Sects: "Anti-Sect France — State of Play", Part 3

This is the third and final part of « La France antisectes : état des lieux » (“Anti-sect France: state of play”), a documentary produced in 2010 by the CICNS (Centre d’Information et de Conseil des Nouvelles Spiritualités), a French association that documents and contests the treatment of spiritual minorities in France. Part 3 examines how television talk shows sustain the anti-sect consensus — with speaking-time figures for « Ça se discute » and « C dans l’air » — and how witness testimony is staged, edited and, ultimately, shielded from legal challenge. It also follows the February 2008 controversy around Emmanuelle Mignon, chief of staff to the President of the Republic, whose published remark that sects were a “non-problem” was denied within a day. Interview excerpts feature the historian Anne Morelli, the ethnologist Maurice Duval, the sociologist of laïcité Jean Baubérot, the writers Gilles Farcet and Christiane Singer, and the sociologist Michel Maffesoli.

CICNS documentary — part 3 of « La France antisectes : état des lieux ». (English translation of the documentary published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 1 April 2010. The French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation; passages the machine could not reliably hear are marked [inaudible].)

Voice: Controversy on every floor.

Voice: The chief of staff of the head of State declares that sects are a non-problem.

Voice: These are totally irresponsible remarks. Besides, one need only listen to the victims of sects.

Voice: Should this mission be abolished, or strengthened?

Voice: Of course not. I think sects are a worrying phenomenon, in France as in Europe.

Voice: Short of followers, in search of power and above all of money, the sects have adapted to the market and to the economy.

Voice: When you are in a sect, you are dominated, you are manipulated, you no longer have any freedom.

[Interviewer]: Sects. Who remembers that this word did not always inspire fear, and that the so-called sects have not always frightened public opinion?

Voice: These religions coming from the Far East are numerous today in the West, and they enjoy a certain vogue. Sir, why have young people so readily adopted these Oriental movements?

Voice: There is a phenomenon of general adolescent crisis which takes various forms.

[Interviewer]: Who remembers the bomb attack of January 1996 against the Unification Church in Paris? Who remembers the headlines that endorsed the assault, and the articles that incited repeat attacks?

Voice: In brief: a bomb attack last night against a building on rue Daguerre…

[Interviewer]: Who remembers the indecency and the recklessness of the commentary that accompanied the second bomb of the year, in the month of August? Who, today, grasps the full meaning and the implications of this word? We saw, in the first two parts of this documentary, that the fear of sects is today spreading to the whole of French society and is taking concrete form in grave acts, ranging from defamation to excessive gendarmerie raids and discriminatory court decisions, even though no real proof of the dangerousness of the so-called sects has ever been produced. The hearings of the third parliamentary commission of inquiry on sects were an opportunity to verify, figures in hand, how unfounded the fear was.

[Dupuis]: We asked the regional education inspectors which of these children at risk were at risk because of sectarian movements. They answered us that there were eight.

[Participant]: No more than two files, you say? Concerning sectarian drift involving minors?

[Interviewer]: But the rumour is tenacious. It barely retreats before the evidence, only to rebuild itself at once. Who feeds it, and why? How does it manage to gain ground in the minds of our fellow citizens? How does it still influence us, at times, even when we know it to be unjustified? It is with these questions that this third part of our documentary opens.

So-called public opinion is built today, in no small part, in the intimacy of every citizen’s living room. At the top of our programme: a high-audience broadcast which, for the autumn 2007 season, drew two million viewers by betting on sects. The Centre d’Information et de Conseil des Nouvelles Spiritualités was approached by the team of this programme to take part in the show. An invitation such as we receive regularly, in very engaging terms. Anne Morelli, historian of religions and a specialist, among other things, in the role of the media in society, received at the same time an invitation to the same programme.

[Morelli]: The assistant had assured me that it was a debate programme.

Voice: We made a debate programme.

[Interviewer]: We, for our part, did a little research on the internet, which led us to the forum of an anti-sect website and to another invitation to the same programme, in very different terms. Faced with the crudeness of the bait, we declined, after a short exchange, an invitation that smelled far too much of a trap. Anne Morelli, though quite doubtful about the sincerity of her interlocutors, decided, for her part, to accept. A few days before the programme, she is informed that it will after all be broadcast pre-recorded, and that she will have to comply with certain instructions.

[Morelli]: When they telephoned to tell me the programme would be pre-recorded, I was told: “I had forgotten to tell you something, madam: so as not to give them any publicity, you may not give the name of any sect.” I said: “Really — and if I want to talk about the Jesuits or the… do I also have to avoid…” “Oh no,” she said, “that, there’s no problem at all. For them, you can say their name.” But I said: “Isn’t that publicity, then?” “No, no, but for them there’s no problem.”

[Interviewer]: On 19 September, the programme is finally broadcast.

Voice: Good evening, everyone. The mere mention of them is enough to make all those who have left them tremble.

[Morelli]: I really had the impression of falling into a trap. They did indeed invite the two types of people, but the people who are victims of the anti-sect hunt were never able to express themselves on that set. So it is quite interesting to see how it is treated — with a rare arrogance, rehashing facts that sometimes dated back 25 years.

