Escaping Utopia
Page 22
Laura M. (Scientology): I am 100 percent certain that whatever was innate within me to leave at that early of an age [fourteen] has been a huge part of me building character throughout my life. And recognizing that maybe I’ve got a little bit of a, I don’t know, I wouldn’t call it rebellion. I think I would just call it this independence that I’m proud of now. That bothered me for a long time, because I felt like it had created all of this damage, but by not giving in—by listening to that little voice inside myself when I was a kid, by not doubting myself even at that young of an age, believing that I was doing what I needed to do has made me in the long run be able to love myself. That’s huge.
Because I look back at that now and I go (gasp), “Wow, what a brave kid! I really admire her.” And then I go, “Wow, that was me” … because it doesn’t feel like me. Feels like a really long time ago (laughs), a totally different life. But I realize that is me and I’m still proud of her. And I’m so honored to have that be a part of my life that came out the other side. And when I meet other people who have gone through all different kinds of experiences, I feel lucky that I get that. I get what it is to survive something. I love that I can bond with people about that.
But I know what it is to feel angry. I know what it is to feel sorrow. I know what it is to grieve. You know, I love being part of the human experience. I’m so grateful for that because I know that it could have been so different. I could have been totally and completely kept away from that. And that, to me, would have been the worst.
Joseph (EB): Be sure that you can rely on yourself and cope by yourself, at least for short periods of time—others may not understand you, and you will not receive the sort of support you have been used to in the group. Try to be open-minded, even when you are shocked or offended by the behavior of persons who do not share your beliefs or practices. If you realize that you are ignorant about something, ask a friend to explain. Be open about your past with people you meet. They will quickly realize there is something different about you, and you gain nothing by trying to hide these things, as they are part of you.
Seek help when you need it. Particularly, do not be ashamed to get counseling if you feel you are struggling, for getting prompt help may make the problem a lot easier to manage than if you struggle on for years pretending that you are big enough to cope on your own. Try to find your own moral compass rather than relying on what you are told. Be aware that life is like a journey, and you may find that your views change a great deal as you acclimatize to the new society you are in. This is not wrong or unnatural—it’s a sign of great maturity to be able to admit you were wrong about something and understand why you used to feel a certain way.
Try to retain some relations with your family in the group if possible. You will miss them, and they will miss you. But don’t let them manipulate you, as the group will probably try to make them do. Assert suitable boundaries for yourself in your dealings with them.
Whatever else you do, live your life with zest and make the most of it. Think of the sacrifices you have made to have this life—and make them worthwhile.
With Joseph’s help, we end this book on a hopeful note. Cult members and people trapped in abusive groups and relationships can indeed escape and build new lives. They can also offer valuable insights to people who are or have been in toxic groups and relationships. The pain and struggles that our narrators experienced are real—yet, so is resilience. And so is post-traumatic growth, even in a situation where all four aspects of bounded choice are active.
In a small way, you’ve entered the lives of sixty-seven cult survivors (including Janja and Karla), and their stories have shown you the scope of the problem—yet they’ve also given you the knowledge that people can and do survive and thrive, even in the midst of toxic groups and abusive relationships. This is a promising sign; yet, as we mentioned in Chapter 1, the cults of our main narrators, Samantha, Iris, Joseph, Jessica, Lily, Matthew, and Rachel, still exist as of 2017. In those cults, and in the others you’ve read about, and in yet still others in the United States and around the world, there are first-, second-, third-, and fourth-generation members who are trying to escape every day.
We wrote this book not simply to share information about cults and the bounded choice framework and theory, but also to help people on the outside understand the real-life experiences of people on the inside. We want you to understand what cult survivors need: friends and family, skilled social workers and counselors, basic life skills (in many cases) and education, trauma-informed therapy, and empathy. There are resources available for people who want to escape or who need help after they have left their groups. However, these resources can be hard to find, so we’ve provided resource lists in the appendices.
We also wrote this book to inform helping professionals in any place where cult escapees might land—such as teen centers, churches, college counseling centers, social service agencies, homeless and domestic violence shelters, mental health facilities, and community service organizations. We want these professionals to understand and be able to meet the unique needs of survivors of cultic groups and relationships, especially those who were born or raised in a cult.
We also want survivors of these unhealthy groups and relationships to realize that they’re not alone. There are more and more of us getting out every day, and we can help each other rebuild our lives—certainly with tangible support like housing and financial help, but also by simply talking, listening, and sharing our stories.
