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How Cult Deprogramming Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know Fromhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
0:11
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
0:13
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, always whacky Jerry. So this is stuff you
0:18
Speaker 1: should know once again. Sixty seconds preceding the record button
0:24
Speaker 1: being pressed is the gold. I wish we could sell
0:28
Speaker 1: that stuff, sell it on the street. People be hooked
0:32
Speaker 1: on you know what the street value of that minute is? What?
0:36
Speaker 1: How about five bucks? And it's not bad? Yeah? Uh, Chuck, Yes,
0:42
Speaker 1: have you ever been in a cult? Um? No, not technically,
0:48
Speaker 1: not at all. Remember we've done episodes on Colts I'm brainwashing. Uh.
0:55
Speaker 1: This is pretty much the natural extension of that progression. Yeah.
0:58
Speaker 1: And we talked a little bit about deep programming and
1:01
Speaker 1: the cults. One watching probably, but this one, it turns out,
1:04
Speaker 1: has a lot of interesting history I didn't know about. Yes, man,
1:07
Speaker 1: it is a dark spot on America's recent path yet again,
1:13
Speaker 1: yet another one, because apparently the powers that they really
1:17
Speaker 1: got everybody so scared over things like the communist threat
1:22
Speaker 1: or nuclear weapons or what have you that America is
1:25
Speaker 1: basically it's like a herd of spook cattle for many decades,
1:29
Speaker 1: and they they we channeled our anxieties out on anything
1:34
Speaker 1: other or different. And this is a great case of that. Yeah,
1:38
Speaker 1: and the courts will get to this, but they said
1:40
Speaker 1: roundly that you can kidnap and torture and rape people
1:43
Speaker 1: as long as it's out of love, as long as
1:46
Speaker 1: those people are weirdos. Yeah, as long as it's apparent
1:50
Speaker 1: loving their child in the harshest extreme way. Man, it's good.
1:54
Speaker 1: Imagine crazy what people went through nie so Um, the
2:00
Speaker 1: whole thing. We should say, like America did lose its
2:02
Speaker 1: mind collectively for many years. And it happens from time
2:06
Speaker 1: and time started in good old Salem before there wasn't
2:09
Speaker 1: even in America. It's a long tradition here in this
2:13
Speaker 1: country of everybody, yeah going crazy. Um. And like I said,
2:18
Speaker 1: this is a case of it. But this case did
2:22
Speaker 1: coalesce around certain things. It wasn't just out of the blue.
2:25
Speaker 1: It wasn't out of nowhere, um for the to start
2:29
Speaker 1: off with. In the late sixties, early seventies, Um, the
2:35
Speaker 1: there was a real division between generations in the United States. Huge.
2:41
Speaker 1: There was the parents who still remember the fifties, were
2:46
Speaker 1: raised in the fifties, born in the fifties, maybe, but
2:49
Speaker 1: definitely we're a little more buttoned, buttoned up and up
2:52
Speaker 1: with ike. Then their kids were. Okay, So imagine if
2:57
Speaker 1: you have kids and they're going through this rebellious phase
3:00
Speaker 1: and they're smoking pot, and they're like wearing motorcycle boots
3:04
Speaker 1: and rocking out to the Beatles and like flipping you
3:06
Speaker 1: off every time you look at them, and then all
3:08
Speaker 1: of a sudden, this weird tranquility comes over them and
3:13
Speaker 1: they start wearing robes and they shave their head except
3:15
Speaker 1: for there's a long ponytail in the back. Or they're
3:17
Speaker 1: still wearing boots and smoking pot. Listen to the Beetles, right,
3:20
Speaker 1: or or they start wearing bow ties and um like
3:26
Speaker 1: quoting scripture to you. Wouldn't you be like, well, this
3:30
Speaker 1: is a little weird. This is a little odd. Something's
3:32
Speaker 1: going on here with with my kid. My kid who's
3:36
Speaker 1: twenty underwent like a serious religious conversion that has never
3:40
Speaker 1: been seen before in our family. That's a little weird.
3:43
Speaker 1: That's not one I approve of. Yeah, So there's these
3:46
Speaker 1: groups that at the time were called cults, but today,
3:49
Speaker 1: if you read sociology texts or studies or whatever, they're
3:54
Speaker 1: called new religious movements. Sex right with the ct yeah, UM,
4:01
Speaker 1: and these groups are basically at the time they were
4:05
Speaker 1: all termed cults. And you usually when you think cold
4:08
Speaker 1: especially United States, it's like, um, some sort of Eastern
4:11
Speaker 1: religion or something like that. But it turns out the
4:15
Speaker 1: cult movement of the early seventies, late sixties and into
4:18
Speaker 1: the eighties where actually um for the most part Bible based,
4:23
Speaker 1: like Christian cults, but they they took Christian beliefs and
4:28
Speaker 1: teachings and went really far out there with them. UM
4:32
Speaker 1: or there was a huge influx of Eastern thought in
4:36
Speaker 1: Eastern religion into the United States too, And anybody who
4:39
Speaker 1: joined this group joined a cult. But today if you
4:42
Speaker 1: call him a cult, it's not very nice. You call
4:45
Speaker 1: him a new religious movement or a sect right or
4:48
Speaker 1: in the case of the Source Family, which I've talked
4:50
Speaker 1: about as being my favorite cult. Yeah, they just like
4:53
Speaker 1: to have sex and do drugs a lot. The Source, right,
4:59
Speaker 1: they were a cult though, Uh well yeah, sure by
5:02
Speaker 1: those definitions right at the time, Yeah, I'd call him
5:05
Speaker 1: a commune now probably that had a band and a
5:08
Speaker 1: charismatic hang gliding frontman. Right. The charismatic thing is a
5:14
Speaker 1: huge thing. That's usually the one thing that is the
5:18
Speaker 1: commonality and all new religious movements they are centered around, um,
5:23
Speaker 1: a central figure. But as the guy who wrote this article, um,
5:28
Speaker 1: which is a pretty good article, I have to say,
5:30
Speaker 1: this is not the Grabster, was it. No, there was
5:33
Speaker 1: a new a newbie. This newbie has taken the grabsters stuff.
