Cult Experts Try to Ease Anxieties, Illuminate Issues

In New York, cult expert Marcia Rudin got more calls than she could possibly answer, forcing her to turn away anxious parents whose children had slipped deep into mysterious sects.

In Los Angeles, Debbie Pine dashed from one television interview to another, laying out the warning signs of cult affiliation for a suddenly attentive public.

In Alabama, Craig Branch and his staff of three were so overwhelmed by the surging interest in cults that he wished for “air traffic controllers” to direct the onslaught of inquiries.

Used to toiling in obscurity, anti-cult warriors across the country are seizing the national spotlight in the aftermath of the mass suicides in San Diego County. For them, the deaths in Rancho Santa Fe present the biggest opportunity since Waco.

Although the deaths of the 39 Heaven’s Gate members deeply troubled these activists, they welcomed the chance to reinvigorate what is otherwise a low-profile trench war, saving one cult member at a time.

“We’ve been screaming about this for years,” said Rudin, director of the International Cult Education Program. “Unfortunately, the world does not pay attention until there are deaths involved.”

These activists--some of whom operate out of their homes with just a telephone and fax machine or computer--know they have to strike now because their moment in the spotlight might be all too brief. If the reaction to the 1993 deaths of 80 Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, was any guide, they expect the phone calls to taper off within a month.

That leaves little time to mount campaigns that they hope will attract new volunteers and desperately needed donations for scattered, poorly financed organizations often ridiculed by their targets as alarmist.

The anti-cult organizations say they are usually contacted by panicked family members after a relative or a friend has joined a suspicious group and begun to pull away from those close to them. Their primary job in such cases is to provide information and emotional support to distraught callers.

But unlike most weeks, the steady trickle of calls has turned into a torrent.

For Branch, southeast regional director of the evangelical Christian Watchmen Fellowship, a Texas-based organization with offices in six states, the deluge began at 6 on the morning after the suicides were discovered.

“I was just getting out of bed,” he said. “My wife handed me the phone and said, ‘It started.’ And it had.”

For most of the groups, the first wave of calls came largely from the media. And many of the counter-cult experts like Pine pounced on the chance to reach a mass audience rather than counseling individuals, one on one.

Pine, director of the Maynard Bernstein Resource Center on Cults, began Friday with an appearance on a local television morning news show.

Speaking earnestly into the camera, Pine ticked off the signs of cult behavior--a person distancing himself from loved ones, acting secretive and offering vague answers to questions about their activities.

“They always ask me the same question: My brother or sister is involved in this group. Is it a cult?” Pine said. “I encourage them to be very supportive, not to be afraid, to plant seeds of doubt about the group but to do it in a respectful way.”

Rudin of the International Cult Education Program spent Friday with a telephone glued to her ear. By early afternoon, she had stacks of messages to return, and the answering machine had run out of tape. Some callers wanted guidance to reclaim their relatives from sects they had joined, and others simply wanted the most basic information, such as what constitutes a cult. Even ex-cult members were calling, their emotional wounds ripped open by the grisly images from Rancho Sante Fe.

“They’ve been re-traumatized by the shock that this could have happened to them,” Rudin said. “It brings back their anxiety.”

Rudin scrambled to keep pace with the barrage of calls from reporters and members of the public, telling some anxious families to call back next week.

“People are suddenly re-panicked about cults,” said Rudin, whose program is affiliated with the American Family Foundation, a secular, research-oriented organization based in New York and Bonita Springs, Fla. “I haven’t been able to handle them all.”

UCLA psychiatrist Louis J. West, an outspoken cult critic, said counter-cult groups like Rudin’s are struggling to keep their doors open.

“The most important national group, the Cult Awareness Network, has been destroyed,” he said. “They were targeted and sued and forced out of business.”

The Chicago-based organization, beset by a barrage of lawsuits by the Church of Scientology, was forced into bankruptcy last year. Its name, logo, post office box and telephone number were sold to the highest bidder: a Los Angeles lawyer and member of the Church of Scientology, who licensed the network to a foundation with ties to the church.

David J. Bardin, an attorney who is appealing the bankruptcy sale on behalf of former network executives, said he is outraged that people affiliated with the Church of Scientology are now operating its hotline and delivering what he called a skewed message.

“This . . . causes confusion to the public,” Bardin said.

An officer of the reconstituted network disputed the characterization, saying the current staff delivers factual information without anti-cult “hysteria.”

“We felt that the old Cult Awareness Network was an equal-opportunity hate group,” said Nancy O’Meara, the group’s treasurer, who described herself as a Scientologist. Those now answering the phones, she said, offer advice rather than the perspective of “one person who had a bad experience with one group and created a hysteria for all religious groups.”

The mass suicides also reignited a related debate among scholars and other experts as to what exactly constitutes a cult, or even if the word is unfairly pejorative. On the conservative evangelical side of the spectrum, some still label the Mormon Church and Christian Science as cults, while many others consider them legitimate religions.

One leading sociologist of religion criticized anti-cultists for spreading what he called fear and misstatements in the wake of the Rancho Santa Fe suicides.

“What we need to say is that 99.9% [of cults] are benign and these unfounded generalizations are ridiculous,” said Stuart Wright, editor of “Armageddon in Waco” and spokesman for the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Religious Research Assn. “I’ve seen a parade of so-called experts on the major TV networks, and not a single one is what I would consider a neutral scholar who has expertise in this area.”

But one anti-cult educator said that even the most seemingly benign groups can pose a threat to those seekers who allow others to control their lives and even determine their fate.

“Any type of group where the leader is charismatic and has total authority over members is dangerous,” said Corey Slavin, 33, a one-time cult member and the former director of the Maynard Bernstein Cult Resource Center in Los Angeles. “If you compare them to God, then that is a cult and that is destructive.”

Jonathan Rosman, a forensic psychiatrist in Pasadena who has treated former cult members, said that a surprisingly large pool of people can be susceptible to subtle recruitment from warm, friendly people who are slow to reveal their true agendas.

“People have a sense of invulnerability when it comes to cults--’I’m not crazy and I’m not going to be influenced by them,’ ” Rosman said. “But these are very sophisticated groups with very sophisticated means to wheedle themselves into people’s lives.”

Counter-cult activists, who have frequently been sued and harassed for their views, saw a measure of vindication in the fact that a charismatic leader apparently persuaded 38 followers to take their own lives.

“When an event like this happens, it helps the nation see that we are not crying Chicken Little,” said James Walker, president of the Watchmen Fellowship. “These groups can be dangerous, psychologically and spiritually, even when they don’t commit suicide, because the power and influence is still in place.”