Deprogramming: The Cults Fight Back

For months, an intense struggle has been going on between modern religious groups known popularly as “cults” and their enemies: parents of members, professional deprogrammers, and even—in some places—the political, judicial, and law-enforcement establishment.

It is hard to tell which side is winning. Ever since parents discovered last year that through conservatorship (guardianship) proceedings they can gain temporary legal custody of their adult young, they have been picking off members of the cults by the scores and possibly by the hundreds (see February 4 issue, page 57). During the period of custody, deprogrammers work at dislodging the member from his or her cult psychologically, and in more instances than not it seems to work. With the young person no longer interested in returning to the cult, the custody case is dropped, and there is not much else the cult can do about it in court.

But now the cults are fighting back, and they are getting strong support from legal experts and rights leaders, including some in the mainline church community. One important weapon is the lawsuit that can be filed by a member who survives—or escapes—deprogramming attempts and returns to the fold. There have been several such suits recently:

• Donna Seidenberg Bavis, 24, a Hare (pronounced hah-ree) Krishna devotee, last month filed a $500,000 federal lawsuit in Baltimore against eleven persons, including a judge in Montgomery County, Maryland, a lawyer, and several deprogrammers. It may be the first time a judge has been sued for issuing a secret order finding a person mentally incompetent without psychiatric testimony and due process. The case is the first major federal lawsuit on the East Coast designed to prevent the practice of deprogramming adult members of religious groups through court-issued guardianship orders. Judge Richard B. Latham’s order specifically authorized “lay persons” to counsel, examine, and treat Mrs. Bavis. She is represented by a coalition of lawyers from the Mental Health Law Project, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

• Wendy Helander, 20, a member of Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, filed a $9 million suit in New York last month against seven persons. She became a “Moonie” two years ago, and twice her parents seized her for unsuccessful deprogramming episodes. The second time, her suit alleges, she was taken from the church’s Barrytown, New York, campus by her parents and deprogrammers and held for eighty-six days in twelve places, where her civil rights were violated. She says she has been in hiding in church centers since February, 1976. Those sued include Ted Patrick, the pioneer deprogrammer from San Diego now serving time in a Colorado jail for such activities, Joseph Alexander, his wife Esther and son Joseph, Jr. (they help staff a deprogramming center and rehabilitation facility run by the Freedom of Thought Foundation in Tucson, Arizona), George Swope, an American Baptist minister who teaches at Westchester Community College in New York (he deprogrammed his daughter from the Moon group), and Citizens Engaged in Reuniting Families, an anti-cult organization Swope helps to direct. Attorney Jeremiah Gutman says his client’s suit seeks to prevent imposition of the thoughts and desires of one person on another by unlawful and forceful means. (A Connecticut court earlier awarded Miss Helander $5,000 from Patrick.)

• Father Philaret Taylor, 22, a member of an Old Catholic monastery in Oklahoma City, filed a $3.3 million suit against twelve persons, including his parents, the Alexanders, and the three top Freedom of Thought Foundation figures: Kevin M. Gilmartin, Michael Trauscht, and Wayne N. Howard.

• Susan Jungclaus, a member of Victor Weirwille’s The Way sect, filed a $20,000 suit in Minnesota against her parents, a Lutheran pastor, and five others for attempting to deprogram her. (Her parents countered with a $1 million suit against The Way for alienation of affection, but the judge threw it out of court.)

• Nancy Lofgren, 22. of Rochester, Minnesota, filed an $800,000 suit against twelve persons, including a county sheriff and two deputies, for attempting to deprogram her from a small sect led by Brother Rama Behera of Shewano, Wisconsin. Behera is described as a Hindu convert to Christianity who claims that Jesus appeared to him.

• Julie Appelbaum, a Jewish woman with no religious training who joined the Moon movement, filed a $1 million suit against the Freedom of Thought Foundation. Under a guardianship order, she was whisked away from a Moon center in Oakland, California, to Tucson, where she smuggled out a letter to her lawyer, Ralph Baker. He succeeded in getting her a court-ordered psychological test, and as a result she was released. Baker, of Armenian Apostolic and Seventh-day Adventist extraction, is a leading West Coast foe of deprogramming. He says a common criminal has more rights than a person in conservatorship proceedings.

