Cults Inside Out: How People Get in and Can Get Out

by Rick Alan Ross

  Aum, like many cults, is a composite reflecting the idiosyncratic beliefs of its leader. Asahara combined his interpretations of Yoga, Buddhism, and Christianity along with the writings of Nostradamus. In 1992 he published a book declaring himself “Christ,” Japan’s only fully enlightened master, and also took the title “Lamb of God.” His purported mission was to take upon himself the sins of the world. Asahara claimed that he could transfer spiritual power to his followers as well as take away their sins and bad Karma.72

  Like Jim Jones and the infamous cult leader Charles Manson, Asahara saw dark conspiracies everywhere. He spoke of evil plots concerning Jews, Freemasons, and rival Japanese religions. He also named the United States as the “Beast” from the book of Revelation in the Bible and claimed America would eventually attack Japan.73

  Asahara, like many cult leaders, predicted a doomsday scenario. His prediction specifically included a third world war. In an effort to bring on that event, Asahara ordered his followers to kill. That is why they planned and executed the poison-gas attack in Tokyo; they believed it would somehow initiate a chain of events and culminate in a nuclear Armageddon. Asahara’s last taped broadcast to his followers called on them to rise up and carry out his plan for salvation and to “meet death without regrets.”74 Humanity would end except for an elite few.75

  Aum’s recruitment efforts included proselytizing aimed at professionals in the Japanese scientific community. These highly educated recruits became the basis for the development of the cult’s chemical and biological weapons. Aum’s search for weapons of mass destruction included a “medical mission” in 1992 to Zaire, supposedly to help fight an outbreak of the Ebola virus, but actually devised to obtain a strain of that virus for use in biological warfare.

  Two days after the Tokyo gas attack, twenty-five hundred police and military personnel raided Aum’s Kamukuishiki complex and simultaneously two dozen more of the cult’s properties across Japan. Large stockpiles of gas-making chemicals and related equipment were found. Aum members and the cult’s leader were arrested.76 At court proceedings in January 2000, Aum members finally admitted that Shoko Asahara had planned and ordered a series of crimes, ending in the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack.77 As the Japanese judicial system slowly proceeded against Aum, thirteen members were sentenced to death by hanging.78

  Nevertheless, some in the academic community have defended destructive cults like Aum. Academics J. Gordon Melton and James Lewis, for example, flew to Japan shortly after the gas attack to investigate charges of “religious persecution.” In subsequent press conferences while they were in Japan, the pair suggested that the cult was innocent of criminal charges and instead a victim. American attorney Barry Fisher accompanied Melton and Lewis and reportedly claimed that Aum couldn’t have produced the poison gas based on photos the cult provided him. Aum paid all expenses for the trio to visit Japan.79

  The exiled Dalai Lama of Tibet, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, also lent credibility to Asahara. The guru donated forty-five million rupees, about $1.2 million, to the Dalai Lama.80 Seemingly in exchange for the cult leader’s generosity, the Dalai Lama consented to several high-level meetings, including photo opportunities. Even after the gas attack in Tokyo, the Dalai Lama insisted that Asahara was his “friend, although not necessarily a perfect one.”81

  Shoko Asahara was sentenced to death in February 2004.82 He remains in prison, and his lawyers claim he is “mentally incompetent.” Asahara is reportedly confined to a wheelchair; he is incontinent and unable to respond to anyone in an intelligible manner. Despite this fact the guru continues to garner the devotion of many remaining followers who still insist he is a “spiritual being.”83

  Aum was stripped of much of its assets through claims filed by victims of its gas attack. In January 2000 the cult claimed to have changed and now has the new name Aleph. Aleph reportedly has about eleven hundred members84 and is led by Fumihiro Joyu, a former subordinate of Asahara.85 Aleph continues to perpetuate many of the conspiracy theories Asahara promoted and still considers him a “master.”86 It has been recently reported that Aleph is recruiting under the guise of a “yoga school.”87

  Former BATF director Steven Higgins explained in 1995 why law enforcement must respond to criminal behavior and the danger posed by destructive cults. Higgins said, “I can only say: Remember Jonestown or remember the members of the sect in Canada and Switzerland who committed mass suicide. Or look at what happened in the subways in Japan, where a group whose presence was known and considered potentially dangerous by government officials allegedly uncorked a deadly nerve gas [later conclusively proven]. The day has long passed when we can afford to ignore the threat posed by individuals who believe they are subject only to the laws of their god and not those of our government.”88

