September 22, 2015 • 37 mins
The fear of cults in the 1970s drove Americans to look the other way on kidnappings, abuse and torture of cult members by deprogrammers - but did it even work?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know Fromhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, always whacky Jerry. So this is stuff you
should know once again. Sixty seconds preceding the record button
(00:24):
being pressed is the gold. I wish we could sell
that stuff, sell it on the street. People be hooked
on you know what the street value of that minute is? What?
How about five bucks? And it's not bad? Yeah? Uh, Chuck, Yes,
have you ever been in a cult? Um? No, not technically,
(00:48):
not at all. Remember we've done episodes on Colts I'm brainwashing. Uh.
This is pretty much the natural extension of that progression. Yeah.
And we talked a little bit about deep programming and
the cults. One watching probably, but this one, it turns out,
has a lot of interesting history I didn't know about. Yes, man,
it is a dark spot on America's recent path yet again,
(01:13):
yet another one, because apparently the powers that they really
got everybody so scared over things like the communist threat
or nuclear weapons or what have you that America is
basically it's like a herd of spook cattle for many decades,
and they they we channeled our anxieties out on anything
(01:34):
other or different. And this is a great case of that. Yeah,
and the courts will get to this, but they said
roundly that you can kidnap and torture and rape people
as long as it's out of love, as long as
those people are weirdos. Yeah, as long as it's apparent
loving their child in the harshest extreme way. Man, it's good.
(01:54):
Imagine crazy what people went through nie so Um, the
whole thing. We should say, like America did lose its
mind collectively for many years. And it happens from time
and time started in good old Salem before there wasn't
even in America. It's a long tradition here in this
country of everybody, yeah going crazy. Um. And like I said,
(02:18):
this is a case of it. But this case did
coalesce around certain things. It wasn't just out of the blue.
It wasn't out of nowhere, um for the to start
off with. In the late sixties, early seventies, Um, the
there was a real division between generations in the United States. Huge.
(02:41):
There was the parents who still remember the fifties, were
raised in the fifties, born in the fifties, maybe, but
definitely we're a little more buttoned, buttoned up and up
with ike. Then their kids were. Okay, So imagine if
you have kids and they're going through this rebellious phase
and they're smoking pot, and they're like wearing motorcycle boots
(03:04):
and rocking out to the Beatles and like flipping you
off every time you look at them, and then all
of a sudden, this weird tranquility comes over them and
they start wearing robes and they shave their head except
for there's a long ponytail in the back. Or they're
still wearing boots and smoking pot. Listen to the Beetles, right,
or or they start wearing bow ties and um like
(03:26):
quoting scripture to you. Wouldn't you be like, well, this
is a little weird. This is a little odd. Something's
going on here with with my kid. My kid who's
twenty underwent like a serious religious conversion that has never
been seen before in our family. That's a little weird.
That's not one I approve of. Yeah, So there's these
groups that at the time were called cults, but today,
(03:49):
if you read sociology texts or studies or whatever, they're
called new religious movements. Sex right with the ct yeah, UM,
and these groups are basically at the time they were
all termed cults. And you usually when you think cold
especially United States, it's like, um, some sort of Eastern
(04:11):
religion or something like that. But it turns out the
cult movement of the early seventies, late sixties and into
the eighties where actually um for the most part Bible based,
like Christian cults, but they they took Christian beliefs and
teachings and went really far out there with them. UM
(04:32):
or there was a huge influx of Eastern thought in
Eastern religion into the United States too, And anybody who
joined this group joined a cult. But today if you
call him a cult, it's not very nice. You call
him a new religious movement or a sect right or
in the case of the Source Family, which I've talked
about as being my favorite cult. Yeah, they just like
(04:53):
to have sex and do drugs a lot. The Source, right,
they were a cult though, Uh well yeah, sure by
those definitions right at the time, Yeah, I'd call him
a commune now probably that had a band and a
charismatic hang gliding frontman. Right. The charismatic thing is a
(05:14):
huge thing. That's usually the one thing that is the
commonality and all new religious movements they are centered around, um,
a central figure. But as the guy who wrote this article, um,
which is a pretty good article, I have to say,
this is not the Grabster, was it. No, there was
a new a newbie. This newbie has taken the grabsters stuff.
(05:38):
Yeah it should have been the Grabster. Well, the Grabster
has gotten a serious focus on all things dungeons and
dragons these days. A right, I oh nine, good for him.
Yeah he's moved on and uh. But anyway, the author
of this article points out that cole is it's a
very slippery word. It has like an in group out
(05:58):
group kind of sent a mentality attached to the point
is over the over the years, Um. This whole idea
of your kid going undergoing a religious conversion and then
just kind of becoming different, it was bothersome and worrisome
(06:19):
to the parents. But then Jonestown happened and all of
a sudden, any kind of semblance of law or religious
freedom or anything like that went right out the window
because it was shown and even before that, thanks to
the Manson family, but really, UM, with Jonestown, it was
shown that these cults that supposedly up to that point
(06:40):
people thought were harmless or even helpful, um could be
very destructive. Over nine people died. Uh. So you know,
I get it. I get why people would be upset
about perhaps their children joining something that in any way,
shape or form resembles jonestown. So what do you do? Well,
(07:04):
you could hire someone to kidnap and torture and beat
them and yell at them into submission a k A
D D programming a k A UH brainwashing or I
guess they would call it reverse brainwashing. Right. That was
kind of the key. Is this idea that, um, you
were combating this conversion to a new religious movement or
(07:27):
a cult group or whatever, um based on the idea
that your kid couldn't possibly have undergone this conversion and
join this group based on his or her own free will.
That's right. So thanks to that mindset UH and a
guy named Ted Patrick we'll talk about right now, the
(07:50):
Cult Awareness Network was formed and Ted was There were
there were many D programmers. We don't know about many,
but there were a handful of D programmers in this
time period, but Mr Patrick sort of led the way. Uh.
He was born in the Red Light district of Chattanooga, Tennessee,
and apparently had a really bad speech impediment such there
(08:13):
that he couldn't even communicate with people. So he dove
into religion and what he said was, quote, it wasn't
long before I could think of was hell, fire and
damnation and um so, he had a bad experience with
religion growing up and then had an opportunity in the
early seventies to uh go and save somebody's kid who
(08:38):
fell into what they called a cult. He's offered a job, yes,
so there it was a scriptural based um Christian group
called the Children of God now called the International Family,
and apparently, um they had tried to recruit Ted's son
and nephew out on the beach in San Diego, and
(09:01):
Ted was like, what do you mean some group tried
to recruit you. I guess I'll just go infiltrate this group. Yeah.
Well he was also approached by parents who's children were
in this what they called the cult, So yeah, he
infiltrate it and said you know what, Uh, they were
brainwashed and I'm the guy that can fix it for
a fee. Yeah, which is weird because um so, Ted
(09:24):
Patrick and the somebody uh named Mia Donovan came out
with a documentary recently called Deprogrammed. I'd like to see that.
