. It was an incredibly chaotic and difficult time, and I was very physically weak. Second At the end of the day, I stayed. Rick kept providing information and skillfully leading the conversation, helping and disarming the psychological traps that had been planted in my head, and I was finally convinced. ‘Well, I know the group I’ve been in Actually a cult. Please tell me all about them. I’m ready to listen.'” Ross was well prepared before he came.
“She learned about the imprisoned leader’s history of sexual assault (which the group had previously dismissed as a demonic attack), and she also learned about the eight counts of rape he was charged with and held in South Korea for 15 years,” Ross said. .
Elizabeth has changed since then.
“When I was in the cult, I didn’t know the truth, I learned everything I could, and went on a long journey of recovery. Rick stayed an extra day and he chatted with me and helped me Understand what happened to me,” she continued. In the end, Elizabeth embarked on a path to healing.
The evolution of the cult
Forty years later, for the first time in his career, Ross recognizes his own limitations. Early in his career (when he was saving people from other cults like Unification, David, etc.), he was more aware of cults, their leaders, how they recruited followers, and what they expected of their followers. Charles Manson, Jim Jones, and David Koresh of the day were notorious psychopaths, undisputedly insane, and blatantly abusive to their followers. They recruit believers mostly in open public places such as various university associations and music festivals. Ross helps people rescue loved ones from the clutches of a cult — rescuing them like a kidnapped hostage.
However, cults are always evolving. Recruiting is now done online. These targets are hard to protect: bullied 13-year-old unknowingly attracted to Reddit, serendipitously tweeting about the Iraq war with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Veterans, or people who have struggled with mental illness for years. Cult leaders like “Q” are sometimes unknown, maybe not even individuals but groups, and may never see their followers. How they exploit believers, or what their goals are, often becomes more obscure.
“Internet cults are an emerging and growing phenomenon,” Ross reflects, “They recruit people online and maintain online membership through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. , there are even YouTube videos and podcasts. They use video software (Zoom) to communicate with believers, they get paid through PayPal, basically running everything online.â€
This is where Ross hit a wall. While countless family members called him for advice, no one hired him to intervene in “Q Anonymous” (QAnon) or other ideologies and conspiracy theories, as Ross told them there was nothing he could do about many of these cases.
“You can’t quit mental illness, and you can’t decode beliefs that a person has held for years. So it’s a new phenomenon, and ‘Anonymous Q’ is a lot more nuanced than the typical destructive cult. Get involved. of people have a history of psychological and emotional problems,” he explained.
A study on January 6 this year found that a third of those captured had previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.
“They didn’t feel well,” Ross said, “and they were already deeply troubled, so they joined ‘Anonymous Q’. There’s also an important factor, ‘Anonymous Q’ has a long history, these people have deep-rooted beliefs , these beliefs will become arguments for conspiracy theories, whether it be religious beliefs, anti-government behavior, or conspiracy theories, and there is nothing I can do about it.â€â€‹
wait a window
Ross hopes the relatives of these believers don’t lose hope. However, his advice may be too difficult to implement for most people.
“I think the most important thing is to keep communicating,†Ross explained, “don’t cut ties with them! Stay connected to them, communicate with them, avoid arguments, avoid fights, just be there. Be there for them, make sure They understand that you are there, that you are not leaving, that you care about them and want to stay in touch with them.”
After that, Ross says, you have to “wait for a window — an opportunity for that person to become suspicious of what he’s involved in. Then you can, in a very calm, discreet way, present the material, or they can go online or Visit the University Education website and read about similar groups.”
“It might help to figure out what has happened and help them see it from a different perspective,” he added, “but unless they express openness to alternative perspectives, you’re just hitting a wall.” Especially if they Completely fascinated by this group.
This advice may be unwelcome to those who are mired in new-age cults and can’t help themselves. Cutting ties with someone because of their distressing beliefs is a dilemma, and you may not be ready to fight the battle. After all, not everyone has the time and patience that Rick Ross has.
