The Theme of the "Cults" in Broadcast Debates (chapter 1: 2004-2007)

The Theme of the “Cults” in Broadcast Debates (chapter 1: 2004 - 2007)

… on television and radio.

Go to chapter 2 (2008 - 2011)

The American media have introduced two rules into their relationship with the general public:

The “Fairness doctrine”, which obliges television channels not to limit themselves to a single point of view in the presentation of a controversial public question.

The “personal attack rule”, which requires the channels to send, within eight days, a copy of the programme concerned to all those who have been attacked by name on air, so that they can defend themselves.

In France, as in many other countries, the world of television generally believes itself obliged to present truncated debates to satisfy an undemanding public fond of the sensational. A real debate on the spiritual minorities, in such a context, will therefore never take place.

These soulless programmes, flattering the basest instincts of human nature, unscrupulously digging the ditches of division, cannot be watched without a pang. But we can certainly cast on them a gaze that will help ensure intolerance is not the only voice heard.

Programme “C dans l’air” of 6 January 2004

Programme “Pièces à conviction” of 24 May 2004

Karl Zéro programme, January 2005

Teva programme of 9 May 2005 - Open letter to the makers

Our experience at “Radio Ici et Maintenant”

Programme “Le téléphone sonne” on France Inter of 5 September 2006

Report “Jonestown” on France 3 of 6 February 2007

Programme Zoom Europa on Arte, 11 April 2007

Jean-Luc Delarue programme on France 2, 13 June 2007

Programme about “Waco” on France 2 on 29 August 2007

Jean-Luc Delarue programme on France 2: 19 September 2007

Programme on Canal + on 8 October 2007

Continued on page 2

Reply from the CSA in April 2011 about a programme on “the cults"

"C dans l’air”, France 5, 6 January 2004: “The cults strike back!”

A programme of disinformation in the habitual style. Three virulent adepts of the anti-cult lodge set out, with controlled intolerance, their mendacious discourse, stimulated by a presenter full of primary certainties on a question completely beyond him.

A single contributor, labelled moreover “pro-cult” and for that matter a “rationalist”, is present. He is a sociologist who says he feels “like a dog in a game of skittles”, but whose words are somewhat drowned in the sarcasm and evasions of the other panellists.

The filmed reports interspersing the dialogues are constructed so as to present a folkloric image of the minorities in question.

The programme begins with Mathieu Cossu’s assertion about the “173 proven cults”, referring to the defamatory parliamentary list, a libellous but still much-used tool. The wearisome use of this illegal assertion is, however, no accident or involuntary error.

One then hears that “The cults are litigious!”. A tragicomic reversal of the situation which the uninvolved viewer will not notice. The poor lawyers and psychiatrists of the crusade suddenly become victims of the spiritual minorities, which have nevertheless endured for more than twenty years, without flinching, continual attacks and unjust amalgams.

“The cults are dangerous, the religions, they, are organised!” affirms with conviction the invited psychiatrist (a member of the Miviludes). If being “organised” becomes in his mouth a guarantee of seriousness or protection against abuses, the same “organisation” is reproached against the “big cults” as a sign of their dangerousness! The manipulation is thus omnipresent, but between people of such “credibility” it is doubtless considered “fair game”.

The invited lawyer (a specialist in the anti-cult fight), whose stock-in-trade, doubtless flourishing now, is directly linked to the crusade, suddenly pulls out of his hat “a little girl in a satanic cult in the depths of the Ardèche!”. If the emotional effect is guaranteed, the veracity of the statement is not. But the well-dressed crudeness of these people betrays above all their awareness of speaking to viewers with the certainty that they will not question what is asserted to them.

This is, then, once again the now traditional saraband of arguments without depth, in the complicit atmosphere of a meeting of bandits (the three panellists address each other familiarly, smile at each other, and the poor sociologist - the dog in the game of skittles - is regularly scorned in his role. “Faced with so serious a subject, we are not going to indulge in sociological considerations!” the presenter exclaims when the invited sociologist asks that the appellation “cult” be defined).

One may note that the debates seem more polished in appearance than a few years ago. But the attacks are more underhand. Watching the strings pulled by one witch-hunter or another, one may wonder whether the famous “gurus” have not changed sides.

There is unfortunately still just as little to hope for from television as a contribution to a deep and serene dialogue on the essential question of the spiritual minorities.

”Pièces à conviction”, France 3, Monday 24 May 2004, on: “Journey to the land of the new gurus”

Two reviews

Read also Landmark’s right of reply

This programme is an enterprise of destruction of the company Landmark Education, of a kind we have already seen many times on television. As always, the will to discredit the new forms of the spiritual or therapeutic quest is at work and, as always, the guests are principally anti-cult activists. A former Landmark trainee nevertheless, despite the pressure of the presenter and the other guests, maintained her positive assessment of her Landmark courses.

