Reading Along with Prudence, Part 3: Entering and Exiting a Cult.

Dr. Hassan spends much of Chapter 2 of Combatting Cult Mind Control sharing his own story of recruitment into and eventual deprogramming from the Unification Church. The year was 1974, the same year our favorite one-legged fictional detective was born. Hassan was a senior in college, an aspiring poet and uncertain about his future when some young people from the "One World Crusade" --an international organization that claimed they absolutely, positively weren't a religious group, approached him in the university cafeteria and invited him to visit their house. Finding a few of the young women attractive, he went. Hassan describes a welcoming group who insisted he return multiple times, "loved-bombed" him with flattery and compliments, and impressed him with their apparent happiness and unity. We can easily imagine a similar thing happening to Will Edensor, whom we are told became friendly with some UHC members after attending a lecture at his university. A chance weekend off work led Hassan to accept an invitation to a weekend retreat, where his indoctrination began. 

Only when Hassan was away at a Tarrytown estate and dependent of the group members for a ride back to Queens did he learn that the "retreat" was actually a three-day workshop run by the Unification Church. Having no transportation back to his university, he was forced to stay for three days of lectures on the "Divine Principle." It is easy to see why Henry Worthington-Fields was grateful he brought his own car to Chapman Farm.

Hassan also describes the use of personality tests on potential recruits, although in his case the attendees were asked to draw pictures instead of taking the pencil-and-paper test given to Robin and her cohort. As with the Chapman Farm recruits, the sleep deprivation began almost immediately, as did the segregation into groups and the lack of any solitude or free time. Just as the UHC recruits were asked to record on their feelings in nightly journals, the prospective Moonies were asked to fill out "reflection papers" at the end of a grueling day. The major difference between Hassan's weekend retreat and the first week of UHC indoctrination was the lack of manual labor, though the group was subjected to calisthenics in the morning before breakfast. 

Contined....

Hassan describes how the emotionally charged final day of lectures prompted him to "admit the possibility" of the group's most radical claim: a new messiah had been sent to Earth between 1917 and 1930. 

By the time we were ready to drive back to the city, I was not only exhausted, but also very confused. I was elated to consider the bare possibility that God had been working all my life to prepare me for this historic moment. At other moments, I thought the while thing was preposterous, a bad joke, yet no one was laughing. An atmosphere of earnest seriousness filled the crowded studio. I could still remember the final moments of Mr. Miller's lecture. "What if... what if... what if it is true?"

After talking to his parents and his rabbi, neither of whom had heard of the Unification Church and thought he was being urged to reject his Jewish faith in favor of a mainstream Christian Church, Hassan returned to college convinced he had to learn more about the group himself. Unfortunately, his only source of information were the hard-core believers. "After several earnest days of prayer, I received what I thought was the sign," writes Hassan. He picked one of his philosophy texts, opened it to a paragraph at random, and read a line about history working in cycles to help humans evolve to a higher level. The language was very similar to the cycles of history that were described in the Moonie lectures. 

At that moment, I believed I had had an spiritual experience. How could I have chanced to open the book to that paragraph? I felt that God was surely signaling me to heed Mr. Miller's lectures.  I felt I had to go back and learn more about this movement. 

Encouraging potential recruits to interpret coincidences as signs is also a tool in Jonathan Wace's arsenal. Recall the challenge he gave Robin and the other temple service attendees. 

Just think, think of a number or a word.... Any number. Any word. But decide on it now, inside the temple....Soon, you'll leave this temple and go about your life. If it should happen that that word, or that number, forces itself upon your notice before midnight tonight-- well, it could be coincidence, couldn't it? But you've just admitted the possibility that it is something else. You've admitted the possibility that the Blessed Divinity is trying to talk to you, to make Their presence known to you, through the chaos and distractions of this world clamour, to speak to you by the only means They have at Their disposal at this time.

Hassan contacted the student group and was immediately sent off to another three-day workshop, nearly identical to the first. 

By the end of those three days, the Steve Hassan that had walked into the first workshop was gone, replaced by a new Steve Hassan. I was elated at the thought that I had been chosen by God, and that I knew what I needed to do with my life. 

This experience very much reminded me of Amandeep's, also a student, who went in convinced the UHC was a bizarre cult and, in his own words, wound up "joining the damn cult." 

Hassan also had something in common with Becca Pirbright:  he was fast-tracked into leadership.  Unlike most members, he was not required to go through 7-, 21- or 40-day workshops and was instead personally "groomed" by Moon himself and other church leaders and quickly given important responsibilities. At this point, Hassan's story diverges somewhat from the activities seen at Chapman Farm. Rather than being isolated in a rural community, he was sent to recruit other students from his university, give lectures and organize political demonstrations under the guise of one of the church's many front groups. He also spent some time fundraising, selling trinkets in the style of the UHC in Norwich. Hassan also described the way Moon set up competitions between his followers, singling out the most successful recruiters and fundraisers for special praise, not unlike Wace did for Danny Brockles. Such favoritism inspired jealously among the leadership, similar to that seen at Chapman Farm; recall Shawn dissing Becca, and Marian's jealousy of Wace's attention to Robin. Looking back, Hassan describes Moon as a narcissist, just as Strike describes Wace. 

After a 1976 stint in New York as part of a fundraising team, Hassan was told his parents were trying to kidnap and deprogram him. He was sent first to Pennsylvania, then to Baltimore, where he led a team whose members were required to raise $100 a day; in today's money, that is 3.6 times as much as the 100-pound daily quota required by Taio Wace. The fundraisers were instructed to lie about the money going to various charitable causes. Abigail Wace made a similar accusation against the UHC, accusing them of "makin' effin corn dollies to sell for starvin' kids in Africa--if that's even where the money wen'. Doubt it." Several days of non-stop fundraising led to Hassan falling asleep and having a serious car accident that left him with a badly broken leg. 

It was this accident that let to Hassan escaping the cult. He was given permission to stay with his sister while recuperating, which helped in multiple ways. The major factors were getting enough food, sleep, rest and time away from the other cult members: something he did not get when fundraising 21 hours per day. Reading about this made me all the more appreciative of Pat and what she did for Will and Qing. As Pat surmised, they "wanted looking after." The care Will received in her home likely played a major role in helping him break free of the UHC's hold over him. 

In Hassan's case, his family took advantage of the fact that he couldn't walk, and brought deprogrammers into the home to educate him about the perils of the Unification Church cult. He described trying to block their words by chanting, in the same way Kevin Pirbright, Alexander Graves and Will Edensor did when their allegiance to the UHC wavered. However, in Hassan's case, the the deprogrammers were able to break the hold of the cult by first pointing out the similarities between the Moonies' recruitment techniques and those employed by the communist Chinese in the 1950's, and then by showing him speeches of Moon's that contradicted what Hassan himself had heard Moon say. After four days, Hassan reports:

I had my first negative thought about Moon in over two years. What a snake. That was it.  Over two years of programming started collapsing, like an elaborate house of cards.

This reminded me of Flora's breakthrough when Robin explained the Pepper's Ghost Illusion to her. 

Since his own escape, Hassan has made a career of exposing the dangers of destructive cults and their mind-control techniques, and counseling people who need help escaping them. In the next chapter, we'll see more about how modern-day cults' techniques have evolved since the 1970's