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==History== In the United States in the early 1970s there was an increasing number of [[New Religious Movement]]s. In 1971, [[Ted Patrick]] founded FREECOG (Parents Committee to Free Our Sons and Daughters from the [[The Family International|Children of God]]).<ref>{{cite book |last=Chryssides |first=George |title=Exploring New Religions |publisher=[[Continuum International Publishing Group]] |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-8264-5959-6 |pages=346–347}}</ref> In 1974, he founded the more wide-ranging "Citizen's Freedom Foundation" (CFF),<ref>{{cite news |last=Sterba |first=James P. |date=1974-09-02 |title=Parents Form Group to Fight Religious Cults' Hold on Young |page=18 |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/09/02/archives/parents-form-group-to-fight-religious-cults-hold-on-young.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230624203650/https://www.nytimes.com/1974/09/02/archives/parents-form-group-to-fight-religious-cults-hold-on-young.html |archive-date=2023-06-24}}</ref> and began offering 'deprogramming' services to people who wanted to break a family member's connection to an NRM. The deprogramming methods involved abduction, physical restraint, detention over days or weeks, food and sleep deprivation, prolonged verbal and emotional abuse, and desecration of the symbols of the victim's faith.<ref name="holywars">McAllister, Shawn (1999). "Holy Wars: Involuntary Deprogramming as a Weapon Against Cults". ''[[Thurgood Marshall Law Review]]'' '''24''' (2): 359–85</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=LeMoult |first=John |date=1978-01-01 |title=Deprogramming Members of Religious Sects |url=https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol46/iss4/1 |journal=Fordham Law Review |volume=46 |issue=4 |pages=599}}</ref> The perpetrators' justification for these actions was that the individual had been "brainwashed", and was not amenable to reason.<ref name="Chryssides">{{cite book|title=Exploring New Religions|last=Chryssides|first=George|publisher=[[Continuum International Publishing Group]]|year=1999|isbn=0-8264-5959-5|pages=346–348}}</ref><ref>[[George Chryssides|Chryssides, George D.]]; Zeller, Benjamin E. (eds.) (2014). ''The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements.'' Bloomsbury Companions. London: [[Bloomsbury Publishing]].</ref> Brainwashing theory denied the possibility of authentic spiritual choice for an NRM member, proposing instead that such individuals were subject to systematic mind control programs that overrode their capacity for independent volition.{{r|gallagher-bromley|p=56}} Ted Patrick's theory of brainwashing was that individuals were hypnotized by brainwaves projected from a recruiter's eyes and fingertips, after which the state was maintained by constant indoctrination, a totalistic environment and self-hypnosis.{{r|gallagher-bromley|p=59}} Most academic research, however, indicated that the reasons for people joining, remaining in, or leaving NRMs were complex, varied from group to group and individual to individual, and generally reflected the continued presence of a capacity for individual responsibility and choice.{{r|gallagher-bromley|pp=43, 61}} Patrick's organizations were later merged to become the Cult Awareness Network.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Chryssides |first1=George D. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qc5UAgAAQBAJ&q=%22cult%20awareness%20network%22 |title=The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements |last2=Zeller |first2=Benjamin E. |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |year=2014 |isbn=978-1-4411-7449-9}}</ref> CAN became the most prominent group in the emerging national [[anti-cult movement]] of the 70s and 80s. The anti-cult movement lobbied for state and national legislative action to legitimize its activities, and although this had very limited success, the movement was nevertheless able to forge alliances with a number of governmental agencies. This was primarily on the back of its propagation of the "cult/mind control ideology", which succeeded in turning affiliation with NRMs into an issue of public—rather than private—concern, and gave a pseudo-legitimacy to the anti-cultists' more extreme claims and actions.{{r|oxford|p=190}} By 1991, the Cult Awareness Network had twenty-three chapters dedicated to monitoring over two hundred groups that it referred to as "mind control cults".<ref name="time" /> Although CFF and CAN were in favor of deprogramming, they distanced themselves from the practice from the late 1970s onwards.<ref>Clarke, P. and R.M.H.F.P. Clarke. 2004. Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements: Taylor & Francis.</ref> Despite this apparent repudiation, however, they continued the practice. In the 1980s, CAN referred thousands of paying clients to activist members who kept lists of deprogrammers. The total number that occurred is unknown, but in 1980 Ted Patrick claimed to have been hired over 2000 times as a professional abductor.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Religion: Cultnaper |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,954578,00.html |magazine=Time |date=October 6, 1980 |publisher=Time USA |access-date=24 October 2023}}</ref> Many other operators emerged both during and after the period in which he was active, many of them trained by him.