5:38
Speaker 1: Yeah it should have been the Grabster. Well, the Grabster
5:40
Speaker 1: has gotten a serious focus on all things dungeons and
5:44
Speaker 1: dragons these days. A right, I oh nine, good for him.
5:48
Speaker 1: Yeah he's moved on and uh. But anyway, the author
5:52
Speaker 1: of this article points out that cole is it's a
5:55
Speaker 1: very slippery word. It has like an in group out
5:58
Speaker 1: group kind of sent a mentality attached to the point
6:03
Speaker 1: is over the over the years, Um. This whole idea
6:08
Speaker 1: of your kid going undergoing a religious conversion and then
6:15
Speaker 1: just kind of becoming different, it was bothersome and worrisome
6:19
Speaker 1: to the parents. But then Jonestown happened and all of
6:23
Speaker 1: a sudden, any kind of semblance of law or religious
6:27
Speaker 1: freedom or anything like that went right out the window
6:30
Speaker 1: because it was shown and even before that, thanks to
6:33
Speaker 1: the Manson family, but really, UM, with Jonestown, it was
6:36
Speaker 1: shown that these cults that supposedly up to that point
6:40
Speaker 1: people thought were harmless or even helpful, um could be
6:45
Speaker 1: very destructive. Over nine people died. Uh. So you know,
6:50
Speaker 1: I get it. I get why people would be upset
6:54
Speaker 1: about perhaps their children joining something that in any way,
6:58
Speaker 1: shape or form resembles jonestown. So what do you do? Well,
7:04
Speaker 1: you could hire someone to kidnap and torture and beat
7:07
Speaker 1: them and yell at them into submission a k A
7:11
Speaker 1: D D programming a k A UH brainwashing or I
7:17
Speaker 1: guess they would call it reverse brainwashing. Right. That was
7:20
Speaker 1: kind of the key. Is this idea that, um, you
7:23
Speaker 1: were combating this conversion to a new religious movement or
7:27
Speaker 1: a cult group or whatever, um based on the idea
7:31
Speaker 1: that your kid couldn't possibly have undergone this conversion and
7:38
Speaker 1: join this group based on his or her own free will.
7:42
Speaker 1: That's right. So thanks to that mindset UH and a
7:46
Speaker 1: guy named Ted Patrick we'll talk about right now, the
7:50
Speaker 1: Cult Awareness Network was formed and Ted was There were
7:55
Speaker 1: there were many D programmers. We don't know about many,
7:58
Speaker 1: but there were a handful of D programmers in this
8:01
Speaker 1: time period, but Mr Patrick sort of led the way. Uh.
8:05
Speaker 1: He was born in the Red Light district of Chattanooga, Tennessee,
8:08
Speaker 1: and apparently had a really bad speech impediment such there
8:13
Speaker 1: that he couldn't even communicate with people. So he dove
8:16
Speaker 1: into religion and what he said was, quote, it wasn't
8:21
Speaker 1: long before I could think of was hell, fire and
8:23
Speaker 1: damnation and um so, he had a bad experience with
8:27
Speaker 1: religion growing up and then had an opportunity in the
8:30
Speaker 1: early seventies to uh go and save somebody's kid who
8:38
Speaker 1: fell into what they called a cult. He's offered a job, yes,
8:42
Speaker 1: so there it was a scriptural based um Christian group
8:49
Speaker 1: called the Children of God now called the International Family,
8:53
Speaker 1: and apparently, um they had tried to recruit Ted's son
8:57
Speaker 1: and nephew out on the beach in San Diego, and
9:01
Speaker 1: Ted was like, what do you mean some group tried
9:04
Speaker 1: to recruit you. I guess I'll just go infiltrate this group. Yeah.
9:08
Speaker 1: Well he was also approached by parents who's children were
9:12
Speaker 1: in this what they called the cult, So yeah, he
9:16
Speaker 1: infiltrate it and said you know what, Uh, they were
9:19
Speaker 1: brainwashed and I'm the guy that can fix it for
9:21
Speaker 1: a fee. Yeah, which is weird because um so, Ted
9:24
Speaker 1: Patrick and the somebody uh named Mia Donovan came out
9:28
Speaker 1: with a documentary recently called Deprogrammed. I'd like to see that.