Uh yeah, apparently it's very tough to find and get
your hands on, but it's out there somewhere. Um, and
it's all about Ted Patrick, Ted Black Lightning Patrick is
his name, and he um. He was an unlikely candidate
(09:47):
to become the face and the leader of what was
an anti cult movement that had arisen in the United
States thanks to Jonestown and thanks to the fact that
kids were joining cults left and yeah, um, he was
a high school dropout, like he said, he was a
he had had his own um experiences with scripture and
(10:09):
Bible beating and all of that kind of stuff, and he,
I guess was his heart was in the right place
from what I understand, But he did some really really
questionable stuff over the years after he formed the Colt
Action or Awareness Network. Do you think his heart was
in the right place. That's that's how MEA Donovan puts it.
(10:30):
I think he's trying to make money. So that was
another thing too. Supposedly he was working not for profit,
that his expenses were paid and he wasn't really pocketing
the money. Himself. But he went the other way pretty
quickly because at one point he was charging up to
grand which would be the equivalent of about a hundred
(10:52):
and twenty dollars for each case today to uh to deprogram,
to kidnap and deprogram your child. Yeah, a lot of
mone uh so he uh. He basically at the very
beginning said you know what, uh, how do we get
away with this? And he said, I think if we
are working with the parents, then we won't be prosecuted
(11:15):
for kidnapping because it's their own kid. So I won't
buy proxy beat affiliated as an accomplice because it's their children. Yeah,
you can't kidnap your own child. In ninete No, you can't.
UM and so that worked. At the time, twenty one
was the federal age for miners, right or for an adult.
(11:39):
Anything below twenty one you're a minor unless the state
had gone in and rewritten law and said now it's
actually eighteen or nineteen or whatever. So that that covered
like a pretty decent amount of the um emerging cult population. Yeah,
And he also figured that I won't get in trouble
because once we have freed these people and program, then
(12:00):
they won't breast charges like they'll be delighted exactly there.
They're brainwashed. All we have to do is on brainwashed them.
The other way that he figured out UM they could
be protected by law was if if the member, the
cult member, was an adult, they could apply for what's
called the conservatorship. And this is basically um based on
(12:24):
that old kind of law where uh husband could have
his hysterical wife committed if he didn't like her attitude,
that kind of thing where there's a very very loose
burden of proof on demonstrating that the person was out
of their mind, so much so that in this point
in time in America, if you were UM high, if
(12:45):
you hired a cult deep programmer, all you had to
do was also shell out five bucks or something for
a psychologist who would come in and say, the very
fact that they are a member of this cult demonstrates
that they are mentally ill, and therefore power over them
should be granted to their parents, even those persons an adult.
And once that power was granted to the parent, the
(13:07):
parent could extend that power to the cult de programmers,
who would then go and kidnap the cult member and
then begin the process of deep programming. Yeah, and they
wouldn't even make any attempts to assess their mental state.
It was just sort of I don't know about grandfather Den,
but it was just sort of lumped in under the
umbrella of the conservatorship. Thank you again, psychology. Way to go. So, uh, well,
(13:31):
should we talk about some of his greatest hips. Well,
let's take a let's take a break first. M alright, So, Patrick,
(14:07):
the first thing he did when he first started doing
this was because he didn't really have a shop set
up or a staff at this point, he's he hired
um thugs, street thugs too do the kidnapping, right. He
would just pay dudes that, look, we're tough ruffians as
they were called, you know, how to abduct these kids,
you know, like with um whenever you hear like of
(14:29):
a um a private investigator making air quotes like is
also involved in like a jewel heist or something like that,
where there's that real like gray area that's occupied by
some people who are maybe working on the side of
the law, but really they're doing really unlawful things to
achieve those ends. These are the kind of people that
(14:50):
were hired by the Cult Awareness Network, That's right. Uh,
And he eventually was joined by someone named Sandra Sachs,
who was a housewife whose son was deprogrammed, and from
I believe the Harry Christnas and then he got to
think of a guy named Goose. I'm not sure of
Goose's real name, but he was his became ultimately his
(15:13):
like a big henchman. So they were sort of the
three heading up the network early on at least. So
one of the things he did, um, it wasn't always
uh religious cults, even he was hired basically anytime a
parent didn't like what their kid was doing, they could
hire him to kidnap them and scream at them in
(15:35):
the handcuffed them to a bed for a week until
they said they didn't want to do what they were doing,
whether it was being a lesbian or just being a
converted Catholic. Yeah, there was one case that he got
in trouble for for false imprisonment I believe, out in
denver Um, where a woman had left the Greek Orthodox
Church to go live her own life and her parents
(15:57):
didn't like that, so they hired Ted and his company
too deep programmer I guess or reprogrammer back into the
Greek Orthodox Church. There was two girls, two daughters, and uh,
their quote at the end of this ordeal was there
was nothing to de program, right, we just left the
church for another one. Yeah. Yeah. There's another woman, an
(16:20):
English professor out in California and San Francisco named Sarah Worth,
and she had become an anti nuke activist, civil rights
activist as well. Her her mother back in Pennsylvania thought
that that just was very unbecoming, so she hired the
Cult Awareness Network to de programmer daughter. That's right, this
(16:42):
is going on and it was legal, well not I
don't know about legal, but it was protected. Here's the thing,
so let's talk about why this was legal or quasi
legal at the time. Again, America has really really scared
that there's this cult movement going on, that the youth
of America is losing its free will. This is what
the whole thing is based on. That there are groups,
(17:02):
insidious groups out there who are recruiting and brainwashing our kids.
What's to become of America If all of our kids
are running around is harrid Christnas or Bible thumpers or
what have you. They're the future. So we have to
fight this. And if they're being brainwashed you need to
de brainwash them. So not only was it groups like
the Cult Awareness Network who were thinking these things, they
(17:25):
were also like drumming up a lot of publicity as well. Yeah,
they thought it was a big conspiracy. Yeah, a communist
conspiracy is what a lot of people said too, that
this is the Ultimately the Communists were behind it. So
not only is it this obscure fringe group that knows
how to work the media who believes this, it's also
the people reading the newspaper, like parents, cops, judges, juries,
(17:48):
and if you take someone to court for kidnapping you
and beating you up until you agree to stop being
a harrid Krishna and the judge is convinced that you
or have been brainwashed by the hard Christmas, the judge
is not going to rule in your favor. And therefore,
this whole technique, this whole method that was used for
(18:10):
more than a decade was quasi legal. For as many
times as he was dragged into court, Ted Patrick was
only imprisoned twice, one time for like ten days and
another time for sixty. Yeah. There was one famous case,
uh Stephanie Ryth Miller in Ohio. Um, she her parents
(18:30):
hired her or hired Patrick and his crew because, uh,
well because she was a lesbian. Well, they suspected she
was a lesbian, yes, was she in fact? Yes? So
they paid eight thousand dollars, which would be twenty one
grand today to kidnap her. She was nineteen years old.
She's walking on the street with her friend on the sidewalk.
