Steve Hassan interviewed by Emma Taylor on November 27, 1995 "Hypnosis, behavior modification techniques, sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation, all designed to disorient me." Steven Hassan is one of America's foremost authorities on cults and mind control. He is the author of the best-selling "Combatting Mind Control". Tripod: You were recruited into the Moon organization at the age of 19, while at Queens College. Can you tell me briefly how they drew you in? SH: Well, they were operating on the campus through a front organization called the One World Crusade. And they represented themselves as students, and dressed like students and carried books like students. But they were not students. They were not registered. They came up to the cafeteria during a break between classes an engaged me in a long conversation about philosophy, religion, and ethics, and current-day problems. And I thought that they were friendly, nice people, and I had no idea that it was a cult. Tripod: When did it go from just intellectual discussions to your having a real allegience to them? SH: I had just broken up with my girlfriend, and three of them were women. And they said, "We're having a dinner at our place -- We kind of live together, comunally, with people from all over the world, would you like to come over?" So, again, I thought this was a friendship kind of thing, and frankly, I was attracted to a couple of them. So I thought, "Oh, why not?" And from that dinner, they said "One of our friends from Holland is giving a lecture. Would you like to hear it?" So it was made to look like it was very loose, when in fact it was very structured. So it went from a lecture to another lecture to, "We're going away this weekend, why don't you come join us?" And I had no interest in going away with them for the weekend because I worked as a waiter, and I never had a weekend off. And it was fate or whatever that caused my job to be put off that weekend -- the wedding was cancelled. And so I wound up going for the weekend with them, when I hadn't thought that I would. And the workshop was nonstop deception, manipulation, and control, to get me to distrust my own sense of reality and put ideas in my head about what the world was. Tripod: How did they continue to maintain this relationship? SH: Basically, I didn't even know it was a three-day workshop. I thought it would be a weekend getaway. I didn't even know if it was religious. I asked them if it was religious, and they said "No." So I was confused, I was not sleeping well in the area that they had provided for a new participant to sleep, and they put a lot of pressure on me to stay for the third day, which meant missing a day of school, which I wound up agreeing to do. And that night, they put pressure on me to stay for another seven days -- at which point I just got angry and I left. I went back home, but they had already put a lot of ideas in my head, that maybe the messiah was coming, and would I be turning my back on god, and wouldn't I want to find out. And so, within a few days, I decided that I wanted to learn more. At that point, I had no idea that I would be committing my life, eventually, to this group, or that Moon was the messiah. So it was a step-by-step recruitment. A lot of deception, a lot of trickery, a lot of manipulation. Hypnosis, behavior modification techniques, sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation, all designed to disorient me and render me more suggestible to their ideas. Tripod: Did you know that they were the Moon group? SH: Nope. Tripod: You became an assistant director of the Moon group. The people at the very top -- do they understand that they are practicing some kind of deception, or do they believe what they're preaching? SH: Essentially, what I was taught was that the world was controlled by satan, and therefore everyone was imprisoned by satan. And because I was working with god, and because I knew the truth, and I had the messiah, that it was ethical and moral for me to lie to people to get them to do god's will. In other words, in that mindset, I didn't think I was lying -- I just thought I was helping people. And the rationalization that was given to me, and I used to give to others, is that "You can't feed an infant steak, you have to feed it milk." Because it can't chew and swallow meat. And the divine principle of the Moonies' teaching was like meat, and people are like spiritual infants. So therefore you have to water it down to give them something that they can swallow. So, again, it was this kind of maternal justification out of love, to spoon-feed people things that they would never agree to if they were told up front. Of course, the analogy breaks down when you consider that fact that the people who are being recruited are adults. And so, they may be viewed as spiritual infants by the group, but they are adults. And therefore, what our Constitution and Bill of Rights says is that we have the right to decide and be responsible for our own lives, as long as we're eighteen. Tripod: How many years did you spend with the group? SH: I spent over two years -- about two and a half years. And I got out, not because I was disillusioned, but because I was in a car crash, and because my family hired ex-members to deprogram me. Tripod: What did that involve? SH: Basically, five days of sitting and