Rick Ross - Inside the Dark World of Cults | SRS #150

Rick Ross welcome to the show nice to be here Sean it's a pleasure to have you thank you so I've been uh looking into taking a peek into secret societies and Cults and kind of stuff like this and um you came across our radar and sounds like you are the expert in Cults and and kind of deprogramming people out of these things and um I'm just really fascinated in this subject and uh this this is the first interview that I'm Diving into this subject and I'm just really happy you're here I'm excited about this one

it's uh it's a heck of a subject yeah yeah well I'm going to uh kick it off with an introduction okay so Rick Allen Ross you are globally recognized you are a globally recognized expert on the inner workings of destructive culture controversial groups as well as subversive movements you've been qualified accepted and testified as a Court expert in 13 States including the United States Federal Court since 1982 you've been studying researching and responding to problems often posed by controversial authoritarian groups and movements youve intervened in more than 500 deprogramming cases in various countries you were

the only deprogrammer to work with members of the branch Davids Davidson prior to the Waco Siege you've been called upon as an expert resourc by Law enforcement including the batf FBI and United States justice department you also have been a guest lecturer at many universities including pen Carnegie melon and the University of Chicago you are the executive director of the Colt Education Institute author of the book Colts inside out how people get in and can get out your reputation has led you to becoming a paid consultant for CBS CBC and nippen of Japan television networks

As well as retained a technical consultant for both mirox and Disney film studios GQ Magazine identified you as America's leading cult expert in Britain's FHM magazine named you America's number one cult Buster you previously worked as an expert consultant for Ubisoft in the creation of the very popular video game Far Cry 5 quite the intro thank you very uh interesting career I am curious um what what got you So interested in Colts you know my my grandmother was really like my best friend and when she was 82 and she was living in a nursing home

a bizarre kind of radical religious group infiltrated The paid staff of the nursing home to Target the elderly and my grandmother was confronted and she told me about it she was very upset that this woman who was a paid uh Aid on the staff had tried to recruit her into this Rel religious organization and U I became an activist I became an anti-cult activist Community organizer back in the early 80s and it grew out of my concern that groups were targeting the elderly and then I would later find out targeting prisoners uh literally a captive

audience and also uh going after minor children without parental notification or consent so what began for me as a personal interest because of my grandmother grew into a life's work and here I am 40 some years later uh but it all started with My grandmother what was the what was the what was the cult that was after your grandma it was a fringe group uh that targeted Jews uh my grandmother lived in a Jewish nursing home uh and this group felt that it was their mission to convert Jews to their group which they identified as

supposedly Hebrew Christians uh but in fact the leader was an ordained Pentecostal Minister and the group was called the Jewish voice broadcast I Think they still exist uh though under different leaders at the time my grandmother was confronted the leader was a man by the name of lwis Kaplan who had been raised as a Jew but had converted to uh Pentecostalism and he felt that it was his mission to convert other Jews and you know I have no problem Sean with people preaching what they believe uh I may not agree with it that's that's fine

my issue is do not Covertly enter into a nursing home staff with a hidden agenda if you want to share your faith with people in the nursing home come in the front door and say hey I'm going to do a Bible study would you post this on your bulletin board and maybe some of your residents would like to participate that I have no problem with what I have a problem with is deceptive uh you know covert type of activities like the one that I dealt With with my grandmother it's Sneaky it's very sneaky it's Sneaky

and uh we'll get into that a couple of things we got to I have to knock out before we get too into the weeds and I can't wait to do that but uh I have a subscription account on patreon they are our top supporters always have been and um they're the reason I get to do this and uh and that you get to be here as well and so I I offer them the opportunity to ask each guest a question and So this one came in from Brandon white and he wants to know how can

individuals protect themselves and their loved ones from falling victim to these groups we're we're going to get into that a little bit later so I'm going to change the question just a little bit CU we are going to cover this what are a few things that what are just a couple of of quick identifiers for somebody who might think that they would be they're being Recruited by a cult what are some some quick identifiers well if you get involved with with a group and the group is obsessed with a leader and that leader has no

accountability uh and that leader seems to be an object of worship that would be a red flag another red flag would be is this group uh be do do they encourage encourage people to become socially isolated that is when you become involved with a group they're kind of Dissing your old friends and your family and and they're encouraging you to make your life totally within this new social environment uh that type of environment control that type of social isolation would be another warning sign and I is the is the leader open to criticism uh is

the group open to criticism or do they characterize it in some negative way and dismiss it and you know basically denigrate anyone that questions them Because typically a group will have accountability for its leadership um that may be Democratic governance Financial transparency and groups can uh you can be involved in an organization and still be very active with your family your old friends people that become cut off and isolated because of a group that is a really U big warning warning flag that something is a something's a Miss how early does that kind of happen

does that Happen early on or is that they ease people into it I would say that they ease people into it and that's what I think people don't recognize is that it's a uh it's indoctrination incrementally it's a slow drip and you get involved but I would say if your family starts to question and your old Friends start to question what you're involved with uh depending on their their closeness to you and and their concerns that could be uh that could be Something that the group will become very uh concerned about very early on if

because what they want these groups is they want you to not have uh feedback from people outside of the group's control what they want is for you to be embedded within this environment that they control where the only feedback you hear is re enforcement from other group members and the leader so when your family begins to question the group and an old friends begin to ask uh critical Questions and the group responds by saying well you need to really kind of cut them off that is uh a very much an early warning sign that could

could be a a kind of tripwire to notify you this is a problem this group is a problem okay okay next thing everybody that comes on the show gets a gift thank you you're welcome I don't know if you got any guesses Well oh gummy bears those are vigilance League gummy bears all right made right here in the USA legal in all 50 states fortunately or maybe unfortunately for you I don't know but um but um yeah let's um let's get on with it so I have uh one of the one of the gentleman on

my team he he actually edits all of our all of the episodes all the show stuff uh is grew up in the Jehovah Witness community and he is uh what he likes to Say escaped that uh Community he calls it a cult and um you know some of the stuff that he has to say about what he's been through and kind of our discussion on the way here um from your hotel I was telling you you know his family has totally abandoned him he doesn't talk to it's just there's so many things that are fascinating

to me about what they go through and and you had kind of mentioned that they have Kind of moved away from the from the cult I don't know what what what what what from the cult uh it sounds like there's not as much of a cult as they used to be am I correct Sean look the Jehovah's Witnesses have been around for over a hundred years so what you see with some groups that be that began as Cults which in my opinion Jehovah's Witnesses began as a personality cult they were uh led by Charles taas

Russell who devised Their you know their belief system and he was an absolute uh totalitarian leader and he was the defining element and driving force of Jehovah's Witnesses after he died another dictator ruled over the witnesses and that was a man named Rutherford but after Rutherford died power devolved into what is called the governing body and the governing body is like a dozen Men Who Run Jehovah's Witnesses and I would say that with without the presence of a single Personality that is an object of worship that is the defining element of the group the group

has changed from a personality cult led by one absolute leader to what could be seen as a destructive authoritarian organization but not a personality cult uh as it once was so what you see with some groups is they evolve and change uh particularly when the founder leader dies and then the group May disintegrate and vanish or the group may have a successor as as Russell did and that group by the way would Jehovah's Witnesses were once simply called the russellites which tells you quite a bit so what now they have is the russellites that wow

they were called the russellites so so typically a group ENT identifies with that leader to the extreme that they might be called by the leader's name for example the unification Church founded by Reverend moon was often called the followers were called the Moonies and That was because of how strong their identification was with Reverend Moon who was an object of worship so in my opinion the Jehovah's Witnesses continue to be a destructive authoritarian organiz ation but I would not call them a destructive cult I think they've evolved beyond that point but they still have practices

such as their uh encouragement of their members not to to have blood transfusions which results in deaths Every year and also they have very extreme beliefs about the world uh the reason that they don't salute the flag or or or pledge allegiance or belong to organizations is because per their belief system they believe that there is only one organization established by Jehovah God on Earth and that is Jehovah's Witnesses and therefore they cannot have any dual loyalty or Allegiance and this is the reason they're not uh uh open to being in a Political party voting

being in the armed services and in fact they became conscientious objectors at at during wartime and so so on but today if you leave the witnesses and about 50% of the young people that are raised witnesses will eventually leave you may be cut off by your family and they have a practice called disfellowshipping or shunning and if you leave and they announce that you have been disfellowshipped your family may Shun you one in five of us has learned learn a new language on our bucket list not sure what's up with the other four but if

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an investment decision now some witnesses May navigate that a bit more uh carefully uh for example Michael Jackson was raised a witness and he left but his family continued to talk to him some would argue well he was a rich celebrity and they gave him special treatment but on the other hand I think he did what was called disassociation so there was a little bit more of a nuanced departure for him and He wasn't cut off by his family so I think it's possible to navigate out of the witnesses without that but many many people

are shunned and disfellowshipped and they go through an enormous amount of pain and suffering and I have testified in court many times about the Witnesses in custody cases and in one uh wrongful death case the Coughlin case which uh we talked about on the way over and you know uh what happens is let's say there's a couple and they're both Witnesses but one leaves divorce and then custody battle over the minor children and it can get very intense where the children uh really get caught in this uh war or struggle because the witnesses feel that

you know they can't celebrate birthdays they can't celebrate Christmas uh they don't acknowledge uh holidays uh only the Watchtower Bible and track society and Jehovah's Witnesses is is what they celebrate or adhere to or whatever so the end result Is that the child is in the middle and the parents are fighting and the witness parent uh wants to raise a child as a witness and frequently what happens is they will if they have custody turn that child against the non-witness parent this is happening to my editor right now right he he has a son and

this you're describing this perfectly it's almost like it's almost like there's a textbook out there or something on how to do it They've lied to the kid they've turned him completely against him his family has disowned him it's it's it's really sad to see it happen yeah well I I've testified in these custody cases and most of the cases that I've testified in of course I am working for the parent who is not a witness um one case for example that I that I worked on uh the the father had become a witness uh even

though he wasn't one when he married his wife and They had their children and it became a a source of friction and the end result was that uh the wife divorced him and I testified about how the Witnesses and their beliefs would impact the children and how it would affect them for example they couldn't be uh a Boy Scout or a girl scout they couldn't be in in Little League they they couldn't celebrate holidays they couldn't go to a Christmas party and so on so the mother ended up with primary custody and the father had

