The 2007 MIVILUDES Report

Skimming, criticisms, pertinent and impertinent questions — a digest of the 234 pages whose reading we gladly spare you.

A reading report by Denis Mathieu

INTRODUCTION (and culinary page). — 1

I- MIVILUDES’s satchel, or the ever bigger bag of “dérives sectaires”. — 3

II- MIVILUDES under attack advances “proofs” of its usefulness, in letters rather than in figures: — 4

Introduction. — 4

1- Feedback from the ministries. — 5

2- “Frenzied lobbying actions” (!) — 7

Conclusion. — 9

III- The so-called policy of combating dérives sectaires, ins and outs (non-exhaustive) — 9

1- Incompatibility with the foundations of the French Constitution. — 10

2- “The declamatory function of the law”. — 10

3- MIVILUDES, instrument of republican hegemony. — 11

4- Frenzied lobbying actions (?) — 12

IV- Stops on a few pages. — 13

1- Datura and Shamanism: guilt by contagion. — 13

2- About a hundred according to the observers, 25,000 according to the police. — 14

3- Travel diary in central Europe of a French anti-cult militant. — 15

4- Everyday discriminations. — 16

5- Instrumentalisation of emotion: — 17

6- “Induced false memories”: — 18

Conclusions. — 19

INTRODUCTION (and culinary page).

In an article in Le Monde of 4 April 2008 [1], entitled “Criticised, the Miviludes defends the principle of a ‘list’ of cults”, one could read: “Mr Roulet again defended the establishment of a ‘list’ of cult organisations, a method in which he sees ‘more advantages than drawbacks’. An opinion apparently shared by the prime minister, who had come out in February for an ‘updating’ of the 1996 list, and by the president of the National Assembly, Bernard Accoyer (UMP) who, in an interview with La Croix on 2 April, estimated ‘the number of victims of cult groups at several hundred thousand’”

A prime minister and the president of the French national assembly issue a favourable opinion on the establishment of public lists of citizens and groups of citizens suspected of “dérives sectaires”.

Not one voice is raised in the chamber or in a major medium to denounce this incitement to practices which flout every democratic value and send France back to the darkest hours of its history.

What is happening in France? The present commentary contains numerous elements of understanding.

The method of listing practices, individuals and groups at risk on criteria as subjective and arbitrary as “rupture with the original environment and antisocial discourse”[2] has in reality been practised without interruption for some twenty years in an insidious form.

The recipe is simple:

Ingredients:

Words that frighten (according to the season, though the safe bets remain “Cults”, “Gurus”, “Childhood in Danger”, “Suicide”, “Paedophilia”, “Mental manipulation”): this is, as it were, the yeast.

Shocking news items bearing even a vague relation to the main subject: the spices.

A polished, well-structured, discreetly peremptory base discourse of the Énarque type: this is the flour.

Examples of what one advances (very few will do).

The names of groups and practices one wishes to cast out of society (to taste).

Finally, a little of anything and everything: approximate studies, various intentions, activity reports…: this is the binding agent of what we cannot call a stuffing, out of respect for those who are its victims.

Method:

Mix it all together (the order matters little).

Take a support that is hard to attack legally, protected by a certain immunity — such as a parliamentary commission of inquiry report or a report to the prime minister. (If the recipe “sticks”, provide for a reinforcement of the immunity.)

Spread in successive layers.

Serve cold. Bearing in mind that the dish will take several months or years to be consumed in full and will withstand reheating quite well.

It is by nature an indigestible dish, but the majority will find satisfaction in it, choosing according to their mood one element or another to suit their tastes.

The most reluctant will let themselves be tempted by the general enthusiasm, or will simply have to choose another canteen.

MIVILUDES’s 2007 report takes its inspiration from this recipe, as does the anti-cult argument in general.

I- MIVILUDES’s satchel, or the ever bigger bag of “dérives sectaires”.

Numerous press articles relayed the report. We noted on the internet this reaction from a reader:

“I am appalled by your article on ‘charlatans’ published in your newspaper of 3 April 2008. I am a sophrologist, I hold all my qualifications, and I regularly meet sophrologists attached to hospital units, notably in pain centres. I should like to obtain a right of reply, other than this email reply, in your newspaper — and other colleagues will join me in it. PLEASE INDICATE THE PROCEDURE, notably for meeting one of your journalists and clarifying these defamatory remarks about the profession. Yours sincerely.” N L.[3]

This reader will quickly realise that the article merely follows the impulse given by the report of MIVILUDES, attached to the prime minister of her country — and if she pursues her enquiry, she will realise that she has quite simply, by virtue of her profession, joined in the great bag of dérives sectaires a number of her fellow citizens each of whom, one day, found themselves as appalled as she is by this situation.

The ideal scapegoat is adaptable at will, and MIVILUDES’s 2007 report makes immoderate use of it by way of the catch-all expression “dérive sectaire”.

“There is in French law no legal definition of the cult (…) The interministerial Observatory on cults noted as early as 1997 that ‘attempting to define and fix in a text, in a necessarily restrictive fashion, a notion whose content is evolving and uncontrollable (…), would not be of a nature to facilitate the exercise of public action against the dérives of this phenomenon.’ It must be noted, ten years later, how apt that analysis was: today dérives sectaires are more numerous in the field of health, alternative therapies and personal development than in the strictly spiritual and religious framework.”

