Introduction
During the last decade, many varied and
highly visible religious groups have emerged in America. These groups
are unconventional and more demanding of individual members' time,
material possessions, and commitment that has been customary in recent
times in this country. The great majority of members are people in
their twenties and, not surprisingly, public and parental reaction has
been intense. Attempts to explain, in sociological terms the
attraction of these groups often sound reassuring: Young people, in
the aftermath of Vietnam, political assassinations and Watergate, are
seeking an alternative to the traditional struggle for material
success and power. An individual's growth towards independence and
maturity often requires an exploration of different cultures and
attitudes. Some see a sustained, "ecstatic" spiritual life
as a corrective to the materialism and superficiality of American
society. A close-knit religious community provides a young person with
a sense of identity and an alternative to family life during
vulnerable years.
Despite these and other reassurances,
however, general public reaction has been primarily hostile to young
people's involvement in these groups. Many of the new groups are
viewed not as bona fide religions, but as "cults," whose
greedy egocentric leaders wreak untold damage on young lives. Unfair,
high-pressure techniques of evangelizing produce, it is said, not
religious converts, but zombies who have no resistance to exploitation
by cult leaders. Some opponents of the new groups claim that the
ultimate subversion is not of individuals but of the very fabric of
our society. A recent magazine article described "religious
breaks" as "America's most dangerous threat."(*)
Desperate parents are increasingly using
forcible means to abduct their adult children from religious groups
that they consider radical and dangerous. Thousands of parents have
hired "religious deprogrammers" to seize their children,
isolate them from their usual associates, and barrage them with
accusations, arguments and threats until they renounce their religious
affiliations.
Parents have organized a tax-exempt
foundation which provides a national communication and transportation
network to deprogrammers in various cities. Free-lance deprogrammers
are springing up all over the country, benefiting by the profit-making
potential of deprogramming. Some parents have paid as much as $45,000
in an attempt to have a child's religious affiliation broken.
Deprogrammers have seized members of
several dozen religious groups, including the Way, the New Testament
Missionary Fellowship, Love Israel, the Unification Church, Hare
Krishna, the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation, and the Divine
Light Mission. One prominent deprogrammer is reported to have declared
that Mormons, Jews, people who meditate, and all those who do not
accept Jesus will have to be deprogrammed. (*)
Yet, deprogramming is not just a
"war against the cults." Rather, it is a technique used
against any affiliation opposed by a relative. One young woman
went through deprogramming because she was a Marxist. Two Denver women
were kidnapped and held by force because they had left the Greek
Orthodox tradition of their families. A Roman Catholic woman from
Ontario and an Episcopalian man from Houston were victims of
deprogramming attempts. One parents'' organization that opposes
"cults" includes feminist consciousness-raising groups on
its list. (**)
The American Civil Liberties Union takes
no position in the debate over the effect on an individual of a
particular religious affiliation or the effect on society of the
proliferation of non-traditional religious group. The ACLU has no
special competence to deal with these difficult questions. What is
clear is that there is a point - and eighteen is now generally held to
be the age of legal majority - where a young person possesses separate
and independent rights to freedom of religion, association and
privacy. The movement to seize, hold and deprogram people of legal
age, particularly when aided by the laws and officials of the
government, is a threat to basic freedoms guaranteed by the
Constitution. This report will describe the origin of the movement to
seize and deprogram members of religious groups, the participation by
the state in this process, and future prospects for state-sanctioned
deprogramming.
I. UNADORNED
ABDUCTION
A. Ted Patrick
1. Patrick's Methods
The originator of deprogramming in this
country is Ted Patrick, a former community relations consultant to
California Governor Ronald Reagan. Patrick was criticized for using
his identification with Governor Reagan to combat religious groups
and, in 1972, when he quit his state job, he went into deprogramming
full time. Since 1972, he has engineered over one thousand
deprogrammings.
Patrick is convinced that the only way
to persuade people to renounce their beliefs is to get them away
from the social and emotional reinforcement of their religious
environment. His methods are primitive. He grabs people by surprise
and transports them to rooms where they are confined for days or
weeks. His account of his activities, Let Our Children Go (E.P.
Dutton and Co., Inc., 1976) documents his techniques. He told one
victim "I can stay here three, four months, Even longer.
Nobody's going anywhere." (p.24). He admits to using Mace on
people who try to prevent the abduction (p. 223), depriving the
victim of sleep (p. 76), and using real violence during the
deprogramming (pp. 188, 189).
2. Patrick's Legal
Status
Patrick carries out abductions with
parents present on the theory that he is acting as their agent.
Although most incidents involve people over the age of legal
majority, authorities have tended to sympathize with parents and
have been reluctant to prosecute in what they perceive as a family
squabble. Grand juries have refused to indict, even where the victim
is over 21.
