VOLUME 4 |NUMBER 2 |2013 25 24 ICSA TODAY
Marie-Andree Pelland
Marie-Andree Pelland, PhD, is on an
aventure. Fascinated by the mysterious in
life, she plumbs the depths of those
mysteries in her research. Her natural
curiosity led her to her current work—
Assistant Professor of Criminology at the
University of Moncton in New Brunswick,
and to her particular area of interest—
destructive groups. “I would say that
doing research on cults is a great
adventure. You have to be open-minded,
understanding, and passionate.”
It was in 1997 that Marie-Andree first
became aware of and interested in the
cult phenomenon. At the time, she was
studying for a year in California.
I was curious about these people
who could talk for hours on a street
corner in order to gain new
members. So when I started my
criminology master program, I
contacted Dianne Casoni, who was
working on cults. Since then, I have
studied various groups which are
often recognized as cults.
Raised in a small town in Canada, an only
child, “protected and loved,”Marie-
Andree had many cousins to play with
and led “an active, everyday life.”When
she began work on her master’s degree,
she met
members and ex-members of
various religious groups and cults,
and I realized that they had a
different conception of reality. I
decided then it could be a great
opportunity to compare the
life stories of members and ex-
members in order to understand
their different perceptions of reality.
Highly regarded by her students,
Professor Pelland teaches courses on
general criminology and group
criminality. “In those, we explore how
organized crime, gangs, and cults use
crime in their group dynamics.”In her
field, the greatest difficulty she has is
that,
...as a researcher, fellow researchers
try to categorize us, put us in a box.
Are we pro or anti cult? I always
answer, “I’m pro people” and I try to
understand the reality of the group,
members and ex-members alike. So
it is not always clear-cut where I
stand, and that can be problematic
to certain people.
Professor Pelland is very close to her
large, extended family, making a point to
see them a couple of times a year.
My maternal grandmother was a
role model for me. She fought for
women to vote, and for equal pay.
She always told me I could be
anything I wanted to be. She died
12 years ago, yet each time I do
something that I’m proud of, I think
of her.
One of those proud moments came at
the past ICSA conference, where “I
presented, with Dianne Casoni, my
mentor, a theoretical framework to
understand how crisis can affect cult
group dynamics. This was well received.”
The professor is thoroughly engaged in
her work and loves it, with the result that,
during the school year, free time is hard,
if not impossible, to find. However, every
now and then she can be found reading,
what else—“a good mystery book.”
Professor Marie-Andree is a board
member of Info-Cult/Info-Secte, based in
Montreal, Canada. ■
Edited by Mary O’Connell Profile On...
Dear Bill,
My 14-year-old daughter used to be a loving, obedient child but
lately, after my wife and I divorced, she has grown moody and
rebellious. She refuses to do her homework and has begun
sneaking out at night to meet friends she won't introduce to me.
I heard an ad on the radio for a program that guarantees to
permanently make a difficult child respectful and obedient. How
do they do this?
Dear Reader,
There are many legitimate treatment programs for emotionally
disturbed, mentally ill, or addicted youth. Usually these programs
are connected to regulated hospitals, mental-health centers, or
treatment centers.
The term troubled-teen industry often refers to unregulated,
poorly supervised programs that offer identical “treatment” for
children who display a wide range of behavior that includes, but
is not limited to, drug experimentation, emotional difficulties,
eating disorders, gender issues, or even mild teenage rebellion.
Controversial schools tend to promise parents that, for a fee, the
schools will help rebellious or problematic teenagers become
well-adjusted members of society. Some programs have been
accused of incarcerating children, limiting their contact with the
outside world (including their parents), denying them education,
and abusing them emotionally, physically, and, sometimes,
sexually.