In another passage of the report:

“Thus, it matters little whether such a dérive is committed by a cult movement, a new religious movement, a religion of the Book or by a health charlatan. As soon as a certain number of criteria are met, the first of which is the placing in subjection, the State’s repressive action has vocation to be implemented.”

Demonstration:

Among the new groups suspected of dérives sectaires one finds “multi-level marketing networks”.

Let us observe the justification of the suspicion of dérive sectaire (leaving aside any assessment of the said economic networks):

“The ‘profession’ chose to organise itself in a period when commercial initiatives in the field were taking very diverse directions and, in a certain number of cases, embarking on the path of dérives, at the very least commercial, and beyond that, possibly liable to be characterised as practices with dérives sectaires.”

And, further on:

“This positioning (…) exposes the FVD[4] to a risk of membership by networks susceptible to the risk of dérives sectaires.”

This is guilt by contagion.

Finally: validation of the risk by the “official criteria” (not legally recognised) recalled in the present report:

– strong hold over the individual with a change of personality in the new follower

– exorbitant character of financial demands

– rupture with the environment: demonisation of family, friends and all those who attack the guru or the movement

– existence of attacks on physical and psychological integrity

– regimentation of children, antisocial discourse and disturbance of public order

– extent of legal entanglements

– diversions of traditional economic circuits

– attempted infiltration of the public authorities

– elitism and cult of personality

– mode of recruitment founded on seduction

– different way of life: community, proselytism, different clothing and diet, refusal of conventional care…”

It is also recalled that a single criterion met does not suffice to pronounce anathema; the example of “multi-level marketing networks” allows us to see that two do:

“Two of the general criteria for assessing cult risk emerge here: rupture with the original environment and antisocial discourse.”

There we are, it is as simple as that — welcome to the multi-level marketing networks in the great bag of “groups at risk of dérives sectaires”; or should we say MIVILUDES’s satchel for 2007?

II- MIVILUDES under attack advances “proofs” of its usefulness, in letters rather than in figures:

Introduction

The president’s word introducing the report is in large part a reply to the criticisms made of MIVILUDES’s policy by what he calls “the cult sphere”.

That is an option which may seem astonishing as a way of introducing the annual report of a State body.

Could he not let the figures signifying its results speak for themselves?

Having gone through the whole 234 pages of the document, we can answer in the negative: this report, like the previous ones, contains no figure, no conclusive statistic justifying MIVILUDES’s denunciations.

When Mr Roulet says “Well, for three years I have met these victims one would wish invisible on a daily basis; I have listened to their families, I have measured the damage, the irreparable harm committed by all that the cult sphere counts of gurus and sorcerers’ apprentices”, when MIVILUDES has as its mission to “combat the activities of movements of a cult character which infringe human rights and fundamental freedoms or threaten public order”, and when they denounce practices and beliefs concerning hundreds of thousands of citizens at the very least, one might expect to see cited a substantial number of judicial proceedings which could not fail to punish “infringements of fundamental freedoms”. All the more so since the first challenge from those who criticise MIVILUDES’s policy is an invitation to produce factual proofs of the existence of what it denounces as a social scourge.

It is, so to speak, incidentally, in the body of the text, that one receives a few concrete data on MIVILUDES’s activity: it is said to have made 41 reports[5] since 2005. To gauge that figure, one should know that each year in France criminal cases are counted in… millions[6]

1- Feedback from the ministries

The chapter containing the reports of the various ministries in the field of combating dérives sectaires is extraordinarily devoid of established facts of delinquency, but full of arbitrary designations and suspicions.

One remembers (though MIVILUDES apparently does not) the figure given officially by the inspectors representing national education who, questioned by the last parliamentary commission of inquiry into “cults”, reported 8 cases having a supposed link with a dérive sectaire out of 19,000 reports of children in danger over one year.[7]

The new activity record brought to our knowledge by the present report does not appear to contradict these figures:

“The year 2007 was for the cell for the prevention of cult phenomena a year during which it continued to carry out its role of coordination and alert.

The CPPS (cell responsible for the prevention of cult phenomena in education) was, indeed, informed:

– of a request for the renewal of instruction within the family for children whose parents belong to the Tabitha’s Place cult;

– of the opening of a private school outside contract in Brest, ‘Cours primaire Notre-Dame de Rumengol’;

– of the wish of the association ‘Les enfants d’abord’ that new procedures for monitoring instruction within the family be implemented rapidly.

The Academy Inspector of the Gard alerted us to a dysfunction and a presumption of cult-type dérives in three schools outside contract. In accordance with the law of 18 December 1998, pedagogical inspections were carried out and no dérive sectaire was observed.”

That is all…

On the other hand:

“The heads of the CPPS organised, as is traditional, an annual seminar of training and information for their academy correspondents in order to draw their attention to the new forms of cult activities…”

In vain, it seems…

The Ministry of health and sports, for its part, is principally concerned with

“Non-Conventional Practices with a Therapeutic Aim (PNCAVT)”

(…) These PNCAVT, which have received no scientific validation, are developing at the margins of the health system and present a certain number of risks and/or dérives which bear numerous similarities to dérives sectaires (…)

That therefore suffices to justify MIVILUDES’s allocation of this space of gratuitous assertion to the ministry.