Visitation and his visitation was uh uh prescribed in the sense that he could not take the children and indoctrinate them in the witnesses and uh he could not go with them for example door Todo as Witnesses do uh you know handing out tracks and trying to recruit people uh because the witnesses unlike most religions are intolerant of other religious beliefs in a way that is very extreme that creates an impos possibility of of Compromise uh whereas most parents could work that out uh it's very difficult for the parent who is not a witness to work

it out with a witness parent and uh so I've seen a number of divorces child custody battles over situations like that and also the courts have had to intervene to get a child uh life sustaining blood transfusions uh because a parent who's a witness believes that by getting a blood transfusion for their child they have Committed a horrible wrong and they're encouraged by the leaders in their in their Church their Kingdom Hall the elders not to do that and so the courts have had to intervene at times and order that a child does receive a

blood transfusion and I guess the premise for that would be that the child has a right to life the parents have a right to believe as they wish to believe and as adults to refuse a blood transfusion but they do Not have the right to make that choice for their child who has a a right to to live and so the courts have intervene in a number of cases like that uh so so there have been a number of things uh that have occurred like that and also uh the witnesses have had a problem uh

similar to uh the Catholic Church uh in regards to U sexual abuse of minor children within the witnesses and that is uh their refusal to go to the authorities to have people arrested and Instead to kind of keep it within uh the witness community and uh that has caused a lot of people who have suffered from abuse uh to feel that they were betrayed by the leadership of the witnesses that seems to be a commonality in a lot of these cultish and cult type organizations what what is the why do they I mean when they

recruit somebody into a cult I don't know the percentage but it has to be it has to be like 99% of People realize that molesting children is is pure evil so when you get a cult like Jehovah's Witness and or or or or an author author what did you call an authoritarian organization a destructive authoritarian organization what how do they manipulate somebody off the street who knows sexual abuse and exploitation of children is wrong how do they get him to I mean how do they get him to look The other way well know this is

happening within within the witnesses and within certain groups they would say that it is in the best interest of the group and that the ends justify the means we are the witnesses we are Jehovah's God we are Jehovah God's you know established organization on Earth uh we should not suffer uh Scandal this would discredit us this would cause problems for us and in the better interest of the group and its and its Larger goals we will make that sacrifice now there are Cults that actually man have mandated sexual abuse for example mandated sexual abuse yeah

there there was a group the children of God that was started by a man by the name of Moses David Berg who's now dead uh River Phoenix Wen Phoenix were at one time uh included in this group because their parents joined and they they were involved in the group and the leader was a pedophile and he mandated that adults In the group molest children and he molested his own children including his granddaughter who I met and his daughter who I also met and uh you know this was a Insidious horribly destructive uh cult and they

would Escape uh a of ility to the authorities by creating you know kind of isolated communities and cutting their people off from any means of reporting but the Mandate was this is Holy this is right this is what we do and within this controlled environment Uh where people were cut off from an outside frame of reference from feedback from others and children were being raised in this environment and this was their normal uh this horrible things went on within that community and I've talked to many uh young people young adults that were raised within children

of God and suffered horribly and uh and and felt very conflicted because they would say to me Rick you know I love my dad and I Love my mom but at the same time I hate them because they brought me into this organization I know they were True Believers and they the eles were tricked and and and you know controlled by the group but horrible things happened to me I suffered sexual abuse as a child and it was mandated by this group and I I wouldn't have been in it if my parents hadn't joined and

I think one of the things we often forget is that there are children that are being raised within Groups that have been called destructive Cults and they have no option they turn to their family their parents for protection and a sense of safety but their parents are manipulated and controlled by the leaders of these groups and they're not there to protect their own child wow I mean what what is so how do they we're going to get into this a lot more but for just for a frame of reference I Mean how what is the

do they have an explanation on why they need to molest and exploit kids sexually inside that cult in the case of children of God it was just a bizarre twisting of scriptures so this was a way of showing love this was some kind of divine love uh that they were sharing you know and and Berg Moses David Berg would also tell the women in the group that they should recruit Men by offering themselves sexually and this was called Flirty fishing and then later they would actually charge for sex with with men that they would try

to recruit and they were called hookers for Christ and I mean this sounds bizarre but this is how bizarre some of some of these groups are probably one of the most Insidious groups was the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints the flds and that is the polygamist uh organization that was led by Warren Jeff's who's now in prison in Texas and there were thousands of people that followed Jeff's uh and these were people that were raised within polygamy for generations for some of these groups go back a hundred years and they lived

in relatively isolated ated communities where the group controlled the police they controlled the school they controlled everything uh the one Community was Colorado City Arizona another was hildale Utah now these Groups have been uh kind of uh dealt with through the law and Jeffs is in prison but for the children they don't know any other life for their families they don't know any other life and there were girls that were literally raped by Jeffs and and others in the group uh and they were minor children so only in recent years has Law Enforcement began to

really deal with these communities uh one would be the flds another would be the Kingston clan in Utah that also was Guilty of of this type of abuse so you know they're they're about 50,000 people living in polygamist uh communities in North America so so that would be another group where things would go on inside the group that Outsiders would not know and that the group would control and people suffered in particular children man what are some of the most prevalent Cults today well I would say we we've touched upon The polygamist groups and then

there are uh in my opinion Scientology would be a group that I would be concerned about even though there are many celebrities involved in it uh it's a shrinking organization but they still control a great many people and they have an enormous amount of money and property that they control uh that group was started by elron hubber the science fiction writer who you know ultimately created a a a religion that has tax Exempt status in the United States and now is run by a man by the name of David Mage who took over after elron

hubber died and so there are prominent people involved in Scientology like Tom Cruz John Travolta interestingly I had always thought over the years that if a celebrity that was in Scientology left and turned on them that could be where celebrity recruitment which often helped them could be a two-edged sword that cut both ways and that happened when uh Leah Reminy you know the sitcom star left Scientology and started to speak out against them and she has accomplished an enormous amount of good uh basically explaining what's going on inside Scientology and how it affected her and

she was raised by Scientology parents to be a Scientologist so so that is an organization that that I look at quite a bit and get quite a few complaints about and I would say that U most of these Groups are relatively small uh they might have a few hundred followers uh some of them have a few thousand um Scientology uh might have 25 to 50,000 people involved at this point uh though they claim to have many more people than that and then there's the unification Church which was founded by Reverend Moon which still exists within

the United States and internationally and has a very strong presence in Japan uh so there are just there's so many groups And many of them recruit online they recruit through social media platforms they have YouTube channels they have uh Twitter X accounts uh they're on Instagram uh there's even a group uh led by Robert Shen who had something called 7M films and the shecka church that is nicknamed the the tick tock cult because his followers dancers and entertainers uh do very popular uh uh videos on Tik Tok and uh Shin makes money from these people

and they live in group housing And there's a documentary now on Netflix in which they allege that this is a cult group that they manipulate and uh control their members and that they cause families to be cut off and a number of people that were in the she church and we associated with Robert Shin have spoken out and then you know there just so many of these groups uh uh you know it's hard to keep track of them uh but I I do try to create a through the cult Education Institute a database Where people

can find information you know when when you say I want to explore Scientology for a little bit but when you when when when the leader of a cult when the torch gets passed how do they how's that person selected well in the case of David mosevic it's interesting because he was in his 20s when elron hubber died and he was like his uh his gatekeeper he was in uh fulltime as a Scientology um uh member of staff and his job was to take care of and and he was like a courier a messenger for elron

hubber and he was able to use that position as gatekeeper to then promote himself into a position of absolute leader of Scientology David Mage has held that position for many many years and I would in my opinion elron hubard was U not a nice guy but probably an easier leader to deal with uh than David mavage who many people that have left Scientology say is a very um harsh uh very uh punitive leader and so so I would say that in the case of Scientology it's things seem to have gone from from bad to worse

under the leadership of David Mage that's my view uh and and I think that even though he had the Breakthrough of getting tax exempt status for Scientology and and building it as a financial Empire that's certainly worth more than a billion dollars uh it it's Shrinking from the standpoint of membership but there these people that are called SE org members the C organization sea and elron hubard uh was in the Navy and so he kind of fancied himself as a leader of a kind of Naval organization and at one time he lived on a ship

with many of his loyal followers so what involved is this organization of Staff called the sea organization and there are thousands of them and they staff various facilities for Scientology And their entire lives are are controlled uh monitored by Scientology and by the way I've testified as an expert in court regarding Scientology and one of the most uh and I've done a number of interventions to help people leave Scientology and I write about that in my book and I think it's a very difficult Organization for people to leave because if you have family in Scientology

or Friends and there are people that have been raised in Scientology their whole life is Scientology uh there's a policy called disconnection which would be the extreme equivalent of what Jehovah's Witnesses called disfellowshipping in Scientology it's called disconnection and so they declare someone as a what they call a suppressive person and then you are to Disconnect from them which means it's over you have nothing to do with them and it's it's uh rumored that this is the reason that Nicole Kidman's adopted children Connor and Isabella Cruz have very little to do with her because they

were raised in Scientology and it's also uh been said that the reason that Katie Holmes left her marriage with Tom Cruz was because of Scientology and that he has very little To do with his daughter Siri because of Scientology so what do what is the basis of Scientology what do they believe Scientology is really kind of a self-help um organization or that's how they sell themselves so they have courses they have curriculum and you go through these U ascending levels first you reach what they call clear and then there are eight different levels above clear

uh they call them operating Thon Level one two all the way to 8 ot8 uh Tom Cruz I think is an ot7 John Travolta an ot7 Jenna Elfman I think also an ot7 uh Danny Masterson by the way was in was very much involved in Scientology and the women that he raped said that because they were scientologists uh this this abuse did not come out for a number of years and of course eventually he was convicted now he's in Prison uh so what scientologists do is they go through what's called auditing which is uh also

referred to as a kind of spiritual counseling and you sit with a person who is an auditor you hold these metal cans which are connected by wires to a box called an eer which is really like part of a lie detector it measures nervous tension in your hands and it makes the needle move and so you are asked questions about your life and what's going on in your life by the Auditor uh Tom Cruz has gone through this John Travolta uh Leah reminy at one point and they take copious notes and they look at the

