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Destructive Leaders and Groups

Destructive Leaders and Groups

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Rick Ross has been working on destructive cults and movements for some time now. I check his site on a regular basis.

Rick has put together a very pointed list of warning signs that you might be dealing with an unsafe group and/or leader. Compare it to the list of signs of a safe group and/or leader.

I’m not sure that the unsafe/safe dichotomy is the best way to describe the difference, but other than that, I think this is a great checklist.

This has obvious applicability to certain religious and political groups and leaders.

Connect the dots.

Ten warning signs of a potentially unsafe group/leader

  1. Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
  2. No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
  3. No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financial statement.
  4. Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
  5. There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
  6. Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
  7. There are records, books, news articles, or television programs that document the abuses of the group/leader.
  8. Followers feel they can never be "good enough".
  9. The group/leader is always right.
  10. The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.

Ten warning signs regarding people involved in/with a potentially unsafe group/leader.

  1. Extreme obsessiveness regarding the group/leader resulting in the exclusion of almost every practical consideration.
  2. Individual identity, the group, the leader and/or God as distinct and separate categories of existence become increasingly blurred. Instead, in the follower’s mind these identities become substantially and increasingly fused–as that person’s involvement with the group/leader continues and deepens.
  3. Whenever the group/leader is criticized or questioned it is characterized as "persecution".
  4. Uncharacteristically stilted and seemingly programmed conversation and mannerisms, cloning of the group/leader in personal behavior.
  5. Dependency upon the group/leader for problem solving, solutions, and definitions without meaningful reflective thought. A seeming inability to think independently or analyze situations without group/leader involvement.
  6. Hyperactivity centered on the group/leader agenda, which seems to supercede any personal goals or individual interests.
  7. A dramatic loss of spontaneity and sense of humor.
  8. Increasing isolation from family and old friends unless they demonstrate an interest in the group/leader.
  9. Anything the group/leader does can be justified no matter how harsh or harmful.
  10. Former followers are at best-considered negative or worse evil and under bad influences. They can not be trusted and personal contact is avoided.

Ten signs of a safe group/leader

  1. A safe group/leader will answer your questions without becoming judgmental and punitive.
  2. A safe group/leader will disclose information such as finances and often offer an independently audited financial statement regarding budget and expenses. Safe groups and leaders will tell you more than you want to know.
  3. A safe group/leader is often democratic, sharing decision making and encouraging accountability and oversight.
  4. A safe group/leader may have disgruntled former followers, but will not vilify, excommunicate and forbid others from associating with them.
  5. A safe group/leader will not have a paper trail of overwhelmingly negative records, books, articles and statements about them.
  6. A safe group/leader will encourage family communication, community interaction and existing friendships and not feel threatened.
  7. A safe group/leader will recognize reasonable boundaries and limitations when dealing with others.
  8. A safe group/leader will encourage critical thinking, individual autonomy and feelings of self-esteem.
  9. A safe group/leader will admit failings and mistakes and accept constructive criticism and advice.
  10. A safe group/leader will not be the only source of knowledge and learning excluding everyone else, but value dialogue and the free exchange of ideas.

Don’t be naïve, develop a good BS Detector.

You can protect yourself from unsafe groups and leaders by developing a good BS detector.
Check things out, know the facts and examine the evidence. A safe group will be patient with your decision making process. If a group or leader grows angry and anxious just because you want to make an informed and careful decision before joining; beware.

Question for Mitt Romney

Question for Mitt Romney

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What is Mitt Romney’s position on torture?

See:
Romney, Torture and Teens
In right-wing Republican circles, abusive authoritarianism without due process is endemic – and profitable. By Maia Szalavitz

When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he’d support doubling the size of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, he was trying to show voters that he’d be tough on terror. Two of his top fundraisers, however, have long supported using coercive tactics that have been likened to torture for troubled teenagers.

As the newspaper The Hill noted recently, 133 plaintiffs filed a civil suit against Romney’s Utah finance co-chair, Robert Lichfield, and his various business entities involved in residential treatment programs for adolescents. The umbrella group for his organization is the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS, sometimes known as WWASP). Lichfield is its founder and is on its board of directors.

The suit alleges that teens were locked in outdoor dog cages, exercised to exhaustion, deprived of food and sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures without adequate clothing or water, severely beaten, emotionally brutalized, and sexually abused and humiliated. Some were even made to eat their own vomit.

But the link to teen abuse goes far higher up in the Romney campaign. Romney’s national finance co-chair is a longtime friend of the Bush family named Mel Sembler. Sembler was campaign finance chair for the Republican party during the first election of George W. Bush, and a major fundraiser for his father.

