Interview with Jean-Marc Florand on the Theme of "Cults"

Jean-Marc Florand is a lawyer at the Paris Court of Appeal and a doctor of law (docteur d’État en droit) who spent eighteen years teaching as a maître de conférences in France’s law faculties. Both roles, he says in this 2006 interview with CICNS, brought him civil, criminal and administrative cases involving members of minority movements, religious or not, that some people call “cults”. His first point is that the word has no definition in French law at all. He then recounts obtaining a definitive acquittal for parents prosecuted over the care they gave their gravely ill child, who died of his illness, and who in his account would never have been pursued had they not belonged to a movement catalogued as a cult. He calls the About-Picard law a bad law and a useless one, and says he is certain the clearing will come from the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

CICNS interview. (English translation of the interview published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 9 November 2006. The French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation; passages the machine could not reliably hear are marked [inaudible].)

[Florand]: My name is Jean-Marc Florand, I am 50 years old, I hold a State doctorate in law, and I am a lawyer at the Paris Court of Appeal. For 18 years I was an academic, a maître de conférences in the law faculties, and I have had occasion, both as an academic and as a lawyer, to reflect, to write, to publish and to plead in a certain number of cases — civil, criminal and administrative alike — involving people who were members of movements, religious or non-religious, but minority movements, described by some as cults.

[Florand]: I believe the first thing one must know is that the terms secte, sectaire, dérive sectaire, sectarisme — these are not legal notions; they are notions which until recently appeared in no text of law, and which did not appear in the penal or civil codes, in the founding codes of French legislation. They are notions which have not been legally defined, which are, all in all, extremely recent, and which are the fruit of a certain number of texts voted not long ago, following lobbying by anti-cult associations, to be very clear. But what must be clearly understood is that these are not legal notions: they are religious, moral, philosophical, historical notions. And that is the first difficulty for the jurist: one cannot refer to a definition as such.

Which means that the courts, like the public authorities, should carefully avoid — if they wished to respect to the letter the spirit and the text of the 1905 law of separation of the Churches and the State, and of the various laws that accompany it — using the terms secte, dérive sectaire, sectarisme, sectateur, and who knows what other derivatives of the same Latin word, which is secta.

That is a first observation. The second observation, equally objective, is that for some fifteen years we have seen a whole series of decisions and ministerial circulars flourish which use this vocabulary, even though, as has been said, it had not been defined beforehand. Which, naturally, is not a good thing, since it opens a door to an extremely subjective interpretation of these notions.

[Florand]: The people I had the honour of defending, who belonged to a movement that some wrongly regard as a cult, and a fortiori as a healing cult — whereas it is a spiritual movement which is neither a cult nor a healing movement — the story of these people is emblematic of what should never be able to happen in a country like ours, which is supposed to be the homeland of human rights and which is quick to give lessons in morality and liberty to every country in the world. It is the textbook example of an extremely serious drift, of a manipulation of the police services and the services of justice by certain people who are absolutely determined to wage a merciless war on a certain number of minority movements, notably religious, but not exclusively religious.

These people — a husband and wife, it should be recalled, and it should be recalled that one of the two was a doctor, which is not a neutral fact — had been accused, on the denunciation of a person in their circle who had sought information from an anti-cult association, to be very clear, of having failed for a certain number of days to provide the necessary and appropriate care to their child, who was suffering from a very serious illness. An illness from which he died a few months later, after enduring the worst suffering. It was proved in the course of the judicial investigation that the few days the parents had taken before having him hospitalized, voluntarily and spontaneously, for heavy drug treatment had in no way influenced the course of the illness — neither aggravating it nor, unfortunately, improving the health of this child, who, in the end, died.

These people endured, I would say, the complete chain of humiliations that the judicial chain sometimes inflicts on innocent people. A judicial investigation was opened against them; they were placed under formal investigation. Proceedings were also opened against them before the children’s judge, to see whether they were treating their other children properly. While the children’s judge understood at once that these were perfectly remarkable people and immediately dismissed any educational-assistance measure, closing the file at the same time, it was not the same before the investigating judge, who inflicted on them several hearings, a confrontation, a certain number of verifications, and who sent them before the criminal court. Before the criminal court, I obtained their definitive acquittal, since the prosecution did not see fit to appeal, given the circumstances of the case.

What is striking in this case is that if they had not been members of this minority movement, which is unfortunately — and wrongly — presented as a cult, the very serious judicial troubles that were theirs would never have happened to them. It is the perfect example of the breach of equality before the law, of what religious discrimination can be in a country in which, nevertheless, discrimination is a criminal offence. To be very clear: had they been atheists, had they not been members of this association, had they been Catholics — in an ordinary parish, I would say — had they been Muslims, Jews, Protestants, Buddhists, this would never have happened. The misfortune came from the fact that they belonged to a movement catalogued as a cult, when they were not one. Which is beside the point, since this word has no legal definition. So they suffered genuine religious discrimination.