Emer to see when the needle moves and when it moves they know you're nervous about what they're asking you and then they can drill down into that and people sign forms uh releasing their files to Scientology so Scientology has the goods on you they know all about your life uh they do this in what they call a process to deal with A negative reactive mind that is to help you it's all done under the idea that this is to help you become a better person to uh realize your full potential uh Tom Cruz has many

times praised Scientology he says that it cured him of Dyslexia other scientologists will make similar claims uh and Scientology considers itself the ultimate science of the mind which is why they are very antagonistic to mental health professionals who they see as if you Will a competing source of Health uh an alternative to what they regard as the way to uh deal with your mind and your problems so scientologists pay a lot of money for auditing they pay a lot of money for these courses and and on and on it goes and um it can be

quite expensive moving up the OT levels uh doing Scientology it's I've heard a lot of rumors about people that have tried to escape this that have been blocked away Kind of kidnapped I what is what do you make of this is that true well you know on occasion scientologists will have problems you know that are not apparently effectively dealt with by Scientology ology uh they may have a psychotic break uh they may have U uh problems because they they're schizophrenic or or they're uh deeply depressed and Scientology says that they can cure These problems uh

but but they apparently can't because there are families that say a suicide occurred because their family member did not get the help needed or that they were in lockdown in Scientology uh because that was what Scientology felt they needed though they did not and what is a lockdown what is that well they they will they will isolate a person and monitor them during a period of time which they believe will Resolve their problem and uh you know this this happens with uh certain situations with Scientology and uh people may not get the help that they

need how long could somebody be locked down well there are people that have been locked in What's called the rehabilitation uh project Force you know uh within Scientology uh this is a program that Scientology runs where if you are deemed To be a problem you can be I isolated in a rehabilitation project for months years so it's a re-education program it supposedly is going to help this person to be to uh uh be a better more productive member of society of Scientology but in reality people that have been a part of this program uh which

uh they're they become isolated in this facility in hemt California uh they they feel it's like a prison and there have been people held there for Long periods of time and there have been people that claim they escaped from that program uh so I would say that Scientology is a very can be a very harsh very controlling Organization for people and uh this can cause a lot of problems and I've had complaints about scient ology going back decades So when you say when these people are put into the the whatever I can't remember what you

call it the re-education camp is that Against their will if if someone is put in that uh Camp it is with their consent uh but I would argue how did that consent how was that consent obtained MH uh what was the process because there there there have been allegations that it can be quite uh coercive quite manipulative to get that person to to go to that rehabilitation program and it's a very very harsh environment according to people who have Left so I would say that they are acting against their own best interest by being there

and in my opinion that would be a sign of undue influence that people are acting against their own best interests but conforming to what the leadership wants them to do which is in the leadership's best interest so in my opinion Scientology exercises very extreme undue influence over its members uh in my book I wrote about a Scientologist that I was Asked to intervene uh to get him out of Scientology he had joined when he was 22 he had been in Scientology for 27 years wow he was almost 50 when I met him and his whole

life had been Scientology from the time he was 22 and uh his wife was not a full-blown Scientologist his two children had not become scientologists but they had not objected they had done courses they had kind of plated him in Scientology uh Though they had concerns they didn't really want to be Allin and so what happened was at one point Scientology wanted him to become a seaorg member they wanted him to go to a a Scientology facility live there become full-time and leave his family and divorce his wife and he told his wife this and

then his family decided to do an intervention and and it boy that was a tough one uh but eventually he decided to leave Scientology and I think the point of that that he kind of had an epiphany that opened his mind to the possibility that Scientology wasn't quite what he thought was when we talked about uh what's called the purification rundown and this is a drug treatment kind of all toxin out of your body treatment that Scientology does which is a process of saunas ingesting vegetable oil large doses of nasin and supposedly they they can

leech the Toxins out of your body and this is premised on the belief uh that was that was uh posited by elron hubard uh the creator of Scientology that if you use drugs if for example you uh once used LSD or you once used U some type of prescribed drug uh that was not good such as uh uh Scientology would say that any psychiatric uh prescribed drug is a negative thing so Scientology believes that that drug is in the fatty tissues of your body Indefinitely and that only through the purification rundown can it be extracted

and that if it isn't extracted you're at risk because at any time that might be released into your blood and then you would hallucinate you would you would uh have a problem functioning and so Scientology charges money to do the purification rundown and people go through this and when I was working with this man who had been in Scientology for 27 years I said to him you know that medical science has proven that drugs do not reside in your fatty tissue indefinitely and a drug test will show the presence of drugs for only a certain

period of time that they they flow out of the body uh you know and they're no longer there and he found that very very difficult to to believe and so I showed him a great deal of documentation and evidence and I said look when elron hubber wrote this that was back in the 50s it was a long time ago but science has moved forward and the the research shows that hubard was wrong and so science isn't static it evolves based on research and and new information and so what happened in Scientology is they're stuck because

they can't ever question what hubard wrote and so at that point he he really had this kind of epiphany and he said wait a minute Scientology that's supposed to be like a Play on science and that it's more than just a religious belief it's somehow scientific and yet you're showing me that something that is believed by scientologists uh that they claim is scientifically true is not and Scientology because it's so rigid cannot evolve beyond that because as Isaac Hayes once said who was a Scientologist what elron hubber said is immutable it is always true forever

and so in that sense Scientology is most Clearly a religion based on belief and when that belief in hubard conflicts with scientific research they will go with hubard not with the research but at this point where this man was unplugged from his Scientology Community with his family had a chance to independently review the research he concluded wait a minute so it's not scientific and Scientology may be a play on the word science but it's not science-based and this belief should Have been changed and the purification rundown is flawed and once he saw that if you

will crack it just opened up opened up and then he was able to realize wait a minute I I don't want to leave my wife I've been married for many years I don't want to leave my kids they love me uh how how often can I see them if I'm a a full-time seaorg member so he at the pleadings of his family and with this kind of recognition of some of the flaws in Scientology decided to leave Wow what's it like for you as a deprogrammer I mean when you see when you see the Epiphany

happen it's uh it's awesome because in my opinion the people people that I'm working with are are really prisoners uh you know psychologically emotionally in these groups and to see them be able to break free and think for themselves and think independently and then literally think their way out which is the antithesis of what the group Wants for them I think that's a really great thing and in some of the interventions that I've done for example I did an intervention in Europe in which a man who had diabetes was told by the group that he

could meditate his his cure that he didn't have to use insulin and he almost died three times before his family brought me in We did an intervention and quite honestly he didn't abandoned meditation he continued to believe many Of of the group's teachings but he decided I'm going to take my insulin because he had a little girl who was about two and he he had a wife who loved him and he wanted to live but the group had told him no you can meditate uh and your diabetes will be cured this is a group called

fallong gong which originated in China and um is known in the United States largely through a dance company it runs called Shen Yun which is supposedly Chinese traditional dance they also control uh a newspaper called The Epic Times and uh just recently the CFO of The Epic Times was charged with money laundering uh millions of dollars we'll see how that works out but for for me uh what I see with fallong gong is people are being taught that they can meditate away medical problems and that can be lethal and I've I've dealt with that a

number of times where someone is in a group the group is teaching them that They don't have to take a life-saving medication that they need and as a result their life is in danger and the family brings me in and I'm sitting with them and uh it's life or death and so I think when I have a breakthrough with someone and they leave the group as a direct result of the intervention uh I'm very happy for the family very happy for them that they can move on with their life back to the back To the

Scientology stuff you had mentioned that the the re-education process can be extremely harsh what kind of stuff are they doing well according to stories that have filtered out from Hemet California where they have this Rehabilitation uh Community according to uh stories that have filtered out about this Rehabilitation Community they live in very extreme situations um they lack uh proper living Conditions um it can be very hot in Hemmet California there there are accounts that that they they will live without proper air conditioning that the facilities are are not properly uh clean and well-maintained that uh

they are subjected to humiliating punishments and ridicule um well one woman uh claimed that uh that that they ridiculed her that they called her names that they uh Made her uh basically gravel uh in in this facility and uh there have been people that claim that they can't reach family members once they are in this facility so this is really of concern now Scientology will say they are here voluntarily and I would say if there was a wellness check done by police and local police in Hammet came to uh the hamt facility Golden Era Studios

uh Where they make uh promotional videos and such for Scientology as well that if they interviewed these people in a wellness check they would say I'm okay I'm okay staying here but the issue for me is getting them out of the facility to be with their family for a period of time where they're not under the control or the influence of Scientology and then maybe they would they wouldn't say that they would say no I don't want to go back it's it's very Harsh there but for those people that are in that facility they feel

that this is warranted that this is part of what Scientology is doing to help them and probably if the police came by and did a wellness check they would say I'm fine wow wow that's uh I mean is there is there any proof of this if or is it all kind of Cu you keep seeing words like allegedly and reports of and Stuff like that has there ever been a a wellness check by police or a federal law enforcement agency on this I I am not certain to what extent it's been investigated there have been

there's been talk that the FBI at times has been involved in looking into Scientology for example David Mage his wife Shelley Mage uh she was not has not been seen in public for a long period of time and there were allegations made by Leah Reni and others that you know where's Shelly Mavage what happened to her and later it was discovered that she is in a relatively comfortable but isolated Scientology facility in Northern California and I think there was a wellness check done and I think that she probably said I'm fine and she's uh I

would say isolated and sequestered there but from her point of view I'm doing what Scientology expects me to do I'm a loyal Scientologist um she doesn't question uh The situation uh but many people feel that she was put there by her husband the supreme leader of Scientology to isolate her because he just for whatever reason didn't want to be with her anymore wow as they had been and so he put her there and so I would say that there are scientologists who may be feeling that their life is very difficult and that they're going through

a lot of hardship uh but basically Scientology is teaching them to suck it Up and to accept this as part of your of your process of being a better human being and that we know what is in your best interest better than you do and so when some when people leave destructive Cults many times they have not sorted things out and they feel there's something wrong with me I couldn't hack it um I wasn't good enough uh I wasn't loyal enough very similar to people in abusive controlling relationships self-blaming Uh you know hurt looking at

themselves and saying look it's really it's my fault what happened instead of looking at the person who was an abusive controlling partner or the organization that was abusive and controlling and recognizing that they were to blame and that they the person who was hurt is really a victim so for people leaving Cults it's a process of sorting it out of in in essence Deprogramming themselves and what they often do is this is done through a process of Education where they read about cults they read about the manipula manipulation that goes on in Cults uh what

we call brainwashing and they they sort it out and they begin to recognize what happened to them but until they do that they may blame themselves rather than the organization that hurt them wow speaking of the brainwashing stuff how does the thought Reform or brainwashing how does that how do they start that process can we just go through the whole thing there have been books and and research done about the process of manipulation that is orchestrated mandated system systematically within cult groups uh for example the book coercive persuasion by Edgar shine a psychologist a professor

at MIT and the book's uh thought reform in the psychology of totalism by the Psychiatrist Robert J lifton who taught at Harvard and so these books inform in large part our understanding another excellent book is uh influence by Robert chalini which explores the basic structure of influence the six principles as he would identify them so by understanding these these uh This research this body of research we can better understand what happens to people in destructive Cults uh shine would say there are three stages of coercive Persuasion first you break people down then when they are

broken down you then provide the means and and the the process of change that you want and they become changed you manipulate them in that diminished broken state to be changed and then after that you refreeze them in that change state which is accomplished in large part by social isolation peer reinforcement and so on so what happens to people in in in a group like I'll I'll give you an example Uh sinon was a drug rehab community that then became a destructive cult founded by Charles dedich in California and they came up with what is

called attack therapy or the hot seat so they would take a member of the community put them in a the center of a circle of people and those people would bombard them with everything that was wrong with them everything they needed to look at to change and so they would break them down and then once they were broken and Groups have various processes by which they break people down then you are open to change because you feel I I'm broken I I am I am desperate for answers help me so you're in distress and then

the group offers you the program the means by which you can address your broken State and make yourself whole and then subsequently you become part of this kind of subculture or community of like-minded people who reinforce that changed state of being and keep you in That state of change in that program and so uh lyton uh then has eight criteria which he lists to recognize a thought reform program for example what he calls milu control or control of the environment or what he would call The Cult of confession that is uh in my view what

