Interview with Bernard Biro on the Theme of "Cults"

Maître Bernard Biro is a French lawyer (avocat) who speaks here from his own courtroom practice during the years of the French « sectes » controversy. What he describes to CICNS is an instrumentalisation, before the courts, of the collective phobia that followed the criminal episode of the Solar Temple. He then examines the judicial side of the controversy: the About-Picard law and the problem of expert evidence, the role of publicly funded anti-cult associations, and the defamation remedies available to people targeted by accusations he considers unfounded. He notes that he has had clients who were victims of vandalism and rumour campaigns of this kind, and he explains why, in his experience, such cases almost never reach the European level.

CICNS interview. (English translation of the interview published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 11 November 2006. The French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation; passages the machine could not reliably hear are marked [inaudible].)

[Interviewer]: What is Maître Biro?

[Biro]: Maître Biro is an instrumentalisation, before the courts, of a collective phobia which principally affected France after the criminal episode of the Solar Temple, which had its moments of paroxysm at certain periods, under a certain effect of fashion, and which today tends to subside. Probably, the collective phobia no longer produces the same effect. Probably also, the lawyers in charge of cases have found in other themes the same effectiveness that they used to find in that of the accusation of cult movements.

The institutions that were created in the wake of that report — and the interministerial mission for the fight against cults in particular — probably took the measure of the phenomenon by issuing a report stating that there was no longer any reason to regard Christian movements as cult movements. That was, it seems to me, a move of wisdom, to try to put an end to what I call the phobic movement which affected public opinion and which spread into the courts.

I think it was indeed wise to revisit that decision, insofar as it is no longer possible, legally, institutionally or on the constitutional level, to go back on a parliamentary report which is not debated, which is not discussed, and against which there can be no appeal. So that report exists, it is in many respects appalling, but it cannot be undone.

The justice system is a social actor, as an institution, which has its role in these movements of “cult” accusation. If there were no justice system, there would hardly be any accusations of “cults”. Then there would remain the press — the umpteenth power of the State — which could play a role of an institutional character in the debate, as the justice system can do today.

It is true that the courts place limits on the rights of expression, in particular of journalists. But inevitably, the justice system and the judge, in an institutional way, play a role, since anyone who is accused, whether by a newspaper or by an adversary, of playing a cult role or of being responsible for a cult activity will find himself at all times before the courts. And the courts have the obligation to rule on the questions that are put to them. So if a judge is asked whether this or that activity is dangerous because it is cultish, the judge will be obliged to rule. So inevitably, the justice system has a far-from-negligible role in this phenomenon.

To apply the About-Picard law, magistrates can rely only on expert evidence. It remains to be determined who, in France, can validly be declared an expert in the field. That is the whole question. In a certain way, the courts will probably fall in behind a technical opinion in order to take decisions, as we see in very many fields where, in the end, it is the experts who come to take precedence over the judge’s power of decision.

The associations that were created to fight against cults benefit, some of them, from public funding or from quite substantial funding, which would already raise a question about freedom of association. The societies, like the societies that were created to defend it, have already implemented decisions on the independence of these structures. Then, these associations, notwithstanding their means, do not deploy the scientific knowledge or the useful knowledge needed to analyse the phenomena, or the incidents, or the events that are submitted to them. One would need to have recourse to the knowledge of experts, to academic knowledge perhaps, to the knowledge of practitioners. It does not seem that these associations make use of such assistance.

Today, it is impossible to make a count of the cases of victims of such accusations of cult activities, because the victims of such accusations themselves already bear the weight of shame and do not make these matters public. In the majority, these matters are linked to questions of divorce, to questions of separation, to family questions. It is not always easy to disentangle what belongs to the defamatory accusation made in order to win a case from a certain reality. Here, there is not necessarily any publication of such decisions. So it would be pertinent to create a body that would make it possible to record such cases.

I am not aware of cases where people who are victims of totally unjust and unfounded accusations of cult activities have been taken to the European level, to the level of a European Convention on Human Rights, essentially because the procedure is long and costly, and because those who have suffered such an affront carry such a weight upon them, such an emotional burden, such suffering, that they do not find the human resources to go further, and still less the material resources. So those are the two major obstacles, in the cases I have seen in my practice, which prevent all the victims of such defamatory accusations from going as far as the European level.

It is not the associations charged with the fight against cults that will necessarily attack or take the initiative of attacking. The attack will come by another route: defamation will be created through the press, and an association fighting against cults will come forward as a witness. That is how those who want to act against cults, and who want to have this kind of effect, operate: they will not necessarily act directly.

It is very difficult to fight against a rumour. A rumour has no face. A rumour does not leave many traces that make it possible to build up evidence. Vehicles can be tagged, houses can be tagged, vehicles can be set on fire — I have seen it; I have had clients who were victims of this kind of thing. And yet, finding the perpetrator of the acts is a tall order. The justice system is not always effective in fighting against this kind of activity.

[Interviewer]: What advice would you give to victims of such acts?

[Biro]: It would be the advice given to any victim of a wrongful act or a criminal act: to build up evidence, to bring the facts to light. We have the classic legal arsenal: the texts on public defamation, non-public defamation, discrimination. We have the press law of 1881, we have the penal code, the code of criminal procedure. That is what we have. It is a lot — one must not say it is little. We have French law.

So there is no set order, there is no recipe to give; one cannot give a recipe. But the bulk of the criticisms, or the attacks, or the accusations of cult activities will come through the somewhat classic means of the press, or through a lawsuit, or through a defamatory letter or defamatory acts, or even criminal acts. So one will prosecute the offence that carries the accusation; one will prosecute the attempted crime, or the crime, that carries the accusation. There it is.

The parliamentary debate having had an effect — the effect we know —, it is delicate to resort once again to a parliamentary debate on spiritual liberty. And yet, in a democratic system, it is indeed before a parliamentary body that public debates must be brought. So it is without much hope in the result, but I believe that the questions of spiritual liberty in France — and one can widen it to Europe in general — must be publicly debated. And the only public and democratic forum that allows it is either the national parliaments or the European Parliament.

The French policy of the fight against cults is the great hunt of the Tartarins: we went hunting the lion. The outcome is disastrous. We equipped ourselves with an enormous arsenal to run, like a Tartarin de Tarascon, after the wild beast that haunted the public forest. We found hardly any dangerous animals, and we produced disastrous effects in the population — notably that collective phobia which seized the country. And behind that collective phobia, a plethora of lawsuits that had nothing to do with it, such as divorces in which some accused others of being in “cults”. That is the outcome: totally disastrous.