rsqubf, thanks for the update. Donna’s story is helpful to understand things.

First, you need to understand the time when the CAN and the deprogrammers were active. This was the time of the big cults Moon, Bhagwan, Jonestown and also the time of the Shepherding/Discipleship movement. Many parents suddenly lost their kids to these cults and were stumped and desperate. They would do anything to get their kids out of these cults.

There was not much experience at that time on how to do the exit counseling properly, and in fact it’s not so easy if your kid is kept away from you, maybe even living in a closed compound where you don’t have a chance to even speak with them. The only viable solution seemed to “kidnap” them and try to talk some sense into them during a limited period of time, e.g. a weekend. I’m sure some of the deprogrammers did not handle this very well, and maybe some did it only for the money. But not all deprogrammers were bad people, and over time they learned and refrained from their “brute force” method of the early days.

Also, the CAN (cult awareness network) did not engage in the deprogramming directly, they mainly collected information, and helped establish contact to exit counselors and deprogrammers. There never was an organized “deprogrammer” organization as UBF tried to make you believe. These deprogrammers were private businesses, some of them good, some not so good, nobody controlled them. I think that’s how America works – anybody can claim he’s a plumber or deprogrammer, no formal education is needed.

How the CAN went bankrupt is an amazing story. They soon became the enemy of Scientology, who went to war against them. First, as they usually do, it was a propaganda war, defaming the director of the CAN, Ms. Kisser. I remember how Samuel Lee relayed that misinformation to the UBF members, with his own twists, like claiming Ms. Kisser was a strip dancer. You can read such things in old UBF newsletters. It was all lies, spread by Scientology, and then twisted even more by Samuel Lee. Then Scientology used one case of a “failed” deprogramming (meanwhile, the deprogrammed person and his mother see it differently), their lawyers constructed a connection between the deprogrammer and CAN, and drove them into bankruptcy with a lawsuit. As you know, Scientology has much money and the best lawyers. They knew how to handle such things. CAN had much less money and support as you may think, they had no chance against Scientology.

But that was not all. The epitome of chutzpah was that after the bankruptcy, Scientology managed to buy CAN and all of its assets, and now operates CAN. I.e. people who were asking for information on cults now were consulted by Scientology staff! So there is no reason to be happy that CAN went bankcrupt. CAN had also collected a lot of valuable information about many cults, including UBF. Now all of this information is lost in the hands of Scientology.

In UBF they told you a very twisted and one-sided story about deprogramming and the CAN, you should start to see it more differentiated.

You can read about this all on the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_Awareness_Network) and on the website of Rick Ross who I think was the deprogrammer who Scientology sued (http://www.rickross.com/groups/newcan.html). Of course you need to take everything with a grain of salt. Scientology is known to manipulate Wikipedia articles, and Rick Ross is certainly also biased in this case, but I tend to believe him anyway, knowing full well how Scientology operates.

That’s another good reason to have information on UBF in the Internet, so that at least in retrospect, people can make some sense to what happened and not feel guilt-tripped for the rest of their lives.

Andrew, I’m glad to read your Russian blog (though it takes me a lot longer to read :).