Scientology is doing in auditing uh that is get people to empty themselves with virtually no boundaries so that you know all their weaknesses all their vulnerabilities which you can then Exploit and then the group uh has what Lyon calls a sacred science which is what we believe is absolute and you cannot question it if you do you are unscientific you are ungodly you are demonic whatever but the group holds out its belief system as absolute without being able to question anything and then there's the demand for Purity which uh Lyon describes as a kind of

black and white world no Shades of Gray where you are forced to either be the good and the Pure or or recognize that what you believe or what you think is impure and negative so you're purging your mind and you're purging your emotions to conform with that demand for Purity and and then there's what LIF calls Doctrine over person which is basically the subordinating of everything to the sacred science of the group so that everything you see must be seen through that lens and you are doing this also again to yourself where you feel that

Any doubts any misgivings you have are impure are are negative are wrong and therefore need to be purged according to the doctrine so what Lyon would say is if these eight criteria and there eight of them if they're evident in a group whether they admit it or not they're using thought reform and what shine would say is this process of coercive persuasion likewise can be identified and he first uh studied it through the re-education programs in communist China And so this is is really kind of the seminal research that forms the foundation for our understanding

of what process goes on inside Cults that changes people in such a way that we from the outside look at them and we say wow those people are crazy why do they believe that stuff but what we don't get is the process they have been put through to get where they're at and how controlled that environment that they're in really is to the the extent that they Have had the they have been uh in a sense uh forced to accept a new normal which is the beliefs and the and and the behavior within the group

that we would regard as bizarre but within that bubble that they exist in that alternate reality it's seen as totally normal wow wow fascinating stuff Rick let's take a quick break and uh when we come back I want to dive into Nexium oh okay perfect if you're like me health and wellness is extremely important to you But how do you know who to trust when it comes to the supplement industry we have all these companies they pop up every other day they're all selling snake oil how do you know who to trust well here's the

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Part in um not in the cult but uh but uh deprogramming and and getting involved with some cord stuff so could you go into that a little bit well that that this all started in around uh 2001 2002 and I was approached by a family in New Jersey that their their their son and two daughters were involved in Nexium and I had never heard of it actually at that point it was called executive success programs or for ESP and the people involved were called Espan and they followed a guy named Keith Riner who at one

point had been an Amway distributor and then he created a big MLM multi-level marketing company called consumer by line which was sued out of existence by attorney generals in different states and then after that folded he created ESP executive success programs which evolved into Nexium and that was a seminar selling company that basically marketed courses very expensive that people would attend for Self-improvement and uh reneer had what he called a philosophy that he taught through nexim which was called rational inquiry and really what I came to find out was that Nexium was actually an amalo

of things that reneer had copied largely from Scientology he copied much of what they teach and then he also Incorporated kind of the structure of another organization called Landmark Education formerly known As EST aard seminars training their kind of training structure and then he also fancied Ein Rand uh the author of you know Atlas Shrugged and and Fountain Head and he Incorporated many of her beliefs regarding objectivism into his philosophy and then he created multi-level marketing for his trainers his coaches that he adapted from his experience with Amway and his previous failed MLM and this

family came to me and they said our son our daughters are Involved in this our our son-in-law is involved will you please help me help us and uh so I examined I investigated and I realized that nexim was uh was really a large group awareness training company and that the kind of training that they offered was very extreme and an I would say uh indicative of a thought reform program and coercive persuasion as opposed to anything really educational and that is that the ultimate goal in my opinion that Nexium had was to create people who

would be Deployable agents for Nexium that they would do whatever Keith Riner wanted give him all their money uh work uh long hours for very little compensation it was all about just serving Keith Riner and his uh co-founder Nancy salsman they actually would call Riner Vanguard that was his title and every year there would be what was called Vanguard week which would be the celebration of his birthday people Would bring him gifts Praise Him and Nancy solsman was called prefect so they ruled over this community which eventually would include thousands of people in the United

States and Canada in Mexico uh there would be celebrities that would become involved the ACT R Allison Mack from the television series Smallville uh for uh a period of time uh Katherine Oxenberg who starred in Dynasty the television series from the 80s she was involved and her hus then husband Casper vanem and their and their daughter also was involved so this became um a very large operation and in particular two heirs to the Seagrams liquor Fortune Sarah and Clare bronfman became involved uh and they control hundreds of millions of dollars and it has been reported

that reneer got approximately a 100 million from the bronfman That Was Then used by him at his behest for Whatever he wanted uh so this went on for a number of years and and I did interventions for this family in New Jersey uh getting three of of their family members out but one son would remain and much to their uh sorrow uh I think he stayed in until almost The Bitter End when Keith Riner was arrested and what happened within Nexium was what happens with a lot of uh totalitarian Cults where the leader has no

accountability uh Rene Mary like many of The cult leaders I've dealt with in my opinion he he would fit and many people have described him mental health professionals as a psychopath or a malignant narcissist so this kind of individual just gets worse especially in a cult environment where everyone is agreeing with him constantly and there are no checks or balances so his behavior became more and more outrageous he sexually exploited women in the group uh and then this escalated until in the End he created a kind of secret society a cult within a cult that

were sex slaves and these sex slaves sex slaves and these women would be branded with a cauterizing iron with no anesthetic and in their pelvis would be engraved what later was understood to be his initials and it was that that was finally The Tipping Point how many women were part of that how many women How many women are out there with his initials branded on them the the women that were branded I'm not sure exactly how many uh I think it's safe to say that there were a number of women that were branded one would

eventually Sarah Edmonson would allow her the brand to be photographed and it was on the front page of the New York times and that was the beginning of the end for Keith Riner who was eventually arrested for uh sex trafficking racketeering fraud and also Uh he was found to be in possession of child pornography and so it was a horrible horrible cult but it was a process of years that this went on and I was a witness to the escalating uh destructive Behavior of Riner and how no matter how much money he had no matter

how much power he acquired he wanted more and more and more and it was about uh humiliating women having control over women and just Plundering money from his followers uh eventually he would be arrested by Mexican authorities in Puerto Baya and then he would be brought to the border and deported and he would stand trial in Brooklyn and I would testify against him as a fact witness reneer uh I would I was the first person to expose Riner and uh and and talk about what he was doing and there were two doctors a psychiatrist uh

and a psychologist a clinical psychologist who wrote papers That I published at the cult Education Institute database which were a review of the process that reneer was putting people through and they would use Lyon's eight criteria uh shines three stages of coercive persuasion to offer an analysis of what he was really doing which was he was breaking people down manipulating them indoctrinating them to become essentially his his Deployable agents his his Slaves and uh those papers uh became the subject and focus of a lawsuit that rer filed against me that would go on for 14

years in federal court in New York and New Jersey ultimately the lawsuit was dismissed before he was arrested but that's how long he continued to harass me and uh he wanted me to take these papers down down from being online uh but I never did and they were used by so many people that were traumatized by Keith Riner families individuals that That he uh manipulated who eventually would leave some uh would actually go through um a kind of breakdown where they would be hospitalized and then leave the group and then uh many of them would

call me and say thank you thank you for having those papers online that those doctors helped me to understand that I wasn't crazy those papers helped me to understand that I'm I'm not crazy that I wasn't crazy and that this was something that Was a direct byproduct of the training that I was uh subjected to within Nexium uh and if I hadn't been able to read that and understand that it would have been even harder for me to recover so that's why reneer wanted those papers to be taken down because he did not want people

to know what he was doing uh which was deliberate which was methodical which was systematic and he had orchestrated this to break people down and control them within nexum and He did this for many many years until he was finally arrested and uh thankfully he's now in prison serving 120e sentence uh and and he's no longer able to hurt people but during those years he hurt many many people through Nexium and he had two heirs to the seagrims liquor Fortune financing him basically wow and and at one point he even had the deli llama of

Tibet come to Albany New York and endorse him and do photo ops with him And it's been said that the deli Lama received a very large che check from the Bromans in order for him to to agree and and do that uh and it certainly made me feel uh deeply disappointed in the deli Lama because leading up to his appearance with Keith Riner in which he awarded him a kind of a white scarf to denote that he was I guess a good guy by someone worthy of Praise from a Nobel Prize winner the dele Lama

of Tibet and uh he he would insinuate the Del Lama that Keith rener uh was being unfairly pillared by the Press when in fact you know he was one of the worst cult leaders uh in modern history I mean according to all the court records and his convictions uh and the deli Lama uh by endorsing him really disappointed me and there were many people that shared information with the deli Lamas uh offices hoping that he would not allow himself to be used as a pawn by Keith rer but that failed and he ended up appearing

in Albany New York and there are many photographs showing him with reneer to prove that wow it's it's it's it's interesting to see the type of people that they're able to manipulate into their agenda and and and spread that type of Gossip or rhetoric but back to the back to the cult within a cult the sex slaves so are these actual sex slaves or this are they Voluntary what Keith Riner would do very similar to U Scientology is he would get information on people through the process of of them being in Nexium and confessing and

emptying themselves to coaches that were over them and this would become what he called collateral in which he could threaten them intimidate them and say I know your secrets if you don't cooperate if you don't submit I will use it against you and I me what kind of Secrets are we talking about here there would be uh uh compromising photographs admissions to possible uh you know things that someone had done that were embarrassing that were humiliating uh things about their their personal life uh their business whatever Keith Riner would gather this information and it would

become his file on these individuals now it's these people are so trusting that they're Sean Sean you need To understand that this was a long process okay that these women were in Nexium for years that India Oxenberg who I met Katherine oxenberg's daughter and I would work with cine Oxenberg to get India out of nexum she was in nexim for years she entered she was like 18 19 years old and she was growing up as a young woman in in nexum and isolated eventually when Catherine and her then husband Casper vane left Nexium because they

thought there it was strange that There was something wrong and they left and she wanted India out and she struggled to get India out and and Keith rer would not let her out and India would be one of the women who would be branded uh through this process in this this group uh that that was a a a a cult within the cult and the women were told that this was a woman's Empowerment Group and that there were women over women and they did not realize that the ultimate Authority was Keith Riner and That he

was at the top of the pyramid lurking running everything in fact when women were branded they were often uh videotaped I mean this was like sadistic so there was a woman who was a member of nexum that was a doctor a medical doctor she since had her medical license revoked by the state of New York but she would take the cauterizing iron and and create the brand to a woman who was strapped to a gurnie it would take as long as 30 minutes or more that would be Incredibly painful but this would be endured as