  1996–2002—Hare Krishna (ISKON) Racketeering and Child Abuse

  In 1996 the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) leader Kirtanananda accepted a plea deal from prosecutors for racketeering related to a $10 million fund-raising scam. The charge was tied to the murders of two Krishna devotees. The killer, a follower of Kirtanananda, testified that the guru had ordered the murders.89 The conspiracy to commit murder charge was dropped as part of the plea arrangement. One of the men killed had apparently intended to expose the guru. He reportedly claimed that Kirtanananda “condoned child abuse and sexual molestation.”90 Kirtanananda received a twenty-year prison sentence.

  Prabhupada, an Indian businessman turned guru founded ISKCON, which has often been called a “cult,” in 1966. We should note that the guru once reportedly said, “The Krishna consciousness movement has nothing to do with the Hindu religion.”91

  Keith Hamm, later known as Kirtanananda, became an ISKCON devotee in 1968. During the 1970s he built a lavish temple called “New Vrindaban” in West Virginia, which was to serve as a palace for Prabhupada. The building was lavishly decorated and painted in gold leaf. Tons of imported marble and onyx were used in its construction. It was not completed until 1979, two years after Prabhupada’s death.

  Kirtanananda was once one of the most powerful gurus within the ISKCON hierarchy; he was released from prison in 2004 after serving eight years of his sentence. ISKCON banned him. The disgraced guru wasn’t allowed to return to the “Palace of Gold,” known as “the crown jewel of the Krishna movement in America,”92 he had built. Kirtanananda died in 2011 at the age of seventy-four.

  In February 2002 ISKCON declared bankruptcy. This was done in response to a $400 million class-action lawsuit filed in 2000 against the organization. Ninety-two plaintiffs claimed sexual, physical, and emotional abuse during the 1970s and 1980s as children within ISKCON boarding schools.93 The Chapter 11 bankruptcy took place before the scheduled trial and effectively forced the plaintiffs to accept a settlement. The court ordered a settlement plan of $9.5 million, which hundreds of children abused in ISKCON ultimately shared. This settlement included schools the group maintained both in the United States and in India.94

  Prabhupada, the founder of ISKCON, wanted all children of his devotees sequestered in boarding schools, beginning at the age of five. This step freed parents to work unencumbered at such things as selling books for the organization and other fund-raising efforts.95

  Children were reportedly “terrorized” within Krishna facilities. Young girls were given as “brides” to older men who donated generously to the group. Children were also deprived of medical care, at times scrubbed with steel wool until their skin bled, and prevented from leaving.96 One plaintiff in the litigation told the Los Angeles Times that as a minor child, she had to “fend off sexual advances of gurus, teachers and other devotees in a Dallas boarding school” and that she “was frequently beaten.” She also saw other Krishna children “put inside gunnysacks and barrels as punishment…[and] locked in closets and told that rats would attack them if they moved.”97 Another plaintiff, who spent time in the ISKCON schools, said that as a child he was “beaten,” “starved,” and “raped.�
�� When he was asked about the settlement, he said, “It kind of feels like a cop-out. They have a lot more money, but they were basically crying, ‘We’re poor, we’re poor.’”98

  Alfred B. Ford, an heir to the Ford Motor Company fortune, however, announced that he would build a multimillion-dollar “religious complex” at ISKCON’s headquarters in India. He dubbed the project a future “spiritual Disneyland.”99 Ford, the great-grandson of Henry Ford and a longtime ISKCON devotee, had previously announced a $10 million donation to the organization in 2002.100

  In 2005 attorneys for both sides said the final settlement payouts to the abused ISKCON children generally ranged from $6,000 to $50,000.101

  2000—The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments, Mass Murder/Suicide

  On March 17, 2000, more than five hundred members of the African “Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments” entered their small church in Kangngu, in the western region of Uganda. They sang for hours before the small wooden building was set on fire from inside. The doors were locked, and windows were boarded and nailed shut. Everyone inside the church perished. Authorities later found their charred bodies, including those of eleven children.102

