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SYSK Selects: How Cult Deprogramming Works · Stuff You Should Know

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