The 2007 MIVILUDES Report — Éric Bouzou's Commentary

The 2007 MIVILUDES Report

Commentary by Éric Bouzou

The 2007 report of MIVILUDES brings no happy surprise in its manner of approaching the question of cults in France. One finds in it a great many conflations and approximations which give a false idea of the so-called “cult” phenomenon. This commentary offers a reflection on certain subjects addressed in the report.

MIVILUDES’s positioning as martyr

A particular effort of the rapporteurs consists in presenting MIVILUDES as a “target” of “attacks” (every criticism is experienced as an attack) emanating from bodies which, besides the cults themselves, are said not to understand the pertinence of the work carried out by the mission and its partner associations, the UNADFI and the CCMM. In the president’s word, Mr Roulet states: “I have noted the cynicism and arrogance of certain leaders of cult movements. I am still astounded by the nerve and bad faith of their leaders and of their defenders”. Further on: “The tendency towards the development of enterprises to paralyse the services in charge of vigilance and of combating dérives sectaires has been confirmed”.

The section entitled “Strategy of influence of the cult sphere internationally: the example of the OSCE” (page 111) is a twenty-page affronted indictment of the criticisms made against French anti-cult policy. On page 122 it is stated: “the energy deployed by certain NGOs, both within and outside the framework of the OSCE, to criticise the countries invested in vigilance and in combating dérives sectaires merits an interest in their profile”. Minorities and civil-liberties associations would thus dare to use the European platforms to defend legitimate rights. On page 115 the paragraph is titled “Recurrent targets: the actors, institutional or otherwise, of vigilance and of combating dérives sectaires”. To pass MIVILUDES and the UNADFI off as misunderstood victims of the controversy over the treatment of the question of cults in France is an astonishing reversal of the situation. The authors also seem indignant at the criticisms addressed to the MILS (Interministerial mission for combating cults), sorry precursor of the present mission, whose excesses many observers have acknowledged, even among those favourable to a severe policy in cult matters. It is possible that certain rapporteurs are nostalgic, so much does MIVILUDES appear to act “MILS-style” while striving to present a more respectable image.

The report lacks a paragraph to complete this outpouring of victimhood: the one that would mention the highly critical assessments of MIVILUDES within the government itself, and that, even if certain authors preferred to retract in the face of the assaults of the single permitted thought. Their tone is certainly as trenchant as anything the alleged “pro-cult” side has been able to say officially within the European bodies or in France. But it is of course delicate to express indignation in an official report about the remarks of the chief of staff to the President of the Republic (“have done with the waffle” of MIVILUDES) or of the Minister of the Interior (who recently cast doubt on the mission’s effectiveness) and of her Head of the bureau of religions (cf. his hearing before the parliamentary commission of inquiry “the stolen childhood”, where he mentions the imprecision of the mission’s work).

Concerning the difference of culture between the Ministry of the Interior and the mission placed under the authority of the prime minister, we refer the reader to the article in Le Monde written by Raphaël Liogier (Cultural revolution in the anti-cult campaign: http://www.cicns.net/sociologues_raphael_liogier_le_monde_sectes_alliot_marie.htm).

On the use of preterition

Preterition is a “figure of rhetoric by which one pretends not to want to speak of a thing of which one nonetheless speaks” (Académie française). ”(…) the figure of rhetoric par excellence, in that it influences the interlocutor’s attitude (…)” (universalis.fr).

One finds this rhetorical device and its variants throughout the document, both in the vocabulary employed and in the arguments deployed.

