Clark Omo

31 April 2019

Beware the Kool-aid: Exploitation and Abuse in Cult Practices

Cults have a notorious reputation for promoting airs of mysticism, supernaturalism, and often disturbing social, emotional, and psychological teachings. The idea of a cult itself is not new; indeed the cults involving Mithras and other mystifying deities find their origins in the ancient periods of the Roman Empire. But the cults that have achieved national and popular recognition in the last few decades of modern America, from the days of the Sexual Revolution and other counterculture movements of the 60s and 70s, have all come with their own rather sinister takes on religion, thus producing their own set of connotations associated with the label ‘cult.’ Each of the groups presented by the research in this post is responsible for establishing and perpetuating the negative image of cults, and rightly so. These cults each implement systems of teaching and doctrine that involve being separated from the primary group and relegating their members to lives of secrecy free from social norms and regulations. But with this freedom and separation, dark cycles of exploitation, sexual molestation, and strict, tyrannical confinement start to ferment. From Manson to Michel to David Berg, cults and their leaders implement techniques of indoctrination and propaganda akin to brainwashing meant to engrain a set of behaviors amongst their followers that lead to sexual exploitation and psychological abuse.

To understand the cult mentality and how these organizations effectively lure members in, attention must be given to the personality ‘cults’ that arise around their leaders. As Camille Paglia states in her article, hypnotic personalities are ever present in popular culture, from Rudolph Valentino to Frank Sinatra to Elvis Presley, as seen by the extreme emotional outpourings of their female fans (61). Eroticism quickly becomes instilled into these massive personality followings, as Paglia states: “Eroticism mixed with death is archetypally potent: there were nearly riots by distraught mourners after Valentino's death from a perforated ulcer at age thirty-one in 1926” (61). Indeed, Paglia illustrates how this god-like allure that many of these contagious personalities produce achieves a sort of Adonis-like beauty (61), to where these popular stars essentially become deified. So also does the cult work, according to Paglia, and these ancient religious sentiments pervaded the countercultures of the sixties, evidenced by the motto “Flower power” which evokes a sort Bacchanalian romanticism (62). Enter a man such as Charles Manson, who, as Paglia states, possessed “hypnotic powers” and managed to establish a cult from “a group of fanatical devotees, hippie girls who thought he was both Jesus Christ and the devil” (64). Convincement of religious power and insight, as Paglia illustrates, is key to how cults operate and manipulate their followers into joining a group with its own agenda at the cost of its members’ emotional and mental health.

And with his magnetic and alluring personality, as Paglia states Manson possessed, he managed to convince his students to “slaughter seven people in two nights, including the actress Sharon Tate, living in a rented house in the Hollywood Hills,”  a heinous act in which the female perpetrators felt “sexual release” as they stabbed and killed their victims (Paglia, 64). Glenn Collins, in 1982, noticed this pervasive ability of cult leaders to drastically change the behaviors of their followers. Collins quotes Dr. Margaret Singer with saying “''Consciously and manipulatively, cult leaders and their trainers exert a systematic social influence that can produce great behavioral changes” (n.pg). Collins quotes Dr. Singer further, saying that cult leaders’ methods of conversion and manipulation involve “humanistic-psychology movements, and combined them with cult ideology and persuasive sales methods—and packaged them in various combinations” (n.pg). Psychological contrivances are ever present in cult leaders according to Collins’s research, and this characteristic of cults proves true with several other manifestations.

Buddhafield was a religious based commune run by a man named Michel that, as Evelyn Wang describes, “seems like your standard '80s Hollywood Hills hippie commune. Imagine lots of watered-down Eastern spirituality and group sing-a-longs” (n.pg). Nonetheless, like Manson and the other cult-like personalities of the 60s and 70s, Buddhafield evolved into another story of emotional and sexual abuse, as Wang’s article describes. Will Allen, a survivor of the Buddhafield commune, compiled a documentary called Holy Hell, which Wang summarizes as turning from “charisma and kumbaya-ing” into “megalomania and gaslighting” (n.pg). As Wang explains, the cult members eventually “accuse The Teacher (real name Jaime Gomez) of moral and criminal violations, the worst of which is widespread sexual attacks of the male cult members” (n.pg). And like Manson and other infectious personalities, Michel manages to achieve complete loyalty from his adherents, as Wang describes. Even in moments where other members of the cult would openly accuse Michel of abuse, as Will Allen describes, “He denounced anybody who came up with anything against him. This is why I made the movie, because one person can't really tackle him—it's your word against his” (Wang, n.pg). Michel’s personality was so infectious and pervasive, that members, even when seeing signs, would still act with utter loyalty to the cult. Wang quotes Phillipe Coquet, another Buddhafield member, on Michel “The first time I saw him, I went home and told my boyfriend, ‘I had a great time, but this guy is kind of demonic.’ And I went back” (n.pg). Vera Chieroff, another member, said of Michel the following: “I was just in ecstasy. A lot of people did come for the community, but I was so in love with him [Michel]. I would have died for him” (n.pg). As Wang indicates with these interviews, Michel, the Teacher of Buddhafield, easily manipulated his disciples with the same personal charisma displayed in popular stars and other cult leaders like Charles Manson. As Wang’s interviews indicate, promise of sexual pleasure and psychological subversion create a near unbreakable loyalty amongst cult members.

