Re: Universal medicine
Posted by:
COncerned Partner
()
Date: October 25, 2012 04:11AM
Interesting Story in a UK paper. I wonder if the Universal Students can see the paralegals with their situation, or whether they would simply highlight the small differences.
Take the test:
Sitting in the Cotswolds farmhouse that he shares with his wife, the fashion designer Savannah Miller (sister of Sienna), Nick Skinner is explaining how an intelligent, middle-class man could get sucked into the grips of a religious cult in Costa Rica and find himself brainwashed, suicidal and fighting for the custody of his child.
“People don’t tend to go looking to join a cult,” he says. “Instead, curious and often idealistic people are led into recruitment and their lives are then ruined. That is certainly what happened to me.”
Nick, 38, has decided to speak out for the first time about his experience because he believes there is still a great deal of misunderstanding and ignorance about how cults recruit people. “There are so many cults out there recruiting everyone from students to the elderly, and the number is rising.”
Nick was the former, an idealistic student. The son of a dentist, he grew up in Devon and went to boarding school at Downside in Somerset. In his twenties, after a short stint at university, he and his then girlfriend, Allie, decided to travel, working their way around the world. Not even a baby could stop their wanderlust.
Just a few months after their son, Oscar, was born, the couple headed to Costa Rica. Talking to fellow travellers, they heard about a “biological reserve” in a remote part of the country with a community who lived on-site.
“I’ve always been a keen environmentalist,” says Nick, who is now a bushcraft teacher, “and the community sounded amazing. It was self-sufficient, set in forest scenery. They kept goats and helped the indigenous population. We had to see it.”
The couple hitched a lift to the reserve. “It was breathtakingly beautiful and instantly inspiring, full of vibrant, happy people living in simple buildings made from wind-felled trees. There was no electricity, radio or television. Allie and I were broke, so when they offered to let us stay as volunteers, it was like a dream.
“There was a dress code,” he continues. “Very short hair and beards for men – the founder didn’t want us looking like hippies to outsiders – and long hair for women, while 'modesty’ dictated a ban on bare legs. The image was scientific and professional.”
The reserve seemed well‑organised, with families, single men and single women all living in separate buildings. As well as Costa Ricans, there were Americans and a Dutch woman.
On their first evening, Nick and Allie joined a group discussion that ended with a short meditation. “It was a bit like a yoga class. We got the impression we were among some very good people who were welcoming two hard‑working Europeans into their community.”
Everyone had a timetable, and the couple were given guidelines on community life, meal times and working patterns. “As we got into the swing of the timetable, the meditations became more intense. We only spoke basic Spanish at first, so our understanding was limited. The conditions were loose early on, but gradually we lost more and more freedom.”
Soon the pair were assigned their own individual tutors, who helped them “integrate”. “It was help with factual things at first, practical stuff, but soon we were being tutored in the beliefs and values of the group. Looking back, the religion was a hotchpotch of everything from Buddhism to Christianity. We were never told things – it felt as if our own inquisitiveness led us to find things out. After a month we asked if we could stay there permanently.”
Nick and Allie discovered that the community had been set up in the 1980s. The founder had persuaded an initial group of people to follow his teachings: give up their lives, sell everything, and pool their resources into buying a piece of land.
To gain acceptance into the group, Nick and Allie were asked to make a one-off payment of £500 each to cover their living costs and kit out their cabin – there was a comprehensive list of items they required, such as two spades and a two-ring cooker. Rather like the dress code, every cabin had to be identical.
Nick had no money, so he returned to England to work in a cousin’s factory. When he arrived back at the reserve two months later, Allie had changed. “She had become much more like the others – I think even at the beginning, I had held something back – and was very sure of her new beliefs. She began calling the leader – a charismatic 30-year-old – 'The Master’, and she was distant with me, less tactile, and mechanical in our lovemaking. Her emotions were tightly controlled.”
The couple soon found they were being given very little to eat – and requests for more of the vegetarian food were met with accusations of greed. Meanwhile, the new timetable dictated that they wake up at 3.30am for meditation, sermons and parables.
“We were told, why sleep when you can be doing something useful?” says Nick. “I realise now we were being weakened by sleep deprivation and a meagre diet so we’d become too weak to resist the force of the group. They’d talk about how consumerism was destroying the world, agricultural reforestation, how to create a harmonious lifestyle – all topics we found fascinating.
“That was the external face of it. The internal face was the development of self, spiritual evolution, how to become the perfect human being, with the leader a sort of living manual to achieve this. If you questioned him that wasn’t tolerated, and people were ostracised and shunned as punishment.”
Nick was being fed barely enough to live on and was physically exhausted from the manual work, the martial arts and long runs that were part of the regime. He lost three stone in weight. The questioning part of his mind remained active, but he silenced it because he wanted to keep his family intact.
Allie, on the other hand, had turned into an unquestioning devotee. Their relationship became strained and she moved out of their shared cabin into the single women’s accommodation. Nick could still visit his son, but this eventually became difficult and Allie accused him of “snooping”. Soon he was forbidden from visiting Oscar at all.
'I tried to gain more acceptance from the cult leader, but it was hard as he used psychological tricks, with rewards for compliance and punishments for crimes such as questioning the teachings. When I managed to get myself into 'acceptance’ mode, everything made perfect sense – and when you see how together everyone is, how close, and that you’re not part of that, you want to be. You would strive for acceptance. But no matter how hard I tried to give myself up to the group, a part of my brain always resisted.”
A year passed, and Nick became more compliant. He recalls this period as the time he was most engaged with the group. The leaders weren’t convinced, however, and suggested Nick return to the UK to work on environmental study for a year, and to come back when he was clearer about what he wanted.
“I had become good at detaching myself emotionally, which is what they encourage, but I was very sad about leaving Oscar. They wouldn’t let me take him. When I arrived home my parents were mortified at my physical appearance – I was very thin and gaunt. I didn’t know it then, but they had sought professional help on how to deal with me and my situation, and had been told that challenging me could be the worst thing they could do. So they decided to sit it out and hope I’d one day see the light.”
Nick returned to the group a year later. The thought of being estranged from his son overwhelmed him, so he knuckled down with his “tutor”, who persuaded the leader to let him stay.
“I didn’t question a thing, and the leader was pleased. I stopped listening to my quiet voice that challenged them, and I continued like that for two more years, believing I was learning to be the perfect person. We were told the end of the world was coming. We were so cut off from the world, with no newspapers or anything, the beliefs of the group were all we had. The longer you are in the grip of a cult, the harder it is to leave – you think you are an evolved being and the outside world is meaningless. There’s also a big part of you that won’t admit it’s all rubbish, that you were wrong to accept it’s not real, to admit defeat.”
Nick eventually became close to Danny, another member who was becoming disillusioned with the community, “and talking to him, my mind started opening up. I started questioning things I had been told. For instance, the leader had said that he’d had an accident as a child and had been pronounced clinically dead, that he was a soul from another planet – rubbish, of course, but by the time we were told this we were so far gone, we believed it. Recruitment is a slow, steady process, you kind of slip into it, and before you know it 'facts’ such as these are plausible. What you don’t know early on is that everyone else is in on it, so you are being recruited by the entire group. I remember an American girl arriving and we all recruited her, me included. I’d become one of them.”
