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Women and Cults: A Lawyer’s Perspective
Abstract
Often the problems facing women
in or recovering from a cult involvement are gender specific, yet they are not
likely to be recognized as such. Societal expectations cause women to have
particular vulnerabilities to cult recruitment, to be more susceptible to abuse
within the cult, and to experience certain difficulties in recovery from the
cult experience. Those working with cult victims need to develop a greater
sensitivity to these issues when addressing women’s needs for preventive
education, legal counsel, family support, and other forms of victim assistance.
When I first became involved with the cult problem some
years ago, people were oriented toward distinguishing the cult leaders, who were
viewed as somewhat mystical charismatic figures, from the victims, who were
lumped together without any differentiation. There was a generalized belief
about the stereotypical cult member: he or she was thought to be a college‑aged,
idealistic, troubled person who was seeking, looking for answers. It came as a
great surprise to people when they learned that cults recruited the elderly, and
that cults were recruiting among minorities and in high schools. Specific
characteristics, such as sex, were also being ignored. No one considered whether
or not there was a gender differentiation in a person’s vulnerability to cults
and cult recruitment, and, particularly, whether women were more susceptible to
recruitment. Recent research, however, has consistently produced samples that
are 60% to 70% female (Chambers, Langone, Dole, & Grice, 1994).
In our work with former cult members, we have found that
victims’ complaints cluster in a certain manner. Many people describe their
experience of having been involved in a cult as “spiritual rape.” A professor of
philosophy at a college in New York described her experience as the “theft of
her identity and persona” (Rosenthal, 1995). Others have spoken specifically
about physical problems, emotional problems, and lingering problems concerning
self‑esteem and self‑image.
Society certainly has not come as far as it might in
perceiving and responding to those harms that are gender specific. Instead, we
are still at an earlier stage, in which we regard people who have suffered these
injuries as somehow being the cause of them: we believe that cult members became
“victims” because of their own gullibility, susceptibility, and lack of
self‑will. Society’s perspective on cults, victims’ rights, and education is
analogous to its perceptions about rape and rape victims a generation ago.
I regard the problems associated with cults as essentially
abuse of a power relationship. If you look at it in that manner, without regard
to religion or the content of the specific doctrine, you will find that abuse of
power is a common element in all kinds of cult situations--whether the group be
a political cult, a lifestyle cult, a self‑improvement cult, or a
religiously‑oriented group. Therefore, it is necessary to recognize the
relevance of differences among cult recruits. It appears to me that women are
especially susceptible, and especially victimized, and need a special,
differentiated protection. Now what does this mean?
I couldn’t possibly cover all the aspects of this thesis. I
will, however, propose some provocative issues, and leave them, to some extent,
unresolved, because we cannot fully resolve them at this time. I’d like to make
an initial, opening inquiry, to address something that has never been raised
before from this perspective. I am asking you to share in the construction of
this inquiry, and to help move toward resolution of some of these questions and
issues.
First, I believe women are more susceptible to cult
recruitment because cults offer them security and answers in a world where we
paint women’s roles in a conflicted, inconsistent manner. Our culture makes
demands on women that heighten their insecurity, that pull them in different
directions, and that provide no fixed images, levels of achievement, or values
by which they can measure themselves. To the degree that cults pose an
attractive offer of security to people who are conflicted--about career, the
future, self‑image, or personal goals--cults become especially compelling for
women. This effect is heightened in situations where women move from highly
protected, restricted environments to more open, undefined ones. We find this
situation, for example, when looking at women who emerge from a Third World
culture and arrive in an American urban university setting. Suddenly, they see
open to them choices and possible roles never before available: not only things
that they could only have dreamed about before, but also things they have no
idea how to handle. In such circumstances women are particularly vulnerable to
manipulation and exploitation.
Similar vulnerabilities exist for women who come from
protected, rural, isolated families and move into an urban atmosphere. When we
recently interviewed a number of people who were recruited into the New York
Church of Christ while they were in a university environment, we found a
significant number of female recruits who had emerged from very restricted rural
backgrounds. One of these recruits was a Vietnamese woman who had settled with
her family in the Midwest and then came to attend a college in New York. Within
a matter of weeks she was recruited into the New York Church of Christ. It was
the first time she had been in an environment where she could establish social
relationships with a group of seemingly genuine, clean‑cut Christian men. She
had no concept of self‑protection or of the possibility that these men were not
interested in her solely for herself, but merely as a potential recruit, after
which they would drop all contact.
