“No one joins a cult” is not a statement you expect to hear from someone who has spent the last few years researching their distribution.
But at first glance, it goes to the heart of what Sarah Steel has repeatedly encountered as she traverses a secret and strange world for her hit podcast Let’s Talk About Sects.
No one thinks he joins a cult, Steel says, that understanding comes later, if at all possible: “People like to think you could never be you, but the more people I’ve talked to, the more obvious it becomes. that anyone could end up in a cult. “
This is because not all cults are the same. While many preach religion, others take advantage of the desire of the people to make a difference in the world, whether it presents itself as a commune of organic farming or a platform to help the less fortunate.
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The type of people they attract are equally varied, according to Steel, who says the only thing the members seem to have in common is that they found the group at a time when their lives were changing or looking for a change.
“You don’t join a cult, you join what seems to be a really fantastic group to which you can dedicate yourself for the general good, or for self-improvement, or something as simple as a martial arts class. he says. .
“It can happen to anyone if they come across the wrong group at the wrong time.”
Many people will only hear about a handful of cults, often through sensationalist reports that focus more on strange details than on their tragic legacies.
In Australia, there is The Family, a doomsday cult founded in the 1960s, covered in the first episode of the podcast. Even after the death of organization leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne in 2019, few will be able to forget the photo of 13 children standing in ascending order, with matching blue and pink dresses and bleached blond bobs.
Internationally, you may have heard of Heaven’s Gate, responsible for the largest mass suicide in the history of the United States, the well-known Mason family, and Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult of the day of the Last Judgment who launched an attack. fatal with sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995.
The family is one of Australia’s most notorious cults. (Distribution of tags)
But beyond the headlines, Steel says, many dangerous organizations continue to go under the radar. A spreadsheet used to track these groups currently includes 146 names that “shouldn’t even take a small chip out of what is there.”
“The number of people you talk to who have had a personal experience, or have a friend or family member involved, is not in the charts; it’s much higher than you’ll ever notice, unless you always have these conversations.” she says.
In his next book, Do Do I Say, Steel delves into the motivations of people who join these cults. And while there are few similarities between those trapped, the tactics used to lure them could come straight from a playbook.
A brush with a scammer
Steel has good reason to believe that we can all fall victim to manipulators. In addition to her extensive interviews with survivors and cult experts, the Sydney-based filmmaker has experienced first-hand how easy it can be to trust the wrong person.
Melissa Caddick is now a well-known name, after it was alleged that she swindled millions of dollars from investors, often her friends and family, while posing as a financial advisor. His surprise disappearance in 2020 and the subsequent discovery of his severed foot off the south coast of NSW months later have sparked public interest in the case.
But Steel knew Caddick as the cousin of his long-term partner, to whom he had given his savings to invest. When the details of Caddick’s ingenuity were revealed, he discovered that he was among the victims.
Sarah Steel’s brush with Melissa Caddick brought home how easy it is to fall into the trap of a manipulator. (Supplied)
“Going through something like that showed me how vulnerable we are to manipulative people,” says Steel. “It never occurred to me to question her at all.”
Steel had been investigating cults for years when the story erupted, but he says the finding that he had been deceived was still a shock. “It opened my eyes almost to the banality of this,” she says, describing how long it took her to reconcile that she had been scammed. “Nothing happens the way you think it will.”
When it comes to cults, which can usurp a person’s entire identity, there’s a lot more to unpacking: “I might start by thinking that there were only a few people who were messy, but the leader was good; but it was corrupted over time, and then you began to realize that it was all mass manipulation, that you had been scammed in some way. “
A nameless cult
As part of their research, Steel established its own criteria for what a cult organization does: they have a charismatic leader or leadership group that closely monitors members, the leader or leaders believe they have exclusive access to truth and the group is highly. secretly about how it works.
Dr. Janja Lalich, a cult survivor and an international expert on cults and coercion, has these items on her list of common cult traits, including a group that has an “overly jealous and unquestionable commitment to its leader.” its “belief system, ideology.” , and practices as truth, as law “.
Over the years, Steel has expanded its definition to take into account the behaviors used to control members that reproduce between groups, such as gas lighting and coercive control.
“I’ve come across groups that have leadership that they control closely, but they don’t necessarily have a leader,” Steel says.
As an example, he points to the two by two, one of the many labels that outsiders use to describe a religious sect that claims to have no name or leader. Founded more than 100 years ago, the “Really Secret” group operates throughout rural Australia preaching beliefs derived from a literal reading of the Bible.
In a podcast episode dedicated to the group, former member Laura McConnell describes the sect’s beliefs as “in a nutshell, take everything you know about Christianity and make it as conservative as you can and you’re very close to what they believe. “. .
“Everything we share is done by word of mouth or preaching, there is no information written down in books, for example, which makes the group really difficult to examine and dissect.”
Although the Two by Twos only meet two of their criteria for a cult, Steel says it’s important to define the group as such, “because if you’re not saying the group is harming the way it works, then so are you.” I’m not talking about the phenomenon I’m talking about. “
Red flags are everywhere
While the two by two are, in a way, an exception to the definition, Steel says it’s surprising how often the same types of structures and behaviors appear in cults around the world.
In the book, Steel lists some of these as a “us and them” mentality, operating hours and busy schedules, and restricting access to professional help and the media.
An entire chapter is devoted to coercive control, an insidious pattern of behavior designed to trap, isolate, and terrorize victims. The practice is often discussed in the context of domestic and domestic violence, and the NSW and Queensland state governments have recently pledged to ban such behavior.
Sarah Steel has spent years interviewing cult survivors for her podcast, Let’s Talk About Sects. In his next book, he sets out what he has learned. (Supplied by: Pan Macmillan Australia)
In cults, there are many ways to perform this type of control, often with the goal of getting people to do what they want. “The bombardment of love” – the act of crushing a new recruit with attention and adoration to inspire loyalty – is common, as is the gas light, referring to attempts to undermine the sense of reality of someone.
It is also common for “hot and cold” treatment by leaders, in which members are treated with love for one minute and contempt for the next. This, Steel writes, can lead to a traumatic bond where members adjust their behavior to return to the good side of the leader and begin to blame themselves when mistreated.
“There are all these ways [leaders] undermining people’s confidence and guessing them, that keeps them trapped in groups, ”he says.
Steel would like coercive control laws aimed at domestic abuse to be extended to include group settings, “because they are the same tools used in a wider group of people, they are all the same.”
“It’s about controlling people and making them behave in a way they wouldn’t otherwise have, handing over their money, overseeing their communications, alienating them from family and friends,” he says.
“Then people leave these organizations and the cults don’t take any responsibility, because they shun anyone who leaves, and they don’t have any help from society because people look at them and say, ‘Well, you’re going decide to join. “
The consequences
This mentality of blaming the victims again parallels the treatment of survivors of domestic and family violence, who are asked over and over again: why didn’t you leave?
Perhaps this is why many former members of the cult turn to psychologists with experience in domestic abuse, and there is a shortage of professionals with specific experience in sects.
For those who make the leap and leave, the trauma can stay with them for decades to come. Steel says it is rare for former members of the cult to want to go to the police, but when they do, they are often told that no crime has been committed. This lack of resources, he says, is one of the hardest things for survivors.
“There’s this concept that if you go out, all of a sudden you’re free and everything’s great,” Steel says. “But there are so many people I’m in contact with who are struggling a lot, and there’s very little help …