And while cults like Buddhafield grew out of a mentality initiated by the counterculture waves of the 60s and 70s, another cult known as the Children of God or the Family committed much of the same abuses. Christina Babin joined the group once having fallen for the cult’s  “public face of open-hearted, ‘meaningful’ Christianity” (Carlson, n.pg) and then finding that the cult’s actual practices were strongly opposed to what “meaningful” Christianity meant (n.pg). Babin relates that daily life was very structured and involved a set routine (n.pg). Furthermore, this group, much like Buddhafield, delved into strict behavioral rules that led to severe cases of sexual mistreatment amongst the members. According to Babin, “the group embraced sexual abuse like child sex and incest” (n.pg), with the cult’s leader, David Berg, even going so far to declare that “We have a sexy God and a sexy religion with a very sexy leader with an extremely sexy young following!” (n.pg). Sex served as a core tenant of this cult, which led to the exploitation and objectification of its female members, along with the proliferation of other sex crimes such as incest and prostitution (n.pg). Babin herself relates how, at an extremely young age, she was indoctrinated into accepting this violating belief, saying that “at 11 I had already been taught that women were sexual objects, that we were supposed to be God’s whores,” (n.pg). Babin’s experiences were ones of indoctrination and abuse. As evidenced by her following statement, she was taught to be a sexual creature and that doing so was a service to God and a fulfillment of the cult’s teachings: “What surprised me was that I didn’t like it and I thought there was something wrong with me, that something was wrong with my heart, my soul, because I didn’t enjoy the thing that David Berg said that I should” (n.pg). The family commits much the same criminals acts and manipulative contrivances s as Buddhafield and Manson. Through propaganda and illusionary teachings, they convince men and women such as Babin to commit acts in violation of social norms and laws in order to please and fulfill a religious ideology. As evidenced by Babin’s statements, the Children’s intrusive and propaganda-like teaching methods utilized in cult statutes tend to result in sexual abuse and disproportionate control over privacy and personal security.

Cults represent a complex matrix of psychological structures and instructional devices that ultimately result in their followers’ becoming isolated or sexually harmed. As can be seen in personality cults like that of popular stars, Camille Paglia makes note of this same magnetic personality present in leaders such as Charles Manson who managed to convince his members to commit murder. Michel, or the Teacher, of Buddhafield, also managed to lure his adherents into his grasp with his hypnotic personality, and thus secure their loyalty. However, like Manson, Michel’s pervasive influence eventually placed his students in a position that allowed him to exploit them for sexual gain. And with the Children of God, the same pattern is evident. Members of this cult, such as Christina Babin, were indoctrinated into following a very sexualized way of life meant to appease the teachings of their leader, David Berg, but, like Michel mistreated his followers and Manson convinced his to commit heinous acts, so did Berg’s tenets result in prostituting his disciples and sexualizing children. Cults present an intriguing if not disturbing example of how easily susceptible the human mind is to the conniving and subliminal influences of magnetic personalities and methodic brainwashing as they, like Utopias, try to establish their own societies separate from others to achieve their vision of existence.

Works Cited

Carlson, Adam. “Ex-Member of Free-Love Cult Details Child Sex Abuse, Incest: 'We Were Supposed to Be God's Whores.’” People, 26 Jun. 2018, https://people.com/crime/children-of-god-survivor-on-child-sex-abuse-incest/. Accessed 31 March 2019.

Collins, Glenn. “The Psychology of the Cult Experience.” The New York Times, 15 March 1982, https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/15/style/the-psychology-of-the-cult-experience.html. Accessed 31 March 2019.

Paglia, Camille. “Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s.”  Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, vol. 10, no. 3, Winter 2003, pp. 57—111. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20163901. Accessed 29 March 2019.

Wang, Evelyn. “This Is What It's Like to Spend Almost Half Your Life in a Cult.” Esquire, 27 May 2016, https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a45261/holy-hell-buddhafield-documentary-will-allen-interview/. Accessed 31 March 2019.