Some parents still resort to pre-conservatorship tactics like Patrick’s early body-snatch routine—but at considerable risk. A Montgomery County, Maryland, grand jury recently handed down an indictment against nine persons for abducting 23-year-old Karen Marie Mischke, a worker in a Moon office in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. The nine, including Miss Mischke’s mother, are charged with kidnapping, false imprisonment, assault, and other crimes, and if they are found guilty they can face prison sentences of up to sixty years.

Deprogramming received some bad press with the disclosure last month by Houston Chronicle reporter Louis Moore that Patrick had attempted to deprogram a member of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Houston. Although the church is charismatic oriented it can hardly be classified as a cult (Patrick maintains it is on his list of 5,000). Huffed Bishop J. Milton Richardson of Houston: “It is a bona fide Episcopal church in good standing in the Diocese of Texas.”

Patrick was retained for the Houston assignment by the American Baptist mother of Patrick Willis, 28, who grew up in American Baptist and Evangelical Free churches. The deprogramming attempt took place last November—when everyone assumed Patrick was in an Orange County, California, jail, doing time in a deprogramming case. Actually, he was serving under a work-release program with the understanding that he would refrain from questionable activities.

Reporter Moore also came across Joyce Daly, 20, who was deprogrammed out of The Church at Houston, a branch of the Local Church movement of evangelist Witness Lee. The deprogramming team included a psychiatrist and an Assemblies of God campus minster. Miss Daly, who was a member of The Church for about eighteen months, now believes it is a cult. She describes her attendance at three ten-day Witness Lee conferences in Anaheim, California, as “brainwashing” experiences. Elders of the church deny it is a cult, and they say the Anaheim conferences are no more intensive than those sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention.

Like Miss Daly, many of those who undergo deprogramming emerge with strong negative views toward the group they were once willing to die for, and they become active in trying to lead others out.

The batting average of the deprogrammers may be reflected by the case of “the Faithful Five” in San Francisco. In March, California superior court judge S. Lee Vavuris ruled that five adult members (four women and one man, ranging in age from 21 to 26) of the Unification Church should be placed in custody of their parents for thirty days. He did not bar deprogramming during the custody but specified that the parents should be present at all times.

Lawyer Ralph Baker appealed the ruling on behalf of the Unification Church, and four days later the California Court of Appeals decreed that no attempts should be made to change the five’s religious faith while the constitutionality of the conservatorship law was being argued (deprogrammers, however, had already done some work). On April 12 the appeals court released the five from their parents’ custody and allowed those who wished to to return to the Moon church. Only the man, John Hovard, Jr., 24, returned. The women instead went to Tucson for a month of rehabilitation. They said that “hearing both sides” in court and talking with ex-Moonies between sessions led them to make the break. One woman, Barbara Underwood, said she now believes she was “definitely under mind control” as a Moonie and that the issue must be exposed to the American public. Retorted Hovard: “Deprogramming is brainwashing!”

Some powerful voices are speaking out on the topic. Deprogramming, says executive director James Wood of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, “is a serious violation of religious liberty and poses a threat to groups other than cults.” And rights specialist Dean Kelley of the National Council of Churches calls deprogramming “the most outrageous infringement of religious liberty in a generation.”

In Significant

Publication of the new California state government telephone book was held up for more than a month over a religious issue. On the cover is a two-color satellite photograph of Earth, accompanied by a quotation from the first chapter of Genesis: “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” The quote raised questions of whether the directory is constitutionally permissible because of its cover design, which was selected by Governor Gerald Brown. Attorney General Yvelle J. Younger was asked to study the issue and render a legal opinion.

Weeks later, Younger ruled that the book is okay constitutionally. He compared the quotation to the phrase “In God We Trust” on U.S. coins. Both, he said, are devoid of religious significance.

Open Tenure

How much is academic respectability worth? For Davidson College, sometimes described by admirers as “the Princeton of Southern Presbyterians,” it may cost the last link in the faith commitment it once had.

Trustees of the North Carolina college approved on first reading last month a proposal that would allow non-Christians to hold tenured faculty and staff positions. Final approval is expected at an October board meeting. Hundreds of faculty members and students had pressured the board to change the rules after the college withdrew a job offer to Ronald Linden, a political science teacher who is Jewish. Linden was offered a teaching post after being told of the school’s policy that generally restricts tenure to “committed Christians.” He accepted the offer but said he found the policy “repugnant” and would work to abolish it. At this point officials withdrew the offer.

