confidential helpline

0845 6037 121

Cult Information

A cult is not necessarily a religious group, although religious cults are common, including breakaway sects from more mainstream faiths. Cults can also take the form of therapeutic, commercial, educational, self–help, pseudo–scientific and various spiritual groups. Cults recruit members by various forms of enticement or deception, demanding subservience and the total adoption of their ideas from members, to the exclusion of free thinking. Members are usually exploited both financially and as a labour force.

  1. Cults are dissociative, separating members from families, friends and colleagues.
  2. Cults tend to be psychologically manipulative or abusive in order to exploit and control members commercially or sexually.
  3. Some cults can also be physically abusive.
  4. The guru and/or upper ranks of the cult are supported in a relatively comfortable lifestyle by the exploitation of lower ranking members.
  5. Cults are totalitarian in structure and thrive on master–slave dependency.

CULT CONCERN

Cults are abundant and deceptive and the reason for concern is clear. The separation from loved ones, whose personalities may become unrecognisable after cultic recruitment, causes a great deal of grief and upset to families and friends. Seeing changes in, or hearing of the abuse suffered by, cult victims – or sometimes having to deal with an individual’s disappearance – can cause a great deal of stress, anger and upset in the home. These “cult parents” and “cult families” are therefore also victims of cults, even if they had nothing to do with their child’s recruitment to a cult. All cult victims need help.

CULT AWARENESS

Helping the victims of cults and educating interested professionals, politicians and members of the public helps raise awareness of the harmful methods and techniques employed by cults. The role of The Family Survival Trust is to listen and talk to, advise and help, parents, children and other individuals, and seek to ease stress. Family support of this kind can enhance family life in the home.

Enquiries have been received on the following groups and subjects. We would like to state that the groups listed here do not necessarily fulfill the criteria of “cult”: Mormons and Mormonism; Scientology and Scientologists; Jehovah’s Witnesses; the Occult; brain washing, Christadelphianism; Christian Science; Seventh Day Adventism; Swedenborgianism; the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (formally the Unification Church); the Family (formerly the Children of God). We receive many other enquiries about groups not named here.