International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 9, 2018 73
Deprogrammed
By Mia Donovan
Reviewed by Joseph Szimhart
Eye Steel Film, Canada: Documentary film.
2015. 1 hr. 25 min. Available on Netflix or to
rent from Amazon.com ($1.99).
In 2011, someone posted this on a religion chat
group: “What ever happened to deprogrammer
Ted Patrick?” (see http://ask.metafilter.com/
192171/What-ever-happened-to-deprogrammer-
Ted-Patrick). The writer Snapdragon had read
Let Our Children Go, by Ted Patrick and Tom
Dulak (1976) and Snapping: America’s
Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change, by Flo
Conway and Jim Siegalman (1978). Snapdragon
noted there had been no news in 20 years about
Patrick. One response to Snapdragon’s note
indicated that cults were no longer big news, and
that the Children of God sex-for-Jesus cult, one
of the big five or six new religions targeted by
Patrick in the 1970s, had morphed into a
smaller, tamer version restyled as The Family.
Mia Donovan’s documentary film
Deprogrammed goes a long way to answer
Snapdragon’s query (which is not in the film).
Donovan offers intimate insights into the origins
of and controversies surrounding
deprogramming, Ted Patrick style, which often
involved abduction of the cult member and
indecorous debate about cultic beliefs and
leaders.
Patrick, 88 this year, began his cult intervention
career in 1971 in San Diego. He inadvertently
initiated a shadowy industry of interventionists
and also several anticult organizations. The latter
found in Patrick’s approach something concrete
to do about thousands if not millions of mostly
young-adult seekers suddenly taken in by
controversial new religions and unmoderated
self-help movements. Simply put, families could
kidnap a cult member and hire deprogrammers,
hopefully to break the spell of the cult, and thus
cure the problem.
The solution was not that easy, of course, and
Donovan’s careful film makes that very clear.
Coercive deprogrammers operated in America
and abroad for perhaps two decades—Patrick
attempted one of his last kidnap-style
interventions in the early 1990s. The majority of
his attempts occurred between 1971 and 1980.
Donovan’s interest in this topic is personal. One
of her main subjects in the film is her
stepbrother, Matthew Robinson, who was one of
Patrick’s last, if ill-advised interventions. It
failed, and at the time of the filming, Matthew
was yet embittered by the interaction with
Patrick around 1993.
By way of disclosure, I have had some skin in
this deprogramming game. I stood trial in Idaho
for one month in 1993 for criminal charges of
allegedly abducting a cult member. I was
acquitted. My formal intervention career began
in 1985. That was when I first agreed to assist
two seasoned deprogrammers in an intervention.
That intervention was semicoercive. There was
no security save a husband and his parents—and
the 30-degrees-below-zero weather in Minnesota
at the time. We stayed indoors. The wife, age 31,
had become immersed in a large New Age sect,
one that I had been devoted to for more than a
year, until I defected in 1980. So I was the token
former member there to explain why I defected.
My reputation grew. Subsequently, I got caught
up in the intervention business and made most of
my living as a cult interventionist from 1986
through 1998.
In the movie, Donovan concentrates on several
individuals who encountered Patrick decades
ago as subjects of deprogramming. We hear
from them, both currently and on archival news
videos with Patrick confronting them.
Patrick regularly used the curious news media to
get his message out. One subject in the film was
in the Unification Church or Moonies another
followed Swami Rudrananda, or “Rudi,” who
was of an American heritage and another was in
the Christ Family, led by Lightning Amen. The
last man, now elderly, is yet a believer, still
Deprogrammed
By Mia Donovan
Reviewed by Joseph Szimhart
Eye Steel Film, Canada: Documentary film.
2015. 1 hr. 25 min. Available on Netflix or to
rent from Amazon.com ($1.99).
In 2011, someone posted this on a religion chat
group: “What ever happened to deprogrammer
Ted Patrick?” (see http://ask.metafilter.com/
192171/What-ever-happened-to-deprogrammer-
Ted-Patrick). The writer Snapdragon had read
Let Our Children Go, by Ted Patrick and Tom
Dulak (1976) and Snapping: America’s
Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change, by Flo
Conway and Jim Siegalman (1978). Snapdragon
noted there had been no news in 20 years about
Patrick. One response to Snapdragon’s note
indicated that cults were no longer big news, and
that the Children of God sex-for-Jesus cult, one
of the big five or six new religions targeted by
Patrick in the 1970s, had morphed into a
smaller, tamer version restyled as The Family.
Mia Donovan’s documentary film
Deprogrammed goes a long way to answer
Snapdragon’s query (which is not in the film).
Donovan offers intimate insights into the origins
of and controversies surrounding
deprogramming, Ted Patrick style, which often
involved abduction of the cult member and
indecorous debate about cultic beliefs and
leaders.
Patrick, 88 this year, began his cult intervention
career in 1971 in San Diego. He inadvertently
initiated a shadowy industry of interventionists
and also several anticult organizations. The latter
found in Patrick’s approach something concrete
to do about thousands if not millions of mostly
young-adult seekers suddenly taken in by
controversial new religions and unmoderated
self-help movements. Simply put, families could
kidnap a cult member and hire deprogrammers,
hopefully to break the spell of the cult, and thus
cure the problem.
The solution was not that easy, of course, and
Donovan’s careful film makes that very clear.
Coercive deprogrammers operated in America
and abroad for perhaps two decades—Patrick
attempted one of his last kidnap-style
interventions in the early 1990s. The majority of
his attempts occurred between 1971 and 1980.
Donovan’s interest in this topic is personal. One
of her main subjects in the film is her
stepbrother, Matthew Robinson, who was one of
Patrick’s last, if ill-advised interventions. It
failed, and at the time of the filming, Matthew
was yet embittered by the interaction with
Patrick around 1993.
By way of disclosure, I have had some skin in
this deprogramming game. I stood trial in Idaho
for one month in 1993 for criminal charges of
allegedly abducting a cult member. I was
acquitted. My formal intervention career began
in 1985. That was when I first agreed to assist
two seasoned deprogrammers in an intervention.
That intervention was semicoercive. There was
no security save a husband and his parents—and
the 30-degrees-below-zero weather in Minnesota
at the time. We stayed indoors. The wife, age 31,
had become immersed in a large New Age sect,
one that I had been devoted to for more than a
year, until I defected in 1980. So I was the token
former member there to explain why I defected.
My reputation grew. Subsequently, I got caught
up in the intervention business and made most of
my living as a cult interventionist from 1986
through 1998.
In the movie, Donovan concentrates on several
individuals who encountered Patrick decades
ago as subjects of deprogramming. We hear
from them, both currently and on archival news
videos with Patrick confronting them.
Patrick regularly used the curious news media to
get his message out. One subject in the film was
in the Unification Church or Moonies another
followed Swami Rudrananda, or “Rudi,” who
was of an American heritage and another was in
the Christ Family, led by Lightning Amen. The
last man, now elderly, is yet a believer, still