Sembler currently heads the Scooter Libby Defense Fund, in addition to his work for Romney, and has worked tirelessly to keep the Vice President’s former Chief of Staff out of prison, even after his conviction on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Like Lichfield, Sembler also founded a nationwide network of treatment programs for troubled youth. Known as Straight, Inc., from 1976 to 1993 it variously operated nine programs in seven states. At all of Straight’s facilities, state investigators and/or civil lawsuits documented scores of abuses, including teens being bound, beaten, deprived of food and sleep for days, restrained by fellow youth for hours, sexually humiliated, abused and spat upon.

According to the L.A. Times, California investigators found that at Straight teens were “subjected to unusual punishment, infliction of pain, humiliation, intimidation, ridicule, coercion, threats, mental abuse… and interference with daily living functions such as eating, sleeping and toileting.”…

However, to this day there are at least eight programs operating that use Straight’s methods, often in former Straight buildings operated by former Straight staff. They include Alberta Adolescent Recovery Center (Canada), Pathway Family Center (Michigan, Indiana, Ohio), Growing Together (Florida), Possibilities Unlimited (Kentucky), SAFE (Florida), and Phoenix Institute for Adolescents (Georgia).

Sembler has never admitted to the problems with Straight’s methods. In fact, when he recently served as ambassador to Italy, he listed it among his accomplishments on his official State Department profile. Although all of the programs with the Straight name are closed, the nonprofit Straight Foundation that funded them still exists, though under a different name. It’s now called the Drug Free America Foundation, and it lobbies for drug testing and in support of tougher policies in the war on drugs.

One of the plaintiffs in the current case against WWASPS, 21-year-old Chelsea Filer, spoke to me when I was researching a TV segment on the industry. She told me that she was forced to walk for miles on a track in scorching desert heat with a 35-pound sandbag on her back. “You were not allowed to scratch your face, move your fingers, lick your lips, move your eyes from the ground,” she said. When she asked for a chapstick, “They put a piece of wood in my mouth and I had to hold it there for two weeks. I was bleeding on my tongue.” …

WWASPS has been linked with facilities Academy at Ivy Ridge (New York), Carolina Springs Academy (South Carolina), Cross Creek Programs (Utah), Darrington Academy (Georgia), Horizon Academy (Nevada), Majestic Ranch Academy (Utah), MidWest Academy (Iowa), Respect Camp (Mississippi), Royal Gorge Academy (Colorado), Spring Creek Lodge (Montana), and Tranquility Bay (Jamaica).

Although it has settled several lawsuits out of court, the organization has never publicly admitted wrongdoing. However, the U.S. State Department spurred Samoa to investigate its Paradise Cove program in 1998 after receiving “credible allegations of physical abuse,” including “beatings, isolation, food and water deprivation, choke-holds, kicking, punching, bondage, spraying with chemical agents, forced medication, verbal abuse and threats of further physical abuse.” Paradise Cove closed shortly thereafter. That same year, the Czech Republic forced the closure of WWASP-linked Morava Academy following employees’ allegations that teens were being abused. …

Police in Mexico have shut down three WWASP-linked facilities: Sunrise Beach (1996), Casa By The Sea (2004) and High Impact (where police videotaped the teens chained in dog cages). …

In 2005, New York’s Eliot Spitzer forced WWASP to return over $1 million to the parents of Academy at Ivy Ridge students, because the school had fraudulently claimed to provide legitimate New York high school diplomas. He fined Ivy Ridge $250,000 plus $2000 in court costs. A civil suit has been filed for educational fraud in New York as well, by a different law firm. …

The Romney campaign is aware of the WWASP suits, and should be familiar with the Straight suits. If not, it’s worth asking: does Romney support these types of tactics for at-risk youth? Or does he take the line the organizations founded by his fundraisers take—that these dozens of lawsuits are merely from bad kids who make up lies?”


Maia Szalavitz is the author of Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids (Riverhead).

Thanks to Carol F. in Amherst, MA for calling my attention to this article.

JW Family Refuse to Communicate

JW Family Refuse to Communicate

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On the topic of how Jehovah’s Witnesses divide families, from the “Ask a Former JW” mailbag:

Basically, the whole of my mothers side of my family are JW’s. She was disfellowshipped when she was around 18-19 but wasn’t told then that she was not supposed to talk to people who were still members of the religion. Since then she was married to my father who was not a JW, had me and my brother and sister, then was divorced from my father.

Around 3-4 years ago my mother was approached by my aunt, who is still a member, and was told then that she was no longer allowed to see or have any communication with my cousins and the rest of the family who were still members.

