Hearing of Serge Blisko, President of the MIVILUDES, before the Senate Commission on Cults and Health

Hearing of Serge Blisko, president of the MIVILUDES, in the framework of the commission of inquiry into the influence of movements of a cult character in the field of health

CICNS commentary (November 2012) hearing video, Q&A video

On 5 September 2012 there was initiated in the Senate a commission of inquiry into the influence of movements of a cult character in the field of health.

It is, in 17 years, the fourth parliamentary inquiry on the theme of “cults”, making this subject one of the most studied by deputies and senators. To such a point that one may legitimately suspect a will to divert the public’s attention away from the problems of society which our political leaders are incapable of resolving (See our interview with the sociologist Raphaël Liogier). The elements of commentary we provide below have as their objective to illustrate, once again, that the question of the so-called “cults” is treated in France in an erroneous and misleading manner.

1- Preamble

It is useful to place this Senate inquiry back in a more general context concerning health, which will make it possible to put into perspective the alarmist and extremist policy pursued with regard to the alleged “dérives sectaires”.

“In the report submitted by the Assembly’s social affairs committee at the conclusion of the work of the mission on Mediator and pharmacovigilance, the deputy Roland Muzeau indicates: “It is estimated in our country that the number of annual hospitalisations linked to drug-related accidents is 150,000 and that the number of deaths caused by medicines is between 13,000 and 18,000."" (Ouvertures)

Concerning hospital-acquired diseases: “If it is difficult to extrapolate [these] regional results to all French health establishments, one may give a first estimate of the number of deaths attributable to hospital-acquired infection: between 7,000 and 20,000 a year in France.” (Actualité et dossier en santé publique)

One may add to this macabre picture: the contaminated blood scandal, the interminable judicial procedure on growth hormone, the Mediator affair, the assessment of the pharmaceutical industry made in the book by Bernard Debré, UMP deputy for Paris, and Philippe Even, director of the Necker Institute: “Le Guide des 4 000 médicaments utiles, inutiles ou dangereux”, and many other pieces of information of the same type.

More and more citizens are turning to alternative therapies and S. Blisko, president of the MIVILUDES, himself lists the reasons for it: “The fear of heavy treatments and the search for a more humanised or less technicised form of medicine; the fear of medical accidents, of hospital-acquired diseases, of the undesirable effects of certain treatments — that is an entirely legitimate fear; a certain mistrust with regard to the pharmaceutical industry; the search for a return to the natural, to the organic, in short to so-called gentle medicine.”

Moreover, certain experts in the field of alternative therapies (named “Non-conventional Practices with a Therapeutic Aim (NCPTA)”), such as the lawyer “Isabelle Robard, a specialist in health law, think that recourse to Non-Conventional Medicine (NCM) — so-called gentle, traditional, complementary or alternative — will be facilitated, “not to satisfy patients’ therapeutic freedom, but out of economic necessity."" (Ouvertures)

No credible figure on the number of victims of NCPTA justifying the French anti-cult arsenal, unique in the world, is provided by S. Blisko, Hervé Machi (secretary-general of the MIVILUDES) or Samir Khalfaoui (adviser at the MIVILUDES’s health unit).

Of course, it is not a matter of minimising, for the people concerned, the disappointments or individual tragedies which may occur in the case of the use of an NCPTA, but of seriously questioning the instrumentalisation of these isolated cases in the establishment of a public policy of discrediting these NCPTA against a background of scandals in the public health institution. Can one truly justify this policy on the basis of the figures provided by Serge Blisko: “12 denunciations to the public prosecutor”, “42 transmissions to the ARS (Regional health agencies) to alert them to abnormal practices by health practitioners”, “60 reports to Ordre councils to request the opening of an investigation into a practitioner’s behaviour or to denounce an illegal practice, 14 referrals to the Regional Directorates for the repression of fraud concerning products or devices presented as having a curative virtue and open to question”? The number of proceedings initiated appears low on the scale of the country, and how many among them will lead to the demonstration of a real problem?

Cases of abuse must be dealt with, but without making conflations between acts which might prove unlawful and the whole body of new health approaches; now the MIVILUDES’s anti-cult action is consubstantially generative of conflations.

In the agitated climate affecting public health today and faced with the difficulties encountered in calming it, it is politically effective, for some, to show that one is acting on a false “social scourge”, namely “dérives sectaires”.

2- The MIVILUDES’s rhetoric

This rhetoric is that of a well-drilled propaganda operating on several mainsprings:

-To claim an absolute respect for beliefs, therapeutic practices, freedom of conscience, etc., in order to justify oneself in a discourse which is in fact discriminatory. That is moreover how S. Blisko begins his hearing: “As you know, the MIVILUDES has no vocation to define what a cult is. Respectful of all beliefs and faithful to the principle of laïcité…”.

-To use pejorative and insulting terms such as “cult”, “guru”, “dérapeutes”, “pseudo-therapists”, “charlatans” while claiming they are inoffensive and asserting that one deals only with “dérives sectaires” (see part 4).

-To associate systematically with “cults” a new deviance: mental manipulation (see parts 5 and 6).