[Interviewer]: Debates and documentaries about sects have been produced by the dozen over the last twenty years. The appearance of debate, where sects are concerned, is provided by the presence on the set, in a tiny proportion, of a few dissenting voices who, like Anne Morelli, generally testify to having had the feeling of an ambush. Two examples to illustrate the impossibility of seeing an alternative opinion break through on these sets. First example: Maurice Duval, an ethnologist who carried out a study of the Aumist religion, attempts, on the set of « C dans l’air », to bring some nuance to a very unbalanced debate.

Voice: What is a sect?

[Duval]: And in reality, sociologically — as, for that matter, from the legal point of view — there is no rigorous definition of the notion of sect.

Voice: It’s very simple: it is what harms fragile people. Then professionals are brought together to try to establish who, what, how.

[Duval]: Well now, one can… It’s a very good definition. Because if it is what harms people — but you have plenty of things that harm people. You know, [inaudible ?], I harm people by selling its tobacco. So, is that a sect too?

Voice: No, no, no, I don’t think we are here to… That is not a fair argument. I don’t think we are here to talk about the Seita, nor even about religion. We are here to talk about sects.

Voice: Go ahead.

[Duval]: Well then, forgive me if I seem to be a bit of a bull in a china shop.

[Interviewer]: It is in reality practically impossible, in these conditions, even with a certain mastery of language and rhetoric, to open a breach in received ideas.

Voice: Excuse me, a space… [inaudible ?]

[Duval]: So afterwards, you go or you don’t go, but broadly speaking, people come in and go out normally, and no one is kept locked inside. So the Mandarom is not a sect. You have to know what you are talking about. You know, the Mandarom is not a sect. At the Mandarom, people come in and go out. I saw Mr Gilbert Bourdin, who was the guru of the Mandarom, and I weigh my words.

[Interviewer]: In this kind of debate, a Manichean and simplistic vision is imposed, and you are requested to take sides.

Voice: But you — don’t you defend the sects?

[Duval]: Yes, of course, I was expecting that one — it’s par for the course.

Voice: Yes, but it is legitimate.

[Interviewer]: Second example: Baudouin Labrique, a psychotherapist, who had been promised a balanced debate on alternative therapies, and who witnesses on the set a systematic demolition of his practices, with the anti-sect activists and so-called conventional medicine acting as both judge and party.

Voice: Is it possible to treat someone with psychological arguments for an illness like that one? I am just asking your opinion.

[Labrique]: Yes, but I think it is perhaps important to situate the history of psychosomatics. In fact…

Voice: No, please, I wouldn’t want… Precisely, I would like us to avoid that theory, because we will all get lost in it. I think people now know very well what “psychosomatic” means.

[Interviewer]: Declared off-topic and thus deprived of the floor, he watches Jean-Luc Delarue, three minutes later, invite a psychiatrist to speak about exactly the same subject.

Voice: Philippe-Jean Parquet, you are a professor of psychiatry. Are you a psychiatrist yourself?

[Parquet]: Yes, absolutely.

Voice: A professor of psychiatry — so that’s the top level. A psychiatrist, so a doctor who, on top of that, has done studies bearing precisely on the influence, perhaps, of the mind on the body — not only that. The influence of the mind on the body.

[Interviewer]: Jean-Luc Delarue’s acrobatic periphrasis is an exact definition of psychosomatics. Philippe-Jean Parquet — whose position as a member of the advisory council of the MIVILUDES was not mentioned — will, for his part, be given every latitude to promote psychiatry and denigrate alternative therapies. The unfairness and the belittlement endured in front of millions of viewers represent a very significant psychological pressure. And hosts such as Jean-Luc Delarue know how to play on it.

[Labrique]: A statistic from the JAMA, I don’t know whether you know it…

Voice: We have to move on, sir, we’re not going to spend all night on this, I am terribly sorry.

[Labrique]: Do listen to me all the same: I came here, you have a certain number of questions to ask me that you have not asked.

Voice: I am sorry, I am going to continue the discussion, Monsieur Baudouin.

[Labrique]: Madame Gilles did not present things to me like that at all. But anyway, I have the impression of being in a trap. … From the biggest American medical journals, which moreover are translated into French.

Voice: Keep it short for me, Monsieur Baudouin.

[Labrique]: Yes, but it is odd all the same that with others, they can go on a little longer, and I always have the right to keep it short. I cannot even explain the details, the facts. You want me to keep it short?

Voice: Well, I say — you have already told us plenty, don’t you think?

[Labrique]: Not at all — I would very much like to explain several cases. You would be very surprised.

Voice: Now there, frankly, you are going too far. So we are going to watch a report — otherwise, indeed, we will be obliged to cut. Alongside these new gurus… Listen, we are going to miss you. We are going to show you the door. Thank you, Baudouin.

[Interviewer]: The measure of the imbalance of these debates is given in part by the respective speaking times of the anti-sect side and of the bearers of an alternative opinion. The latter, in the « Ça se discute » programme of 19 September 2007, were represented by Anne Morelli, Baudouin Labrique and two members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Between the four of them, they total 14 minutes 30 seconds of speech against 1 hour 55 minutes and 30 seconds of anti-sect discourse — that is, 11% against 89%. The « C dans l’air » programme of January 2004: Maurice Duval, the only alternative voice in the debate, was able to speak for 10 minutes against 55 minutes devoted to anti-sect discourse — that is, 15% against 85% of the programme’s airtime. As for the last word, it is never left to chance.

Voice: Is the Jehovah’s Witnesses movement, omnipresent in Paris, considered a reaction?

Voice: Yes, that’s true.

