John of God grabs what looks like a kitchen knife from a silver tray and appears to scrape it over the right eye of a believer.
An Open Letter to Clergy Regarding Helping Former Members of Abusive Churches or Cults
ICSA Today, Vol. 03, No. 02. Carol Giambalvo ICSA Director of Recovery Programs, ICSA Board of Directors As both the Director of Recovery Programs for the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) and a cofounder of reFOCUS, a support and referral network for former members of closed, intense organizations or relationships,…
They came from the heavens
FringeAldis Brennan December 7, 2012 As a child Diane Brisebois was brought up Catholic. But, like any teenager, she rebelled when she hit adolescence. She began to question the validity of Christianity. Unable to find a satisfactory explanation for the existence of God, she searched for something that did make…
Sex Abuse Scandals and Ultra-Orthodox Jews: Is the Internet the Problem?
RevealerAyala Fader November 13, 2012 On May 22, 2012, forty thousand ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and boys gathered at Citi Fields Stadium in Queens to listen to important rabbis rail against the dangers of the Internet. (There were separate places where the event was video-streamed for women, prohibited from mingling, at…
Murder of ex-MOVE member remains a mystery
Philadelphia InquirerMonica Yant Kinney September 20, 2012 Last of two parts. All unsolved murders are inherently mysterious, but that of John Gilbride remains extra-curious, since he was shot dead hours before a court-ordered visit with the son his ex-wife, MOVE matriarch Alberta Africa, vowed not to let him see. Most…
Reverend Moon: Cult leader, CIA asset and Bush family friend
The death of Reverend Sun Myung Moon hopefully ends one of the strangest chapters in U.S. security industrial complex history.
Heavenly Mountain Tract To Be Sold
Developers Earl and David Kaplan later disavowed transcendental meditation, angering some who said they had invested with the understanding that transcendental meditation would be the basis of the community.
France steps up struggle against religious radicals
Reuters Tom Heneghan December 12, 2012 France will deport foreign-born imams and disband radical faith-based groups, including hardline traditionalist Catholics, if a new surveillance policy signals they suffer a “religious pathology” and could become violent. A French Islamist shooting spree last March that killed three soldiers and four Jews showed how…
Maharishi free school fails to enter pupils for Sats
Hannah Richardson December 13, 2012 A flagship new free school where pupils practise transcendental meditation twice daily has been reprimanded by the government after it failed to put any of its pupils into compulsory national curriculum tests. Pupils at Lancashire’s Maharishi Free School receive what is described as a “consciousness-based”…
The Psychology of Cults
Radio National – All in the Mind If you sign up to a weekend personal development workshop, you don’t really expect to emerge 10 years later a shadow of your former emotional self. What sets many groups apart from what we regard as cults is a range of powerful psychological…