A similar situation occurred in the case of a young woman
who was upwardly mobile, moving from an environment in which her family insisted
that she achieve, but provided no model of their own achievement as a guide. The
young woman unqualifiedly sought opportunities for achievement, and became
involved in an urban cultic group.
Because of these special vulnerabilities, we find, not
surprisingly, that a significant number of cultic groups tailor their message
specifically to appeal to women. For example, a significant number of Eastern
groups in the New York metropolitan area seek to promote a particular body type,
diet, and appearance. Groups link their appeal to body‑image concerns via
Eastern meditation techniques or a guru’s inspiration, but the message that is
sold is essentially one of shape, health, and appearanceCa pitch that is
specifically directed toward and appealing to women.
Several groups tailor their appeal to idealism. They reach
out for the healthy, nurturing spirit, and promise to involve recruits in noble
projects, such as the elimination of world hunger. The ideal of reaching out, of
a helping idealism, is more responsive to a woman’s needs and approach than to a
man’s. Diet, likewise, is offered as a part of some groups’ regimen, a regimen
that also often includes manipulation of guilt and enhancement of dependency.
The second aspect of women’s specific vulnerability to
cults is found within the groups themselves. First, women are utilized as
recruiters. Here we see cults using sexual and social manipulation as a
recruitment device. For years the Children of God sent out female recruiters to
do what they described as “flirty fishing”--actually, simply sexual
prostitution. Women within the group were used as sexual objects, exploited for
their potential to attract new members.
Apart from the use and abuse of women as recruiters, there
is also the issue of the general treatment of women within the group. What
happens to them that is different from what happens to male members? First, the
groups generally (with some exceptions) insist on a greater degree of submission
for the female members. Women are fitted into a role that is more reflective of
their status a generation or two ago than in the contemporary scene. I found
this to be the case in a group in New Jersey. A group of about 10 or 12 women,
all of whom were among the highest academic graduates of the Seven Sisters
schools, were required to spend their lives doing housekeeping chores and
playing no other role in the world, despite their education. The desire to use
any of their acquired skills was not permitted. The leader’s psychological
manipulations had caused them to regress to a childlike, dependent, and
submissive role. When I asked them why and how they accepted that kind of
regression, their answer was that it was so much more comfortable, so much less
threatening to accept that role, to simply give up all of their individuality,
than to challenge their leader. In this particular situation, not only had the
women been manipulated into giving up asserting themselves, but also they had
given up their names and identities, and had been induced to become
interchangeable people without any particular identity of any kind.
Within certain cultic groups we find that the leader
exercises sexual domination and control over the members. Often in such groups,
each female member is purportedly afforded a “special” relationship with the
leader, and of course that “special” relationship is one that must be held
confidential, kept secret from every other member of the group--that is, until
the women find that they all have had the same “special” relationship with the
leader. This involves, again, a tragic elimination of the individual personality
and a gender‑specific abuse of sexual power.
In many cultic groups we find a familial problem that
involves abuse between generations. Children are abused by parents, and sexual
abuse by leaders is prevalent. Incest is not unheard of, sometimes occurring as
part of a ritual bonding relationship. Again in such groups the women are likely
to suffer from particular problems that are more exacerbated than men’s
experiences.
Third, we must consider issues that relate specifically to
women in their emergence from groups. Sexual issues and sexual abuse have
different implications and different aftereffects from some of the other
experiences typically found in cults. If a man becomes involved in a group whose
sexual mores are very liberal and unstructured, he might come out and say, AI
slept with 12 women.” The woman who comes out of the same group and says AI
slept with twelve men” will experience a tremendous difference in her social
adjustment afterwards.
Consequently, we must draw a distinction between men’s and
women’s experiences as they try to resume conventional roles in society. I know
one woman who was involved in a New Age group that engaged extensively in
liberal sexual practices. She is now in a top-level senior executive position.
She lives in fear that somehow her employer will find out that she engaged in
this cult activity, and that such knowledge will destroy her professional
status. This is a peculiar kind of problem that women risk when they leave
cults.