The citing of the parliamentary report as a reference dictionary of the cults continues, despite the illegality of this procedure. The groups listed are not necessarily cults in the criminal sense of the term. This has been confirmed by several court decisions. Having asserted several times that Landmark Education is a cult because it appears in that parliamentary report should therefore expose FR3 to being condemned in its turn by the courts.

Throughout the programme, enthusiastic trainees express what they discovered at Landmark Education. But rather than listen to them, FR3 prefers to listen to a few self-proclaimed specialists, veritable cult-obsessives, with the sole aim of discrediting Landmark Education without supplying any proof.

Every year thousands of people die violent deaths, murder or suicide. Even when Christians are concerned, faithful or clergy, the Christian institutions are not called into question for all that. Likewise the psychiatric hospitals are not called into question when one of their residents commits a crime.

We therefore ask FR3 the cause of this insistence on associating Landmark with a horrible murder and a suicide.

The presumption of innocence is part of French law, not the beginning of a proof has been supplied, but the consequences of this calumny are already at work.

Landmark Education and Scientology have nothing in common. Why the amalgam between these two groups? Was FR3 short of arguments against Landmark Education, and did Scientology have to be called to the rescue to feed the fear? Or was the opportunity to be taken to tarnish Scientology’s image a little more?

2. The programme is well named (“pièces à conviction” - “exhibits for the prosecution”), since it presents Landmark Education (L.E.) from the outset as a dangerous organisation. An association is made between their teaching method and criminality. The rest of the programme is the development of a judgment without appeal. The journalists draw the link between a murder, a suicide and L.E.’s method. The accusation being “grave”, one expects to see “exhibits” presented. There is nothing of the sort. One is astonished that the courts, like the State, did not carry their investigation so far.

The programme’s title: “Journey to the land of the gurus”.

The atmosphere is anguishing, music and shock images set the tone, the fear is maintained by extracts from interviews taken out of their context but which, shown in this way, aim to feed the cult psychosis. The programme is billed as “special”.

Equipped with a micro-camera (a shirt button), a journalist, Laurent Richard, infiltrates the L.E. organisation and takes part in one of their courses, called the Forum. All the faces are hidden by digital masking, except that of the leader, Alain ROT. A contract is shown which the trainees sign before starting. It stipulates that they are free to take part in the course and that they are of sound mind, no one who has been under psychiatric care being accepted:

“Each client declares that he assumes all the risks of physical and psychological damage and emotional disturbance that may arise during or after the forum”… and “releases L.E. from all liability”

An example of group work is shown. The method is presented as a psychological violence the trainees undergo. The journalist associates it with mental manipulation, the trainee is “put in danger” by the words of the coach, Alain ROT, who does not hesitate to make the person cry. A lawyer on the programme’s set says that the contract’s clauses are abusive, for the course coach provokes in the person a “mental destabilisation” and could find himself liable for the consequences.

It is an argument put into images, attempting to draw the relation between L.E.’s methods and the tragic events set out subsequently.

Then comes the presentation of L.E. It is associated with a “cult”, and the occasion is used to show other spiritual movements. The list from the 96 report is shown, L.E. can be seen listed among other movements. “Le suicide des rives” and “the clan of supermen” surround L.E. and are named. Interview with Jean-Marie Abgrall, who made a report on L.E., he does not take a position on whether the organisation is a cult or not. The journalist’s questions push him to say that it is indeed a cult.

In his report he says that L.E. seems to have a scientific approach, and that the clients are not under constraint, but deplores the lack of follow-up afterwards, a criticism expressed several times in the course of the programme. Jean-Marie Abgrall, who is a psychologist and adviser to the ministry of justice, is said to have been paid 45,000 € by L.E. to make a study of them. The journalist does not cite his sources. The deputy Jean-Pierre Brard makes a gratuitous association with the money, saying “you can see very well that it’s a cult, it’s obvious!” without advancing the slightest argument to prove it. Up to this point nothing in the report corroborates his words.

Once again, we find ourselves back at the course. An example is shown in which the coach questions a trainee without gentleness.

A former trainee kills his mother with a pitchfork, the family holds L.E. and Scientology responsible.

At the trial, a psychiatrist presents a report asserting L.E.’s responsibility. The criminal is committed and declared not responsible, he himself says that the only ones who can help him in his distress today are L.E.

The lawyer of the killer’s brother evokes a procedure of the courts, “intimate conviction” in criminal matters.

That is to say: does there exist a grave, concordant link implicating these parties, the killer and L.E.? If that is proven, conviction follows.

One of L.E.’s members, Jocelyne Berthelot, is interviewed on the set and remains almost until the end of the programme. She is the only person providing a counterweight in the programme, acting as counsel for the defence. She appears as the living example of the effectiveness of L.E.’s methods by her sincerity in being herself. The others, such as a psychiatrist, will try to make her out to be a naive woman who has not seen that she has been manipulated. A certain pity is shown towards her, with remarks of the kind “Madame, when one is manipulated by the cults, one no longer has the capacity to reason objectively for oneself”.