a sign of you know empowerment supposedly but in reality reneer would watch this and and and in my opinion you know he was the ultimate misogynist uh wanting to humiliate degrade women control women and he did this and this went on unknown for a period of time but because Sarah Edmonson came forward and Katherine Oxenberg uh was there fighting for her Daughter's life all of this eventually came out publicly the southern district of New York in Brooklyn the justice department prosecuted Keith Riner but it was after years of abuse that had escalated and escalated and

escalated until finally he was exposed and brought to Justice and I and many other people had talked about this for more than a decade before he finally was arrested how many women are we talking about here in in this in this in the Secret cult inside the cult uh this was a a relatively uh small group of women I don't know the exact amount uh but they were under n's control but they did not understand clearly that he was in control they were led to believe this was a woman's group Nancy salsman who often would

put herself out as this uh woman icon to be to be emulated uh she would say yeah you know I'm about women's empowerment but in reality it was about Keith rer and His sick desire to dominate and control and and torture women because that's what he was doing and and no and and again no matter how much money no matter how much power he had he always had to have more and that is the downfall in my experience over the years of cult leaders uh that was the downfall of Jim Jones that was the downfall

of David Kesh uh that was the downfall of Keith Riner of char dedr who started sinon no matter how much power they had they Wanted more and more because these are deeply Disturbed individuals Psychopaths malignant narcissists so they keep going and going and going until finally they just go over a bridge too far and the authorities come in what encourages me that I've seen in the United States and in other countries around the world is that Cults are being held accountable uh they can believe whatever they want but they cannot do whatever They wish in

the name of those beliefs so when they cross the line into criminality that's when the authorities become involved and I'm seeing more prosecutions of criminal cult leaders than I've seen in the past a number of them have been convicted criminally sent to prison uh Tony Alamo who had headed Alamo Ministries in Arkansas who raped women who raped children eventually was was brought to Justice and put in prison where he died uh so there are a number Of groups that have had to face uh the criminal courts I I just recently testified in Atlanta in the

trial of cult leader alio Bishop who headed a group called carbon nation and would recruit people online through Facebook through Twitter x uh he would have videos on YouTube and it was all done online and he would he would create a compound through an Airbnb that he would run online and then he he would bring people to at one point Costa Rica Mexico then pan subsequently those countries deported him they told him you are not welcome here we want you here he eventually ended up back in Atlanta his hometown where he was prosecuted for unlawful

imprisonment and rape and I testified at his trial and and my role in my testimony was to help the jury understand how this went on for so long and the women that were being brutalized and horribly mistreated did not come forward uh the jury needed to get their Head around that that these women felt that what was going on was either their fault or nothing was wrong because that was the environment that they were embedded within that Bishop controlled and Bishop and Court of course said oh I'm not guilty of anything these women had consensual

sex with me no they did not he used coercive persuasion thought reform techniques and force to take advantage of and exploit those women and now he's doing life in Prison without parole what kind of thought reform techniques would he use what Bishop uses and what reneer used and what all cult leaders use is control of the environment what lyton calls milu control then they hold out their program as a sacred science that cannot be questioned uh then they use a kind of cult of confession to exume and obtain information to leverage their power over people

then they have uh another one of lon's criteria which would be Doctrine Over person the subordinating of everything you feel everything you think to the group program and step by step inch by inch the leader then becomes more and more in control of the people and the key to Breaking that control is taking a break from the group which is what I frequently will tell people I'll say can you take a break is there a legitimate reason to leave is there a legitimate reason to take a break if you're in a group and there's no

Legitimate reason to leave what does that mean I mean because you can belong to a church or a club and if you say gee I'm moving I want to go to a different church or I I can't be in this club anymore my wife doesn't like it or whatever the group would say fair enough all the best stop by and see us sometime but if you're in a group and there's no legitimate reason to leave and you're made to feel shame and even fear over leaving and the group is creating in Your mind unreasonable fears

about leaving you're in trouble well kind of fears would those be well in in Nexium uh that they would use the same uh verbage that Scientology used uh reneer would tell people if you if you doubt what I'm teaching if you are thinking of leaving you are a suppressive person an SP and that means you will never be a success in your life you will fail at everything unless you can overcome that being a suppressive person and and Scientology if if it labels someone a suppressive person that would be the reason to disconnect if you

are a Scientologist from that person uh a group that is more spiritually based can contort the Bible or a person's religious beliefs they might say for example if you leave our organization you will be damned you will have no salvation Salvation is predicated on belonging to our specific organized group under our specific Leader and if you leave there is no other church that can provide salvation for you there is no other place that you can be protected our leader is your spiritual covering your protection and when you doubt our beliefs when you think maybe we

might not be right that isn't even you think that's Satan attacking your mind so you have people that doubt because they see something that conflicts with their own Mor morality their own ethics and they Say oh that's not that's not good that must be Satan attacking my mind and they are basically shutting down critical thinking by using techniques like this so so what we don't understand is how this happens and and let me just tell you this I have deprogrammed five medical doctors one was a orthopedic surgeon another was a highly accomplished anesthesiologist this can

happen to anyone given the right set of Circumstances that is no matter how educated you are no matter how uh good you think your life has been you may come at a vulnerable point in your life and we all have vulnerable points in our lives where things aren't going well and have the bad luck at that point to have someone you trust someone you know someone who's a co-worker a an old friend a a relative who says hey I know you're hurting and this group that I'm involved in this church this Organization has ways to

help you why don't you come with me to one of our meetings and bit by bit step by step the group brings you in all the while lying being deceptive not disclosing what they're really all about withholding the kind of information that you need to make a more informed decision so this can happen to anyone uh you know there's not an Ivy League school that I have not sat with a graduate of it seems to me uh one man that I worked with was He was doing his residency uh after graduating from Yale medical school

when I met him and I only talked to him for less than an hour and he ran away a medical doctor in residency graduate of Yale Medical School wow he ran away in Terror from his own father and mother who were there with his grandmother to do this intervention years later he would leave the group and get in touch with me but at that point that Yale medical school Graduate was not able to critically think and I I also work with a man who had an MBA from Wharton and he ended up deciding to stay

in the cult and I've worked with people from that were Harvard graduates graduates of pen uh all of the IV League schools Cornell uh not long ago I worked with a Cornell graduate who scored over 90 in the MCAT to be admitted into Medical School very High score in The mcap Graduate of Cornell would be accepted in any medical school practically in the US and he was going to go and live in an ashram in India and give everything up and his parents brought me in We did an intervention uh this was about a year

ago and it was successful and I can remember when his family was driving me to the airport and for a while we were alone he was in the back seat and I was sitting in front of him in the car and He said to me Rick you have no idea how bad it was and he started to cry and he said to me they really had me they really had me and this was a straight A student that graduated from a with honors from Cornell so if you think that somehow you're inv Invincible you're you're

the one person that is not persuadable that nothing can persuade you uh you are not recognizing your own vulnerability to the extent that you have made yourself more vulnerable to a Cult group or some person that wants to run a scam on you mhm we we see this with conmen multi-level marketing I mean look there would be no advertising or negative political ads if people were not persuadable so what these groups do is they create a kind of synthesis of coercive persuasion thought reform understood influence techniques that they knowingly use and they focus it like

a laser on someone and they they break them down put them in a position Where they're in distress or they believe that there's no way out and the group then says we have the answer and then they change them and so what you have are people being changed without their informed consent by these groups and uh being exploited and taken advantage of which iies from group to group uh so what you see and I would say this is the nucleus for the definition of a destructive cult that all definitions intersect these three Core characteristics which

is number one an absolute totalitarian leader that becomes an object of worship that is the defining element and driving force of the group and two that leader knowingly uses thought reform and coercive persuasion to gain undue influence over his followers and then three that leader uses the undue influence that he possesses to exploit and do harm to his followers and you take those three Things together and I don't care what the name of the group is and what they say they believe it could be pseudoscience it could be politics it could be self-improvement it could

be some kind kind of religious belief but that is simply the window dressing the facade beyond that mask are those three core characteristics the absolute totalitarian leader the use of thought reform and Coercive persuasion to gain undue influence and ultimately that undue influence being used to take advantage of people to exploit them to do harm to them and that may vary by degree from group to group because there are some groups that are much worse than others that doesn't mean that the group that is doing less harm is somehow benign but we can recognize that

not all groups are hunkering down for Dooms Day not all groups sexually abuse their Members or physically abuse them uh there are some that are worse than others but you take those three core core characteristics ICS the all powerful leader the use of thought reform and Co of persuasion and the harm done because if there's no harm done maybe the group is benign but in my experience power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and so that leader that Keith rer that Jim Jones who has no accountability will ultimately Use that power in a destructive way

wow you know it's interesting these all these cult leaders seem to go from what you're saying off the same Playbook where is that Playbook where's the model from I think that many cult leaders were themselves at one time either in a group that was cult-like or they read about cults or they read about thought reform and coercive persuasion I mean the books are available I mean you know they can compile a kind of manual and what you See is they copy from other cult leaders and incorporate and create a composite like Keith Reiner did with

Nexium which was a composite of Scientology Ein Rand uh well established large group awareness training techniques so what you see over and over again with cult leaders is they don't reinvent the wheel they just copy MH and then they create a composite and then they have their own group uh the the names change but the techniques are the same I mean if they Were in a cult and then started would they have would they have deprogrammed their themselves it's interesting you can you can deprogram a cult member but you cannot deprogram a cult leader a

cult leader is inherently typically a psychopath uh a sociopath a malignant narcissist they were quite literally in it seems to me born that way I mean Keith Riner was terrorizing children When he was 10 according to to reports uh and interviews so it's almost like these people are hardwired you cannot deprogram them uh and and you cannot deprogram someone Sean that has sincerely held beliefs so so if we see someone that we don't agree with uh maybe we don't agree with their politics maybe we don't agree with their religious point of view uh it's it's

not fair to just say oh you're brainwashed you need to be deprogrammed because we Need to realize that people have sincerely held belief belie and that even though we may not agree with those beliefs that doesn't mean that they're brainwashed instead we should respect the differences that other people have and and recognize how thought reform coercive persuasion Works to the extent that we can say well did that person arrive at those beliefs through a process where that was just their family that was their life uh they they truly Believe this or were they in a

totalitarian controlling group that use thought reform and coercive persuasion to bend them to the will of the leadership I mean these are different things so so I think a lot of times people use the word cult haphazardly to just denigrate some group or or individual that they don't appreciate saying oh you're in a cult or that's a cult uh and there is a range of meaning to the word cult I mean there Are rock groups that have cult followings there are products that are cult branded and so on but when we use the word cult

to describe an organization typically we're talking about a destructive cult and for that they need to have those three core characteristics to be defined as a destructive cult what's the fastest you've seen one of these Cults um hit traction grow and and it now with the Internet it's so fast I Mean in in the old days when I started in the Stone Age before the internet and social media groups literally had to press the flesh they had to show up typically on college campuses or or parks and malls and and recruit people face to face

now people are recruited through social media online and anybody that has an electronic device that accesses the internet is a potential Target so a group can can can just metastasize Online so fast it it can make your head spin algo Bishop who I testified against in Atlanta who's now in prison he had over 30,000 followers on Twitter alone and there are people that have been called cult leaders that have hundreds of thousands of followers online and then they call from those followers to create a a deeper committed group and and you can use social media

to do that uh there was uh one uh couple that I dealt with uh in the midwest uh the wife Was an attorney the husband had an MBA and work remotely from home for a Fortune 500 company and he was recruited online indoctrinated through videos on YouTube and the wife didn't even know it wow it was happening while she was at work he had gone through some some hardships a very close friend that he regarded as a virtual brother had died suddenly in his 30s from a heart attack I mean he was just gone there

was incredible grief uh the husband dealt With this and eventually he found answers he thought online and keep in mind Sean that based on the algorithms that are online if you find something and you identify it on YouTube or or on Facebook or on Twitter the algorithm is going to push more of the same to you and you're going to go down the rabbit hole and that's what happened to this husband and he became to totally indoctrinated in in a group called Israelites United in Christ uh led by a A former police officer from in