talking with ex-members about what mind control was, and aspects of the group that were contrary to what the teachings were, or things that were hypocritical, or mistranslations of the Bible, or whatever. Just encouraging me to step back and think about what it was I believed and how I came to believe it. Tripod: But you don't actually advocate that kind of deprogramming, do you? SH: Well, in my case, the first day was involuntary. But the last couple of days were voluntary. It wasn't voluntary because I wanted to leave the group -- it was voluntary because I wanted to prove to my family that I wasn't brainwashed and that I wasn't under mind control. And in terms of my work as a licensed mental health counselor, I do not engage in any kind of forcible abduction or detention. I do only voluntary types of interventions, where a person can get up and walk out at any point. Tripod: Is there a level at which that's no longer effective? SH: Sure. Because people get up and walk out. But I'm not willing to impose my point of view on people, and so what I do is I work with family members and friends to teach them about mind control and about how the cult has programmed them and encouraged them to continue a relationship with them, and go to cult meetings and such, and ask questions -- in order to encourage the person to agree to -- if they don't want to meet with me -- meet with other people, other sources of information. Tripod: A lot of cults seem to recruit on college campuses. Why is that? SH: Because young people are trying to figure out who they are and where they fit in the world. They're curious, they're ambitious, and cults also want bright, talented people who are going to be effective and who will make good members. So college students are very vulnerable from the point of view that they are not educated about cults and mind control. And also, life is uncertain at that point. And perhaps they're willing to take risks that they ordinarily wouldn't. Tripod: You differentiate between a cult and a destructive cult. What are the warning signs that people should watch out for? SH: Basically, a destructive cult is not up front about what they believe and what is expected of people when they join. And they don't like it if people ask a lot of questions. They don't like to give direct answers, they like to be evasive, they like to give global generalizations, or truisms. But what I say to people is "Be good consumers." And just because somebody says something with certitude, doesn't mean that it's true ... I'd encourage people to ask a lot of questions, avoid heavy pressure always. If there's a lot of pressure that's being used, making you feel guilty, or making you feel like you're not smart, or there's something wrong with you if you don't want to do what they want you to do, that should be a warning signal. Because healthy groups don't do that. "...the workshop was nonstop deception, manipulation, and control, to get me to distrust my own sense of reality..." Tripod: After your public lambasting of the cults -- what's their reaction been? Have they attempted to stop what you're doing in any way? SH: Oh, they've threatened me. They're threatening lawsuits right now for my Website. I'm using quotes that Moon gave that were published by the group in the '70s, and they're saying that those are not well-translated quotes, and I'm not fair-using them, and other things. So I've had to hire attorneys about that. They also tell lies to members about me, saying that I do kidnap and harm people. And that's a drag. Tripod: Do you find that people coming out of cults are floundering in terms of what to believe? SH: Most people walk out of cults without counselling, and some walk out after a few days or weeks or months. Some people walk out after years. I can say as a generalization that all people who have been subjected to mind control benefit tremendously from learning about mind control and learning about cults, whether it's by reading books or watching videos or interacting with former members of that group or other groups. People who've had a very long involvement with a cult suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and all kinds of phobias and fears which are part of the indoctrination. By the way, I want to comment that the universal mind control technique that cults use is phobia indoctrination. They hypnotically implant suggestions that if you ever leave the group, terrible things will happen to you -- you'll go insane, you'll get cancer, you'll be hit by a car, you'll be possessed by evil spirits, you'll be reincarnated ten thousand times as a worm. Things that, you know, we would laugh if we think about these things. And yet, many bright, talented people, because of hypnosis, accept it unconsciously. So when they think about leaving, they can only imagine suicide, drug addiction, prostitution, death, illness, or insanity. So they're physically able to walk out of the group, but psychologically, they're paralyzed with these fears. Tripod: Do people tend to take refuge in mainstream religion? SH: Most of the time, people are afraid of any group. And because of social stigmas that are still attached to being in a cult, most people don't even like telling people that they're in a cult. So it can be very isolating. Visit Steven Hassan's "Combatting Cult Mind Control" page at: http://www.shassan.com/