In a few lines are associated:

“grave risks for children”, “deluded charlatans swindlers”, “so-called training courses”

and

“esoteric or mystical foundation”, “which highlight the benefits of ‘nature’”, “of neo-oriental origin”, “inscribed in a search for ‘personal development’” — not forgetting to cite the key phrase “New age”.

One finds, in the provisional record of what is called a campaign, the “actions undertaken by the ministry in 2007” (numbered).

Here are those which mention a concrete case that would justify the campaign:

“2) A report to the judicial authorities, by the Director general of health, of a PNCAVT and of its creator-promoter (…) Thus, in August 2007, the Director general of health, after a meticulous examination of the file by his services, addressed to the judicial authorities a report concerning the creator-promoter of a PNCAVT which he considered particularly worrying.”

“3) Follow-up to a complaint by the DHOS[8] to the judicial authorities, for a situation of usurpation of title. A complaint was lodged in 2005 by the DHOS with the judicial authorities, for usurpation of title, against the holder of a doctorate in philosophy (Ph.D), … ”

“4) Refusal by the DHOS of applications to practise traditional Chinese medicine… ”

The DHOS refused to issue an authorisation to practise medicine to a person holding a diploma in traditional Chinese medicine, who …

“6) Studies commissioned by the DGAS[9] on the method known as ‘Facilitated Communication’, not very conclusive as to its effectiveness …”

We went to the health ministry’s website in order to establish the importance given there to “Dérives sectaires” and to “PNCAVT”:

Nothing on the “Front page”, nothing in the “National campaigns”, nothing in “the Press”, nor in the “health alerts”…

Search results with the site’s internal engine:

Your query “pncavt” matches 0 of 55496 documents.

(Execution time: 0.747 s)

No document found

Might the word have been invented just for MIVILUDES’s report?

Nor does one find on the site any document devoted to dérives sectaires apart from, lost in the tree structure, internal circulars and the archives of the legal texts devoted to them.

Why are the extremely alarmist statements made by the health ministry in its report to MIVILUDES not taken up on its own website?

We see two hypotheses to explain this phenomenon:

The Ministry of Health complies with MIVILUDES’s instructions on dérives sectaires without really believing in them.
MIVILUDES’s report is a sort of outlet, or a lawless zone (an “anything goes” zone), in which the ministry makes statements that serve it but which it cannot decently express more officially.

Any other rational explanation is welcome.

The other ministries bring no more proof than the health ministry of a major scourge invading the country.

To be noted in the defence ministry’s report: a particularly scandalous chapter (on the part of sworn officials) of its activity report, which designates legal persons by name, entitled:

“Rapes and sexual assaults committed within the ‘Tang’ cult.”

In the last line of which one learns that nothing is either judged or proved:

“The investigations to be conducted have as their aim to establish the truth as to the grave accusations made by ex-followers.”

The rare cases cited in the report as a whole are most of the time old, and/or approximate, often calumnious or disrespectful of the presumption of innocence.

In MIVILUDES’s current obligation to justify its existence, such a selection has evidently been made for want of better — and not for want of time or of an obligation to justify itself — and therefore reveals on its own the enormity of the lie which the Mission appears to have as its function to sustain.

2- “Frenzied lobbying actions” (!)

A whole chapter of the report is devoted to denouncing “frenzied lobbying actions” by the “cult sphere” at European level, a chapter entitled:

“Strategy of influence of the cult sphere internationally: the example of the OSCE [10] ”

Here then is the opportunity to grasp the concrete reality of little-known international bodies which genuinely carry a hope of seeing realised the fundamental texts that inspired our democracies, but which are openly mistreated there: a return to sources, the equality of right and of speech between the ordinary citizen and any body that governs them. It is also the opportunity to understand how urgent their mission is.

Let us quote MIVILUDES:

“The OSCE is a vast forum of consultations and negotiations for the 56 participating States (Western, central and eastern Europe, the United States and Canada). It was designed in such a way that the civil societies of the member countries may express their grievances when they consider that their fundamental freedoms are flouted. This principle allows a good defence of individual liberties where they are threatened.”

“It is open to the representatives of civil society, who may express themselves on an equal footing with the States’ delegates in the framework of several thematic sessions, among which those concerning fundamental rights.”

“And the cult movements have well understood this, displaying themselves without the slightest scruple on an equal footing with other NGOs which legitimately express their sufferings.”

Everything is said: for MIVILUDES the so-called cult movements are not on an equal footing with other citizens and have no legitimacy to express their sufferings.

The cherry on the cake — or rather the bone in MIVILUDES’s throat:

“In 1999 for example, the panel designated as facilitators of a supplementary session of the ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights), on ‘religious pluralism’, Mr Alain Garay, who was for a time the lawyer of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as Mr Massimo Introvigne, director of CESNUR, (…). Mr Alain Garay has been part since 2005 of the panel of experts — as one of the two figures designated by France — and in 2006 he joined the more restricted circle of its steering council. There he rubs shoulders moreover with Mr Jeremy Gunn, designated by the USA, another scourge of the European initiatives intended to prevent and combat dérives sectaires.”

MIVILUDES takes umbrage for 20 pages that its indignation is not shared by the European bodies, despite its effort to destroy the image of the objectors — notably by suspecting that most of the persons involved in this subject belong to a “cult” or have been in contact with one.

This argument dishonours France in the eyes of Europe and of the World. To gauge its crudeness, one must realise that the French anti-cult phobia is indefensible by the yardstick of the universal declaration of human rights, like any local ostracism of a racist character, for example.