New York and this is a a kind of racial identity group that believes that African-Americans are the new Israel and that white people are devils and the husband was recruited into this MBA and all and of course this became a point of friction with his wife and then she brought me in and I did work with him for about a day but then the group became involved he would not unplug completely from them and give himself a Break to discuss things with his wife and family and so the group coached him and he he would

not continue beyond the first day man uh but he was recruited in a home office in a major city in the Midwest and his wife had no idea what was happening and they eventually would divorce because she could not accept the hate the hate beliefs of this group so it can happen to anyone and the way that it happens now increasingly is online and it's being and it's happening Through social media uh for example you know the the so-called Tick Tock cult that's been exposed by Netflix uh that group has a following online members of

this group called The sheina Church are are controlled uh by ultimately this leader Robert shin and as a result they work for him they live in group housing they attend his church which by the way is by invitation only so just a regular person cannot attend the church you have to be Invited which is not the typical church so we're not talking about the typical groups but what you see in the sheina church is again milu control so Shen has them living together uh reinforcing his his his uh teachings reinforcing his control and they work

together and people cannot attend their Church unless invited and so he's controlling the environment what kind of stuff goes on in the in in group housing uh just basically people are all indoctrinated They're all likeminded and so if someone were to say this is crazy we're we're working for very little we don't have health insurance uh we're being exploited some would would say oh that that's not true uh this is a holy and wonderful thing that we're in and uh our leader uh you know he's a wonderful man and this is a great church and

how can you possibly think that now outside of the group if he were to say that or someone were to Say that someone would say well those are valid concerns but in the group environment where they're living together working together reinforcing the indoctrination of the leader they're not able to think outside of the box and that's how these groups control uh the mind and control people how many of these I mean how many requests do you get for deprogramming well every year I'll do interventions throughout the year and Some of those interventions are with uh

people that are in abusive controlling relationships uh but most of them them are people that are in groups called Cults and uh I have traveled all over the world I've done interventions in Europe in Asia in Australia I've worked in every state within the United States except for Wyoming I've yet to do any work in Wyoming I I think Dick Cheney will probably say good you know and Liz chady Will probably say good I'm glad Wyoming is not on your list but every other State I've worked in and uh I've done hundreds of interventions and

all an intervention really is Sean is it's a a process of educating someone about what is a destructive cult uh defining that uh and then second how does thought reform and coercive persuasion really work and explaining that and then the third what information has this group withheld from you that You deserve to know to make a more informed decision about continuing and finally why did your family bring me here why are they concerned about you so this discussion can take three or 4 days M uh and you ask the person can you take a break

can you do this for your family three or 4 days just take a break and if if this group is everything they say they are and they're really a great group they won't have a problem with you taking a break for three or four Days and and then you can unplug think about these things and ask yourself does it make any sense to me how do I feel about all of this uh why is my family so concerned and then at the end you decide what you wish to do so you can continue with the

group you can continue to take a break or you can decide to leave about seven out of 10 of the people that I work with will decide that they're not going back I would imagine there's quite a bit Of push back at the beginning oh heck yeah you know the first thing is why did you do this because the intervention regarding Cults is typically very much like an alcohol or a drug intervention you don't tell the person there's going to be an intervention so it's a surprise and and initially they may say well how could

you do this you should have told me uh you know and the answer is well if we had told you would you share that with someone in the group would you tell The leader what would they do would they would they say it's okay for us to have this process this uh this uh analysis of the group uh apart from them would they let you participate would they insist on coaching you I mean what would really happen and then if if the person is honest and they most often are they would say well yeah probably

they wouldn't like that and so I guess I understand why you did this the way you Did but I'm kind of shocked but then the family will say well look we love you we really really care about what's happening in your life we care about you we love you and we wouldn't do this if we didn't feel there was a reason so would you trust us you've known us all your life you know we love you so all we're asking you to do is give us some time we're not telling you that you have to

leave the group ultimately what we're asking you is will You give us 3 days maybe to think about things to talk about things and if you'll do that that will ease our concerns and we'll feel like like that that that is okay that we've addressed what we're worried about and usually the person will say yes interesting you know I've I've seen a couple of things in surrounding areas here one of them I want I remember when I first moved to Tennessee me and my Wife went to this restaurant and it was the it was in

this place called palaski Tennessee and we went into this restaurant and it was uh I don't know any other way to describe it other than very very hippie like and it was a lot of like Falafel vegetarian stuff like that but that's not what I'm getting at what I got what I'm getting at is the the Minute we entered and it was we were looking it was before we actually moved here we were looking for a place to live and that was that was the we had checked this town out and this was the only

restaurant still open and we walked in and immediately it was there was just a weird vibe in there and uh was it called The Yellow Deli yes yeah that's the 12 tribes that's a cult group that owns a chain of delies it was originally a group started by a Guy by the name of Jean sprigs in Chattanooga Tennessee and they believe that they are the chosen New Israel and their leader is the prophet they called him the prophet yon Well jean sprigs died rich I mean he had a yacht he had multiple homes I mean

he lived the good life but his people would flip real estate for him they would rehabilitate homes in Upstate New York and and and around the country and then that would add to the group's coffers and they had A chain of of restaurants called The Yellow Deli and they also had cafes that that serve what what I think they call it mate which is a South American kind of tea or coffee or something and and uh and this would be the way that Jean sprigs made money because uh these people would work for basically nothing

but room and board so so they would be living in group houses uh that would have designated leaders and they would be there within this community and they Would work at the cafes for the real estate business or rehabilitating or doing whatever sprigs wanted for nothing but room and board no health insurance no social security nothing and then they'd be raising children in the group and these children would not be well treated and they would not be schooled past the age of 13 and they would be beaten uh sprigs would have children beaten with like

balloon sticks that they would dip in Resin and then whip the children uh one mother who hired me uh she uh her name is Lori Johnson and she lived in Upstate New York she became involved with her husband uh in the 12 tribes he really was devoted and she began to have doubts because she saw how hard it was on her kids she had two little children and she wanted to leave her husband wouldn't leave divorce custody battle Lori gets custody husband disappears with the two children it took n years before the FBI Found those

kids I did a a Jerry Springer Show where were the kids they were hidden within the community in Florida and no one knew where they were and Lori had been without her children for 9 years when they recovered them and her husband was arrested and the FBI returned kids and I would work with those children uh then uh I think one was uh 14 and the other was maybe 12 thereabouts minor kids but they had not been with their mother for Years and that was because of this group that owned the yellow delies 12 tribes

headed by Jean sprigs and I would appear with Lori on a very early Jerry Springer Show and in that show Lori would show pictures of her kids tell her story and leaders from 12 tribes also appeared on the show with me and I would then talk with them at the hotel that we were put up in and I would say to them why don't you guys just give Lori back her kids and then people will think that you're Not so bad that you're not a bad cult because you're you're you're being sensitive and caring about

this mother who wants to be reunited with their children and they would repeatedly just say to me oh well you know we don't know where the kids are we don't know where they are and then they would make outrageous accusations that Lori was immoral that she was a harlot whatever really totally baseless but the point is they would not come clean and eventually The children were found in the community and when I talk to the children they most definitely knew they told me that Jean sprigs specifically knew where they were and that uh other leaders

in the groups group knew where they were and that they were deliberately hidden from their mother for years wow is that so is that whole organization the organization is still going I'm not clear as to who's really Running it I mean it may evolve and change change but it's been a very authoritarian very destructive group for many years and do you know Sean at one time they had contracts with Robert Redford sundance's catalog Trader Joe's and Estee Lauder to do packaging in in regards to products but when it was exposed uh and and I had

a part in that uh there were former members who told me about these sweat shops where these Members of the group were working uh and unbeknownst to these companies they were being uh the their product was being packaged and and produced through this uh often child labor illegal labor well that was eventually exposed and they were raided by New York labor authorities and those contracts were shut down but sprigs used to use companies like Estee Lauder Trader Joe's Robert Redford Sundance catalog to make money off of his people he was basically Selling them as like

slave labor and they were working under extraordinarily difficult conditions often unsafe and so they they were raided and after that one of the leaders of the group Eddie Weissman who I appeared with on this Jerry Springer Show he uh he he called me on the phone and he said said you know Rick you're a son of a you know you're you're so bad you you you realize the money that you've cost the families in 12 tribes and they don't Have the money because of the raid and you're responsible for that you should be ashamed of

yourself and I said look Eddie come on give me a break you and your wife jeie are living the good life cuz you're leaders and you were working children illegally now the Bible teaches that you're to obey the laws of the land that you're to submit to civil Authority that's what is taught in the New Testament and you willfully went against the law and you did it for what so that You and Jeanie could live better so that Jean sprigs can have multiple homes don't come to me and tell me that I'm the bad guy

you're the one that broke the law and somewhere along the line I heard a click and that was the end of him listening to what I had to say wow but but but that group whenever you go to a Yellow Deli whenever you have one of their mes you are contributing to the 12 tribes cult that Is I'm uh so glad I brought this up that was about 7 years ago we sat down our waiter came up and it was immediate I was like something's going on in here and and uh my wife picked up

on it immediately as well so we started we started questioning the the waiter and asking I can't even remember what the conversation until but I do this is what I remember he would always refer to the leaders of the cult as the authority The Authority is not going to like this the authority wants us to do this and he he was talking about all these different restaurants and and I had asked you know how do you know where you're going he goes well the authority lets us know where we're going and I would he would