[Florand]: Justice is, like every institution — whether the executive power, the judicial power or the legislative power — confronted with the power of the media and the press. Justice is not an ivory tower sheltered from all influence, able, like certain councils of wise men in Antiquity, to abstract itself from the entire social environment. So justice, like the other institutions, is to some extent subject to the pressure of the media, good or bad, in a positive or a negative direction. And above all, justice is imbued with the ambient culture of a country at a given moment.

One cannot wipe away with the back of one’s hand 20 or 30 years of extremely harsh campaigns against cults, in certain departments, in certain domains, on the part of associations. And one cannot, in the ambient culture, tell certain magistrates who believed for years that certain movements were dangerous and that the word of the associations was truth, from one day to the next, that these movements are not dangerous and that the word you made into truth is not so true [inaudible ?] as all that.

I would be tempted to draw a comparison with Outreau. When we said, a few years ago, with other lawyers who plead in the assize courts as I have the honour of doing: children can lie; in morals cases, a child’s word is not gospel — most professionals told us: no, a child cannot lie; a child’s word is necessarily the truth. We know what to make of that now, after Outreau. We know that a child, like an adult, can lie, sometimes very cleverly, and that this can lead to catastrophes. We have seen it. We saw it notably in the Outreau affair.

So it is the same thing for the so-called question of cults. It will take more time yet for the judicial and legislative institutions and the executive power to become aware that France reserves for minority religious movements, called cults, a treatment which is still discriminatory and which is quite singular in Europe, and notably compared with the United States, at which you like to point the finger regularly.

[Florand]: You will understand that with a body like the MIVILUDES — you have one parliamentarian who made his name in the past through his relentless fight against all religious sentiment and who was a militant, another parliamentarian who himself, in another life, prosecuted so-called cult movements in his former functions, and one could multiply the examples — it is obvious that the opinions it delivers cannot be objective. One observes that this mission has a tendency to… not to reinforce itself, that is not the exact term, but to repeat itself [inaudible ?]. And that its most reasonable and most moderate elements have withdrawn from it.

[Florand]: Well, I am convinced of the beneficial role of the European Court of Human Rights on France, notably in the matter of dérives sectaires. One must know that, all domains taken together, France must be the second or third most condemned country of all the countries under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. I would remind you that criminal matters are an entirely different area: France is systematically condemned for particularly long pre-trial detentions or for unfair trials.

In the matter of “cults”, in quotation marks, I am certain that the clearing will come from the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, which cannot let pass — and indeed does not let them pass — the discriminations committed in France in religious matters to the detriment of minority religious movements. There is a majority [inaudible ?] which produced a condemnation, indeed a recent one, of France, concerning a book that had been published and concerning, indeed, a minority movement — a sizeable one, certainly, but a minority — and in my opinion there will be a rain of condemnations.

So I think that the hardest-line proponents of the anti-cult fight — whether the UNADFI, the ADFI, or certain members of the MIVILUDES — are living, I would say, their last moment of bliss, or, I would be tempted to say, of impunity, because the European Court will end up calling France, and a certain number of the actors in the anti-cult fight, very seriously to order — that is, by judgments entering into positive law. It cannot be otherwise: the European Convention is not open to interpretation, it has supra-constitutional force, it applies to all the countries that come under its jurisdiction, and France — were it even the homeland of human rights — cannot be an exception to it.

[Florand]: The About-Picard law, which is legislation specific to cults, seems to me to be a bad law, because it is specific to cults, and a totally useless law, whose application is virtually impossible to put into practice in the courts. The offences of mental manipulation, in particular: we know very well — all the specialists in these questions, whether historians, sociologists or jurists, know very well — that it is an offence… It is an offence which is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to put into practice in a case. Unless one sees mental manipulation everywhere — but in that case, we are leaving a democratic state behind.

Political parties engage in mental manipulation; credit companies engage in mental manipulation; the salesman who calls you at 8 p.m., four times in a row, to offer you a fitted kitchen with lots of advantages engages in mental manipulation. The police officers who visit elderly people to install alarms for them engage in mental manipulation. Monasteries, when they recruit, engage in mental manipulation; churches engage in mental manipulation. Everyone, at that point, engages in mental manipulation. So I do not see how one could specifically hold an offence of mental manipulation against a cult movement — apart from textbook cases; one will certainly always find a case. It seems to me a scarcely democratic offence, and one which we know was very much in favour in countries around the world, in former times, which did not shine for their democratic quality. So I think it is a bad law.

