Breaking the Silence on
Spiritual Abuse
By Lisa Oakley and Kathryn Kinmond
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. ISBN-10: 113728286X ISBN-13:
9781137282866 (hardcover). £50.00 (Amazon.com.uk) $85.31
(Amazon.com). 160 pages (UK) 142 pages (US).
Reviewed by Gillie Jenkinson
This book addresses the void in knowledge about spiritual
abuse (SA) and, in particular, SA in the mainstream UK Christian
Church. The book provides the reader with a theoretical
understanding of SA and addresses the needs of survivors of
SA. The chapter on Working With Individuals Who Have Been
Spiritually Abused (Chapter 5) also gives some salient and
helpful pointers and insights for clinical work.
The strength of this book is that it draws on both research
and clinical experience. It is informative for counsellors and
pastoral counsellors, and also for Church workers and those
who provide pastoral care. Survivors of SA could approach any
counsellor, and the counsellors they approach need to know
something about SA in the mainstream Christian Church. This
book provides a helpful and informative overview of the area.
That the authors have had to emphasize that SA is abuse is
symptomatic of the systemic denial of this kind of abuse, thus
making this book even more important to those who study
these areas.
The chapters cover the following subjects:
• What Is Spiritual Abuse? (Chapter 1)
• What Does Spiritual Abuse Look Like? (Chapter 2)
• Spiritual Abuse Is Abuse (Chapter 3)
• The Process of Spiritual Abuse (Chapter 4)
• Working With Individuals Who Have Been Spiritually
Abused (Chapter 5)
• Working With Spiritual Abuse: Professional and
Personal Issues (Chapter 6) and
• Looking Forward (Chapter 7).
The authors set out three categories that survivors of SA may
fall into. The first category includes survivors whose religion
and spirituality remain core to self and identity and so they
relocate their affiliation the second category includes those
whose religion and spirituality remain fundamental but the
survivors completely dissociate from any organization and the
third category includes those persons for whom “the experience
will leave the meaning [of religion and spirituality] … so barbed
that they reject vociferously any possible association with
organised religion…” (p. 98). The authors note that survivors in
the latter category are the most challenging to work with and
are perhaps the ones who would particularly benefit from their
counsellors having read this book.
I was disappointed that this short book was so expensive
because many potential readers may feel it is not worth the
investment. I suggest that the publishers consider a cheaper
version so it is more accessible, and so that the voices of
survivors of SA are heard and their needs attended to more
accurately n
About the Reviewer
Gillie Jenkinson, PhD, MA, UKCP-
accredited psychotherapist, and
registered member of BACP, specializes
in working with spiritual and cultic
abuse, offering postcult counselling,
psychotherapy, group facilitation, training,
supervision, and consultancy. She is an
international speaker and a published
author, including coauthor of Chapter 13,
Pathological Spirituality, in Spirituality and Psychiatry, RPsych
Publications, 2009. She has authored a chapter entitled
“Relational Psychoeducational Intensive—Time Away for
Postcult Counselling” in the new ICSA book, Cult Recovery: A
Clinician’s Guide to Working With Former Members and Families.
She is the mental health editor for ICSA Today.
For her doctoral research, Dr. Jenkinson conducted a
qualitative, constructivist, grounded-theory investigation
into what helps former cult members recover from an
abusive cult experience. Her dissertation is entitled Freeing
the Authentic Self: Phases of Recovery and Growth From an
Abusive Cult Experience. To contact Dr. Jenkinson, email info@
hopevalleycounselling.com or visit
hopevalleycounselling.com n
This book addresses the void
in knowledge about spiritual
abuse … in the mainstream
UK Christian Church.
25 VOLUME 9 |ISSUE 3 |2018

28 ICSA TODAY
Profile On...
Robert Capellini is friendly and forthcoming (“Call me Cap—
everyone always has”) as he answers my questions in a lively
voice. Early on, he quips that, at 90, he’s trying marijuana.
“Medical marijuana! For my back.” But he quickly, naturally, veers
to talking about his wife, Joan Capellini, who passed away in
2014, and their children Steve, Tina, and Jim. “We’ve always been
a close family,” he says. It becomes clear that any profile about
Mr. Capellini will necessarily be about him and his loved ones, so
much a part of him.
Cap was born in 1928. He spent the first 7 years of his life in
Rockville Center, Long Island, moving to California with his
family when he was 8 years old. After the Second World War, he
began working for the phone company now known as Verizon,
where he met Joan, to whom he was married for 56 years. They
had three children. Cap was promoted a few times. They lived in
Chicago for 6 years. Cap was eventually promoted to a position
in Tampa, Florida. He worked for the company for 37 years,
retiring at 59. A Time magazine article about older adults using
the Internet, published in 1998 when he was 70, featured Cap
prominently. He had discovered the Internet and email, and had
gotten quite adept at using both, volunteering to teach others.
Part of the article reads, “…A product of the Depression, he shops
at Sears and clips coupons despite having earned a comfortable
retirement for himself and his wife…”
~
It was in 1978 that Cap’s middle son, Steve, was recruited into the
Unification Church, aka the Moonies, setting off a family crisis.
Cap speaks with tremendous pride and affection about Steve.
“When he was only 12, he asked, ‘Why is there anything?’ He was
reading Plato and Socrates at that age! He was always a seeker.”
Cap paints Steve as a “free spirit” and explains that he went
to college directly after high school but stayed for only one
semester, leaving to sail the Caribbean for a few months, then
hitchhike from Miami to San Francisco. While in San Francisco, he
encountered Rev. Moon’s organization. The members engaged
the inquisitive young man, taking him to their farm 100 miles
north of the city. Steve continued to call his parents every
weekend, so Cap at first suspected nothing. Joan, however,
with a mother’s intuition, pronounced after the first phone call,
“Something is wrong.”
To isolate Steve from his parents, the group sent him to Colorado.
After 6 months, Steve finally told his parents the name of the
organization. There was little information about the group
then however, in doing research, they came upon a book
entitled ominously Let Our Children Go, by Ted Patrick. The Moon
organization was covered in the book on page 113.
Thoroughly alarmed, Cap and Joan tried to tell Steve about what
they’d found. He spurned the information. The Moonies had
already made a lot of headway. They were, however, unsuccessful
in turning him completely away from his parents. Cap relates,
“Everything they said about his mom he rejected.”
The Capellinis realized the depth of the situation. After a family
conference, they arrived at a sobering, frightening conclusion:
They would have to take the extreme measure of rescuing their
son via kidnapping and deprogramming. Unlike today, when
parents have access to a range of resources to help them deal
with a loved one in a group, in those days, deprogramming often
seemed like the only option for families.
This part of the story is in turn terrifying, funny, and heart-
rending. With Joan at home holding down the fort, Cap, the
loving and devoted father, left everything behind and set off
alone on a journey to save his son’s life. He travelled to a place
he’d never been had to put his trust in people he didn’t know
and had to be at times incredibly patient, at others as quick and
fleet-footed as the protagonist in a spy novel.
He met with strangers who were part of a kind of underground
railroad at the time and willing to help. They managed to
grab Steve, take him to a safe house, and proceed, led by the
deprogrammer, Ted Patrick. A crucial point in the rescue finally
came when Cap
broke down in tears
in front of his boy.
“He’d never seen his
father cry. I think
it shocked him it
moved him.” That
was the beginning
of Steve’s return to
himself.
They were
successful at getting
Steve home. It was
Christmas time. As
Robert Capellini
Joan and Robert Capellini.