Let us take an example from the past that will offend no one:

What would you say of a representative of the South African government of the 1960s who, to disqualify a speech by Nelson Mandela in the eyes of the World, would say “But, but really, don’t listen to him! Can’t you see that he is black?!”

To finish with Europe, we note a significant omission in the chapter

“Recourse by cult organisations to the European Court of Human Rights: the current case law.”

The report mentions two cases condemning Greece for failure to respect religious freedom, but it does not cite a line of case law that is nonetheless significant, since it condemns France for obstructing freedom of expression in a case directly involving the policy of combating dérives sectaires: “CHAMBER JUDGMENT PATUREL v. France” of 22 December 2005.

And yet the following comment, tinged with a certain bitterness, appears to refer to it.

“However, it (the ECHR) has never had to rule on complaints by persons claiming to be victims of the activities of cults. The applications judged emanated from active followers of movements claiming freedom of conscience and religion. It is possible that in the future the victims of cult movements will apply to it in their turn, and that the exploitation of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) by cult organisations will no longer be so easy for them.”

Or “he laughs best who laughs last”?

Conclusion

Let us return to Mr Roulet’s introduction:

With no figure to set against the criticism, he caricatures and distorts it, disdaining the prudence and rigour of the analyses made over 20 years of French policy on combating dérives sectaires by jurists, by researchers recognised and qualified by French universities, and by officials of the French government or of the UN — whom he has never wished to listen to.

In a second stage, having thus brought the debate down to the level of trench warfare, he sweeps aside all argument in a few lines which might be summed up as: “It is not true, it is even quite the contrary” — without further ado.

To see him brandish at the end of his text the standard “Liberty Equality Fraternity” makes one want to weep rather than laugh.

III- The so-called policy of combating dérives sectaires, ins and outs (non-exhaustive)

The second major part of the report, entitled “Childhood and Education”, takes up the 50 proposals of the last parliamentary commission of inquiry into cults and reports the responses they received. One can see emerging there some of the ins and outs of the policy of combating dérives sectaires.

1- Incompatibility with the foundations of the French Constitution

Three of these proposals were rejected on the ground that they are contrary to the fundamental principles of democracy or to the spirit of the law. The rejection appears to be taken as an administrative obstacle, a hazard of the structures which a way will one day be found to circumvent — and not as the nonetheless obvious sign that an action which thus collides with the fundamental principles of the Republic must be reviewed in substance.

Proposal 1 of the commission:

“Define precisely the conditions for the choice of home instruction: illness, the child’s disability, the family’s relocation or any other real and serious reason.

Response

Conceding that the choice of home instruction may be motivated by the child’s state of health or disability, the Social Affairs Commission of the National Assembly judged that it could also be a matter of ‘the parents’ strict convenience’. Likewise, the government did not wish to ‘end up reversing the principle of freedom by requiring every parent to produce real and serious reasons’.”

Proposal 2:

– “Require recourse to the pedagogical instruments offered by the national centre for distance education or by declared private distance-education bodies. (For home instruction.)”

Response

(…), the obligation to have recourse to determined pedagogical instruments does not appear indispensable and would be contrary to the principle of freedom of parents’ educational choices.

Proposal 34:

– “Open a new limitation period for minors who are victims of the offence of abuse of weakness in movements of a cult character, running from the date of their majority.”

Response

(…) unfavourable opinion of the government considering:

– on the one hand that this would end by creating a specific regime of limitation, peculiar to minors raised in a cult environment, which would constitute a breach of equality between victims of acts committed during their minority; it being further specified that this refers back to the not legally defined definition of “cult”.

MIVILUDES’s comment on this last government response:

“New avenues must be explored, for it is a capital point for victims to be able to obtain reparation for the harm suffered.”

2- “The declamatory function of the law”

A dozen legislative advances in MIVILUDES’s sense are cited in the report.

Most of them do not appear likely to bring about major upheavals within the courts, and recall what Raphaël Liogier expressed at the CICNS colloquium in September 2007:

”(…) the great advantage (editor’s note: of the cult problem in party politics) already lies in what the Council of State called, in a recent report, the declamatory function of the law — a real dérive: things which everyone knows perfectly well will not be applied, but ‘the deputies are thinking of you, they are not paid for nothing’. This declamatory dérive occurred in the field of the so-called cults because it affects practically no one statistically, yet everyone finds it horrible and sees cults everywhere…”

Without being a jurist, one may wonder whether the following text will one day find matter to be applied (to our knowledge, that is still not the case).

“Is punishable by a fine of 7,500 euros the fact of disseminating, by whatever means, messages intended for young people and promoting a legal person, whatever its legal form or object, which pursues activities having as their aim or effect to create, maintain or exploit the psychological or physical subjection of the persons taking part in those activities, when there has been pronounced at least once, against the legal person itself or its de jure or de facto directors, one final criminal conviction…”

This text is cited in the report because the militant anti-cult deputies recently obtained the change from “several criminal convictions” to “one criminal conviction”. This will perhaps allow a first line of case law of which MIVILUDES will inevitably make “a major advance in the campaign against dérives sectaires”.

3- MIVILUDES, instrument of republican hegemony

A large part of the parliamentary commission of inquiry’s proposals had no follow-up, but two of them held our attention because they more or less directly underwrite modifications of the law against practices affecting the whole French population, and because they significantly reinforce the State’s precedence in two fields which Raphaël Liogier recently situated within “the monopoly which laïcité, as a symbolic system and a political system of State, grants itself”.