They pull up in a van. They mace her friend,
(18:52):
and they throw her in the back of the van
and uh, you know, subdue her. She was driven to
Alabama from Ohio. Uh and over the course in the
next seven days, was raped once a day, um by
a guy named James Rowe, who was one of the
henchmen that worked with Patrick, right, in order to get
her back into the heterosexual mindset, right, yeah, uh. Which
(19:15):
We're gonna do a whole podcast on gay d programming
at some point, um, because that's a whole different thing,
but that has its roots and something like this. Obviously,
at the trial, they because this did go to trial, Um,
the defense attacked her roommate who was gay and said,
you know, look at her boots and her pickup truck
(19:37):
and she has a Doberman pincher Like this is very unbecoming. Uh,
she has a very over overbearing style. Where they were
trying to prove was that the roommate had brainwashed her
into becoming a lesbian and just look at her with
her boots and her pickup truck. So eventually goes to
trial and the judge, um Hamilton County Judge Simon Lese
(20:02):
l e I s he was not very sympathetic at
all of her lifestyle. Of course. Uh. He said homosexuality
was immoral and uh. Even he told the jury that
the lifestyle was an issue, but I'm not going to
represent to you that I approve of the sexual preference.
And she called it unnatural. So eventually he said what
(20:23):
the parents did was wrong, but I don't think there's
any question that they did was totally done out of
love for their daughter. Uh. And he described the tactics,
even the rape, as to detract, like you said, from
her lesbianism and attractor to heterosexual activity. So he got
off with that one. Huh uh yeah, And I don't
think he was actually in the room like it was.
(20:44):
There was a lot of back and forth on like
what he knew and what he didn't know about this case.
But the guy who raped her got away with it.
And this is I mean that was again he was
dragged to court over and over again, and it wasn't
a lot of the cult groups did not fight back,
and in some cases because they didn't want to open
their books from what I understand, which they may have
(21:05):
had to had they fought anything like this in court,
but also because America as a whole was against them,
Like can you remember Airplane, the original one? I just
watched it the other day where he just beats up
a bunch of mooneyes in the airport who are trying
to like offer him a free flower. One of them
is Joe Iszuzu. For God's sake, he's America's sweetheart. Well
(21:26):
he should have been beating up for that. So um,
there was this this It was a joke, obviously, but
it it definitely pointed out this whole sentiment that America
had toward cults at the time, which was like they
it was open season, man, they were fair game inside
and outside of court. There's an indictment in New York
where they indicted some Harri Christna leaders for using mind control.
(21:50):
In an indictment in a court of law, the words
mind control were used to indict somebody for a crime
which which has never been even proven, Like, how do
you mind control somebody? It's crazy? But this was like
the kind of the sentiment that was going on at
the time, right, And so you could be if you
(22:11):
were a member of what was considered a cult group
and your parents were well healed enough to afford the
cult awareness network. You could be sitting there hanging out
in the commune one day, playing your acoustic guitar. What
have you thinking about consciousness and the universality of it?
And all of a sudden, the door gets kicked in
(22:31):
and Ted Patrick and some of his henchmen enter grab you.
Your buddy stands up to be like, hey man, you
can't do that, and they mace him and they take you,
throw you in a van, drive you several states over,
maybe to your parents house. I think they frequently used
the parents house because it added like an extra sense
of legality to it. And then they would keep you
(22:54):
there for as long as they wanted to. They would
beat you, they would um abu use you physically, emotionally,
verbally um. They would starve you, they would deprive you
of sleep um and you weren't allowed to leave. You
were berated constantly. They would take shifts, they would have
your family come in and berate you. And all of
this was completely made up out of whole cloth by
(23:19):
Ted Patrick. Like he he had no training whatsoever in
any kind of brainwash techniques. There is no training, right
he but he just kind of intuitively got that, like
if you deprive someone of sleep or food, they'll start
to do what you want them to and um, the
whole goal of it, as far as he was concerned,
was to create um to snap somebody out of it.
(23:42):
And when somebody snapped, they basically gave into your will
and that they were no longer resisting. They were no
longer saying, uh, my right to be a harry Christmas
protected by the First Amendment. You have kidnapped me. I
want to go, please leave, Please leave me alone. They
just said, fine, you're right, I don't want to be
(24:02):
a hard Christian anymore. That could be snapping. It could
also be something that was a lot closer um and
complexion to something like that religious conversion. But it would
be like a conversion back where they'd start crying and weeping.
And these are the ones that were frequently pointed to
as proof positive that deep programming actually worked because there
(24:23):
are a lot of people who are deprogramming. You said,
this is a great thing for me, um, But it
has been explained time and time again as basically, a
lot of kids who joined cults did so because they
felt like they weren't accepted at home or by their
families or whatever. And they would see once they were
kidnapped and and taking back to their parents house that
(24:45):
maybe their parents actually did care about them more than
they realized. They were willing to spend some money and
hire Black Lightning to come beat me up until I
agree to come back home. So maybe that was the
reason for this this snapping. Yeah, and sometimes they would
get all together to get out of that prison, which
was the case which we'll talk about right after this
break of Jason Scott. Alright, so Jason Scott, this was
(25:37):
not a Patrick affair. This was a guy named Rick
Ross and another guy, two guys named Mark Workman and
Charles Simpson. Yes, but they were referred by the cult
Awareness Networks, that's right, was involved. Well, yeah, they were referred,
But this wasn't Patrick heading up this operation. Uh. And
this is a guy named Jason Scott, and he was
(25:59):
kidnaped and brought to UH out in the Booneys in
Washington State, and he was held there for days against
his will, physically abused all the stuff that we've been
going over because they wanted him to leave this Pentecostal
church that he was in with his brothers. I think
his mom was in it at one point, but she left.
The sons decided to stay and she was like, I
(26:22):
don't like what's going on over there, so she hired
them uh to to de program him. UM it failed
in that. Scott eventually UM faked that he was after
four days of torture. He faked it and said, I
don't believe that stuff anymore. He broke down in tears
and said he completely rebuked everything that he had stood for.
(26:46):
And so they said, well, this is great. It worked.
Let's go out for a celebration dinner with your family
and um he was allowed to use the bathroom at
the restaurant by himself for the first time in a week,
and he ran to the police and the police arrested
these guys. UM. There were there was a civil suit filed.
(27:07):
This is where it gets really interesting. There was a
civil suit filed on Jason Scott's behalf by counselor for
the Church of Science lead counsel by the Church of Scientology.
So now Scientology is getting involved. They end up bankrupt
ing through this court case. They awarded eight hundred seventy
five thou dollars in compensatory damages a million and damages
(27:31):
of punitive nature against the Cult Awareness Network and two
point five million against Ross himself. It ended up bankrupting them,
and then the Church of Scientology buys out the Cult
Awareness Network in bankruptcy court, buys their assets, buys their logo,
buys your name, renames it the new Cult Awareness Network,
and now it is run by the Church of Scientology. Right,
(27:52):
So if you're looking for help to get your kid
out of a cult, including Scientology, the hopeful people there
will explain to you how great Scientology is. What's funny, though,
is that, like this this um Jason Scott case was
one of about fifty that were brought at the time
through Scientology lawyers. This just happened to be the one
that stuck. Yeah, it went all the way to the
(28:14):
Supreme Court where they denied the appeal and in the
end Scott only got about five thousand dollars and two
hundred hours of professional services from Ross, which I didn't understand.