At the height of the controversy the American Association of University Professors and the American Political Science Association announced they would investigate the case. (Linden has since accepted a job with the University of Pittsburgh.)

Andrew Leigh Gunn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, defended the church college’s right to “use religious criteria in selecting” teachers except when the college uses tax funds. Davidson, he said, received $170,000 under the North Carolina direct-tuition grant program that was recently upheld by a federal court. “We believe the court erred grievously in its decision, and the Davidson College case highlights it,” asserted Gunn.

Endangered Species

Twenty-two of the United Methodist Church’s 107 colleges and universities will have to close, merge, or find major new sources of financial support.

That is the upshot of findings by a special fifteen-member UMC commission. The commission declined to announce the names of the schools, choosing to notify the presidents first.

“This is not a death list nor a decision to withdraw church support but a ‘most endangered’ list,” commented T. Michael Elliott, the commission’s executive director. He and others, however, indicated that closure is a likely possibility for most of the schools. The findings, said Elliott, are based on public records and data from institutional audits.

The UMC sinks $20 million annually, plus additional money for capital improvements, into its educational institutions. It supports more colleges and universities than any other Protestant body. The schools are related to the UMC in a variety of ways, from loose historical connections to outright ownership by a regional unit of the denomination. Most support is channeled through regional units, but the twelve predominantly black colleges receive direct national support.

Seventeen other schools have questionable health, said the commission in its report. It advised the UMC’s staff to complete a major study of denominational higher education by 1980 that would lead to the recommended disaffiliation or merger of as many as thirty schools, leaving “roughly seventy-five institutions of maximum academic and fiscal strength” in which the UMC’s resources “would be concentrated.”

The commission also recommended:

• That scholarship and loans be limited to UMC members attending denominational institutions.

• That as a condition of continued affiliation with the church, a college or university must be accredited, must submit a written statement of agreement regarding its church relationship, and must be financially viable.

Catholic Labor Pains

William Ball can turn a neat phrase. A lawyer from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he has a national reputation based on some of the phrases he has turned to win church-state cases. One of his toughest cases is now before the courts, and he has been doing some overtime semantic work.

He is representing pastors in the Philadelphia Catholic archdiocese who do not want the National Labor Relations Board to conduct a union-representation election among lay teachers in their parochial elementary schools. The federal agency has no business in the church schools, Ball declared. He likened the NLRB’s competence in religious matters to that of “an orangutan playing a violin.”

Supreme Court justice William J. Brennan, Jr., was not very impressed by the argument, however. In May he cleared the way for the election to be held this month, but he ordered that the ballots must be impounded until federal courts dispose of certain appeals. Ball has promised an appeal to the full Supreme Court on behalf of the pastors. They have vowed to refuse to cooperate in any way with the election. They say that they will deny the use of church property and will refuse to provide lists of teachers to the NLRB or the union.

A similar case from Gary, Indiana, was turned back by the Supreme Court early last month. The tribunal refused to hear any arguments of the constitutional issues until all “administrative remedies” are exhausted by the bishop who wants to prevent NLRB involvement in a disputed election there. In a “friend of the court” brief in that case, the house counsel for the American Baptist Churches argued that the NLRB should not be allowed to become excessively entangled in church affairs.

An appeal is also coming to the nation’s top court over the lay-teacher unionization issue from the archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Lawyers for all the bishops fighting the NLRB are having to weigh their words lest they seem to contradict the church’s social teachings regarding the rights of workers to organize.

Expensive Help

A 1971 firebombing of a grocery store in the North Carolina coastal city of Wilmington has become an international issue. One reason the world knows about it is that the United Church of Christ has put over $500,000 into the case, in addition to $400,000 in bond money for the defendants—better known as “The Wilmington Ten.”

A North Carolina judge, after a two-week hearing, last month denied a new trial for the ten. Soviet journalists and East German television crews came to Burgaw, North Carolina, to report on the hearing. As a result, when the representatives of the signatory nations of the Helsinki accords meet in Belgrade this summer to review human rights in Europe and North America, the Wilmington case is likely to be Exhibit Number One to show that the United States is not without problems.