I was just wandering if, what had happened, was right to have happened? if these JW “rules of life” permit such things? My mother has had difficulty speaking to ANY of her family since that day, and it doesn’t feel like any sort of religion should warrant that sort of treatment. Any info you may have would be extremely helpful.

– Sami

Dear Sami –

I completely agree with you that the dynamic here is wrong, unethical, and lacking in compassion, kindness, or family love.

Unfortunately for former-JWs (and for non-JW family members who are affected by it), this treatment is very common and even encouraged. Former JWs are considered to be even worse than “worldly associations.” Disfellowshipped Jehovah’s Witnesses are described in the harshest of terms, no matter what the reasons were for leaving the group. The same treatment applies to anyone who is disfellowshipped, whether it was for murder, rape, homosexual acts, being a whistleblower, asking pointed questions, having a less than submissive attitude toward elders and policies, or even smoking a cigarette.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are strongly encouraged, using several methods of “spiritual guidance,” to be loyal to the organization first. For some, that loyalty is even stronger than their feeling for God. The Watchtower Society and its affiliated corporations are very controlling and authoritarian – even totalitarian. They motivate with fear.

Unfortunately, your family members (like many, many others) prioritize the shaky biblical interpretations of a dozen men in New York over their connection to your mother. She has been demonized in their regard; they hold her in contempt. Her family may even fear that she is somehow contagious, or a contaminant or toxin (actually, this whole view of otherness and evil, along with their views on blood transfusions, first got me interested in the topics of my PhD dissertation).

The bottom line is that JWs will tend to err on the side of caution when following the directives of the Watchtower Society. Anything that they believe may potentially interfere with their reward of “everlasting life on paradise earth” (once the Jehovah-God very shortly destroys this “system of things”) is to be avoided… at all costs. They entirely miss the Christian message.

Just a sampling of some of the messages the family would have received (instead of ones which might emphasize love and forgiveness and grace):

“We must hate [the disfellowshipped person] in the truest sense, which is to regard with extreme active aversion, to consider [the disfellowshipped person] as loathsome, odious, filthy, to detest.”
Watchtower 10/1/1952 (p 599)

“In the case of the disfellowshipped relative who does not live in the same home, contact with him is also kept to what is absolutely necessary. As with secular employment, this contact is limited and even curtailed completely if at all possible. We should not see how close we can get to relatives who are disfellowshipped from Jehovah’s organization, but we should ‘quit mixing in company’ with them.

What if a person cut off from God’s congregation unexpectedly visits dedicated relatives? What should the Christian do then? If this is the first occurrence of such visit, the dedicated Christian can, if his conscience permits, carry on family courtesies on that particular occasion. However, if his conscience does not permit, he is under no obligation to do so. If courtesies are extended, though, the Christian should make it clear that this will not be made a regular practice. . . . The excommunicated relative should be made to realize that his visits are not now welcomed as they were previously when he was walking correctly with Jehovah.”
Watchtower 7/15/63 (pp.443-44)

“And we all know from our experience over the years that a simple “Hello” to someone can be the first step that develops into a conversation and maybe even a friendship. Would we want to take that first step with a disfellowshipped person?”
Watchtower 1/15/81 (“If a Relative is Disfellowshipped,” p. 26-31)

“Such ones willfully abandoning the Christian congregation thereby become part of the ‘antichrist.’ (1 John 2:18,19)”
Watchtower 7/15/85

“Former friends and relatives might hope that a disfellowshipped one would return; yet out of respect for the command at 1 Corinthians 5:11, they do not associate with an expelled person.”
Watchtower 4/15/91

“Why is it loving to expel an unrepentant wrongdoer from the congregation? Doing so is an expression of love for Jehovah and his ways. (Psalm 97:10) This action shows love for those pursuing a righteous course because it removes from their midst one who could exercise a bad influence on them. It also protects the purity of the congregation.”
Watchtower 7/15/95

“Sometimes Christian parents have accepted back into their home for a time a disfellowshipped child who has become physically or emotionally ill. But in each case the parents can weigh the individual circumstances. Will he bring ‘leaven’ into the home?”
Our Kingdom Ministry 2/2002

The destructive ways that JWs affect the larger dynamics of family are evident in testimonies, divorce case papers, and the news. Google some likely phrases, and you will have no problem finding material (see my JW-related links page). Here are just a handful:

Couple’s faith tested
The Yarmouth Mercury, UK/September 28, 2006
By Miles Jermy


Witnesses cost me my family
Halifax Herald (Canada), February 13, 2000
By Susan LeBlanc

Cast out: Religious shunning provides an unusual background in the Longo and Bryant slayings
The Register-Guard/March 2, 2003
By Karen McCowan

Jehovah’s Witnesses: A Threat To The Social Family Fabric by Victor Escalante