[Florand]: The circular taken by the Prime Minister, M. Raffarin, a short while into his departure [inaudible ?], was a courageous text — rather unexpected, and courageous — which had the merit of recognizing that the idea of having drawn up a list of cults, a blacklist, was a liberticidal idea and a bad idea. The Prime Minister acknowledged it, and his text is very clear: from now on one must proceed — which I have, moreover, always perceived [inaudible ?], personally said that a certain number of my colleagues proceeded — by criteria of assessment, movement by movement, but in no case by a system of lists, which earned France the harshest criticism.

[Florand]: I had brought an action, with a certain number of lawyers, on behalf of a certain number of complainants who were victims of discrimination, against the ADFI and the UNADFI, before the Tribunal de grande instance of Paris. Our action was dismissed. A certain number of the complainants appealed, including my clients. I quite understand that, in the France of 2006, asking for the dissolution of the ADFI — which has become an institution, which moreover seems to me abnormal — is a decision heavy with consequences for a tribunal de grande instance to take. But I have no doubt that the Court of Appeal, or beyond it the Court of Cassation, or beyond that — and there I have no doubt at all — the European Court of Human Rights, will end up finding for the complainants and recognizing that the ADFI and the UNADFI do not serve any great purpose, cost the taxpayer dearly — since they live almost exclusively on State subsidies — and, in any event, in a certain number of cases, have gone off the rails and gone well beyond the mission that is theirs as an association, indeed against the mission that is theirs.

These associations have been allowed to hold a monopoly on educating not only the press but — what is more serious — the public authorities, and — what seems to me more serious still — within the public authorities, the renseignements généraux. In each department, most of the time, when the renseignements généraux want information on this or that movement — one perhaps suspected of being a cult, and thereby, perhaps, of engaging in activity that might prove dangerous; all of which makes for a lot of ifs and conditionals — whom do they ask? They ask the ADFI.

[Florand]: I believe the situation in France has nevertheless improved a great deal in recent years. There has been progress in favour of minority movements; there is still work to do, but there has already been much progress. But I believe the major obstacle is the disinformation of public opinion and of the media. There is significant disinformation on the so-called question of cults in the media, and thereby in public opinion, because it is the media that shape public opinion. Why? Because, until very recently, the media took their sources almost exclusively from the UNADFI and the ADFI. So we are going round in circles a little. The ADFI and the UNADFI long ago stepped outside their legitimate role, and say things that are sometimes true, but often false, concerning minority movements, and thereby maintain a disinformation of the media, which do not inform public opinion correctly.

[Florand]: The creation of a new parliamentary commission of inquiry into dérives sectaires seems to me totally useless. It seems to me, here again, a needless use of taxpayers’ money. There have been several commissions of inquiry, several much-contested parliamentary reports. As far as I know, in recent years there has been no particular dérive sectaire that would justify a new parliamentary commission of inquiry.

What is needed is a body of the type of an observatory of minority religions — or an observatory of religions, full stop, whether majority or minority — which would be a body composed of qualified persons, as there are in a number of authorities, and not of association activists, and which would make it possible to give fair and objective information — with regard to the 1905 law of separation of the Churches and the State and the legislation on faiths (I am thinking notably of Alsace-Moselle) — to the media, the public authorities and public opinion. That would send the ADFI and the UNADFI back to their basic mission, that is, like any association, helping a certain number of people in distress — which no one disputes — and it would render the MIVILUDES totally useless and should allow its dissolution.

[Florand]: The idea of a citizens’ inquiry, of a certain number of statistics on the ADFI, on the question, will certainly be very useful. One would certainly find — no, not “certainly”: one would find, absolutely — that over these last ten years there have been very few convictions concerning so-called cult movements, and that, furthermore, most of the convictions that have occurred concern individual behaviour by members of this or that movement, from which no consequence can be drawn for the movement.

For example, every year you have a certain number of priests of the Catholic Church who are convicted in morals cases. Naturally, no conclusion is drawn from this about the Catholic Church. And it is right that no conclusion is drawn, because these are, unfortunately, personal moral and criminal falls, and personal lapses. In the convictions affecting people belonging to so-called cult movements, it is in the immense majority — first of all, they are very rare — and in the immense majority of cases they are personal lapses as well. It is the treasurer of such-and-such a movement who dipped into the till; it is the member of such-and-such a movement who behaved reprehensibly on the sexual level; but no implication can be drawn from it for the movement, or its founder, male or female.

Now, what would truly be cult delinquency would be delinquency generated by the movement, according to the movement’s credo, or on the orders of the founder, the grand master. There, it would truly be a matter of offences secreted by membership of a cult. So, if there were a citizens’ inquiry — statistical, sociological, judicial — one would find that, one, there have been very few convictions in 10 years — practically nothing: one would find about ten — and that, of those ten or so, 8 or 9 of them concern personal lapses of members belonging to minority groups. So it is indeed a fantasy to think that there is a delinquency, or a particular criminality, a particular delinquency, that affects cults. The problem of cults barely exists in France. Barely exists in France.