The Megyn Kelly Show - What Happens in Cults, and Escaping From Them: A Megyn Kelly Show True Crime Special | Ep. 573

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

"Hot Crime Summer" week on The Megyn Kelly Show continues with a deep dive on cults. Megyn Kelly is joined by Michelle Dowd, author of "Forager," and Dr. Steven Hassan, a cult expert, to discuss each of their experiences in cults, the survival skills Dowd learned while she was in the cult, what it was like growing up in the cult in extreme poverty, looking back on the trauma and abuse she experienced, what's happening now in the cult, raising a family after leaving, how each escaped their cults, how cults control the minds of followers, personality types that are susceptible to cults, ways to escape cults or help loved ones escape, and more.Dowd: https://www.amazon.com/Forager-Field-Surviving-Family-Memoir/dp/1643751859/Hassan: https://freedomofmind.com Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. For today's episode of Hot Crime Summer, we are diving deep into the world of cults with two former cult members. Later, we'll be joined by Dr. Stephen Hassan, one of America's leading cult experts. And as a former cult member himself, he'll tell you how he got recruited. He was a totally normal guy. He was an adult. He was like in his 20s when he got lured in. He now helps individuals and families who have been trapped in cults. But we begin with the story of Michelle Dowd. Michelle was born into the ultra-religious cult called The Field, run by her maternal grandfather. He convinced generations of

followers that he would live 500 years and ascend to the heavens when doomsday came. Michelle spent 10 years of her childhood living on a mountain, suffering from all sorts of abuse and severe poverty. There, she was forced to learn skills necessary to survive. Michelle eventually gained the strength to flee the cult at 17 years old and is now a professor and author and totally candid about what life was like for her in that environment. She tells her story in her new book, Forager, field notes for surviving a family cult. I'm fascinated by your entire story. If you don't mind, I'm sure you've told a million times, but if you don't mind, let's start at the beginning.

So you were born into a cult. So how did that happen? Well, yes, indeed I was. In fact, my mother was born into the same cult. My grandfather was a young man from Oklahoma, was orphaned in his teenage years. Some debate on how old he was because he often exaggerated the truth or sometimes completely misled people. But in any case, he came to LA, Hollywood area sometime in his teenage years and began working as a Boy Scout leader. When he was unable to have the control that he wanted as a Boy Scout leader, then he left. He kind of segmented off and created his own organization, which by 1931 started to show up in newspapers. So I was able to look back at that. So for sure,

they were an organization by then. And he started taking boys up to the mountains. Then he started a Bible band, and he started giving young boys opportunities to, I don't know, just like to be part of a community if they didn't have a sense of belonging. So in the 1940s, my father was, he came to California with his mother, who was a single mom, who was running away from an abusive husband. And he she was hiding in California in a chicken coop, actually. And my father joined my grandfather's cult when my mom was a young girl. And so they were married off to each other later. And I came along a couple decades later, along with I along a couple of decades later,

along with, I was a second of four children. So this cult had been around for a very long time before I was born into it. And you were, you, where did you live? It's hard for me to understand because I know when you were little, I know you lived sort of more in, I don't know if we, if we would say a city environment or I remember reading, it was like nearby a town dump. So you were with people and things and access to, you know, things that we all know in our towns for some time before you went to this just remote mountainous area. Absolutely. My grandfather actually started the organization in Pasadena, which is just east of LA. We were living when I was a baby and into my early years until I was seven on the border of El Monte so there was a dump that we lived next to and there was also a area that they kind of

dug out at the end of a cul-de-sac where even before I was born in the 1950s my grandfather leased land from a business owner so it was private land that he leased. And my father was one of the teenage boys who literally constructed the buildings there out of cinder blocks. So I was raised on the border of that until I was seven. So I went to public school when I was five, six, and seven. And then after a fire and some other occurrences, we had nowhere to go. And so my grandfather who had leased a mountain property, I believe in 1947 from the government, then moved

our nuclear family up onto the mountain. And I stayed there until I finally left the cult, which you'll have to read the book to find out. Yeah, no, no. Right, right. But that was about 10 years later? Well, yeah. I stayed there for 10 years until I got out. It's crazy to me how you lived. You know, part of me, I speak only of the survival skills here, but part of me was envious of all the things you learned about how to take care of yourself. And then there was the sexual abuse and other abuse and lack of love and all the other things, which we'll talk about. But can we just spend a minute on the survival skills and how you did survive up there and

how your mother knew all of this to teach you? I want to pay tribute to my mother who passed last year for teaching me how to not only survive in the wilderness, but how to appreciate the great intricacies and interdependencies of the ecosystem that is north of Los Angeles. And that has served me in many ways throughout my life, not because I any longer need to survive in that way, but because I know that the earth can provide for us. And it is also just a wonderful gift to be able to recognize different birds, different animals, and many, many, many plants. My mother's knowledge was self-taught. She was, I guess, obsessed would be the word. She was obsessed with learning every single thing in

our ecosystem. So she was so skilled, in fact, and knowledgeable that government workers at the ranger station that was not too far away, we weren't allowed to go there, but my mother did when the men weren't around. So let me just go back one second and say that it used to be an entirely male organization. And my mother was born into this 100% male organization. She had three older brothers. And so she was very used to figuring out how to get around whatever the rules were. And her father actually did find her unique and intelligent. And he gave her more leeway, I think, than anyone else had in the cult. It's tough for a cult that has only men to survive. So they eventually brought in women.

But yes, you're very astute at that. But let me say that at the beginning, my grandfather just had followers that he demanded be celibate. So in the 1930s, he had some young men who followed him, who stayed with him all the way until his death in the 1980s.

And so I know for a fact, because I knew these men, they, I can't attest for sure that they're celibate, but they were alone and they stayed with him for a very long time. And it wasn't until my mother got into her twenties that I think he recognized that he needed to allow women to be in the organization. So she married one of his early followers. And after she was the very first marriage at the fields, and there were women who then married into the organization afterwards. And there were lots of girls, still male dominated, but there were girls and women after my mother got married. So what, how, like, how, how did you live? Were you in a tent? like describe your living circumstances to

us well when we first came to the mountain which was in the fall when I was almost eight we lived in a mess hall so a mess hall is you know that's what it was called kind of a military quarters but it was one room and there was a big stone fireplace so we were not out in the cold. We had an outhouse down the hill. So I don't know how far away the outhouse was less than a quarter of a mile. And we would walk down to the outhouse and there was a sink. So there was someone running water and in the kitchen and the kitchen and the great room and all these army bunks. It was all in one room. And so we slept on army bunks. And what were you eating? Because I know food was always an issue. Well, interestingly, and I have this a little bit in the book, we did forage for acorns

and other lots of nuts. We were not killing animals. We were living off of plants, so plant-based diet. But the government actually gave us surplus. So there were times, not immediately, but I don't know exactly how long in where they would come by and unload from a truck, whatever was available. So cans of peanuts or carob syrup, sometimes fruit cocktail, and sometimes blocks of butter, and sometimes cheese, depending on you know, what the government had as surplus at the time.

So it's very interesting that we were living on government land, even though the government didn't know what we were doing there. Yeah. And that must have felt like such a delicacy to get some fruit cocktail and some cheese after foraging for acorns. Absolutely. I don't even know if we were supposed to eat it, but we used to go into, there was kind of a dug in walk in and my sisters and I would sneak in there and get the food because we had a can opener. So we would. Yes, it was an incredible delicacy. And I'm very grateful to the government actually for that program, at least at that time. So it was we had an army jeep that my my father also got from government surplus. So he had been drafted and he was very militaristic. He, that was the training that he got that he believed helped him become a man. And so he

trained all his children, girls, and the one boy that he had to work in a military system, you know, which we were not military, but we were trained to behave as if we were. Well, I was going to say that the deprivation was a feature, not a bug. So can you expand on that? Because it was a life of deprivation. Thank you for noticing that you have very astute observations. It was a feature. It was intentional. The deprivation was to help us, for one, lead the army of God in the time of the apocalypse. So they believed that there would be a thousand years of a reign of terror on the earth and that we would have to live without. And that as we were hiding

in the rocks of the mountains, that if we could survive on very little, then we would be able to outwit the, I mean, honestly, it was, I think a little psychotic because, well, very psychotic, but they both, we received things from the government, but they also feared the government. So they thought that whatever political leaders might be coming next would be our enemies. And so we would need to survive without having access to the things that ordinary very strange approach to love, tenderness, affection, even by your parents toward their children. Yes. They would not have called it a cult. They did not call it a cult. They called it a community. And my younger brother, who I call Danny in the book, he came to me after reading this book.