One must no longer speak of “cults” henceforth; the report is attentive on this point, and so speaks of cult movements. Is there a real difference? Are the groups not targeted as such despite deceptive oratorical precautions imposed by a code of good conduct? On the subject of the term “cult”, which still poses a problem, the report states on page 13: “the absence of a definition of the cult does not efface the reality of the existence of victims of the dérives of certain cult movements. This notion of dérives sectaires is evolving and its French approach is at once pragmatic and textually framed”. The text consistent (underlined) with the declared intentions ought to have been: ”(…) the reality of the existence of victims of the dérives sectaires of certain groups (…)”. But the temptation is too great to catalogue the group: one therefore replaces “cult” with “cult movement” and the trick is done. Mrs Picard, currently president of the UNADFI, had asserted that the notion of “cult” should not be specified, because the said cults would always manage to escape that definition. She had not seen fit to acknowledge that this deliberate imprecision would, on the other hand, allow her to bring any movement whatever, arbitrarily, under that label unofficially. The choice was therefore officially “to frame” the “evolving” notion of dérive sectaire. One can well imagine the size of the frame required to accommodate a notion both vague and evolving.

Mr Roulet asserts in the president’s word: “It was not a matter, for MIVILUDES, of stigmatising anyone a priori, but indeed of playing fully its role as lookout”, yet the report concludes: “lobbying, disinformation, legal proceedings, intimidation, manipulation constitute the daily methods of these groups”. These groups are also designated on page 114 as “Cult movements and their allies”, as though it were a real army; on page 122 the report speaks of “what unites these groups in a network of “pro-cult lobbying”. The president of MIVILUDES presumably thinks that everything written between the introductory word and the report’s conclusion justifies this final, unappealable verdict, which would therefore be a statement of fact and not an indiscriminate a priori stigmatisation. The reader will nonetheless search in vain for the sufficient proofs that would give credit to the report’s conclusion. Stigmatisation has always been one of the favourite tools of anti-cult protagonists, because even when what is said is false (and it very often is, either factually or in the direction of exaggeration), an imprint of it always remains with the public. This stigmatisation is called “acute vigilance” in order to respect the code of good conduct.

On page 44, the report draws up a survey of the professions of psychological support: “This panorama of the professions of psychological support (…) brings to light an insufficiency, or indeed an absence, of initial training in the disciplines concerned, for more than half of the psychotherapists recorded by a professional federation, that is, a body of 5,000 to 7,000 practitioners. This observation, while it must not lead to the hasty conclusion that at least half of psychotherapists have charlatanesque and dangerous practices, is nonetheless an aggravated risk factor in this sector of services (…)”. One may doubt that the author of these lines had no intention of discrediting psychotherapists; the hasty quantification of the number of charlatans, though immediately disavowed, was unnecessary — all the more so in suggesting that all the psychotherapists considered might be incompetent.

In the section “The risks linked to certain business coaching techniques”, page 83, the report’s authors state: “While it is not the purpose of the present study to take sides on the philosophy of the doctrine or on the content of the methods it induces, MIVILUDES nonetheless considers it indispensable to alert the public to the dangers that an inappropriate practice is liable to engender”. It is hardly credible, given the tenor of the ten or so descriptive pages that follow, to claim to be without bias. One may wonder about the authors’ real intentions. They moreover state generally, as early as page 17 of the report: “It is absolutely essential to refer to the movement’s doctrine and to integrate it into the investigation, because it contains almost systematically the ideology which advocates or leads to the violation of the law”. So they referred to the coaching techniques, without taking sides on a doctrine… which might nonetheless lead to a violation of the law… The type of reasoning used could without difficulty lead to designating it dangerous to go shopping at the grocer’s, since it might occur to him to manhandle us.

“It is absolutely essential to refer to the movement’s doctrine and to integrate it into the investigation (…)” is nothing other than an evaluation of doctrines and practices (including religious ones) by a secular State body which is not supposed to concern itself with beliefs.

The rapporteurs cannot be unaware of the necessarily negative a priori impact of this type of rhetoric on the persons targeted.

The fallacious (and undemocratic) argument of mental hold

Mental hold, mental manipulation are the new expressions which have replaced the more vivid notion of brainwashing. They are central notions of the anti-cult argument, which may be expressed thus: the followers of a cult are mentally manipulated; those who complain of it are the living witnesses, and those who claim to have made a conscious choice to join the group and are satisfied with that choice are the most affected of all.