go you know get another drink or whatever and I'd look at my wife like the authority like what the hell is this what's going on in here and uh and um we never went back you know I've I've Heard their food is good their Mones are good but I wouldn't give them a penny and look I I feel great Sympathy for the people that in my mind are trapped within that group because you have to realize the children were born into that group there's a old generation that was raised in 12 tribes and I've spoken

to many of them including Eddie weissman's son who fled the group and for years felt shame and sadness because they felt well they were told by the group you're Turning your back on God you're you're a sinner you're evil and and the kids that I deprogrammed would would contact me at one point and say you know our dad is still in the group and and we want to spend time with him but the only way that he will agree to spend time with us is if we come to group activities and whenever we do that

they're just bombarding us with you know manipulative talk about how we need to rejoin the group and be in the group and That's not what we want and so I told the kids I said look you know you can tell your dad you know Dad we love you we love you we want a relationship with you but we do not love 12 tribes and we do not want 12 tribes but we want you and we are willing to meet with you and spend time with you but we don't want to deal with the group we

don't want to hear about the group and In fairness we're not going to criticize the group we just want to spend quality time with You Dad and as far as I know he would never agree to that and there his relationship with the children ended and uh so so there are children that leave groups like this and it's very very hard on them because their their family shuns them uh they they don't know people outside side of the group they may not have an education because the group didn't want them to and so they're not

prepared to work in the outside world and to adapt uh many Of them though have have construction skills and certain things that they can get a job but um wow sounds very similar to to my editor the guy that edits the show he talks about I talk to him all the time about this stuff and um he does he talks about when he left Jehovah's Witnesses is that what you say the Jehovah's Witnesses when he left it he I mean he still says he's like it's like I'm still trying to learn how to live Like

he's a normal life he's he's he's like I've never celebrated a birthday I've never celebrated a Christmas he's any of that stuff and he's there's he's like there's just so many things that that I don't know that are normal in society that I that I have I he's still trying to figure out what's Normal and abnormal and and it's um wow wow yeah and but here's the Here's the the the interesting thing is that so many people that leave these high control groups Blame themselves they say you know I failed it's it's a shame on

me and they haven't sorted it out they haven't unpacked it and so what I would urge any of them to do is uh I'll plug my book read my book Cults inside out and understand that you are not alone that there are many many other people that have gone through this experience and that they've survived and that you need to unpack it you need to know that your group was very much like these other Groups and if these other groups are called Cults what does that mean about your group and is it really your fault

that you left or is it the group's fault that they had unreasonable expectations and demands that they made and that they were too controlling and that they were suffocating you and so you had to leave much like a a a woman who's leaving an abusive controlling relationship will feel like well I can't leave uh my husband because he loves me and I have To be loyal to him and it's my fault I'm not being a good enough wife I'm not doing enough it's on me and of course the abusive controlling partner is saying you're right

it's your fault it's not about me it's you you aren't Measuring Up and very much like a cult that abusive controlling husband will isolate the wife uh estranging her from Old Friends uh moving her maybe to a new area where she's separated from family and kind of cocooning her and Controlling her interactions her social life uh if you're in a situation like that it's very hard to understand what to do because you have this sense of loyalty to the the your spouse or to the group and you feel like they are right and if you

have been raised in a group and your parents belong to the group even more so you feel like well my parents I I love them and and they're in this in this organization it must be good it must be right and so you feel Like there is no legitimate reason to leave and and when and you have unreasonable fears about leaving I mean I'll have women talk to me about abusive controlling relationships and say what sounds like crazy I mean they'll say uh no one will ever love me like he loves me I'll never find

love again in my life um I I I'm so fortunate that I found this person I'll never ever find anyone like that ever again and uh and I'll look at the woman and say You're very young you're highly accomplished you're not to objectify you but you're you're attractive you can find someone else but because of your spouse and the way that you've been manipulated you've been led to believe that you can't and that's wrong uh and the way that you've been treated is wrong and and frequently the women that I have worked with have been

subjected to physical violence they've been beat up uh Repeatedly and people will blame them people will say oh she went back to him she deserves what she gets but very few people unwind what has happened to this woman and understand it in the terms of how the abusive controlling partner has manipulated her and I devoted a whole chapter in my book to abusive controlling relationships and describe how I did an intervention with a young woman to get her out of such a situation so there is a correlation between Abusive controlling relationships and Cults and I

think it's important to know that and to have understanding and really Sympathy for the people that have been victimized I find it very interesting how when you're talking about mother s and fathers who are giving up their kids inside these Cults or or when we're talking about the the The Yellow Deli crew and these people are working for what what room and room Room and board and that's it I mean how do you get a a graduate from I mean how do you get a a anesthesiologist who's making half a million a year maybe more

maybe Millions a year to join a cult and give all of that up for room and board I mean what does that conversation look like well now now the doctors in fairness the doctors that I work with were in different groups not in the Yellow Deli okay uh but I will tell you this I I was Lecturing at a university and it was in Upstate New York and a young woman came up to me at the end of my lecture and said my mother is in the 12 tribes and she gave every penny and this

is standard practice in the 12 tribes you join you give them everything you have your bank account your house your car everything and that greatly increased you know the the net value of of 12 tribes and the money that they Control which I'm sure is in the millions of do uh though no one knows exactly and this girl is talking to me this young woman and she's has tears in her eyes and she says you know my grandmother left an inheritance for my mother with the explicit understanding that my mother would pay for my college

education with some of the money but she's given it all to the 12 tribes and I came to her and I said mom you're brainwashed and you're In a cult and she of course rejected that and I said what what would you have me do you have given away all of our family's money all of Grandma's money and I have nothing to go to college and the mother said well join the 12 tribes and you can be with me and everything will be fine so why did the mother do it she did it because the

12 tribes convinced her that they were the only place where God was the only place where God was able to be a part of your life In in in a true and meaningful way and that this would lead to Salvation this would lead to to uh to a fruitful spiritual life that and this is this is what separates the 12 tribes as a cult from mainstream Christianity and it's the only place no other Christians are right no other church is right no other Pastor is preaching authentic beliefs according to the Bible only us and so

the mother felt I am giving all this to God I'm giving It all to the one and only organization that is true to God and and my daughter uh should join as well because this is the truth I mean that is the level of indoctrination and control that these groups have over the thinking of individuals that are involved and it's very difficult to to unwind that kind of programming but that is an answer to your question why would someone do that and in the case of the doctors uh I I know there were uh there

were two Doctors I worked with that were in a particular church called Victory Church in uh in grandforks North Dakota that was run by this couple and it was a total just a personality cult in which they had no accountability and they controlled all these people and lived off of hundreds of people that were in this church uh called Victory Church and um I would eventually be hired by two first one Doctor Who had had doubts and then I would help him and Then I would deprogram his children and then he would convince the other

doctor to invite me to his home and then I would work with him and his family as well and then they in turn convinced a cardologist who was also in the group to leave so this was kind of a a domino effect and eventually I would do an Oprah Winfrey Show with former members of Victory Church and Oprah Winfrey would expose the group uh nationally and eventually it would Crumble and and cease to exist uh and I have to give Oprah some credit because uh the group uh sued Oprah Winfrey and tried to keep her

from airing that program and Oprah Winfrey said no way I am airing the program and and actually the lawsuit attracted more attention as as lawsuits like that often do and the show aired and it was the undoing of that Victory Church in grandforks North Dakota do you know John of God oh yeah that's the Canadian cult leader is Oprah involved in that one I you know you know it's interesting I've done the Oprah show a couple of times and Oprah has done some really good work regarding the one show that I did involved Jehovah's Witnesses

in which she exposed some of their excesses the other show was about this group called Victory Church in North Dakota which ended that church effectively uh but then Oprah has done Other shows where she brings on people a very questionable uh backgrounds uh for example James Arthur Ray who led these training seminars and three people died in one of his training seminars and he was a featured guest on Oprah and largely traded on that to promote himself and promote his seminars uh which he became a millionaire selling and so Oprah at times has been involved

D with um kind of Fringy you know new Agy um gurus who end up not being so good John of God would be another example who is what is John of God John of God is a kind of a faith healer someone who claims that he can heal people and he's now being accused of sexually exploiting and abusing women women and so uh to the extent that uh Oprah Winfrey thought that John of God was of God and a man of God uh you know he Traded on her show and exposure through her show to

promote himself and I think Oprah should do a kind of mopa where she gets on on her show or does some show where she says you know at times I've made mistakes I've had people on that turned out to not be really that good and I need to apologize I mean I don't think that she was aware of how bad these people were and they would later be exposed but I think it it it it means that perhaps she Should have been more reluctant to feature them and to promote them the way that she did

I mean I speak from the standpoint that I was an expert consultant uh in regards to the prosecution of James Arthur Ray so I work with the prosecutor eventually Ry would be convicted for negligent homicide and even though three people died he spent two three years in jail and that was about it and as far as I know he's back out selling his Seminar training again wow wow when it comes to back to you know giving up everything for peanuts let's talk about I mean what are the conversations like when a woman gives up her

children in a cult well the most that has to be some serious programing to overtake Mother Nature's Instinct of these are my kids the most terrible situation I ever dealt with where a parent gave up a child was uh Carrie Jewel I met her when she was 10 Years old her mother gave her to David Kish uh the leader of the Waco devidians and he raped her and she would eventually testify in a congressional hearing when she was 14 about what happened and I remember doing uh the Phil Don who show with Carrie during the

standoff off and we were all talking about whether or not David Kesh would ever surrender and come out from the compound which he never did and at the time he asked each person on the panel How do you think this is going to end and when he got to carry Jewels she said they're all going to die and I've made my peace my mother will never come out and I was shocked but she was right she was absolutely right and I think that her father David juel who was a very brave man and who rescued

his daughter from the compound before the raid and before the standoff occurred and she was safely with him in his Custody when all that happened um that she knew and David juel knew just how totally Brainwashed the people were in that compound because this woman I'm sure was a loving mother but she so was so programmed by David Kesh to believe that he was the seed the davidic seed the Messiah uh that she thought that giving her child to the Messiah was a Godly thing to do and they were told that he was planting the

seed of David in in These victims that he raped uh and I think one of the reasons why he did not surrender was he knew that when they did DNA testing they would establish that he was a pedophile and that he had sex with minor children and that they had children when they were children oh man can we wow can we go into the wo incident a little bit what what what was that cult about first of all the Waco devidians for a Long time were a totally peaceful benign group kind of unusual they followed

the teachings of a man named Victor howu and after howu died his widow took over and after her a man named George Rhoden took over and after that his wife Lois Rhoden took over and for years and years they were peaceful and they lived outside of Waco on a kind of uh Ranch area on the on the outskirts of Waco then came Vernon Howell later named David Kesh and he became very close to Lois Rhoden at the end of her life and then he took over and that's when the trouble started because he tried to