He hasn't read a book since he was a teenager and he got a copy in the mail and he read it the first night. And then he drove to my house from Santa Barbara and he said, you know, the one thing you got wrong is it's not that they would sacrifice us. It's that they did sacrifice us. And so he was able to have a conversation with our father, and who is still alive. And our father said, it's not a cult, and he won't read the book or have anything to do with me. But my brother stood up and he said, but dad, if grandpa had told you to put us all in the mess hall and set it on fire, you would have done it. And he said, Yes, I would have, but I didn't. So it wasn't a cult.

So my father knows that he was absolutely at the mercy of whatever our grandfather, which was not his father. Remember it was his father-in-law who he didn't really call that. He called him mister, but he really truly believed that our grandfather would tell him he was God's prophet and he would tell him how to behave in the world. And my father resigned all forms of critical thinking. He just gave up any sort of alliance to us, any sort of caretaking. And my mother as well. They believed that God was in control and that God's word would be given to them through grandpa. When you're, you spoke a little bit about this, but when your dad arrived into the relationship

with your mom, like what was, what had been his background? You mentioned military, but what had been his background that he was, I mean, I suppose we're going to get into this later, but like that made him susceptible to that. Well, first, I think almost anybody is susceptible to the kind of mind control in these high control groups that really charismatic leaders know how to orchestrate. But in my father's particular case, he was 12 years old when he met my grandfather. My father came from the East Coast. He came from Connecticut with his mother on a bus. He didn't know where he

was going because they were running away from an abusive man who my mother was married, or sorry, my grandmother was married to. His father was abusive to him and to his mother. And so they ran away and they came to California and they were living in a chicken shed when my father met my grandfather. So my grandfather provided a father figure and also provided some someplace for my dad to go because his mother was working in a factory. She was the only woman working in a post-World War II factory in the 1940s when they arrived here in California. And I don't think she knew what her son was doing. I think she was a wonderful, she did her best to be an attentive mother, but she just didn't have the time. She had an

eighth grade education. That's the furthest she ever got in her life. She lived to be in her nineties and I had the great blessing of being with her during her death. But at the time she just didn't have any resources. And so her son went and joined this cult and she tried to get him out later when she realized it, when he was like 18 or 19, but he wouldn't leave at that point. It was too late. Yeah. And this particular cult preyed on only children. So you couldn't be an adult who joined the cult.

They called from, at the time, only boys. But they had an after-school program. And lots of boys joined. Not all the boys were hurt by the organization. A lot of boys, I think, got training, sports training that was really useful in their lives. But if a parent was capable of seeing that it was a high control group, a lot of times the kid was a play for two or three or four years on the sports teams. And then the parents would say, that's enough now. We're going to go to high school or whatever they were going to do. And they were allowed to leave. But it was the boys who were compelled and who worshipped my grandfather and who really found their greatest sense of belonging there, who were taken through layer after layer of

testing and basically training to be bullies. And they would not be allowed to then, they signed a commitment for life forms. They couldn't sign those until they were 18 years old. But nobody could come there at 18. They all had to be groomed during their early years in order to get to the point where they really would sign their lives over as adults. I mean, you were born into it, but how are they getting girls? Well, I, the word I used was groomed, but they, the women were also, they didn't get girls until my mom was of age. So they would just be celibate. They didn't get married. But my father was the very first boy. They called him,

he was almost 30, but he was the very first boy who was allowed to marry at the organization. And so he married my mother, who's the founder's daughter. And that was kind of a royal wedding. They had it at the fields. My grandfather officiated, I've seen all the pictures. And then I was the second child born out of that marriage. But there were no, there weren't marriages before that. And so once we were born, then there had to be something there, they had to figure out what to do with the children. And so they allowed marriages then. And those women were the sisters of the other members. And they were also then groomed to be wives and mothers. And to be fair, some of those women had access to resources from their parents. We didn't because my mother, you know, was born there. And then my father didn't have

any resources. His mother, after he was 19, I believe she moved to the East coast and we didn't see her for decades. But my, my understanding and my knowledge of the other families were, there were families who were there that their parents, sometimes, especially if there were children involved would send the grandkids money for food and other things. We just didn't have access to that. And the other cult members who were raised there, I'll just give you an example. The first nine kids that were born there. So even though I was the second in my family, I was the fourth oldest child who was born into this cult. And of the first nine of us, which were all within two years of age, the other eight are all still there.

Just to put that in perspective. How many people were in the cult when you were there? So there are about 150 in the inner workings of the cult, but they were calling from about 1500 boys at any given time. So they would bring boys in and they wouldn't stay, you know, and they also would hide what they were doing from their parents. And I don't think this is happening anymore. But at the time, it had been happening for decades.

So this, of course, helps explain to some extent some of the sexual abuse. I mean, just the sheer numbers of boys versus girls. And you were one of very few. It's interesting how you write about it and how your mother talked to you about it. Again, there's like a tinge of affirming life advice in here, but it doesn't discount the overall trauma of the event. Like you were sexually abused repeatedly from what you write in the book. And tell us how, let's talk about that first. Then we'll talk about your mother's messaging to you on it.

So I am aware that I was not the only one who was abused, but I also am aware that it was not something that happened to all the girls. In our particular case, we were very vulnerable because our mother would go on these trips, which she'd be gone for two to three months and she would go with the men. So like all the men would go, but she would go with her husband. So she was protected on these trips. She was also with her father. And we were often left with, I have since, since I read the book, some of the caregivers that I had when I was a baby have come out of the woodworks who left the cult and have written me letters and asked to meet me. I went to coffee with one recently.

She was only 15 when she left the cult, but she was my caregiver when she was 12, 13, 14, 15, until my mother no longer allowed girls to take care of us. But in any case, our particular family was very vulnerable because we just didn't have any other relatives other than the ones who were there. And the boys, they called them boys. I believe, I do not believe anyone under 18 ever assaulted me. I believe that the youngest one that I know of who I did know very well was 19 at the time I was seven. And I think that they were babysitting us and they had access to our bodies. And I don't know that it was condoned, but I think that it was, it was overlooked. And these, these young men really, honestly, I'm not, I'm not obviously condoning it, but I, they were very unhealthy and they did not have access. They were not allowed to masturbate.

For example, my grandfather was adamant about that. So like very strict and more like vocal requirements that they stay chased. And then they just sort of like put them around young girls. So again, it was a really unhealthy environment for them. And then they just sort of like put them around young girls. So again, it was a really unhealthy environment for them. And I feel that, um, you know, they were, I do feel that they were victims too, you know, it was a different kind of victimhood, but I think they were. Yeah. May I ask how often this happened to you? Well, I, I went through this frequently for about a year when I was seven. I don't know that it happened before that.