In at least two cases, Patrick escaped
conviction for kidnapping and assault by invoking the doctrine of
"justification." New York Law, 35.05 of the Penal Law,
Subdivision 2, defines justification as follows:
2. Such conduct is necessary as an
emergency measure to avoid an imminent public or private injury
which is about to occur by reason of a situation occasioned or
developed through no fault of the actor, and which is of such
gravity that, according to ordinary standards of intelligence and
morality, the desirability and urgency of avoiding such injury
clearly outweigh the desirability of avoiding the injury sought to
be prevented by the statute defining the offence in issue."
Under this doctrine, it is permissible
to break into a burning house in order to save someone from fire.
In 1973, in a case involving an attempt
to kidnap Daniel Voll, Patrick claimed he was aiding Voll's parents
to save him from a greater wrong than the admitted assault and
kidnapping. This greater wrong, according to Patrick, was Voll's
affiliation with the New Testament Missionary Fellowship, a small,
noncommunal group of evangelical Christians who meet in Manhattan
apartments.
During the trial, the judge permitted
the defense to introduce evidences that attempted to ridicule the
group's devoutly held beliefs. No evidence was offered that the
group was engaged in unlawful activity. Rather, it was fundamental
religious beliefs and practices that came under the court's
scrutiny. Judge Bruce Wright charged the jury that, if the abductors
reasonably believed the abduction was justified, "then you may
excuse the conduct of the defendant." The jury acquitted
Patrick under the doctrine of justification, presumably because the
jury found that the theological tenets of the New Testament
Missionary Fellowship were sufficiently bizarre to have led the
kidnapers to believe they were acting for the good of the victim.
Most of the time, Patrick has been
successful in his assertions that he was acting as agent for the
family and that he had "justification." Nonetheless, he
has served time in jail for false imprisonment, a misdemeanor. In
June 1974, Denver District Court Judge Zita Weinshienk sentenced
Patrick to one year in jail and fine him $1,000 for falsely
imprisoning two young women. The women, who had no religious
affiliation, had left their parents' strict Greek Orthodox way of
life. For this non-affiliation, they were seized and held in a room
with barred windows and subjected to shouted accusations for a week.
The National Organization of Women picketed the Denver District
Attorney's office to protest the inaction of law enforcement offices
in the case, which finally resulted in Patrick's conviction. Judge
Weinshienk suspended all but seven days of Patrick's sentence with
the condition that he cease his deprogramming activities, but
insisted that he spend some time in jail to experience for himself
"what deprivation of physical freedom means."
Patrick's response was to go after a
young woman, a member of a radical political group in Philadelphia,
a month later, while his conviction was on appeal. The following
spring, Patrick was found guilty in Orange County, California of
falsely imprisoning a Hare Krishna woman. There, the judge refused
to accept Patrick's choice-of-evils defense, calling it "a
matter of religious liberty, plain and simple", and sentenced
Patrick to one year in prison.
While serving his sentence in the
Orange County jail, Patrick was removed from an unsupervised
five-day-a-week work furlough program because he lied about the
duties of his work while on furlough. Rather than promoting his
book, as he had claimed, he was continuing his deprogramming
efforts.
Patrick was released from the Orange
County jail in March 1977. Judge Weinshienk then ordered him back to
Denver to serve the suspended one-year sentence because he had
violated the terms of his parole, but deducted the 221 days he had
served of the California sentence. Judge Weinshienk said, "This
is a case where an individual has sought to take the law into his
own hands." When he was sentenced in Denver, Patrick vowed to
continue deprogramming activities as soon as he was free. He was
released in July, 1977.
At this writing, Patrick faces new
misdemeanor charges for two deprogramming attempts which he made
during his work furlough. In August 1977, the Beverly Hills district
attorney charge Patrick and five other persons with conspiracy and
false imprisonment for kidnapping two members of the Brotherhood of
the Sun, a Santa Barbara Christian group.
B. Other Extra-Legal
Abductors
1. Abduction for principle
Joyce B. is a twenty-seven year old
hare Krishna devotee who is married to another devotee. She was six
months pregnant in January 1977 when she set out from her apartment
to the Krishna temple nearby. On previous occasions, she had noticed
that she was being followed on her walks and thoughts that she
recognized members of a Christian group which had been heckling Hare
Krishna devotees at the city's airport.
As she was entering the temple this
January morning, a car pulled into the driveway. Four men were in
the car. They said they had some questions to ask her and, as she
approached, the rear door opened and she was told a gun was pointing
at her and that she would be shot if she did not get into the car.
She got in, was blindfolded, and was driven to a motel. According to
Joyce B's signed affidavit, she was forced to disrobe and remain
without clothing. She was beaten by the men. She was continually
harassed day and night and was given only minimal amounts of food
and sleep. She was forced to listen to tapes excoriating her
religion.
She lost track of time, but estimates
that, after two or three weeks of this ordeal, she was taken to some
kind of boarding house where she and a young woman from the
Unification Church were kept under guard for about five days. She
was then taken to a house belonging to a family of Pentecostal
Christians and was exhorted to accept the Pentecostal philosophy.