-To use rumour and fear by invoking the thesis of the social scourge (see parts 7, 9 and 10).

• To spread disinformation by using unfounded figures which, because they feed fears and rumours, are not called into question (see part 8).

-To communicate in an emotional register by evoking the fate of the victims (see examples in the following paragraphs).

If the tone of S. Blisko’s predecessor at the MIVILUDES, Georges Fenech, left no doubt as to his working methods, it must be observed that the tone of the MIVILUDES’s new president is more amiable and appears more prudent. With H. Machi (already a member of G. Fenech’s team), who says without precaution what S. Blisko expresses with some detours and roundabouts, they adopt, consciously or not, the police technique of the bad cop and the good cop.

We shall not express an opinion on the sincerity of their commitment to the interministerial mission, but we question their lack of lucidity (hypocritical or not) about the above-mentioned mainsprings of their discourse.

A mission asserting for more than ten years, across all media alike, that 500,000 people are in danger in “cults” demonstrates an aggravated form of contempt for those citizens engaging of their own free will in alternative practices. Since it is not acceptable in a democratic regime and a State governed by the rule of law to declare 500,000 citizens “mad”, some had the idea of transforming them into “victims”.

The MIVILUDES’s object (and the MILS’s all the more before it) contains an original bias. Charged with highlighting at the highest level of the State the supposed abuses (since it is principally a matter of risks of dérives sectaires and not of abuses per se) of certain groups of citizens, without any positive evaluation in counterpart and considering that any contradictory discourse is a going-over to the enemy (one will note the explicit use of the term “adversaries”), it does not respect the rules of democratic debate. Any practice, any group mentioned by the MIVILUDES will de facto find itself tainted with a suspicion of dangerousness in the public’s mind. To this is added the fact that the MIVILUDES has demonstrated no solid working methodology and has produced no serious inquiry, despite its numerous publications.

By its very object, the MIVILUDES is therefore led to find dérives sectaires at all costs (that is what is supposed to justify its existence and the salary of its members), even if it means inventing them or manipulating the figures or the Penal Code; and that is the MIVILUDES’s “problem” from the beginning. S. Blisko: “Every time I say it in a slightly off-the-record way, every time I introduce myself as the president of the MIVILUDES, people say to me: “But all that is over, why are you telling us this?”. In the end, the debate must be engaged as you are doing, Senator (…) and one must say: “But it is much more serious than one imagines, take these things seriously”. Perhaps certain affairs which end up before the courts with a strong media resonance can show us that one can indeed lose one’s life, lose money, lose one’s honour in a way (…) by entering into this phenomenon of manipulation.”

The only body that would make sense would be an Independent Observatory of spiritual, educational and therapeutic minorities as we advocate, in replacement of the MIVILUDES. The GAT (Technical support group) at the ministry of health, created to evaluate the NCPTA, leaves room for every question as to its objectivity, given that it was instituted at the MIVILUDES’s instigation and that the NCPTA are not represented in it.

3- The senators’ rhetoric

The senators’ tone is more cautious than that to which certain deputies have accustomed us. We did not have to endure the outrageousness of a Georges Fenech, a Jacques Myard or a Jean-Pierre Brard, who generally take outrageous advantage of their parliamentary immunity on this subject.

Nevertheless, the exchanges seem to denote a complete adherence by the senators to the MIVILUDES’s message. The untruths about the figures for child victims, about mental manipulation, about the reality of the social scourge have been so repeated without being called into question that no one any longer dares to question them. The senators seem to adopt the French anti-cult single line of thought. None of their reactions to the answers given to their questions suggests the contrary. One can only hope for a start of lucidity in the rapporteur’s final report.

The very title of the commission of inquiry reveals the bias of this enterprise, a bias equivalent to the one mentioned above concerning the MIVILUDES’s object. A correct theme of inquiry could have been: “The influence of NCPTA in the field of health”, making it possible both to measure the positive impact of NCPTA and the possible abuses linked to these NCPTA.

4- The hypocrisy and the ineptitude of the fight against dérives sectaires

We have amply demonstrated the hypocrisy constituted by the passage from a “fight against cults” (MILS) towards a “fight against dérives sectaires” (MIVILUDES: one may admit a temporary positive evolution in the mission’s first years under the presidency of MM Langlais and Bottine) (see our demonstration, with supporting quotations).

This hypocrisy is perfectly expressed, in terms of ambiguity, by senator Yannick Vaugrenard: “I think that our democracy suffers from its weaknesses sometimes and often; if there is a distance between political leaders and public opinion in general, it is because our texts are not necessarily comprehensible or self-evident to the common run of mortals. (…) The basis is prevention and repression of dérives sectaires and not of cults. How is one to explain that cults have practices which would not be cultic, where there would be no dérives sectaires? Forgive me this layman’s question, but it is the question that any ordinary citizen would put to you.”

