The Guide for the Public Official Facing Dérives Sectaires

The Guide for the public official facing dérives sectaires

published in 2004 by the Miviludes

A “guide” widely distributed within the French administrations. This little manual of the good public official facing the cult hydra sets out unambiguously the administration’s will to stigmatise spiritual minorities and, if possible, to prevent their existence.

Presentation and commentary by CICNS

(the text of the guide is in bold and italics)

This guide presents the “cult phenomenon” and the attitude that the public official must have towards it, as though it were a matter of alcoholism or drugs — that is, taking for granted the existence and the importance of the danger.

It nonetheless supplies nothing conclusive to support this thesis.

One finds in the guide’s introduction a “recent history of the cult phenomenon” which purports to justify the policy implemented but which presents, as always, no reference to the numerous works produced on the question by historians of religion, ethnologists or sociologists, nor the point of view of associations such as CICNS.

“It is in the middle of the 20th century that one sees appear in France the modern form of the cult phenomenon, often inspired by movements born in Asia or in the United States.

In 1968, and in the following years, marginal groups living in community are formed. Between 1972 and 1975, the departure across the Atlantic of minor children (some thirty a year) into movements such as the Association for the Unification of World Christianity, the Church of Scientology, the International Association for Krishna Consciousness,”

Thousands of French people leave France every year. For what reason is this thirty-odd departures singled out, when not one of the renowned sociologists and historians who have examined the emergence of the New Religious Movements has noted it as a significant or notable fact?

“In 1978, the collective suicide of 923 followers of the Peoples Temple takes place in Guyana in South America.”

Since the public revelation of the FBI reports in 1995, speaking of collective suicide for this tragedy is wholly abusive (see Jonestown, a false collective suicide).

In 1981, the son of Roger Ikor, Goncourt prizewinner, dies from a Zen macrobiotic diet. This father writes in 1982: “I lodge a complaint” and creates the Centre against mental manipulation, the CCMM.

This isolated case, which appears to be an important justification for MIVILUDES, is to be set alongside the numerous victims of the scandals of modern medicine — such as that of contaminated blood — which nonetheless did not call into question the foundations of French health policy.

The government takes up the cause in the name of the protection of children.

There is at that point only one supposed victim — the son of a Goncourt prizewinner, admittedly — and a hundred or so parents or grandparents worried (or made worried) at seeing their children or grandchildren move away from them. This seems a somewhat disproportionate justification for the mobilisation of a State.

The minister for social affairs requests a report, which will not be made public, on the protection of minors in the face of the development of the cult phenomenon.

Is the reality too terrible, or really too insignificant, for this report not to be circulated?

“After a latency period of ten years, dramatic events will follow one another:

– 1993, 88 dead by suicide and confrontations with the police at Waco in Texas within the Davidian cult;

– 1994, 53 dead in the affair of the Order of the Solar Temple in Switzerland and Canada;

– 1995 (5 March), 11 dead and 5,000 injured in the sarin gas attack perpetrated in the Tokyo metro by the Aoum cult (sic) (…)

– On 23 December 1995, 16 dead are discovered in France in the Vercors; they will be identified as followers of the Order of the Solar Temple.”

This history is an artificial montage, linking together certain tragedies which have nothing to do with the spiritual search (see our page on the Myth of cults) or with French policy on “combating dérives sectaires”. This obstinacy in presenting the facts from the same angle for years, without taking account of the new elements of investigation that may have appeared since, can only be explained by the absence of established facts which would make it possible to justify this policy. This insistence, deaf to the comments made by the leading authorities in the history of religions and in sociology, shows a will to pursue this policy.

There is in this guide no objective, statistical, factual, conclusive justification for this policy of “combating dérives sectaires”, no reference to a quantitative study demonstrating the dangerousness of the new spiritualities. The few cases falling under the law are hardly significant in number. This rarity — for one supposes that MIVILUDES would not deny itself the citing of larger figures if there were any — could even serve as an example for many sectors of society which are not subject to the impressive surveillance apparatus put in place over the past decade in the name of the anti-cult campaign.

“the number of files of minors in danger is relatively low at national level (a survey showed in 2003 that of 54,000 educational-assistance files, only 192 presented a link with a cult problem)” That is, 0.3%.

Which did not prevent a thunderous parliamentary commission on “cults and childhood” in 2006. The comment which follows this paragraph is revealing of an obstinacy in seeing a problem where there is none.

“This study highlights the difficulty of identifying situations of danger linked to a cult problem, and must prompt magistrates and social workers to increased vigilance in this field”

Or is it the admission of a tactic consisting in forcing a maximum number of cases of delinquency into the same “cult mould”?

The contradictions of the argument become glaring when one reads further on, in the conclusion of the chapter on “the evolution of the cult landscape”:

“The actions of vigilance and prevention conducted by the public authorities for several years, both at central and local level, have made it possible, it seems, to contain the development of dérives sectaires.”

It is said that the protection of childhood is the principal reason for this policy; one observes that there are only 0.3% of cases which could be attached to dérives sectaires. It is also asserted that the phenomenon is under control and in decline — yet throughout this guide one may read of the necessity of increasing the apparatus’s performance.