At this stage of the programme it emerges that F3 has rushed into a gap in L.E.’s educational system to justify the claim that L.E. is indeed a dangerous cult. And this despite the affirmation of several former trainees who would like to continue the courses, though they were roughly handled.

The reports show a point of view… at the opposite pole from what the L.E. member Mme Berthelot lives. She is touched and begins to cry.

The association with Scientology is made, a former follower testifies to it: “the vocabulary and the methods are exactly the same between the two organisations.” Then comes the relationship to money, the journalist infiltrates L.E.’s administrative offices, dialogues are heard between the volunteers and Alain ROT, there is talk of “enrolment” to find new trainees, vocabulary used by the members. The cheques being banked are shown, an estimate of 60,000 euros per course is advanced, or a turnover of 1.5 million euros per year. The question is where this money goes, since only volunteers work there. The labour inspectorate and the finance ministry have made no check since the announcement of the report on the cults in 96. L.E. makes no declaration of its income to the chamber of commerce as the law requires.

The deputy Jean-Pierre Brard denounces the non-actions of the tax administrations, and says that this film shows there can be abuses.

Once again, no argument as to what he means by abuse, or the association he draws between what is seen and what he says. It is as if he were mistaking his target, but profiting from the climate of fear generated by the programme to attack every spiritual path in itself.

Still with his camera, the journalist lunches with a trainee doctor, who admits that he advises his patients to take these courses.

In passing, we see that the course of the interview was edited. The plate of crème brûlée the journalist is eating is half-finished at the start of the interview and full at the end. An inversion of the interview was therefore made. It is common practice in the audiovisual world in order to condense and make the discourse comprehensible. Doctors are thus proselytes. An interview with the deputy secretary of the council of the order confirms that there are 3,000 of them in France.

A trainee kills himself, testimonies from his parents and his wife confirm that the L.E. training is at fault. Of course, no concrete argument to support the accusation, other than an emotion of sadness and anger.

Then the tone changes in the programme, ending with a panel with Mathieu Cossu, Catherine Picard, a print journalist and Gilles Bottine, secretary of the MIVILUDES. Gilles Bottine was trapped by F3 in his office, believing the camera was off, he says that the State has taken no action against Landmark. He is roughly handled on the set.

We find ourselves as if in an arena with a “coach”, the presenter, who will try by force to demonstrate that the State is irresponsible. F3 having successfully infiltrated, the courts ought to do the same in order to dissolve L.E. Gilles Bottine defends himself by saying that these are not the State’s methods.

The presenter Elise Lucet reveals herself, the initial bias is confirmed.

Comments: My general feeling is that this programme was carefully prepared. The objective was to attempt to demonstrate that L.E. was a dangerous cult. It is difficult to say that the images seen are not reality, since the journalist was passing himself off as a trainee, the course is shown as it takes place in its most intense moments. But as the images are taken out of context, what one retains of them is only the intensive character, and not the possible benefits some participants may experience. In this programme a dialogue could have been born, the actors were present for it: Jean-Marie Abgrall, who made a constructive remark concerning the lack of follow-up during the courses. Jocelyne Berthelot, an L.E. member testifying to something lived.

The secretary of the MIVILUDES, Gilles Bottine, who does not let himself be carried away into the panic of “the cult must be destroyed”. One would have liked more thorough interviews with the trainees, it would have been interesting for example to go and see the one who was crying during an exercise, and not merely show him as proof that L.E. makes people crack and that it is therefore dangerous. As for knowing where the money goes, the deputies rightly point it out several times, but it is as if they were mistaking their target. The thesis that holds the personal-development path responsible is seriously in need of revision. If the State does not enforce the very simple law that says accounts must be filed every year, there are surely other interests at play that have nothing to do with personal development.

It is easy to see the commitment of those who denounce, we are often confronted with the anti-cult associations, which maintain their combat without any questioning of their starting point, and this does not escape the rule, the report having been begun with a bias, it was difficult for them to question their judgement, despite the openings often offered by the answers of the interviewees, who express satisfaction whatever the emotional content of the courses. The doubts expressed in the course of the programme are quickly evaded, like the veracity of the relation between the murder and the suicide and L.E.’s methods. Once again this practice, which consists in associating certain tragic events with L.E.’s methods, as with every spiritual path, in order to discredit them, is at work in a demonstration mounted in images. All of it tending to demonstrate that the claims of the anti-cult movement must be taken into account.

It was easy for F3 to make a programme that feeds viewers’ fears.

The doubt over the recruitment of trainees and the use of the money was an occasion for embroidering, rather than deepening a question which is, all in all, a matter for the tax services and falls under French law.