Field of health:

“the law of 5 March 2007 relating to child protection issued a favourable opinion on the aggravation of the penalties incurred for the offences of failure to declare a child’s birth and failure to vaccinate.

These two aggravated contraventions have become offences, provided for and punished by article 4-18-1 of the penal code (failure to declare) and article 116-4 of the public health code (failure to vaccinate), and are punishable by 6 months’ imprisonment and a fine of 750 euros.”

Field of education:

“The child protection law redefined the processes for monitoring school absenteeism:

Article L.131-8 (Law no. 2006-396 of 31 March 2006, art. 48 II, Official Journal of 2 April 2006), (Law no. 2007-297 of 5 March 2007, art. 12-3º, Official Journal of 7 March 2007)”

For a deeper treatment of the sacralisation and instrumentalisation of medicine and of the school in the service of a State hegemony, and of its bearing on the “Campaign against dérives sectaires”, we recommend the interventions of Jean Baubérot and Raphaël Liogier at the CICNS colloquium in September 2007 entitled “Cults: social scourge or scapegoat?“

4- Frenzied lobbying actions (?)

Other recommendations of the third parliamentary commission of inquiry into cults, relayed by MIVILUDES.

10 - Provide for awareness-raising about dérives sectaires in the civic education programmes at middle school and high school.

12 - Provide for teaching about dérives sectaires in the university training and research units (UFR) of psychology and of educational sciences, as well as in the IUFM (university institutes for teacher training).

13 - Introduce, within the faculties of medicine, teaching devoted to mental hold and to victimology.

14 - Institute training of judicial auditors and trainee lawyers in the cult question, bearing notably on the specificity of disputes relating to family law and to child-protection law.

17 - Recall by circular of the Keeper of the Seals the criminal penalties applicable for failure to vaccinate.

37 - Increase the role of the “cult referents” of the general prosecutors’ offices.

43 - Train the regional “cult” referents of the ministry responsible for Health and of the ministry responsible for Youth and Sports, so that they have the required qualification to raise the awareness of the officials of the decentralised services of the dangers of dérives sectaires.

41 - Promote training in the cult question for magistrates and lawyers.

42 - Encourage the general councils to put in place training in the cult question for the personnel of their social services, in charge of the approval procedures for family assistants or adopters.

44 - Create a post of correspondent responsible, within the ministry (of Foreign Affairs), for following the problems linked to dérives sectaires and for proposing policies of action, training and information.

45 - Raise the awareness of the ministry’s officials posted abroad of the risks of dérives sectaires.

48 - Encourage the coordination of the actions of the associations taking part in the campaign against dérives sectaires.

The two principal associations for combating dérives sectaires, the UNADFI and the CCMM, are regularly associated with days of reflection initiated by MIVILUDES. Moreover, their presidents are members of the Mission’s Orientation Committee.

50 - Reaffirm the specificity of the campaign against dérives sectaires at departmental level.

“On 9 January 2008, Mr Jean-François Thony, Director of the ENM, wrote to the President of MIVILUDES: ’…I have duly noted your proposal to extend this awareness-raising action to judicial auditors in training. That seems to me an excellent suggestion.

‘I must specify to you that a training sequence for future children’s judges, at the end of their training, within the framework of their specialisation, has already been scheduled for March 2008 under the title “Cult phenomenon and minors”…’”

The anti-cult associations, as well as MIVILUDES, say they receive more and more calls from citizens worried about this or that behaviour or this or that spiritual, educational or medical practice said to be deviant. That is certainly true; we too receive them regularly, for that matter (by mistake).

In view of what the State has invested over 25 years in subsidies to anti-cult associations and in communication, training and information at every level of its administration on anti-cult theories, and of the unconditional relay given to this propaganda by the major media, it is not surprising that fear should grow. That is certainly one of the most significant results of the policy of combating dérives sectaires.

As the ethnologist Maurice Duval’s analysis underlines:

“The neoliberalism we are currently living through is characterised by two fundamental traits. On the one hand, the growing withdrawal of the State as guarantor of social solidarity, and notably of social policies; and on the other, the reinforcement of the State’s presence in the fields of repression: an increase in the number and the powers of the forces of order, the development of penal policy [11], record-keeping, the retreat of social rights, and so on. Now, in order to have this neoliberal policy accepted, the security ideology, basing itself in large part on ‘cults’, produces a collective fear which of itself calls forth in return a demand for increased protection and the stigmatisation of what is outside the norm as being potentially dangerous.”[12]

IV- Stops on a few pages

1- Datura and Shamanism: guilt by contagion

It is not for us to return to the dangerousness of consuming datura (a hallucinogenic mushroom).

What we underline here is the orientation of MIVILUDES’s discourse, which hastens to conclude:

“‘Western-style’ shamanism merits particular vigilance from the public authorities, for it is constantly developing in new directions. Thus, certain magazines of practical information on ‘natural therapies and personal development’ report a new concept: the corporate shaman…”

We wish to set this attitude alongside that of INFORM, the independent institute which in the United Kingdom is the State’s reference on spiritual minorities, and some of whose assessments the report takes up:

INFORM warns of the dangers of datura but adds:

“one of the most influential figures of neo-shamanism in Western countries is said to refuse to promote its use during shamanic rituals for that reason.”

