Cultic Studies Journal, Volume 17, 2000, Page 83
time without any water and having risked death … When we realised that
what we had been through was a true cult, we understood we could no
longer go on this way, pretending nothing had happened, as other former
members had done before … All my fears went away one by one and were
replaced by a single, increasingly clear awareness: that diabolical thing, that
tremendous octopus, must stop, or at least we had to make others know it
existed … you can defend yourself from an enemy only when you know you
have one.
Who Says “Apostates” are Unreliable?
According to a certain current of scholars of new religions, these two testimonies --the first
by a mother whose daughter belongs to a magical-occultist group, the second by a person
who left a pseudo-mystical group --are not worthy of consideration by scholars of new
religions.
In the first case, with all due respect to the person involved, some might say that this is the
typical attitude of a parent who, upset by her daughter‘s making a choice that does not
agree with her mother‘s ideas, sees the ―cult‖ as the source of all evil. This attitude does of
course exist among families of members of New Religious Movements (henceforth NRM),
but one cannot generalize. When considering the suffering of a mother (which appears
clearly from the dramatic and even aggressive tone of this testimony), who can no longer
recognise her daughter, who has lost emotional contact with her, who sees her suffer from a
human and a spiritual point of view, we cannot simply say: ―Young people often make
different choices from their parents.‖ Each case should be looked into individually. While it is
true that there have always been cases of authoritarian interference by parents in the
spiritual life of their children, without any respect for their freedom of choice in such a
delicate field as that of spirituality, it is also true that there have been cases of young and
less young people taken into psycho-physical slavery inside certain organizations that call
themselves ―religious.‖ Those who are aware of this issue also meet with cases of young
people who, after difficulties and hesitation and thanks to far-sighted and respectful help
from their parents, realise that the group they had joined was not actually what they
thought it was. In such cases, the young person leaves the group freely, but support and
help from parents are an indispensable element. We must therefore avoid pronouncing
summary judgement, and must keep to the facts. Facts sometimes do not confirm what the
parents say in other cases they most definitely do.
In the second case, we have a former member who denounces the state of ―psychological
imprisonment‖ in which the group kept him. For a certain current of thought, this testimony
would not be reliable either, since this individual is certainly inspired by resentment against
the group he belonged to. Since the former member says he intends to denounce the
―atrocities‖ of the group, according to the scholars we have in mind, this would be a case of
―apostasy,‖ that is, a case in which the person who has left the group starts a war against it
for personal reasons or interests, or because he/she belongs to an ―anti-cult‖ movement.
Once the unreliability of this kind of testimony has been settled, to whom must we refer to
have the simple, objective, clear, and ―scientific‖ truth about the cult or NRM, always
following these same scholars? To the movement itself, of course, which will be happy to
cooperate, providing its own followers for interviews, its own documents for a study of the
doctrine, and everything else that may be needed for a successful scientific study! Is there
something out of place or wrong in this happy picture of loving concord? First of all, let us
ask, is it scientifically correct to study a movement only on the basis of its own sources and
of the documents it provides? Is it possible that our scholars never suspect that somebody
in the movement might have an interest in ―forgetting‖ some document? And what if those
who have left a group, showing authentic documents and using evidence, had something to

Cultic Studies Journal, Volume 17, 2000, Page 84
say too? And why should ―apostates‖ always be unreliable? What philosophical dogma lays
this down? Where is the evidence that every ―apostate‖ is associated with an anti-cult
movement? And even if some really were, does this mean that merely because they belong
to such a group, they lose their human value, so much so that they cannot be believed even
when they present proof. We are dealing here with bigotry, not science.
Luckily, not all scholars agree with this attitude. For example, Benjamin Zablocki, Professor
of Sociology at Rutgers University, who has studied NRM‘s for about 30 years, says he has:
visited hundreds of religious communes and talked with or interviewed over a
thousand members and ex-members of these groups. Enough of these people
have explained their experiences by something like a brainwashing model to
convince me that the weapon exists. Some of them probably are lying or
confabulating, but it is unlikely that all of them are. Most had no particular ax
to grind, nor were the majority associated with any anti-cult organization.1
The same author says:
Since many NRM apostates were sources of evidence about brainwashing, a
tendentious campaign was begun to define the apostate role as one whose
accounts were inherently unreliable. Instead of letting the issue of the
reliability of apostate accounts be settled empirically, an attempt was made
to settle it definitionally ...By definition, they are all now following the
ideological line of some opposing group, usually an anti-cult organization.2
It is true that people who leave such groups do not always do so dramatically nor do they
always bear a negative memory of the group indeed, they sometimes recognize that there
were positive as well as negative features in it. It is also true that only a few denounce the
―injustices‖ they suffered.
The fact that the former are less numerous than the others does not necessarily imply that
they are exceptions. It could mean that other former members, who could testify to the
same facts, do not do so for other reasons, including:
1. Fear due to the continued presence inside the group of a relative one has to go on
living with or whom one is afraid of losing once and for all, or whom one hopes to
help ―recover.‖
2. Blackmail of various kinds, both emotional and financial.
3. Shame for taking part in not entirely ―transparent‖ activities when one was involved
in the group.
4. A psychological reaction of total rejection of the past experience, felt to be foreign to
one‘s own picture of oneself, a defensive desire not to mention this part of one‘s past
any more.
5. Involved minors are not always able to testify suitably to any psychological or
physical abuse they may have suffered.
6. A left-over phobia induced by the leadership, which leads to the notion that those
who do not keep secrets may suffer mishap or disaster of some kind
Who can decide whether the silence of the majority of former members is more reliable than
the dramatic testimony of a minority of ―apostates‖? Who can decide that ―apostates‖ are
―bad‖ former members, and that all the others are ―good‖? Can some percentages here and
there in one hurried study finally prove a principle which can then be generalized to all
groups and all situations? And what about the statement that ―apostates‖ accuse the groups
they used to belong to in court only to be awarded damages, or in order to get publicity for