- Are you a well-educated professional with a healthy bank
balance? Are you intelligent with an idealist streak? Then watch out, you're
just the sort of person cult recruiters are looking for.
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- That's according to former cult member Ian Howarth, who
now runs a UK charity to help cult victims.
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- As general secretary of London-based Cult Information
Centre, Mr Howarth gives out information on cults and warns about deceptive
methods used by cults to recruit new members.
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- "People are recruited rather than actively joining,"
Mr Howarth said. "People are usually approached by a friend, possibly
to go on a weekend course with other professional people.
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- "There are lots of myths about cults. Everyone's
vulnerable."
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- According to Mr Howarth the average cult takes less than
four days to fully recruit a new member, but the effects can be far-reaching.
He himself was in a cult in Toronto, Canada for just two and a half weeks
when he was 31. He says it took him 11 months to recover from the experience.
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- "I managed to get out because of a journalist,"
he said. "Cult members are programmed to believe the media is the
work of the devil. I had not yet been programmed - I was still open to
media input."
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- Armageddon?
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- There are growing fears that doomsday cults are stepping
up activities because of the millennium, but too much emphasis is placed
on this according to Mr Howarth.
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- He said: "It may be relevant to certain groups but
there are so many variations on when the end of the millennium actually
is. Some say it's the end of 1999 whereas mathematically it's the end of
the year 2000.
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- "If you have gained control of a person's mind who
cares what year it is?"
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- Stephen, another man, who asked only to be called by
his first name, said his son Patrick was drawn into a cult aged 18. He
had three grade A A-levels and was due to go to university.
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- "My son was seen as a leader of his school, a good
public school. By all standards he should have been cult-proof," he
said.
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- "But on the other side of the coin he was highly
susceptible. Cults offer utopia. They have all the solutions to life. "
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- Seeds of doubt
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- Patrick spent about eight years as a member of the Unification
Church, commonly known as the Moonies, and started training to be a group
leader. It was only then that he started to have doubts and two years ago
he walked out.
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- "He gave up his career to serve God - that's what
he said. The harder you work, the more committed you become. That's what
he really believed," Stephen said.
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- "Until he started becoming a leader himself and
began to realise that everything he'd been told wasn't right. He had more
time to think about it.
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- People do break away from cults, often through the help
of their family, explained Ian Howarth, but there are no guarantees. Patrick
took about four months to get the Unification Church out of his system
and is now doing an accountancy course in London.
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- Patrick's wife - matched in a Moonie wedding - was kidnapped
by her family, but after three weeks she walked out and went back to the
group.
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- "If you remove someone from one belief system and
replace it with something else and that is taken away, that person is left
with nothing and that can drive them mad," Stephen said.
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- The Cult Information Centre offers advice to people who
suspect a friend or family member is in a cult:
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- DO try to keep in regular contact even if there is little
response DO express sincere love for the cult member at every available
opportunity DO always welcome the cult member back into the family home
no matter what is said DO NOT rush into adopting a solution without researching
the cult problem DO NOT say:"You are in a cult; you are brainwashed"
DO NOT be judgemental or confrontational towards the cult member DO NOT
give money to the member of the group
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