She persuaded her captors that she
needed medical attention because of her advanced pregnancy and they
took her to a hospital. From there she called her husband with whom
she returned to the temple where she is now living.
Joyce B. was threatened with a worse
fate if she returned to the Krishna religion. She expressed fear
about taking any legal action against the people who held her, some
of whom she said she could identify. After two months, she overcame
her fear sufficiently to write an affidavit for use by her temple
where others have been threatened with similar incidents. She is an
orphan and has no near relatives. The apparent motive for the
deprogramming attempt is that the Pentecostals saw she was pregnant
and decided to save her soul and the baby's for Christ.
This group has seized other young
people in order to convert them from their chosen religions to its
particular beliefs. Its most frequent targets are members of the
Unification Church and Hare Krishna devotees. The halfway house
where Joyce B. was taken from the motel is used as a deprogramming
center where several young people are held at the same time.
2. Abduction on behalf of parents
a. David Goodman
All over the country, imitators of
Patrick are willing to profit by parents' willingness to pay to
have their children seized. Like Patrick, they have avoided
conviction by claiming in their defense that there is a law of
love between parent and child that is a "higherlaw" than
mere mundane laws against things like kidnapping. After David
Goodman, age 19, took part in a 21-day Unification Church worship,
four men grabbed him in a parking lot and attempted to deprogram
him in a Westchester County, New York, motel. Goodman filed a
complain against six people, including his mother and uncle, for
unlawful imprisonment, a felony in New York.
The defense pleaded justification. A
Westchester grand jury refused to indict. Westchester District
Attorney Carl Vergari explained, "Implicit in their findings
was the belief that the family had the right to take reasonable
steps to rescue the child from a situation which they believed
constituted a danger to his health and welfare."
b. The Queens
County Case
Not only have grand juries failed to
indict kidnapers, but, in one bizarre case, a grand jury reverse
direction and indicted two Hare Krishna leaders for unlawful
imprisonment through the use of brainwashing.
The case began with the abduction of
Merylee Kreshower, a 23-year-old Hare Krishna devotee, by her
mother and a private detective, Galen Kelly. Kelly, who admits to
performing about seventy similar missions in the past, seized
Kreshower at a shopping center in August 1976, forced her into a
van and took her to a motel. After five days, Kreshower pretended
to renounce her faith, got back to the Hare Krishna temple in
Manhattan, and charged Kelly and her mother with kidnapping.
Merylee Kreshower went to court to
testify with Ed Shapiro, another Hare Krishna devotee, who had
been the victim of a Ted Patrick deprogramming attempts eighteen
months earlier. The Queens grand jury heard testimony from Ms.
Kreshower and others about Krishna beliefs and practices,
dismissed the charges against her mother and Kelly, and charged
leaders of the Manhattan temple with unlawful imprisonment by mind
control techniques. The court then held Ms. Kreshower and Mr.
Shapiro as material witness on $50,000 bond each.
Under New York law, the crime of
unlawful imprisonment requires proof that one person restrains
another under conditions which expose that person to the risk of
serious physical injury. Attorney Jeremiah S. Gutman asked the
criminal court judge to dismiss the indictment against Hare
Krishna leaders on the grounds that: a. no physical force was use,
b. Ms Kreshower entered the Hare Krishna temple voluntarily, and
c. she was in no way physically restrained from leaving the group.
Most important, the charges directly interfered with her
constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion.
In the meantime, Ed Shapiro's father
succeeded, in cooperation with the prosecutor, in getting the
material witness order against Ed vacated and had Ed
"delivered" to him under a Massachusetts conservatorship
order secured without notice to Ed. The father then had Ed placed
in an ambulance under guard and driven to a mental hospital in
Long Island, presumably to be committed. The New York CLU called
the hospital and warned its officials that there would be
litigation if they admitted Shapiro. They did not, and Shaprior's
father took him, still under guard, to Massachusetts. There Ed
Shapiro's struggle to prevent his father from confining him in a
mental hospital finally ended in June 1977 when a petition to
grant a guardianship over Ed was dismissed because there was no
evidence that he was mentally incompetent.
In March 1977, New York State Supreme
Court Justice John J. Leahy dismissed the charges against the Hare
Krishna temple leaders and called the grand jury indictments a
"direct and blatant violation" of religious freedom. As
to the state's charge that the practices of Hare Krishna (rituals,
chanting, etc.) constituted mind control, the court found no legal
foundation, but rather "a concept that is fraught with danger
in its potential utilization in the suppression... of citizens'
right to pursue, join and practice the religion of their
choice". The ruling, the first of its kind, is not binding on
other courts, but Leah issued a "dire caveat to
prosecutors" across the land to protect religious belief.
(Memorandum, Supreme Court Queens County, Ind. No. 2114/76 and
2012/76, March 16, 1977).
Despite this decision, Merylee
Kreshower's abductors escaped prosecution and Justice Leahy's
words have not deterred deprogrammers elsewhere.
|
The
Anti-Cult Movement
Deprogramming