“It is stated by Inform that Mr Harner, founder of the FSS (The Foundation for Shamanic Studies) and his ‘franchises’, although very influential in the neo-shamanic sphere, do not promote the use of datura in any publication.”

Two quite different approaches in form and in intention:

INFORM investigates and sets out the data gathered; it specifies the field and the contours of the problem.
MIVILUDES seizes on a case and draws abusive conclusions stigmatising a whole set of practices without leaving room for nuance or for a right of reply.

2- About a hundred according to the observers, 25,000 according to the police

MIVILUDES devotes a part of its report to satanism:

Its conclusions:

“Today, on account of the secrecy with which these groups surround themselves, it is difficult to estimate their number and notably that of structured groups, but the specialised services consider that the number of followers of the satanic sphere in the broad sense, all branches and chapels taken together, is of the order of 25,000 persons in France, of whom 80% fall in the under-21 age bracket.

That is a good reason to remain vigilant and to detect as early as possible the moment when the adolescent manifests a genuine addiction and when he is probably subjected to the hold of other persons who wish to make him travel his initiatory journey into the demonic arcana.”

One could read in the newspaper Libération of 3 April 2008 [13]:

“Even before its presentation, this passage of the report was contested by the sociologist Olivier Bobineau, author of a work just published on the subject [14]. Whereas the Mission for combating cults puts the number of persons in contact with this sphere at 25,000, of whom 80% would be under 21, the researcher estimates ‘at about ten the number of satanists affiliated to currents, and at about a hundred the unaffiliated satanists, practising informally and regularly’.”

Whom to believe?

Olivier Bobineau is: “Canonical Graduate in social and economic sciences”, “Qualified by the Sociology and Demography and Political Science sections of the National Council of Universities”, “Doctor of the Institut d’Études Politiques of Paris in Sociology, with the mention ‘très honorable’ and the congratulations of the jury awarded unanimously”.

In his comment he joins another, older researcher, Pierre Barucand, anthropologist and honorary research supervisor at the CNRS, who commented on an earlier MIVILUDES publication on satanism, and to whom we leave the conclusion:

”(…) The problem of satanism in the USA, where delirious rumours spread, is complex because of the Church of Satan. But in Europe, the only satanists are ‘gothic’ adolescents in a ‘crisis of juvenile originality’, passionate about ‘black metal’, and also a few schizophrenics. As for the links with ‘neo-Nazis’, they seem extremely rare! Settling the problem of juvenile originality is a vast programme — though in general it resolves itself! The ‘dérives sectaires’, extremely rare, must be punished when they have a criminal character; but should an interministerial mission be created against… cannibalism in France?”[15]

3- Travel diary in central Europe of a French anti-cult militant

A chapter of the report is entitled “Cult risk: legal and administrative apparatus in central Europe”.

We take up extracts from it with a touch of humour, underlining the French egocentrism which is exercised for the “campaign against dérives sectaires” in a less inoffensive manner than for its cheeses, but with the same obstinacy in believing itself the holder of the truth in a field where it stands as an exception for the rest of the world.

In Bulgaria, “The notion of ‘movement of a cult character’ is (…) unknown to the law”. Movements called cults in France are designated there “under the generic term ‘New Religious Movements’”. We imagine that the anti-cult militant, at this first stage of his journey, already misses France a little and its plain speaking. Hungary will not have failed to detain him, so exotic may it seem to him: “New religious movements sometimes give rise to questions, but are not the object of stigmatisation in the media or in public opinion.”, “Generally speaking, the climate between the State, the Churches and religious movements is serene, and the theme of ‘cults’ is not a subject with media traction.” He investigates the foundations of such singular customs… and then learns that “since the change of regime in 1989, the authorities have scrupulously seen to the respect of freedom of religion.” and that “The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion not only in theory but also in practice since 1990.” Our anti-cult militant then continues his journey, somewhat reassured by this practical explanation for what he considers Hungary’s libertarian youthful errors. Ukraine, with its 1,227 registered religious organisations, where he notes that “The populations are neither protected on the legal plane nor informed of the threats emanating from cults.”, that “The propagation of the new religions is not controlled” and that the law “leaves complete latitude to any religious organisation which presents no direct threat to the life and health of the individual.” brings him to the verge of apoplexy. It is while scanning the Ukrainian newspapers in vain for a collective suicide or other catastrophe which could not fail to occur that he flies off to Slovenia. There, no more than elsewhere, does he find any real understanding for the subtleties of “French-style laïcité”; indeed “the authorities do not seem preoccupied by the risks that movements of a cult character might represent. Slovenian public opinion and press are little sensitised to this subject.” Out of conscientiousness rather than genuine interest in lands whose existence he had until then been unaware of, he decides to make a detour by the Baltic states. Lithuania brings him a glimmer of hope, for although “The authorities never seem to have considered that cults posed a Problem”, “following alarmist press articles published in 2000 denouncing the suspicious activities of 300 cults in the country, they set up a commission responsible for coordinating the action of state institutions against the illegal activities of cults”. “Alarmist press campaign”, “commission on cults” — “There we are!” he says to himself, “we are well on the way; in a few years they will have their MIVILUDES…” In Latvia, where “are recognised as traditional religions” the Seventh-day Adventists — who are stamped “dangerous cult” in the Bible that the Gest-Guyard report constitutes for him — he will have shrugged his shoulders and will not have lingered. As for Estonia, which seems unaware even of the existence of “dangerous cults”, he notes that: “the small population (1.5 million inhabitants) (…) does not favour the establishment or activity of movements of a cult character, which would be fairly easily detectable by the police services.”