This work is a fresh demonstration “by abstention” that anti-cult policy rests on no serious study of the incriminated movements.

And yet the apparatus put in place is impressive

The three paragraphs which follow the history set out between the lines the process which today results in a consensus difficult to call into question in the mind of the ordinary citizen, and a fortiori in that of public-service officials who have for years undergone the hammering of circulars, training sessions, colloquia, seminars and other manuals and “guides” on the “cult phenomenon”.

The notion of dérive sectaire

The decree of 28 November 2002 entrusts the interministerial mission with the task of “observing and analysing the phenomenon of movements of a cult character whose activities infringe human rights and fundamental freedoms, constitute a threat to public order, or are contrary to the laws and regulations”.

The report of the 1995 parliamentary commission of inquiry into cults contains a list of movements of a cult character. For some, this list constitutes a sufficient criterion of a movement’s or a community’s belonging to the cult sphere. Others consider that it no longer corresponds to present reality. The courts do not recognise it as having normative value.

This euphemism is to be set beside the paragraph below, found further on in the guide:

“Several judicial decisions have thus reminded the State that it may not forbid such and such an individual or such and such a grouping access to rights on the basis of the lists established by the parliamentary commissions of inquiry. (cf. administrative court of Paris, 13 May 2004, Association cultuelle des témoins de Jéhovah, and European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), 6 November 2001, Fédération chrétienne des témoins de Jéhovah de France, and ECHR, 16 December 2003, Palau-Martinez)”

The administrations have had to specify their criteria for analysing the phenomenon. They naturally had recourse to “ordinary law”, as well as to the elements of information contained in the parliamentary reports of 1995 and 1999, and notably to the criteria of dangerousness mentioned there.

It seems to us that it would have been just as “natural” to consult jurists, sociologists, ethnologists, or indeed the case law and any other objective source in order to target and quantify the supposed problem. Nothing of the sort occurred. The administrations were formally required by ministerial circulars to implement a policy which had been the object of no vote in the National Assembly, with as their sole working support (delivered as an extract or as an attachment to the circulars) the famous parliamentary report which is, like any parliamentary report and as the law specifies, intended only for the use of the national assembly as a basis for reflection and debate. The administrations therefore naturally obeyed the very precise directives of their respective supervising ministers, disseminating criteria, lists, and the references of anti-cult militants drawn from the parliamentary reports whose very content — in addition to its lack of legal value — would be judged unserious by a Paris court.

The absence of specific charges

Respectful of all beliefs, faithful to the principle of laïcité, recognising no religion, the legislator has always refused to define religions. Nor has it, for the same reasons, specified the notions of cult and of dérive sectaire. For want of this legal basis, public officials and services have had to position themselves between too narrow an approach, founded on the sole criterion of the constituted offence, and an approach by potential risk, doubtless too extensive. The task has been no simpler for judges faced with movements or dérives sectaires of which ordinary law gave them no definition. The legislator of 2001 did, admittedly, adapt the offence of abuse of weakness by extending it to situations of physical or psychological subjection characteristic of cult hold, but no case law was yet available as at 1 October 2004.

Everything is said in this paragraph: the minorities targeted by this policy do not break the laws sufficiently to be charged and convicted, and it has therefore fallen to judges to bear the responsibility of applying directives which run counter to the very principle of the equality of each before the law whatever his religion or his beliefs.

The criteria of dangerousness

In the exercise of their mission of vigilance and combat against cult activities, the administrations accord a determining place to the criteria of dangerousness adopted by the parliamentary commission of inquiry of 1995, namely:

– mental destabilisation;

– the exorbitant character of financial demands;

– rupture with the original environment;

– the existence of attacks on physical integrity;

– the regimentation of children, antisocial discourse, disturbances of public order;

– the extent of legal entanglements;

– the possible diversion of traditional economic circuits;

– attempts to infiltrate the public authorities.

In any event, a single criterion cannot suffice to characterise a movement; several of these criteria must be cross-referenced.

The criteria in this paragraph are wholly subjective. The public official who is told of a grave danger requiring exceptional vigilance will, consciously or not, look in these texts for precise bearings, for criteria concretely applicable. And as in all the documentation supplied to him on the subject for more than a decade, he will find in this field only the reference to the famous parliamentary list together with scattered but far from innocuous words, all of which evoke a spiritual orientation, or therapeutic or educational options “not conforming to habit”.

The boundary between dérive sectaire and religion is another difficulty. The temptation one may have to adopt specific legislation the better to combat cult movements risks colliding with the principle of the State’s neutrality (…)

It is clearly said here that the aim is to combat designated movements, and that this collides with the very principles of the French constitution. It is nonetheless not envisaged that this campaign be called into question. The French State, despite this “risk”, has even taken the step on several occasions, of which the two following examples are highlighted in this same book:

- law of 12 June 2001 tending to reinforce the prevention and repression of cult movements infringing human rights and fundamental freedoms. (Read Maître Perollier’s commentary on this law)

- Law of 18 December 1998, tending to reinforce the control of compulsory schooling. (Whose preliminary debates were centred on the possible dérives of cult groups)

One may read further on, in the chapter “Methodological tools”, 68 points of questioning grouped under “Twelve themes for testing a group that gives cause for concern”?

