Shouts echo across the bunks. Sunlight from the crack of dawn seeps through the windows. Another day of torture begins. It’s been a year since you’ve left the compound, and you don’t think you ever will again.
Every day, across the globe, thousands of men and women wake up to the same situation - trapped in a cycle of debilitating abuse and egregious psychological manipulation. These groups are called cults, and through targeting those at their lowest, they have recruited over a million members across the globe and forced them into being cut off from our world, causing a loss of identity and a significant shift in their sense of self, leading to a loss of decision making. However, the most deceptive, nefarious thing these groups do is take in children. Young minds are incredibly malleable as their entire lives are shaped by their experiences, easily exploitable and able to be indoctrinated with malicious and ignorant ideas that can affect them throughout their whole life. What effect do cults have on children, and how can we reduce it?
To truly understand cults, we have to look inside one, such as the Family International (formerly known as the Children of God). Founded in 1968, it spread worldwide in the ’70s, settling in over a hundred countries. However, it has one disgusting, truly insidious secret - sexual abuse. Its founder, David Berg, claims that love and sex are for everyone and every age. This is horrendously wrong. This is horrendously inappropriate. This is horrendously unjust, immoral and unacceptable. We simply cannot stand by as this issue continues to grow and infect our society. We have to protect those who are too young to protect themselves.
Not only are children being forced in after their parents are recruited, but babies are being born into this hell too. According to author Don Lattin, in his book “Jesus Freaks”, over 13,000 children were born between 1971 and 2001, saying that mothers “with six, eight, ten, thirteen kids were not uncommon”. The cause of this is “Flirty Fishing”. This was a method of “evangelism” used by female members of Berg’s cult. They would lure men in and recruit them using sexual appeal - a truly disturbing tactic.
Lastly, these issues that lie in deep emotional scars left on these children don’t just wash away - they are there forever. Fear of the outside world, fear of the unknown, fear of the future. Many are left with long-term psychological trauma and turn to drugs to cope. This is a cycle that needs to be broken. We need to protect the children of the world from these sinister groups. We cannot tolerate this level of abuse, where children are pulled from their beds in the middle of the night as part of a “sharing schedule”, where they are groped and raped by David Berg, and brutally beaten if they have a “poor performance”.
What kind of world do we want to create for our children – one where they’re free to thrive, or one where they’re trapped in a cycle of abuse and fear?
As a society, we cannot and should not tolerate these issues, yet there remains little awareness of cults themselves and support and acceptance of their victims. Even in privileged countries such as the United States, blatant corruption leads to offenders out on the streets without so much as a slap on the wrist, while those who need support are abandoned and ignored even by their own families. Even after 56 years of brutal torture and abhorrent abuse, the Family International continues to stand strong, inhabiting six continents and over 100 countries. We owe it to ourselves to take these sexual offenders off the street. We owe it to humanity to enact change. We owe it to past, present and future generations to take action and better the world.
While the Family International does have widespread reach, they are only one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of abusive cults across the globe. No one person or even government can tackle this problem alone. However, there is still something each of us can do to help, even with our limited influence. With the birth of social media and the internet came a place for people to campaign for change, and now is the time to take advantage of that. We must campaign to tackle the problem by the roots and provide support for those vulnerable people targetted by cults and manifest a culture where this is okay. Secondly, education is key - campaigning for the government to update the PSHE curriculum to teach children the warning signs of cults would contribute massively to slowing down their growth.
In conclusion, the horrors that children experience in cults are stark reminders of the danger that awaits people throughout their whole lives. We have seen how cults prey on the innocent, who have nothing more left to give, and then scar them with the memories of trauma. Yet, we’ve also seen hope. Hope that, through education and support, we can create a world where children are protected, and cults are left as a remnant of the past. Now, we must use that hope to demand change. To demand a society free from fear. Free from abuse. Free from trauma. We owe it to ourselves and to each other to relegate cults to stories of the past.
What can be done to prevent people from joining cults in the first place?
If we want to stop people from joining cults, we need a multi-faceted approach. Firstly, education is extremely important. We need to educate about the warning signs of cults, such as manipulation and control, and isolating members from their families. We can do this through awareness programs, such as on social media and physical posters, and other forms of educational programs. Furthermore, we need more support for vulnerable individuals who are most likely to be preyed upon by cults by raising awareness for where people can seek help, and create a culture where this is acceptable and not looked down upon.
How can we support individuals who have escaped from cults and want to rebuild their lives?
People who have escaped cults face significant challenges simply just accustoming to the outside world. Their trauma and abuse often goes overlooked by family members and trusted friends. To help overcome these problems, we need to make sure they know that support is there, and we must provide it. Counselling and therapy is key in these situations, and by creating safe spaces and connecting them with others who have been through similar experiences, where they can find a community and try to start living life for themselves.
Should governments play a larger role in regulating cults and preventing abuse?
I think that governments and law enforcement has a critical role to play in regulation and abuse prevention, but right now they simply don’t do enough. Even after 56 years of abuse, the Family International is still operational to this day. Cults are not a thing of the past - they live now in the present, and they will most likely continue to thrive in the future if our governments don’t enact change. They have to take a strong proactive approach into the investigation and shutting down of dangerous cults by enacting new laws for change.
How does manipulation and control affect the accountability of cult leaders?
To use the example of the Family International again, after 56 years and countless accusations of abuse, there has only ever been one conviction - Derek Lincoln, who was jailed for 11 and a half years in 2020 for the rape of two nine and ten-year-olds. Abusive cults, by their very nature, are constantly accused of abuse by victims coming forward. However, the offender actually facing justice is very rare. One reason is that cults often destroy evidence and witnesses are often so indoctrinated that they aren’t willing to come forward or are not aware that what they’ve gone through is not okay, sometimes even trying to defend their abusers due to Stockholm Syndrome. All of this leads to minimal accountability for those who deserve to face justice.
What tactics do cults use to emotionally manipulate their members?
Cults use a wide variety of manipulative tactics, but some include emotional blackmail, where guilt, shame or fear is used to control members behaviour through threats. An example is limiting contact with members’ families, leaving them willing to do anything just to talk to them again. Controlling the flow of information from the inside world is also a key tactic, making it difficult to cling on to what the world was before, and making it harder to fight against their ideology, as it is all they have ever known.