VOLUME 4 |NUMBER 2 |2013 7 6 ICSA TODAY
n order to speak, one must have a voice. Now this might seem
obvious to most people, but to people who have been abused
in a cult, having a physical voice did not mean they could
speak their truth. The individual’s voice has been taken over by
another, stronger voice, the voice of the leader. Through a variety of
influence and control techniques, often lumped together as “mind
control,” the cult leader imposes his will and views on the follower, so
the follower loses her own will and views. When mind control is
accompanied by physical or sexual abuse, the task of speaking up
becomes even more complicated and difficult for the follower.
In my case, I was in a Bible-based fundamentalist cult that charged
high fees for long classes on the veracity and supremacy of the
Word of God. People were subjected to hours and hours of teaching
to control their minds with Scripture. The methods, not the
doctrine, employed to accomplish the goals of world domination
by the group were very harmful. The leader wielded his control
through intensive psychological indoctrination and sexual contact.
I remember one incident vividly in which I questioned “the Doctor,”
the leader of the group, about the ethicalness of his behavior. He
quoted Scripture and explained that I needed to be “spiritually
mature” to understand. The Doctor taught that if one’s mind was
pure enough, one could do anything with one’s body. God did not
care about the flesh. The sexual needs of the leaders were to be
satisfied by females who were submitting to “the will of God.”
He commanded me to keep our sexual encounters in the “lockbox
of my soul”—never to be spoken of or revealed to anyone else.
“What if someone finds out?” I asked naively. “Why, I’d lie,” he said. I
was shocked. Adultery was certainly wrong, but lying about it was
even worse. I was a chronic truth seeker. How was the lockbox
consistent with the truth? How could behavior that was done in
secret be consistent with the openness he advocated in his
teachings? I am talking about behavior that is harmful to oneself or
others. Sex per se is a natural act but when there is a societal taboo
or power differential between the parties, then sex is wrong.
Women, children, and men forced by mind control into physical or
sexual submission are being abused.
What is mind control? Geri-Ann Galanti, PhD, defines mind control
as “the use of manipulative techniques that are for the most part
extremely effective in influencing the behavior of others.” Now this
definition could apply to recovery programs such as Alcoholics
Anonymous and motivational programs such as Weight Watchers.
But cults differ in one important way. Cultic leaders employ
negative manipulative techniques based on “deception,
dependency and dread” (see Recovery From Cults, edited by Michael
Langone, PhD W.W. Norton &Company, New York, 1993). When one
is experiencing abuse, these manipulative factors are always at play.
And secrecy is a big part of them.
Sexual predators and batterers know the power of silence. They
abuse their victims, and then swear them to secrecy. This method
ensures that not only is the abuse hidden from society, but it also
becomes hidden from the victims. The truth of individuals becomes
concealed for them to survive. It is a function of abuse for the abuser
to shame the abused, first by the humiliation of the act, and then by
the secrecy in which the act is performed.
When the victim’s pain of silence becomes greater than the pain of
disclosure, freedom becomes possible. But freedom can be a scary
proposition, too. Freedom means independence and autonomy,
which can threaten a follower’s childlike dependency on a leader.
The tacit agreement between cult leader and follower is “If you
remain silent, I will take care of you,” or a variation of that, “If you
tell, I will reject you and you need me to survive.”To the victim,
truth telling seems to jeopardize her very existence when, in fact, it
is the way to wholeness.
So how does one open the lockbox? Where does one find the
courage to speak in the face of fear and shame, the double-edged
sword of oppression? First, one must make the choice to heal.
Healing is always a choice, not an accident. Often propelled by
suffering, the individual decides whether to passively “accept one’s
fate”or actively pursue a way to freedom. It is a mystery why some
people choose to heal and others do not. Individuals vary. For some,
the choice may be obvious and swift. For others, it may take a long
time to come to that essential decision.
On
Breaking
the Code
of Silence
I
By Kristen Skedgell DeVoe
Once the decision to heal has been made, one must begin the
process of opening up by sharing his true feelings. Just as Pinocchio
became a “real boy” when he told the truth, so the magic of genuine
self-disclosure allows one to become who he is. But this disclosure
must happen in a safe place. Safety is essential to building trust.
Continual assaults in the past at the heart of one’s being make it
hard for one to trust others. Safety allows one to make tentative
stabs at reality without fear of punishment.
Experience teaches abused people not to trust anyone as a way of
survival. But they must make small steps in the direction of trust in
order to heal. There are individuals in society who are trustworthy.
Shamans and priests were once the hearers and witnesses of truth.
In today’s society, credentialed psychotherapists, counselors, and
teachers who are bound by a code of ethics can help those who
have been abused learn to trust again. These professionals bear
witness to each of these individuals’ truths.
Initially, people may become depressed, if not suicidal when they
come out of an abusive cult and take steps toward healing. The
realization of their losses—the loss of time, the loss of identity, the
loss of one’s self—can be intolerable. But depression keeps them
stagnant. It slows them down it keeps them down, locked in the
cycle of oppression.
