Inquiry Submission
On how cults, organised fringe groups & new religious movements recruit.
Victoria’s State Government is running an Inquiry into the recruitment methods and impacts of cults and organised fringe groups. The Inquiry has largely adopted the framework of the International Cultic Studies Association.
The Inquiry has released a redacted version of my formal submission. The Inquiry’s redactions remove identifying information for several people and organisations that for me would likely be difficult for them. It also removes a significant section where I detail some aspects of my blended family of origin background - and the personal life difficulties which I have either had to overcome or just learn to live with.
The formal submission attempts to do several things.
First, it is a rejoinder to the Inquiry’s Guidance Note that scopes its approach, definitions, methodology, inclusion / selection criteria, and other issues. Every such Inquiry or Review has its own issues; matters that are not discussed; and both known and unknown “elephants in the room”. Responding to an Inquiry is both an opportunity to provide your own perspective and - as a whole - to contribute to a new knowledge base about the specific issues or problems being addressed. A rejoinder is meant not just to be a Reviewer 2 sledgehammer that demolishes or humiliates the Recipient. When it is done well, it is meant to advance and contribute to a particular debate or issue. This is hopefully pro-social; but it often deals with egos; hurt feelings; misunderstandings; different ideological viewpoints; and flak as well.
My approach here is informed by over two decades of (former) work in research administration, research and teaching in Australian universities, as well as 9 years with the former Disinformation website, and in Australian and United States publishing. To really understand what the Inquiry is looking into, it needs to be a multi-level, transdisciplinary, cumulative knowledge approach that also triangulates / evaluates information and sources.
Second, it addresses some (not all) aspects of my initial experiences in the Gurdjieff Work and the Temple of Set. I do not speak for or represent either of these new religious movements in any official or authoritative capacity. My formal submission is made strictly in a personal capacity. Specifically - because the Inquiry’s focus is on recruitment methods and impacts - and with the outcome of expanding the definitional scope and use of legal strategies to prevent coercive control - I have focused on what is often called the Sorcerer’s Apprentice or the Corridor of Madness antipattern. These can occur very early on; and they can often involve the surfacing of brain-based vulnerabilities; psychosocial risks; and trauma-based life histories.
It thus is about primarily what can go wrong, how, and why. It is not the full story of what specifically happened (or the full events of what occurred), and nor does it really cover the Michael Apted 7Up series-like longitudinal effects of branching, counterfactual moments. It refers to a 2005 MA in Counter-Terrorism Studies essay (Monash University) that was on an Academia.edu profile (which I deleted when the firm changed its intellectual property rights laws) which has attracted significant online attention, and which you can find here. This was a coursework student essay rather than being a peer reviewed journal article. I now know far more about what it covers (and have since had MA and PhD degree conferrals, as well as research ethics training). The full story would take a book to write, and would need to include other, contrarian, divergent perspectives to convey more of the gestalt-like full picture.
ICSA’s approach - championed by Michael Langone - draws on a neo-authoritarian model of “high control” groups. This emerged from the respective work of Edward Hunter, Robert Jay Lifton, Edgar Schein, and Robert Jay Lifton - and from the recent exemplar work of “lived experience” scholars like Janja Lalich and Alexandra Stein. It differs from other normative and paradigmatic approaches such as in new religious movements; investigative journalism reportage; “lived experience” memoirs; and Netflix (and other streaming media) documentaries. There is significant disagreement, contestability, and at times even bitter polarisation between these different approaches - which may be incommensurable.
My own stance and “lived experience” differs from this - and some key details as to why are in the Inquiry’s redacted sections. Some of this is easily discoverable to you if you use Open Source Intelligence and structured analytic techniques. To better understand why redactions occur (and how declassification can work) I commend to you UCLA Research Professor Marc Trachtenberg’s academic publications track record. I suggest you also read my formal submission twice: once just to read it and to perhaps grasp some of what I am conveying; and second, please go ahead and critique both it (and me) in terms of making this an active learning experience for you - so that most importantly you can avoid my significant life mistakes.
The framework that ICSA advances is one amongst many. Coercive control exists in many relational contexts - and it may be hidden (at least at first) by sophisticated deception practices. ICSA’s ontological and epistemological sub-field of Cultic Studies often draws on a well-known case universe - from the Moonies and Jim Jones to the Branch Davidians at Waco, Heavens Gate, and more recently, NXIVM. But there may be different permutations; innovations; and idiosyncratic risk-oriented edge cases at the extremes.
Whatever their manifestation, we need to understand what coercive control is relationally - and we need counter-measures to both prevent it and to help victim-survivors to recover and to gain a sense of stabilisation, safety, care, and post-traumatic growth and resilience. Here, “lived experience” of the cultic victim-survivor - together with what I call “clinician informed” approaches of medically qualified experts (psychiatrists; clinical psychologists; and counsellors) is I have found far superior to the “trauma-informed care” approach that human resources and education people use.
I am likewise a little sceptical of exit counsellors (formerly, deprogrammers): any exit process needs to be handled and undertaken via the medically qualified experts above in what is both an independent process and one that is done by people who have professional ethics. This avoids - or at least deals with some aspects of - conflicts of interest. A further challenge (which is part of my own “lived experience” which has been redacted) is coming from a “high control” blended family-of-origin that is ideologically fused (in a Dialectical Behaviour Therapy sense) with specific belief structures that in Lifton’s approach above, are rigidly totalistic. The longitudinal impacts of this can arise in schooling and university studies; in relationship dynamics; in what Brad Klontz has called our financial scripts; and in our workplaces - notably in manager/supervisor-direct report/employee “power over” relationships.
The Inquiry’s formal submissions; its hearings; its questionnaire data; and its reports and recommendations thus have far broader relevance. Coercive control occurs in many different life contexts. The knowledge of this is not well known. All of the above life contexts, milieu, and organisational / institutional / subculture are relevant. The relevant knowledge / anti-knowledge is now “loose in the world”. We have to deal with it - and for those of us who have encountered it in varied contexts (for example, also in AUKUS security compact Pillar 1 and 2 work on nuclear safety and security), there is a “duty to warn” that must transcend some (groupthink-oriented) consensus-based norms. You break the glass when you have to. The precautionary principle applies.
If you are reading this formal submission as a victim-survivor, here are a couple of suggestions. First: thank you and good luck on your own life journey. You might find some of the Bibliography section suggested books (and your own research) to help you to establish an “internal locus of control.” Second: be mindful and compassionate with yourself - and seek an appropriate support system like a non-EAP clinical psychologist and/or counsellor. Third: do what you can to establish the respective boundaries that you need (including to go “no contact” with specific people if required). Fourth: take each day as you can, and try to develop some mid-term or long-term self-expressive goals. Art therapy; community groups; civics involvement; comparative religious and spiritual movement study; and cultivating some skills in critical thinking, anthropology, sociology, politics, economics, or an area / topic of your choice will help. As James Altucher says: “Choose yourself.”
I thank the Inquiry for making my formal submission (and its redactions) publicly available. I look forward to its final report in 2026 - and to strengthening the laws, scope, and case based reasoning use of coercive control counter-measures. My formal submission is just one (very partial, and specifically scoped here in rejoinder form) story here; also please read and learn from others. Thanks for reading and take care.