Women also disproportionately bear the onerous results of
matrimonial and family arrangements that were made within the cult by the
group’s leaders. These arrangements tend to fracture after one of the parties in
the family leaves the cult. Within the cult, often women are assigned
childbearing and child-rearing roles. This situation may produce no immediate
problem of conflict so long as both marriage partners are in the cult, and no
particular abusive behavior is involved. However, when a woman leaves the cult
without her partner, she must contend with dissolving a marriage and looking
after the welfare of her children. She now finds herself in a painfully divided
situation in which the partner remaining in the cult wants to assert control
over the children and characterizes the departing woman as untrustworthy, a
devil, and deserving of humiliation. More painful still, often the group’s
doctrine demands that the children be alienated from the departing spouse. These
strains are left as residual problems for the woman to cope with alone, even as
she struggles with her own psychological fragility.
One former member of a Bible-based group whom I have heard
about relates how her life fell apart when the group decided that she could not
continue to attend any fellowship meetings unless she became more submissive to
her husband and to the group. According to group doctrine, she was simply not
being obedient and respectful enough. She said, AI think the real reason was
that I was going back to college and thinking for myself.” The group’s leader
concluded that she was a possessed person, that she had homosexual tendencies
because she had stopped shaving her armpits, that she was in league with the
devil and, therefore, that she was an unfit mother. In the process of leaving
the group, the woman became involved in a very ugly divorce and custody case
with her husband, who had remained a member.
Often the cultic group asserts that the husband of the
departing wife and children is no longer obligated to support them, since (in
the cult’s view) they have become heretics, or devil‑possessed beings. The woman
is thus deprived of essential financial protection and is often left to fight a
battle without resources, where the opponents are, in effect, not her husband,
but the group and all its resources. For example, I know of one group which
provides every spouse of a departing member with counsel at no cost. The group
has argued uniformly, in hundreds of custody cases, that the departing spouse
has sexually abused the children and therefore should not receive custody of the
children. Such an accusation is a terrible burden for the ex‑member.
Furthermore, courts have thus far refused to recognize that this argument
reflects a uniform tactic and does not necessarily reflect individuals’
particular situation.
Ex‑members face humiliation while going through the process
of emergence and recovery from cults. Though society has begun to realize that
it is not appropriate to blame the victim of a rape, a similar reevaluation has
not occurred in the case of the cult victim. As a result women are reluctant to
come forward as cult victims. They do not want to acknowledge their experience
publicly because they fear they will be accused of being gullible, trusting, or
foolish.
Also they fear the adverse publicity, because cults strike
back. Cultic groups often have deep pockets, and if one accuses a cult leader of
criminal or sexually abusive conduct, one can be threatened with a slander suit.
The cult will not hesitate to finance such a lawsuit, since they see it as a
means of keeping other members from defecting. Thus, ex‑members may have to
fight a powerful adversary without commensurate resources. There is really no
protection for ex‑members. If they want to go on with the rest of their lives,
if they don’t want accusations about their alleged behavior flaunted in Macy’s
window, they have a real problem. There is no assurance of confidentiality for
the person trying to leave a cultic group. Often cults extract confessional
material from members during their time in the group, and use this information
against former members who try to assert their individual rights.
Finally, those coming out of the cults struggle to regain a
positive self‑image, a capacity to trust again, and a productive role in
society. Here again, it is more difficult for a woman to rehabilitate her
self‑image. Whether abuse has taken place within a familial setting, with a
trusted guru, or in the context of the group, rebuilding social and intimate
relationships after abuse is more difficult for women because of the cultural
constraints placed on them.
In conclusion, with respect to women and cults, the issues
center around the problem of respect for the individual. The fact that women are
vulnerable, that some of them are seekers, really reflects the situation of
every individual. But we must recognize that women experience peculiar
exacerbations of the issue which require special care and special consideration.
Certainly it is a subject that has not received adequate examination or adequate
concern. I would hope that this discussion would represent the beginning of
speaking out. It’s a long road, but we’re beginning the examination of these
important issues, and I’d like to enlist your concern, your cooperation, and
your help to see how we can make an effective and appropriate response to them.
References
Chambers, W., Langone, M.D., Dole, A.A., & Grice, J.W.
(1994). The Group Psychological Abuse Scale: A measure of the varieties of
cultic abuse. Cultic Studies Journal, 11(1), 88B117.
Rosenthal, A. (1995). Conversions. Philadelphia, PA:
Temple University Press.
Acknowledgments
This article was originally a presentation given by Herbert
Rosedale on October 25, 1995, at a session focusing on “Violence Towards Women”
at The New School for Social Research in New York City. This session was part of
a New School series entitled “Women and the Law.”
Reprinted from: Cultic Studies Journal Volume 12, Number
2 1995
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