I don't have memories of really being younger than seven. But the thing about being seven was there was a big fire. A lot of things happened. And this type of abuse ended for me at that point because we left to go up to the mountain. And when we first got to the mountain, it was just our nuclear family. And my father was not sexually abusive. So my father was very militaristic and could be unkind, but he was not sexually abusive and neither was my grandfather to me at least. So we were separated from that culture. And then we had a lot of young men living with us and things were, I would say, inappropriate, but I did not get physically violated. I think it was just sort of an emotional thing after that. And I'm very, very, very grateful for spending the time we did on the mountain because it removed me from the really most damaging effects of the cult. Can we talk about what your mom said? Because the reason I said there's like a tinge of something positive you could take away,

if you know, God forbid you find yourself in this situation. And it was, it was basically to try not to think too much about it. And I know that sounds absurd. That sounds absurd. I realize, trust me, I know enough sexual abuse victims that it sounds absurd. But if you can do it, it's a very useful coping technique for a lot of people. And I know somebody, a Hollywood star, who told me this story about when she was young and she was raped by a few boys in the neighborhood and sexually assaulted. And she didn't really understand what it was fully. You know, she didn't totally understand what had happened to her. And her mother told her, you just forget about that. Like that, don't, don't give that any mind. You know, that's what boys do. Some boys, whatever, but like, that doesn't have anything to do with who you are. That wasn't nice to them,

but don't dwell on it. And I was like, when I heard the story, I'm like, that's terrible. My God, the amount of damage that must've been done. And she was like, no, it actually really, it gave me this box to put it in. I managed to put it in there and I was fine after that. So that's when I was reading your story. I'm sure a lot of people have the same reaction of like, oh my God, that's horrible. But were you able to compartmentalize? Cause your mother was very dismissive of this. I definitely compartmentalized. And I think that there is value to that when you need to move on and survive. And so there were, yes, I had compartmentalized, I had boxes for everything, including literally

a box where I kept my writing, which I was able to finally break the lock on literally when I was getting ready to write this book. And I had not read what I had written in, you know, 35 years or some ridiculously long period like that. But when it comes to and I'm not going to make a claim for what is healthy for anyone else, but I will say for my healing process, the fact that my mother made it seem as if I was not damaged, but that it was, again, a byproduct, as you said, of sort of what boys will be boys. There is something that is useful about that because you don't blame yourself. Later, I ended up blaming myself because I got very sick and there was a lot of complications about that. But at the time, it really helped me see myself as just kind of a vessel, which sounds horrible, but like I was a vessel for God's will or whatever, but I looked like I'm a vessel that the boys used and then, you know, they were done. And so then I became myself again. And

even at seven, Michelle, I mean, seven is a baby. Yes, yes, it is. It is. And I'm not saying there was no damage, you know, but at the time I was able to, um, to function and it wasn't until later in life that it's not that I had memories. I mean, I always have the memories, but I also felt that there was a lot of deprivation and a lot of difficult things. And I just put them all in boxes. And I think that it came to me later.

And this is a story I know I've written about that. I couldn't sit still. I had an inability as a young adult to sit still. I had children very young. I moved through life very quickly, the stages of adulthood. And it wasn't until I first sat still that I had to deal with the ramifications of sexual abuse. Yes. Okay. So that's one of my questions. I did have to deal with that. If you're born into a society that doesn't attach

the obvious negative labels to that and help you understand how wrong it is morally and every other way, does the damage still happen? Do you carry it forward? How does it manifest? Well, you know, I, I did exist in a wider society to some degree. And certainly by the time I was 17 and moving, for example, when I moved into a co-ed dorm in college, then that I was very afraid of men because I did not know. I didn't know men that were strangers in any other way than violent ways. And so it was very scary to me, even though the boys in college did not hurt me. I was scared. Right. That's the irony. This is not something that it's not something boys do. You know, I mean, some sick criminals do it, but like the most boys would never do it.

Right, right. And so there were wonderful young men at my college, but I was afraid of them. And so I had all sorts of they called me the ice queen. I was very distant. I was very careful. So there were those ramifications at the beginning, just that I didn't know how to have normal social relationships. My God, were you like, I was raised in a cult. What's wrong with you people? Don't give me such

a hard time. It's a miracle I'm here. You know, I didn't talk about it. I was very ashamed of where I came from. I mean, there was a lot I didn't know, Megan. There was a lot of things like, I didn't know songs. I didn't know pop culture. I didn't know movies. I didn't know the things that other young people knew. So I just listened a lot and started gathering all that information. And I don't know. Was there no schooling? I can see why you had no pop culture. I'm not sure there's no TV, but was there no schooling? So after I was seven, so I went to public school through second grade. And then after that, we were not officially homeschooled, but they did have this, when we would be at the field, they had a seriously one room schoolhouse, it was in the church, and they would put kids five through 12

in this room together, the kids that were at the field. And we had some sort of instruction, we had, we played a lot of like football, we listened to stories of the Bible. And as I talk about in the book, I read the Bible cover to cover when I was eight. And that is an education in and of itself. You could learn a lot from that. And I did have access to my mom's brothers who I can ask questions about the Bible. And I started cross-referencing as a very young child. And so by the time I got to college, I could understand the language of Shakespeare, for example, really well, because it is the same language of the King James Bible. But is it true you never learned, for example, the presidents? I did not know the presidents. I still don't know the presidents. Wow. Like, do you know the big ones? You know, you probably know the big ones.

I know the big ones. I don't, I don't really want to be tested on it, but yes, I could, I could tell you the big ones. Right, right. I'm not going to quiz you on Martin Van Buren because nobody cares. Okay. Yeah, I wouldn't answer those well. So you're living this existence, and part of the problem was your mother did not show you really any love. I mean, that was one of the saddest parts of the story, which was, I mean, yes, there was the physical and sexual abuse, not to diminish that. But doesn't a human being come into this world needing affection, a baby, a toddler, a little one needing to be told they're loved and to feel loved? I would say that not having my mother's love was the greatest heartbreak of my life. It was the love I was

seeking my entire life. I know a lot of women go around seeking love for men, but I felt that I wanted a mother figure. I wanted a maternal figure. I wanted that kind of affection. And I worked very hard to try to get that from my mother. To be fair to her, she was raised in a very rigid, high control group, right? So this, she was raised in this cult and she gave up her children upon giving birth. She, she handed them over to the group. And I think that she had to put armor on to keep herself from loving what she thought would be taken away from her. My grandfather thought that the world would end in 1977.

So my mother had these babies that she thought she was just going to have to give over in 1977 when they were like little children. And again, she believed this. She really believed it. And so she was not able to attach because attaching, I think, would have been wrenching for her. And again, not excusing her coldness, but understanding it. I just don't think she really wanted to risk attaching to something that she felt she had no control over. So she didn't attach. You're 54 now. Okay. So you're two years older than I am. So you were born in 68, right around there. So you were alive and cognizant in 1977. And so what happened when the world did not end? Nothing. That's an interesting thing, right? The first thing my grandfather said is that they

got the years wrong because he said that when it was all based on when Jesus was born, you know, the understanding when Jesus was born, but because of Caiaphas and, you know, he gave all the names of the Sanhedrin and just different people who would have controlled Pontius Pilate. Um, and his understanding then was that the years were off. And so we were on the wrong calendar. Hmm. Okay. That's, I mean, that's how it works. I think in, in a lot of these cults, um, when, you know, the end of the world doesn't come. Let's talk about how you got out because it's a miracle you got out. I mean, you talking to you now, you're perfectly normal, you're dynamic, you seem happy, you know, forgive me for being so judgmental in that implication there. But you know, I would have expected you to appear more damaged given this childhood. So talk to us about how you got out. Well, first of all, thank you for

the compliment. I don't know what damage looks like. And also I have had many years in the wider world to not just, I don't know, I haven't spent that much time in therapy really, but I have spent time doing what I would consider healthy work. My profession has been a one of service. And I felt that working with young people has done a world of good for me, understanding the ways that many people are damaged by their upbringings and not to the same, you know, degree necessarily I was, but there are many people who struggle with upbringings that didn't serve them. So I will say, first of all, that we all have something to recover from and that we are capable of recovery.

I will also say that reading books and being in a profession that enables me to talk about those things has been very useful. And. As far as how I left, I think that one of the main ways that I got out really was using the advice that my mother gave me. So while she wasn't able to give me the affection I needed, she was able to give me the skills that would help me really scrounge. And I mean, we can use the word forge. It's true. But like I used the forging for words and the foraging for, you know, how to find what you need anywhere if you know what you're looking for. So once I knew that I wanted to get out, I had all the skills to do that.