Although there are differences between the troubled-teen
industry and cults, there are many similarities, and survivors of
both of these systems intuitively perceive a great overlap. Those
teens who were imprisoned in these programs recognize
similarities with second-generation cult survivors because their
parents were sold a bill of goods. Their behavior was
reinterpreted to the parents, and the reality of life within the
program was hidden from the parents but the teens experienced
the brutal reality of the programs.
My clinical experience and that of colleagues supports this view
of the troubled-teen industry. Although clinical generalizations
do not speak to all cases, they do help us understand
commonalities among many programs.
The most obvious parallel is that, in both teen programs and
cults, there tends to be a powerful leader whose grandiose vision
of himself has no limits. There is nothing that the leader admits to
being unsure of, and there is no boundary that he won’t break to
assert his power. Concepts of decency, ethics, or the rights of
others are viewed as petty annoyances rather than moral
imperatives.
The second obvious commonality is the existence of a group of
followers whom the leadership treats as inferior, sinful, ignorant,
and uncivilized. They are lesser beings who have forfeited their
fundamental human rights. Both cult leaders and the heads of
the troubled-teen programs establish a standard of acceptable
behavior and belief that is self-serving, self-justifying, and self-
perpetuating. You need to be in this cult because you can’t trust your
instincts and your own sense of morality. Similarly, you need to be in
this program because you’re an uncivilized animal who needs to be
controlled and the proof that you’re an uncivilized animal who
needs to be controlled is the fact that you’re in this program. You
basically are a bad person who must admit to how bad you are in
order to recover.
Another parallel is that one of the aspects of cults and the
troubled-teen industry is the degree to which the victims of both
tend to accept their degradation and to identify with their
oppressors. In most cults, the leadership views cult members’
sense of personal integrity (i.e., that they should be treated with
dignity and respect) as sinful, evil, or selfish. A parallel process
occurs in the troubled-teen programs, when truth and the needs
of the individual are both sacrificed because of the ideology of
the “program.”
All the victims of the troubled-teen industry with whom I have
worked have told me that they lied in order to survive the
program. Since the assumption was that everyone in the program
had committed heinous and depraved acts, and that they would
lie to conceal these facts, they were forced to “confess” to the
crimes they had supposedly committed. The more lurid these
crimes were, the better. They fabricated stories of incest, drug
dealing, bestiality, and stealing from their families. If a victim/
prisoner would tell the truth and say that she had not committed
these acts, she would be accused of lying and would be
punished. The way to earn privileges would be to confabulate
past acts of depravity—the more wicked or perverted, the better.
Therefore, truth was defined as a lie and was punished, while
lying was defined as truth and was rewarded. After several years
of this Through-the-Looking-Glass existence, it is no wonder that
some of the victims/prisoners temporarily lost the ability to
distinguish between reality and pseudo reality.
Another parallel is that in both the cults and the troubled-teen
industry, the leadership and the victims who have risen in the
ranks to leadership positions are taught to emulate the leader’s
arrogance, cruelty, and abuse. They learn not only that their
abusive actions are justified, but that they can be rationalized as
acts of kindness because they keep the cult member/program
participant/prisoner from backsliding. Therefore, acts of physical,
emotional, and spiritual brutality are really displays of kindness. In
this manner, the middle-management cult members or troubled-
teen leaders are able to displace the anger and hostility that they
feel toward the leadership and transfer those feelings to other
victims.
My final parallel is to point out the fact that, just as there are
noncultic religious, therapeutic, and political groups that are
legitimate, helpful, or comforting to people, there are also good,
helpful programs for troubled teens that don’t strip them of their
dignity and civil liberties, and that can help them. Not all groups
are cults, and not all programs are bad.