9:32
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, apparently it's very tough to find and get
9:35
Speaker 1: your hands on, but it's out there somewhere. Um, and
9:38
Speaker 1: it's all about Ted Patrick, Ted Black Lightning Patrick is
9:42
Speaker 1: his name, and he um. He was an unlikely candidate
9:47
Speaker 1: to become the face and the leader of what was
9:52
Speaker 1: an anti cult movement that had arisen in the United
9:55
Speaker 1: States thanks to Jonestown and thanks to the fact that
9:58
Speaker 1: kids were joining cults left and yeah, um, he was
10:01
Speaker 1: a high school dropout, like he said, he was a
10:03
Speaker 1: he had had his own um experiences with scripture and
10:09
Speaker 1: Bible beating and all of that kind of stuff, and he,
10:13
Speaker 1: I guess was his heart was in the right place
10:16
Speaker 1: from what I understand, But he did some really really
10:20
Speaker 1: questionable stuff over the years after he formed the Colt
10:23
Speaker 1: Action or Awareness Network. Do you think his heart was
10:26
Speaker 1: in the right place. That's that's how MEA Donovan puts it.
10:30
Speaker 1: I think he's trying to make money. So that was
10:32
Speaker 1: another thing too. Supposedly he was working not for profit,
10:38
Speaker 1: that his expenses were paid and he wasn't really pocketing
10:42
Speaker 1: the money. Himself. But he went the other way pretty
10:45
Speaker 1: quickly because at one point he was charging up to
10:49
Speaker 1: grand which would be the equivalent of about a hundred
10:52
Speaker 1: and twenty dollars for each case today to uh to deprogram,
10:57
Speaker 1: to kidnap and deprogram your child. Yeah, a lot of
10:59
Speaker 1: mone uh so he uh. He basically at the very
11:04
Speaker 1: beginning said you know what, uh, how do we get
11:08
Speaker 1: away with this? And he said, I think if we
11:11
Speaker 1: are working with the parents, then we won't be prosecuted
11:15
Speaker 1: for kidnapping because it's their own kid. So I won't
11:19
Speaker 1: buy proxy beat affiliated as an accomplice because it's their children. Yeah,
11:26
Speaker 1: you can't kidnap your own child. In ninete No, you can't.
11:29
Speaker 1: UM and so that worked. At the time, twenty one
11:33
Speaker 1: was the federal age for miners, right or for an adult.
11:39
Speaker 1: Anything below twenty one you're a minor unless the state
11:42
Speaker 1: had gone in and rewritten law and said now it's
11:45
Speaker 1: actually eighteen or nineteen or whatever. So that that covered
11:49
Speaker 1: like a pretty decent amount of the um emerging cult population. Yeah,
11:55
Speaker 1: And he also figured that I won't get in trouble
11:57
Speaker 1: because once we have freed these people and program, then
12:00
Speaker 1: they won't breast charges like they'll be delighted exactly there.
12:04
Speaker 1: They're brainwashed. All we have to do is on brainwashed them.
12:08
Speaker 1: The other way that he figured out UM they could
12:10
Speaker 1: be protected by law was if if the member, the
12:15
Speaker 1: cult member, was an adult, they could apply for what's
12:19
Speaker 1: called the conservatorship. And this is basically um based on
12:24
Speaker 1: that old kind of law where uh husband could have
12:28
Speaker 1: his hysterical wife committed if he didn't like her attitude,
12:31
Speaker 1: that kind of thing where there's a very very loose
12:34
Speaker 1: burden of proof on demonstrating that the person was out
12:39
Speaker 1: of their mind, so much so that in this point
12:42
Speaker 1: in time in America, if you were UM high, if
12:45
Speaker 1: you hired a cult deep programmer, all you had to
12:48
Speaker 1: do was also shell out five bucks or something for
12:52
Speaker 1: a psychologist who would come in and say, the very
12:55
Speaker 1: fact that they are a member of this cult demonstrates
12:57
Speaker 1: that they are mentally ill, and therefore power over them
13:01
Speaker 1: should be granted to their parents, even those persons an adult.
13:04
Speaker 1: And once that power was granted to the parent, the
13:07
Speaker 1: parent could extend that power to the cult de programmers,
13:10
Speaker 1: who would then go and kidnap the cult member and
13:13
Speaker 1: then begin the process of deep programming. Yeah, and they
13:16
Speaker 1: wouldn't even make any attempts to assess their mental state.