Nick knew he had to leave with Oscar, so he focused on being ultra “good”. It worked. The leader agreed that Nick could take Oscar to England for a holiday.
When Nick arrived home he was a fragile mess, seeing the outside world through the group’s eyes one minute, and as a critic the next. “Everyone at home seemed so self-indulgent. I’d been brainwashed to think my parents were very negative, which they weren’t – it’s all part of being accepted, to be alienated from those who care about you. I’d had no contact with my parents for a year, as their letters had gone unread, left in the town a two-hour walk away.”
Three months passed. It was time to return to Costa Rica, but in his heart Nick knew he wasn’t going back. He contacted Allie's parents to explain, and they invited Nick to visit their home to discuss the situation. They hadn’t told him Allie would also be there, and she grabbed the boy.
An eight-month court battle ensued, during which time Nick made contact with the anti-cult expert Graham Baldwin, who runs Catalyst, a charity that helps cult victims get their lives back. Graham counselled Nick and helped prepare his court case against Allie, putting him in contact with a specialist lawyer. Nick was only allowed to see Oscar with a child psychologist present. Suicidal thoughts crossed his mind.
“This group wasn’t about money but power,” explains Graham Baldwin. “Nick was very confused when I met him, like many people in his position who are trying to make sense of what happened to them. I let him talk a lot, but I asked a lot of questions, such as 'why do you think they did this or that?’. Cult victims must find the answers themselves. Cults target intelligent young people who are often searching for something. Anyone can be recruited. There is no immunity.”
It was actually Allie’s sister who saved the day. Having visited the group in Costa Rica, she came forward and said she believed Oscar was better off with his father. Oscar was made a ward of court.
Nick, meanwhile, slowly started rebuilding his life – and Savannah Miller became a big part of this rehabilitation. When they first met at a friend’s wedding eight years ago, she describes him as a “poor lost puppy”. They married in 2005 and now have three children – as well as Oscar, 16, who continues to live with them.
Nick kept a diary during his stay with the group, something that is helping with Paradiso, the film script he is working on, about his experiences in a cult. He intends to donate some of the profit to Catalyst to help pay for a therapy centre for the victims of cults – unlike many countries, the UK still lacks such a facility.
Catalyst currently deals with around 200 cases a year, and estimates that approximately 1,500 cults operate in the UK alone. As Savannah says: “Without Graham’s help, who knows if Nick would have recovered and turned into the confident man he is today.”
*Some names have been changed [www.telegraph.co.uk]
*For more information or to make a donation, visit www.catalystcounselling.org.uk
Take the test:
Sitting in the Cotswolds farmhouse that he shares with his wife, the fashion designer Savannah Miller (sister of Sienna), Nick Skinner is explaining how an intelligent, middle-class man could get sucked into the grips of a religious cult in Costa Rica and find himself brainwashed, suicidal and fighting for the custody of his child.
“People don’t tend to go looking to join a cult,” he says. “Instead, curious and often idealistic people are led into recruitment and their lives are then ruined. That is certainly what happened to me.”
Nick, 38, has decided to speak out for the first time about his experience because he believes there is still a great deal of misunderstanding and ignorance about how cults recruit people. “There are so many cults out there recruiting everyone from students to the elderly, and the number is rising.”
Nick was the former, an idealistic student. The son of a dentist, he grew up in Devon and went to boarding school at Downside in Somerset. In his twenties, after a short stint at university, he and his then girlfriend, Allie, decided to travel, working their way around the world. Not even a baby could stop their wanderlust.
Just a few months after their son, Oscar, was born, the couple headed to Costa Rica. Talking to fellow travellers, they heard about a “biological reserve” in a remote part of the country with a community who lived on-site.
“I’ve always been a keen environmentalist,” says Nick, who is now a bushcraft teacher, “and the community sounded amazing. It was self-sufficient, set in forest scenery. They kept goats and helped the indigenous population. We had to see it.”
The couple hitched a lift to the reserve. “It was breathtakingly beautiful and instantly inspiring, full of vibrant, happy people living in simple buildings made from wind-felled trees. There was no electricity, radio or television. Allie and I were broke, so when they offered to let us stay as volunteers, it was like a dream.
“There was a dress code,” he continues. “Very short hair and beards for men – the founder didn’t want us looking like hippies to outsiders – and long hair for women, while 'modesty’ dictated a ban on bare legs. The image was scientific and professional.”
The reserve seemed well‑organised, with families, single men and single women all living in separate buildings. As well as Costa Ricans, there were Americans and a Dutch woman.
On their first evening, Nick and Allie joined a group discussion that ended with a short meditation. “It was a bit like a yoga class. We got the impression we were among some very good people who were welcoming two hard‑working Europeans into their community.”
Everyone had a timetable, and the couple were given guidelines on community life, meal times and working patterns. “As we got into the swing of the timetable, the meditations became more intense. We only spoke basic Spanish at first, so our understanding was limited. The conditions were loose early on, but gradually we lost more and more freedom.”
Soon the pair were assigned their own individual tutors, who helped them “integrate”. “It was help with factual things at first, practical stuff, but soon we were being tutored in the beliefs and values of the group. Looking back, the religion was a hotchpotch of everything from Buddhism to Christianity. We were never told things – it felt as if our own inquisitiveness led us to find things out. After a month we asked if we could stay there permanently.”
Nick and Allie discovered that the community had been set up in the 1980s. The founder had persuaded an initial group of people to follow his teachings: give up their lives, sell everything, and pool their resources into buying a piece of land.
To gain acceptance into the group, Nick and Allie were asked to make a one-off payment of £500 each to cover their living costs and kit out their cabin – there was a comprehensive list of items they required, such as two spades and a two-ring cooker. Rather like the dress code, every cabin had to be identical.
Nick had no money, so he returned to England to work in a cousin’s factory. When he arrived back at the reserve two months later, Allie had changed. “She had become much more like the others – I think even at the beginning, I had held something back – and was very sure of her new beliefs. She began calling the leader – a charismatic 30-year-old – 'The Master’, and she was distant with me, less tactile, and mechanical in our lovemaking. Her emotions were tightly controlled.”
The couple soon found they were being given very little to eat – and requests for more of the vegetarian food were met with accusations of greed. Meanwhile, the new timetable dictated that they wake up at 3.30am for meditation, sermons and parables.
“We were told, why sleep when you can be doing something useful?” says Nick. “I realise now we were being weakened by sleep deprivation and a meagre diet so we’d become too weak to resist the force of the group. They’d talk about how consumerism was destroying the world, agricultural reforestation, how to create a harmonious lifestyle – all topics we found fascinating.
“That was the external face of it. The internal face was the development of self, spiritual evolution, how to become the perfect human being, with the leader a sort of living manual to achieve this. If you questioned him that wasn’t tolerated, and people were ostracised and shunned as punishment.”
Nick was being fed barely enough to live on and was physically exhausted from the manual work, the martial arts and long runs that were part of the regime. He lost three stone in weight. The questioning part of his mind remained active, but he silenced it because he wanted to keep his family intact.
Allie, on the other hand, had turned into an unquestioning devotee. Their relationship became strained and she moved out of their shared cabin into the single women’s accommodation. Nick could still visit his son, but this eventually became difficult and Allie accused him of “snooping”. Soon he was forbidden from visiting Oscar at all.