  Africa reeled in shock as Ugandan police found hundreds more the cult had murdered. According to pathologists who examined their remains, some were poisoned, and others were strangled; many had stab wounds and/or fractured skulls. Their bodies had been hidden under houses or thrown down wells and latrine pits. The death toll ultimately reached 780,103 though some reports placed the final number at more than 1,000.104 Many bodies may not have been recovered. Possibly this cultic mass murder or suicide surpasses Jonestown.105

  Joseph Kibwetere founded the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments in the late 1980s; at one time it may have included as many as five thousand members. The sixty-eight-year-old, self-styled “bishop” was once a prominent Roman Catholic and was active in Ugandan politics. Kibwetere was hospitalized due to a mental illness. “He had an affective disorder. A cyclical thing. Up and down. Like manic depress[ion],” Dr. Fred Kigozi, executive director of Kampala’s Butabika Hospital, told reporters.106

  Like Shoko Asahara, Kibwetere also claimed a special and pivotal position in human history by divine mandate. He made grandiose claims based on his visions and said he had also overheard conversations between Jesus and the Virgin Mary.107 Kibwetere told his followers that the Virgin Mary complained about the world’s sin and departure from the Ten Commandments and said he had been commanded to restore them and announce a coming apocalypse in the year 2000.108 The cult leader authored a handbook, which predicted a litany of coming calamities that would destroy most of the world’s population. He said only those who obeyed the commandments and followed him might be spared within his church, which he called the “ark.”109

  Joseph Kibwetere’s special revelation led to his expulsion and eventual excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. The past bishop of Mbarara Diocese said, “Kibwetere claimed that he could talk to God, which was unacceptable.”110

  Joseph Kibwetere merged his leadership with a woman. His soul mate was a former prostitute named Credonia Mwerinde, often called the “programmer.” Some say Mwerinde, who claimed to have met the Virgin Mary, ultimately eclipsed the cult’s founder in both real importance and power. Fr. Paul Ikazire, a priest and former cult member, said she dominated the group and that “Kibwetere was just a figurehead.” He characterized Mwerinde as “a trickster, obsessed with the desire to grab other people’s property.” It was the “Virgin Mary,” as channeled through Mwerinde, who supposedly determined all the group rules.111 Mwerinde preached that personal possessions were evil. She encouraged cult members to sell everything and surrender all their assets to her. Eventually Mwerinde became rich and accumulated farms, houses, and cars. Ikazire recalled, “She would come in and say things like: ‘The Virgin Mary wants you to bring more money.’”112

  Kibwetere and Mwerinde kept their followers isolated. Any contact with outsiders, labeled as “sinners,” was strictly monitored and frequently forbidden. Cult members were predominately poor and former Catholics. They were encouraged to be celibate, swore to a vow of silence, and were unable to speak unless in prayer. They often relied on sign language.113 The movement’s members rose at dawn, prayed until noon, and worked long hours in the fields before going to bed, usually at 10:00 p.m. Though newcomers were fed well, the regular members largely subsisted on beans. They were hungry, tired, estranged from family, and largely cut off from the outside world.

  Doomsday predictions the cult leaders made were pushed forward again and again.114 Kibwetere’s manifesto handbook, titled A Timely Message from Heaven: The End of the Present Time, was mailed out by the thousands. The date of the final event was set for December 31, 2000.115 When that day passed as yet another unfulfilled prophecy, some disgruntled members apparently wanted to leave and have their property returned.

  On March 15, 2000 (two days before the church fire), Kibwetere issued a “farewell” letter to government officials. The letter spoke of the imminent end of the current generation and the world. Similar sentiments had been expressed in a previous communication, which said, “God sent us as a movement of truth and justice to notify the people to prepare for the closing of this generation, which is at hand.” One official, reflecting on Kibwetere’s last letter, recalled, “The person who brought the letter bid farewell to the…staff. It was premeditated suicide.”116

  Joseph Kibwetere’s family says he is dead. His body hasn’t been positively identified, but a ring believed to be Kibwetere’s was found on a finger amid the rubble of the burned church.117

  There are conflicting claims regarding Credonia Mwerinde. At one point the police claimed to have identified her body, but some speculate she is still alive.118 Cult survivors claim Mwerinde killed the other leaders before fleeing. One local businessman stated that just days before the church fire, she had talked to him about selling cult property, which included large tracts of land, vehicles, and buildings. A documentary, later produced for African television, concluded that “money and greed” motivated Mwerinde to initially help form the cult and ultimately led her to destroy it.119

  An international law enforcement hunt for the leaders of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments has so far produced no meaningful results. No leader has yet been located or arrested.

