We recently consulted with Dr. Janja Lalich, a world-recognized expert in cults and coercion, about how cults can harm their youngest members — and the roles their parents and other adults in their lives often play in keeping them in abusive systems of control. Among Dr. Lalich’s insights:
In Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives, which I coauthored with Dr. Margaret Singer,1 we describe what cults are and how they work. The book clearly lays out the manipulative techniques used and their effects on the individual subjects. Included is a chapter on children (chapter 10, “Rescuing the Children”), which discusses the role of the leader and of the parents and the impact of those influences on the children. Sections include “Physical Abuse,” “Inadequate Schooling,” “Poor Health Care,” and “Emotional and Psychological Abuse.” These excerpts further detail important concepts:
- Rescuing the children: “Each cult regards itself as above the laws of the land, as a sovereign state with its own superior rules, and in many cults, children are treated as expendable…. The leader may rationalize the group’s practices so that parents no longer heed the practices they once knew were good for children” (p. 254).
- Role of the Cult Leader: “Since the structure of the cult is authoritarian, children are socialized to that world, not to mainstream democratic society. Children see their parents submit and surrender to the dictates of the leader. The parents and others simply carry out orders, doing what the guru or leader says.” (p. 258)
“A cult is a mirror of what is inside the cult leader. He has no restraints on him. He can make his fantasies and desires come alive in the world he creates around him. He can lead people to do his bidding. He can make the surrounding world really his world…. They do his bidding. They speak his words back to him. He punishes them in any way he wants. He is all-powerful and makes his fantasy come alive.” (p. 258)
“The cult leader’s idiosyncratic notions permeate the system he puts into operation. There is no feedback. No criticism is allowed. When he finally gets his followers to be sufficiently obedient, he can wield unlimited power and get his followers to carry out whatever acts he directs. He becomes the most powerful dictator one can imagine.” (p. 259)
- Role of Cult Parents: “Parents are just intermediaries who see that the children obey the will of the leader… The leader positions himself as the gatekeeper between parents and their God… Parents must get their children to submit to them and to the dictates of the leader in order to prove that they themselves are submitting to the leader, who becomes the sole person to be given high respect, obedience, and veneration… Parents are taught that the leader is their only avenue to enlightenment, God, mental health, or political rightness, and that unless their children submit to them, and they to the leader, they will be cut off from the promised result.” (p. 259)
“Cult parents in essence turn over the custody of their children to a third party, so that the leader or the group becomes the actual custodian of the children… The thought-reform milieu and totalist thinking found in cultic groups play a major role in influencing parents to stand by while their children and others are severely abused.” (p. 261)
“There is an interplay between the ideology of the group and the authoritarian role of the leader that has a particular impact on parents’ thinking and behavior. The authoritarian ideologue, through his control of the social system and social environment, is able to gain compliance and obedience from the parents. The shared ideology of the group is a set of emotionally charged convictions about mankind and its relationship to the world. Once parents have made overt commitments to follow the ideology of a particular leader, then social psychology tells us that their open declaration solidifies and increases the likelihood that they will follow through on whatever behavior is expected of them. Certain behavior may be in total opposition to what they previously subscribed to – not to mention, morally reprehensible. This alternation in the way they think allows them to perform as desired by their cult leader.” (pp. 261-262)
- What children learn: “Children see no modeling of compassion, forgiveness, kindness, or warmth. Since all members are expected to idolize the leader, so are the children. Children either identify with the leader’s power and dominance or capitulate and become passive, dependent, obedient, and often emotionally subdued and flattened.
“Children adopt the cult’s right-wrong, good-bad, sinner-saint starkly polarized value system. They are taught that a divided world exists – ‘we’ are inside; ‘they’ are outside. We are right, they are wrong. We are good, they are bad. In this us-against-them world, children (like the rest of the members) are taught to feel paranoid about nonmembers and outside society.
“Children have no opportunity to observe the compromising, negotiating, and meeting on the middle ground demonstrated in ordinary families. They do not see people resolving disputes or adjusting to the wants and desires of others, the trade-offs that are so central to learning how to play, work, and live in a family or in groups that have been socialized in democratic ways.
“Children do not see adults having input in decision making or making ideas and plans together. Instead, they witness and are taught that critical, evaluative thinking; new ideas; and independent ideas get people in trouble. From this, they learn simply to obey.
“[Often], normal aggressiveness, liveliness, and assertiveness in children are labeled as sinful or as signs of demons, and often warrant severe punishment and suppression. Thus, like their parents, children learn to be dependent on the leader and his system. As a result, anxious-dependent personality traits can be built into [a child’s] developing character.” (pp. 262-263)
1 Singer, M. T., with Lalich, J. Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1995). Note: For decades, Dr. Singer was the worldwide leading authority on cults. She died in 2003.