Any number of profit-making companies do exactly the same thing and are not accused of manipulation. Here, because we are touching on spirituality, it is the path of all the movements that is called into question. Fear and ignorance are the masters. Finally, we witness a live mental manipulation at the end on the set, where Gilles Bottine is roughly handled before the violence of the presenter’s words. In the end, she took her example from the methods she reproaches L.E. with.

”Le vrai faux journal” on “the false prophets”, January 2005, with Karl Zéro

End-of-year spectacle: Karl Zéro strokes the collective unconscious with the grain for an hour and a half, on the theme of the “cults”.

Children often tell each other grating stories to make each other laugh or to frighten each other. It is a way for the teller to show off before the audience of his classmates, to attract attention. Very often their stories mock or slander a racial, social or religious minority which remains for them a very abstract object of joking. They may for example innocently tell the worst racist jokes, ignorant of a real dramatic context of exclusions, conflicts, human tragedies and a terrible past. Then these children grow up, and become gradually conscious of the reality of beings and the power of words.

Can the same presumption of innocence be granted to television and to some of its actors?

That is what one may ask oneself after watching Karl Zéro’s programme “False prophets”, on 26 December on Canal+.

These interviews where everything is done to destabilise and ridicule the interviewee are too easy, the intentional selection of facts to draw the public into indignation and dread is disrespectful of the public itself, in its aspiration to understand and truly approach what is foreign to it.

The principal clichés are there in caricatural form: money, sex and power. Karl Zéro pulls on the universal strings of human nature to make his public dance like a docile puppet. That might be acceptable, if this dance did not trample some of the most beautiful aspirations, along with innocent people, in a crude amalgam.

I remember with emotion the interview with Commander Massoud, on this same programme, and the profoundly human approach to that figure. Was that the best of the “Vrai-Faux Journal”? I return to this programme only today, for this “false prophets special”, where I observe the worst.

Beyond the veracity of the facts set out, which we shall not linger to question, there are, in the manner of presenting them and in the comments accompanying them, induced and sometimes very explicit conclusions which, for their part, must be exposed and examined without concession, along with their implications and consequences.

These conclusions could be summed up thus:

• The cults are places of perdition where collective suicide is to be feared at any moment - The gurus are swindlers and/or paedophiles, - The healers are charlatans - Esotericism and the minority spiritual movements are the privileged sites of every abuse - Those who speak of Jesus and God outside the traditional frameworks are megalomaniac madmen or manipulators - The Catholic Church remains a safe value and the refuge of a reasonable faith in the face of the folly of the marginal movements.

These are traits that fall within the very particular French context in which the State has for some fifteen years been conducting, under the appellation of the “fight against the cults”, a genuinely liberticidal policy. It has already claimed many victims and led, a little more each year, to the narrowing of the framework for expressing spiritual, therapeutic or educational life choices.

The CICNS was born from the observation of this situation and works to bring into the light of day the worrying reality of a discriminated population and of the violation today, in France, of the human rights to freedom of religion, belief and convictions.

Each programme of this type adds a stone to a shameful edifice of propaganda, and represents an insult to the direct victims of this policy, but also to the millions of people who find or have found within the spiritual minorities a comfort, and often a genuine awakening to a broader understanding of human existence, of which the art of living together in respect and openness is a fundamental value.

There would be a fine subject there for a programme or a report, for courageous journalists concerned with truth.

The public, we are sure, deserves it and awaits it.

Teva, “Cults: simple community or organised manipulation”

For the attention of the makers of the programme:

“Cults: simple community or organised manipulation”, broadcast on Monday 9 May 2005 at 8.50 pm

On 6 May 2005 we sent you a letter of reflection on the announcement of your programme. We were struck by the announcement text of your dossier, which started from a question but gave the answer to that question, without detour, in the announcement itself. After seeing the programme, the conclusion is distressing. No word is severe enough to describe a dossier that claims to remain factual and open while omitting so crudely, on several occasions, to present the complementary testimonies for each situation.

You may have a settled position on the phenomenon known as “the cults” and everything it covers, but then announce clearly that it is an opinion. Your dossier as a whole leaves no latitude for reflection. It starts from an a priori that gives the viewer the final answers. Is that your idea of journalism?

Let us take the sequences one by one.

1 Introduction

The introduction by Marielle Fournier (presenter of Teva’s dossiers) sets the tone. From the first minute of the programme, the viewer is warned that the cults recruit, destabilise and manipulate. At no moment of the programme will you give the alternative opinion a chance. How could it be otherwise, the word “cult” in its new acceptation (although there exists no current sociological or legal definition of the word) is synonymous with crime. The very title of your programme is an intellectual fraud that unfolds throughout the reports. Understand clearly that the everyday meaning of the word cult is not a problem. It is its inconsiderate use that is at issue, towards everything that disturbs, without any need for justification once the word has been pronounced.