S. Blisko’s reply: “In the enthusiasm of our first steps, the mission’s title was Interministerial Mission for the fight against cults. It was called the MILS. (…) The mission had brought out a list of cults. We realised, after quite a few lawsuits moreover, how very inoperative this list was. (…) We realised that these groupings changed name, nature, legal form very easily. (…) More profoundly on the substance, we slowly understood that the difficulty was obviously to protect, once again, the weak, fragile, vulnerable people, future adherents or members of these movements, but that we could never characterise in positive law such an organisation as being a cult and such another as not being one. It is a debate, what makes the cult, it is a debate. On the other hand, we were able to define a doctrinal corpus on what the dérive sectaire is. (…) We are all the same in a country of freedom; the 1905 Act forbids us, as a public administration (…), to have any opinion whatever on this or that movement, and what you describe as a cult may have no dérive sectaire, is a closed group, is a strange group, may have beliefs which shock the common run of mortals. But so long as we have neither a report, nor a minor in danger, nor a phenomenon of financial captation, nor a hold, we can only keep it in our memory, and no more. Independently of this difficulty between cult and dérive sectaire, we are also concerned to respect freedom of belief, of religion and of opinion, including freedom of movement. It is not in our nature or our mission to prevent someone from going to see this or that person. People telephone us, the journalists, the media: “Why did you not ban this or that lecture?""

The groups described as “cults” under the MILS, and continually thereafter, will appreciate the evocation of the initial enthusiasm of the anti-cult “crusaders” who are visibly unconcerned with the consequences of this insulting appellation. To behave as though the term “cult” were innocuous, referring probably to the obsolete definitions of the sociologists Weber and Troeltsch, when, for example, a minister forgetful of the conventions of language (Laurent Wauquiez) speaks of the “cancer of cults”, is an intellectual dishonesty. To claim that one does not pursue “cults” by henceforth naming them “cult movements” is a false pretence. To claim that without “report, minor in danger, phenomenon of financial captation, or hold”, the targeted groups are unharmed by the anti-cult hysteria is a lie or the sign of a total absence of sociological lucidity. Moreover we are not surprised to have another confirmation of the deleterious role played by the media.

The argument concerning the protection of “weak, fragile, vulnerable people, future adherents or members of these movements” fits into a context of exacerbated victim politics in France (See the work “Le temps des victimes” by Caroline Eliacheff and Daniel Soulez Larivière). It makes it possible to place the exchange immediately at the emotional level and to make any opponent appear insensitive or irresponsible. This victim posture was demonstrated to us in caricatural fashion by a former president of the MIVILUDES, Jean-Michel Roulet, during an interview. After we had presented to him the damage caused by French anti-cult policy, he replied to us: “Were there but a single victim, the action carried out is justified”.

The “dérive sectaire” is not a new form of abuse which would have gone undetected in 2,500 years or more of the evolution of law. It is a dishonest tool of stigmatisation against a category of citizens declared to be manipulators or mentally manipulated victims: namely spiritual, educational and therapeutic minorities. Why principally those minorities? Because they broach a theme which is a French pathological obsession: the spiritual and the religious, and because they question two sanctuaries of the republican religion: education and health.

It is easy to show, granting any sense at all to the criteria of dérives sectaires, that the environment of the firm and that of the family, among others, would be among the principal crucibles of such abuses; we have for example successfully applied these criteria to France Télécom, but they work equally, it goes without saying, for Freemasonry. These criteria are therefore inept when they are put forward to stigmatise one human group rather than another.

As for the new definition of the dérive sectaire provided by the MIVILUDES on its site: “A perversion of freedom of thought, of opinion or of religion which undermines public order, laws or regulations, fundamental rights, the safety or the integrity of persons. It is characterised by the implementation, by an organised group or by an isolated individual, whatever its nature or its activity, of pressures or techniques having as their aim to create, to maintain or to exploit in a person a state of psychological or physical subjection, depriving her of part of her free will, with damaging consequences for that person, those around her or for society”, the danger of totalitarian slippage that it constitutes is patent, bringing in notions such as psychological subjection and the loss of free will (see part 5); it is worrying to see that so few commentators seem to have noticed it.

5- Mental manipulation

“Mental manipulation” (or “mental hold” or “mental destabilisation”) is presented as the principal deviance of “cults”. Let us note that the multiplicity of expressions is the surest sign of a confused definition. Citing the criteria of dérives sectaires, S. Blisko specifies: “The first criterion is no doubt always present, it is mental destabilisation”.

We have shown (see our synthesis on the subject) that the notion of mental manipulation is considered pseudo-scientific by a majority of researchers, notably because it implies two other derived non-scientific notions: the “loss of free will”, the “vitiation of consent”. Nevertheless, and as we had anticipated, the repeated association in the media of the expression “mental manipulation” and the term “cult”, without the slightest questioning, has ended by making it accepted as self-evident; each person relying on the word of pseudo anti-cult “experts” representing only themselves and not their respective scientific communities.

One may be astonished nevertheless that very few intellectuals have observed the danger (in terms of social exclusion) that these expressions represent. Let us advance a hypothesis: the temptation of “manipulation” and an effective manipulation are no doubt at the heart of our interpersonal relations and of our desperate quest for love, recognition, power, pleasure. If we are presented with a theory, even an evidently false one, claiming that certain people (the “cult gurus”) have a particular power of “mental manipulation” which the common run of mortals would not possess, capable of perverting our free will (which moreover no doubt no one knows how to define precisely), it is probable that fear will win out over reason, independently of our IQ and our diplomas.

