Cult News

Goldie Hawn has been hired to speak at an event sponsored by a group called a “cult.”

The actress is being paid by “NXIVM” (pronounced Nexium), formerly known as Executive Success Programs (ESP), to speak at its “Vanguard Week” celebration.

NXIVM was recently criticized by residents of Albany, New York and labeled a “cult.”

Ms. Hawn will speak about “the importance of seeking joy in one’s life,” reports MSNBC.

But what the star doesn’t know is she is actually featured entertainment for the group leader’s birthday party.

“Vanguard Week,” the event Hawn has been hired for is named for the NXIVM founder Keith Raniere, called “Vanguard” by his devoted students.

Raniere formerly ran a multi level marketing (MLM) scheme “Consumer Buyline,” which tanked after State Attorney Generals took action against it. The MLM was also the subject of a class action lawsuit.

Some years later Raniere started up ESP with the help of Nancy Salzman, a registered nurse.

ESP seems to borrow heavily upon the teachings, philosophy, seminar structure and/or terminology of Scientology, EST, Landmark Education, the Forum and Ayn Rand.

An ESP “Intensive” can cost thousands of dollars and take 10 hours a day for 16 consecutive days.

One clinical psychologist has compared ESP training to “thought reform,” often called “brainwashing.”

Complaints associated with ESP range from strained relationships, estranged families and at least one breakdown during an “intensive” that led to a hospital stay.

Hawn is not the first star to be seemingly used by a purported “cult” to promote an event.

Both Bill Cosby and Whitney Houston were once booked as entertainment for events associated with Rev. Moon’s Unification Church.

Scientology routinely uses celebrity members to promote its associated programs, such as Tom Cruise and his recent round of appearances related to “Applied Scholastics.”

Goldie Hawn is probably picking up a hefty honorarium for her professional appearance at Raniere’s birthday bash. But the Oscar winner, who first became widely known through the television show Laugh In, should realize that this is no joke.

Raniere and his group are using her name to promote NXIVM, a group that has allegedly hurt families and students.

Note: Goldie Hawn later cancelled the engagement.

According to one news web page in England purported “cult leader,” “liar” and “crazy” L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, was really a “humanitarian, world-renowned photographer and author.”

Well, he did write.

Liz Nygaard a reporter for the web page “This is Kent” gushes these posthumous titles within an article about photography workshops held annually within Hubbard’s old mansion in England.

The event, which has been run for seven summers, was organized Gray Levett an English camera dealer.

Levett a Scientologist is ranked by the organization as one of its top 100 International Patrons. This essentially means he gives a lot of money to Scientology.

Levett apparently managed to get Nikon UK LTD, Kodak professional films and the Nikon Owners Club International as sponsors for the Hubbard house workshops.

The stately stone Saint Hill manor house was once a kind of royal residence for L. Ron Hubbard. It was from this manse that he ruled over a burgeoning Sci-fi religious empire through much of the 1960s.

And it was there that Hubbard often instructed his disciples in Dianetics and offered them other Scientology courses and training.

But maybe Ms. Nygaard should have dug deeper and done a little research about the history of this place.

Saint Hill was also where one former member of what he called an “evil cult” testified that “subconscious duress following a period of processing” took place.

Some critics call this process “brainwashing.”

However, now instead of “processing” people it appears film is the preference at Hubbard’s old haunt.

More controversy is swirling around the Executive Success Programs (ESP) led by a failed multi-level marketing guru Keith Raniere, now known to his devotees as “Vanguard.”

Raniere is pushing ahead with a proposal to build a 66,000 square foot NXIVM (pronounced Nexium) center in a small town near Albany, which would then be run by ESP.

But the townsfolk seem to dislike both the building plan and Raniere’s group, reports The Community News.

“Their Web (site) sounds like a brainwashing type of cult,” wrote in one resident.

In an apparent dedication ceremony to launch the project, before receiving Planning Commission approval, one perplexed resident witnessed ESP members “on their hands and knees kissing the ground, scooping up the soil and kissing it, some…rolling on the ground.”

The president of ESP Nancy Salzman, who was mentored by Raniere, told the planning commission that the proposed center would offer instruction for “people to maximize their potential through parenting, relationship and executive success classes.”

Does this mean the project is business related or a social service?

Salzman is called the “Prefect” by devoted “ESPians” and seems to be the second in command.