2 First report: the cults profit from catastrophes to proselytise

Scientology is said to have profited from the AZF catastrophe in Toulouse to offer its help and gain new followers. Scientology is the emblem of the scapegoats among the cults. Not a programme goes by without this name being pronounced like a scarecrow. The only tangible proofs of this movement’s dangerousness would be proofs either legal or based on a sociological study. Who today possesses such proofs to support their words? Who is prepared to undertake that work of study, which would seem natural in the face of a movement that triggers so much fear? In the absence of that sociological or ethnological gaze, every accusation is abusive.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) are said to have profited from the floods of November 99 in the south of France, by helping the victims. The journalist’s attempt to wring from the various witnesses a word that could confirm that the JWs sought to proselytise is pathetic…

A centre director testifies simply: the JWs offer her help, at first anonymously, she agrees, then they specify who they are, she sees no problem and she testifies formally that there was no attempt at proselytism.

A couple testify to their interaction with the JWs in the same tone. Faced with this simplicity, the journalist looks for the crack: “But if one day they call you back and say, you remember, we helped you, can we come and see you?” - ‘No thank you, that’s all’, “You didn’t feel like making a donation?” - ‘no, I won’t give’. At the end of the interview the husband of this couple states that he does not think we have much to fear from these cults.

Only the Mayor of Cuxac d’Aude meets the unavowed expectations of this report: he states that he is under no illusions about the JWs. The Mayor tells us of his case of conscience: he saw himself obliged to accept the JWs’ help given the situation, and despite his reluctance towards this group.

The report ends with these words: “For 3 years the cults have been present at catastrophes: a priori nothing to be said against this generosity, but what is really the aim of this voluntary work? The JWs move considerable sums of money, do the catastrophes end up paying? How many people do they allow them to seduce, yesterday or tomorrow, impossible to know, but the threat is real… Officially, the cults are there only to help, in reality they often see behind each victim a potential future follower.”

Our reflection is the following: we do not know, at the end of the day, what the intentions of the Scientologists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses were during these events. Must we necessarily imagine them negative? What perversity, however, drove the makers of this report to degrade to this point the impulse of mutual aid of certain people, even granting there was an ulterior motive, in order to feed their argument about the fear of the cults? What were the ulterior motives of the people who did not help on the ground, must we judge them too?

3 A couple destroyed by a cult

This is a case that is becoming classic now. A couple tears itself apart and the membership of one of them in a spiritual minority is used against them to obtain custody of the children.

The report takes up the husband’s cause. This man suffers from the break-up of his couple and from no longer seeing his children as much, that is certain. Is his suffering a sufficient reason for the report to pass a verdict without appeal on his rightfulness, and on the guilt of his wife, when one judgment and then a second confirmed that the mother could keep her children?

What fault, then, has this woman committed?… She belongs to a cult. This membership is not proven, but no matter.

The movement accused of being a cult is the Sri Ram Chandra Mission. Two journalists visit a centre of the movement at Augerans. They are forced to acknowledge that the people seem peaceful, but, according to them, the leisure does not last, the time for meditation comes. In two sentences, the journalist manages to evaluate the group’s philosophy and to show the danger it makes its followers run.

Another proof advanced of the dangerousness of the Sri Ram Chandra Mission is its presence in the Gest-Guyard report. No mention is made of the conditions, contrary to the elementary rules of a democratic country, in which that report was made. No mention is made of the communiqué of the Ministry of the Interior specifying that this report has no normative or legal value. Since this movement is in the report, it is a dangerous movement.

A farmer’s wife is questioned about the movement: her first answer is to say that she sees no problem with these people. The journalist promptly puts her back on the right path by asking her whether she knows it is a cult: yes, one of the worst, it seems, replies the lady.

So, the mother of the children, who belongs to this supposed “cult”, makes the children run a grave danger. The father states that he is worried about the children’s health, that he sees them getting thinner. Intervention by Janine Tavernier who, in the name of the ADFI, thinks they are in danger, without any other justification.

The report makes outrageous use of moments of tenderness between the father and his children, implying that this “guilty” mother is putting them in peril. The emotional fibre is used without restraint to point the finger at a culprit designated in advance for her choice of spiritual path, and this in spite of two court decisions.

Editor’s note: Mechanisms

Concerning these two reports, a word should be said about the techniques employed.

The accusations, the trials of intent, are brought without proof. They call on the testimony of apostates.

We are presented with a testimony from Alain Vivien without anyone taking the trouble to specify that he was president of the MILS, which no longer exists and was replaced by the Miviludes; the interest of his testimony, however, is that it allows publicity to be given to the two French anti-cult associations, the ADFI and the CCMM.

