More than half of those who sued the church had been kidnapped, deprogrammed, and then asked to sue to prove they had been really “de-converted.”
by Masumi Fukuda
Article 4 of 4. Read article 1, article 2, and article 3.
Table of Contents
Abduction, confinement, and deprogramming
Returning to the discussion of the dissolution order request, it has been revealed that there is a significant issue with the thirty-two judgments that recognized the church’s liability for compensation. Out of these, twenty-two judgments acknowledged the responsibility of the FFWPU (Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, formerly called Unification Church, UC) for former members who were plaintiffs, and the compensation amount reached approximately 1.4 billion yen. The maliciousness of these cases was cited as the reason for exercising the right to question, which took place in November 2022.
As the details of these twenty-two cases have been somewhat disclosed, Tatsuki Nakayama, the lawyer representing FFWPU, conducted a thorough examination of each judgment. Surprisingly, it was revealed that out of the total 231 plaintiffs, 55.4%, or 128 individuals, were former believers who had been abducted, confined, and deprogrammed.
For example:
2001 / Hiroshima High Court Okayama Branch / 2 plaintiffs
2001 / Sapporo District Court / 80% of the 21 plaintiffs
2002 / Tokyo District Court / 3 plaintiffs
2002 / Niigata District Court / all 58 plaintiffs.
However, regarding the newly added ten cases, no information has been disclosed about the reasons for disaffiliation. With the dissolution request being submitted, the judicial system will now be responsible for making judgments. However, since the proceedings will be conducted in private, there is even a possibility that a dissolution order might be issued without much information being disclosed to the public until the judgment is issued.
In the past, I have repeatedly written about the abduction and confinement carried out against followers of FFWPU, which resulted in more than 4,300 victims of deprogramming. Let me explain it once again.
Deprogrammers or pastors from mainstream Christianity, who view the UC as heretical, instigate believers’ close relatives to abduct the devotees. The believers are then confined in securely locked apartments and similar places where they cannot escape from the inside.
Daily, deprogrammers and pastors hostile to the UC visit and deluge the believers with verbal abuse, which is at times accompanied by violence. The deprogrammers and pastors relentlessly criticize the UC’s doctrines and bring up scandals blamed on the founder until the believers express an intention to abandon their faith. Consequently, around 70% of the 4,300 kidnapped believers reportedly abandoned their faith.
Some believers, desiring to escape confinement, try to merely pretend disaffiliation. To expose such deception, multiple steps are carried out: the ex-believers are required to write a letter of apostasy, consume alcohol (against the UC’s rules), disclose the addresses of other believers (to find new targets for abduction), and visit other confined believers to persuade them to leave.
Additionally, they are asked to file lawsuits seeking for example the annulment of the marriage for those who participated in the Unification Church’s Blessing Ceremonies (collective weddings), and lawsuits demanding the return of donations from the UC. Fearing the possibility of being abducted and confined again if they refuse these demands, believers find themselves compelled to comply.
In court, these former believers testify about the malicious nature of the FFWPU. Moreover, under the guidance of deprogrammers and pastors, they appear in the media as “normal” former members who just want to denounce the organization. Observing this, parents of other believers become anxious and seek the help of deprogrammers, leading to further cases of abduction and confinement. It becomes an endless loop.
If MEXT’s (the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) “right to question” the FFWPU is based on testimony from many formerly kidnapped and deprogrammed plaintiffs in the twenty-two cases, and if it leads to the decision, “Yes, the malicious nature of the church became clear and it should be dissolved,” it would be excessively unjust. It is only natural for the FFWPU to vehemently oppose the dissolution order request.
A young believer’s abduction story
However, it appears that the MEXT never intended to promote a fair and impartial judgment, since it sought the cooperation of the NNLASS (National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales), an anti-cult group deeply hostile towards the UC, and heavily relied on its lawyers for obtaining materials and conducting investigations. In fact, the strong influence of the NNLASS over the MEXT is evident in Minister Moriyama’s press conference remarks: “The church… continuously restricted the free decision-making of numerous believers over an extended period, impeded normal judgment, and caused significant damage by inducing them to make large donations and purchase goods, disrupting the peace of their lives.”
This statement mirrors NNLASS’ claims. If one overlooks this passage, the absurdity of the text might go unnoticed. Essentially, it implies that the FFWPU applied long-term, widespread “brainwashing”—a pseudo-scientific notion already rejected in the West long ago—on its believers and made them into robots obedient to the church.
The Minister of the MEXT, if he has seriously read such a ludicrous text, should raise some issues. Could it be that officials at MEXT have been “brainwashed,” or mind controlled, by the NNLASS?
Since the civil trial of Toru Goto, who had been abducted and confined for twelve years and five months and won his lawsuit against his deprogrammers in the Supreme Court of Japan in 2015, there have been almost no known abduction and deprogramming incidents. However, there is still information about second-generation believers being abducted, indicating that the issue has not been completely eradicated.
A 25-year-old male believer was confined by his family at his home in Shizuoka Prefecture for one month starting from December 31, 2020. The man was not a second-generation believer, but while attending university, he became interested in FFWPU after being approached by a woman affiliated with the “World CARP Japan” (formerly known as the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles), an organization connected with the FFWPU. He joined the CARP during his freshman year and later joined the FFWPU.
“I never felt that they (CARP members) were trying to use or deceive me, or ask me for donations,” the man said. “They are wonderful people. I had a vague belief that there might be a God. Considering the existence of the universe and the Earth, I thought that by some chance, we are alive here. Although coincidences piled up for us to exist, I felt that the will of God might be at work there. So, I developed a desire to learn about God through the Divine Principle. I informed my parents about joining the CARP during my third year of university, but they seemed worried. To reassure them, I had both my parents participate in a CARP Parents’ Meeting and arranged for them to have a meeting with the responsible person to help them understand that it was not a bad organization.”