'I tried to gain more acceptance from the cult leader, but it was hard as he used psychological tricks, with rewards for compliance and punishments for crimes such as questioning the teachings. When I managed to get myself into 'acceptance’ mode, everything made perfect sense – and when you see how together everyone is, how close, and that you’re not part of that, you want to be. You would strive for acceptance. But no matter how hard I tried to give myself up to the group, a part of my brain always resisted.”
A year passed, and Nick became more compliant. He recalls this period as the time he was most engaged with the group. The leaders weren’t convinced, however, and suggested Nick return to the UK to work on environmental study for a year, and to come back when he was clearer about what he wanted.
“I had become good at detaching myself emotionally, which is what they encourage, but I was very sad about leaving Oscar. They wouldn’t let me take him. When I arrived home my parents were mortified at my physical appearance – I was very thin and gaunt. I didn’t know it then, but they had sought professional help on how to deal with me and my situation, and had been told that challenging me could be the worst thing they could do. So they decided to sit it out and hope I’d one day see the light.”
Nick returned to the group a year later. The thought of being estranged from his son overwhelmed him, so he knuckled down with his “tutor”, who persuaded the leader to let him stay.
“I didn’t question a thing, and the leader was pleased. I stopped listening to my quiet voice that challenged them, and I continued like that for two more years, believing I was learning to be the perfect person. We were told the end of the world was coming. We were so cut off from the world, with no newspapers or anything, the beliefs of the group were all we had. The longer you are in the grip of a cult, the harder it is to leave – you think you are an evolved being and the outside world is meaningless. There’s also a big part of you that won’t admit it’s all rubbish, that you were wrong to accept it’s not real, to admit defeat.”
Nick eventually became close to Danny, another member who was becoming disillusioned with the community, “and talking to him, my mind started opening up. I started questioning things I had been told. For instance, the leader had said that he’d had an accident as a child and had been pronounced clinically dead, that he was a soul from another planet – rubbish, of course, but by the time we were told this we were so far gone, we believed it. Recruitment is a slow, steady process, you kind of slip into it, and before you know it 'facts’ such as these are plausible. What you don’t know early on is that everyone else is in on it, so you are being recruited by the entire group. I remember an American girl arriving and we all recruited her, me included. I’d become one of them.”
Nick knew he had to leave with Oscar, so he focused on being ultra “good”. It worked. The leader agreed that Nick could take Oscar to England for a holiday.
When Nick arrived home he was a fragile mess, seeing the outside world through the group’s eyes one minute, and as a critic the next. “Everyone at home seemed so self-indulgent. I’d been brainwashed to think my parents were very negative, which they weren’t – it’s all part of being accepted, to be alienated from those who care about you. I’d had no contact with my parents for a year, as their letters had gone unread, left in the town a two-hour walk away.”
Three months passed. It was time to return to Costa Rica, but in his heart Nick knew he wasn’t going back. He contacted Allie's parents to explain, and they invited Nick to visit their home to discuss the situation. They hadn’t told him Allie would also be there, and she grabbed the boy.
An eight-month court battle ensued, during which time Nick made contact with the anti-cult expert Graham Baldwin, who runs Catalyst, a charity that helps cult victims get their lives back. Graham counselled Nick and helped prepare his court case against Allie, putting him in contact with a specialist lawyer. Nick was only allowed to see Oscar with a child psychologist present. Suicidal thoughts crossed his mind.
“This group wasn’t about money but power,” explains Graham Baldwin. “Nick was very confused when I met him, like many people in his position who are trying to make sense of what happened to them. I let him talk a lot, but I asked a lot of questions, such as 'why do you think they did this or that?’. Cult victims must find the answers themselves. Cults target intelligent young people who are often searching for something. Anyone can be recruited. There is no immunity.”
It was actually Allie’s sister who saved the day. Having visited the group in Costa Rica, she came forward and said she believed Oscar was better off with his father. Oscar was made a ward of court.
Nick, meanwhile, slowly started rebuilding his life – and Savannah Miller became a big part of this rehabilitation. When they first met at a friend’s wedding eight years ago, she describes him as a “poor lost puppy”. They married in 2005 and now have three children – as well as Oscar, 16, who continues to live with them.
Nick kept a diary during his stay with the group, something that is helping with Paradiso, the film script he is working on, about his experiences in a cult. He intends to donate some of the profit to Catalyst to help pay for a therapy centre for the victims of cults – unlike many countries, the UK still lacks such a facility.
Catalyst currently deals with around 200 cases a year, and estimates that approximately 1,500 cults operate in the UK alone. As Savannah says: “Without Graham’s help, who knows if Nick would have recovered and turned into the confident man he is today.”
*Some names have been changed [www.telegraph.co.uk]
*For more information or to make a donation, visit www.catalystcounselling.org.uk
Re: Universal medicine
Posted by:
HerbertKane178
()
Date: October 25, 2012 06:21AM
It's a good article. I wonder what happened to Allie in the end? I hope she somehow managed to extract herself too.
Catalyst sounds like a good organisation.
Catalyst sounds like a good organisation.
Quote
COncerned Partner
Interesting Story in a UK paper. I wonder if the Universal Students can see the paralegals with their situation, or whether they would simply highlight the small differences.
Take the test:
Sitting in the Cotswolds farmhouse that he shares with his wife, the fashion designer Savannah Miller (sister of Sienna), Nick Skinner is explaining how an intelligent, middle-class man could get sucked into the grips of a religious cult in Costa Rica and find himself brainwashed, suicidal and fighting for the custody of his child.
“People don’t tend to go looking to join a cult,” he says. “Instead, curious and often idealistic people are led into recruitment and their lives are then ruined. That is certainly what happened to me.”
Nick, 38, has decided to speak out for the first time about his experience because he believes there is still a great deal of misunderstanding and ignorance about how cults recruit people. “There are so many cults out there recruiting everyone from students to the elderly, and the number is rising.”
Nick was the former, an idealistic student. The son of a dentist, he grew up in Devon and went to boarding school at Downside in Somerset. In his twenties, after a short stint at university, he and his then girlfriend, Allie, decided to travel, working their way around the world. Not even a baby could stop their wanderlust.
Just a few months after their son, Oscar, was born, the couple headed to Costa Rica. Talking to fellow travellers, they heard about a “biological reserve” in a remote part of the country with a community who lived on-site.
“I’ve always been a keen environmentalist,” says Nick, who is now a bushcraft teacher, “and the community sounded amazing. It was self-sufficient, set in forest scenery. They kept goats and helped the indigenous population. We had to see it.”
The couple hitched a lift to the reserve. “It was breathtakingly beautiful and instantly inspiring, full of vibrant, happy people living in simple buildings made from wind-felled trees. There was no electricity, radio or television. Allie and I were broke, so when they offered to let us stay as volunteers, it was like a dream.
“There was a dress code,” he continues. “Very short hair and beards for men – the founder didn’t want us looking like hippies to outsiders – and long hair for women, while 'modesty’ dictated a ban on bare legs. The image was scientific and professional.”
The reserve seemed well‑organised, with families, single men and single women all living in separate buildings. As well as Costa Ricans, there were Americans and a Dutch woman.
On their first evening, Nick and Allie joined a group discussion that ended with a short meditation. “It was a bit like a yoga class. We got the impression we were among some very good people who were welcoming two hard‑working Europeans into their community.”