13:18
Speaker 1: It was just sort of I don't know about grandfather Den,
13:21
Speaker 1: but it was just sort of lumped in under the
13:23
Speaker 1: umbrella of the conservatorship. Thank you again, psychology. Way to go. So, uh, well,
13:31
Speaker 1: should we talk about some of his greatest hips. Well,
13:33
Speaker 1: let's take a let's take a break first. M alright, So, Patrick,
14:07
Speaker 1: the first thing he did when he first started doing
14:09
Speaker 1: this was because he didn't really have a shop set
14:11
Speaker 1: up or a staff at this point, he's he hired
14:16
Speaker 1: um thugs, street thugs too do the kidnapping, right. He
14:21
Speaker 1: would just pay dudes that, look, we're tough ruffians as
14:24
Speaker 1: they were called, you know, how to abduct these kids,
14:27
Speaker 1: you know, like with um whenever you hear like of
14:29
Speaker 1: a um a private investigator making air quotes like is
14:34
Speaker 1: also involved in like a jewel heist or something like that,
14:38
Speaker 1: where there's that real like gray area that's occupied by
14:42
Speaker 1: some people who are maybe working on the side of
14:44
Speaker 1: the law, but really they're doing really unlawful things to
14:47
Speaker 1: achieve those ends. These are the kind of people that
14:50
Speaker 1: were hired by the Cult Awareness Network, That's right. Uh,
14:54
Speaker 1: And he eventually was joined by someone named Sandra Sachs,
14:58
Speaker 1: who was a housewife whose son was deprogrammed, and from
15:03
Speaker 1: I believe the Harry Christnas and then he got to
15:07
Speaker 1: think of a guy named Goose. I'm not sure of
15:09
Speaker 1: Goose's real name, but he was his became ultimately his
15:13
Speaker 1: like a big henchman. So they were sort of the
15:15
Speaker 1: three heading up the network early on at least. So
15:18
Speaker 1: one of the things he did, um, it wasn't always
15:22
Speaker 1: uh religious cults, even he was hired basically anytime a
15:27
Speaker 1: parent didn't like what their kid was doing, they could
15:30
Speaker 1: hire him to kidnap them and scream at them in
15:35
Speaker 1: the handcuffed them to a bed for a week until
15:38
Speaker 1: they said they didn't want to do what they were doing,
15:40
Speaker 1: whether it was being a lesbian or just being a
15:43
Speaker 1: converted Catholic. Yeah, there was one case that he got
15:46
Speaker 1: in trouble for for false imprisonment I believe, out in
15:49
Speaker 1: denver Um, where a woman had left the Greek Orthodox
15:54
Speaker 1: Church to go live her own life and her parents
15:57
Speaker 1: didn't like that, so they hired Ted and his company
16:02
Speaker 1: too deep programmer I guess or reprogrammer back into the
16:07
Speaker 1: Greek Orthodox Church. There was two girls, two daughters, and uh,
16:11
Speaker 1: their quote at the end of this ordeal was there
16:14
Speaker 1: was nothing to de program, right, we just left the
16:17
Speaker 1: church for another one. Yeah. Yeah. There's another woman, an
16:20
Speaker 1: English professor out in California and San Francisco named Sarah Worth,
16:24
Speaker 1: and she had become an anti nuke activist, civil rights
16:28
Speaker 1: activist as well. Her her mother back in Pennsylvania thought
16:32
Speaker 1: that that just was very unbecoming, so she hired the
16:36
Speaker 1: Cult Awareness Network to de programmer daughter. That's right, this
16:42
Speaker 1: is going on and it was legal, well not I
16:44
Speaker 1: don't know about legal, but it was protected. Here's the thing,
16:46
Speaker 1: so let's talk about why this was legal or quasi
16:50
Speaker 1: legal at the time. Again, America has really really scared
16:54
Speaker 1: that there's this cult movement going on, that the youth
16:57
Speaker 1: of America is losing its free will. This is what
17:00
Speaker 1: the whole thing is based on. That there are groups,
17:02
Speaker 1: insidious groups out there who are recruiting and brainwashing our kids.
17:08
Speaker 1: What's to become of America If all of our kids
17:10
Speaker 1: are running around is harrid Christnas or Bible thumpers or
17:13
Speaker 1: what have you. They're the future. So we have to
17:16
Speaker 1: fight this. And if they're being brainwashed you need to
17:18
Speaker 1: de brainwash them. So not only was it groups like
17:21
Speaker 1: the Cult Awareness Network who were thinking these things, they
17:25
Speaker 1: were also like drumming up a lot of publicity as well. Yeah,
17:28
Speaker 1: they thought it was a big conspiracy. Yeah, a communist
17:31
Speaker 1: conspiracy is what a lot of people said too, that
17:33
Speaker 1: this is the Ultimately the Communists were behind it. So
17:36
Speaker 1: not only is it this obscure fringe group that knows
17:40
Speaker 1: how to work the media who believes this, it's also
17:42
Speaker 1: the people reading the newspaper, like parents, cops, judges, juries,
17:48
Speaker 1: and if you take someone to court for kidnapping you
17:52
Speaker 1: and beating you up until you agree to stop being
17:54
Speaker 1: a harrid Krishna and the judge is convinced that you
18:00
Speaker 1: or have been brainwashed by the hard Christmas, the judge
18:03
Speaker 1: is not going to rule in your favor. And therefore,
18:06
Speaker 1: this whole technique, this whole method that was used for
18:10
Speaker 1: more than a decade was quasi legal. For as many
18:14
Speaker 1: times as he was dragged into court, Ted Patrick was
18:16
Speaker 1: only imprisoned twice, one time for like ten days and
18:20
Speaker 1: another time for sixty. Yeah. There was one famous case,
18:23
Speaker 1: uh Stephanie Ryth Miller in Ohio. Um, she her parents
18:30
Speaker 1: hired her or hired Patrick and his crew because, uh,
18:34
Speaker 1: well because she was a lesbian. Well, they suspected she
18:37
Speaker 1: was a lesbian, yes, was she in fact? Yes? So
18:40
Speaker 1: they paid eight thousand dollars, which would be twenty one
18:42
Speaker 1: grand today to kidnap her. She was nineteen years old.
18:47
Speaker 1: She's walking on the street with her friend on the sidewalk.