For many, opening the lockbox is a byproduct of expressing their
anger. Anger is the vehicle that drives the truth into the open.
Victims must not only feel their feelings they must also see the cult
leader for what he was—an abusive sociopath, not a loving
presence. It is not enough that the abuse caused suffering. Suffering
accompanied by resolve becomes the catalyst for change. The
victims need the spark of indignation that enables them to
recognize the unfairness and imbalance of power in their situation.
Then they begin to puncture the membrane of silence that leaves
them isolated from the world.
They penetrate the code of silence through their initial decision to
heal and their courage to begin to tell the truth about themselves in a
safe place. This process, accompanied by education about physical,
sexual, psychological, and spiritual abuse, allows individuals to start
on the journey toward wholeness. True expression of their feelings,
especially anger, makes healing possible. As these individuals grow
stronger, they may even expand the stage of disclosure to include
the world at large.
So, then, truth begets truth. Light begets light. But it is not enough
to know the truth. Survivors of abuse are accustomed to
disconnecting psychologically and emotionally from a painful
reality. This dissociation is a major survival tool. To heal, it becomes
necessary for these survivors to connect with themselves, not
dissociate from the trauma. Again, in mind-control situations,
connecting with themselves becomes doubly difficult because their
conscience, overtaken by the cult leader, has become an inner
abuser and oppressor.
This inner taskmaster demands silence and compliance. One risks
not only separation from society but annihilation of a part of the self.
Like a giant parasite, the abuser needs the abused in order
to survive.
But what happens when the abused need the abuser? When the
abused internalize the voice of the abuser and continue to be
oppressed, long after the abuser is gone? Even when the objective
reality has been changed, the abused can sometimes experience a
great deal of terror. This is the terror of being free, the terror of
breaking the code of silence and the perceived dire consequences
that will ensue (i.e., insanity, illness, death). But the true
consequences of speaking up are freedom and joy, the very things
that the oppressor does not want for the oppressed. Their silence is
how he keeps them down. They learn to be helpless in the face of
abuse. Again, to overcome learned helplessness, they must allow
themselves to feel their genuine feelings and speak out
about them.
Trauma experts have long advocated the necessity of “bearing
witness” to one’s abuse. Why? Because truth is acknowledged and
affirmed in the context of community. Personal truth becomes
understood when it is spoken. Lies keep one isolated and separate.
Speaking the truth of one’s own reality allows one to belong to the
world. One is no longer alone. But it doesn’t stop there. One must
question destructive assumptions and become educated about
individual rights.
The truth of human experience proclaims the imperative to live and
be free, not to be in bondage. Just as a flower is meant to bloom,
each person is put here to blossom forth in her true nature. One
must believe one has the RIGHT to live in order to own one’s
experience. When one realizes the truth of being alive (or becomes
aware of its opposite—the mandate NOT to live independent of the
leader), one is able to break the bonds of mind control. One begins
to question negative assumptions through critical thinking and
education. Once one fully comprehends the right to exist, then
acting on the right to bear witness to one’s life and experience
becomes possible. Negative distortions of reality are replaced with
positive assumptions, which result in one coming to understand the
right to be happy and free.
For many years after leaving the cult, I was suicidal. Years of abuse
and oppression had made me believe that I deserved to be
punished for leaving the group. I was brainwashed into thinking that
living without my leader would destroy me. Earlier trauma and
abuse reinforced the idea that I was no good and deserved to die.
But now I realize that that is not true. Through counseling and
education, I have learned that I deserve to live. I have a right to
speak my truth.
Now that the lockbox has been opened, I do not take anything
for granted. Like the skier healing from a broken leg, I am learning
to use my muscles again, learning to walk psychologically. I am
learning what it feels like to live and be free. I am learning to
tolerate good things. I am learning to accept the sound of my own
voice. Knowing now that I HAVE a voice, I am learning to
use it. Perhaps, one day, I will even learn to sing. ■
About the Author
Kristen Skedgell DeVoe
was born in Nyack, New York. When she
was 14, she was recruited into The Way
International, a religious fundamentalist
cult, and remained active until age 29
when her mother rescued her. After
leaving the cult, she attended Johns
Hopkins University then earned master’s
degrees from Yale Divinity School and
Columbia University School of Social Work.
Her book Losing the Way: A Memoir of Spiritual Longing,
Manipulation, Abuse and Escape (Bay Tree Publishing, 2008)
recounts her experience in The Way. She lives happily with her
husband, artist Edward Spaulding DeVoe, in the foothills of the
Berkshire Mountains where they enjoy their six children, four
grandchildren, and rescue dog, Addison. ■
ICSA_volume4Issue2_Final 8/9/13 8:31 PM Page 8

ow does an abusive church or organization recover its
spiritual integrity? The only answer I can give is to tell
how one such group did so. That group was the
organization of which I was a member for five and a half years,
Great Commission Churches (GCC). If and when other cults or
cult-like groups seek to reform themselves, they may find lessons
in the journey of GCC.