Unsurprisingly, the use of a pseudo-scientific concept can only lead to intellectual contortions. S. Blisko: “I cited those examples which can end very very badly for the people; in the end, it is a very profound personal questioning, they believed, they adhered, they were under a hold, sometimes they are even under a hold years afterwards, when the cult phenomenon has faded; there is no physical barrier, there is no prison; remember the affair which the press described at length, of the Monflanquin trial; it is extraordinary, it is problematic, the people were in England, the guru was far away but he continued to direct. They could have fled at any moment, they were not under lock and key (apart from one, because he was a little particular and a little shut up) but the rest of the family adhered freely to its own servitude, if I dare say so, and to its absence of free will. It is quite exceptional. We had much hoped that the Monflanquin trial might enlighten the general public thanks to the media and to the psychiatric and psychological experts who came and, of course, to the closing speech for the prosecution and the pleadings on what mental hold is.”. “To adhere freely to one’s own servitude and to one’s absence of free will”, there is a curious argument on the notion of “mental manipulation”.

As for the CAIMADES (Assistance and intervention unit in matters of dérives sectaires) at the Ministry of the Interior, it anticipates by its action what the MIVILUDES wants to pass into law (see part 6): “The investigations carried out make it possible to characterise criminal offences such as rape, sexual assaults of every kind sometimes concerning children, acts of violence, unlawful confinements, frauds, under cover of mental hold.” (MIVILUDES 2010 annual report, p 220). To claim, as this unit’s investigators do, that: “What we do is relatively simple, but when afterwards we have to demonstrate a mental manipulation, that calls on very precise, very technical notions which require particular training”, verges on charlatanism. It is striking to observe that the bodies seeking to combat so-called “cult” charlatanism have themselves developed their own corpus of charlatanesque notions.

6- The About-Picard Act

The legal translation of an offence of “mental manipulation” was carried out in the About-Picard Act, voted in 2001. This law, aiming to dissolve a “cult” through a conviction of its leaders, fits into what is customarily called in France legislative incontinence, when politicians think to settle by dint of botched laws problems that are badly posed and badly examined.

The first draft of the law explicitly targeted “cults” and defined an offence of “mental manipulation”. These last two points, judged too exotic in French law, were modified by the parliamentarians. The “cult” was replaced by “any legal person” and the offence of “mental manipulation” was replaced by a new offence of abuse of weakness introducing a notion equivalent to mental manipulation but with a more “legal” wording: “psychological subjection”. Worried by the very broad character of the notion of “legal person”, certain deputies would be reassured in session by the law’s rapporteur, Catherine Picard, who brought “a corrective to exculpate the associations under the 1901 law such as political parties, trade unions, professional groupings” (C. Picard, AN I, p. 5721) and recalled it later (C. Picard, AN I, p. 5751) (Patrice Rolland, professor, Paris XII). And for those who might have difficulty remembering that this law principally targets “cults”, its title recalls it explicitly. Such a hypocrisy, assumed and protected by parliamentary immunity, leaves one speechless.

But this law is not only a legislative fiasco (a law nevertheless celebrated as an achievement in the protection of victims), it is also a juridical fiasco since it is almost never used. And S. Blisko knows it: “We have a wonderful law [the About-Picard Act], which was voted unanimously in both assemblies in 2001. In ten years, thirty charges, I believe, (…) a dozen convictions at most, on the basis of the 2001 law. That does not surprise us, it disappointed us of course. There is nothing more complicated to define for a magistrate than what mental hold is; one enters the domain of psychological expertise.”

S. Blisko “believes” that there have been a dozen convictions on the basis of the 2001 law, but he in fact knows nothing of it, as is specified in the MIVILUDES 2010 annual report, pp 231-232. At the ceremonious celebration of the About-Picard Act at the National Assembly (a celebration organised by Georges Fenech, then president of the mission), on 26 October 2011, Maryvonne Caillebotte, Director of Criminal Affairs and Pardons at the ministry of justice, presented the assessment of the About-Picard Act tending “to reinforce the prevention and repression of cult movements undermining Human Rights and fundamental freedoms”: “There are about a hundred criminal proceedings under way identified as having a link with dérives sectaires. (…) Since 2004, the date at which the law began to be applied in fact, 35 convictions have been pronounced on the basis of this law. Four to five directly concerned dérives sectaires. And, among them, the conviction of Néophare may be considered emblematic of what the introduction of the new offence of “psychological subjection” introduced by the About-Picard Act can signify. And of having a jurisprudential impact.” (Ouvertures)

Even this information must be qualified, for today the offence of abuse of weakness combines the old wording (excluding psychological subjection) and the new, introducing psychological subjection. Consequently, a conviction for abuse of weakness requires a precise knowledge of the file to know whether psychological subjection was ruled upon. That is the reason why, probably, Maryvonne Caillebotte remains vague on the “four to five” affairs mentioned and insists on the sole real case of application: the Néophare affair. A former analyst of the Renseignements Généraux, who cannot be suspected of complaisance towards “cults”, makes the same observation but goes even further in qualifying the application of the law even in the case of the Néophare affair (source).