18:49
Speaker 1: They pull up in a van. They mace her friend,
18:52
Speaker 1: and they throw her in the back of the van
18:54
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, subdue her. She was driven to
18:57
Speaker 1: Alabama from Ohio. Uh and over the course in the
19:01
Speaker 1: next seven days, was raped once a day, um by
19:05
Speaker 1: a guy named James Rowe, who was one of the
19:08
Speaker 1: henchmen that worked with Patrick, right, in order to get
19:10
Speaker 1: her back into the heterosexual mindset, right, yeah, uh. Which
19:15
Speaker 1: We're gonna do a whole podcast on gay d programming
19:18
Speaker 1: at some point, um, because that's a whole different thing,
19:21
Speaker 1: but that has its roots and something like this. Obviously,
19:25
Speaker 1: at the trial, they because this did go to trial, Um,
19:29
Speaker 1: the defense attacked her roommate who was gay and said,
19:35
Speaker 1: you know, look at her boots and her pickup truck
19:37
Speaker 1: and she has a Doberman pincher Like this is very unbecoming. Uh,
19:42
Speaker 1: she has a very over overbearing style. Where they were
19:45
Speaker 1: trying to prove was that the roommate had brainwashed her
19:48
Speaker 1: into becoming a lesbian and just look at her with
19:52
Speaker 1: her boots and her pickup truck. So eventually goes to
19:56
Speaker 1: trial and the judge, um Hamilton County Judge Simon Lese
20:02
Speaker 1: l e I s he was not very sympathetic at
20:05
Speaker 1: all of her lifestyle. Of course. Uh. He said homosexuality
20:09
Speaker 1: was immoral and uh. Even he told the jury that
20:13
Speaker 1: the lifestyle was an issue, but I'm not going to
20:15
Speaker 1: represent to you that I approve of the sexual preference.
20:18
Speaker 1: And she called it unnatural. So eventually he said what
20:23
Speaker 1: the parents did was wrong, but I don't think there's
20:25
Speaker 1: any question that they did was totally done out of
20:28
Speaker 1: love for their daughter. Uh. And he described the tactics,
20:31
Speaker 1: even the rape, as to detract, like you said, from
20:35
Speaker 1: her lesbianism and attractor to heterosexual activity. So he got
20:39
Speaker 1: off with that one. Huh uh yeah, And I don't
20:42
Speaker 1: think he was actually in the room like it was.
20:44
Speaker 1: There was a lot of back and forth on like
20:46
Speaker 1: what he knew and what he didn't know about this case.
20:49
Speaker 1: But the guy who raped her got away with it.
20:51
Speaker 1: And this is I mean that was again he was
20:53
Speaker 1: dragged to court over and over again, and it wasn't
20:56
Speaker 1: a lot of the cult groups did not fight back,
21:00
Speaker 1: and in some cases because they didn't want to open
21:02
Speaker 1: their books from what I understand, which they may have
21:05
Speaker 1: had to had they fought anything like this in court,
21:08
Speaker 1: but also because America as a whole was against them,
21:13
Speaker 1: Like can you remember Airplane, the original one? I just
21:16
Speaker 1: watched it the other day where he just beats up
21:18
Speaker 1: a bunch of mooneyes in the airport who are trying
21:20
Speaker 1: to like offer him a free flower. One of them
21:23
Speaker 1: is Joe Iszuzu. For God's sake, he's America's sweetheart. Well
21:26
Speaker 1: he should have been beating up for that. So um,
21:29
Speaker 1: there was this this It was a joke, obviously, but
21:33
Speaker 1: it it definitely pointed out this whole sentiment that America
21:36
Speaker 1: had toward cults at the time, which was like they
21:38
Speaker 1: it was open season, man, they were fair game inside
21:41
Speaker 1: and outside of court. There's an indictment in New York
21:45
Speaker 1: where they indicted some Harri Christna leaders for using mind control.
21:50
Speaker 1: In an indictment in a court of law, the words
21:53
Speaker 1: mind control were used to indict somebody for a crime
21:58
Speaker 1: which which has never been even proven, Like, how do
22:00
Speaker 1: you mind control somebody? It's crazy? But this was like
22:04
Speaker 1: the kind of the sentiment that was going on at
22:07
Speaker 1: the time, right, And so you could be if you
22:11
Speaker 1: were a member of what was considered a cult group
22:15
Speaker 1: and your parents were well healed enough to afford the
22:17
Speaker 1: cult awareness network. You could be sitting there hanging out
22:21
Speaker 1: in the commune one day, playing your acoustic guitar. What
22:24
Speaker 1: have you thinking about consciousness and the universality of it?
22:29
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, the door gets kicked in
22:31
Speaker 1: and Ted Patrick and some of his henchmen enter grab you.
22:36
Speaker 1: Your buddy stands up to be like, hey man, you
22:39
Speaker 1: can't do that, and they mace him and they take you,
22:42
Speaker 1: throw you in a van, drive you several states over,
22:45
Speaker 1: maybe to your parents house. I think they frequently used
22:48
Speaker 1: the parents house because it added like an extra sense
22:51
Speaker 1: of legality to it. And then they would keep you
22:54
Speaker 1: there for as long as they wanted to. They would
22:57
Speaker 1: beat you, they would um abu use you physically, emotionally,
23:02
Speaker 1: verbally um. They would starve you, they would deprive you
23:06
Speaker 1: of sleep um and you weren't allowed to leave. You
23:09
Speaker 1: were berated constantly. They would take shifts, they would have
23:12
Speaker 1: your family come in and berate you. And all of
23:14
Speaker 1: this was completely made up out of whole cloth by
23:19
Speaker 1: Ted Patrick. Like he he had no training whatsoever in
23:23
Speaker 1: any kind of brainwash techniques. There is no training, right
23:26
Speaker 1: he but he just kind of intuitively got that, like
23:29
Speaker 1: if you deprive someone of sleep or food, they'll start
23:31
Speaker 1: to do what you want them to and um, the
23:35
Speaker 1: whole goal of it, as far as he was concerned,
23:37
Speaker 1: was to create um to snap somebody out of it.