Voice: Thank you all very much for taking part in this programme.

[Interviewer]: So what, concretely, are these programmes made of, since the debate of ideas is truly absent from them? Mainly of prosecution testimony — and more precisely, that of so-called victims of sects. Let us look closely at a few sequences, in their form and their content.

Voice: [inaudible ?]

[Interviewer]: Antoine is presented by Jean-Luc Delarue as a former member, and above all as a father fighting to find his daughter again, who is said to be a prisoner of the sect that he himself has left. In the following passage, the team of « Ça se discute » accompanies Antoine in his investigation.

Voice: In Toulon, Antoine goes straight to knock at his sister’s door — she, too, a member of the community. He is convinced that his daughter is hidden at her house.

[Antoine]: Is anyone there?

Voice: The door does not open. For these ultra-radical religious believers, the laws of confinement are stronger than the ties of blood. His daughter will go on living hidden among the other members.

Voice: Since the report, good news: you have managed to see your daughter again.

[Antoine]: Yes, I managed to see my daughter again — I did not recognize her at first.

Voice: But how did you see her? How did you manage to find her again?

[Antoine]: I went back to my sister’s house. And in fact, indeed, they were not there during the day. And they came home in the evening. And so that’s when I saw her.

[Interviewer]: The report and the studio sequence followed one another in the programme. The report makes viewers believe that Antoine ran up against the frantic refusal of members holed up in their home. On the set, Antoine reveals the facts: he quite simply found a door closed because nobody was in.

[Antoine]: And in fact, indeed, they were not there during the day. And they came home in the evening.

[Interviewer]: A door which opened without difficulty a few hours later.

[Antoine]: And so that’s when I saw her. We were able to talk for a while. It went very well.

[Interviewer]: Would you yourself have noticed this deceitful shortcut? Nothing is less certain. It was not, in fact, on first viewing that we spotted it. How are we made to swallow such tall tales? Thanks, among other things, to cinema techniques increasingly used in this kind of programme. A demonstration by a professional formerly employed by the major channels.

[Participant]: You have to understand that when you edit a sequence, you always put an intention into it. We are going to make two edits based on the same stated facts. So, first edit: my intention is simply to inform. A classic shoot, purely narrative. Mostly fixed shots, no transformation of the images. We convey reality: a man arrives in front of a house and rings at the door. He has come to see his daughter. Nobody answers. He supposes that she is away and that he may have to come back some other time.

Now we are going to take the same story again, but this time with the intention of making people believe that his daughter is shut in — indeed held captive — in the house. Tilted shot. Handheld camera. I am going to put a black halo around the images. Framing on the feet. And suitable music. Without your being aware of it, the images and the music are telling you that something abnormal is happening or is about to happen. At the most intense moment of the sequence — that is, when the protagonist knocks at the door — we pull out all the stops: fast cutting, a garish transition. An evocation of the daughter he has come to see, with a psychedelic effect. You buy completely into a feeling of dread. And finally, a commentary, which in a way channels the emotion created and offers it an outlet.

Voice: The door does not open. For these ultra-radical religious believers, the laws of confinement are stronger than the ties of blood. His daughter will go on living hidden among the other members.

[Participant]: There you are: that is no longer reporting, it is fiction.

Voice: It really is something extraordinary — with all the experience we now have of the media, of television, of cinema — to believe that the camera is innocent, that editing does not exist, and that one can make an objective documentary about this or that seminar, this or that association, when it is quite obvious that everything will depend on the way things are shown, and on what one intends to convey as an a priori.

[Interviewer]: Without special effects, or music, or slanted commentary, the story of Antoine and his daughter might well come down to this.

[Antoine]: I said that I loved her. I was very unhappy to have found her there, in that sect. And then she said to me: “Dad, you can’t understand. It’s not a sect. I am happy where I am.” That, I don’t believe — but well.

[Interviewer]: It is also important to set the record straight about the supposed “dangerous sect”, the spiritual community caricatured in the report. It is in reality the Plymouth Brethren, easily identifiable, although they are hypocritically not named.

Voice: In France, more than 1,500 members live withdrawn in their houses, isolated from the world and from modern life. In 2005, the services of the Prime Minister raise the alarm about the living conditions of these faithful, and more particularly of the children.

[Interviewer]: The so-called “services of Matignon”, or of the Prime Minister, are in reality the MIVILUDES, which has indeed, in several of its reports, mentioned the Plymouth Brethren as a group at risk. The head of the bureau of religious affairs at the Ministry of the Interior, before the third parliamentary commission of inquiry on sects, made a reasoned critique of the MIVILUDES’s policy, taking, among other examples, the stigmatization of the Plymouth Brethren: “The MIVILUDES’s 2005 report once again presents the Plymouth Brethren as liable to sectarian drift in the education of children. That is naturally not to be ruled out, but the file must still be substantiated in a rigorous and precise manner. Yet in this matter we are once again dealing with forms of approximation which may in time discredit the real necessity, the legitimate action of the public authorities against sectarian drift.”

More precisely, the new case for the prosecution rests on three elements that raise questions. First element: the statements of the former president of the VIF are given prominence, even though he was convicted of defamatory remarks against the Plymouth Brethren by the tribunal de grande instance of Lyon, on 4 January 2005. Second element: the report states that the Plymouth Brethren refuse all public schooling. This is factually inaccurate; and for that matter, the current president of the VIF received part of his compulsory schooling in public education, although he had claimed the contrary. Let us add that the current president of the VIF — an association created, in the wake of contentious divorce proceedings, to fight the Plymouth Brethren — is none other than Antoine, whose real name is Jean-Philippe [inaudible ?].