Right now the group is preparing to throw a weeklong birthday bash for “Vanguard” later this month.

“Vanguard Week is a celebration of the human potential to live a noble existence and to participate in an interdependent civilization,” says Raniere.

So why is it named “Vanguard Week” and celebrated on Raniere’s birthday?

During this week of “celebration” there will be “forums every night with Vanguard and Prefect [Salzman],” notes the ESP website.

Sound a little creepy?

Does this mean reaching the “human potential to live a noble existence” is somehow dependent upon this dynamic duo?

Is that what Raniere means by an “interdependent civilization”?

Raniere’s last scheme was an interconnected multi-level buying club called “Consumer Buyline,” which collapsed amidst scandal and lawsuits.

It doesn’t look like many of the residents near the proposed NXIVM complex feel like celebrating Raniere’s birthday during “Vanguard Week.”

In the 1970s “Moonies” became the moniker for the growing “cult” following of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church.

Today Moon has moved beyond those humble beginnings to become the friend of presidents, owner of the Washington Times and a tycoon who controls billions of dollars.

But some would say Moon’s burgeoning empire all began as little more than a “religious cult.”

Now there is a new Korean “spiritual” leader with an enterprise sweeping across the United States. It is “Grand Master” Seung Huen Lee and he calls his movement “Dahn Hak.”

Lee boasts “three hundred centers in South Korea…[and] over fifty centers in the United States, including a meditation retreat…in Sedona, Arizona, and a holistic health club in Closter, New Jersey.”

Dahn Hak includes the practice of “brain respiration.”

Lee says, “Brain respiration strips away the mysticism from enlightenment.”

However, others have observed that this “respiration” is more like “brainwashing.” And it “strips away” critical thinking along with a goodly amount of cash.

Dahn Hak’s founder claims in his book Healing Society that he received a pivotal revelation in the midst of an “excruciating headache.”

“The cosmos opened up inside me and swept me into her arms with a loud resounding moment of enlightenment, a deafening crash that seemed to transport me to another world,” Lee claims.

The Grand Master insists that “this voice told me that my body is not me, but mine. It told me that my mind is not me, but mine. It assured me that the Cosmic Mind is my mind and that the Cosmic energy is my energy.”

Lee then felt “the all-encompassing rhythm of life…absorbing and understanding in wonder the Cosmic Order within that governed all things.”

With his newfound powers Lee could purportedly perform “miraculous feats” including “communing with spirits, curing incurable diseases, helping paralyzed people walk, and calming mentally unstable people.”

Unselfishly the “Grand Master” then decided to share his vision. And it was time to “embark on an Enlightenment Revolution, a massive spiritual awakening that will sweep across the Earth.”

Lee’s “little masters” seem to believe in him and they work slavishly for next to nothing, often receiving little more than room and board. The Grand Master’s faithful feel that as Lee says he can “draw in and send forth energy.”

These acolytes also hope he will share with them his “energy-sensitizing and controlling techniques.”

Some practitioners seem to think that Dahn Hak is good place to work out and get rid of aches and pains.

However, Lee explains, “Although Dahn Hak starts out as a physical exercise, its true purpose lies in…becoming a ‘spiritual’ person.”

Sound like a religion with Lee as some sort of “healing” “messiah?”

“Dahn Hak aims at the spiritual enlightenment…a collective Enlightenment Revolution to sweep across the face of this Earth.”

Dahn Hak is also includes a plethora of corporate entities that appear to be making “Grand Master” Lee rich. If money can be defined as “green energy,” maybe Lee does employ some “energy-sensitizing and controlling techniques.”

Was Rev. Moon this man’s mentor? He seems to be following in his footsteps.

Members of a Florida-based organization called the “Kashi Ashram” led by a former Brooklyn housewife turned “guru,” are working LA streets handing out food to the homeless reports the Ventura County Star.

Apparently the group, which has been called a “cult,” hopes to offset its bad press back in Florida with some positive spin.

Joyce Green, known now as “Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati,” has devotees that claim she is their “cord” or “conduit” to God.

Now it appears Ma wants to make nice with the media. And whatever Ma wants she seems to get through her followers, which act as her own “conduit.”

Virtually everything about the Kashi Ashram is wrapped around Ma.

The guru’s devotees wrote, “Ma loves you” on many of the lunch bags they handed out. Ma even chooses names for some of her followers that translate to rather revealing things like, “Always at the Feet of the Guru.”