The About-Picard Act is therefore a resounding juridical failure (let us not even mention the case where an analysis of the legal files would show that the pronouncement of a psychological subjection would have been more frequent in a non-”cult” context…) and H. Machi knows it: “Today, the chancellery is incapable of making a census of these affairs” and he specifies: “The offence of abuse of weakness by psychological suggestion is one of the most difficult offences in the Penal Code to characterise, which explains the very low number of convictions. Today, when we arrive at a dozen convictions for the offence of abuse of weakness, the cult movements say to us: “Where are your victims, where are your convictions?”

Faced with this failure, what does the MIVILUDES propose to convince the over-punctilious magistrates of the bench? S. Blisko: “We want to simplify the About-Picard Act by bringing in a certain number of areas where it is difficult to characterise: mental hold, the introduction of aggravating circumstances which target the context of psychological suggestion (…) in particular when we know, (…) even if it is difficult to characterise, that there is a cult hold; I think for example of rapes, of sexual assaults, of frauds or of thefts where very often we have there a cult hold which is difficult to characterise and we would like this to be an aggravating circumstance in the Penal Code”. H. Machi follows in his footsteps: “The idea we can formulate is that rather than creating an autonomous offence such as that of abuse of weakness by psychological subjection, in each ordinary-law offence there should be created an aggravating circumstance of the cult context in which the facts are constituted (…), so that one knows that such a rape was committed in a cult context.”

So then, a magistrate considering the offence of abuse of weakness by psychological subjection as inapplicable could allow himself to be convinced to use it as an aggravating circumstance? If such is the case, it is because the lobbying of the MIVILUDES and of the chancellery (see the circular sent by Maryvonne Caillebotte not only to prosecutors but also to the presidents of district courts and courts of appeal) will have got the better of the juridical lucidity of the magistrates of the bench. We call that a manipulation of the Penal Code to attempt to inflate artificially the figures of victims of dérives sectaires.

The pseudo-scientific notion of psychological subjection has no business in the Penal Code. Moreover, its introduction tends to depreciate the judge’s opinion in relation to that of the expert, who is not subject in France, unlike in the United States for example, to a requirement of endorsement by his scientific community when he invokes a thesis of a scientific nature (and in the present case: non-scientific).

To give citizens or a public authority the means to deprive other citizens of responsibility, by invoking for oneself or for others a psychological subjection depriving them of part of their free will, is the door open to every abuse. It is the end of the value of the adult’s consent, one of the pillars in private-law relations and in the law of freedoms, and which “can be set aside only for exceptional reasons”, according to Patrice Rolland, professor at Paris XII.

7- The immunity of the MIVILUDES’s members

In February 2012, at the request of Philippe Vuilque, deputy and member of its Steering Council, the interministerial mission sought to obtain immunity for its members through an article of law providing that they “may not be investigated, prosecuted, arrested, detained or judged on account of the opinions they express in the annual report” (article 134). Voted by the National Assembly, this article of law was rejected by the Senate, not so much on the substance as as a “legislative rider”. This opinion was confirmed by the Constitutional Council. Unsurprisingly, the MIVILUDES, once the idea has already made its way, continues its lobbying to obtain immunity for its members.

Senator Jacques Mézard: “You are a new president; we know that there have been challenges of which this body has been the object; does that lead you to envisage vigilance differently, especially in the field of health?”

S. Blisko: “All my predecessors have on several occasions been challenged; we are dealing with powers backed sometimes, if I dare say so, by very well-advised legal counsel; very substantial teams never hesitate to attack us and as we have hardly any immunity, we are generally… All the successive presidents have been placed under investigation such a number of times that I, who have not yet been placed under investigation, feel a very little bit isolated in this matter. So I await, not with impatience, but it is never very pleasant, the first applications in particular: defamation, right of rectification, right of reply. From this point of view, there are also a few flaws: the MIVILUDES’s annual report submitted to the prime minister, when we bring it out, benefits like all administrative reports from a sort of immunity, let us say; in any case one cannot attach a right of reply to it. If we put the same report online on the Internet, then rights of reply are enforceable. It is a little strange, I discovered that recently. (…) Very few people have noticed, including in the State’s services, this extraordinary difference which means that the same thing can be attacked when it is put on the Net. They have perfectly understood, our adversaries, and so the requests for rectification are extremely numerous. In so far as, in addition, they are extremely attentive to everything that is said, we are sometimes obviously a very little bit, not worried, but I would say prudent, including in the public expression of a certain number of our own feelings.”