I'll explain it to you. So, um, they became buddies.
Apparently they did become buddies. So apparently Jason Scott did.
(28:34):
He forgave his mother. He also forgave Rick Ross. He
broke from the scientology um lawyer. He had a different
look after. I guess he felt a little fleeced maybe
by the scientologist or used, I should say, and ended
up being chummy with Rick Ross. So he sold Rick
Ross his settlement which should have been three million dollars
(28:56):
for five grand and two hundred hours of his services
of depro ramming services right the D program. I think
his daughter something like that. That's what I couldn't find. Yeah, So, um,
Rick Cross is still at it. He's a he's an
exit counselor um and he if you listen to him talk,
it's really weird. Man. While approaching this from the outside,
(29:17):
like there was a war that was going on that
is still being fought here there, but the average person
wouldn't know about it. In the media, between the anti
cult movement, which is headed up by people like Ted
Patrick and Rick Ross and the Cult Awareness Network, the
old version of it, and the I guess cult movement,
(29:39):
which has as disparate members as the Church of Scientology
that the Catholic League First Amendment people like the a
c l U on another side. So there's this weird,
like this battle that went on in Scientology ultimately one
just because they bled the anti cult movement out in
(30:02):
the courts. But like I said, Rick Cross is still
at it. What he's doing now is exit counseling. And
if before deep programming was coercive brainwashing, then um exit
counseling is the opposite of that. It's basically like a
drug intervention, but as far as cults are concerned, Yeah,
(30:24):
the idea is that you get the whole family involved,
You get the person who you're trying to UH counsel
I guess involved, and they all agree to meet and
they talked to them about what they were doing, and
they explained to them about the harmful practices of that
cult or not cult, depending on what it is, and
(30:45):
UM essentially involved, it's a it's a really intensive therapy
group therapy with your family, but again not coerced supposedly
voluntary and the proper way to go about it. It's
still expensive though, right, But like a normal intervention or
like a drug related intervention, like it'll probably be a
surprise to the UM, the cult member UM, but in
(31:12):
a in a exit counseling, seminar session or whatever, that
that person has to agree to stick around and listen,
like they can leave at any point in time. There's
no more kidnapping and duct taping. So that's the state
of affairs now. And it's really weird again because this
is the remnants of this this info war that went
(31:35):
on between the anti cult movement and the cult movement
or the New Religious Movement movement, and UM, it's really
kind of the whole thing is muddy morally speaking, because
there are people walking around, including ones that were abducted
and beaten up or mistreated or abused or tortured by
(31:56):
Cult Awareness Network or other d programmers, who say, if
it weren't for those guys, I'd probably still being a
cult right now. And I'm really grateful to my parents
for showing out the money to have these guys kidnap
me because I was really I was lost in life
and very vulnerable at the time, and this really helped
(32:16):
get me back on track. Well, yeah, and cults can
be destructive and in uh, destroy people's lives and kill people. Um,
but what you can't do is just I think the
problem came when everything was lumped together in one big under,
one big umbrella called a cult. Exactly. That's exactly right,
because who was Ted Patrick or anybody else the great
(32:37):
decider of what made acceptable religious beliefs and non acceptable
religious beliefs? Like, where was that dividing line and who
gave him the right to do it? Man? Could you
imagine if this was going on today with the way
things are, Well, it kept going until was when the
judgment came down that backup the cult Awareness Network. Yeah,
(32:58):
I mean, with the way things are, I could see
I could see Wacko's left and right hiring people to
abduct their children and set them straight. You know, well,
supposedly they made out pretty well in the Satanic panic
of the eighties. To that that documentary D Programmed is
largely about the director's stepbrother, who was the programmed by
(33:21):
Ted Patrick because their parents thought that he was a
Satanist or whatever because he listened to metal. We should
do one on the PMRC and backmasking that whole. We'll
just call it like eighties satanic panic or something. Let's
do it. It would be a good one. Uh. There's
a book. Ted Patrick wrote a book called Let Our
Children Go. There's an exclamation point in the title. That's right,
(33:41):
because you better uh, in nineteen seventy six, and here
was one quote of something he bragged a lot about
some of these things. He said, Uh, he's something out West,
one of the people he d programmed. He said, West
had taken up a position facing the car with his
hands on the roof and his legs spread eagled. There
was no way to let him inside while he was
race like that. I had to make a quick decision.
(34:02):
I reached down between what's his legs, grabbed him by
the crotch and squeezed hard. He let out a howl
and doubled up, grabbing for his groin with both hands.
Then I hit, shoving him headfirst into the back seat
of the car and piling in on top of him.
And then the Jason Scott I think was you know
duct tape put face down in a van and like
(34:23):
this three pound guy sat on him, and that can
kill you. Yes, I can pretty kokie stuff. Man. Yeah,
let's uh, how to combat brainwashing by brainwashing? I love
any looking back in America's recent path to see how
crazy it's been from time to time. Every once a
while it just goes nuts. We just go crazy. Yeah. Um,
(34:47):
let's see you got anything else? I got nothing else.
If you want to know more about deep programming, you
can type those words in the search bar how stuff
works dot com. And since I said search bars, time
for listener mail. Hey guys, just finished listening to your
Hot Air Balloons podcast. I'm calling this hot air Balloon email.
(35:07):
I jumped the gun having worked for a hot air
balloon company for two years in Napa Valley where I
grew up. I worked on the ground crew, the chase
crew as we called it. The company I worked for
a Napa Valley balloons as balloons that can fit two
people all the way up to twenty people. The envelope,
although it looks like, can weigh an excess of six
hundred pounds, and the basket is easily twice that, if
not more. And he wrote a lot about the getting
(35:31):
all the hot air out and what an arduous process
that was. And then he has another good little story here.
One day after we launched the balloons from just north
of Napa, the wind picked up and one of the
pilots couldn't find a safe place to land. Uh. And
we call this Josh's worst nightmare of fortune. The balloon
kept going south and what was supposed to be in
our flight was getting close to two hours. The balloon
(35:52):
got so far south that it was approaching the San
Francisco Bay, and if it got over the bay, the
balloon wouldn't have enough fuel to make it to land again.
And so the pilot made an emergency landing in a
wheat field that was the last land before the bay.
You try not to land somewhere without permission, but in
this case it was an emergency. The pilot left with
the customers, so we had to contact the owner of
(36:13):
the land and had to be let onto the property
get our balloon. Understandably, the owner was angry, but we
gave him a bottle of champagne as you said, they
still do that, uh, and offered to pay for the
damages to his crops. While most flights had now issues whatsoever,
That someone sticks out of my mind because it was
a particularly exciting day nice. That is Ryan from Washington,
(36:34):
d C. The NAPA that light. I like the the
part about champagne. Sure. I like the part where the
pilot left with the customers really quickly after he landed.