There exist, finally, three sociological studies of the Plymouth Brethren, which neither the MIVILUDES nor Jean-Luc Delarue’s team, it seems, took the trouble to consult. From them we learn that the Plymouth Brethren have been established in France for 150 years, where they have integrated peacefully. Bryan Wilson, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Oxford, noted that their children, according to their teachers who are not members of the movement, prove easy to teach, and as alert and intelligent as the average child of their age. The most recent study, by Sébastien Fath, researcher at the CNRS, concludes in these terms: “The elements available could not justify a collective indictment in the name of public order.” His assessment concurs with that of Bryan Wilson and of Blandine Chélini-Pont, senior lecturer at the University of Aix-Marseille.

We express no judgement on the Plymouth Brethren’s way of life, but we would point out that this is, until proven otherwise, a movement respectful of the law and of human dignity, and that the story of Antoine and his daughter comes down, in fact, to a simple difference of opinion over life choices which may be surprising, but which are perfectly legitimate.

[Interviewer]: On 6 February 2001, « Ciel mon mardi » was devoted to sects. A particularly agitated and unproductive programme, but the theatre of a unique live-television moment, when the words of a prosecution witness were brutally called into question by a man in the audience.

Voice: I know the Ram Chandra Mission association, which is a raja yoga association, from which the partner of Monsieur François [inaudible ?], you see, left with the children, because of the treatment inflicted by Monsieur. Madame is not in the sect, is not enrolled in the sect. She stayed three months in that meditation course. Sir, your resentment, your pain — we understand them; but your hatred — your wife does not understand it.

Voice: Well, me — your accusations, I do not accept them, sir. Me, I have not accused them here publicly — this gentleman, of mistreating his children — I do not accept them. Goodbye.

Voice: Unbelievable. It’s bedlam. Monsieur Fenech. Excuse me.

[Interviewer]: Michel [inaudible ?], challenged on that set, was taken up again in several anti-sect programmes.

Voice: The man you are about to see had his family torn apart by a sect. When his wife let herself be ensnared, she cut off everyone around her, she left for abroad taking the children, and nothing seems able to make her come back.

Voice: The person responsible for this whole situation is absolutely not the mother of my children — it is a yoga group, a Hindu sect, called Shri Ram Chandra Mission.

[Interviewer]: Always presented as the victim, he is filmed here on hidden camera, during an encounter with his ex-wife.

Voice: But nothing stops me from bringing sweets to my children.

Voice: You have no business coming here to harass us every day.

Voice: It is not harassment. Usually it is not you who comes to pick up the children.

Voice: You have no business coming here every century.

[Interviewer]: Which is what his ex-wife is trying to remind him of — and what was confirmed to us by Maître Laurent Hincker, lawyer for the Shri Ram Chandra Mission, which ended up filing a complaint against Michel [inaudible ?].

[Hincker]: 17th correctional chamber: Monsieur Michel [inaudible ?] arrives, and he is told: “Sir, you said this, this and this — that a sect had supposedly taken your children from you; so what tangible elements do you have?” In fact, he had none. It was utterly false, it was nothing but lies. And behind that, we, for our part, had from his ex-wife a court decision showing that he was an abusive father, that his children had been entrusted by the French courts, by the family-court judges, to their mother, and that it was in that context that the children left and could no longer see this father except at a supervised contact centre, as is the case for all mistreated children.

[Interviewer]: Michel [inaudible ?] was then convicted of defamation — a conviction that was upheld on appeal. What we have here, then, is a divorce badly taken by the ex-husband, who contests the judge’s decision and refuses to apply it. As for the role attributed by Michel [inaudible ?] to the Shri Ram Chandra Mission, it belongs truly to fiction — a fiction to which the media obligingly give substance.

The next example touches on the truly inadmissible — at least, on what should not be able to happen in a State governed by the rule of law. This summary, broadcast as an introduction to the programme, will prove to be very biased and very incomplete on careful listening to the testimonies.

Voice: Precisely — for me too, the fact of having seen the light was, for them, a great blessing. And after the fact, now, I tell myself I would have preferred never to have had access to it.

Voice: Well, because I lived through the worst, in so little time, so far from them. I truly lived through hell.

[Interviewer]: This young woman does not testify [inaudible ?], concerning her period of contact with the so-called sect, to any ill-treatment, or even to suffering. The worst, which she has just mentioned, in reality came about when she wanted to leave the family home, and her parents physically opposed it — even though she was of age.

Voice: You were afraid of losing her — that she would leave with a movement showing sectarian drift. For what reason were you afraid for her?

Voice: Because she was no longer at all aware of what she was doing. She arrived one day telling me that she was an angel. She was happy for a while, but in unconsciousness. She was no longer in this real world, she was no longer in reality. There were two solutions: either she left — and at that point, the family was over; she would leave and we would lose a daughter. It was a choice; we had not adopted her. So, at that point: stop. She was in her room. We helped her a little to fall asleep — a little — so that she would calm down. And then we locked the bedroom. We outright held her captive.

Voice: For more than a week, Floria’s parents keep their daughter locked up. The whole family takes turns to impose on Floria a genuine withdrawal cure.

