A magazine on religious liberty and human rights
The records of what was once the largest world anti-cult organization demonstrate that criminal behavior was systemic rather than occasional in anti-cult milieus.
Auditors and scholars who examined CAN accounts found massive irregularities, a usual problem in anti-cult organizations.
Anti-cultists referred parents of “cult members” to deprogrammers. The latter, in turn, transferred a percentage of the honoraries to the anti-cultists.
The most damning documents the bankruptcy of CAN put at the scholars’ disposal concerned the sexually abusive behavior of deprogrammers towards their victims.
Basically, anti-cultists and deprogrammers regarded as a “cult” any group that had as members children of parents willing to pay for deprogramming them.
Massive evidence confirmed that the anti-cultists referred parents of members of new religious movements to deprogrammers.
CAN’s anti-cult predecessor, the Citizens Freedom Foundation, already got in trouble for its clandestine association with illegal deprogramming.
The Scott case resulted in American courts putting an end to forcible deprogramming, a criminal activity supported by leading anti-cultists.
Based on pseudo-scientific theories of brainwashing, anti-cultists supported the criminal but lucrative business of deprogramming.