For more information about this issue, Help At Any Cost, by Maia
Szalavitz, and the Web site for the Community Alliance for the
Ethical Treatment of Youth are both excellent resources. ■
Send questions for Bill or for other guest columnists to
mail@icsamail.com
by William Goldberg, MSW, LCSW Point of View -Q&A
ICSA_volume4Issue2_Final 8/9/13 8:31 PM Page 26
Marie-Andree Pelland
Marie-Andree Pelland, PhD, is on an
aventure. Fascinated by the mysterious in
life, she plumbs the depths of those
mysteries in her research. Her natural
curiosity led her to her current work—
Assistant Professor of Criminology at the
University of Moncton in New Brunswick,
and to her particular area of interest—
destructive groups. “I would say that
doing research on cults is a great
adventure. You have to be open-minded,
understanding, and passionate.”
It was in 1997 that Marie-Andree first
became aware of and interested in the
cult phenomenon. At the time, she was
studying for a year in California.
I was curious about these people
who could talk for hours on a street
corner in order to gain new
members. So when I started my
criminology master program, I
contacted Dianne Casoni, who was
working on cults. Since then, I have
studied various groups which are
often recognized as cults.
Raised in a small town in Canada, an only
child, “protected and loved,”Marie-
Andree had many cousins to play with
and led “an active, everyday life.”When
she began work on her master’s degree,
she met
members and ex-members of
various religious groups and cults,
and I realized that they had a
different conception of reality. I
decided then it could be a great
opportunity to compare the
life stories of members and ex-
members in order to understand
their different perceptions of reality.
Highly regarded by her students,
Professor Pelland teaches courses on
general criminology and group
criminality. “In those, we explore how
organized crime, gangs, and cults use
crime in their group dynamics.”In her
field, the greatest difficulty she has is
that,
...as a researcher, fellow researchers
try to categorize us, put us in a box.
Are we pro or anti cult? I always
answer, “I’m pro people” and I try to
understand the reality of the group,
members and ex-members alike. So
it is not always clear-cut where I
stand, and that can be problematic
to certain people.
Professor Pelland is very close to her
large, extended family, making a point to
see them a couple of times a year.
My maternal grandmother was a
role model for me. She fought for
women to vote, and for equal pay.
She always told me I could be
anything I wanted to be. She died
12 years ago, yet each time I do
something that I’m proud of, I think
of her.
One of those proud moments came at
the past ICSA conference, where “I
presented, with Dianne Casoni, my
mentor, a theoretical framework to
understand how crisis can affect cult
group dynamics. This was well received.”
The professor is thoroughly engaged in
her work and loves it, with the result that,
during the school year, free time is hard,
if not impossible, to find. However, every
now and then she can be found reading,
what else—“a good mystery book.”
Professor Marie-Andree is a board
member of Info-Cult/Info-Secte, based in
Montreal, Canada. ■
Edited by Mary O’Connell Profile On...
Dear Bill,
My 14-year-old daughter used to be a loving, obedient child but
lately, after my wife and I divorced, she has grown moody and
rebellious. She refuses to do her homework and has begun
sneaking out at night to meet friends she won't introduce to me.
I heard an ad on the radio for a program that guarantees to
permanently make a difficult child respectful and obedient. How
do they do this?
Dear Reader,
There are many legitimate treatment programs for emotionally
disturbed, mentally ill, or addicted youth. Usually these programs
are connected to regulated hospitals, mental-health centers, or
treatment centers.
The term troubled-teen industry often refers to unregulated,
poorly supervised programs that offer identical “treatment” for
children who display a wide range of behavior that includes, but
is not limited to, drug experimentation, emotional difficulties,
eating disorders, gender issues, or even mild teenage rebellion.
Controversial schools tend to promise parents that, for a fee, the
schools will help rebellious or problematic teenagers become
well-adjusted members of society. Some programs have been
accused of incarcerating children, limiting their contact with the
outside world (including their parents), denying them education,
and abusing them emotionally, physically, and, sometimes,
sexually.
Although there are differences between the troubled-teen
industry and cults, there are many similarities, and survivors of
both of these systems intuitively perceive a great overlap. Those
teens who were imprisoned in these programs recognize
similarities with second-generation cult survivors because their
parents were sold a bill of goods. Their behavior was
reinterpreted to the parents, and the reality of life within the
program was hidden from the parents but the teens experienced
the brutal reality of the programs.