The report asserts on page 37: “The notions of mental hold and of placing in a state of subjection, whether they are one of the material elements of the offence or constitute only the context of the latter, are always a precondition for the implementation of a dérive sectaire”. Let us sum up: to assess a dérive sectaire, the judge would therefore have at his disposal the ten criteria of dangerousness recalled on page 26; if a certain number are established (the number being at his discretion, presumably), he will then be able to speak effectively of a “dérive sectaire”, conclude that a “mental hold” exists… and apply the About-Picard law, that regrettable attempt by the French legislator to criminalise the vague and unmastered notion of psychological subjection (the current legal translation of mental hold).

The rapporteurs have used a circular logic which does not trouble itself to avoid contradictions, since they concede on page 28: “Faced with the complexity of determining at what moment an individual, who initially freely chooses to submit to the demands of his new group, loses that freedom through a placing in a state of subjection, the criminal judge has, in analysing the files of dérives sectaires, brought out the possibility of delimiting the notion of mental hold both in the framework of the application of the About-Picard law and in the implementation of the other texts of the penal code, since there is in France no “anti-cult” legislation but texts of ordinary law which may be applied to dérives sectaires”.

The judge may therefore rest easy. If he does not know what mental hold is, he can always apply the About-Picard law, which knows how to punish what he does not understand. He will have recourse to the so-called “expert” (they can be counted on the fingers of one hand) who, given the volatility of the subject, will take the decision in his place.

In American case law, a scientific theory may be invoked only if it is the object of a majority consensus of the scientific community concerned (see Massimo Introvigne’s work “Brainwashing – myth or reality”). This approach appears reasonable. Apparently in France it is not the case. We are not aware of a theory of mental hold shared by a majority of the ad hoc scientific community, and we consider it particularly inappropriate that the French parliament should have passed a criminal law on so delicate a subject of study (one which ought still to be confined to the research world), while moreover ostensibly targeting one part of the population, despite assertions to the contrary (if this law were not discriminatory against the said “cults”, it would have been invoked, for example, against the Renault company on the basis of the criteria of dangerousness mentioned on page 26 and the number of suicides observed within the company; we of course do not subscribe to the use of this bad law against the car manufacturer, but wish by this illustration to point up the incoherences of the legislator and of MIVILUDES).

The absence of methodology and the chronic insufficiency of verifiable references and figures

The reader of MIVILUDES’s 2007 report will search the document in vain for the references to pluralist and verifiable studies which are nonetheless indispensable to a work of synthesis of this nature.

Sociologists of religion are ignored as usual. The report’s authors state on page 13: ”(…) today dérives sectaires are more numerous in the field of health, alternative therapies and personal development than in the strictly spiritual and religious framework”. This sentence implies, without really saying so, that the phenomenon of dérives sectaires in spiritual circles does not have the scale that has been implied for 30 years. MIVILUDES would therefore be moving on to more pressing subjects while retaining its accusatory capital: less than “more numerous” is still numerous dérives sectaires. Instead of at last drawing up a salutary balance sheet with the help of sociologists, MIVILUDES prefers to divert attention until the next scoop allows it to feed the psychosis against spiritual minorities anew.

Not only does MIVILUDES take no account of academics’ work (with a few rare exceptions, and apparently only when the argument is compatible with its own discourse), but it reproaches those who do use it for doing so, on page 120: “To reinforce and legitimise its discourse, the cult sphere calls on the word of academic experts. The denunciation of the refusal of adversarial debate and the appeal to the endorsement of sociologists, jurists, philosophers, historians of religion or other “experts” are one of the constants of cult rhetoric (…)”. It is not pointless to recall in what terms Mr Roulet judged academic work at the conference organised by CESNUR in Bordeaux: a way “for a few academics to spend their time citing one another” (source: Sud-Ouest, 2 June 2007, article by Hélène Rouquette-Valeins).