23:42
Speaker 1: And when somebody snapped, they basically gave into your will
23:47
Speaker 1: and that they were no longer resisting. They were no
23:49
Speaker 1: longer saying, uh, my right to be a harry Christmas
23:52
Speaker 1: protected by the First Amendment. You have kidnapped me. I
23:56
Speaker 1: want to go, please leave, Please leave me alone. They
24:00
Speaker 1: just said, fine, you're right, I don't want to be
24:02
Speaker 1: a hard Christian anymore. That could be snapping. It could
24:05
Speaker 1: also be something that was a lot closer um and
24:08
Speaker 1: complexion to something like that religious conversion. But it would
24:12
Speaker 1: be like a conversion back where they'd start crying and weeping.
24:15
Speaker 1: And these are the ones that were frequently pointed to
24:18
Speaker 1: as proof positive that deep programming actually worked because there
24:23
Speaker 1: are a lot of people who are deprogramming. You said,
24:25
Speaker 1: this is a great thing for me, um, But it
24:28
Speaker 1: has been explained time and time again as basically, a
24:33
Speaker 1: lot of kids who joined cults did so because they
24:36
Speaker 1: felt like they weren't accepted at home or by their
24:38
Speaker 1: families or whatever. And they would see once they were
24:41
Speaker 1: kidnapped and and taking back to their parents house that
24:45
Speaker 1: maybe their parents actually did care about them more than
24:47
Speaker 1: they realized. They were willing to spend some money and
24:49
Speaker 1: hire Black Lightning to come beat me up until I
24:53
Speaker 1: agree to come back home. So maybe that was the
24:56
Speaker 1: reason for this this snapping. Yeah, and sometimes they would
25:00
Speaker 1: get all together to get out of that prison, which
25:03
Speaker 1: was the case which we'll talk about right after this
25:05
Speaker 1: break of Jason Scott. Alright, so Jason Scott, this was
25:37
Speaker 1: not a Patrick affair. This was a guy named Rick
25:40
Speaker 1: Ross and another guy, two guys named Mark Workman and
25:44
Speaker 1: Charles Simpson. Yes, but they were referred by the cult
25:49
Speaker 1: Awareness Networks, that's right, was involved. Well, yeah, they were referred,
25:53
Speaker 1: But this wasn't Patrick heading up this operation. Uh. And
25:56
Speaker 1: this is a guy named Jason Scott, and he was
25:59
Speaker 1: kidnaped and brought to UH out in the Booneys in
26:04
Speaker 1: Washington State, and he was held there for days against
26:06
Speaker 1: his will, physically abused all the stuff that we've been
26:09
Speaker 1: going over because they wanted him to leave this Pentecostal
26:14
Speaker 1: church that he was in with his brothers. I think
26:17
Speaker 1: his mom was in it at one point, but she left.
26:19
Speaker 1: The sons decided to stay and she was like, I
26:22
Speaker 1: don't like what's going on over there, so she hired
26:25
Speaker 1: them uh to to de program him. UM it failed
26:31
Speaker 1: in that. Scott eventually UM faked that he was after
26:36
Speaker 1: four days of torture. He faked it and said, I
26:39
Speaker 1: don't believe that stuff anymore. He broke down in tears
26:42
Speaker 1: and said he completely rebuked everything that he had stood for.
26:46
Speaker 1: And so they said, well, this is great. It worked.
26:49
Speaker 1: Let's go out for a celebration dinner with your family
26:52
Speaker 1: and um he was allowed to use the bathroom at
26:55
Speaker 1: the restaurant by himself for the first time in a week,
26:59
Speaker 1: and he ran to the police and the police arrested
27:03
Speaker 1: these guys. UM. There were there was a civil suit filed.
27:07
Speaker 1: This is where it gets really interesting. There was a
27:09
Speaker 1: civil suit filed on Jason Scott's behalf by counselor for
27:13
Speaker 1: the Church of Science lead counsel by the Church of Scientology.
27:17
Speaker 1: So now Scientology is getting involved. They end up bankrupt
27:22
Speaker 1: ing through this court case. They awarded eight hundred seventy
27:26
Speaker 1: five thou dollars in compensatory damages a million and damages
27:31
Speaker 1: of punitive nature against the Cult Awareness Network and two
27:34
Speaker 1: point five million against Ross himself. It ended up bankrupting them,
27:39
Speaker 1: and then the Church of Scientology buys out the Cult
27:42
Speaker 1: Awareness Network in bankruptcy court, buys their assets, buys their logo,
27:46
Speaker 1: buys your name, renames it the new Cult Awareness Network,
27:50
Speaker 1: and now it is run by the Church of Scientology. Right,
27:52
Speaker 1: So if you're looking for help to get your kid
27:54
Speaker 1: out of a cult, including Scientology, the hopeful people there
27:57
Speaker 1: will explain to you how great Scientology is. What's funny, though,
28:01
Speaker 1: is that, like this this um Jason Scott case was
28:05
Speaker 1: one of about fifty that were brought at the time
28:08
Speaker 1: through Scientology lawyers. This just happened to be the one
28:12
Speaker 1: that stuck. Yeah, it went all the way to the
28:14
Speaker 1: Supreme Court where they denied the appeal and in the
28:17
Speaker 1: end Scott only got about five thousand dollars and two
28:21
Speaker 1: hundred hours of professional services from Ross, which I didn't understand.