Throughout the report we benefit from the enlightened comments of psychologists specialising in the question of the cults; and of a lawyer who explains that the members of a cult deceive the magistrates because they are serene, unlike certain unrecognised victims who show their distress and thus lose their powers of persuasion.

These techniques of argumentation are so similar to those employed by the ADFI and the CCMM that the source of this report’s information seems beyond doubt…

4 Waco

Doubtless the most objective report of the programme, on the Waco tragedy in the United States. An Anglo-Saxon report, to be taken as an example. The voice-over is sober and contents itself with describing the facts. All the parties express themselves. The viewer can form an opinion for himself. The responsibility of the FBI in the massacre seems crushing. You may think differently. You may also remember what you said of the event at the time of the facts, without taking precautions, like most of the media concerned. Who among the media makes honourable amends today for these past media errings? Who among the media makes honourable amends on the Guyana affair, a tragedy similar to Waco, where the files published by the FBI are damning against the American intelligence services? These events are at the origin of the development of the anti-cult fight by the French public authorities. One could give similar examples in France, where accusations are brought without discernment and at little cost. A rumour without proof on television is common usage. We recommend to you the interview with Maurice Duval, ethnologist, published on our site.

5 Colonia Dignidad

We will not pronounce on this report, not knowing sufficiently the context in which this movement evolved. Our feeling is that it is constructed in the same way. A question is asked at the start, but its treatment seems unequivocal as to the journalists’ opinion. Which, once again, is not a problem if it is clearly said that this is a subjective position.

6 Conclusion

Marielle Fournier concludes the programme with: “we have shown you the reality of these movements and their abuses”…

Our conclusion

Ask yourselves the question in conscience: who is manipulating whom with a dossier like the one you have presented? You lose all legitimacy to exercise the profession of journalist when you depart to this extent from an approach that presents the views of the different parties to a fact or an event. The impact you have on the public is great: that power must be earned.

There is one positive point in the dossier presented, quite in spite of you. It is the openness with which most of the people questioned (in the first report) speak of their encounter with the supposed “cults”, and sometimes even their incomprehension at this insistence on the danger incurred. The hope of a new, open, dispassionate gaze is there, in that simple acceptance of the other, even if one does not agree with him or he is different, even if his intentions can be questioned without rejecting him.

”Le téléphone sonne” on France Inter, 5 September 2006

A pretext of a title for a few of the artisans of anti-cultism to wallow in the crudest commonplaces. 45 minutes of an indecent tea party among friends of the crusade against the spiritual minorities, where everyone calls each other by their first names, free to drip contempt and lies in the absence of any contrary point of view (intended by the programme’s makers). A dismaying and surreal moment of pure disinformation. The strings of this “debate” seemed to us so enormous, and Alain Bédouet’s bias so flagrant, that we neglected to send a letter to the authors of this distressing programme. We have however received dozens of emails from people revolted by so much manipulation (testimonies carefully filtered on air, since only people won over to the anti-cult cause were able to express themselves). It is perhaps the only positive effect of this programme, and doubtless, by dint of indiscriminate hammering in the most evident bad faith, the spiritual minorities will feel the necessity of joining together in an impulse of solidarity.

Report on “Jonestown”, France 3, 6 February 2007

In the weeks preceding the programme, one could find on the France 3 website a five-page feature promoting the report: “Jim Jones, the murderous madness of a Guru”

Extract: “That day, almost all the followers of an American cult commit suicide or are murdered on the orders of their guru: Jim Jones. Toll: 913 dead, including more than 200 children. One of the deadliest tragedies of the cultic world.”

This link between the tragedy and “the cultic world”, which refers to the new expressions of spirituality as a whole, does not exist in the documentary. Why does it appear in the presentation? And why, exclusively, a list of anti-cult organisations and sites to support that presentation?

Many other sites on the Internet have examined the Jonestown tragedy in a much more specific way, but without this amalgam with the spiritual minorities designated by the term cults or dérives sectaires.

Why such a selection? Review of the documentary:

Generalities: a film that gives the impression of a B-movie, unconvincing actors, heavy-handedness… There is in particular a striking contrast between the fiction images, which show the supposed inhabitants of Jonestown prostrate and under the permanent influence of fear, and the period images and survivors’ testimonies, which evoke an entirely different reality (the apostate almost weeps as he speaks of his former brothers, all wonderful, and of their common dream).

As the principal theme: “The madness of a man of extraordinary charisma leads to the death of hundreds of people”

The raw material:

Witnesses:

• A man who wanted to leave Jonestown shortly after his arrival.

He describes Jonestown as “a camp under high surveillance where one felt a prisoner”. Later he nevertheless explains that he left his son there on his departure, to protect him from the racism he might encounter in America, saying that “Jonestown was better for him”. His testimony is that of a man tortured by the regret of having abandoned his son, and presents many incoherences. There are other survivors whose testimony can be found on the Internet and who have a more positive vision of life at Jonestown. Was it impossible to make them known? - A son of Jim Jones, Stephan, describes his father as a raving madman entirely responsible for what happened.