{{r|gallagher-bromley|pages=59}} Deprogramming was an integral part of the anti-cult ideology and economy, and was seen as an effective response to the demand emanating from people who wanted a family member extracted, but it also clashed with the need for anti-cult organizations to present themselves as 'educational' associations (CFF, for example, received tax-exempt status as an educational trust). This, along with its tenuous legal and moral status, meant that deprogramming tended to be publicly disavowed, while its practice continued clandestinely.{{r|oxford|p=191}}{{r|davis}} The Cult Awareness Network became the subject of controversy when Patrick and other CAN-associated figures, such as [[Galen Kelly]] and Donald Moore, were convicted of crimes committed in the course of [[deprogramming]]s. Patricia Ryan, the daughter of US Congressman [[Leo Ryan|Leo J. Ryan]] (D-[[Millbrae, California]]), who died from gunfire while investigating conditions at the [[Peoples Temple]] compound in [[Jonestown]], [[Guyana]], was president of CAN from 1990 to 1993.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Tom |first=Whittle |date=2021-02-11 |title=Unanswered Questions about Jonestown (in 'The Cult Awareness Network: Anatomy of a Hate Group', published by 'Freedom Magazine', January 1995) |url=https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=108526 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308010152/https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=108526 |archive-date=2021-03-08 |website=Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple}}</ref> Actor [[Mike Farrell]] served on the board of advisors of CAN.<ref>{{cite news |last=[[FACTNet]] Newswire |title=Farrell the Human Rights Activist |work=Mike Farrel Online |publisher=L.A. van Aardenne 1998 |url=http://www.mikefarrell.org/activist/humanrights.html |access-date=2007-10-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514142243/http://www.mikefarrell.org/activist/humanrights.html |archive-date=2011-05-14 }}</ref> In 1990, the Cult Awareness Network established the "John Gordon Clark Fund", in honor of [[psychiatrist]] [[John Gordon Clark|John G. Clark]], who had given testimony about Scientology and other groups.<ref>{{cite news |last=Nagourney |first=Eric |title=John Clark, 73, Psychiatrist Who Studied Sects |work=The New York Times |date=October 18, 1999}}</ref><ref name="Schumaker">{{cite book |last=Schumaker |first=John F. |title=Religion and Mental Health |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=1992 |page=242 |isbn=978-0-19-506985-3}}</ref> The fund was established to assist former members of [[destructive cult]]s.<ref name="Schumaker" /> Detractors Susan E. Darnell, [[Anson D. Shupe]], and [[Church of Scientology]] attorney [[Kendrick Moxon]] charged that CAN deliberately provided a distorted picture of the groups it tracked.<ref name="shupe">{{cite news |first1=Anson |last1=Shupe |author1-link=Anson D. Shupe |first2=Susan E |last2=Darnell |first3=Kendrick |last3=Moxon |author3-link=Kendrick Moxon |title=CAN, We Hardly Knew Ye: Sex, Drugs, Deprogrammers' Kickbacks, and Corporate Crime in the (old) Cult Awareness Network |work=Presented at 2000 meeting of Society for the Scientific Study of Religion |publisher=[[CESNUR]] |date=2000-10-21 |url=http://www.cesnur.org/2001/CAN.htm |access-date=2007-10-28}}</ref> In 1991, ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine quoted then CAN director Cynthia Kisser in its article "[[The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power]]". Kisser stated: "Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen. No cult extracts more money from its members".<ref name="time">{{cite magazine |last=Behar |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Behar |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,972865,00.html |title=Scientology: The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |date=May 6, 1991 |access-date=February 7, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140525200902/https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,156952,00.html |archive-date=May 25, 2014 |url-status=live }}</ref> This quote has since been referenced verbatim in other secondary sources discussing Scientology.<ref name="healy">{{cite book |last=Healy |first=David |title=Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression |publisher=NYU Press |year=2004 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/letthemeatprozac00heal/page/58 58] |isbn=978-0-8147-3669-2 |url=https://archive.org/details/letthemeatprozac00heal/page/58 }}</ref><ref name="Signorile">{{cite book |last=Signorile |first=Michelangelo |title=Queer in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power |publisher=[[Random House]] |date=1993 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/queerinamericase00sign_0/page/275 275] |isbn=978-0-679-41309-7 |url=https://archive.org/details/queerinamericase00sign_0/page/275 }}</ref> These comments and other forms of criticism from CAN garnered the attention of the Church of Scientology and [[Landmark Education]], and both separately began litigation proceedings against the organization. CAN declared [[bankruptcy]] after a jury found that CAN conspired to violate the [[civil rights]] and [[freedom of religion|religious liberties]] of [[Jason Scott case|Jason Scott]], a [[Pentecostalist]], who had been forcibly kidnapped and subjected to a failed deprogramming by [[Rick Ross (consultant)|Rick Ross]], a CAN-referred deprogrammer, and others.