Everyone had a timetable, and the couple were given guidelines on community life, meal times and working patterns. “As we got into the swing of the timetable, the meditations became more intense. We only spoke basic Spanish at first, so our understanding was limited. The conditions were loose early on, but gradually we lost more and more freedom.”
Soon the pair were assigned their own individual tutors, who helped them “integrate”. “It was help with factual things at first, practical stuff, but soon we were being tutored in the beliefs and values of the group. Looking back, the religion was a hotchpotch of everything from Buddhism to Christianity. We were never told things – it felt as if our own inquisitiveness led us to find things out. After a month we asked if we could stay there permanently.”
Nick and Allie discovered that the community had been set up in the 1980s. The founder had persuaded an initial group of people to follow his teachings: give up their lives, sell everything, and pool their resources into buying a piece of land.
To gain acceptance into the group, Nick and Allie were asked to make a one-off payment of £500 each to cover their living costs and kit out their cabin – there was a comprehensive list of items they required, such as two spades and a two-ring cooker. Rather like the dress code, every cabin had to be identical.
Nick had no money, so he returned to England to work in a cousin’s factory. When he arrived back at the reserve two months later, Allie had changed. “She had become much more like the others – I think even at the beginning, I had held something back – and was very sure of her new beliefs. She began calling the leader – a charismatic 30-year-old – 'The Master’, and she was distant with me, less tactile, and mechanical in our lovemaking. Her emotions were tightly controlled.”
The couple soon found they were being given very little to eat – and requests for more of the vegetarian food were met with accusations of greed. Meanwhile, the new timetable dictated that they wake up at 3.30am for meditation, sermons and parables.
“We were told, why sleep when you can be doing something useful?” says Nick. “I realise now we were being weakened by sleep deprivation and a meagre diet so we’d become too weak to resist the force of the group. They’d talk about how consumerism was destroying the world, agricultural reforestation, how to create a harmonious lifestyle – all topics we found fascinating.
“That was the external face of it. The internal face was the development of self, spiritual evolution, how to become the perfect human being, with the leader a sort of living manual to achieve this. If you questioned him that wasn’t tolerated, and people were ostracised and shunned as punishment.”
Nick was being fed barely enough to live on and was physically exhausted from the manual work, the martial arts and long runs that were part of the regime. He lost three stone in weight. The questioning part of his mind remained active, but he silenced it because he wanted to keep his family intact.
Allie, on the other hand, had turned into an unquestioning devotee. Their relationship became strained and she moved out of their shared cabin into the single women’s accommodation. Nick could still visit his son, but this eventually became difficult and Allie accused him of “snooping”. Soon he was forbidden from visiting Oscar at all.
'I tried to gain more acceptance from the cult leader, but it was hard as he used psychological tricks, with rewards for compliance and punishments for crimes such as questioning the teachings. When I managed to get myself into 'acceptance’ mode, everything made perfect sense – and when you see how together everyone is, how close, and that you’re not part of that, you want to be. You would strive for acceptance. But no matter how hard I tried to give myself up to the group, a part of my brain always resisted.”
A year passed, and Nick became more compliant. He recalls this period as the time he was most engaged with the group. The leaders weren’t convinced, however, and suggested Nick return to the UK to work on environmental study for a year, and to come back when he was clearer about what he wanted.
“I had become good at detaching myself emotionally, which is what they encourage, but I was very sad about leaving Oscar. They wouldn’t let me take him. When I arrived home my parents were mortified at my physical appearance – I was very thin and gaunt. I didn’t know it then, but they had sought professional help on how to deal with me and my situation, and had been told that challenging me could be the worst thing they could do. So they decided to sit it out and hope I’d one day see the light.”
Nick returned to the group a year later. The thought of being estranged from his son overwhelmed him, so he knuckled down with his “tutor”, who persuaded the leader to let him stay.
“I didn’t question a thing, and the leader was pleased. I stopped listening to my quiet voice that challenged them, and I continued like that for two more years, believing I was learning to be the perfect person. We were told the end of the world was coming. We were so cut off from the world, with no newspapers or anything, the beliefs of the group were all we had. The longer you are in the grip of a cult, the harder it is to leave – you think you are an evolved being and the outside world is meaningless. There’s also a big part of you that won’t admit it’s all rubbish, that you were wrong to accept it’s not real, to admit defeat.”
Nick eventually became close to Danny, another member who was becoming disillusioned with the community, “and talking to him, my mind started opening up. I started questioning things I had been told. For instance, the leader had said that he’d had an accident as a child and had been pronounced clinically dead, that he was a soul from another planet – rubbish, of course, but by the time we were told this we were so far gone, we believed it. Recruitment is a slow, steady process, you kind of slip into it, and before you know it 'facts’ such as these are plausible. What you don’t know early on is that everyone else is in on it, so you are being recruited by the entire group. I remember an American girl arriving and we all recruited her, me included. I’d become one of them.”
Nick knew he had to leave with Oscar, so he focused on being ultra “good”. It worked. The leader agreed that Nick could take Oscar to England for a holiday.
When Nick arrived home he was a fragile mess, seeing the outside world through the group’s eyes one minute, and as a critic the next. “Everyone at home seemed so self-indulgent. I’d been brainwashed to think my parents were very negative, which they weren’t – it’s all part of being accepted, to be alienated from those who care about you. I’d had no contact with my parents for a year, as their letters had gone unread, left in the town a two-hour walk away.”
Three months passed. It was time to return to Costa Rica, but in his heart Nick knew he wasn’t going back. He contacted Allie's parents to explain, and they invited Nick to visit their home to discuss the situation. They hadn’t told him Allie would also be there, and she grabbed the boy.
An eight-month court battle ensued, during which time Nick made contact with the anti-cult expert Graham Baldwin, who runs Catalyst, a charity that helps cult victims get their lives back. Graham counselled Nick and helped prepare his court case against Allie, putting him in contact with a specialist lawyer. Nick was only allowed to see Oscar with a child psychologist present. Suicidal thoughts crossed his mind.
“This group wasn’t about money but power,” explains Graham Baldwin. “Nick was very confused when I met him, like many people in his position who are trying to make sense of what happened to them. I let him talk a lot, but I asked a lot of questions, such as 'why do you think they did this or that?’. Cult victims must find the answers themselves. Cults target intelligent young people who are often searching for something. Anyone can be recruited. There is no immunity.”
It was actually Allie’s sister who saved the day. Having visited the group in Costa Rica, she came forward and said she believed Oscar was better off with his father. Oscar was made a ward of court.
Nick, meanwhile, slowly started rebuilding his life – and Savannah Miller became a big part of this rehabilitation. When they first met at a friend’s wedding eight years ago, she describes him as a “poor lost puppy”. They married in 2005 and now have three children – as well as Oscar, 16, who continues to live with them.
Nick kept a diary during his stay with the group, something that is helping with Paradiso, the film script he is working on, about his experiences in a cult. He intends to donate some of the profit to Catalyst to help pay for a therapy centre for the victims of cults – unlike many countries, the UK still lacks such a facility.
Catalyst currently deals with around 200 cases a year, and estimates that approximately 1,500 cults operate in the UK alone. As Savannah says: “Without Graham’s help, who knows if Nick would have recovered and turned into the confident man he is today.”