The director says: “Stephan refused to speak for 20 years. During all that time, the media of the whole world tried in vain to interview him. We arrived at the moment when he had finished mourning this tragedy and was ready to speak.” Yet several interviews with Stephan Jones can be found on the Internet, including one from 1984. A lie, or the simple approximation of superficial journalists?

• The testimony of a journalist who survived the shooting at the airport. He says at the end: “People wrongly spoke of collective suicide, it was a collective murder”. At the end of the film, scrolling text says “913 people died by suicide or were killed…”

One can still read today on the MIVILUDES site: “THE CULTIC PHENOMENON AND THE PUBLIC AUTHORITIES - HISTORY: 1978 collective suicide of 923 followers of the ‘Peoples Temple’ in Guyana”

Why this approximation from the MIVILUDES, when the truth has been known to all for at least a decade?

• The testimony of the father of a young girl who died at Jonestown. He was accompanying Ryan on his journey to see his daughter, who had been living with her mother at Jonestown since their separation. He brings to the film that emotional dimension which supplants investigation. Nothing in the documentary, or elsewhere, justifies the assertions of the summary presented on the France 3 site:

“The cult (…) has long since tipped over into totalitarian madness in the exclusive service of its leader. Rapes, tortures, embezzlement, capture of inheritances, forced labour, humiliation, blind obedience are part of daily life at Jonestown.”

The report’s introduction presents Jim Jones as a spiritual leader who transformed himself into a “guru”, followed by “followers” lost in a violent society in crisis. Throughout the documentary, what comes through first about the “Peoples Temple”, and what the experts on the question confirm, is its Marxist predominance.

Why, then, not speak of a revolutionary Marxist Pastor?

If the French-language Internet sites that speak of Jonestown tell more or less the same story as the documentary, the English-language sites reveal that the greatest specialists on the question, those who have spent years studying the subject, agree in saying that the affair is not elucidated, that there is not one history of Jonestown but several, quite different ones, and notably those which contradict with facts the simplistic vision advanced here (see our page on Jonestown).

The authorities first announced 383 dead, then, a few days later, 775 and, finally, 913. Either the military were grossly mistaken in their counts, or more than 500 people were indeed not dead at Jonestown and someone brought them there afterwards. In any case, the authorities concealed important facts.

Why not mention the CIA, intimately linked to the massacre?

How can they dare to assert in the documentary’s introduction: “We are going to tell you the story of the last 5 days of Jonestown”, as if they could hold a truth the experts do not claim to hold?

A strange lacuna in the film: Stephan Jones and the other members of the Jonestown basketball team were playing a tournament against the Guyanese national team. They refused to rejoin the camp at Jim Jones’s injunction on the famous evening, and went to take refuge at the United States embassy to “try to raise the alarm”. When they returned later to the cult’s house in Georgetown where they were staying during the tournament, the tragedy had taken place. The question left unanswered: “What happened at the embassy?”

Likewise, Leo Ryan briefly mentions the lack of cooperation he found from the United States embassy and from the local Guyanese authorities, who sometimes visited Jonestown and found nothing to say against it.

Why not investigate this strange and supposed blindness towards a group that displayed its hostility to the American government?

Jim Jones’s son says that the members of the congregation suffered from malnutrition, to explain their submission and their irreparable act.

No other witness or visitor, official or not, mentions this.

They all speak of people in good health. Should this contradiction not counterbalance Stephan Jones’s testimony?

What does this documentary bring?

No new fact, no analysis of the facts, no overall vision of the very complex Jonestown affair, on which the FBI has published more than 39,000 pages without supplying a definitive answer to what remains an enigma, probably owing to the fact that many elements are kept hidden by the authorities.

It supplies, in essence, a simplistic explanation that serves the French policy of fighting dérives sectaires at the precise moment (a chance of scheduling, no doubt?) when a genuine offensive is being conducted around the third parliamentary commission of enquiry on the cults, and when the CICNS is releasing a film on the same subject.

A distressing report, in the great popular television tradition, which managed to zap the facts that contradict the version of the French anti-cult campaigners (the fact that the movement was just as assimilable to revolutionary Marxism as to the new spiritualities, and the fact that the version of a sole “collective suicide” has long since ceased to hold). To make up for this, the documentary’s presentation, automatically taken up by all the media, is the reflection of a crude, tendentious anti-cult discourse. Read our enquiry into the Jonestown massacre

”Zoom Europa”, Wednesday 11 April 2007 at 9.35 pm on Arte

“Zoom Europa. The zoom of the week: while the traditional churches empty, Europeans in search of spirituality are turning to other practices, sometimes very original ones. Are these new religions or cults? Reports from Bavaria, Greece and Hungary.”

