The Arnaud Mussy and Néo-Phare Affair: Revocation of Human Rights

The Arnaud Mussy and Néo-Phare Affair

Revocation of human rights, or “the Dédit de Nantes” (a play on the Edict of Nantes)

By Émile d’Albret, member of the CICNS (June 2005)

France is about to go back on the commitments it made before the world by signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ratifying the European Convention on Human Rights.

It is also about to go back on its own constitution, on its solemn commitment to the separation of Church and State.

In Nantes, the severity of the appeal verdict in the trial of Arnaud Mussy, three years of prison including six months of unsuspended custody (ferme), appears significant, like other recent events in the press and in the district town halls of Paris, of a will to ratify the use of what is proving to be a genuine instrument of the most arbitrary repression: the “combat against dérives sectaires”.

Whatever faults may have been committed, Arnaud Mussy is not being judged solely on acts, but through a filter: his membership of a spiritual minority, his adherence to a belief and a practice, and the fact that he gathers around him people who believe in him, in short, a “cult”…

Judges determined that a citizen was liable to a prison sentence for having “abused the state of ignorance and weakness of several persons in a state of physical and psychological suggestion (…) to lead them to acts or omissions gravely prejudicial to them”.

The indictment rests on the subjective and ill-defined criteria of a law that drew severe reactions from numerous international bodies when it appeared, and whose title (“Law to reinforce the prevention and repression of cult movements infringing human rights and fundamental freedoms”) is the admission of an objective of repression against movements which, here again, are designated by a term that escapes any legal definition.

In the absence of clearly defined criteria, this man stands convicted on the word of an “expert” who, as the defence lawyer points out, is in fact a “witness for the prosecution” who has devoted his life to fighting certain forms of spirituality. Witness these remarks made in 1995 on a television programme, in answer to the question of what attitude he would adopt if one of his relatives became a member of a cult:

“I would act like Rambo, I would take my submachine gun, I would go into the ‘cult’, I would take my relative, I would bring him with me and I would kill anyone who prevented me from getting him, and then I would sort things out.”

If he has since moderated his language somewhat, his words still rest on the conviction of being engaged in a war in which no holds are barred, and not in an objective search for truth:

”(…) Alas, the family generally looks on almost powerless at a progressive deterioration (…) It is reluctant to resort to force when every attempt to help is rebuffed. As if one had to wait for the worst before deciding to act!” Or again: “Coercive care must be avoided as far as possible, but one must not neglect the measures of compulsory hospitalisation (HO) or hospitalisation at the request of a third party (HDT), as defined in the law of 1990. Cults will find it easy to set religious freedom against police repression, as they often do: the risk is out of all proportion to what is at stake — a person’s mental or physical health.”

Professor Abgrall also advises: “filing reports with the administrative health authority (DDASS) within the framework of the policy of sectorised psychiatric care. If these procedures do not always achieve their aim, they have the advantage of triggering an assessment, an expert evaluation, investigations. Another advantage: they sow disorder in the cult…”

One may legitimately wonder how a man embodying such extremism, so narrow a vision of the problem, can serve as an authority in a court of justice. His presence is acceptable only if it is accompanied by counter-expertise, by the presentation of other theses on the “cult phenomenon”. Yet there is nothing of the kind.

I think it is not excessive to draw a structural parallel between this court and those of the Inquisition, with the “rationalist and materialist republic” taking the place of the “Holy Church” and the role of the inquisitor being played by the psychiatrist.

The various articles reporting on the trial spare only a few lines for the defence. If current events sometimes lead journalists to courageously call out states and members of government to remind them of their duty of morality, in this case, and perhaps unconsciously, they are taking part here in a liberticidal and retrograde consensus. By taking this further step of establishing a precedent, the French State is turning a deaf ear to the cries of alarm that punctuated, for example, the university seminar organised throughout the year by the MIVILUDES, entitled “Cults and Laïcité”.

The media cannot be wholly ignorant of the fact that the About-Picard law is a danger to the respect of the citizen’s fundamental rights, and useless for sanctioning the excesses of human behaviour which the ordinary law already guarantees against. This has been stated by the principal Catholic and Protestant religious leaders, but also by the Conseil National des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen, the standing committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and numerous individuals and associations in France and around the world.

We take no position on the responsibility of the accused in the tragic events referred to. We only ask that he be judged fairly and not become the pretext for a precedent clearly awaited as a new instrument of repression against groups defined not by illegal behaviour but by their belonging to what we call “the new spiritualities”.

Maître Jean-Michel Pesenti speaks of “victory”, while the international human rights bodies are worried. Victory of what, then, of whom? Who is waging a fight, and against whom?

An invitation is extended to all those whose mission is to report this kind of news story: to open their columns to the defence, to give the floor to those who represent not delinquents or offenders against the laws of the Republic, but spiritual minorities trampled in their most legitimate rights.

Read also Susan Palmer’s analysis on the CESNUR site (containing information on the history of Arnaud Mussy’s group and her comments on the affair), extracts:

(…) On 14 July 2002, a member of Néo-Phare, a 29-year-old sports teacher named Jérémie, committed suicide by throwing himself under the wheels of a car in a village in Maine-et-Loire.

The deputy prosecutor, François Touron, echoing the judge: “You are morally responsible for Jérémie’s death. You caused Jérémie’s death!” Maître Pesenti said that Mussy was responsible for Jérémie’s suicide by applying to the victim “repeated pressure so as to impair his judgment” and by using “techniques that shape thought”. He claimed that Mussy had never “shown the shadow of repentance or regret” (Mussy commented: “the idea never comes — nobody thinks, ever, …that perhaps I might be innocent”).

Jérémie was not even living with Arnaud Mussy in the weeks preceding his suicide and was not subjected to physical punishments or threats. Thus, according to the findings of Lifton and Schein on thought reform (1961), it is implausible that Jérémie was in a brainwashed state when he committed suicide.

Jérémie threw himself in front of a car, leaving no written justification for his act. It was not a collective suicide, and there is no evidence that Mussy or the group planned it or expected it. None of the Néo-Phare or Phare-Ouest texts mentioned at the trial advocated suicide, even cryptically.

When Arnaud returned to Cellier around 1 p.m. on 13 July, he found that Jérémie had just left. The next day, 14 July, Jérémie called him three times from his mobile phone, in the morning, at lunch, and in the evening. The first time, he said: “I’m calling from a hotel in Nantes.” The second time he called to warn Arnaud of the attempted coup (Claude and Sylvie wanted to take Arnaud Mussy’s place). Arnaud invited him to his home, but he said: “No, there is nothing to be done, the evil is too powerful.”

The third time, Jérémie called him briefly to say that he was hitch-hiking to Angers [to his home] and that he would call back later. He said he was calling from the car that had picked him up on the road. Later that evening, the members of Néo-Phare learned of his death.

This information could be relevant to understanding Jérémie’s state of mind during his final week. One could say that he was reacting to the destabilisation of his social world. He had been tried by the loss of his wife and by the threats to his social world posed by the police investigation and the negative media coverage. He was evidently alarmed by the chaos within Néo-Phare, and perhaps discouraged by Arnaud’s weak response to the challenge the couple posed to his leadership.