Voice: He would put tablets in her mouth.

Voice: And after a week, what happened?

Voice: After a week, I think the threat of the psychiatric hospital made her react. And when she saw that… We had cut off her internet, we had told her that she had to leave the room. We had taken away all her things. She stayed in her room, cloistered. We had taken everything out of her room, because she had threatened four times to commit suicide.

Voice: Are you all right, Flora? — Yes, yes, I’m listening. Yes, and…

[Interviewer]: Even if the young woman says today that she is happy with her parents’ decision, what is described here is outright forcible confinement, with violence, punishable by several years in prison. And until proven otherwise, the said sect, for its part, has broken no law — and has, of course, never asked anyone to commit suicide. As for the young woman, she was simply exercising her freedom as an adult citizen before her parents’ intervention.

Voice: Her parents were right. Floria gradually comes back to her senses. But she emerges from this period totally broken.

[Interviewer]: The journalist approves of their illegal acts. The magistrate present on the set refrains from any comment. No media outlet pointed out what nevertheless constitutes an incitement to violence — nor did the viewers who commented on, and sometimes sharply criticized, the programme on the channel’s forum.

[Interviewer]: We do not have the means to analyse every case of supposed sectarian drift put forward by the media. But every time we do, we discover, beyond the lies and the patent absence of proof, the same dispiriting picture: that of people whose suffering is very real, propelled into a role which, in the long run, cannot serve them. These disappointed members who turn against their former group are, so to speak, the raw material of anti-sect action, which puts forward their criticisms and grievances as though they were absolutely true and representative of a majority opinion.

[Participant]: It is one face of reality, but it obviously has to be cross-checked — in history, testimony is always cross-checked: you have a person from one party, a person from another party, and you can hope to obtain a somewhat more balanced view. And on the question of the so-called sects, in fact, the point of view of the repentant is systematically adopted — as one says of those who have come out of the mafia: repentants, apostates — and the point of view of the people who live a spirituality, happily, is systematically neglected.

[Interviewer]: Not only are former members the only ones given the floor, but in addition a selection is made among them that is far from innocent. Massimo Introvigne, doctor of law and an internationally recognized specialist in the sociology of religions, studied the opinions of the former French members of Nouvelle Acropole, an association regularly considered typical from this point of view. This movement is in particular saddled with the label “racist” or “fascist”, which has earned it, as you will be able to see, particularly violent attacks.

Let us first specify that the association exists entirely legally, has never been convicted of anything — indeed, no complaint has ever been filed against it — and, finally, that a tax audit could find no irregularity in its accounts. More precisely, and concerning the accusation of racism, Massimo Introvigne’s inquiry reveals that the profession of faith, the public statements and the writings of Nouvelle Acropole show no evidence of a racist character, but on the contrary a denunciation of racism.

Massimo Introvigne therefore methodically questioned the population [inaudible ?] and the accusation of racism. Three quarters of the people who left Nouvelle Acropole say they are outraged by the accusations brought against their former movement by the anti-sect activists, and judged slanderous. Contrary to the clichés spread about the so-called sects, more than 80% of the people in his study sample do not regret the money they spent there, and 90% consider that they did not [inaudible ?] the movement. Those whom sociologists call apostates — and who seem to be the only ones of interest to the media — represent only 10% of former members. Another notable result: three quarters of the apostates consider that the ADFI played a role in their decision to leave the group. In the light of this study, let us return to certain events of the year 1996.

Voice: In brief: a bomb attack last night against a building on rue Daguerre, in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, which houses a sect; [inaudible ?] was slightly injured.

Voice: Nouvelle Acropole is a sectarian and racist fringe group, according to the specialists in the field.

Voice: If the media have an interest — because it brings ratings, because it works, and so on — in manufacturing fear with the groups people call sects as its object, they will do it, and it will work. People will go along. I could develop any number of examples that demonstrate it. From the moment the media say it, people think it is true. Even if, in the abstract, they know they are being led into falsehood by these media, concretely, when they watch, they nod along, they say yes.

[Interviewer]: It is perhaps worth asking ourselves, personally, about this observation. In thirty years of anti-sect campaigning, how many of these abuses have we let pass? How many lies about the so-called sects have thus gone and lodged themselves in our memory? We are all potential links in a rumour which, today, feeds on itself.

Voice: I got really worried, in the village. Up to now, they haven’t harmed anyone.

Voice: And you know that it is a sect?

Voice: I know it. They often talk about it on television. They said it’s the worst one we have.

[Interviewer]: The beginning of 2008 provided an occasion to take stock of spiritual freedom in France. A few weeks after the Lateran address, in which the head of State invoked a “positive laïcité”, the policy of fighting sects is directly called into question, following statements by the Minister of the Interior, Michèle Alliot-Marie. In interviews given successively to the newspaper La Croix and to Le Parisien, she announces that she wants to make the fight against sectarian drift “less inhibited”, and forcefully restates the principle of tolerance and respect for all forms of spirituality. Rumours then circulate about a possible abolition of the MIVILUDES.

But what would really set the powder alight, and the anti-sect activists astir, were the statements of the chief of staff of the President of the Republic, Emmanuelle Mignon. In an interview with VSD, published on 20 February 2008, she declares that, in her view, sects are “a non-problem”: “The 1995 list is scandalous. The fight against sects long served to conceal the real issues.” Such remarks, made at the summit of the French State, are unprecedented. Whatever their degree of sincerity, they will above all have been an occasion to measure the extreme reactivity of the French political world on the subject.