The principal defendant and the leader of the ten is Ben Chavis, field representative of the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice. The UCC claims he was dispatched to Wilmington in 1971 to calm a tense racial situation, but the state accused him of leading a group that set the store afire. The ten were convicted in 1972. During last month’s hearing, witnesses at the original trial recanted some of the testimony that led to the convictions. One of the key witnesses, however, recanted his earlier recantation. The judge ruled that there had been no “substantial denial” of the group’s constitutional rights.

The UCC plans to appeal the latest North Carolina decision. Chavis was reportedly ordained by an independent congregation, but he does not hold UCC ministerial credentials. He was hired by the UCC agency in 1970 as a community organizer. His eventual cost to the 1.8-million-member denomination may eventually run to more than $1 million. UCC president Joseph H. Evans acknowledged that it took a lot of work to keep up the support for the case. He said, “You’ve got to tell the story all the time, up and down, across the church through campaigns, literature, meetings.”

Among those in Burgaw to rally the pro-Chavis forces was Angela Davis, who drew wide church attention several years ago when United Presbyterian funds were used in her defense. The Marxist teacher was also the star of a Wilmington Ten rally in Paris.

Ford: The End Is Not Yet

In a fifteen-minute commencement address at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, former President Gerald R. Ford said that his faith in Christ had deepened during his stay in the White House. “My presidency led to a great reliance on God,” he said, mentioning how he had sought God’s help and wisdom on various occasions. Leaving the White House was “not the end of the world,” he affirmed, because he possessed “the conviction that God works his own way on our lives.”

Ford’s voice cracked with emotion as he spoke about his wife’s struggle with cancer in 1974: “Those were the days we came to a deeper understanding about our relationship with ourselves and Jesus. We could see for the first time that Christ’s strength is made perfect through our own weaknesses.”

The 181 graduating students and 2,000 visitors gave the former President a warm ovation. Ford remained on the platform to congratulate his son Michael, 26, the recipient of a Master of Divinity degree. The younger Ford plans to engage in a youth ministry.

Camp Safety

If youth camps across the country—including church camps—have a safe season this summer, it will be with no thanks to the federal government. Capitol Hill advocates of federal regulation of camp health and safety are not optimistic about getting any of their bills through Congress even though the full Committee on Education and Labor of the House voted for such legislation last month. In 1975 the House passed a Youth Camp Safety Act but the Senate did not.

For the simple reason that the Carter Administration is not yet ready to join the crusade, the Committee-approved bill, H.R. 6761, is not expected to pass this year. C. Grant Spaeth, a legislative specialist in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, asked a congressional subcommittee to defer action until 1978, when the Administration will decide on the appropriate federal role. He said surveys conducted in three states indicate that “youngsters are far safer in camps than in their own communities.”

The Administration position was praised on the House floor by Republican John B. Anderson, an evangelical leader from Illinois who has listened sympathetically to many Christian camp operators opposed to federal regulation. Anderson offered an alternative bill that would provide a one-time, three-year grant program to encourage states to establish campsafety programs. The majority of states have no camp-safety legislation or policies on the books, according to a research source. (Many states leave such matters in the hands of local jurisdictions, whose standards may vary widely.)

Although H.R. 6761 does not spell out specific standards for camps, it provides for an office of camp safety that would formulate guidelines and work with state agencies to ensure safe facilities, a healthful environment, and qualified, adequate supervision.

The House committee claimed support for its bill “from groups most experienced in youth camps,” such as the American Camping Association, the Boy Scouts, and the Girl Scouts. Opponents at hearings included operators of independent religious camps, the Southern Baptist conference center in Glorietta, New Mexico, and Christian Camping International. Many fear privately that regulation will result eventually in unrealistic standards and prohibitive costs.

The Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs has kept a close eye on the proposed legislation without taking a position. “No church-state issue exists,” commented a spokesperson. The group’s executive director, James E. Wood, Jr., did draft language that strengthens the “non-interference” section of the bill. The Wood wording specifies that no government agencies enforcing the law can dictate the religious affiliation, admission policy, or program of any camp “operated by a church, association, or a convention of churches, or their agencies.”

In California, meanwhile, two Christian organizations that operate camp facilities and programs failed in their attempts to avoid paying state unemployment insurance taxes. The Mount Hermon Association and Young Life had been considered “churches” and were not paying the taxes until their cases were taken to the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board. The groups have appealed the board decision, which reversed an earlier ruling by an administrative law judge. The outcome of the case is being watched closely, since it could affect state policy toward all ministries not controlled by a church or denomination.

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