*Some names have been changed [www.telegraph.co.uk]
*For more information or to make a donation, visit www.catalystcounselling.org.uk
Re: Universal medicine
Posted by:
MacReady
()
Date: October 25, 2012 06:38AM
Thanks CP. The similarities in techniques of control between these cult organizations is quite uncanny. It's baffling that so many UM students could consider this information and still reject the notion that UM is a cult and that they have been manipulated, however subtly, to adhere to Serge's psychobabble belief system via established thought reform methodology.
Students: if you are reading this, don't any of you find it slightly odd that the 'true selves' UM has helped you find are all, in fact, just facsimiles of Serge?
Students: if you are reading this, don't any of you find it slightly odd that the 'true selves' UM has helped you find are all, in fact, just facsimiles of Serge?
Re: Universal medicine
Posted by:
Willow.Sunshine
()
Date: October 25, 2012 10:53AM
An interesting fact – If the obvious things like illegal drugs are pranic as well as caffeine, sugar and alcohol plus students are not allowed anything with dairy or gluten to enter or touch the body because they are pranic and not good for the soul then why do the so called “magic massage creams” contain benzyl alcohol?
Benzyl Alcohol is an aromatic alcohol used as a preservative, as the active ingredient in head lice treatment, and as a solvent. It is most often created by combining benzyl chloride (a suspected carcinogen that has been used as a war gas) with sodium hydroxide (lye). Sometimes it is created by reacting Phenylmagnesium Bromide (C6H5MgBr) with Formaldehyde.
Benzyl Alcohol can act as a skin sensitizer, and, according to a 1998 study can "can instigate immune system response that can include itching, burning, scaling, hives, and blistering of skin." It is also a known neurotoxin.
The term "aromatic" doesn't just mean that it's fragrant. It's a chemical term meaning that on a molecular level, the compound contains a benzene ring. Benzene is a highly toxic and carcinogenic compound, and depending on what it's combined with, can have many side effects. In addition, it can break down and create aldehydes (like formaldehyde) in the presence of other chemicals. Titanium Dioxide is one of those chemicals. So you may be using a "mineral" makeup or sunscreen and feeling like you're safe--but if it contains benzyl alcohol, it could be offgassing formaldehyde or a related chemical.
Granted it takes a far bit of Benzyl Alcohol to really affect you but given the fact that Universal Medicine teaches that anything pranic at all can damage the soul (and I would say that anything with the properties detailed above, must be pranic!) it is surprising that this very ordinary, non organic, and by no means natural cream is given the green light and that practitioners are allowed to freely smother it all over students bodies while having a treatment......, but of course any itching or burning will just be the body clearing !
Benzyl Alcohol is an aromatic alcohol used as a preservative, as the active ingredient in head lice treatment, and as a solvent. It is most often created by combining benzyl chloride (a suspected carcinogen that has been used as a war gas) with sodium hydroxide (lye). Sometimes it is created by reacting Phenylmagnesium Bromide (C6H5MgBr) with Formaldehyde.
Benzyl Alcohol can act as a skin sensitizer, and, according to a 1998 study can "can instigate immune system response that can include itching, burning, scaling, hives, and blistering of skin." It is also a known neurotoxin.
The term "aromatic" doesn't just mean that it's fragrant. It's a chemical term meaning that on a molecular level, the compound contains a benzene ring. Benzene is a highly toxic and carcinogenic compound, and depending on what it's combined with, can have many side effects. In addition, it can break down and create aldehydes (like formaldehyde) in the presence of other chemicals. Titanium Dioxide is one of those chemicals. So you may be using a "mineral" makeup or sunscreen and feeling like you're safe--but if it contains benzyl alcohol, it could be offgassing formaldehyde or a related chemical.
Granted it takes a far bit of Benzyl Alcohol to really affect you but given the fact that Universal Medicine teaches that anything pranic at all can damage the soul (and I would say that anything with the properties detailed above, must be pranic!) it is surprising that this very ordinary, non organic, and by no means natural cream is given the green light and that practitioners are allowed to freely smother it all over students bodies while having a treatment......, but of course any itching or burning will just be the body clearing !
Re: Universal medicine
Posted by:
COncerned Partner
()
Date: October 25, 2012 02:32PM
From another thread on this forum. Seem familiar? Serge and Bill should get together for a pow-wow to discuss past life notes and to sort out claims on bodies they were occupying just in case they both lay claim.
[forum.culteducation.com]
William Camilleri also makes references to Rudolf Steiner and a lot of his works. He normally does this when he first meet you to give himself a sense of legitimacy.
He also claims that because his technique is superior, a number of the teachers in the Rudolf Steiner school system in Melbourne work with him.
Following the techniques of the Inner Light Society
He talks about doing studies in Switzerland at some school that followed Carl Jung's teachings.
William Camilleri by all accounts does have skills of clairvoyance. In practice he exploits this talent, to convince his followers to seek his advice on everything.
Ultimately you don't make a decision without his approval. He generally advises all his followers to reject their families.
There are accounts of former female members of the group, reporting the belief that they felt William was grooming them for sex.
all advertisements for psychic phone counselling and guidance carry the name of the service provider.
The advertisements run by the inner light Society of Australia, generally go through Consulate.
Recruiting people through the psychic phone lines is very effective and very subtle. The callers are often very lost and feel genuinely empowered by the prayers and meditation techniques being offered. What they don't realise is that they are being drawn into a web where they become powerless.
They are convinced they can only access the spiritual powers through the Inner Light Society and William Camilleri.
the truth is these are very common spiritual techniques. What William Camilleri does is manipulate his followers into putting him first. He also creates an imaginary past life relationship between the member of the group and himself.
William claims to be a reincarnation of Gandhi, and several other historical figures including John the Baptist and Confucius.
New members to the group are slowly fed this information about past lives, like it is a very important secret available only to the chosen.
Once a person begins to believe this past life hierarchy, then they are caught up in this psychological web as defined by William Camilleri. He then is in a position to keep instructing the person to keep on compromising their own life and not questioning him.
People are mortgaging their houses to him, on the basis it was the continuation of the past life relationship.
Other members have made the observation that William Camilleri appears to have genuine spiritual powers. Coming across as utterly plausible and charismatic on occasion.
Others say that this is purely a fleeting impression, saying it is obvious he is a charlatan and a fraud.
However as with all cults, they play upon the vulnerable and they attack people who are vulnerable.
Using the psychic line model,Inner Light Society have found a very insidious and almost invisible way to recruit the lost and powerless in society.
[forum.culteducation.com]
William Camilleri also makes references to Rudolf Steiner and a lot of his works. He normally does this when he first meet you to give himself a sense of legitimacy.
He also claims that because his technique is superior, a number of the teachers in the Rudolf Steiner school system in Melbourne work with him.
Following the techniques of the Inner Light Society
He talks about doing studies in Switzerland at some school that followed Carl Jung's teachings.
William Camilleri by all accounts does have skills of clairvoyance. In practice he exploits this talent, to convince his followers to seek his advice on everything.
Ultimately you don't make a decision without his approval. He generally advises all his followers to reject their families.
There are accounts of former female members of the group, reporting the belief that they felt William was grooming them for sex.
all advertisements for psychic phone counselling and guidance carry the name of the service provider.
The advertisements run by the inner light Society of Australia, generally go through Consulate.
Recruiting people through the psychic phone lines is very effective and very subtle. The callers are often very lost and feel genuinely empowered by the prayers and meditation techniques being offered. What they don't realise is that they are being drawn into a web where they become powerless.