However, on New Year’s Eve in 2020, when he returned home, he encountered a strange situation. In the evening, his uncle and aunt visited, stating, “We want to discuss your future with relatives.” Six people, including his parents and brother, gathered for a discussion. At that moment, his brother said, “We want to talk without any interference. Please give us your mobile phones.” Hearing stories from CARP leaders about many believers being abducted and forced to resign in the past, he felt uneasy. However, he never expected to be confined at home. For the time being, he handed over his two mobile phones to his brother.
Special locking devices installed on the windows
Later, when he returned to his second-floor room after the discussion, he noticed a special locking device, which required a key to open, was installed on the window, and this sent shivers down his spine. The next morning, on January 1, the shutters of all the rooms were closed, even though it was bright outside, and the lights were on in the rooms. Similar to his own room, special locking devices were installed on the entrance, back door, and room window, all requiring a key to open. The kitchen, bathroom, toilet, and changing room windows had iron bars on the outside. He could not enter his parents’ or brother’s rooms. The man realized that he was in a state of complete confinement.
“What’s going on with this situation? Did someone ask you to do this? I want to go out!” The man appealed to his parents, but they refused, saying, “We want to talk until we understand.”
The young man was not afraid, however. He had left a “rescue request letter” with CARP in case his parents planned to abduct and confine him when he returned to their home for the holidays. This was done in case his whereabouts became unknown after returning home, so that the church’s lawyer and CARP staff could organize a rescue. “By leaving this ‘rescue request letter,’ I felt somewhat reassured. I thought that a lawyer or CARP staff would come to help me,” he said.
In reality, on January 7, CARP staff came, and on January 11, a FFWPU lawyer visited the house. However, the man was inside the locked room and could not answer the intercom, so the rescue was unsuccessful. In both instances, the family called the police immediately after the rescuers arrived, and the police questioned the young man. But the police sided with the family, and even when the man told the police he was being “confined,” they did not listen.
Around January 18, his mother told him she wanted him to revoke his “rescue request” to the FFWPU lawyer and hire “Yasuo Kawai, the lawyer from the Spiritual Lawyers Association [NNLASS], for help.”
The man was, of course, opposed to this request, but he thought that going against his parents would make it even more difficult to escape. So, reluctantly, he wrote a letter revoking the rescue mandate to the church’s lawyer and instead accepted the mandate for representation by lawyer Kawai over the phone. Lawyer Kawai did not inquire whether the man was confined at home, nor did he come to the house directly to confirm the situation.
Destroying the bond between parents and child
Following the failed rescue, the man began to feel anxious. He thought, “I cannot get out like this. Thinking the situation might continue indefinitely, I felt a strong sense of impatience.” The man desperately considered how he could escape on his own. That’s when he noticed that the small window in the second-floor bathroom had neither a lock nor metal bars. On January 30, during the day, he removed the glass window of the bathroom, leaned out, clung to the pipe extending to the ground and descended. He quickly ran to a nearby taxi stand, hailed a taxi to Tokyo, and was finally liberated from captivity. He then revoked lawyer Kawai and again appointed the church’s lawyer as his representative.
The subsequent events will be omitted due to space constraints, but the man, who still harbors a deep mistrust toward his parents, has cut ties with them and found work in Tokyo. The captivity shattered the parent-child bond.
Something else became evident: why his parents resorted to confining him at home. It all started when the mother read a book called “All About the UC’s Mind-Control,” written by lawyer Masaki Gouro, a prominent member of NNLASS (published in 1993 by Kyoiku Shiryo Shuppankai and reissued by Kodansha in 2022). His mother said she has also read books written by ex-believers.
Lawyer Gouro argues in his book: “Parents, to facilitate dialogue, might have to create an environment where children cannot escape.” “The UC criticizes the actions of these parents as abduction and confinement.” “However, these actions do not constitute the crime of confinement under the Penal Code.” “Abduction and confinement are legal as justified actions under Article 35 of the Penal Code.”
This part of the book led the mother to believe that locking up her child was not a problem. The fact that a book by a lawyer affiliated with NNLASS triggered confinement is highly problematic.
Furthermore, lawyer Gouro’s argument is legally untenable. Lawyer Nakayama, who serves as the UC’s representative, stated in his blog, “Article 35 of the Penal Code’s justification refers to acts that, despite superficially meeting the elements of a crime, are exceptionally justified (and their illegality is excluded) as social acts such as in the case of surgery or boxing. Applying this to abduction and confinement and considering it justified is an opinion held by no lawyer in our country other than Attorney Masaki Gouro.”
Through over a year of coverage of the issues related to UC, I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to discuss the problem without addressing the issue of abduction, confinement, and deprogramming. This conclusion was further solidified with the filing of the request for dissolution.
The deprogrammed ex-believers, mass-produced through abduction and confinement, are now placed on another conveyor belt to be fabricated as “victims” of the church, and they are reconfigured into apostates to attack the church. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, whether knowingly or unknowingly, or pretending not knowing, chose to maximize the use of these testimonies, pushing the UC to the brink.
The deprogrammers and NNLASS, who devised this scheme, are truly cunning. Therefore, this lawyers’ organization fully meets the three criteria of organization, maliciousness, and continuity requested for dissolution. Indeed, there is an organization worthy of dissolution. It is the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales.