My clinical experience and that of colleagues supports this view
of the troubled-teen industry. Although clinical generalizations
do not speak to all cases, they do help us understand
commonalities among many programs.
The most obvious parallel is that, in both teen programs and
cults, there tends to be a powerful leader whose grandiose vision
of himself has no limits. There is nothing that the leader admits to
being unsure of, and there is no boundary that he won’t break to
assert his power. Concepts of decency, ethics, or the rights of
others are viewed as petty annoyances rather than moral
imperatives.
The second obvious commonality is the existence of a group of
followers whom the leadership treats as inferior, sinful, ignorant,
and uncivilized. They are lesser beings who have forfeited their
fundamental human rights. Both cult leaders and the heads of
the troubled-teen programs establish a standard of acceptable
behavior and belief that is self-serving, self-justifying, and self-
perpetuating. You need to be in this cult because you can’t trust your
instincts and your own sense of morality. Similarly, you need to be in
this program because you’re an uncivilized animal who needs to be
controlled and the proof that you’re an uncivilized animal who
needs to be controlled is the fact that you’re in this program. You
basically are a bad person who must admit to how bad you are in
order to recover.
Another parallel is that one of the aspects of cults and the
troubled-teen industry is the degree to which the victims of both
tend to accept their degradation and to identify with their
oppressors. In most cults, the leadership views cult members’
sense of personal integrity (i.e., that they should be treated with
dignity and respect) as sinful, evil, or selfish. A parallel process
occurs in the troubled-teen programs, when truth and the needs
of the individual are both sacrificed because of the ideology of
the “program.”
All the victims of the troubled-teen industry with whom I have
worked have told me that they lied in order to survive the
program. Since the assumption was that everyone in the program
had committed heinous and depraved acts, and that they would
lie to conceal these facts, they were forced to “confess” to the
crimes they had supposedly committed. The more lurid these
crimes were, the better. They fabricated stories of incest, drug
dealing, bestiality, and stealing from their families. If a victim/
prisoner would tell the truth and say that she had not committed
these acts, she would be accused of lying and would be
punished. The way to earn privileges would be to confabulate
past acts of depravity—the more wicked or perverted, the better.
Therefore, truth was defined as a lie and was punished, while
lying was defined as truth and was rewarded. After several years
of this Through-the-Looking-Glass existence, it is no wonder that
some of the victims/prisoners temporarily lost the ability to
distinguish between reality and pseudo reality.
Another parallel is that in both the cults and the troubled-teen
industry, the leadership and the victims who have risen in the
ranks to leadership positions are taught to emulate the leader’s
arrogance, cruelty, and abuse. They learn not only that their
abusive actions are justified, but that they can be rationalized as
acts of kindness because they keep the cult member/program
participant/prisoner from backsliding. Therefore, acts of physical,
emotional, and spiritual brutality are really displays of kindness. In
this manner, the middle-management cult members or troubled-
teen leaders are able to displace the anger and hostility that they
feel toward the leadership and transfer those feelings to other
victims.
My final parallel is to point out the fact that, just as there are
noncultic religious, therapeutic, and political groups that are
legitimate, helpful, or comforting to people, there are also good,
helpful programs for troubled teens that don’t strip them of their
dignity and civil liberties, and that can help them. Not all groups
are cults, and not all programs are bad.
For more information about this issue, Help At Any Cost, by Maia
Szalavitz, and the Web site for the Community Alliance for the
Ethical Treatment of Youth are both excellent resources. ■
Send questions for Bill or for other guest columnists to
mail@icsamail.com
by William Goldberg, MSW, LCSW Point of View -Q&A
ICSA_volume4Issue2_Final 8/9/13 8:31 PM Page 26