Who is that Ryan? Thanks? Ryan, that was a good story. Again,
I like the champagne part. Then, if you want to
(36:57):
get in touch of this and tell us all of
your champagne, which is and KVR dreams, you can tweet
to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(37:27):
is it how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know Fromhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, always whacky Jerry. So this is stuff you
should know once again. Sixty seconds preceding the record button
(00:24):
being pressed is the gold. I wish we could sell
that stuff, sell it on the street. People be hooked
on you know what the street value of that minute is? What?
How about five bucks? And it's not bad? Yeah? Uh, Chuck, Yes,
have you ever been in a cult? Um? No, not technically,
(00:48):
not at all. Remember we've done episodes on Colts I'm brainwashing. Uh.
This is pretty much the natural extension of that progression. Yeah.
And we talked a little bit about deep programming and
the cults. One watching probably, but this one, it turns out,
has a lot of interesting history I didn't know about. Yes, man,
it is a dark spot on America's recent path yet again,
(01:13):
yet another one, because apparently the powers that they really
got everybody so scared over things like the communist threat
or nuclear weapons or what have you that America is
basically it's like a herd of spook cattle for many decades,
and they they we channeled our anxieties out on anything
(01:34):
other or different. And this is a great case of that. Yeah,
and the courts will get to this, but they said
roundly that you can kidnap and torture and rape people
as long as it's out of love, as long as
those people are weirdos. Yeah, as long as it's apparent
loving their child in the harshest extreme way. Man, it's good.
(01:54):
Imagine crazy what people went through nie so Um, the
whole thing. We should say, like America did lose its
mind collectively for many years. And it happens from time
and time started in good old Salem before there wasn't
even in America. It's a long tradition here in this
country of everybody, yeah going crazy. Um. And like I said,
(02:18):
this is a case of it. But this case did
coalesce around certain things. It wasn't just out of the blue.
It wasn't out of nowhere, um for the to start
off with. In the late sixties, early seventies, Um, the
there was a real division between generations in the United States. Huge.
(02:41):
There was the parents who still remember the fifties, were
raised in the fifties, born in the fifties, maybe, but
definitely we're a little more buttoned, buttoned up and up
with ike. Then their kids were. Okay, So imagine if
you have kids and they're going through this rebellious phase
and they're smoking pot, and they're like wearing motorcycle boots
(03:04):
and rocking out to the Beatles and like flipping you
off every time you look at them, and then all
of a sudden, this weird tranquility comes over them and
they start wearing robes and they shave their head except
for there's a long ponytail in the back. Or they're
still wearing boots and smoking pot. Listen to the Beetles, right,
or or they start wearing bow ties and um like
(03:26):
quoting scripture to you. Wouldn't you be like, well, this
is a little weird. This is a little odd. Something's
going on here with with my kid. My kid who's
twenty underwent like a serious religious conversion that has never
been seen before in our family. That's a little weird.
That's not one I approve of. Yeah, So there's these
groups that at the time were called cults, but today,
(03:49):
if you read sociology texts or studies or whatever, they're
called new religious movements. Sex right with the ct yeah, UM,
and these groups are basically at the time they were
all termed cults. And you usually when you think cold
especially United States, it's like, um, some sort of Eastern
(04:11):
religion or something like that. But it turns out the
cult movement of the early seventies, late sixties and into
the eighties where actually um for the most part Bible based,
like Christian cults, but they they took Christian beliefs and
teachings and went really far out there with them. UM
(04:32):
or there was a huge influx of Eastern thought in
Eastern religion into the United States too, And anybody who
joined this group joined a cult. But today if you
call him a cult, it's not very nice. You call
him a new religious movement or a sect right or
in the case of the Source Family, which I've talked
about as being my favorite cult. Yeah, they just like
(04:53):
to have sex and do drugs a lot. The Source, right,
they were a cult though, Uh well yeah, sure by
those definitions right at the time, Yeah, I'd call him
a commune now probably that had a band and a
charismatic hang gliding frontman. Right. The charismatic thing is a
(05:14):
huge thing. That's usually the one thing that is the
commonality and all new religious movements they are centered around, um,
a central figure. But as the guy who wrote this article, um,
which is a pretty good article, I have to say,
this is not the Grabster, was it. No, there was
a new a newbie. This newbie has taken the grabsters stuff.
(05:38):
Yeah it should have been the Grabster. Well, the Grabster
has gotten a serious focus on all things dungeons and
dragons these days. A right, I oh nine, good for him.
Yeah he's moved on and uh. But anyway, the author
of this article points out that cole is it's a
very slippery word. It has like an in group out
(05:58):
group kind of sent a mentality attached to the point
is over the over the years, Um. This whole idea
of your kid going undergoing a religious conversion and then
just kind of becoming different, it was bothersome and worrisome
(06:19):
to the parents. But then Jonestown happened and all of
a sudden, any kind of semblance of law or religious
freedom or anything like that went right out the window
because it was shown and even before that, thanks to
the Manson family, but really, UM, with Jonestown, it was
shown that these cults that supposedly up to that point
(06:40):
people thought were harmless or even helpful, um could be
very destructive. Over nine people died. Uh. So you know,
I get it. I get why people would be upset
about perhaps their children joining something that in any way,
shape or form resembles jonestown. So what do you do? Well,
(07:04):
you could hire someone to kidnap and torture and beat
them and yell at them into submission a k A
D D programming a k A UH brainwashing or I
guess they would call it reverse brainwashing. Right. That was
kind of the key. Is this idea that, um, you
were combating this conversion to a new religious movement or
(07:27):
a cult group or whatever, um based on the idea
that your kid couldn't possibly have undergone this conversion and
join this group based on his or her own free will.
That's right. So thanks to that mindset UH and a
guy named Ted Patrick we'll talk about right now, the
(07:50):
Cult Awareness Network was formed and Ted was There were
there were many D programmers. We don't know about many,
but there were a handful of D programmers in this
time period, but Mr Patrick sort of led the way. Uh.
He was born in the Red Light district of Chattanooga, Tennessee,
and apparently had a really bad speech impediment such there
(08:13):
that he couldn't even communicate with people. So he dove
into religion and what he said was, quote, it wasn't
long before I could think of was hell, fire and
damnation and um so, he had a bad experience with
religion growing up and then had an opportunity in the
early seventies to uh go and save somebody's kid who
(08:38):
fell into what they called a cult. He's offered a job, yes,
so there it was a scriptural based um Christian group
called the Children of God now called the International Family,
and apparently, um they had tried to recruit Ted's son
and nephew out on the beach in San Diego, and
(09:01):
Ted was like, what do you mean some group tried
to recruit you. I guess I'll just go infiltrate this group. Yeah.
Well he was also approached by parents who's children were
in this what they called the cult, So yeah, he
infiltrate it and said you know what, Uh, they were
brainwashed and I'm the guy that can fix it for
a fee. Yeah, which is weird because um so, Ted
(09:24):
Patrick and the somebody uh named Mia Donovan came out
with a documentary recently called Deprogrammed. I'd like to see that.
