Interview with Author and Cult Expert Steve Hassan

Deceived Podcast Series, show host Charles Hubbell interviews Steve Hassan, founder of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center. For nearly four decades, Steve has lectured and counseled about brainwashing, deprogramming, mind control, cults, and undue influence. As a 19-year-old college student, he was recruited into the Unification Church, or Moonies, and rose to the rank of Assistant Director, even personally meeting Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Within three years, however, Steve was helping people exit destructive cults and, over the years, he developed non-coercive methods to help cult members quit their groups. In 1990, after reading one of Steve’s books, podcast producer Russell Johnson sought out the author and received counseling from him. Steve put Russell in contact with a reporter working on a story about Chung Moo Quan, which led to Russell speaking out for the first time in public about the Moo. In this interview, Steve explains everything you always wanted to know about cults – or not – but were afraid to ask, including recruitment, avoidance, exit strategies, deprogramming, and how one becomes stronger for exiting and surviving a cult. Steve also discusses cult leaders: how cults “clone” the leader’s image, and their common type of narcissistic psychopathological personality disorder. "Deceived: The Moo Years" is the true story of one young man's compelling, at times terrifying, former involvement with the martial arts cult Chung Moo Quan.