Kashi faithful even have email addresses, which includes the motto “ma4me.”

This might cause objective observers to call the group little more than a personality-driven “cult.”

But the California reporter that covered the Kashi food program seemed somewhat impressed by Ma’s supposed “fearlessness and empathy.”

Does “a paper sack filled with a brownie, banana and ham-and-cheese on a bagel,” offset former member’s repeated allegations of “abuse,” “brainwashing,” “cult” manipulation and the claim that the guru blew group funds through gambling?

Well, maybe in Ventura.

A “cult” victim received a $6.5 million dollar personal injury settlement Tuesday from insurance carriers for 13 years of abuse, experienced through a group called “Kids” reported The New Jersey Law Journal.

Lulu Corter was sent to Kids of North Jersey Inc. in Hackensack by her parents in 1984 at the age of 13. She escaped in 1997, after enduring more than a decade of what other victims call a “living hell.”

Kids was dominated and defined by its charismatic leader Miller Newton now bankrupt, according to victim advocate and activist Wes Fager.

Kids is a spin-off of Straight, another controversial rehab program eventually shut down by litigation and bad press.

Melvin Sembler founded Straight, a wealthy businessman closely associated with the Bush family.

George W. Bush appointed Sembler Ambassador to Italy.

Straight’s roots are in The Seed, a drug rehab program in Florida that lost funding amidst allegations of mind control.

The Seed was itself based upon Synanon; a rehab program turned “cult” founded by Charles Dederich Sr.

Dederich now deceased plead no contest in 1980 to conspiracy, regarding a murder plot to kill a California lawyer litigating against the group. A rattlesnake was placed in his mailbox, but attorney Paul Morantz, survived.

A rattlesnake didn’t bite Corter’s attorney Phil Elberg, but he did manage to take quite a bite out of Miller Newton and his associates through their insurers, not to mention the ebbing credibility of such programs and related supporters like Sembler.

It seems the many incarnations of Synanon’s treatment model once called “the game,” live on and on and on. And it may take more lawsuits to finally slay this many-headed hydra.

Note: The Third International Conference on Adolescent Treatment Abuse will take place this month July 26th and 27th in St. Petersburg, Florida. Contact SAFETY for further information and details.

Joyce Brothers, Ph.D. has been a regular on television and within newspapers for many years. She graduated from Cornell in 1947 and received her doctorate in psychology in 1955. “Baby boomers” have literally grown up with her advice

Still syndicated as a columnist Brothers dispenses advice on an array of subjects.

This week she has tackled “cults,” “brainwashing” and “mind control” in two of her columns.

Her first piece on Monday assured the concerned grandmother of a Marine that “cult brainwashing” is not the same as “torture and brainwashing” used on prisoners of war (POWs). Brothers’ comments were featured within the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

However, her commentary is actually somewhat misleading.

Psychiatrist, author and researcher Robert Jay Lifton revealed in his seminal book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, that civilians incarcerated by North Korean Communists during the Korean Conflict, subjected to “thought reform,” often called “brainwashing,” were temporarily transformed without the use of “torture.”

Likewise, imminent clinical psychologist and author Margaret Singer discovered the same, through her examination and research regarding military prisoners, while working for Walter Reed Hospital.

In other words, what Lifton and Singer found, is that there is no significant difference between what was done to POWs and the techniques employed by destructive “cults” through their thought reform programs.

Today Brothers lays out for readers the basics regarding “mind control,” within the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The good doctor posits a couple of rather controversial points worth mentioning.

She said, “If the captors happen to be of the same religion as their captives…their task of mind control might be somewhat easier.”

Actually, this is a bit too simplistic.

For example, “cults” composed largely of former Roman Catholics, are actually most often schismatic groups that may have begun within a mainstream church and then were drawn away by a charismatic leader and later excommunicated, such as Christ Covenant Community.

Another example would be polygamist groups with many former mainline Mormons as members, such as “The True and Living Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days” (“TLC”), which simply recruited within a state that, is overwhelmingly made up of Mormons.

Brothers also says, “The best targets for brainwashing are…upper and middle economic classes.”

But this can be seen as a direct result of cult recruitment efforts often focused at college and university campuses, where “upper and middles class” students are ubiquitous.

Both of these observations by Brothers can be seen as a kind of “victim bashing.”

That is, if the cult victim were not “religious” or “middle class” they would not be as vulnerable.

