Before I address survivor's stories in later articles, I believe it is important to understand how groups that ritually abuse operate.
Cults can be abusive or non-abusive, and there are many fairly benign cult-like groups that exist today. But for the purposes of my article, I want to look at cults that abuse, specifically, in the sense of ritual abuse.
What are the characteristics of an abusive cult? There are many studies that have defined controlling cults. Dr. Margaret Singer, Phd, U.Ca. Berkley, has written one of the definitive articles on cults that employ mind control and their characteristics (1).
She states that thought reform, as employed by controlling cults, involves the entire anthropological/social spectrum of behaviour, including language use, social environment, and influence of the leader and peers on the member. This often involves attacking the person's self concept.
I would like to take the six conditions that she has identified as being pre-requisites to exerting mind control, and compare them to experiences of survivors in ritualistically abusive groups. The two correlate completely.
1. CONTROL OVER TIME : this is Singer's first condition. The cult group must get some of the person's time, as much as possible, and have the individual think about group idealogy. Survivors report spending time during the week in contact with the cultic groups that abuse them. Contact is by phone; by verbal discussion, or going to meetings. Survivors state that group meetings often occur weekly, monthly, or as frequently as two to three times a week for intensive training sessions. The group that I was involved in (the Illuminati) met two to three times a week for normal teaching times, and had large group meetings on a monthly basis ("ritual times") as well as leadership meetings once a month to plan the activities for the next few weeks.
2. CREATE A SENSE OF POWERLESSNESS Most groups involved in ritual abuse do this to the nth degree. Through pain, degradation, tying up victims, and experiences created to show there is "no escape" from infancy on, the victim of cult control soon comes to believe that he/she is trapped, can never break free, and should just "give in" to what is asked of them.
3. MANIPULATE REWARDS, PUNISHMENTS, EXPERIENCES IN ORDER TO SUPPRESS OLD SOCIAL BEHAVIOR BEHAVIORS REWARDED: Participation, conformity to ideas/behavior, zeal, personal changes BEHAVIORS PUNISHED: criticalness, independent thinking, non-conformity to ideas/behavior From earliest childhood in generational ritual groups, to later childhood or adulthood in other groups, the use of rewards and praise, as well as punishment have a name: training. Cult type groups believe strongly in the use of praise if the person does well, including merit badges, ceremonies of reward, and high status if the person conforms to the expected behaviour, and severe punishment, even death threatened if the person refuses to perform. Often, abusive and coercive groups will take this concept to its outermost extremes.