28:26
Speaker 1: I'll explain it to you. So, um, they became buddies.
28:29
Speaker 1: Apparently they did become buddies. So apparently Jason Scott did.
28:34
Speaker 1: He forgave his mother. He also forgave Rick Ross. He
28:39
Speaker 1: broke from the scientology um lawyer. He had a different
28:43
Speaker 1: look after. I guess he felt a little fleeced maybe
28:45
Speaker 1: by the scientologist or used, I should say, and ended
28:48
Speaker 1: up being chummy with Rick Ross. So he sold Rick
28:52
Speaker 1: Ross his settlement which should have been three million dollars
28:56
Speaker 1: for five grand and two hundred hours of his services
28:59
Speaker 1: of depro ramming services right the D program. I think
29:02
Speaker 1: his daughter something like that. That's what I couldn't find. Yeah, So, um,
29:07
Speaker 1: Rick Cross is still at it. He's a he's an
29:09
Speaker 1: exit counselor um and he if you listen to him talk,
29:13
Speaker 1: it's really weird. Man. While approaching this from the outside,
29:17
Speaker 1: like there was a war that was going on that
29:20
Speaker 1: is still being fought here there, but the average person
29:24
Speaker 1: wouldn't know about it. In the media, between the anti
29:28
Speaker 1: cult movement, which is headed up by people like Ted
29:31
Speaker 1: Patrick and Rick Ross and the Cult Awareness Network, the
29:34
Speaker 1: old version of it, and the I guess cult movement,
29:39
Speaker 1: which has as disparate members as the Church of Scientology
29:45
Speaker 1: that the Catholic League First Amendment people like the a
29:49
Speaker 1: c l U on another side. So there's this weird,
29:53
Speaker 1: like this battle that went on in Scientology ultimately one
29:58
Speaker 1: just because they bled the anti cult movement out in
30:02
Speaker 1: the courts. But like I said, Rick Cross is still
30:05
Speaker 1: at it. What he's doing now is exit counseling. And
30:08
Speaker 1: if before deep programming was coercive brainwashing, then um exit
30:14
Speaker 1: counseling is the opposite of that. It's basically like a
30:19
Speaker 1: drug intervention, but as far as cults are concerned, Yeah,
30:24
Speaker 1: the idea is that you get the whole family involved,
30:27
Speaker 1: You get the person who you're trying to UH counsel
30:32
Speaker 1: I guess involved, and they all agree to meet and
30:35
Speaker 1: they talked to them about what they were doing, and
30:38
Speaker 1: they explained to them about the harmful practices of that
30:42
Speaker 1: cult or not cult, depending on what it is, and
30:45
Speaker 1: UM essentially involved, it's a it's a really intensive therapy
30:50
Speaker 1: group therapy with your family, but again not coerced supposedly
30:55
Speaker 1: voluntary and the proper way to go about it. It's
30:58
Speaker 1: still expensive though, right, But like a normal intervention or
31:01
Speaker 1: like a drug related intervention, like it'll probably be a
31:04
Speaker 1: surprise to the UM, the cult member UM, but in
31:12
Speaker 1: a in a exit counseling, seminar session or whatever, that
31:17
Speaker 1: that person has to agree to stick around and listen,
31:20
Speaker 1: like they can leave at any point in time. There's
31:22
Speaker 1: no more kidnapping and duct taping. So that's the state
31:26
Speaker 1: of affairs now. And it's really weird again because this
31:31
Speaker 1: is the remnants of this this info war that went
31:35
Speaker 1: on between the anti cult movement and the cult movement
31:39
Speaker 1: or the New Religious Movement movement, and UM, it's really
31:44
Speaker 1: kind of the whole thing is muddy morally speaking, because
31:49
Speaker 1: there are people walking around, including ones that were abducted
31:52
Speaker 1: and beaten up or mistreated or abused or tortured by
31:56
Speaker 1: Cult Awareness Network or other d programmers, who say, if
32:00
Speaker 1: it weren't for those guys, I'd probably still being a
32:03
Speaker 1: cult right now. And I'm really grateful to my parents
32:06
Speaker 1: for showing out the money to have these guys kidnap
32:09
Speaker 1: me because I was really I was lost in life
32:13
Speaker 1: and very vulnerable at the time, and this really helped
32:16
Speaker 1: get me back on track. Well, yeah, and cults can
32:19
Speaker 1: be destructive and in uh, destroy people's lives and kill people. Um,
32:25
Speaker 1: but what you can't do is just I think the
32:26
Speaker 1: problem came when everything was lumped together in one big under,
32:30
Speaker 1: one big umbrella called a cult. Exactly. That's exactly right,
32:34
Speaker 1: because who was Ted Patrick or anybody else the great
32:37
Speaker 1: decider of what made acceptable religious beliefs and non acceptable
32:42
Speaker 1: religious beliefs? Like, where was that dividing line and who
32:45
Speaker 1: gave him the right to do it? Man? Could you
32:47
Speaker 1: imagine if this was going on today with the way
32:50
Speaker 1: things are, Well, it kept going until was when the
32:54
Speaker 1: judgment came down that backup the cult Awareness Network. Yeah,
32:58
Speaker 1: I mean, with the way things are, I could see
33:01
Speaker 1: I could see Wacko's left and right hiring people to
33:05
Speaker 1: abduct their children and set them straight. You know, well,
33:09
Speaker 1: supposedly they made out pretty well in the Satanic panic
33:12
Speaker 1: of the eighties. To that that documentary D Programmed is
33:16
Speaker 1: largely about the director's stepbrother, who was the programmed by
33:21
Speaker 1: Ted Patrick because their parents thought that he was a
33:23
Speaker 1: Satanist or whatever because he listened to metal. We should
33:26
Speaker 1: do one on the PMRC and backmasking that whole. We'll
33:30
Speaker 1: just call it like eighties satanic panic or something. Let's
33:33
Speaker 1: do it. It would be a good one. Uh. There's
33:35
Speaker 1: a book. Ted Patrick wrote a book called Let Our
33:38
Speaker 1: Children Go. There's an exclamation point in the title. That's right,
33:41
Speaker 1: because you better uh, in nineteen seventy six, and here
33:45
Speaker 1: was one quote of something he bragged a lot about
33:48
Speaker 1: some of these things. He said, Uh, he's something out West,
33:51
Speaker 1: one of the people he d programmed. He said, West
33:53
Speaker 1: had taken up a position facing the car with his
33:56
Speaker 1: hands on the roof and his legs spread eagled. There
33:58
Speaker 1: was no way to let him inside while he was
34:00
Speaker 1: race like that. I had to make a quick decision.