This chapter is concluded by this note:

Few groups meet all the points of the foregoing definition. Some may exist in groups that are otherwise innocuous. It is the coexistence of a certain number of these characteristics that must prompt mistrust.

If these are criteria of mistrust, what then were the criteria of dangerousness cited at the beginning of the chapter? The “cult” is never defined, but the crossed beam of criteria of mistrust and of dangerousness is such that the public official can only sink into confusion or paranoia.

the public official has at his disposal, in the exercise of his missions, all the resources of the ordinary-law legal arsenal.

What does this sentence mean? That the public official uses the laws as an instrument of repression and not as an instrument of discernment? Is it not the admission that actions against spiritual minorities are not the consequence of genuine offences but of another intention which can only be discriminatory?

The situation of couples in divorce proceedings is mentioned in the guide. The suggested response is characteristic of the spirit of the anti-cult campaign.

Divorce

The mere membership of a spouse in a movement of a cult character cannot constitute a ground for divorce (CA Dijon 23 September 1997). Nonetheless, when a spouse’s behaviour gravely disturbs the life of the couple, the family-affairs judge may consider that it constitutes a fault rendering the maintenance of common life intolerable, and pronounce the divorce on that basis (CA Nancy 23 February 1996, JCP 1997, IV, 1178 and CA Montpellier 7 November 1994, JCP 1996, 22680).

Is this not an incitement to use the theme of cults in order to win a divorce?

In fact, certain lawyers denounce in the courts the resurgence of recourse to the “cult trick” and its incredible effectiveness before magistrates themselves trained in “anti-cult vigilance”. (Read the apparatus put in place)

In the same register of affairs where speaking of cults can win you a case, one finds in this manual:

The mere membership of a parent in a movement of a cult character cannot justify an unfavourable decision towards that parent as regards the fixing of the children’s residence or of visiting and accommodation rights. However, in the event of separation, when a parent’s practices present a serious risk of physical or psychological disturbance to the children, the family-affairs judge may decide to fix the habitual residence with the other parent or to restrict the exercise of the right of visit and accommodation

The choice by parents, for their children, of a way of life in a “closed world” where they are neither correctly schooled nor seriously educated is also of a nature to justify a report to the public prosecutor on the basis of articles 375 et seq. of the Civil Code.

This kind of incitement to “reporting” on wholly subjective criteria is the door open to every abuse — and indeed, numerous parents have been the object of investigations and criminal proceedings on the sole presumption of their “cult membership”.

There is also reported, for all useful purposes, a line of case law in the field of adoption which is a refusal of adoption to a Jehovah’s Witness couple, on the ground that their refusal of vaccination put the child’s life in danger.

Also reported are lines of case law in the fields of labour law — “The strong submission and dependence towards the leader or the guru” being able to “lead members of the movement to work in conditions punishable by law as concealed employment” — and further, in no particular order: the exercise of the right of pre-emption, taxation, the illegal practice of medicine or of pharmacy, the provisions limiting the advertising of cult movements which present, it seems, a further lapse by the State from its duty of neutrality, and the question of the refusal of care, which explicitly targets the refusal of vaccination and of blood transfusion and which is supported by a line of case law stating that “the practice, in certain conditions, of a blood transfusion against the patient’s will did not constitute a grave and manifestly illegal infringement of that freedom”.

Finally one finds cited texts which appear wholly incongruous if one does not know that they correspond to specific affairs incriminating movements under particular surveillance.

“The communication of administrative documents” and “The limits to the right of access” are questions raised directly by an action of the Church of Scientology, certain of whose members demanded and obtained, after a long procedure, the consultation of their “files” held by the Renseignements Généraux, only to find that they contained no other ground of surveillance than their membership of the Church of Scientology — and therefore no offence and no report of any “infringement of human rights and fundamental freedoms”.

If the public authorities defend themselves throughout this “guide” against any discrimination on grounds of religious or philosophical convictions, it is pure hypocrisy, since the argument and the examples cited designate, sometimes by name, spiritual or religious groups.

The following paragraph, taken from the section The aspects particular to the administrations and the chapter Ministry of the Interior, is revealing of a genuinely discriminatory policy:

In a more repressive perspective, the units also coordinate the action of the services with the will to exploit every avenue liable to lead to a criminal conviction of movements to which dérives sectaires would be imputed, or to prevent their establishment: combating concealed employment, checking declarations of assets, prohibition of construction or of occupation of premises for environmental harm or for non-conformity with the rules for receiving the public, etc.”

To conclude, we observe that:

• The booklet brings no conclusive element on the existence of a phenomenon of “dérives sectaires” which would be a major risk to the integrity of individuals and to society, and which would justify the policy pursued by the government.

• Its argument is confused, contradictory and wholly subjective.

• It designates persons, by their choices of life — notably therapeutic, educational, religious and spiritual — as potentially dangerous.

• It gives public officials tools and advice in order to persecute these persons.

• It sets out an apparatus whose scale can only disquiet anyone concerned for the respect of human rights.

Read the apparatus put in place