At no moment does S. Blisko seem to have considered senator J. Mézard’s question as meaning: do you take account of the remarks or criticisms made of you in the exercise of your mission? The MIVILUDES’s action has been so little questioned in the media or at the level of the State apparatus (with the notable exception of the Ministry of the Interior, which we know played for a long time a moderating role, but is that still the case?) that all requests for rectification, all criticisms are considered an offence; any use of legal channels is seen as an abuse. Now legal procedure is the only avenue of recourse for the groups targeted by the MIVILUDES — let us repeat that to be mentioned by the MIVILUDES is today equivalent to an almost indelible label of dangerousness — regularly lynched in the media and whose right of reply is systematically trampled on, notably during the National Assembly’s parliamentary commissions of inquiry. What is more, a law on the immunity of witnesses taking part in these commissions (immunity in case of defamation, for example) was specially voted against these minorities. To learn that the MIVILUDES’s members see themselves as prudent in the public expression of a certain number of their feelings leaves one perplexed as to what they say to each other in private. G. Fenech: “If I give you the name of the cults I have in my sights, I am entitled to a lawsuit within the hour… Not easy to put five hundred cults and communities under surveillance; that concerns five hundred thousand people, of whom eighty-five thousand children.” (VSD); is that an example of prudence? To raid violently and on the basis of a vague “suspicion” of dérives sectaires: an ecumenical monastery, a university of knowledge, a well-being centre — is that a mark of prudence?

Feeling perhaps that he has overdone it a little in the register of complaint, S. Blisko goes on to pay a vibrant tribute to his team “which has forged itself over the years”, then to evoke all those victims dead of cancer because they were not treated on account of the NCPTA.

H. Machi is going to say aloud what S. Blisko has suggested: “Today, the MIVILUDES is the object of four judicial proceedings before investigating judges or on appeal. (…) Obviously this judicial risk, which we take at its just value, brings about two consequences: first, it brings about a sword of Damocles over the mission’s officers because responsibility is borne criminally, borne personally; that is to say that it is the President who will be sentenced to fines or suspended imprisonment and, consequently, it practically brings about a phenomenon of self-censorship; I reassure you, for the moment the MIVILUDES has never been the object of self-censorship. And then above all, it contributes to delaying the action of the public authorities, because these cult movements are obviously very powerful, very organised, have specialised lawyers and go all the way through the procedure. (…) Our idea would of course be a specific text, centralised on dérives sectaires, which would take up a certain number of the proposals your commission might formulate and which incorporates that of the immunity of the mission’s members.”

That the groups regularly defamed should use legal procedures to the end (that is to say notably as far as the European Court of Human Rights) is normal and healthy: it is a way of calling to order the French courts and public authorities when they go astray, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses showed with France’s condemnation for violation of article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights on religious freedom (Le Monde). On the other hand, that officials and magistrates (H. Machi, G. Fenech before him) should try to extract themselves from the framework of justice — that is shocking. As for the “Calimero” act that the MIVILUDES’s representatives are trying to perform — forced to censor themselves because of the wicked “cults” which supposedly bring unjust lawsuits against them, but resisting this self-censorship — it is pathetic. G. Fenech has just been convicted at first instance of defamation in the framework of his functions at the MIVILUDES, so there is indeed matter for judgement. Their request amounts to no more and no less than a possibility of defaming, insulting, calumniating freely, sometimes under oath.

8- The thesis of the social scourge

The MIVILUDES (and the MILS before it) implements a policy of fear and rumour. These two tools have allowed it to assert without proof the reality of a social scourge that dérives sectaires would constitute. When citizens are afraid (see the MIVILUDES’s IPSOS poll, erroneously interpreted by the mission), they rarely ask for explanations, they ask to be reassured.

Through its annual reports, its guides, its media interventions, the mission asserts that “cults” (i.e. spiritual, educational and therapeutic minorities) are everywhere and that they have invested every cog of society: institutions, education, health, training, businesses (and soon, according to the announcements: personal care services). To our knowledge (we have analysed all the reports and guides produced), no serious inquiry has been produced, that is to say one presenting a solid and validated methodology of analysis, conducted independently by associating all the ad hoc scientific communities, with results cross-checked and published.

S. Blisko: “Four French people in ten have recourse to an alternative or complementary medicine; that is more worrying, of whom 60% among cancer patients.” H. Machi: “There is today the proliferation of universities or training institutes. (…) We know today that there are many non-conventional practices which have infiltrated the hospital. And it is a form of recognition. Very often, these are complementary forms of medicine when they enter the hospital, but progressively, through the hold that is exercised over the patient by the pseudo practitioner, they become alternative techniques.”

In striking contrast with this type of remark, hospital centres produce reports worthy of attention on the NCPTA, without having recourse to anti-cult terminology (Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris portal).

9- Disinformation by figures

Rumours and fears are fed by false numerical data, regularly hammered home by the MIVILUDES in the media. One of the most manipulated figures, for obvious anxiety-inducing reasons, is the number of children in danger on account of dérives sectaires. This figure was born at the time of the vote on the third parliamentary inquiry into cults: “Stolen childhood”, chaired by G. Fenech in 2006. Despite their enthusiasm for the subject, the deputies all the same needed some valid reasons to launch a third parliamentary inquiry into “cults”. One therefore saw this figure soar to reach a satisfactory value of around 40 to 50,000, but it has known arbitrary fluctuations according to moods, notably those of G. Fenech. Today, the rating seems to have stabilised around 50 to 60,000.