Uh yeah, apparently it's very tough to find and get
your hands on, but it's out there somewhere. Um, and
it's all about Ted Patrick, Ted Black Lightning Patrick is
his name, and he um. He was an unlikely candidate
(09:47):
to become the face and the leader of what was
an anti cult movement that had arisen in the United
States thanks to Jonestown and thanks to the fact that
kids were joining cults left and yeah, um, he was
a high school dropout, like he said, he was a
he had had his own um experiences with scripture and
(10:09):
Bible beating and all of that kind of stuff, and he,
I guess was his heart was in the right place
from what I understand, But he did some really really
questionable stuff over the years after he formed the Colt
Action or Awareness Network. Do you think his heart was
in the right place. That's that's how MEA Donovan puts it.
(10:30):
I think he's trying to make money. So that was
another thing too. Supposedly he was working not for profit,
that his expenses were paid and he wasn't really pocketing
the money. Himself. But he went the other way pretty
quickly because at one point he was charging up to
grand which would be the equivalent of about a hundred
(10:52):
and twenty dollars for each case today to uh to deprogram,
to kidnap and deprogram your child. Yeah, a lot of
mone uh so he uh. He basically at the very
beginning said you know what, uh, how do we get
away with this? And he said, I think if we
are working with the parents, then we won't be prosecuted
(11:15):
for kidnapping because it's their own kid. So I won't
buy proxy beat affiliated as an accomplice because it's their children. Yeah,
you can't kidnap your own child. In ninete No, you can't.
UM and so that worked. At the time, twenty one
was the federal age for miners, right or for an adult.
(11:39):
Anything below twenty one you're a minor unless the state
had gone in and rewritten law and said now it's
actually eighteen or nineteen or whatever. So that that covered
like a pretty decent amount of the um emerging cult population. Yeah,
And he also figured that I won't get in trouble
because once we have freed these people and program, then
(12:00):
they won't breast charges like they'll be delighted exactly there.
They're brainwashed. All we have to do is on brainwashed them.
The other way that he figured out UM they could
be protected by law was if if the member, the
cult member, was an adult, they could apply for what's
called the conservatorship. And this is basically um based on
(12:24):
that old kind of law where uh husband could have
his hysterical wife committed if he didn't like her attitude,
that kind of thing where there's a very very loose
burden of proof on demonstrating that the person was out
of their mind, so much so that in this point
in time in America, if you were UM high, if
(12:45):
you hired a cult deep programmer, all you had to
do was also shell out five bucks or something for
a psychologist who would come in and say, the very
fact that they are a member of this cult demonstrates
that they are mentally ill, and therefore power over them
should be granted to their parents, even those persons an adult.
And once that power was granted to the parent, the
(13:07):
parent could extend that power to the cult de programmers,
who would then go and kidnap the cult member and
then begin the process of deep programming. Yeah, and they
wouldn't even make any attempts to assess their mental state.
It was just sort of I don't know about grandfather Den,
but it was just sort of lumped in under the
umbrella of the conservatorship. Thank you again, psychology. Way to go. So, uh, well,
(13:31):
should we talk about some of his greatest hips. Well,
let's take a let's take a break first. M alright, So, Patrick,
(14:07):
the first thing he did when he first started doing
this was because he didn't really have a shop set
up or a staff at this point, he's he hired
um thugs, street thugs too do the kidnapping, right. He
would just pay dudes that, look, we're tough ruffians as
they were called, you know, how to abduct these kids,
you know, like with um whenever you hear like of
(14:29):
a um a private investigator making air quotes like is
also involved in like a jewel heist or something like that,
where there's that real like gray area that's occupied by
some people who are maybe working on the side of
the law, but really they're doing really unlawful things to
achieve those ends. These are the kind of people that
(14:50):
were hired by the Cult Awareness Network, That's right. Uh,
And he eventually was joined by someone named Sandra Sachs,
who was a housewife whose son was deprogrammed, and from
I believe the Harry Christnas and then he got to
think of a guy named Goose. I'm not sure of
Goose's real name, but he was his became ultimately his
(15:13):
like a big henchman. So they were sort of the
three heading up the network early on at least. So
one of the things he did, um, it wasn't always
uh religious cults, even he was hired basically anytime a
parent didn't like what their kid was doing, they could
hire him to kidnap them and scream at them in
(15:35):
the handcuffed them to a bed for a week until
they said they didn't want to do what they were doing,
whether it was being a lesbian or just being a
converted Catholic. Yeah, there was one case that he got
in trouble for for false imprisonment I believe, out in
denver Um, where a woman had left the Greek Orthodox
Church to go live her own life and her parents
(15:57):
didn't like that, so they hired Ted and his company
too deep programmer I guess or reprogrammer back into the
Greek Orthodox Church. There was two girls, two daughters, and uh,
their quote at the end of this ordeal was there
was nothing to de program, right, we just left the
church for another one. Yeah. Yeah. There's another woman, an
(16:20):
English professor out in California and San Francisco named Sarah Worth,
and she had become an anti nuke activist, civil rights
activist as well. Her her mother back in Pennsylvania thought
that that just was very unbecoming, so she hired the
Cult Awareness Network to de programmer daughter. That's right, this
(16:42):
is going on and it was legal, well not I
don't know about legal, but it was protected. Here's the thing,
so let's talk about why this was legal or quasi
legal at the time. Again, America has really really scared
that there's this cult movement going on, that the youth
of America is losing its free will. This is what
the whole thing is based on. That there are groups,
(17:02):
insidious groups out there who are recruiting and brainwashing our kids.
What's to become of America If all of our kids
are running around is harrid Christnas or Bible thumpers or
what have you. They're the future. So we have to
fight this. And if they're being brainwashed you need to
de brainwash them. So not only was it groups like
the Cult Awareness Network who were thinking these things, they
(17:25):
were also like drumming up a lot of publicity as well. Yeah,
they thought it was a big conspiracy. Yeah, a communist
conspiracy is what a lot of people said too, that
this is the Ultimately the Communists were behind it. So
not only is it this obscure fringe group that knows
how to work the media who believes this, it's also
the people reading the newspaper, like parents, cops, judges, juries,
(17:48):
and if you take someone to court for kidnapping you
and beating you up until you agree to stop being
a harrid Krishna and the judge is convinced that you
or have been brainwashed by the hard Christmas, the judge
is not going to rule in your favor. And therefore,
this whole technique, this whole method that was used for
(18:10):
more than a decade was quasi legal. For as many
times as he was dragged into court, Ted Patrick was
only imprisoned twice, one time for like ten days and
another time for sixty. Yeah. There was one famous case,
uh Stephanie Ryth Miller in Ohio. Um, she her parents
(18:30):
hired her or hired Patrick and his crew because, uh,
well because she was a lesbian. Well, they suspected she
was a lesbian, yes, was she in fact? Yes? So
they paid eight thousand dollars, which would be twenty one
grand today to kidnap her. She was nineteen years old.
She's walking on the street with her friend on the sidewalk.