And I owe that to my mother, not not because she necessarily prepared me for that purpose, but it did indeed serve me. And I'm very side effect of all the other things she was teaching you. Yeah. And so the book Forger, if any of you have a chance to read it, does actually go into the details of, to some degree, what led to me leaving. But the details of what it was like right after I left, I'll have to save for the next book because, well, I can give a little bit now, but that was a long process. And I felt like it is a story in and of itself because I did not naturally acclimate to, I was very fortunate that a college took me in, that I was living there at 17, that I was able to have the ability to learn and a passion for learning. And I was really grateful that it led me straight to grad school and that I was able to get a teaching job very young and I was able to support myself. But emotionally, I think I was very stunted and it

took me a long time to figure out how to make connections with other human beings who are healthy. And that was all miraculous. I mean, it's truly miraculous that this happened. I do recall there was an injury, not an injury, there was a disease. You came down with an autoimmune disease that landed you in the hospital. And I wondered, were there big medical problems in, quote, the field, where you were living, that would have required you to go to the hospital? Did your family support modern medicine and understand that certain things, like you break a femur, you got to go get a cast? Well, to some degree, yes. And to some, no, there's a lot of modern medicine that we didn't have access to. We didn't have insurance, for example, or money to pay for things. We actually didn't break bones, interestingly enough. So that none of my siblings ever broke

a bone. Neither did I. And we didn't need antibiotics. You know, there's just some kids who get through without that. But I had an autoimmune disease called idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura, which was and is still of unknown origin. It doesn't have a genetic component. There is some speculation that perhaps, well, I'll just say what the disease is, is your body is coating lots of cells and platelets with antibodies so that your organs like your spleen filter the blood and kill off what they perceive as invaders. In the process of killing off what they perceive as invaders, the spleen and the liver and kidneys and this filter out the platelets themselves that are necessary to clot

blood. So in my case, I really was down to nearly zero platelets. So like even a little cut, I could have bled to death. Now what this comes from is very uncertain. But when I got to the hospital, they didn't know what it was. And I've had, you know, some public a little bit critique and just saying that wouldn't the hospital recognize that I was a victim of abuse? And I would say no, not in the late seventies and the early eighties. And those questions weren't being asked of young children. And once I was in the hospital, my parents were very busy. And that was also normal that if you had a working mother and if you had other children

in the family, I was in a children's hospital and there were other children, not all, but there were other children who were left without their parents during their duration of their stay. And the nurses and the doctors were working on our bodies and helping us understand what was going on while we were present in the hospital, but not necessarily concerned with our mental health. I just don't think that that was something people talked about in those days to children. It was very tough love. I know you wrote, your mother was like, there'll be no crying, period. And again, I think a lot of us can look at some of these little hints and say like, well, you do want to raise tough children. You want your

children to be resilient. You don't want them licking their wounds and feeling sorry for themselves all the time. But as with all of these examples, it just, it was next level. And it was at a place, you know, if you get really hurt, you're going to cry. If you get raped, you're going to cry if you've got the right context for what's happening to you. So how do you see that now? That sort of very tough love, I guess. I went through, I would say about 14 years from the age of 11 to into my 20s without crying ever. And my mother strongly believed you do not cry when you get hurt. You do not cry when you get raped. You do not do those things that you act like nothing happened because then you will not become a perpetual victim. There was also mental illness in her family that I later found out from her. And my editors didn't want me to reveal medical things about the family because, you know,

that could be a violation of their privacy. But my mother knew that there was mental illness, not her own or her father's, but other members of the family. And when I asked her later in life, why she didn't let us know this, if, if we were really honestly being put in danger and she said, well, I didn't want you to worry that that would happen to you. And she's, and she just really, truly believed that you wouldn't become mentally ill if you didn't know that it was possible.

And so she thought that kind of toughness kept you. And I think it's really old school, but I think she just felt that being really tough, which again, I'm not advocating. I'm just putting it in the context that I don't think she saw that as being abusive. I think she saw it as being useful. Well, it's kind of an interesting experiment. I mean, I'm not recommending it, but now that you've been through it, it is interesting to ask, like I was saying about abuse. If you don't, if, if you don't know what file to put it in, is it less damaging in some way? If, if, you know, she doesn't tell you about mental illness, is she right? It can't manifest. That doesn't sound, none of this sounds right, but you were part of an experiment.

Yes. And Southern California, by the way, was a Mecca of small cults. This one was particularly successful, honestly, but there were a lot of people in California who were experimenting in communities with what would happen if you lived alternatively to the wider culture. And a lot of those cults were religious, but not all. There were just people who had very strong ideologies. And what made them cults is that they had a high control group mentality led by a charismatic leader who would then make mercurial decisions about what was or wasn't allowed within said cult. So yes, we were very experimental. And I think after my grandfather's death, it got a little bit more rigid, which just happened to be really vulnerable years for me.

But then the cult softened because it couldn't continue to maintain that. And since we were the very first children born there, it was an experiment and it was kind of a failed experiment. And I don't think, for example, my mother would not have told you that I turned out well. She would have said that I was like a bad seed and that I had made choices to leave and to leave the calling that she believed I was always meant to be, which is to be a leader at the field. And she thought the work that I do, I teach college, that I work in a secular field. And that is negative for, she thinks it's just very negative to teach people secular worldviews. And so she was not ever proud of what I did. And she couldn't bear to hear a word of it.

You started to stray a little in your behaviors and beliefs. And it just led to, as I understand it, irreconcilable differences where they didn't want you and you didn't really want to be there. And you left at a relatively young age. I mean, how did you get into college? Like, how did you even know to pick up an application, you know, that there could be, you know, a dormitory and a food and beverage service? You know, like, how did all of this come to you? Well, I was a house cleaner.

So because we didn't have any money, I started house cleaning when I was very young. Right when I got out of the hospital, by the time before I even turned 14, I was cleaning a lot of houses. And I went by word of mouth and I started working in wealthier areas because I got paid more. And I- Were you coming down off the mountain at this point? Where were you when you were doing the house cleaning? Okay. So my family still lived at the mountain. We had no other home. But my parents would go away on these long trips.

And so I would sometimes stay down with my grandmother, especially after our grandfather died. She was alone. She was a widow. And I would stay at her house on the couch with all her dogs. And then I borrowed one of the girls I knew, one of her bike. It wasn't one of her bikes. It was probably her only bike. But I borrowed one of the girls. I knew one of her bike. I bought it. I wasn't one of her bikes was probably her only bike, but I borrowed a bike and I would ride secretly and nobody really was around by my grandmother had Alzheimer's and that wasn't diagnosed as Alzheimer's.

She later went into a home, uh, not that much later. Uh, she was sort of just pushed aside out of the field, but at the time she had Alzheimer's, she was alone. I slept on her couch and I took a bike and I went and did house cleaning jobs and I stored the money. I got cash and I put it in this cup and I like put it up on the top of her shelf and she couldn't reach it. And I just was very secretive about it. So I did house cleaning as much as I could. So I couldn't always, you know, once my parents were in town and we were up on the mountain, I couldn't house clean. But it was something that I was very good at.