A section is devoted to satanism. In an article in Le Monde of 17 March 2008, Stéphanie Le Bars states: “[according to] Olivier Bobineau, member of the Societies, religions, laïcités group of the CNRS, for a time associated with MIVILUDES’s work, the figures put forward by the Mission are “absurd”. “Satanism is a non-problem and represents no danger”, asserts the researcher, who has just edited a collective work, Satanism, what danger for society? (…)”.

On page 159 the report’s paragraph is titled: “A psychologist’s view of the dérives of the practice of induced false memories”. Delphine Guerard (clinical psychologist of the association “Alerte Faux Souvenirs Induits”) comments over ten pages on the practice of induced memories.

Why is Olivier Bobineau’s work (and that of other researchers) not integrated into MIVILUDES’s presentation? Why is a privileged place accorded to Delphine Guerard’s opinion? Are there no other expert assessments available?

It is not for us to evaluate the doctrine of satanism or the theory of induced memories; our purpose is to question the precautions taken to guarantee quality investigations. A public body for the assessment of risks, on subjects as vast and diverse as the new spiritualities and alternative health methods, must be an organ of synthesis of research work. It must be the relay of the scientific and legal consensus on these subjects, if there is one. If the consensus does not exist, its mission is to ensure that work will make it possible to arrive at a balanced overall view. One may accept — while regretting it — the partiality of associations such as the UNADFI or the CCMM. It is not acceptable on the part of a mission attached to the prime minister.

The report refers on page 101 to the association INFORM. The thorough work carried out by this British body for the study of spiritual minorities (see our interview with its president) is the opposite of that carried out by MIVILUDES, which could advantageously take inspiration from it.

As for the figures which would illustrate the alleged social scourge constituted by dérives sectaires, they are of course absent (or contradicted: see the preceding quotation from Olivier Bobineau on satanism). On page 13 the dérives are said to be “more numerous” in the health and personal-development sector. Thirty years of campaigning ought, in principle, to have allowed MIVILUDES (and its predecessors) to present quantified and substantiated statistics; it is still reduced to resorting to spurious, falsely alarmist data, or to the adjectives “many” and “numerous” — and that without contemplating any calling into question of its approach.

Curiously, this absence of figures is surprising in the paragraph commenting on the sequels to the parliamentary commission of inquiry “the stolen childhood”, page 53. Let us recall the facts: before the inquiry, the deputies in charge had peremptorily asserted that 80,000 to 100,000 children were in danger in cults. After the inquiry, and in spite of the contrary evidence supplied by the various administrations, the commission’s report persisted in announcing extravagant figures of 60,000 to 80,000 children in danger. These figures are not mentioned in MIVILUDES’s 2007 report, which had nonetheless firmly supported them at the time of the commission. This omission (deliberate?) would merit explanation, given that the media hammering on these false data has in any case done its work of erosion with the public.

The denial of legitimate access to the judicial system

The denial of the legitimacy of minorities and NGOs to testify within the European bodies is doubled by a denial of legitimacy in access to the judicial system. This point is illustrated on page 53 by a new law proposed by the president of the National Assembly, Mr Bernard Accoyer, following the parliamentary commission of inquiry “the stolen childhood”: “Witnesses called by the Commission, whose remarks were made public by the parliamentary channel (…) have been the object of judicial proceedings on the part of certain representatives of the incriminated movements”. To avoid this “judicial exploitation”, the law recently passed aims “to grant witnesses before commissions of inquiry the same legal protection as that recognised to persons called to testify before the courts”.

People will therefore henceforth have the right to express themselves without restraint during public and mediatised hearings, without the groups targeted being able to be heard and without their being able to have recourse to justice; this law amounts to a genuine right to defame in peace those movements designated as cults.