We thank our narrators for their willingness to share their pain and their triumphs, and we thank you for becoming aware of the serious effects that cultic groups and relationships have on individuals, families, communities, and our world. We end with a helpful reminder about your rights as an individual—and as a member of a group.
Your Personal Bill of Rights
For many individuals in cults or abusive relationships, personal rights do not exist. A key part of their healing comes from learning that they are valuable individuals with unique voices, emotions, ideas, opinions, and rights. Janja created the list below to help escapees from cults and abusive relationships learn about their rights; yet it’s important for all of us to be reminded of them from time to time.
If you are not yet familiar with your personal rights, you may want to read this list daily until you are aware of your rights and can assert them. It may also be helpful to post a copy of this list where you can see it regularly.
1.
I have a right to ask for what I want.
2.
I have a right to say no to requests or demands that I cannot meet.
3.
I have a right to express all of my feelings—positive and negative.
4.
I have a right to change my mind.
5.
I have a right to make mistakes and do not have to be perfect.
6.
I have a right to follow my own values and beliefs.
7.
I have the right to say “no” to anything if I feel that I am not ready, if it is unsafe, or if it conflicts with my values.
8.
I have the right to determine my own priorities.
9.
I have the right not to be responsible for the actions, feelings, or behavior of others.
10.
I have the right to expect honesty from others.
11.
I have the right to be angry at someone I love.
12.
I have the right to be myself … to be unique.
13.
I have the right to express fear.
14.
I have the right to say, “I don’t know.”
15.
I have the right not to give excuses or reasons for my behavior.
16.
I have the right to make decisions based on my feelings, knowledge, and/or life experiences.
17.
I have the right to my own personal space and time.
18.
I have the right to be playful.
19.
I have the right to be healthy and perhaps even healthier than those around me.
20.
I have the right to make friends and be comfortable around people.
21.
I have the right to feel safe, and to be in a non-abusive environment.
22.
I have the right to change and grow.
23.
I have the right to have my wants and needs respected by others.
24.
I have the right to be treated with dignity and respect.
25.
I have the right to be happy.
Notes
1
Robert Jay Lifton, The Protean Self: Human Resistance in an Age of Fragmentation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 1–2.
2
Ibid., 7.
3
Ibid., 217.
4
Steven M. Southwick and Dennis S. Charney, Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 7.
5
Ibid., 8–9.
6
Carolyn Gregoire, “The Surprising Benefit of Going Through Hard Times,” The Huffington Post. January 6, 2016. Accessed January 5, 2017, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/post-traumatic-growth-creativity_us_568426c0e4b014efe0d9d8e8.
7
Shelly Rosen, “Cults: A Natural Disaster: Looking at Cults Through a Trauma Lens,” International Cultic Studies Journal, no. 5 (2014): 12–29.
8
Ibid., 17.
9
Daniel W. Smith, Michael R. McCart, and Benjamin E. Saunders, “PTSD in Children and Adolescents: Risk Factors and Treatment Innovations,” in The Psychobiology of Trauma and Resilience Across the Lifespan, Ed., Douglas L. Delahanty (Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson/Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 69–72.
10
Ibid., 71.
11
Rosen, “Cults: A Natural Disaster,” 20.
12
Smith, McCart, and Saunders, “PTSD in Children and Adolescents,” 70.
13
Ibid., 78.
14
See Douglas L. Delahanty and Sarah A. Ostrowski, “Recent Advances in the Pharmacological Treatment/Prevention of PTSD,” in Delahanty, Ed., The Psychobiology of Trauma, 233–54.
15
Leona Furnari, “Born or Raised in High-Demand Groups: Developmental Considerations,” ICSA e-Newsletter 4, no. 3 (2005). Accessed January 5, 2017, www.icsahome.com/articles/born-or-raised-funari-en4–4.
16
Ibid.
17
Blood atonement is a form of human sacrifice that early Mormons practiced on people who were considered to have sinned so heinously that the blood of Christ could not heal them. These unforgivable sins included interracial marriage, adultery, murder, theft, and apostasy. The mainstream Mormon church no longer supports blood atonement, but some offshoot Mormon sects do. In those sects, apostasy is still one of the most heinous sins.
18
Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (New York: Anchor Books, 2004).
19
Rosen, “Cults: A Natural Disaster,” 22.
20
The Cult Awareness Network (CAN) was an informational resource for families and former cult members for many years. CAN was founded in 1978, headquartered in Chicago, and CAN affiliates operated in some cities around the country. CAN also organized yearly public conferences. After years of non-stop litigation brought by Scientology and Landmark Education, CAN finally went under in 1996. During bankruptcy proceedings, CAN’s assets (including all of its files on cults, which included personal information on many inquirers), its name, and its phone number were auctioned and bought by Scientology and a few other organizations. This was a devastating blow to the public’s ability to easily access information on many controversial groups and created a lack of networking opportunities for people who are affected by (or interested in studying) cults.