And one of the women whose houses I cleaned and I've been working for her for quite a while, she gave me a college application and I filled it out in pencil. And it just so happens that, yeah, it's so interesting. But anyway, but the end result was I went to a very experimental college. It's called Pitzer College. And they started in the 60s. And they didn't have general ed, for example. They I mean, they were an accredited institution, but they were private. And they really liked that I had an alternative education. And they did test me on things. But I was a wonderful writer. I went to an event recently, one of my college professors was there. And she said, Oh, no, from the moment I met you, you were just, you know,

a wonderful writer, I didn't teach you a thing. That can't be true. But it is true that I tested out of writing. And I had very strong math skills from all the stuff I did was selling and from astronomy, and from building, because we would weld and we would build, you know, buildings. And it's a lot, you can learn a lot with hands on education. Sure. Well, that's how it used to be done in this country. So can I just ask you, so now you're, are you married now? I know you've got a family of your own now. So no, I, I, I have my, I got married to a guy who was at the Colt. I had all my children with him and then they are now. So we stayed married when we raised our children, but then they are now just, I just launched

my youngest daughter and all of my children now are in their twenties and partnered. Actually my oldest, just, I have twins that are my oldest and they're 30 now. So they are, you raised them outside of the cult. Like the husband came with you. He did. Yeah. Well, we got married outside of the cults. Um, and, but we knew each other, we grew up together. He's older than I am, but we, um, he was one of the boys who used to stay at our house and take care of us. So it was kind of, you know, a brotherly figure to me, but I was young. I was with him, um, starting, let's see when I turned 18 and I was with him after that. And we had a lot of trauma.

You didn't stay married. No, we wanted to, um, possibly where you look at that you think there's no way the more than 50 of marriages end in divorce just like the odds or were against you anyway but then with all this in your background but i was just wondering what it would be like you know now to to meet somebody who wasn't in the cult and try to fall in love and try to trust and i i assume you've had other you know boyfriends and so on fall in love and try to trust. And I assume you've had other, you know, boyfriends and so on after your marriage. And has that been strange to you? Or you were living enough sort of in the real world with your first husband that you got used to that before you had to date strangers? Right. So I've only had one husband and he, we stayed together for a very long time and we are still close because we

have, um, really shared experiences and, um, we have shared family and we have nieces and nephews and we have, you know, our, our children. So we also really understand, um, our various forms of trauma. And he would say, and has said to me, he's so grateful for the book, that his trauma that he experienced there was more psychological abuse. He was not born and he was, he came there at age seven. So since then I have had, yes, I've had difficulty with understanding necessarily how relationships are. I can understand short-term relationships really well, but longer-term relationship, it's difficult for me to trust. And that's something I'm working through. Why is it awkward when I ask you if you are married and have a family?

I just think that one of the things that I said when I was coming into this, I guess this, I don't know if you call it tour, but like talking about the book is that I would keep my personal life private. That was just something I made for a boundary for myself and also for the man I married and also for my children, because they, they do feel really awkward about our, our past. I think that it's just maybe an area we didn't explore a lot. And so, um, but the children had a traditional upbringing, like you, you raised them outside of the cult.

Yes. Um, all my children went to public school. They've done very well. They all got out of college, um, rapidly. They've been, um, they're all partnered. Um, two of them are married. Two of them. That's funny how you keep saying that that's from the cult, right? The part, they're all partnered. We, we say married. Okay. Well, they're not all married. So some of them, my children have long, they're in relationships. I could say it that way. They're not all married. I don't mean to belittle it, but it's just, it's like I said, you're just, you seem like such a powerhouse. So it's, there's something kind of sweet, these reminders of all that you've overcome in the way you speak and so on. It's just, there's something endearing because you're seem like a, just a very strong person and you must be

so like, you know, that, that resilience is still in you. Um, I did read that you can't see your sisters, like that seeing your family of origin brings it all up for all of you. So can you talk about that? Are they, are they out of the cult and are in, what's that like when you're all together? So we're not all together really anymore, except for we were at our mom's services. So that was honestly wonderful. I, I don't know if it was something I'd written earlier. I think we all had really difficult times being together for most of our adult lives. But especially since the book came out, my younger brother and my younger sister, and all four of us are, we're all born within five years of each other total. So we're all the same age. My younger brother and sister came to

the book opening, they come and stayed at my house. My sister flew in from my younger sister from the East coast. And so we have had wonderful long conversations and I have, I already had a relationship with my younger sister. We never really broke relationship, but she's lived on her East, on the East coast ever since college. So we haven't lived in the same town any time during our adult life. And my younger brother also came and just talked about the book, said that he was unable to talk to it. He was unable to talk about it during his own marriage and that it has been so healthy for him to be able to be part of this conversation. So I've spent a great deal of time with my younger brother and sister since this book came out, which is very recent. And then our older sister is the only one who chose to stay

in the community. And she would say the community is very different, but they don't welcome outsiders. Is it still going up? I mean, are there children being raised in this right now who are underweight and possibly getting abused? No, I mean, there are still children there, but the organization has changed. And it is certainly, I mean, physically, I think that the children are very healthy. I am not there. And it was very difficult for me to understand how to put the parameters on my conversation, because I don't really know all the details. But it certainly doesn't exist in the form. There's nobody who is being raised the way I was raised. That is for sure. Certain. But our sister, my sister does,

I call it our sister because she's all of our sister, but she is the one who then now has a school, but it is accredited now and she runs the school that raises the kids there. And she says it's a really different place than it used to be. And I do know that they have, you know, accreditation people come in. So people are checking on it in a way that did not happen when we were young. Accreditation. But what about Division of Child and Family Services? I mean, is there anything and how are people living now at the field? Are they living in mess halls still? Or what's the facility like?

So my understanding is that families are now allowed to have regular jobs and that they are allowed to, so it is more of a church now and they do have a strong faith system. I think that many churches believe different kinds of interpretations of the Bible. I'm not justifying their particular interpretation, but they do use the traditional Judeo-Christian Protestant version of the Bible. I'm not justifying their particular interpretation, but they do use the traditional Judeo-Christian Protestant version of the Bible. And my understanding is that the families have their, they are now allowed to be nuclear families. And I will also say that my sister is married to a boy that, or a man that grew up with us as a boy. She's been married her whole life to him. And I knew him all growing up and that they have two children, my niece and my nephew, who seem by

all accounts there, they went to college there in, you know, they're in their twenties now. So it seems that it is a place where it is still a real tight community, but that it would be no longer abusive. Is it up on a mountain? Is it still in the same location up on the mountainside in California? So they have the mountain location, but they rent it out now to outside groups so that they can make money. Okay. So it is not being used in that same capacity, but they do still have that lease.

How, are you still religious? No, I would consider myself a spiritual person and I did raise my children in a faith community in a United Church of Christ congregational church because I thought it was really wonderful for them to get the opportunity to see healthy people who are have a faith and believe in something and I thought thought it was really great. And I did teach church school there. I know the Bible very well. So I raised them there, but I don't identify directly anymore because I feel that for me, it is a source of a lot of anxiety and tension. Yeah. I mean, this is where now I'll quiz you on Martin Van Buren. You won't know much. And you quiz me on the Bible and I won't know much either.

So that, you know, one of us has studied a certain area and one of us has studied the others. Like we all have our deficiencies and how we're raised and what we focus on. Though my mother would not be happy to hear me admit this about the Bible. I won't tell her. I, yeah, we should, she's probably not listening. So I think we're safe. So can, can you just explain to me like, because one of the

things we're going to talk about is getting out of a cult, like whether it's possible and how, how many challenges it poses, you know, listening to you here, it sounds like it was kind of easy, but that's probably not true. So I think it's certainly possible to get out of any cult. It is always a process though. I do not think anyone, because it's, I feel like it's certainly possible to get out of any cult. It is always a process though. I do not think anyone, because it's, I feel like it's a little bit like leaving an abusive relationship. You can leave the relationship and still have the behaviors that put you in that abusive relationship. And, um, a lot of people enter another abusive relationship. So, um, I, I, I guess I didn't know that I was making it look easy. I think that I

was trying really hard with the book not to just focus on the negative aspects and not to just sort of pummel people with the pain of the experience. Because I do think that we, we do all have a need for belonging. And the reason cults are so attractive to people is because they do provide a source of belonging. And not that they do it in a healthy way, but that that need is something that is innate, and that we do need each other, and we do need community. Leaving was excruciating for me. I married far too young. I was not an adult. I wasn't able to think clearly for myself. When I had my own children, I did tons and tons and tons of research to figure