They are convinced they can only access the spiritual powers through the Inner Light Society and William Camilleri.
the truth is these are very common spiritual techniques. What William Camilleri does is manipulate his followers into putting him first. He also creates an imaginary past life relationship between the member of the group and himself.
William claims to be a reincarnation of Gandhi, and several other historical figures including John the Baptist and Confucius.
New members to the group are slowly fed this information about past lives, like it is a very important secret available only to the chosen.
Once a person begins to believe this past life hierarchy, then they are caught up in this psychological web as defined by William Camilleri. He then is in a position to keep instructing the person to keep on compromising their own life and not questioning him.
People are mortgaging their houses to him, on the basis it was the continuation of the past life relationship.
Other members have made the observation that William Camilleri appears to have genuine spiritual powers. Coming across as utterly plausible and charismatic on occasion.
Others say that this is purely a fleeting impression, saying it is obvious he is a charlatan and a fraud.
However as with all cults, they play upon the vulnerable and they attack people who are vulnerable.
Using the psychic line model,Inner Light Society have found a very insidious and almost invisible way to recruit the lost and powerless in society.
Re: Universal medicine
Posted by:
Jasmin
()
Date: October 25, 2012 08:46PM
Quote
Willow.Sunshine
And by the way....did you recognize, that all the students use the same creams with the same smell. And then think about the brain activity and the smell. Our sence of smell is the strongest in refer to remind someone of something. There are so many facts, that are influenced by Universal Medicine, as little as they seem to be alone, the effects in combination are so strong and keep Serge students addicted to UM.
Re: Universal medicine
Posted by:
MacReady
()
Date: October 26, 2012 05:02AM
Frome TownTalk unfortunately removed this story after being bombarded by the loveblog brigade's typical 'we're not in a cult' mantras. Luckily it will remain here for readers to see. Feel free to comment on it here as well, 'Forever Students'.
Quote
MacReady
http://www.frome.towntalk.co.uk/news/d/30317/aussie-cult-leader-visits-frome/
Aussie Cult Leader Visits Frome
An alleged Australian cult leader and former bankrupt tennis coach, who claims to be the reincarnation of Leonardo da Vinci, Pythagoras and Alice A Bailey visits Frome for a series of courses and lecture in November.
An alleged Australian cult leader, Serge Benhayon who operates out of the Lighthouse building in Frome, Somerset is visiting for a sold out lecture tour in November. Mr. Benhayon, a former bankrupt tennis coach, started his group Universal Medicine in 1999 after a 'spiritual awakening' while on the toilet.
His group teaches its mainly woman followers to make 'loving choices' which includes avoiding gluten, dairy, alcohol, strenuous exercise, music and even sex.
The group offers treatments such as "Esoteric Breast Massage", "Esoteric Uterus Massage" and "Chakra-puncture" treatments, which has captured the attention of the mainstream media in Australia, with stories appearing in News Ltd and Fairfax publications and on tabloid television programs. Many of the treatments are available at the Lighthouse and from 'practitioners' in London and as far afield as Germany and Norway.
Critics of the group, which include disaffected families including husbands, partners, siblings and parents claim that the group is actually a cult and that members change their behaviour radically to conform to the doctrine of Universal Medicine. One Australian husband, whose wife is said to have spent $70,000 AUD on courses and treatments over 5 years says that his wife became incapable of making decisions for herself, and was addicted to his courses and treatments. "Serge claims that they are free to make choices and he simply presents an alternative way of living, when in fact, they are dependent on him to tell them what is 'energetically true" or not"
The group was recently forced to withdraw a range of herbal supplements from the Australian market after an investigation by the Therapeutics Goods Administration (Aust) found that the products made false claims. The Health Complaints Commission is also investigating allegations that "Universal Medicine can cure or reduce the incidence of cancer"
Mr Benhayon teaches that cancers and ills are the result of 'past lives', 'karma' and 'evil spirits' and it has been alleged that people seeking treatments with Universal Medicine in Australia and the UK have avoided seeking medical treatment as a result of advice given by Universal Medicine practitioners.
A former cult member explains that the group is taught the world is either 'pranic' or 'fiery' and that Mr. Benhayon is a master sent by 'Lord Matreya' to see in the 'new-era' which commenced this year. The followers or students are taught to avoid pranic food, exercise, music and relationships in order to clear themselves for better future incarnations and to elevate the world from its 'astral' stage. "It's about making correct energetic choices, which he calls energetic integrity. However only Serge knows what is energetically correct or not so students become dependent on him and the group for their every decision."
A cult expert who has been looking into the group in Australia, and counselling ex-members explains. " Universal Medicine is a typical paternalistic cult. It is difficult for people to know they or a member of their family is in a cult because very few people have experience of what one is. In Universal Medicines case, the students believe they are learning 'energetic' healing, when in fact they are being taught Serge's doctrine. Over time and through subtle thought reform methodology, they become dependent on Serge and the group as their worldview alters radically. A feature of Universal Medicine is a focus on elevating the feminine and emasculating men, which tends to amplify natural gender differences which seems to be resulting in extremely high relationship failure rates. We are counselling quite a number of men whose partners have left them for the cult, and a number of woman who are now recovering"
Mr Benhayon has denied being involved in relationship breakdowns when questioned by Australian reporters. However at a recent retreat in the UK he spoke of leaving ‘pranic relatiionships’ and is known to have emailed students advising them that their partners are ‘holding them back from their glory” and “not in-truth.”
48 year old Mr Benhayon is married to a woman 18 years his junior who he first met as her tennis coach when 13 years of age. His ex-wife Deborah and his their children are all involved in the group, while his eldest daughter Simone heads up the UK operations and is said by Mr Benhayon in a recent interview to be the reincarnation of Winston Churchill.
The group is thought to making around $5M AUD a year from selling courses and is known to have collected at least £1M in donations for renovations to the Lighthouse. A recently established “Universal Medicine charity” in Australia is asking for $1million in donations to build a healing centre close to Mr Benhayon's Australian clinic and headquarters at Alstonville, in Northern NSW.
Re: Universal medicine
Posted by:
VenusDarkly
()
Date: October 28, 2012 04:10PM
I thought I'd post a list of locations of Universal Medicine Meditation groups and the first names of their contacts. The info is available on the UM main site with contact details. It gives an idea of the spread, and there were locations here I wasn't aware of, particularly in North America. I wondered why I was getting so many hits on my blog from there. [universalmedicineaccountability.blogspot.com.au]
AUSTRALIA
NSW:
Tilba Tilba: contact Sherry
Byron Bay: contact Denise
Lismore: contact Desiree
Ocean Shores: contact Judy
Pottsville: contact Victoria Carter
Sydney/Northern Suburbs: contact Lucy
Sydney/Ashfield: contact Rachel
Sydney/City/Inner-West: contact Deanne
WA:
Perth: contact Johanne
Perth: contact Johanna
Perth: contact Sally
QLD:
Brisbane (Fairfield): contact Jenny
Brisbane (Camp Hill): contact Jennene
Brisbane (St Lucia): contact Annie
Gold Coast: contact Rik
Gold Coast/Southport: contact Robyn
Munruben area/near Jimboomba: contact Donna
Warwick (possibly Stanthorpe/Tenterfield/Toowoomba): contact Kim
VIC:
Bendigo: contact Kathryn
Geelong: contact Shirley
Melbourne: contact Serryn
Melbourne/East: contact Marika
ACT:
Pearce: contact Felicity
SA:
Adelaide: contact Monya or Andrew
NEW ZEALAND
North Island:
Auckland: contact Ingrid
Tauranga: contact Jeanette
South Island:
Wanaka: contact Paul
EUROPE
Belgium: contact Carolien
France: contact Maryline
Germany
Köln: contact Judith
Leichlingen: contact Katrin
Stuttgart: contact Esther
Holland
Zutphen: contact Annelies
Amsterdam: contact Katinka
Voorschoten/Leiden: contact Monika
Ireland
contact Eunice the Esoteric Surgeon - contact the NHS while you're at it.