They pull up in a van. They mace her friend,
(18:52):
and they throw her in the back of the van
and uh, you know, subdue her. She was driven to
Alabama from Ohio. Uh and over the course in the
next seven days, was raped once a day, um by
a guy named James Rowe, who was one of the
henchmen that worked with Patrick, right, in order to get
her back into the heterosexual mindset, right, yeah, uh. Which
(19:15):
We're gonna do a whole podcast on gay d programming
at some point, um, because that's a whole different thing,
but that has its roots and something like this. Obviously,
at the trial, they because this did go to trial, Um,
the defense attacked her roommate who was gay and said,
you know, look at her boots and her pickup truck
(19:37):
and she has a Doberman pincher Like this is very unbecoming. Uh,
she has a very over overbearing style. Where they were
trying to prove was that the roommate had brainwashed her
into becoming a lesbian and just look at her with
her boots and her pickup truck. So eventually goes to
trial and the judge, um Hamilton County Judge Simon Lese
(20:02):
l e I s he was not very sympathetic at
all of her lifestyle. Of course. Uh. He said homosexuality
was immoral and uh. Even he told the jury that
the lifestyle was an issue, but I'm not going to
represent to you that I approve of the sexual preference.
And she called it unnatural. So eventually he said what
(20:23):
the parents did was wrong, but I don't think there's
any question that they did was totally done out of
love for their daughter. Uh. And he described the tactics,
even the rape, as to detract, like you said, from
her lesbianism and attractor to heterosexual activity. So he got
off with that one. Huh uh yeah, And I don't
think he was actually in the room like it was.
(20:44):
There was a lot of back and forth on like
what he knew and what he didn't know about this case.
But the guy who raped her got away with it.
And this is I mean that was again he was
dragged to court over and over again, and it wasn't
a lot of the cult groups did not fight back,
and in some cases because they didn't want to open
their books from what I understand, which they may have
(21:05):
had to had they fought anything like this in court,
but also because America as a whole was against them,
Like can you remember Airplane, the original one? I just
watched it the other day where he just beats up
a bunch of mooneyes in the airport who are trying
to like offer him a free flower. One of them
is Joe Iszuzu. For God's sake, he's America's sweetheart. Well
(21:26):
he should have been beating up for that. So um,
there was this this It was a joke, obviously, but
it it definitely pointed out this whole sentiment that America
had toward cults at the time, which was like they
it was open season, man, they were fair game inside
and outside of court. There's an indictment in New York
where they indicted some Harri Christna leaders for using mind control.
(21:50):
In an indictment in a court of law, the words
mind control were used to indict somebody for a crime
which which has never been even proven, Like, how do
you mind control somebody? It's crazy? But this was like
the kind of the sentiment that was going on at
the time, right, And so you could be if you
(22:11):
were a member of what was considered a cult group
and your parents were well healed enough to afford the
cult awareness network. You could be sitting there hanging out
in the commune one day, playing your acoustic guitar. What
have you thinking about consciousness and the universality of it?
And all of a sudden, the door gets kicked in
(22:31):
and Ted Patrick and some of his henchmen enter grab you.
Your buddy stands up to be like, hey man, you
can't do that, and they mace him and they take you,
throw you in a van, drive you several states over,
maybe to your parents house. I think they frequently used
the parents house because it added like an extra sense
of legality to it. And then they would keep you
(22:54):
there for as long as they wanted to. They would
beat you, they would um abu use you physically, emotionally,
verbally um. They would starve you, they would deprive you
of sleep um and you weren't allowed to leave. You
were berated constantly. They would take shifts, they would have
your family come in and berate you. And all of
this was completely made up out of whole cloth by
(23:19):
Ted Patrick. Like he he had no training whatsoever in
any kind of brainwash techniques. There is no training, right
he but he just kind of intuitively got that, like
if you deprive someone of sleep or food, they'll start
to do what you want them to and um, the
whole goal of it, as far as he was concerned,
was to create um to snap somebody out of it.
(23:42):
And when somebody snapped, they basically gave into your will
and that they were no longer resisting. They were no
longer saying, uh, my right to be a harry Christmas
protected by the First Amendment. You have kidnapped me. I
want to go, please leave, Please leave me alone. They
just said, fine, you're right, I don't want to be
(24:02):
a hard Christian anymore. That could be snapping. It could
also be something that was a lot closer um and
complexion to something like that religious conversion. But it would
be like a conversion back where they'd start crying and weeping.
And these are the ones that were frequently pointed to
as proof positive that deep programming actually worked because there
(24:23):
are a lot of people who are deprogramming. You said,
this is a great thing for me, um, But it
has been explained time and time again as basically, a
lot of kids who joined cults did so because they
felt like they weren't accepted at home or by their
families or whatever. And they would see once they were
kidnapped and and taking back to their parents house that
(24:45):
maybe their parents actually did care about them more than
they realized. They were willing to spend some money and
hire Black Lightning to come beat me up until I
agree to come back home. So maybe that was the
reason for this this snapping. Yeah, and sometimes they would
get all together to get out of that prison, which
was the case which we'll talk about right after this
break of Jason Scott. Alright, so Jason Scott, this was
(25:37):
not a Patrick affair. This was a guy named Rick
Ross and another guy, two guys named Mark Workman and
Charles Simpson. Yes, but they were referred by the cult
Awareness Networks, that's right, was involved. Well, yeah, they were referred,
But this wasn't Patrick heading up this operation. Uh. And
this is a guy named Jason Scott, and he was
(25:59):
kidnaped and brought to UH out in the Booneys in
Washington State, and he was held there for days against
his will, physically abused all the stuff that we've been
going over because they wanted him to leave this Pentecostal
church that he was in with his brothers. I think
his mom was in it at one point, but she left.
The sons decided to stay and she was like, I
(26:22):
don't like what's going on over there, so she hired
them uh to to de program him. UM it failed
in that. Scott eventually UM faked that he was after
four days of torture. He faked it and said, I
don't believe that stuff anymore. He broke down in tears
and said he completely rebuked everything that he had stood for.
(26:46):
And so they said, well, this is great. It worked.
Let's go out for a celebration dinner with your family
and um he was allowed to use the bathroom at
the restaurant by himself for the first time in a week,
and he ran to the police and the police arrested
these guys. UM. There were there was a civil suit filed.
(27:07):
This is where it gets really interesting. There was a
civil suit filed on Jason Scott's behalf by counselor for
the Church of Science lead counsel by the Church of Scientology.
So now Scientology is getting involved. They end up bankrupt
ing through this court case. They awarded eight hundred seventy
five thou dollars in compensatory damages a million and damages
(27:31):
of punitive nature against the Cult Awareness Network and two
point five million against Ross himself. It ended up bankrupting them,
and then the Church of Scientology buys out the Cult
Awareness Network in bankruptcy court, buys their assets, buys their logo,
buys your name, renames it the new Cult Awareness Network,
and now it is run by the Church of Scientology. Right,
(27:52):
So if you're looking for help to get your kid
out of a cult, including Scientology, the hopeful people there
will explain to you how great Scientology is. What's funny, though,
is that, like this this um Jason Scott case was
one of about fifty that were brought at the time
through Scientology lawyers. This just happened to be the one
that stuck. Yeah, it went all the way to the
(28:14):
Supreme Court where they denied the appeal and in the
end Scott only got about five thousand dollars and two
hundred hours of professional services from Ross, which I didn't understand.