34:02
Speaker 1: I reached down between what's his legs, grabbed him by
34:04
Speaker 1: the crotch and squeezed hard. He let out a howl
34:07
Speaker 1: and doubled up, grabbing for his groin with both hands.
34:11
Speaker 1: Then I hit, shoving him headfirst into the back seat
34:14
Speaker 1: of the car and piling in on top of him.
34:18
Speaker 1: And then the Jason Scott I think was you know
34:21
Speaker 1: duct tape put face down in a van and like
34:23
Speaker 1: this three pound guy sat on him, and that can
34:26
Speaker 1: kill you. Yes, I can pretty kokie stuff. Man. Yeah,
34:31
Speaker 1: let's uh, how to combat brainwashing by brainwashing? I love
34:35
Speaker 1: any looking back in America's recent path to see how
34:39
Speaker 1: crazy it's been from time to time. Every once a
34:41
Speaker 1: while it just goes nuts. We just go crazy. Yeah. Um,
34:47
Speaker 1: let's see you got anything else? I got nothing else.
34:51
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about deep programming, you
34:54
Speaker 1: can type those words in the search bar how stuff
34:56
Speaker 1: works dot com. And since I said search bars, time
34:59
Speaker 1: for listener mail. Hey guys, just finished listening to your
35:03
Speaker 1: Hot Air Balloons podcast. I'm calling this hot air Balloon email.
35:07
Speaker 1: I jumped the gun having worked for a hot air
35:09
Speaker 1: balloon company for two years in Napa Valley where I
35:11
Speaker 1: grew up. I worked on the ground crew, the chase
35:14
Speaker 1: crew as we called it. The company I worked for
35:16
Speaker 1: a Napa Valley balloons as balloons that can fit two
35:19
Speaker 1: people all the way up to twenty people. The envelope,
35:22
Speaker 1: although it looks like, can weigh an excess of six
35:24
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, and the basket is easily twice that, if
35:27
Speaker 1: not more. And he wrote a lot about the getting
35:31
Speaker 1: all the hot air out and what an arduous process
35:33
Speaker 1: that was. And then he has another good little story here.
35:37
Speaker 1: One day after we launched the balloons from just north
35:39
Speaker 1: of Napa, the wind picked up and one of the
35:41
Speaker 1: pilots couldn't find a safe place to land. Uh. And
35:44
Speaker 1: we call this Josh's worst nightmare of fortune. The balloon
35:48
Speaker 1: kept going south and what was supposed to be in
35:50
Speaker 1: our flight was getting close to two hours. The balloon
35:52
Speaker 1: got so far south that it was approaching the San
35:55
Speaker 1: Francisco Bay, and if it got over the bay, the
35:57
Speaker 1: balloon wouldn't have enough fuel to make it to land again.
36:00
Speaker 1: And so the pilot made an emergency landing in a
36:02
Speaker 1: wheat field that was the last land before the bay.
36:06
Speaker 1: You try not to land somewhere without permission, but in
36:08
Speaker 1: this case it was an emergency. The pilot left with
36:10
Speaker 1: the customers, so we had to contact the owner of
36:13
Speaker 1: the land and had to be let onto the property
36:15
Speaker 1: get our balloon. Understandably, the owner was angry, but we
36:18
Speaker 1: gave him a bottle of champagne as you said, they
36:20
Speaker 1: still do that, uh, and offered to pay for the
36:23
Speaker 1: damages to his crops. While most flights had now issues whatsoever,
36:26
Speaker 1: That someone sticks out of my mind because it was
36:28
Speaker 1: a particularly exciting day nice. That is Ryan from Washington,
36:34
Speaker 1: d C. The NAPA that light. I like the the
36:38
Speaker 1: part about champagne. Sure. I like the part where the
36:43
Speaker 1: pilot left with the customers really quickly after he landed.
36:49
Speaker 1: Who is that Ryan? Thanks? Ryan, that was a good story. Again,
36:54
Speaker 1: I like the champagne part. Then, if you want to
36:57
Speaker 1: get in touch of this and tell us all of
36:58
Speaker 1: your champagne, which is and KVR dreams, you can tweet
37:02
Speaker 1: to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
37:04
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.
37:07
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37:10
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
37:12
Speaker 1: at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
37:15
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37:27
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