Voice: These are totally irresponsible remarks. Besides, one need only listen to the victims of sects — in particular those men and women who have left them — to know how sects operate. And the French Republic, which is the laïque Republic, has an imperative duty to fight against sects.

Voice: If it turned out that Mme Mignon had, in any way whatsoever, justified the existence of sects, I believe that would call into question Mme Mignon’s very presence at the Élysée.

Voice: It is not the responsibility, it is not the legitimacy, it is not the mandate of the State, nor of the President of the Republic, to come and tell us what we should believe.

Voice: Should this mission be abolished, or strengthened?

Voice: Of course not. I think sects are a worrying phenomenon, in France as in Europe. I am thinking of all those families who have had children, loved ones, who were swept up into this sectarianism that is unacceptable in modern times. I tell you — I, [inaudible ?] of Paris, who have fought against sects: I will never, never, never accept the slightest laxity.

[Interviewer]: To complete this overview, we will cite Roland Minnerath, archbishop of Dijon, who declares that sects must not be minimized, that they behave criminally, that they manipulate people, and that they are to be absolutely distinguished from religions, which, for their part, have a transparent organization. To finish, let us note the unambivalent positioning of the Grand Orient de France, which declares its support for the 1995 blacklist of sects, and firmly invites the government to hold hearings at the opposite pole from the remarks attributed to Emmanuelle Mignon. It should be noted that no one takes any precautions any more: people speak plainly of sects, and not of sectarian drift.

What happens then? While the anti-sect activists are offered all the honours of the press, those who triggered the controversy retract, or promptly fall back into line with the dominant opinion. In a letter addressed to the four French [inaudible ?], the Minister of the Interior denies any rumour of the MIVILUDES being abolished, and states that her first concern on the subject is the protection of victims. On the very day her interview appeared, Emmanuelle Mignon denies her remarks, while VSD reaffirms their accuracy and specifies the place and time of the interview. Madame Mignon [inaudible ?] — in the end, it is the President of the Republic himself who speaks.

Voice: Sectarian activities are unacceptable, inadmissible, and the greatest firmness must be shown.

[Interviewer]: At midday, LCI lends its airtime to anti-sectarianism, with its traditional actors: Catherine Picard, president of the UNADFI, a lawyer specializing in sects, a repentant former member, and the inescapable Georges Fenech.

[Fenech]: I expect a clarification from the Prime Minister as quickly as possible.

[Interviewer]: A few hours later, Georges Fenech’s wish is granted by the Prime Minister, who declares that, we quote, “sectarian drift must be fought in France”, and that he wishes to see the MIVILUDES strengthened. The hope of an opening on the subject will therefore have been short-lived. One may even say that this year 2008 saw unprecedented political support for anti-sectarianism. On 4 November, in an exceptional consensus, a law protecting the witnesses of parliamentary inquiries is passed. This vote responded essentially to the situation — embarrassing for anti-sect action — of seeing several of its major testimonies called into question by legal proceedings.

Voice: When I testified before the parliamentary commission of inquiry on “sects and minors”, chaired by Mr Fenech, prosecutions followed immediately afterwards. I was sued for defamation.

[Fenech]: So, on that point, we have a legislative proposal from the president of the National Assembly, Mr Accoyer, who wants [inaudible ?] that the witnesses summoned by the commissions of inquiry should enjoy the same immunity as parliamentarians. I myself was not prosecuted in that context, since I had immunity. On the other hand, Nicolas Jacquette and other people we heard are currently in the courts, and have to bear their lawyers’ fees, which is, all the same, very complicated.

[Interviewer]: For whom, then, is the immunity that Mr Fenech defends so vigorously intended? Alongside Nicolas Jacquette, among the ten or so so-called victims of sects heard in 2006, we find Antoine — whose real name is Jean-Philippe [inaudible ?] — and Michel [inaudible ?].

[Hincker]: Michel [inaudible ?] was heard again by Mr Fenech during the third parliamentary commission, on children, a year ago, and said exactly the same thing over again. Which goes to show that Mr Fenech, who this time chaired that commission, could not have cared less about what the 17th chamber had done in ruling this person a delinquent, in finding that what he was doing was mendacious, that it was fabrication, that it was completely fantasized — and that he was preparing to do it again in a new parliamentary report on sects and children.

[Interviewer]: Protection of testimony without any real control of its content, wholesale dissemination and unprecedented media coverage of their work: the parliamentary commissions of inquiry are taking on a dimension that worries even some deputies. Jean-Luc Warsmann, on 4 April 2008, during the Assembly’s debates on the witness-protection law, announced [inaudible ?] of instrumentalization of the commissions of inquiry. That objection would, alas, very quickly be swept aside. A parliamentary commission of inquiry is due to be constituted by the month of June — the fourth on the subject in thirteen years; it will go after the businesses and the economy of the sects.

[Interviewer]: It is worth returning to the targets of these campaigns, which we always believe to be further removed from our personal practices than they actually are.

Voice: It’s courses, trainings… Personal-development courses, training courses… Everything to do with constellations — which is very clearly written in the report — family constellations, psychogenealogy, bio…

[Interviewer]: Forty formulas or key words that the MIVILUDES considers decisive for assessing sectarian risk appear in the guide « L’entreprise face aux dérives sectaires » (“Business facing sectarian drift”), which it published at the beginning of 2008. Sects and education, where nearly 60,000 children are exposed through tutoring; but also the medical and paramedical field: no fewer than 28 alternative health practices on which the latest MIVILUDES report casts suspicion.