kill her son George Rhoden and he was tried for attempted murder uh but a hung jury uh was the end result and the prosecutor said that guy is going to be trouble and he went back to the compound he was stockpiling weapons and unbeknownst to me he was also raping children and and abusing women in the group uh that would later come out so The batf then did an investigation and I had deprogrammed one of the Waco dividian he David cres had sent him on a kind of trip to get some money and do some

fundraising in California and his brother retained me and I did an intervention and he never came back and he's he he still lives in California and he has a family but he was a witness to Illegal weapons and stockpiling that was going on inside the dividian compound David Kesh was manufactur ing guns he was converting semi-automatic weapons to fully automatic he was breaking the law regarding firearms and so the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms investigated him they called me they interviewed the young man that I deprogrammed it was their interview with that young man

that I deprogrammed and in part his testimony that led to an affidavit that was then the basis for a warrant for the search of the dividian Compound and a warrant for the arrest of David Kesh so the batf went there I was shocked at the way they went I mean we had warned them about how many weapons and how huge the stockpile was and how militant the group was and how totally really psychopath like David Kesh was and the batf just uh raided the group in a way that uh shocked me I mean they just

went in like it was any any normal raid which it wasn't and of course it was a a a gun Battle uh people were killed devidians died uh federal agents were killed in the process and then they created a perimeter around the compound and there was a 51 day standoff 51 days 51 days and during that time I worked for CBS News and I was interviewed by uh by the FBI and by their hostage negotiator that they had but the problem that the FBI had at that time which I don't think they have now because

they learned from Waco and subsequent uh Situations uh that this was not a conventional hostage situation that the devidians were not hostages they were programmed they were completely and totally subservient to David Kesh and that that Dynamic needed to be understood and so much of what I suggested to the FBI uh they did not do some of the things I suggested that they do they did for example um David cres who said I am Jesus I am the Messiah uh they said well Jesus loved children and He said suffer not the little children to come

unto me so would you let some of the children out and David Kesh did let out 21 children and uh he let out some of the elderly people uh people that he thought were essentially a burden or expendable uh he kept most of the devidians in now then the FBI set up these big loudspeakers around the uh compound and they would keep the devidians up at night they would blast them with rock And roll music rabbit screaming things that probably fit within the typical hostage negotiator Playbook but they did not understand they were dealing with

a cult they were dealing with cult members and what I suggested was that they give them every opportunity to get sleep to be rested so they could think more clearly and then maybe during the the the 9 to 5 hours bring in family and let the family talk to their loved ones through those loudspeakers because David Kesh was controlling all Communication in that compound uh when families wanted to visit someone he you had to go to visitation wow in the compound and there would be Kesh or a delegated person that would be monitoring your visit

with your family member there were only two phones in the compound uh one was an old gigantic mobile phone uh hard to believe how big those were and the other was a Hardline he controlled both he listened To all conversations so what I suggested to the FBI and they did not do this was use the loudspeakers so the families can speak to their loved ones uh kind of like almost like radiofree dividian you know where there could be communication that he did not control they did not do that and then I also told them please

don't act aggressively on the perimeter because that that you know basically validates His narrative that you're Satan that you are the army of Satan come to attack the people of God what you want to do is make yourselves as peaceful and and non-threatening as possible to under undercut his narrative which which they did not do In fairness to the FBI they had never dealt with a cult like this before and it was their first experience and they learned from it painfully uh but in the final analysis I don't think it was going to end any

way Other than it ended which is how David KES wanted it to end and he did not want to live he was like Jim Jones he wanted to go out with his followers on his throne King to The Bitter End that's how David Kesh left the world ruling over his flock in the compound just like Jim Jones at Jonestown did you go into Jim Jones yeah Jim Jones was at one time a very popular uh figure in San Francisco he was considered one of the leading lights of social action in the Bay Area He was

uh very connected to the Democratic party the Democratic leaders uh Governor Jerry Brown assemblyman Willie Brown uh when rosn Carter visited San Francisco she did a photo up with Jim Jones so Jim Jones was a kind of Icon and the people's Temple was a huge church with thousands and thousands of members but no one really knew what was going on inside and so ultimately what happened is that people that left started to talk about the abuse they Experience children being beaten brutally people being exploited financially and people came out of the church and they talked

to the media and so Jim Jones became more and more paranoid again a a malignant narcissist a psychopath and then he decided I'm leaving the Bay Area because the Press is against me the media is against me I used to be a celebrity now they say bad things about me I'm going to pack up and leave and so he took about a Thousand of his most devoted followers and he moved to English-speaking Guyana in South America in the middle of the Jungle they carved out a little community that they called Jonestown he controlled all Communications

all social interaction people were totally isolated now comes families of those thousand people and in particular they approached uh Congressman Leo J Ryan and they said please help us we're very Worried about our family members our our children our grand grandchildren that are in Jonestown Leo J Ryan then gets Jim Jones to agree for him to come on a fact finding trip with his staff to Jonestown he comes there at first things go fairly well then people are passing notes to Ryan and his staff take me with you I want to get out of here

bad things are happening in here that you don't know and so Jones ultimately agrees to let let some of these people go with Ryan uh and then he recognizes that they're going to tell what's really going on in Jonestown and so he dispatches his security force and they murder everyone some people survive Jackie Shar one of Leo J Ryan's staff members who had later become a United States congressman from his very District was shot five times and almost bled out but she miraculously survived Other people survived as well but Leo J Ryan was killed and

Jim Jones knew this is the end I'm they're going to come for me and he was right the authorities were coming from Georgetown in Guyana for him and so he mixed these tubs of uh punch and they were placed with uh with Cyanide and he encouraged insisted that all of his people take the cyanide and so that's what when the phrase came you you drank the Kool-Aid Because people would say well it was Kool-Aid and the the people in Jonestown drank the Kool-Aid and they died and so if you the expression you drank the Kool-Aid

is an illusion to Jonestown and and the idea that you're brainwashed that you're not thinking clearly so the many of the people in Jonestown were forced to drink the Kool-Aid they didn't have a choice the children there were hundreds of them they were all murdered there were people that were shot that Were trying to run away so it was a massacre and almost a thousand people died wow in one day in 1978 and that was J town and that was really the beginning of people saying well what what about these Cults what's going on because

people started to write about them and write about Jim Jones of course Jonestown came before me because I started my work in 82 so that was four years after Jonestown but I remember Jonestown and I also remember Charlie Manson and I remember Patty Hurst who was abducted by a cult called The symbionese Liberation Army so Cults were becoming known before Jonestown but at Jonestown that was the shock that really woke everybody up that this could be very very bad and of course since Jonestown there have been a number of cult tragedies uh there another is

the movement for the restoration of the Ten Commandments in Uganda in 2000 the Leader of that group Joseph KB ordered the deaths of over 700 of his followers and right now there's a man named Paul McKenzie in Kenya and he is responsible for the starvation deaths of over 400 of his followers many children why because he said it's the end of the world that's what uh Joseph Keb said that's what Paul McKenzie said we have to get ready it's the end and the end it was for their followers 750 in Uganda 400 in Kenya and

then of Course we know about the suicide of the people of uh uh the solar Temple which was in Europe and those were the followers of Luke jé uh they all died in what could have been a murder or a suicide there were almost a hundred of them and then there was Heaven's Gate around the same time in the 9s that 39 people in a house rented by their leader uh you know all died Together because he determined that this was the end and that they were going to somehow move their from their bodies to

a level above human so so we have had a number of cult tragedies and and they have happened over and over again some of them uh worse than others and I think that it you know of course these are the most extreme groups where people die but there are many groups where people's lives are horribly damaged where they Lose their job they drop out of school they become estranged and isolated from family and old friends they lose all their money because of some group uh they're not dead but they've been badly hurt and so this

is the reason that people pay attention to these groups not because of their beliefs but because of their behavior and how they negatively impact people's lives wow you know it's it seems like the commonality behind a lot of These is manipulating Christianity I would you know there's no religion that has not been used as a facade a mask by Cult leaders there have been groups that have used Judaism Hinduism uh Christianity Islam in my in my opinion Isis and Al-Qaeda both Cults one following Al bagdadi as their savior the other following uh you know uh

now I'm spacing out uh B Laden Ben Laden excuse Me there have been uh Cults using any religion uh Islam you know the Osama Bin Laden LED Al-Qaeda uh and Al bagdadi LED Isis both of them basically as SA avors as Messiahs uh leading their followers to death so every religion has been used now in the United States and in and in and in Europe of course it's Christianity because Christianity has currency Christianity has credibility and so if you're a cult leader you want To use something as a facade as a mask to invoke your

authority to invoke your power so what you're saying to your followers is I'm not telling you to give up your life for me I'm telling you to give up your life for God and you're going to do it because I'm calling upon your deeply held beliefs as a Christian a Jew a Muslim a Buddhist a Hindu and because of that you will see me as an authority representing that higher power and you will then obey me you will give Me what I want want you will do what I say because you think that by following

me you're following that higher power and so that's why they use that Authority are there any Cults that you any newer ones that you have your eye on right now I am very concerned about Israelites United in Christ that is an africanamerican identity group a hate group that has a YouTube channel I think YouTube should do something about that uh I think that They're negligent by not looking at that closer uh I hope they will you know so they're I would encourage YouTube in particular to police YouTube more and look for these cult leaders that

are on YouTube look for these people that are using social media because they are and they're hurting people and I think there should be more policing done on those platforms well I'm sure this show will help out with that I hope so well Rick We're wrapping up here and I just want to say thank you for coming on that was a fascinating conversation and uh I got to be honest I totally wasn't expecting you to know about the Yellow Deli that was that was I cannot wait to get home and tell my wife about that

what was it the 12 12 tribes the 12 tribes you you can find a whole historical archive about them at cult education.com I've been following them for decades she's going to be we've been Talking about this for seven years and uh to just have you just go The Yellow Deli I was that was uh wow just goes to show you these place I mean palaski Tennessee is a you and me are probably the only ones that have ever heard of it that are watching this G no they've been in the media there was a fire

in Colorado that that allegedly started at one of their communities and so and they've been in the news many many many times over many Things the 12 tribes began in Chattanooga Tennessee that's where they started and then they branched out and they moved around and they all over the place very interesting what I was getting out is palasia is a very very small town and so it's it's you know this I guess they just pop up anywhere is it close to Chattanooga it's not far from here it's only about 45 minutes south of here so

if you want to go grab a bite no thanks I'm just kidding but Rick it was it was a pleasure interviewing you I really appreciate it [Music] no matter where you're watching Shan Ryan Show from if you get anything out of this please like comment subscribe and most importantly share this everywhere you possibly can and if you're feeling extra generous please leave us review on Apple and Spotify podcasts