So how did GCC do it? Like most groups that end up either as
destructive cults or abusive churches, GCC did not begin that
way. From its origins in the late 1960s, GCC provided a caring
environment for many young Christians to begin a spiritual life
and to grow in that life. This church had a lot of the features that
one expects to characterize a church. Its members were a warm,
friendly bunch of people (mostly in their twenties, but also a few
older couples and their families). It was not bound by tradition
but sought to emphasize knowing and serving God according to
the teaching of the Bible. There was no emphasis on money—in
fact, there were no collections taken at all in those days. And
there had so far not been any drive to erect or purchase a build-
ing to serve as a meeting place (most meetings were held in
homes or on the campus of the University of
Arizona). In addition, church members often sought to help the
needy. In other words, the emphases seemed to be in the right
place.
However, things changed. Even in the early years, some of the
seeds of later abuses showed themselves to those with the
courage to look. Initially, GCC welcomed spiritual help from men
associated with the so-called “Open” or “Christian” Brethren (from
which many early GCC leaders had come) although, after a few
years, GCC founder and chief elder Jim McCotter
counseled local elders against inviting such “outsiders” to address
their groups. He was afraid these outsiders might teach
something he would have to correct afterward. Thus, GCC
gradually became more insular and exclusive, believing that it
was closer than any other church to reflecting the first-century-
church lifestyle and beliefs.
There were other things that made me uncomfortable. At the
time, however, they were things with which I felt I could live.
For example, the church leaders tried to get the members,
including those with growing families, to participate in the
on-campus “witnessing.” I thought this focus was an inversion of
priorities, at least for the latter. But I concluded that it was not
really a major error, and I was willing to participate occasionally
in the campus outreach so I let it slide.
Later, other things began to bother me, and I learned that I was
not the only one. Some examples were doctrinal, although they
did not affect primary beliefs of historic Christianity as they are
contained in the Apostles’ Creed and other early, historic church
statements of faith. The most troubling concerns were behavioral
in nature namely, authoritarianism and inconsistent and
hypocritical ethical standards. For example (based on a list by a
former elder),
• The church tended to regard people more for their utilitarian
value than for their true, essential worth. In other words, it
treated them as deployable agents in accomplishing the goal
of world evangelization more than as human individuals with
their own aptitudes and gifts, which were being wasted in this
recruiting-team environment.
• Uniformity around an evangelistic strategy became the
substitute for true biblical unity based on the sharing of our
common life in Christ. Thus, the focus was wrong. As the
Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it, the “chief end of man”
is “to glorify God, and enjoy Him forever.”
• Authoritarianism developed to maintain that uniformity for
example,
-Domination over members’ personal lives outside biblical
moral directives—e.g., telling them who could or could not
be their roommates, whether or not they could visit their
parents during the Christmas season, whom to marry or not
marry, and many other things.
-The tendency to make the elders’ interpretation of the
Scriptures the last word on the subject, virtually “sanctifying”
the elders’ teaching.
-Cultivation of uncritical submission and identification of
criticism as stemming from a “bad heart,” thus creating a
“non-falsifiable system.”
-A focus on eradicating and preventing “faction” and “slander”
(redefined as any criticism of the group, its leaders, or its
teachings, true or not, and even if it was not intended to be
negatively critical) as crucial sins.
-The cultivation of an "imitation principal [sic]" whereby the
members were encouraged to pattern their thinking and
behavior after their leaders, without critically evaluating
whether or not that thinking or behavior was biblical,
correct, or just.
• The movement had become basically a closed system that
allowed very little, if any, influence from the rest of the
Christian community, let alone the rest of society. Any such
influence tended to be carefully controlled.
• A sense of elitism was cultivated from the self-perception
that GCC was the only group that really followed the New
Testament pattern of church life.
• Loyalty to the movement, and especially to founder Jim McCotter,
who was the ultimate source of any developing changes in the
theology or practice, was highly cultivated as a result.
• Ethics drifted in a pragmatic direction, becoming ethics of
expediency, with a lack of integral consistency this shift led to
the justification of exaggeration, half-truths, and, at times,
outright lies and injustice in the treatment of people. In fact,
this atmosphere is what finally led Paul and Barb Martin and
others to break their ties with the movement.
Failure to go along with the plans, programs, and lifestyles that
national and local GCC leaders promoted often resulted in those
persons who opted out being regarded as less spiritually mature
and disobedient to God’s will. In short, these individuals were
looked on, often, as “dead wood.”Consequently, many concluded
they couldn’t live up to God’s standards and could only look
forward to living as “second-class” citizens in God’s kingdom.
The bottom line in all of this and more was that, in various ways
and to different degrees, people were being hurt.
Another individual who became alarmed at the gradual
deterioration of GCC was one of the elders in Columbus, Ohio,
Bill Taylor. During a meeting of national leaders in 1974, Bill
expressed his displeasure with the cultural ethos that founder
Jim McCotter was introducing into the movement. Bill accused
McCotter of acting like a “king-bishop,” compelling (or trying
to compel) members simply to accept his interpretation of the
Bible and fall in line with it, among other things.
H
An Abusive
Church Movement
Recovers Its
Balance
Back
From
the
Brink
By Lawrence A. Pile
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