<ref>James R. Lewis [https://books.google.com/books?id=JWJ_BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA97 Cults: A Reference and Guide: Approaches to New Religions]. Routledge, 2014 {{ISBN|978-1-317-54513-2}}</ref>{{rp|97–98}} The court ordered CAN to pay a judgment of 1 million [[United States dollar|USD]]. The large award was intended to deter similar conduct in the future; the court noted that the defendants were unable to appreciate the maliciousness of their conduct towards the deprogrammee, and portrayed themselves, throughout the entire process of litigation, as victims of the alleged agenda of the plaintiff's attorney, [[Church of Scientology]] attorney [[Kendrick Moxon]].<ref name=Shupe180-184>{{cite book | last = Shupe | first = Anson | author-link = Anson Shupe | author2 = Darnell, Susan E. | title = Agents of Discord | publisher = Transaction Publishers | year = 2006 | location = New Brunswick, US; London | pages = 180–184 | isbn = 978-0-7658-0323-8 }}</ref> In 1996, CAN went bankrupt and its assets were bought by a coalition of organizations and individuals, including Scientologists.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{cite book |title=Scientology |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MtW90YkkB3gC&pg=PA279 |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=2009 |isbn=978-0-19-988711-8 |first=James R |last=Lewis |author-link=James R. Lewis (scholar) |page=279|quote=There was a period of frantic ACM [anticult movement] efforts to obtain CAN's files and logo, and there was even a brief attempt by scrambling ACM activists to resurrect the group, but CAN was irreparably broken. Eventually a new CAN ''did'' emerge, but it was headed and staffed at its Los Angeles office largely by Scientologists and sympathizers of that church.}}</ref> The bankruptcy trustee told ''[[The Washington Post]]'' that he put CAN's name-brand assets on the auction block only because Kisser herself asked to buy them.<ref>{{Cite news|title = Anti-Cult Group Dismembered As Former Foes Buy Its Assets|url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/12/01/anti-cult-group-dismembered-as-former-foes-buy-its-assets/c64962b7-f35a-435a-96aa-8c0d70c873e8/|newspaper = The Washington Post|date = 1996-12-01|access-date = 2016-01-21|issn = 0190-8286|language = en-US|first = Laurie|last = Goodstein}}</ref> As a result of a legal settlement with Landmark Education, CAN agreed not to sell copies of ''[[Outrageous Betrayal]]'', a book critical of [[Werner Erhard]], for five years after it emerged from bankruptcy proceedings. Following its bankruptcy, the files of the "Old CAN" were made available to scholars for study and transferred to a [[Online Archive of California|university library]].{{r|davis|page=23–24}}<ref>{{Cite web| title = Cult Awareness Network (CAN) Collection| accessdate = 2023-10-18| url = https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8p26zqp/admin/ |website=[[Online Archive of California]]}}</ref> ===Deprogramming referral kickback scheme – NARDEC=== The National Resource Development and Economic Council (NARDEC) was formed in the mid-1980s and had become institutionalized as a special unit within CAN by 1987.<ref name="discord">Shupe, A. and S.E. Darnell. 2011. Agents of Discord: Deprogramming, Pseudo-Science, and the American Anticult Movement: Transaction Publishers.</ref> The unit's role was to provide referrals to deprogrammers in exchange for a "[[Kickback (bribery)|kickback]]" – either in cash or in the form of a [[Tax deduction|tax-deductible]] "donation" or "commissions" which were then funneled back to national CAN headquarters.<ref name="discord"/>{{r|davis|page=26–28}} Journalist Nora Hamerman, in writing about the [[Galen Kelly|Dobkowski deprogramming]], referred to CAN as "a clearinghouse for kidnap-for-hire rings",<ref>Nora Hamerman, 1994. "Don Moore: Headed for the CAN". ''[[The New Federalist]]'' Vol. 8, #14. April 25, p. 12.</ref> with her phrase affirmed by scholarly researchers as "an apt description"<ref name=shupe02>Shupe Darnell, & Moxon (2002). The cult awareness network and the anticult movement: Implications for NRMs in America. In Davis & Hankins (Eds.), New religious movements and religious liberty in America (pp. 21-43). Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. They state: "Journalist Nora Hamerman, in writing about the Dobkowski deprogramming fiasco, referred to CAN as 'a clearing-house for kidnap-for-hire rings." This is an apt description. There was a corporate crime basis for CAN's continuance and funding..." (p. 24)</ref>{{rp|24}} of CAN. Hamerman referred to the "financial symbiosis between CAN and coercive deprogrammers".<ref name="discord"/> CAN-associated deprogrammers included [[Steven Hassan]], [[Carol Giambalvo]], [[Rick Ross (consultant)|Rick Ross]],<ref>Melton, J. Gordon. 2001. "The Fate of NRMs and their Detractors in Twenty-first Century America". ''[[Nova Religio]]'' 4 (2): 241–248.</ref> [[Ted Patrick]], [[Galen Kelly]]<ref name=VanityFair>{{cite news |url=http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/archive/1993/04/orth199304 |title=Blueblood War |first=Maureen |last=Orth |date=December 2008 |work=[[Vanity Fair (magazine)|Vanity Fair]] |access-date=2010-03-10 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141012002722/http://www.vanityfair.com:80/magazine/archive/1993/04/orth199304 |archive-date=October 12, 2014}}</ref> David Clark,{{r|davis|page=28,38}} and Robert Point.<ref>{{cite web |title=Main Line Socialite Is Expected To Surrender In Kidnapping Plot Three Men Already Have Been Arrested In A Scheme To |url=http://articles.philly.com/1992-10-01/news/25998215_1_kidnapping-plot-deprogram-abduction |website=[[The Philadelphia Inquirer]] |access-date=2016-01-18}}{{dead link|date=October 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref>
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