Norway
Oslo: contact Eva
Switzerland
contact Sarah
Scotland
Isle of Arran: contact Joan
Fife: contact Doug
United Kingdom
Brighton: contact Stephen
Bristol: contact Jane Keep
Cholsey Oxfordshire: contact Sue
Lightwater Surrey: contact Shirley-Ann
London: contact Sara
Norfolk: contact Beverley
Somerset: contact Simon at the Lighthouse Centre
Suffolk: contact Elaine
Wales: contact Ariana
NORTH AMERICA
Canada
NS, Cape Breton, Tirnanog Wellness Centre – June till November: contact Elizabeth
NS, Cape Breton, Florence – November till May: contact Elizabeth
USA
Minnesota, Minneapolis: contact Deborah
Utah, Salt Lake City: contact Nykole
Vermont, Bristol: contact Michael
AUSTRALIA
NSW:
Tilba Tilba: contact Sherry
Byron Bay: contact Denise
Lismore: contact Desiree
Ocean Shores: contact Judy
Pottsville: contact Victoria Carter
Sydney/Northern Suburbs: contact Lucy
Sydney/Ashfield: contact Rachel
Sydney/City/Inner-West: contact Deanne
WA:
Perth: contact Johanne
Perth: contact Johanna
Perth: contact Sally
QLD:
Brisbane (Fairfield): contact Jenny
Brisbane (Camp Hill): contact Jennene
Brisbane (St Lucia): contact Annie
Gold Coast: contact Rik
Gold Coast/Southport: contact Robyn
Munruben area/near Jimboomba: contact Donna
Warwick (possibly Stanthorpe/Tenterfield/Toowoomba): contact Kim
VIC:
Bendigo: contact Kathryn
Geelong: contact Shirley
Melbourne: contact Serryn
Melbourne/East: contact Marika
ACT:
Pearce: contact Felicity
SA:
Adelaide: contact Monya or Andrew
NEW ZEALAND
North Island:
Auckland: contact Ingrid
Tauranga: contact Jeanette
South Island:
Wanaka: contact Paul
EUROPE
Belgium: contact Carolien
France: contact Maryline
Germany
Köln: contact Judith
Leichlingen: contact Katrin
Stuttgart: contact Esther
Holland
Zutphen: contact Annelies
Amsterdam: contact Katinka
Voorschoten/Leiden: contact Monika
Ireland
contact Eunice the Esoteric Surgeon - contact the NHS while you're at it.
Norway
Oslo: contact Eva
Switzerland
contact Sarah
Scotland
Isle of Arran: contact Joan
Fife: contact Doug
United Kingdom
Brighton: contact Stephen
Bristol: contact Jane Keep
Cholsey Oxfordshire: contact Sue
Lightwater Surrey: contact Shirley-Ann
London: contact Sara
Norfolk: contact Beverley
Somerset: contact Simon at the Lighthouse Centre
Suffolk: contact Elaine
Wales: contact Ariana
NORTH AMERICA
Canada
NS, Cape Breton, Tirnanog Wellness Centre – June till November: contact Elizabeth
NS, Cape Breton, Florence – November till May: contact Elizabeth
USA
Minnesota, Minneapolis: contact Deborah
Utah, Salt Lake City: contact Nykole
Vermont, Bristol: contact Michael
Re: Universal medicine
Posted by:
corboy
()
Date: October 28, 2012 09:11PM
Quote
Frome TownTalk unfortunately removed this story after being bombarded by the loveblog brigade'
By preserving the text of that story in Frome Town Talk and placing it here on the RR.com message board, Macready has done what the diligent monks and scribes did
during the Dark Ages:
Saved an important text from disappearing so that the present generation and future generations could read it.
In the bad old days, we had book burnings.
Today, we have the delete button that is hit, making texts disappear from cyberspace when well organized groups pressurize small publishers lacking finances or stamina to mount a legal challenge.
Re: Universal medicine
Posted by:
treefern
()
Date: October 29, 2012 08:38AM
Quote
COncerned Partner
Interesting Story in a UK paper. I wonder if the Universal Students can see the paralegals with their situation, or whether they would simply highlight the small differences.
Take the test:
Sitting in the Cotswolds farmhouse that he shares with his wife, the fashion designer Savannah Miller (sister of Sienna), Nick Skinner is explaining how an intelligent, middle-class man could get sucked into the grips of a religious cult in Costa Rica and find himself brainwashed, suicidal and fighting for the custody of his child.
“People don’t tend to go looking to join a cult,” he says. “Instead, curious and often idealistic people are led into recruitment and their lives are then ruined. That is certainly what happened to me.”
Nick, 38, has decided to speak out for the first time about his experience because he believes there is still a great deal of misunderstanding and ignorance about how cults recruit people. “There are so many cults out there recruiting everyone from students to the elderly, and the number is rising.”
Nick was the former, an idealistic student. The son of a dentist, he grew up in Devon and went to boarding school at Downside in Somerset. In his twenties, after a short stint at university, he and his then girlfriend, Allie, decided to travel, working their way around the world. Not even a baby could stop their wanderlust.
Just a few months after their son, Oscar, was born, the couple headed to Costa Rica. Talking to fellow travellers, they heard about a “biological reserve” in a remote part of the country with a community who lived on-site.
“I’ve always been a keen environmentalist,” says Nick, who is now a bushcraft teacher, “and the community sounded amazing. It was self-sufficient, set in forest scenery. They kept goats and helped the indigenous population. We had to see it.”
The couple hitched a lift to the reserve. “It was breathtakingly beautiful and instantly inspiring, full of vibrant, happy people living in simple buildings made from wind-felled trees. There was no electricity, radio or television. Allie and I were broke, so when they offered to let us stay as volunteers, it was like a dream.
“There was a dress code,” he continues. “Very short hair and beards for men – the founder didn’t want us looking like hippies to outsiders – and long hair for women, while 'modesty’ dictated a ban on bare legs. The image was scientific and professional.”
The reserve seemed well‑organised, with families, single men and single women all living in separate buildings. As well as Costa Ricans, there were Americans and a Dutch woman.
On their first evening, Nick and Allie joined a group discussion that ended with a short meditation. “It was a bit like a yoga class. We got the impression we were among some very good people who were welcoming two hard‑working Europeans into their community.”
Everyone had a timetable, and the couple were given guidelines on community life, meal times and working patterns. “As we got into the swing of the timetable, the meditations became more intense. We only spoke basic Spanish at first, so our understanding was limited. The conditions were loose early on, but gradually we lost more and more freedom.”