I'll explain it to you. So, um, they became buddies.
Apparently they did become buddies. So apparently Jason Scott did.
(28:34):
He forgave his mother. He also forgave Rick Ross. He
broke from the scientology um lawyer. He had a different
look after. I guess he felt a little fleeced maybe
by the scientologist or used, I should say, and ended
up being chummy with Rick Ross. So he sold Rick
Ross his settlement which should have been three million dollars
(28:56):
for five grand and two hundred hours of his services
of depro ramming services right the D program. I think
his daughter something like that. That's what I couldn't find. Yeah, So, um,
Rick Cross is still at it. He's a he's an
exit counselor um and he if you listen to him talk,
it's really weird. Man. While approaching this from the outside,
(29:17):
like there was a war that was going on that
is still being fought here there, but the average person
wouldn't know about it. In the media, between the anti
cult movement, which is headed up by people like Ted
Patrick and Rick Ross and the Cult Awareness Network, the
old version of it, and the I guess cult movement,
(29:39):
which has as disparate members as the Church of Scientology
that the Catholic League First Amendment people like the a
c l U on another side. So there's this weird,
like this battle that went on in Scientology ultimately one
just because they bled the anti cult movement out in
(30:02):
the courts. But like I said, Rick Cross is still
at it. What he's doing now is exit counseling. And
if before deep programming was coercive brainwashing, then um exit
counseling is the opposite of that. It's basically like a
drug intervention, but as far as cults are concerned, Yeah,
(30:24):
the idea is that you get the whole family involved,
You get the person who you're trying to UH counsel
I guess involved, and they all agree to meet and
they talked to them about what they were doing, and
they explained to them about the harmful practices of that
cult or not cult, depending on what it is, and
(30:45):
UM essentially involved, it's a it's a really intensive therapy
group therapy with your family, but again not coerced supposedly
voluntary and the proper way to go about it. It's
still expensive though, right, But like a normal intervention or
like a drug related intervention, like it'll probably be a
surprise to the UM, the cult member UM, but in
(31:12):
a in a exit counseling, seminar session or whatever, that
that person has to agree to stick around and listen,
like they can leave at any point in time. There's
no more kidnapping and duct taping. So that's the state
of affairs now. And it's really weird again because this
is the remnants of this this info war that went
(31:35):
on between the anti cult movement and the cult movement
or the New Religious Movement movement, and UM, it's really
kind of the whole thing is muddy morally speaking, because
there are people walking around, including ones that were abducted
and beaten up or mistreated or abused or tortured by
(31:56):
Cult Awareness Network or other d programmers, who say, if
it weren't for those guys, I'd probably still being a
cult right now. And I'm really grateful to my parents
for showing out the money to have these guys kidnap
me because I was really I was lost in life
and very vulnerable at the time, and this really helped
(32:16):
get me back on track. Well, yeah, and cults can
be destructive and in uh, destroy people's lives and kill people. Um,
but what you can't do is just I think the
problem came when everything was lumped together in one big under,
one big umbrella called a cult. Exactly. That's exactly right,
because who was Ted Patrick or anybody else the great
(32:37):
decider of what made acceptable religious beliefs and non acceptable
religious beliefs? Like, where was that dividing line and who
gave him the right to do it? Man? Could you
imagine if this was going on today with the way
things are, Well, it kept going until was when the
judgment came down that backup the cult Awareness Network. Yeah,
(32:58):
I mean, with the way things are, I could see
I could see Wacko's left and right hiring people to
abduct their children and set them straight. You know, well,
supposedly they made out pretty well in the Satanic panic
of the eighties. To that that documentary D Programmed is
largely about the director's stepbrother, who was the programmed by
(33:21):
Ted Patrick because their parents thought that he was a
Satanist or whatever because he listened to metal. We should
do one on the PMRC and backmasking that whole. We'll
just call it like eighties satanic panic or something. Let's
do it. It would be a good one. Uh. There's
a book. Ted Patrick wrote a book called Let Our
Children Go. There's an exclamation point in the title. That's right,
(33:41):
because you better uh, in nineteen seventy six, and here
was one quote of something he bragged a lot about
some of these things. He said, Uh, he's something out West,
one of the people he d programmed. He said, West
had taken up a position facing the car with his
hands on the roof and his legs spread eagled. There
was no way to let him inside while he was
race like that. I had to make a quick decision.
(34:02):
I reached down between what's his legs, grabbed him by
the crotch and squeezed hard. He let out a howl
and doubled up, grabbing for his groin with both hands.
Then I hit, shoving him headfirst into the back seat
of the car and piling in on top of him.
And then the Jason Scott I think was you know
duct tape put face down in a van and like
(34:23):
this three pound guy sat on him, and that can
kill you. Yes, I can pretty kokie stuff. Man. Yeah,
let's uh, how to combat brainwashing by brainwashing? I love
any looking back in America's recent path to see how
crazy it's been from time to time. Every once a
while it just goes nuts. We just go crazy. Yeah. Um,
(34:47):
let's see you got anything else? I got nothing else.
If you want to know more about deep programming, you
can type those words in the search bar how stuff
works dot com. And since I said search bars, time
for listener mail. Hey guys, just finished listening to your
Hot Air Balloons podcast. I'm calling this hot air Balloon email.
(35:07):
I jumped the gun having worked for a hot air
balloon company for two years in Napa Valley where I
grew up. I worked on the ground crew, the chase
crew as we called it. The company I worked for
a Napa Valley balloons as balloons that can fit two
people all the way up to twenty people. The envelope,
although it looks like, can weigh an excess of six
hundred pounds, and the basket is easily twice that, if
not more. And he wrote a lot about the getting
(35:31):
all the hot air out and what an arduous process
that was. And then he has another good little story here.
One day after we launched the balloons from just north
of Napa, the wind picked up and one of the
pilots couldn't find a safe place to land. Uh. And
we call this Josh's worst nightmare of fortune. The balloon
kept going south and what was supposed to be in
our flight was getting close to two hours. The balloon
(35:52):
got so far south that it was approaching the San
Francisco Bay, and if it got over the bay, the
balloon wouldn't have enough fuel to make it to land again.
And so the pilot made an emergency landing in a
wheat field that was the last land before the bay.
You try not to land somewhere without permission, but in
this case it was an emergency. The pilot left with
the customers, so we had to contact the owner of
(36:13):
the land and had to be let onto the property
get our balloon. Understandably, the owner was angry, but we
gave him a bottle of champagne as you said, they
still do that, uh, and offered to pay for the
damages to his crops. While most flights had now issues whatsoever,
That someone sticks out of my mind because it was
a particularly exciting day nice. That is Ryan from Washington,
(36:34):
d C. The NAPA that light. I like the the
part about champagne. Sure. I like the part where the
pilot left with the customers really quickly after he landed.
Who is that Ryan? Thanks? Ryan, that was a good story. Again,
I like the champagne part. Then, if you want to
(36:57):
get in touch of this and tell us all of
your champagne, which is and KVR dreams, you can tweet
to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(37:27):
is it how stuff Works dot com
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