Chapter 9: The threat of Intimidation
Chapter 9: The threat of Intimidation
(Mentioning Eileen Barker, Anson Shupe and David Bromley)
Academics
In 1989, the Religious News service carried a story that Dr. barker's
book was funded by the Unification Church, saying that Barker
"freely admits that the Unification Church paid all her expenses
to attend 18 conferences in Europe, new York, the Caribbean, Korea,
and South America. …One member of Parliament said, "Any
academic who allow themselves to be manipulated to lend credence
to a cult does harm to families all over the world."
INFORM, lost its U.K. government funding in 1993 after much criticism
from churches, parents, and former cult members, and Barker resigned
as the organization's director and chairperson.
They also shelter the cults by trying to discredit the reports
of ex-members who try to tell the world what it was like to be
in a cult. The apologists disparage these former members, calling
them bitter apostates, disgruntled, defectors, disloyal, and turncoats.
David Bromley and Anson Shupe, sociologists. Cult apologists
blame the victims and protect the villians. Like the mad kings
of old, they shoot the messenger bearing bad news.
One of the most illogical positions taken by the apologists is
their claim that only current cult members tell the truth. However,
the findings of many researchers, as well as my own numerous interviews
with former members, show that cult members are so dependent on
the group while they are in it that they dare not tell the truth,
dare not complain.
Many of the large international cults have nearly unlimited financial
resources and the power to intimidate publishers, newspapers,
television producers, academic researchers, professionals, and
any of the public who may speak up about cults.
If cults and their sympathizers block publication of scientific
studies about their groups the histories of their leaders, and
fair comment from scholars, the cults become the arbiters of what
the world hears about them. Without a free press, scientific
publications, fair comment, and the ability to express opinions,
all of us are at the mercy of cult leaders who would determine
what we read, what we say, and what we think.
Former CAN president Patricia Ryan, the daughter of Congressman
Leo J. Ryan who was assassinated at Jonestown, said, "The
American courts were never meant to be used as a weapon available
to those with money to destroy with frivolous legal actions anyone
perceived as their enemy. Scientology has a long history of using
the courts this way, and it has to stop if justice means anything
in our courts today."
There are many frightening examples of cults' stark and widespread
efforts at silencing and intimidating critics. Not only have
researchers, journalists, authors, and ordinary citizens been
intimidated, attacked, and sued, but cults have also attempted
to frighten professionals away from the courts, waging concentrated
attacks on professionals who have testified on behalf of ex-members.
In the hope of stifling attorneys, physicians, psychiatrists
and psychologists, social workers, child welfare evaluators, and
any others who might aid cult victims in legal suits or child
custody cases, certain cults have stooped to vicious ends and
terror tactics.