  2001—Al-Qaeda Terrorist Attacks

  On a September morning in 2001, nineteen members of a militant extremist group called al-Qaeda (“the base”), led by Osama bin Laden, hijacked four American passenger jets and crashed them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. On that day 2,977 lives were lost.120 Osama bin Laden later arrogantly boasted, “These events were great by all measurement.”121

  Bin Laden’s followers believed their criminal acts were part of a “holy war” or “jihad,” which cast them as “martyrs,” and those they despised and would destroy were “infidels.” Jack Straw, Britain’s foreign secretary, compared the cult of personality built around Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and said it was “similar to the Nazi phenomenon.”122

  Al-Fadl, once an active bin Laden devotee, told a jury about the culminating event, which effectively marked the conclusion of his indoctrination. He was instructed to “follow the rule of the emir.”123 The rule was clarified through a secret rite, an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda called the “bayat.” This oath signified not only each recruit’s submission to al-Qaeda but also dependence on bin Laden himself for guidance. Stephen Kent, a professor of the psychology of religion at the University of Alberta, concluded, “The common refrain of former cult members is that they would’ve died for their leader. Suicide for a holy cause is not as mysterious as it first seems.”124

  Mohamed Atta, the suspected leader of the hijackers, appeared to enter into a trancelike state through a constant repetition of prayers before stepping onto the plane. Jim Siegelman, coauth
or of the book Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change, explained, “Saying a prayer a thousand times—that’s just a way of jamming anything human from coming into his brain.”125 Al-Qaeda devotees often videotaped their own suicides. On such tapes the suicide bombers can be seen listening to audiocassettes of chanted praises, given to those willing to die, before boarding trucks loaded with TNT. Flo Conway commented that such thought-stopping techniques could potentially compromise a person’s ability to think. She said, “The hardest thing to understand is that the mind itself can be captured and made into a machine.”126

  Bin Laden, like other cult leaders, told his followers they would reap supernatural rewards if they were willing to commit suicide. Bin Laden promised they would receive “a martyr’s privileges…guaranteed by Allah.” In a 1996 decree, bin Laden claimed that fighting the United States would “double” those supernatural rewards and told Americans that his followers would “enter paradise by killing you.”127

  Al-Qaeda eerily echoed the beliefs and behavior of a destructive cult from the distant past led by Hassan i Sabbah (1034–1124), a religious mystic and terrorist. Hassan’s Order of Assassins, like al-Qaeda, deployed suicide killers. And the group believed that through this ultimate sacrifice they would enter the gates of heaven. Hassan, like bin Laden, allowed his followers to experience pleasures on earth before their deadly missions.128 The assassins drank wine, used hashish, and enjoyed sex with courtesans. Centuries later, al-Qaeda’s hijackers drank heavily and sought prostitutes before their suicide attacks.129 Both bin Laden and Hassan used their followers like puppets to fulfill their own agenda.

  Osama bin Laden didn’t share the same humble beginnings of many cult leaders. He was the son of a billionaire from Yemen, who built a business empire based in Saudi Arabia. Osama’s mother, a Syrian, was his father’s fourth wife. But like other cult leaders before him, he may have felt estranged and isolated. A family friend explained, “In a country that is obsessed with parentage, with who your great-grandfather was, Osama was almost a double outsider.”130 According to his half-brother, Yeslam bin Laden, there are fifty-four siblings in the bin Laden family, which ultimately included twenty different mothers. Each wife was given a separate house. And because Osama bin Laden was the only child of his mother, he had very little contact with his extended family. Ironically, bin Laden’s mother was not an Islamic fundamentalist but rather a sophisticated and well-traveled woman who refused to wear a burka (enveloping outer garment worn by some Muslim women) and instead favored Chanel suits.131 Like many Arab children of his class, bin Laden enjoyed an early life filled with nannies, tutors, and servants. In 1968 bin Laden’s father died, leaving his thirteen-year-old son $80 million.132 Eleven years later he graduated from King Abdulaziz University with a degree in civil engineering.133 As a young man he was known to frequent nightclubs in Beirut and enjoy free spending. According to one acquaintance, he was “a heavy drinker who often ended up embroiled in shouting matches and fistfights with other young men over an attractive night-club dancer or barmaid.”134