APPENDIX A
Research Methodology
This book is based on research conducted by coauthor Dr. Janja Lalich, while she was a sociology professor at California State University, Chico. The project was entitled, “On Our Own: How Children of Cults Manage in the ‘Outside World,’ ” and was approved by Chico State’s Institutional Review Board. As far as we know, this was the first in-depth research of its kind. The purpose of the study was to explore attitudes, experiences, coping mechanisms, and issues related to societal integration of young people leaving a cultic group and entering mainstream society. A grounded theory approach was used with some document analysis and primarily semi-structured interviews of subjects located through snowball technique.
The subject population was individuals who were born and/or raised in a cult and who left the group on their own—that is, without any inside or outside assistance, an intervention, and so on. These individuals are sometimes referred to as “second-generation” cult members (although some of the participants in this research were third generation) and most don’t like that moniker, as they feel they did not choose to be members. They could perhaps be called “adult children of cults,” which is the term Dr. Lalich prefers to use.
In most cases, subjects were contacted by e-mail or telephone, and in some cases, in person. Once a subject was identified, he or she was briefly interviewed by telephone to determine whether the requirements of the study were met. During this initial call, an Interviewee Contact Form was filled out that included name, contact information, name of group born or raised in, years in the group, and age when left the group. If the person verbally agreed to the interview, then she or he was sent an Informed Consent Form to sign and send back, as well as a basic demographic questionnaire (age, sex, name of group, years in group, family size, relations with parents and/or siblings, education, how left, marital status, current employment, and so on). Once these documents were returned, an appointment was made for an interview.
Subject interviews were done by telephone or in person. Interviews were semistructured to allow the person to speak fully. As the researcher, Dr. Lalich used an Interview Guide to ensure covering all desired areas of interest for the research (see Attachment 1). The questions were not necessarily asked or answered in the order they appear in the document. The average length of the interviews was two hours, and all interviews were audio-recorded. Dr. Lalich also took notes during the interviews and immediately afterward. Seven interviews were completed in writing by the subjects who lived abroad and if we were unable to arrange a phone call. Data from these written documents were treated the same as data from the telephone or in-person interviews.
Subjects’ confidentiality was preserved in that their identities, as well as other identifying characteristics, were kept in confidence. Subjects were not identified in any report, article, presentation, or publication. Even though several subjects preferred that their real names be used in any publications, subjects’ anonymity was preserved through the use of pseudonyms and changing other identifying data, such as nationality, location, and so on. A code key was used to link each interview to the original. During the course of the research, data was kept in a locked file cabinet, and will be destroyed five years after publication of this book.
Sixty-five individuals were interviewed, and they were born and/or raised in thirty-nine different groups that represented a range from Christian fundamentalist to New Age eclectic to political to Eastern meditation to hippie communal. The data from the questionnaires was entered in SPSS by an undergraduate research assistant in the Sociology Department. The interviewees consisted of 50 females, 13 males, 1 transgendered male, and 1 F-T-M transsexual. The number of years spent in the group ranged from 7 to 41 years. Their ages at the time of the interview ranged from 21 to 68.
The audiotapes of the interviews were transcribed by undergradua
te research assistants in the Sociology Department, using HyperTranscribe, Express Scribe, and Jodix software. These transcripts were then printed out and hand-coded by Dr. Lalich and a research assistant with a B.A. in Sociology. Two sets of codes were developed for themes that emerged from the interviews. The codes pertained to while the subject was in the cult and after the subject had left the cult. Occasionally new codes were added as the coding progressed.1
Once all the interviews were coded, the data were analyzed using Dr. Lalich’s bounded-choice theory, as set out in her book, Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), as well as incorporating theories on attachment, trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, and resilience.
ATTACHMENT 1
Interview Guide
1.
What is the name of the group you were born or raised in? Please describe it for me briefly—what type of group, when it was founded, the leader, the size.
2.
Did your parents join together or meet in the group?
3.
What was your childhood like? If possible, describe this in different age ranges—earliest memories, childhood, middle years, teen years, and so on. Describe where you lived and what your daily life was like. Did you live in the same place with your parents and/or siblings? Did you have friends who were not in the group?
4.
Describe how you think the group structure/norms/belief system had an impact on you as a child/adolescent.
5.
Were you part of an indoctrination program? Was any part of it especially geared toward children?