Voice: The impression we have had, with regard to the practice of gentle medicine in France, is that the convictions we have been subject to are not isolated cases, since we have heard from students and naturopaths who have had trouble, whether with the courts, with the tax authorities, or with all sorts of other institutions.

[Participant]: When my wife and I took over the Marchesseau school, in 1992, we were subjected to an enormous number of inspections and pressures. That made us realize that there was discrimination against all these techniques of health, vitality, well-being and spirituality. We work a great deal with continuing education; many — not to say almost all — of the documents, all the files, were returned to us, refused, quite simply because all these bodies had received circular letters telling them that we were, in quotation marks, a “sectarian activity”. At present, many terms can no longer be used. They are terms that cause offence — or else we are shut into boxes, as supposed sects: terms like holistic, terms like well-being, terms like vitality, terms like chakras, and so on. As soon as you are in a medicine that is not classical, chemical medicine, they try to demonize people. To demonize them, they say they belong to sects. It’s easy: that way, they are rejected wholesale, and there is no more discussion.

[Interviewer]: There are certainly hundreds of thousands of us, if not millions, affected, in one way or another, by these discriminatory and defamatory campaigns. But very rare are the people fully aware of the scale of these actions — and also of their unique character at the international level.

Voice: In the Netherlands there was also an inquiry into sects, and the final report said that it is not a problem. There are small religious groups, large religious groups, but they are not criminogenic, and so we do not have to concern ourselves with them in particular.

Voice: We really had the impression that France was almost one of the champion countries of this witch-hunt. And this kind of story, such as we experienced, is not imaginable in Switzerland, nor in Germany, in Italy or in Spain.

Voice: Me, I do not understand what is happening in France. I find it unacceptable. Nor do I understand the motive for such a stance.

[Interviewer]: The common question is indeed: why? Why this repressive action? Why in France? What is the goal being pursued? What is the driving force — the reason, or reasons? Indeed: who bears responsibility — or again, who is pulling the strings? In the interviews we conducted, we heard several explanations on the subject, none of which claimed to be the only one. Jean Baubérot, holder of the chair of history and sociology of laïcité at the École pratique des hautes études, evoked two historical currents long opposed to each other.

[Baubérot]: You have people who are militant anticlericals, for whom all religion is bad, harmful, for whom people ought to be freed from all religion. And for a long time, Catholicism considered that outside the Church there was no salvation — that the rest was heresy.

[Interviewer]: These two radical tendencies, somewhat out of fashion, find in the so-called sects, according to him, fresh matter for expression.

[Baubérot]: There is a sort of reconciliation of these two forces, the anticlerical force and the Catholic force, against, precisely, minorities — since there, they tell themselves that at least they can fight, that these groups have a reputation — rightly or wrongly — and so they will be able to exercise an aggressiveness which is in fact more global and which is more [inaudible ?].

[Interviewer]: Anne Morelli, for her part, points to the motivations of these same two poles — more pragmatic than ideological.

[Morelli]: There is a defensive, wary reaction from the religions that hold the high ground, and which naturally look rather unkindly on the arrival of these new little competitors. I think that the big religions — and possibly laïcité as well — have an interest in keeping a certain monopoly over our societies.

[Interviewer]: Other monopolies are unquestionably at stake.

[Participant]: It should be known that Marchesseau, who brought naturopathy to France in 1935, faced seven trials in his lifetime. That is to say, there were things that must not be said — and certainly protected professions: in this case, that of illness. There is a kind of attempt to keep the population within the all-chemical outlook, so to speak. The tension exists because people are realizing that chemical and surgical medicine cannot do everything.

[Interviewer]: It is also inescapable that the theme of sects constitutes a kind of political tool.

Voice: The fight against sects gives the feeling that something useful is being done, and that it can be pushed to the front of the stage, to denounce the real underlying problems: social problems, economic problems, at every level.

[Interviewer]: For some, the anti-sect struggle is placed in the service of a certain authoritarian drift which, in France, is more usually attributed to foreign governments.

Voice: In France, it’s our axis of evil. The fight against sects manufactures collective fear. People are afraid of sects: they have very friendly faces, but they are going to wash people’s brains — above all those of the weakest, of children, and so on. It’s such a terrible danger. This fear means that people, once they are afraid, agree to accept retreats of democracy — in their own interest, they believe, since it will make it possible to protect them. Since it makes it possible to protect them, one will go as far as to say: “The doctor’s professional secrecy — perhaps it should be put in brackets, because that might make it possible to fight against sects”, without anyone asking the question: but what is a sect? What are these people? Partisans, in the media, who do not open our minds, but close them.

[Interviewer]: Why such a struggle, in the end? Perhaps, quite simply, because the stakes are considerable — as Christiane Singer expressed it before our camera, in April 2006.

[Singer]: I see in it an indirect homage paid to the religious — to this religious dimension of the human being. That is to say: if so many forces have to be mobilized to discredit it, it must have power inside the being.