However, when psychiatrist John Clark of Harvard researched the issue of some demographic group’s special vulnerability to cult influence, he found no evidence to support such a theory.

Instead, Clark discovered this vulnerability to be widespread and that no special class or group was immune or predisposed to be taken in by cults.

Of course there are times when everyone is more vulnerable to suggestion, such as college students away from home and family for the first time in a new environment, people that are depressed and/or under extreme stress. And there is always the obvious vulnerability of a subject during a hypnotic trance, which might also include certain forms of meditation.

It seems there are no easy answers when attempting to understand whom destructive cults and leaders victimize.

Perhaps the only meaningful immunity that can be achieved is through specific education and increased awareness about destructive “cults,” their dynamics and the techniques they may employ to recruit, indoctrinate and retain members.

The Church of Scientology has a deeply troubled history, especially in Florida. And this may pose a problem for the organization regarding potential jurors in a coming wrongful death civil case.

Floridians commonly call the controversial church a “cult,” “scam,” “strange” and associate its behavior with “brainwashing.”

Scientology counters such criticism with accusations of “religious bigotry” and “hate mongering.”

However, one editorial recently said “residents…are well informed…have good memories” and simply have not forgotten “years of shenanigans,” opined the St. Petersburg Times.

“Bigotry” and “hate mongering” is essentially the typical label Scientology applies to almost any public criticism.

Such claims were once made against Time Magazine, regarding its 1991 cover story “Scientology: The Cult of Greed.”

Likewise, Germany’s close scrutiny of the organization has garnered them the inferred title of “Nazis,” from Scientologists eager to dismiss them.

But maybe “what goes around, comes around” and Scientology is now “reaping what it has sown.”

After decades of bullying its critics and some say abusing many of its members, its history appears to have come back around full circle to haunt the house that L. Ron Hubbard built.

Sadly for Scientologists a recent effort to burnish their image and promote positive spin doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference. Even after using celebrity spokespeople such as Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Lisa Marie Presley.

It seems unlikely that Scientology will find any venue in Florida where people don’t know about the bad behavior of the “cult” that prefers to be called a “church.”

Could there be an isolated swamp somewhere in the Florida wetlands, where no one knows about Scientology?

But you can’t call up alligators for jury duty, or can you?

A school supposedly devoted to helping troubled teens was closed in Costa Rica by the government amidst allegations of “severe physical and mental abuse,” reports the National Post.

Such schools often locate their facilities outside the United States to avoid regulation, but most of their students come from the United States and Canada.

Desperate parents, often persuaded through school run seminars, send their kids at great expense hoping for a touted turn-around in behavior.

Minor children are often brought in by force and may even be sedated with drugs to subdue them during their initial entry.

Former students have described such schools as virtual “prisons” where they were bullied, humiliated and at times physically abused.

Some critics say such facilities often employ extreme environmental control and coercive persuasion techniques not unlike destructive cults to “brainwash” participants.

Lawsuits and even criminal charges have swirled around what many call the “teen boot camp” industry.

One year after her abduction Elizabeth Smart continues to recover from her ordeal, reports the Desert News

Her father said, “It’s like we’re fully re-engaged, as much as that can be done,” and added, “Elizabeth is doing great.”

The Smart family sought the advice of another kidnap “cult” victim Patty Hearst, to better understand the problems posed within the recovery process.

An apparent roving lunatic and sexual predator kidnapped Elizabeth. That self-proclaimed “prophet” Brian David Mitchell and his accomplice/wife, Wanda Barzee, remain in jail awaiting trial.

The Smart family hopes to avoid subjecting Elizabeth to the personal pain of having to recount her horrific experience as a court witness.

The Smart case once again brought to public attention the power of “brainwashing.”

For nine months the teenager traveled with the deranged duo that abducted her, seemingly cooperating with them and taking on their mindset.

As the story unfolded subsequent to Elizabeth’s rescue it became clear that Mitchell isolated and terrorized the girl for two months before beginning their travels.

During that time as an act of self-preservation and a byproduct of controlled influence Elizabeth largely lost her sense of identity and assumed a new “cult-like” persona.

Returned to the security of her family that cultic identity quickly crumbled and the girl resumed her former life.

This fall Elizabeth plans to attend her regular school and once again will be amongst old friends and classmates.

However, as the Smart family and Elizabeth know, their life will never really be the same again.