This denial of legitimate access to the judicial system is moreover more general, since “cult movements” are very often reproached with a chronic “procedural relentlessness”. It is possible that certain groups make intensive use of the judicial apparatus to defend themselves, but they do not do so for pleasure. It is a riposte to the relentlessness of a part of the public authorities and of the media in turning them into scapegoats. When a deputy permits himself to say (with a rather remarkable sense of impunity), during a prime-time television news broadcast, that the members of a spiritual movement (namely the Jehovah’s Witnesses) are all “perfect delinquents”, and the journalist interviewing him finds no comment to make, must one accept media lynching? Is it not legitimate to use the legal tools placed at citizens’ disposal? When a town hall refuses a movement, without legal justification, either a building permit or the rental of a meeting hall, on the basis of the movement’s inclusion in the parliamentary report on cults — which has no legal value — must one accept this discrimination or seek redress before the administrative court? It is moreover probable that the majority of the groups and persons targeted have neither the financial resources nor the energy to go to law as often as would be merited, which gives great latitude for discriminating with impunity.

The choice of blindness

We met Mr Roulet on 24 October 2006 and asked him whether he was aware of the discriminations suffered by many honest and sincere people who are targeted directly or indirectly by French policy on combating cults. His answer was that he was not aware of it, but was nonetheless interested to hear about it. Following our account (which was subsequently completed by further information) we were able to observe that the president of MIVILUDES was not hearing what we said, and his conclusion was: “Were there but a single victim, the action pursued is justified!”. This sentence expresses well the will to neglect the significant collateral effects of a course of action, provided it answers to the victim-focused approach of the moment.

On page 6, Mr Roulet states: “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”. MIVILUDES had more than 200 pages after the president’s word in which to set out in verifiable fashion its methodology for assessing victims.

It is not, moreover, a matter of rendering “invisible” alleged or real victims. But the visibility invoked cannot be merely a media visibility, artificially and deceptively amplifying its impact; it must be based on cross-checked investigations with a pluralist and recognised panel of expertise (sociologists, jurists, practitioners in the world of health, etc.) making it possible to arrive at a classification and a quantification of the various disputes. This work of analysis does not prejudge the arrangements to be put in place to deal with people’s suffering, but one must not systematically and a priori associate the expression of a suffering with the guilt of a group, a guru, a doctrine. This work has never been done — doubtless, as the hearings of the various administrations during the parliamentary commission of inquiry “the stolen childhood” demonstrated, because the number of real victims is very small and calls into question the action conducted until now.

Taking the opposite course to a pragmatic, case-by-case approach avoiding conflations and resting on legal and scientific investigations and statistics, MIVILUDES deliberately unbalances its discourse and its action. This deliberate choice generates a great deal of confusion and tension.

Getting out of the tunnel

MIVILUDES very often finds itself saddled with the cult attributes (however vague they may be) that it combats — and this from a growing number of observers — which it naturally finds hard to bear, since it saw fit to position itself as a “target” in this 2007 report. Not doubting for a moment that its members are indignant at being likened to conduct they reprove, they could take the opportunity to realise (in a very much softened form) what hundreds of minorities accused without proof of being dangerous cults experience far more severely.

We do not think that MIVILUDES’s policy will evolve so long as its mission is not balanced. As Robert Vincent Joule and Jean-Léon Beauvois illustrate in their book “A little treatise on manipulation for honest people”, decision-makers confronted with the failure of their strategy will for the most part continue in the same erroneous direction — all the more so if it is suggested to them that they change it.

Once the context for studying a social phenomenon is no longer serene (and the context for studying “cults” has never been so), the priority is to restore a climate of trust and the conditions for a real debate. The creation of an independent observatory of spiritual minorities will make it possible both to re-establish a favourable environment and to embark on a genuine approach of knowledge. CICNS encourages the Ministry of the Interior to follow this path.