[Interviewer]: To answer more precisely the question of who is pulling the strings — since it is often put to us — we will say that, while it is useful for certain responsibilities to come out into the open, it seems important to us not to fixate on them, and not, at the same time, to exaggerate the power of those who seem to hold the reins of society. Our experience leads us to consider that the only true enemy of spiritual freedom is the one that each of us can carry, and on which each of us can act. In this we join the analysis of Gilles Farcet, writer, former journalist and attentive witness of the emergence of the new spiritualities.

[Farcet]: Too often, what poisons relations between people, within the family, is once again fear — and, arising from fear, the judgements, the thoughts, the sweeping snap positions.

[Interviewer]: In the face of fear, one tool: the approach of knowledge and understanding.

[Farcet]: Where there is understanding, fear diminishes. Where there is no understanding, fear increases. Where fear increases, positions harden; fundamentalisms, on one side or another, develop. I would suggest to people who are worried at seeing a parent or someone close to them turn toward unconventional practices that they quite simply try to understand, and move toward an openness — which therefore implies a will and a necessity to understand. It being understood that understanding is work. It requires informing oneself — genuinely informing oneself — taking the time, looking, examining, reflecting, rather than deciding, judging, settling for a few slogans, for a few unverified pieces of information, as we so often do. So understanding is work; fear is a laziness.

[Interviewer]: Laziness, or slumber — that is certainly what has made all of us, more or less consciously, accept the message spread by the media. Recognizing that one has been fooled requires a certain humility. Maurice Duval’s journey is exemplary in this respect. Indeed, when it was proposed that he study the so-called sect of the Mandarom, he had to overcome a few preconceived ideas.

[Duval]: I was a little afraid. I was inside the ideology of the media: these were people who weren’t right, perhaps dangerous. In fact, I remember telling my secretary above all not to give my telephone number to anyone, still less my address. I was afraid that people might come and harm my daughter, or I don’t know what. And yet I watch rather little television, but I was still marked by the rumours. I carried out that study, and I do not regret it: I discovered people about whom I knew nothing. I did not know that this existed, and it interested me — it was thoroughly interesting.

[Interviewer]: Becoming aware of a reality very far removed from the most widespread preconceptions brought him up against a certain hostility from the dominant way of thinking.

[Duval]: It was seen that I was saying something other than what I was expected to say, and there, things changed. Colleagues, institutions tried to apply pressure so that I would stop this research. But of course I did not stop, because I think it would not have been ethical to stop. I had to tell the truth of what I was seeing. For example, people would say to me: “What — you don’t see any children locked up?” Obviously I saw no children locked up, because there aren’t any. So either I was going to invent them — but telling tall tales is not exactly the mark of a human science — or I told the truth: I see no children locked up. My colleagues would lay into me when I did not say what they expected me to say. In fact, I had only one interest in writing this book: that of being able to look at myself in the mirror every morning, saying: you did your job. My job, which consists in saying what I saw over years of observation — because I did not go there for a week or a fortnight, which would already be much more than the journalists, who go for an hour, when they go at all.

[Interviewer]: The CICNS proposes the creation of an independent observatory of spiritual minorities, in response to a public policy called the “fight against sectarian drift” and judged inadequate by many witnesses of our society. This observatory would be a consultative body, composed at once of figures [inaudible ?] favourable to spiritual minorities. It would undertake an approach of knowledge toward spiritual movements, which would thus come out of the shadows. What the general public would then discover would be very different from the idea it may currently have of them, and would, in our view, converge with the appreciation of the sociologist Michel Maffesoli.

[Maffesoli]: Well, it can of course be disorderly, like anything in its nascent state — that is for better and for worse — but I, for my part, would see in it rather the expression of a welcoming of the non-rational, a welcoming of life, a welcoming of the other, of the stranger, in its various forms. And from that point of view, in contemporary reliance — in what I call this somewhat syncretistic religiosity that is at play — there is something in which new forms of solidarity, of generosity, find expression: in ways of being, in the relationship one has with others and with the world. There you are. So yes, from that point of view, it can be considered — contrary to what many say — a form of enrichment; and let us think of it as such.

[Interviewer]: The following testimonies reflect the general impression left on us by five years of encounters with, and study of, the people and movements designated by the word “sect”. These three young women are members of the community of the Gens de Bernard, a small spiritual group [inaudible ?] the object of accusations of being a sect, even in the national press.

Voice: For me, here, it is also a big family. So we learn from everyone — whether children, adults, friends — we learn from everyone, and we also have a different relationship with each person. And we get on more or less well with different people, but that is also what teaches us, precisely when we go out into life and meet other people, to weigh things up and to find our bearings a little.

Voice: If I lived alone with my mother, I think I would perhaps have had more difficulties than by sharing many things with the people who live here, and especially the young people of my age.

Voice: What I know, I would say, of the human being — it’s true that I did not learn it at university, because it is certainly not university that teaches us that. And I think that, on that side, Monsieur David has taught me many things — and perhaps also to have less judgement about behaviours, to have precisely an openness of mind which, I think, is very important in the studies I am doing.

Voice: We simply want a little happiness, a little physiological well-being, a little health for our children, and a great deal of love. So if love is spirituality, then I am completely a spiritualist, and I dare to claim it loud and clear. Everything I bring to life, everything I manage to make flower, I do it for all my own, for all others, and with all others.

Voice: To reopen our vision of the world would be something so essential. It is heartbreaking that there really is a sort of conspiracy against the spirit. It was Bernanos who already said: “Our society is the most enormous conspiracy against the spirit that has ever taken place.”