Senator J. Mézard questions S. Blisko on this subject: “There was in 2006 a commission of inquiry at the National Assembly with M. Fenech who was president of the commission of inquiry and as rapporteur the deputy Vuilque; with a certain number of findings which concerned the domain of children; in this report, it was stated, and one may consider this to be something important and grave, that several tens of thousands of children were concerned by this problem of dérives sectaires in the field of health; my first question is to know whether since this commission of inquiry in that field (…), there have been developments.”

Transcription of S. Blisko’s reply, not conveying the sighs and hesitations reflecting the MIVILUDES president’s embarrassment: “What in fact were the dangers we had seen for children? And no doubt since 2006 there have been developments which are unfortunately not all in the right direction. It is that several tens of thousands of children, around 40,000, were living in closed movements, cults, most of them (I say it here trying to recall from memory the report of the parliamentary commission of inquiry) being subjected, I believe, in so-called Jehovah’s Witness families, to the risk of not being treated, in particular, but it is something that is well known, if they needed so-called official medicine and still more official surgery and blood transfusion. You know that today, and it dates from before the report moreover, this problem, if it is still present, can be resolved very simply: doctors have the right, the duty to treat the child without taking account of what the parents wish or do not wish. So from this point of view, the problem is resolved, well, could be resolved and it has no doubt shifted onto adults today more than onto children. Then there exist many other groups, I would not wish here to focus on that group which was numerically the largest; there exist many other groups, I have cited them, where one puts forward rather what I might call hygienic abuses of cult groups, dietary hygienic abuses; I cited two particularly dramatic cases which had moved opinion and which had brought the parents before the courts (…). Many others which are sometimes less serious, I spoke of the absence of intellectual development, exist and from this point of view, we would like stronger action from the public authorities. Fundamentally, a child’s health is also its education; there is not only the refusal of vaccinations: from the point of view of browsing the Net, there must be what the HAS calls the vaccination calendar, it must be consulted in twentieth position in relation to the nineteen or fifty anti-vaccination leagues (…) So, we have at the same time children who are badly educated. From this point of view, we had this morning a discussion with inspectors general of National Education about these home schools, these de facto schools which one would like to see transformed at the very least into schools outside contract, because there is better control by National Education. I confess that it is extremely difficult and that we have a certain number of closed communities where children (…) do not have every chance, if one takes up the Convention on the rights of the child.”

For what reasons would 50 to 60,000 children be in danger: on account of refusal of blood transfusion? No, S. Blisko tells us. On account of non-vaccination? Where are the proofs? On account of poor education? What criteria are employed to arrive at this conclusion? S. Blisko’s long tirade expresses his inability to answer these questions. The publicised number of children in danger on account of dérives sectaires is unfounded, as all the administrations which came to testify before the commission of inquiry chaired by G. Fenech demonstrated. We regret that senator J. Mézard contented himself with this non-answer.

Other figures were produced during the MIVILUDES’s hearing, notably the number of 3,000 qualified doctors said to be linked with the cult sphere. S. Blisko specifies that this figure was supplied by the Ordre des médecins. What does “link with the cult sphere” mean? What criteria are adopted by the Ordre des médecins?

S. Blisko speaks of 400 NCPTA, suggesting that it is a great muddle. Who is the author of this list and on the basis of what information? Is its source the MIVILUDES’s secret referential to which the minorities have no access, but which is accessible to all the MIVILUDES’s administrations and partners?

10- La C…

S. Blisko: “So-called gentle medicine as opposed to hard medicine, the term already being evocative of a value judgement. A gentle medicine which does not cure as against a hard medicine which, for its part, cures but is indeed sometimes difficult for a patient to accept.” The MIVILUDES’s president does not seem to notice that he is himself issuing an even more definitive value judgement on the NCPTA. The artifice consisting in claiming that one does not judge, the better to be able to judge, is present throughout the hearing; thus S. Blisko asserts: “We even forbid ourselves, independently of the personal judgements we may have, to appraise (since we rely on the GAT, the famous group for the evaluation of new therapies at the ministry of health) to evaluate the validity of these methods.” Has the GAT therefore already judged the alternative therapies to be all ineffective?

Let us listen to H. Machi’s version: “What keeps these dérapeutes going is the lure of gain. All that represents a phenomenal quantity which can be evaluated at several million euros without being much mistaken, without any trace obviously, with phenomena of tax avoidance, of diversion of traditional economic circuits. And I think that it is first of all through action on finances that we shall manage to put an end to these various phenomena which, in certain respects, greatly resemble a mafia action, that is obvious.”

H. Machi is supported in his analysis by senator Y. Vaugrenard: “As in other times in other countries, organised crime has been put out of a position to do harm through taxation; it seems to me that there too, it is an effective means.”

Among the NCPTA pointed at in this filmed public hearing (Naturopathy, Reiki, Kinesiology, Instinctotherapy…) is the well-being centre La C… directed by Dominique and Sylvie B. whom we interviewed.