To be sure of finishing his journey well, he had kept as his penultimate stage Albania, which he regards with affection for its traditional atheism. Yet there too he will find a notable absence of concern for the “problem of cults”: “The indifference to questions of religion, widespread in the Albanian population, still strongly marked by official and militant atheism, may constitute an explanatory factor for this serenity of the authorities.”

Russia does not disappoint him, and it is with enthusiasm that he reports:

“In Russia, following the very liberal law on religious freedom adopted in 1990, a multitude of religious organisations and above all of organisations of a cult character swept over the country. The harmful effects of these movements’ action were not slow to make themselves felt. Becoming aware of the danger, notably of the risks of manipulation of youth, and after very lively debates between defenders of absolute freedom of conscience and proponents of a necessary regulation of the activity of movements of a cult character, the Duma (Parliament) adopted, on 26 September 2007, a law on freedom of conscience more restrictive than that of 1990, subjecting the activity of these movements to very restrictive conditions under the vigilance of the Federal Registration Service.”

MIVILUDES’s introduction to, and synthesis of, its study of the countries of central Europe:

“Some countries – such as Russia – practise a restrictive policy, others a very permissive one; but all are concerned by the problem of dérives sectaires and remain vigilant.”

Our synthesis and conclusion: the most “concerned” of these countries are far behind France in their preoccupation with the said “cults”; those which practise a “restrictive” policy do so, as in France, to the detriment of individual liberties and to the benefit of a dominant religion or thought. Most of these countries do not see in these minorities a significant problem, and are none the worse for it.

4- Everyday discriminations

One finds in the activity report of the “General Delegation for employment and vocational training” a synthetic example of the consequences of the policy pursued by MIVILUDES:

Suspicion induced by the ambient psychosis and by ministerial circulars:

“There has been observed, for several years, a rise in power of certain groups at risk, (…) services with a therapeutic, healing and/or personal development [well-being] aim. The services offered, extending over time, may lead, by their contents and their modes of unfolding, to serious risks of dérives sectaires for the beneficiaries.

(…)”

Stigmatisation:

“Among these contentious activities, some — whether requested, offered or pursued — intended to promote concepts, therapies, practices, techniques or methods (often associated) relating to Biological decoding [of illness], to Total biology [of living beings], to Channeling, to Fasciatherapy, to Kinesiology, to Cellular healing, to the Silva Method [of mind control], to Rebirthing, to Family constellations, Corporate constellations, to Reiki, to NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), to EMF Balancing, Technique, to Kundalini Yoga.”

And on this subjective basis of judgement: warnings and administrative acts heavy with consequence:

“The follow-up given to the files concerned led sometimes to the applicant’s withdrawal, or — in application of article L.920-4 of the labour code — either to the refusal to register the declarations of activity submitted as a body of continuing vocational training, or to the cancellation of that registration by the State administrative authority responsible for vocational training.”

5- Instrumentalisation of emotion:

In an “annex” to the document one finds a chapter of “Testimonies” containing two heartrending testimonies of family suffering, including the particularly moving transcription of a little girl’s letter to her “granny”.

Testimonies of families torn apart, of parents adrift, of psychological sufferings carrying a considerable emotional charge, including cases of abusive denunciation of incest.

It is not a matter of trivialising the suffering contained in these testimonies, but of pointing to the shameful procedure which consists in justifying an all-out denunciation, and more than two hundred pages of discourse calling into question thousands of innocent people (until proof to the contrary) and blowing over society a wind of suspicion and hatred — all while claiming pragmatism and rationalism — by means of two testimonies which have no demonstrative value for what precedes but which will unfailingly attract the reader, weary of the tireless repetition of the same arguments, and plunge them into a compassionate and indignant emotion apt to deprive them of all discernment.

One can of course find, in the mass of tragic destinies produced by our era[16], a few examples corresponding to any theory designating a “public enemy” as vague as “dérives sectaires”. It is finally audacious, in cases as complex and subjective as the two cited, to determine at every moment of their lives the subjects’ predisposition to paranoia and the responsibility of third parties — a subject on which the courts appear not to have pronounced, since no judgment to that effect is mentioned. MIVILUDES, for its part, implicitly allows itself to designate a guilty party in the affair (certain therapeutic practices).

The little girl’s letter to her Granny — a vibrant testimony of love and gratitude from a child ill-treated by life towards the person who embodied support and stability in it — contains no element, no illuminating fact. To see this testimony of tenderness put at the service of the iniquitous cause of this report is truly distressing.

6- “Induced false memories”:

MIVILUDES has for some time made itself the relay of a marginal theory, to which it devotes a chapter of its 2007 report.

In it, it denounces the “Birth of a dangerous phenomenon”, namely the “Induced false memory syndrome”.

Going back to the source of this theory leads to a circumspection very far from MIVILUDES’s assurance. The American page[17] which Wikipedia devotes to this supposed syndrome is the site of significant controversies about the validity of the said theory, and concludes by quoting the “American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language” in its year 2000 edition:

false memory syndrome” as “The belief that one remembers events, especially traumatic ones, that have not actually occurred. Not in scientific use.”