out how to raise them, but it did not feel natural to me. I felt the love was extremely natural. I did all the things, you know, breastfed and was very into attachment parenting and was there with them. Even when I worked, I would bring them on my belly, you know, I put my baby on my back or whatever. I mean, after your mom never hugging you, this must have been so special for you. It really was. And I think that I was very fortunate that I was able to give birth to them in a hospital and to have, I was in Boulder, Colorado, where I was in grad school. And I was able to, you know, just have, there was just lactation consultants and things like that around. So then by the time I, you know, became a mother a few times, like I was just really, really good at it, you know, at least the parts that were about physically caring for them and being able to be emotionally present. It was just wonderful to be able to give despite not having received it, Michelle. I mean, so few people

have that story. There's, you know, something in you that, that made that happen. Hard work, determination, the sparks of knowledge and certainly your resilience, but it, your story is a testament to human resilience and strength, despite many odds against you. Thank you. I think sometimes we teach what we most need to learn, you know, and I think that being able to offer my children that kind of attachment really gave me the attachment that I needed so much. And even at my mom's death, I was able to physically be present for her and lie down with her and even giving her she was in a hospital bed, but she died at home on hospice. I was able to physically be

present with her through the whole process of dying. And I was able to give her the same sort of comfort I needed from her in the hospital. And I think it was like that with my kids too. Like I gave them what I needed. And I think because I needed it so badly, I knew, you know, I just knew how important it was. Do you ever have a moment where you're like, stop crying? Like do you know the remnants? Yes. You know, my oldest daughter is a marriage and family therapist. And she tells me, she said, you had a problem with crying. And I said, I tried not to. And she said, wow, you know, it's really healthy for children to cry. And I said, I'm so sorry. I probably,

probably was not as welcoming of that as I could have been. I mean, not that I forbade them from crying, but I do not think I was that tolerant. But it's understandable. Yeah, but they were very close. They are very all very close to each other. And I think that's another wonderful thing. And they have not been victims of abuse, which I'm also very proud of. And when my twins were little, I was breastfeeding both of them, they never took a bottle. And I just felt so deeply committed to really just being a hundred percent there. So I'm just really grateful for that. Michelle, when you go, now you're a successful writer and would teach at a college. Like when you go to a cocktail party for the first time and you're meeting people and they're like, Hey, where'd you grow up? I mean, how do you short form this?

I have never been good at this. I think that's why I wrote a book because I hate that question. So I'm just here, read this. And even in the book, I didn't really cover it because I really ended up focusing on my story and not really fleshing out the community entirely. So maybe I'll do that later. But I just say I had an unconventional childhood. It's complicated. Yeah, it's really not an easy question to answer.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's really not an easy question to answer. their lives. And maybe not. Maybe if you read Forager, field notes for surviving a family cult, it might be helpful to you even if you weren't in a cult, right? Even if you just had some massive challenges that you don't think you can get past. Michelle, all the best to you. Thank you for coming on. Thank you so much for having me, Megan. It's been a pleasure. I appreciate all your insights. Oh, thank you. It's a pleasure for me to, to be continued. So I know that you were listening to Michelle's story and I thought it was a very astute observation. And what I know is true from your writings that there's, there's something about a cult that provides a sense of belonging. It's a sense of community. There is a reason people are attracted to these organizations. It's because you of community. There is a reason people are attracted to these

organizations. It's because you hear about the abuse, you hear about psychological torture and so on. You think, why? Well, it doesn't start off like that. And it does provide some pluses that are alluring. Yeah. So I want to just comment that there are some real differences with people who are born into an authoritarian cult, as Michelle was, versus someone like myself who was recruited at age 19 while I was a college student through deceptive means into generalization, the public tends to look too much at the person who's involved and too little at the deception and the control of social influence variables. But as you correctly said, there are always positives, even in the worst of situations. Right. And I'm fascinated by your story too. So you seem to have had a relatively normal childhood and you seem to have been a rather well-adjusted young man, and yet you got lured in. And I remember hearing about the Moonies and they sounded like a bunch of kooks. So I don't know much about them, but looking at you now, thinking you were in the

Moonies? What? Explain. Yeah. So I should say that I was dumped by my girlfriends in 1973 in the Christmas time. And I got recruited in February of 1974 at Queens College. And that was the same month, by the way, that Patty Hearst was physically abducted by the Symbionese Liberation Army, just for your listeners who are of an age to remember that. But when I got recruited, nobody knew anything about the Moonies. They didn't really get public until later that year when the group was fasting for Nixon during Watergate. And I was part of that fasting that God wants to forgive, love, and unite no matter what Nixon did at Watergate. And then the media dubbed them the Moonies, and some young Moon who claimed

to be 10 times greater than Jesus Christ or any other religious leader loved that we were being called Moonies. And I was promoted to a pretty high rank as an American leader. Not that I had any power at all, but I was kind of a front person who was used to recruit and indoctrinate people. But wait, before we got to your promotion, there was the luring in of this college student, Queens College. Yeah, women. Women flirting and lying and pretending that they were students and complimenting me and doing what's called love bombing. And I had bicycled cross-country when I was 16. I should say I was raised in a middle, middle-class family. My father had a hardware store.

My mom was an eighth-grade art teacher. I have two older sisters. We lived in the same house, in the same community, conservative Jewish upbringing. I had bicycle cross country when I was 16. I was very anti-group, anti-authoritarian. I skipped eighth grade because I was deemed a good tester or whatever. So yeah, I had no belief that anyone could con me or brainwash me. It didn't enter my mind that anyone could brainwash me. But I became a fascist. I became a total fanatic that needed a formal deprogramming intervention after a near fatal van crash before I started going, what? How could I believe Moon was the greatest man in human history?

You went to the first meeting where they just said, hey, come on over. Let's hang out. And you went, fine. And as I understand it, you had an instinct. This is a little off. And you said, is this a religious group? What is this? No, no, no, no, no.

And you left kind of determined not to go back. And then they all ran outside and the love bombing kicked off in earnest. And most of us were susceptible to flattery and compliments and that kind of love from people who want to accept you, especially if it's coming from a beautiful member of the opposite sex. Exactly. We're all human beings, and we all love to believe that we're special and that we're smart and that we can contribute to the world and make the world a better place. But I said I did ask them,

are you part of a religious group? Oh, no, not at all. And they claimed to be students, which they weren't. But this was part of heavenly deception because members believe the world is controlled by Satan. And therefore, we need to use deception to trick Satan's children into doing God's will. As the ends justify the means. Yeah, what were the Moonies about, and what did Mr. Moon get out of all this? So the Moonies, well, I should say that the stereotypical cult leader playbook is they all want power, money, and sex. And it's always power. Usually money brings more power.

And often they're sexual perverts. And Moon was all three. The teachings varied based on who the cult was trying to influence to recruit. As a recruiter, I was taught to categorize potential recruits in terms of thinkers, feelers, doers, or believers. So if somebody represented the spirituality and religion as something important, then we would shape the recruitment that way. If they were someone who was a feeler, then we talk about how we're one unified family and we're brothers and sisters and we have this idyllic view of restoring the earth to the Garden of Eden, etc. And the idea with influence and mind control is, if you think about the influencer and the influencee, there's this relationship of

someone has a vulnerability and everybody wants to improve themselves, it seems, or make the world a better place, some human need. If you're schizophrenic, cults will not want to recruit you. Or if you're absolutely apathetic, they don't want you either. They want people with talent and abilities and passion who can work long hours for little or no pay. Try to raise money and give it to the cult. So power, money, and sex. So for me, I was mostly recruiting and doing public types of influence things, but they had full-time fundraisers who were bringing in around $30 million a year cash, lying to people saying they were recruiting for Christian drug programs or whatever.

And the money was then used to buy property, and then loans were taken out against the property to buy more and then invest in businesses. And there was a congressional subcommittee investigation in the 70s that I wound up being an expert for looking into Korean CIA activities in the US. And as they were researching the Moonies, because they were part of that plan, the researchers said, this is a group with hundreds of front groups. Let's just call them the Moon Organization because they're all following Sun Myung Moon. And Sun Myung Moon was best known at that time for mass weddings where he would assign men and women to marry. They often didn't know each other or even speak the same language, but they believed that he was God's greatest man on earth, sinless, and he had the power to match you with your ideal mate.