Soon the pair were assigned their own individual tutors, who helped them “integrate”. “It was help with factual things at first, practical stuff, but soon we were being tutored in the beliefs and values of the group. Looking back, the religion was a hotchpotch of everything from Buddhism to Christianity. We were never told things – it felt as if our own inquisitiveness led us to find things out. After a month we asked if we could stay there permanently.”
Nick and Allie discovered that the community had been set up in the 1980s. The founder had persuaded an initial group of people to follow his teachings: give up their lives, sell everything, and pool their resources into buying a piece of land.
To gain acceptance into the group, Nick and Allie were asked to make a one-off payment of £500 each to cover their living costs and kit out their cabin – there was a comprehensive list of items they required, such as two spades and a two-ring cooker. Rather like the dress code, every cabin had to be identical.
Nick had no money, so he returned to England to work in a cousin’s factory. When he arrived back at the reserve two months later, Allie had changed. “She had become much more like the others – I think even at the beginning, I had held something back – and was very sure of her new beliefs. She began calling the leader – a charismatic 30-year-old – 'The Master’, and she was distant with me, less tactile, and mechanical in our lovemaking. Her emotions were tightly controlled.”
The couple soon found they were being given very little to eat – and requests for more of the vegetarian food were met with accusations of greed. Meanwhile, the new timetable dictated that they wake up at 3.30am for meditation, sermons and parables.
“We were told, why sleep when you can be doing something useful?” says Nick. “I realise now we were being weakened by sleep deprivation and a meagre diet so we’d become too weak to resist the force of the group. They’d talk about how consumerism was destroying the world, agricultural reforestation, how to create a harmonious lifestyle – all topics we found fascinating.
“That was the external face of it. The internal face was the development of self, spiritual evolution, how to become the perfect human being, with the leader a sort of living manual to achieve this. If you questioned him that wasn’t tolerated, and people were ostracised and shunned as punishment.”
Nick was being fed barely enough to live on and was physically exhausted from the manual work, the martial arts and long runs that were part of the regime. He lost three stone in weight. The questioning part of his mind remained active, but he silenced it because he wanted to keep his family intact.
Allie, on the other hand, had turned into an unquestioning devotee. Their relationship became strained and she moved out of their shared cabin into the single women’s accommodation. Nick could still visit his son, but this eventually became difficult and Allie accused him of “snooping”. Soon he was forbidden from visiting Oscar at all.
'I tried to gain more acceptance from the cult leader, but it was hard as he used psychological tricks, with rewards for compliance and punishments for crimes such as questioning the teachings. When I managed to get myself into 'acceptance’ mode, everything made perfect sense – and when you see how together everyone is, how close, and that you’re not part of that, you want to be. You would strive for acceptance. But no matter how hard I tried to give myself up to the group, a part of my brain always resisted.”
A year passed, and Nick became more compliant. He recalls this period as the time he was most engaged with the group. The leaders weren’t convinced, however, and suggested Nick return to the UK to work on environmental study for a year, and to come back when he was clearer about what he wanted.
“I had become good at detaching myself emotionally, which is what they encourage, but I was very sad about leaving Oscar. They wouldn’t let me take him. When I arrived home my parents were mortified at my physical appearance – I was very thin and gaunt. I didn’t know it then, but they had sought professional help on how to deal with me and my situation, and had been told that challenging me could be the worst thing they could do. So they decided to sit it out and hope I’d one day see the light.”
Nick returned to the group a year later. The thought of being estranged from his son overwhelmed him, so he knuckled down with his “tutor”, who persuaded the leader to let him stay.
“I didn’t question a thing, and the leader was pleased. I stopped listening to my quiet voice that challenged them, and I continued like that for two more years, believing I was learning to be the perfect person. We were told the end of the world was coming. We were so cut off from the world, with no newspapers or anything, the beliefs of the group were all we had. The longer you are in the grip of a cult, the harder it is to leave – you think you are an evolved being and the outside world is meaningless. There’s also a big part of you that won’t admit it’s all rubbish, that you were wrong to accept it’s not real, to admit defeat.”
Nick eventually became close to Danny, another member who was becoming disillusioned with the community, “and talking to him, my mind started opening up. I started questioning things I had been told. For instance, the leader had said that he’d had an accident as a child and had been pronounced clinically dead, that he was a soul from another planet – rubbish, of course, but by the time we were told this we were so far gone, we believed it. Recruitment is a slow, steady process, you kind of slip into it, and before you know it 'facts’ such as these are plausible. What you don’t know early on is that everyone else is in on it, so you are being recruited by the entire group. I remember an American girl arriving and we all recruited her, me included. I’d become one of them.”
Nick knew he had to leave with Oscar, so he focused on being ultra “good”. It worked. The leader agreed that Nick could take Oscar to England for a holiday.
When Nick arrived home he was a fragile mess, seeing the outside world through the group’s eyes one minute, and as a critic the next. “Everyone at home seemed so self-indulgent. I’d been brainwashed to think my parents were very negative, which they weren’t – it’s all part of being accepted, to be alienated from those who care about you. I’d had no contact with my parents for a year, as their letters had gone unread, left in the town a two-hour walk away.”
Three months passed. It was time to return to Costa Rica, but in his heart Nick knew he wasn’t going back. He contacted Allie's parents to explain, and they invited Nick to visit their home to discuss the situation. They hadn’t told him Allie would also be there, and she grabbed the boy.
An eight-month court battle ensued, during which time Nick made contact with the anti-cult expert Graham Baldwin, who runs Catalyst, a charity that helps cult victims get their lives back. Graham counselled Nick and helped prepare his court case against Allie, putting him in contact with a specialist lawyer. Nick was only allowed to see Oscar with a child psychologist present. Suicidal thoughts crossed his mind.
“This group wasn’t about money but power,” explains Graham Baldwin. “Nick was very confused when I met him, like many people in his position who are trying to make sense of what happened to them. I let him talk a lot, but I asked a lot of questions, such as 'why do you think they did this or that?’. Cult victims must find the answers themselves. Cults target intelligent young people who are often searching for something. Anyone can be recruited. There is no immunity.”
It was actually Allie’s sister who saved the day. Having visited the group in Costa Rica, she came forward and said she believed Oscar was better off with his father. Oscar was made a ward of court.
Nick, meanwhile, slowly started rebuilding his life – and Savannah Miller became a big part of this rehabilitation. When they first met at a friend’s wedding eight years ago, she describes him as a “poor lost puppy”. They married in 2005 and now have three children – as well as Oscar, 16, who continues to live with them.
Nick kept a diary during his stay with the group, something that is helping with Paradiso, the film script he is working on, about his experiences in a cult. He intends to donate some of the profit to Catalyst to help pay for a therapy centre for the victims of cults – unlike many countries, the UK still lacks such a facility.
Catalyst currently deals with around 200 cases a year, and estimates that approximately 1,500 cults operate in the UK alone. As Savannah says: “Without Graham’s help, who knows if Nick would have recovered and turned into the confident man he is today.”
*Some names have been changed [www.telegraph.co.uk]
*For more information or to make a donation, visit www.catalystcounselling.org.uk
I wonder if Nick has been treated with as much aggression, hostility, threats of violence, slanderous lies spread and just plain rudness by his 'friends' as my husband has, since he left the cult?
Closed minds, closed hearts.
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