One also learns that the concept is the invention of an association, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (…), created by parents who say they have been falsely accused of incest by their children.

Finally, the page devoted to the FMSF points to the ambiguity of an approach so providential for anyone who might be rightly accused of having sexually abused his children.

To be noted finally:

One cannot overlook the similarity between the birth of this concept and that of “mental manipulation”.

Persons who do not find in the courts an ear sufficiently attentive to their claims constitute themselves as an association and, with the help of a few academics, develop a pseudo-scientific theory which endorses their point of view.

Just like the theory of “Brainwashing” or of “Mental manipulation”, the concept suddenly finds across the Atlantic a new impetus in the service of the “French campaign against cults”, without its having been demonstrated or validated by any adversarial study.

It is not, once again, a matter of denying the existence of cases which “fit” this theory, nor of denying the sufferings associated with them, but of denouncing the dangerous generalisation of a concept sufficiently subjective to give rise to every liberticidal and discriminatory dérive.

The mote and the beam?

Certain anti-cult associations already present themselves as a place of welcome for “the victims of false memory syndrome” (see on this site). Which constitutes one more anachronism in the anti-cult campaign, given the capacity of these associations to generate “false traumatic memories” in people themselves, in order to help them destroy a “cult” they have in their sights.

We are currently working on testimonies where the process of manipulation of reality by these associations — some of them subsidised by the State — is flagrant.

For 25 years anti-cult militants have been repeating:

“Members or ex-members of spiritual minorities must be helped by every means to realise that they are ‘cult victims’, and encouraged to lodge complaints.”

They were even recently demanding the opening of a “new limitation period for minors who are victims of the offence of abuse of weakness in movements of a cult character, running from the date of their majority”, necessary according to them and among other things “given (…) the necessity of a time of psychological ‘reconstruction’ after leaving the cult…”[18]

If there is not, in the assistance offered by anti-cult associations, “Induction of false memories” and incitement to assert them in court, then there is none anywhere else.

Conclusions

Extracts from the conclusion of MIVILUDES’s report:

“The sentence most often uttered by the victims of cult movements, whether former followers or the families of persons still under influence, recalls a well-known fable: ‘it is the struggle of the earthen pot against the iron pot’.

In 2007, MIVILUDES’s interlocutors said it dozens of times.”

”(…) since lobbying, disinformation, legal proceedings, intimidation and manipulation constitute the daily methods of these groups, the risk is real that, after the victims who give up applying to the courts, the State will question the legitimacy of its action.”

“Let us not be deceived and let us not mistake our victims! The iron pot always strikes the weak, the earthen pot — but it also always strikes the naive person who thought it right, often in good faith moreover, to fly to its aid on hearing its cries!”

We are among MIVILUDES’s interlocutors and have presented to it “earthen pots” broken or chipped by the iron pot of an ostracism which remains deaf (as a pot) to the suffering it engenders. They will have been filed under “Frenzied lobbying”.

MIVILUDES’s 2007 report, in essence, spins fables — but far from the elegance of La Fontaine’s, it drives its moral home by repeating it tirelessly over more than 200 pages; and this method is encouraging in the sense that it signifies the human being’s resistance to seeing the enemy everywhere, especially when he is unarmed and produces no demonstrable damage.

Finally, MIVILUDES’s disquiet at seeing the State question the legitimacy of its action seems to us well founded, and encourages us to pursue our work.

[1] http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2008/04/04/critiquee-la-miviludes-defend-le-principe-d-une-liste-des-sectes_1030958_3224.html

[2] Page 74 of the report

[3] http://credit-immobilier.metrofrance.com/x/metro/2008/04/03/j1lKPKqmdujlc/index.xml

[4] FVD: “Fédération de la Vente Directe”

[5] This figure of 41 is given by the prime minister in a recent reply to a question from the national assembly (page 224 of the report).

[6] The prosecution services handled, for example, 4,838,441 cases in 2005 according to the Annuaire statistique de la justice 2007. http://lesrapports.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/BRP/074000740/0000.pdf

[7] http://www.cicns.net/Auditions_Commission_Parlementaire_2006.htm#7

[8] Directorate of hospitalisation and of the organisation of care

[9] Directorate general of social action

[10] Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe

[11] 27. Loïc WACQUANT, Les prisons de la misère, Paris, éd. Raisons d’agir, 1999.

[12] Extract from “Le discours anti-secte comme support de l’idéologie néolibérale” by Maurice Duval, ethnologist, senior lecturer at the university Paul Valéry of Montpellier, published in L’Homme et la Société: Revue internationale de recherches et de synthèses en sciences sociales, no. 155 January/March 2005: Sécurisation et Globalisation. Publisher: L’Harmattan

[13] “La France au péril des sectes”: http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/societe/319120.FR.php

[14] “Le Satanisme, quel danger pour la société”, éd. Pygmalion

[15] http://www.les4verites.com/Il-faut-en-finir-avec-les-derives-anti-sectes-1812.html

[16] Under the heading of childhood in danger (for example), children’s judges are seised of some 120,000 new files each year

[17] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory_syndrome

[18] Page 106 of the report “MADE ON BEHALF OF THE COMMISSION OF INQUIRY relating to the influence of movements of a cult character and to the consequences of their practices on the physical and mental health of minors.”