And so he had, I think, the Guinness Book of Records, 30,000 couples at one time in this particular cult. Did you believe that? Did you think he had these powers and believe in his ability to just find the right mate with people who had never met? And we were literally taken to see the Exorcist movie when it came out. And then Moon gave a lecture how God made this movie, and it was a prophecy of what would happen if we left. So one thing I want to explain to you and your listeners is that mind control is best understood as a dissociative disorder. So the old Steve Hassan, son of Milton and Estelle Hassan, got replaced by Steve Hassan, son of Sun Yung Moon and Hak Chah Han, the true parents of the universe. I was still in there, but I was being suppressed. Think about a computer virus that hacks your computer and takes over your operating system. That's an easy analogy

for what it's like. And in my case, because I almost died in a van crash due to sleep deprivation and was away from the cult and then wanted to prove to my family I wasn't brainwashed, I agreed to meet with ex-members and learn about Chinese communist brainwashing, etc., the real me popped out. And I had all these memories of things that should have maybe run from the cult. But again, this cult identity that had been programmed into me was in executive control. People think maybe this is just a small niche thing. It's not. There are a lot of cults in America, even today. And I know, I mean, I've talked a lot about Scientology on this show and the other shows I've had, but they have a lot of the features where you buy in at this level, and then you have to pay all this money to advance to the next level.

And that's also, I know, a feature of cults. Moreover, them learning what your weaknesses are in these little sessions that they have where you've got to like pour your heart out through these little Campbell's soup cans, the soup cans through the through the string like we used to do when we were kids. And then the other person knows all your vulnerabilities, which get used against you. But like the cult Michelle talked about, like the Moonies, there's something for you in there. The Scientology messaging of don't associate with the negative people. They're suppressive people. Move on. There's no reason to bask in that negativity.

You just get rid of them. You know, there's something attractive and there's something positive about it. So there's always something right. They they do have something good to reel you in until you learn about all the other stuff. But by that point, they're hoping it's too late. So I want you to be clear and understand and your listeners that people don't understand what the group is and what the beliefs are, what's going to happen to them. If there was actual informed consent where people understood what the beliefs were, people wouldn't get involved in the first place. In my work and in my doctoral dissertation that I did, I talk about behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control variables. I call it the model of authoritarian control. And I go through a laundry list of the most common techniques that all types of cults, political

cults, therapy cults, religious cults, cults, one-on-one cults even, use on people. And what's missing for the public is to have an understanding that influence exists on a continuum from ethical influence to unethical and what to watch out for. So preventive education, and that's why I'm so grateful that you had Michelle on your show and that I'm able to do this show, is because people don't want to be lied to. They don't want to be tricked. They don't want to be mind controlled and abused or trafficked. And if they understood how to reality test for themselves, whether they're in a mind-control environment, then they won't join or they'll get out if they're already in. Yes. So I've had a long interest in this, including interviews in depth

with Catherine Oxenberg, who's, she was a famous star. She is a famous star and was very big in the 1980s um and her daughter india oxenberg who was lured into this cult nexium which is from my hometown albany new york you wouldn't have thought i wouldn't have thought it could happen in an upstate new york community people are very sensible you kind of always think it's not going to be me it's not going to be my hometown where to sense no wrong can happen anywhere. And here she is this glamorous, absolutely stunning woman, you know, very well known and her beautiful daughter. And they went for a like self like female empowerment. That's what they were told it was going to be about, you know, start a business for female leaders.

And her daughter thought that was attractive. And Catherine thought, sure, I'll go, I'll support you. And they went and then they took like maybe another seminar and then that was attractive. And Catherine thought, sure, I'll go. I'll support you. And they went. And then they took, like, maybe another seminar, maybe a third. And then Catherine was like, I'm good. And India was getting more and more into it. And, of course, you did need to buy up to the next level of courses. And it had all the features, right? It was like they revered the one guy, Keith Raniere, this short, unattractive, disgusting man.

They always are. It's never the Robert Redford, Brad Pitt type who's at the center. All the women, as it turns out, were having sex with him. The women wound up being branded within this weird little sex cult that was like baked into the cult.

Anyway, it was such a story as Catherine tried to get her daughter out of this, thank God, successfully. But the pulling out is so much harder than the pulling in. Yeah, exactly. I would say that I knew about Keith Ranieri when he got busted by 20 attorneys general for his multilevel marketing cult, Consumers Byline. Multi-level marketing cults promise the pie in the sky, you'll make a fortune, but it's all about behavior, information, thought, and emotional control to make people dependent. He was forbidden from doing an MLM. He recruited Nancy Salzman to

be the front person and did an MLM for coaching. And so the whole NXIVM program, I have a lot of information on my freedomofmind.com website about NXIVM and all the techniques they've used. And I'll also add, after my deprogramming in 1976 from the Moonies, I befriended ex-Scientologists and started learning. I befriended Paulette Cooper, who was unmercifully attacked by Scientology, and I got labeled a suppressive person. And I'm very close friends with John A. Tech, who's written the best books on Scientology, being a former member himself, and brilliant. People need to understand it can happen to anyone. And it makes a lot of sense for preventive education, consumer awareness. Again,

why I'm so grateful, Megan, that you're doing this show. Well, how do you know, right? Like I, I know lots of people who pay to go to a self-help workshop or I don't know, you know, you learn how to do some sort of stress management techniques, what have you, there's all sorts of things out there and they bounce from one to another, but they, they never get drawn into a cult. Like They don't wind up giving their money. They just sort of test different things. But is there a personality type who is more likely to be susceptible to this? A personality type? I would say probably if you're oriented to being a people pleaser and you haven't been taught how to be assertive to say no, you're going to be more likely susceptible to being manipulated, especially by trained

recruiters who know a lot of social influence techniques. But I want to state categorically that everyone is situationally vulnerable. Death of a loved one, an illness, a breakup in a relationship, losing a job, moving to a new city, state, or country that throws you off balance, where somebody can come in and start telling you with certainty how much your life can get better or how you can help to save the world and make the world a better place. With Scientology, it's more about power than saving the world. There's an element of clearing the planet and getting rid of all the evil mental health professionals. I'm one of those. But mostly it's a situational vulnerabilities and lack of awareness that it could happen to you. So if you're walking around thinking,

oh, it only happens to weak people or stupid people or uneducated people, then you're really very, very vulnerable. Think again. What is it about Keith Raniere or Sun Yung Moon or L. Ron Hubbard and now his disciple, David Miscavige of Scientology? What is it about them that makes them so good at persuasion? That makes them, you know, you talk about Keith Raniere, he's just some loser. I mean, this guy never accomplished anything in his life. So how does he have these enormous powers of persuasion to get so many people to follow him? That's a really good question. So I want to cite Eric Fromm, who is brilliant,

wrote in the 40s. He talked about malignant narcissists. And I have said in my books that this is the stereotypical profile of cult leaders, the grandiosity, the certainty, the need for attention, but the lack of empathy, but also thinking that they're above the law, the pathological lying. And there's a whole list that I have on my website. So certainty is something that the average person tends to go, hmm, they're so sure. Maybe they know something I don't know, as opposed to this person has a personality disorder. They're a narcissist. And I should be more skeptical of anyone with that level of certainty and such. But I also want to comment that I just finished two chapters for a textbook on hypnosis about the dark side of hypnosis. And I wrote about Hubbard being a hypnotist and that the entire system is based on hypnosis. And Croneri learned neurolinguistic programming, which was based on the work of Milton Erickson,