Let us take up S. Blisko’s terms: were there in the case of La C… any “reports, minors in danger, phenomena of financial captation, phenomena of hold” justifying this public accusation? Were there any malpractices that one might qualify as “mafia-like”, according to H. Machi’s expression? This type of publicised lynching resembles defamation. One then understands the eagerness of the MIVILUDES’s members to obtain immunity.

The decision one is entitled to expect from the senators following this public accusation is to grant a filmed and published hearing to Dominique and Sylvie B.. The same goes for the other families of NCPTA which have representative bodies.

11- France’s isolated position

France’s isolated position in matters of the fight against dérives sectaires is presented with a hint of satisfaction by senator Alain Milon: “It is illuminating to point out that the MIVILUDES is a structure which has no equivalent in the world, with the exception of the CIAOSN created in Belgium in 1998.”

To think oneself right against everyone is not always a sign of pertinence. Spiritual, educational and therapeutic minorities are the same, for example in Western Europe, and certain countries (such as Sweden, Spain, Italy, Switzerland…) do not see them as problems. To suggest in half-words that these countries would pay less attention to the potential risks incurred by their citizens because they do not have a MIVILUDES is not credible and is very arrogant.

Concerning Belgium, if it is true that it has a damaging tendency to copy France on the treatment of the question of the so-called “cults”, it does not reach the French degree of paranoia on the subject. The CIAOSN, despite the numerous criticisms one may address to it, is not the equivalent of the MIVILUDES, for it is an independent body. Moreover, French researchers recognise its efforts to constitute balanced files on the groups studied, which is far from being the case with the MIVILUDES.

France is therefore isolated and its only recourse is international lobbying (G. Fenech travelled for example to Australia to vaunt the merits of the MIVILUDES to certain Australian parliamentarians). France also attempts to occupy the anti-cult terrain with FECRIS and in the European institutions. Concerning a European harmonisation in matters of dérives sectaires, H. Machi comments: “To our knowledge, there exists no system of harmonisation and for good reason, since France, as the president said just now, is the only country in Europe, indeed in the world, to have such a harmonised system, with an interministerial mission, a specific law and then a system of subsidising associations. On the other hand, we are trying to bring about this harmonisation; we have begun to do so, not by way of health, but by way of minors, by prompting within the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe a draft resolution which has been adopted, it is a French deputy, M. Rudy Salles, who is working on the question of the influence of cult movements on minors, so as to lead to the creation of a European observatory of dérives sectaires affecting minors. That was for us the way of interesting our European partners in this question by touching them through the common denominator which is that of the protection of minors.” The Council of Europe would be well advised to look more closely at the information supplied by France.

12- The fate of the NCPTA

Here are the legal provisions the MIVILUDES wishes to see put in place against the NCPTA:

S. Blisko: “A ban on practising, for example, for a doctor who has seriously deviated or slipped is valid only in France. (…) It seems to us extraordinary that a doctor (…) can continue to practise a few kilometres from the border (…), when he is banned from practising in France.”

H. Machi addressing the senators: “In the legal field, we have three types of proposal to submit to you. First, those which would aim to combat the proliferation of non-conventional practices with a therapeutic aim which present a cult risk, and that would be quite simply to ban them. (…) The second proposal would be to extend the powers of the ARS (Regional Health Agencies). (…) There is today no State service empowered to inspect [the pseudo-therapists]. (…) A third type of proposal we could make is the inspection of what are called well-being centres.

The second category of proposals is to combat the training in risky practices, (…) there is today the proliferation of universities or training institutes. (…) The protection of the title of university would have to be reinforced (…), the rectorate’s power of inspection over falsely qualifying training courses reinforced. (…) Perhaps it would also be necessary quite simply, because we are in a very sensitive field, to ban the creation of training centres in the field of health which have not been the object of a prior approval or registration.

A third category of proposals is the fight against phenomena of infiltration (…) on the title of doctor. Today, when a doctor is struck off by his Ordre (…) he does not lose his degree of doctor awarded by the university, but there too certain unscrupulous practitioners take advantage of this legal void.”

It is unlikely that the French political class will abandon its extremist anti-cult posture (for example by abolishing the MIVILUDES and putting in place a genuine independent and competent observatory, as we suggest). This victim posture pays politically. And those who might like to distance themselves from it cannot take the risk of an alternative positioning: one cannot defend groups which have been transformed into “public enemies”, on pain of being socially and professionally delegitimised. The anti-cult propaganda is henceforth installed.

The usually attentive ear of the Bureau of Religious Affairs at the Ministry of the Interior (in the time of Didier Leschi, then of Bertrand Gaume) for our analysis of the situation seems to be growing deaf. We presented our observatory project to the new Bureau, which replied laconically that we could always try to set it up ourselves. A reply either disinterested or somewhat cynical (in the French context, it goes without saying that to be recognised as a reference, such an observatory needs the endorsement and support of the public authorities from its creation).

The only way out seems to be a shared awakening, expressing itself in the public square, of the targeted groups, to defend fundamental freedoms that are being stifled. The political class understands nothing better than the electoral weight of the people it has in front of it. In the absence of this movement of solidarity, spiritual, educational and therapeutic minorities risk being crushed, at worst, or condemned to a form of clandestinity.