who was the penultimate hypnotherapist psychiatrist. So what I want to say to your listeners is that human beings go in and out of altered states of consciousness all day long. And hypnosis is not sleep. It's about a focusing and narrowing of your attention, which makes you more suggestible to ideas. And this is a great superpower for people who are super successful to enter into this kind of flow state where they're able to super concentrate. But if you're in an environment with someone with a hidden agenda who can start putting in beliefs and ideas like you've lived before, or that the world is filled with body thetans, which is part of Hubbard's sci-fi ideology, the critical mind gets bypassed. yourself is look at the source, look for credibility, look for credentials, and always be open to listening to critics and former members. And if you're in a group that says, don't ever listen to X members or critics, automatically you should be going, that's information control. I'm an intelligent human being. Let me hear what the critics and former members have to say, and I'll decide for myself whether or not that has

validity or not. This is why I say when I was in Fox News, I was in a cult. And it's not to say it wasn't a real cult, but there were cultish elements in that you, once you leave, you are otherized. That is it. You don't leave. Like you did once you're out, you are banished, you know, you're shunned. And when I was there, it was all about the reverence to dear leader, who was Roger Ailes, who ran that place with an iron fist and would absolutely tell, be telling you not to listen to anything the Libs said, you know. That was his political bias, but also there was something different about it. And just the way the people would talk about Roger, I hear remnants of it when I hear stories about Scientology, about how,

well, Roger approves of this. Well, Roger likes that. Well, Roger thought this, you know, as if he was this deity that somehow had, you know, greater divine knowledge than the rest of us. And so where do you, where do you draw the line between, well, they just love the guy because he was a genius and he built a really powerful news organization and this is getting culty, right? Like I, I still don't know exactly where that line is. So it's a really important point. I just put up on my podcast an interview with a leadership professor of business about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. And he did a journal article talking about corporate cults and the qualities to to evaluate. And it comes back to the charismatic figure who cannot be criticized, who is held up and not accountable, not transparent, doesn't apologize and say that they're wrong, but the control of behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions in order to make people dependent and obedient. And so to stay in your job, you need

to adopt the corporate identity, keep your thoughts to yourself and follow the rules or be ostracized and criticized. And that's the opposite of healthy corporations and healthy groups where they want dissent. They want to hear other points of view that the leaders, if they screw up, they say sorry, and they really make policy changes. But if you're an authoritarian, you want total power and control. Well, the NBC might be a cult too, because they didn't want opposite points of view from what they're, you know, that's a news problem. That's a media problem. The important thing about my work is I'm against authoritarianism on the left and the right. I'm against, I want human rights for all. I want to support human rights, women's rights,

gay rights. I want people to be free to think and not just conform and follow in lemming like fashion, whatever they're being told. You know, I would say my own experience, and this may be one of the reasons why I'm so interested in this subject is it took years after leaving Fox for really the, that second skin to come off. You know what I mean? Like it took a long time, even to be honest with you, I was a knee jerk defender of Fox news for a long time. Like, no, they didn't know that you're wrong. Well, don't criticize them like that. Well, that's not true. And to this day, I have some fear in criticizing them because I was there for some 14 years. I have a bit of an emotional hangover from these problems. So this is a really important point that you make.

And when I talk about the BITE model and the E is emotional control, emotional control includes feeling awe and reverence and feeling special and chosen, but mostly it's about fear and guilt. And the universal mind control technique is what I call phobia indoctrination, which is the inculcation of irrational fears that if you ever leave the group or criticize the leader, terrible things are going to happen to you. And the way to get out of phobia programming is to think back who you were before you got involved and to use your critical frontal cortex to evaluate what's an actual danger where you should have fear, and what's an irrational fear. And I deal with traffickers, sex traffickers, pimps, as well as labor traffickers. And unfortunately, with some of

these criminal enterprises, people should be afraid of speaking out against them because they can be harassed or harmed physically. But most religious cults, most cults, I would say, in the United States, it's a psychological imprisonment. And why it took time for you is time brings perspective through experiences outside of the totalist environment. The more contact you have with normal people and other frames of reference. And also, I would suspect your interest in Scientology and NXIVM and other things, that gave you some tools to start thinking and getting perspective on Fox would be my guess. No, I remember I was at NBC, we were covering NXIVM. I was neck deep on that story. And I was doing an interview on what a cult is and what are the defining characteristics. And I said on camera, oh, my God, I was in a cult. It was the aha moment.

I think I watched that interview, actually. And truly, I don't mean to be completely, this isn't my cult hangover, but I don't mean to be completely disparaging of this place that gave me all these opportunities and I made a lot of money there. But it's more than just a normal news organization. There's just no question about it. And it's not that, and the more is not healthy. So, all right, enough about me. How do we extract somebody who we know? I mean, like this actually happened to my friend, Catherine Oxenberg. She had to extract India and India did not want to hear anything negative about NXIVM or

Keith Raniere from Catherine. Catherine had been otherized. Catherine had been made the outsider and a threat. So it's a very ginger, delicate process for someone like Catherine or a loved one like your family trying to extract the loved one. Right. So I want to say that I was extracted after a near fatal van crash in 1976. And I got involved for a year with extracting other people from the Moonies called deprogramming. And I realized this is not healthy. This is traumatizing. And then it became illegal when judges stopped giving conservatorships to parents. So I just turned my back on that approach, but I still wanted to help people involved with cults. So I embarked, and now it's 47 years later, but I embarked on a process of wanting to understand

the programming elements and what are the patterns that have helped people to get out and to reality test. And that's why I've written four books on the subject and have a course that I've just put up for mental health professionals, especially to help their clients. And what works the best is empowering people to reflect and reality test for themselves versus trying to persuade them that the group is wrong or bad or the leader is wrong or bad. And it's about warmth, respect, asking questions, and understanding the methodology involved with creating this dual identity or dissociative disorder to get the person back in time before they join to

start remembering what did they think their life was going to be when they went to that first session. And if you knew then what you know now, if you could go back in time and you were being arrested as India was under threat of arrest, you can start to activate the person's core identity. And as you educate them about Chinese communist brainwashing or pimps or traffickers and explain the influence continuum and the bite model, you're asking them questions and pointing out these other areas or other cults that they would say are brainwashing people. And people exit themselves is what I'm trying to say, Megan. But if you can create a team of family members, friends, former members, and that's why I loved Michelle is doing this book, Forager.

There are so many other former members who were born in cults or recruited in cults writing books. What I love about this is it's people sharing their stories will help to destigmatize the idea that only weak, stupid people are in these groups, right? And that many people have life after cult or life after group. So they can have a future in their mind that's happier. Yeah. So what percentage of attempted extractions work, would you say? What's the success rate?

So again, I don't think of extractions. I have what I call the strategic interactive approach and it unfortunately it's labor intensive and time intensive so families who want to just write me a check and tell me to go get their loved one I don't take those clients I work with people who love their son or daughter or their husband or wife or their mother or father, and I coach them on how to interact. So it happens over time. And I would say the earlier you can start in this project to the person's recruitment, the faster they're going to exit. If you start this process 10 years later or 20 years later, in a way, it's easier to get them to think critically because they've had a long body of negative experiences that have been

suppressed, but it's harder to re-socialize. And again, you want a face-saving exit for people to say, we love you, we want you in our life. And again, the idea isn't to try to control them or to tell them what to think or to tell them what they're doing is wrong, but to ask them to think over what it is they're doing and persuade you perhaps to, you know, why it's so good that you would might consider to get involved yourself. It's a very powerful frame. Oh, I hope you enjoy the show as much as I did. Cults are fascinating. They're so fascinating. Are they fascinating to you? They probably are. If you're sitting here listening to this tomorrow, we conclude our hot crime summer with a deep dive on the missing plane, MH370, and the show that's been haunting us all since we taped it. People, we found the guy who

knows what happens to MH370, and we found the guy who can tell you exactly how it likely happened, how the passengers were likely killed. Oh God, it's chilling. It's compelling. You might not fly the same again, but some of the things he said actually calmed my nervous flying nerves. So join me tomorrow for this crazy story and the deep dive. We've got the expert to tell you on what went down. Talk to you then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.