The conclusion that flows from the editing and from the superior, ironic commentary is that abroad a dangerous “liberalism” is practised, while all these groups are “eccentric”, “worrying”, indeed “cultish”. The prices and profits were often underlined, as were possible disapprovals from the established religious authorities. In the middle of all this, a Pentecostal group and shamanic paganist groups in Hungary, a German Zen group and a Greek polytheist group, all with several thousand faithful. Quiet people, looking very happy with what they do, and happy to present it to the journalists. For the Pentecostal Church, an apostate, former number 2 of the Church, expressed the view that Pentecostalism in reality uses superstition for the benefit of a single superstar priest-leader. One can understand that it is hard for a number 2! We learn that in Hungary, a hundred signatures of faithful suffice to declare oneself a religious association and thereby receive the right to create dispensaries and schools and to benefit from certain tax reductions. These Hungarians are mad, one wonders how their country is not already in flames! The Greeks seem hardly more reasonable, since they have granted the status of religion to “originals” who go and prostrate themselves in temples which, according to a representative of tourist affairs, are not places of worship but ancient monuments evidently intended simply to be admired. Worshippers of Athena at the Acropolis, that would look a bit untidy after all, wouldn’t it? To close the series on the religious revival, a “synthesis” of Internet users’ reactions on the subject, in three testimonies from people in the 18-30 bracket, of which we transcribe the essentials here:

Testimony No. 1: The return of the religious? “In Germany, many came to see the Pope, but I think it’s just a fashion.” Testimony No. 2: The revival of the religious? “It’s mostly folklore kept up for tourist needs.” Testimony No. 3: The revival of the religious? “Meh, basically if they’re not hurting anyone, I’m for tolerance.” This programme faithfully reflects French opinion, which does not want to believe in the revival of the spiritual but believes in its dangerousness, entrenched behind its “reasonable” certainties and its anti-cult system unique in the world.

”Ça se discute”, France 2, 13 June 2007, with Jean-Luc Delarue: “Cults - Can we all be victims? / Who can be enrolled in a cult?”

A few guests, former “followers of communities”, or this father no longer having any contact with his two children, who left with his ex-partner overnight… Stories recounting family dramas, insisting on the classic syndromes of the “indoctrinated” person, the rupture with family members, the crazy ideas… In fact, no “cult” is clearly named in the programme, in order to guard against any risk of a defamation suit. The testimonies are those of people who chose to join some community or other; I did not note any notable amalgam, except this one: “these are people who eat exclusively vegetarian”… No comment and, of course, no correction of the generality by the journalist, who might have avoided drawing a link where there is none. In the end, I wondered what the programme was driving at, except to say: careful, we can all be victims of a cult, from near or far. A family member, or even a perfectly rational person of the type of that engineer, testifying.

”Un jour, Une heure”, 29 August 2007, presented by Laurent Delahousse: “Waco / in the hell of a cult”

A film by Paul Degénève. Edited by Alexandra Willot.

Read our enquiry into Waco

France 2’s presentation: On 19 April 1993, the world discovers the images of a ranch in flames; Waco, Texas. Inside, 87 people, including 22 children, are holed up. The FBI agents and the journalists present on the spot are in shock, the building burns in a few minutes. There will be only nine survivors. For six weeks these men and women had been living as recluses, all followers of a cult, the Davidians. Their guru is called David Koresh. And this man, who quite simply takes himself for God, will lead them to their death. What really happened inside the ranch? Why could the FBI do nothing? How could mothers go so far as to sacrifice the lives of their children?

This introduction is a faithful summary of what those who prepared this programme wanted to put across. A guru is supposed to be responsible for the Waco disaster, and this tragedy is supposed to demonstrate the danger of the “cults”, or “dérives sectaires”. These few lines are a manipulation of the truth that sends “a chill down the spine” when one knows a little of the reality of the events (see our page on the subject: Waco). To assert that “these men and women were living as recluses”, when they were under siege after having been attacked, some wounded and several of them killed by the ATF, is manipulation of the most odious kind which, by using the word “recluse”, aims to place the responsibility on a supposed behaviour of religious inspiration.

We noted in this film the pertinent question of Gilbert Picard, journalist at France-Inter, who says in substance:

“David Koresh sometimes went into town alone; He often went jogging, alone and unarmed… If they wanted to arrest him, why did they not take advantage of those occasions to pick him up?!”

Aberrations of this kind, though numerous, will probably not have reached the consciousness of the unwarned viewer, drowned as it was in the journalist’s one-sided discourse and the preponderant interviews with two people whose objectivity can only be questioned, since they are Byron Sage, the negotiator who assisted the FBI up to the dramatic epilogue, and Jean-Pierre Jougla, administrator of the UNADFI. The first, unsurprisingly, holds a discourse that exculpates himself and the FBI from what was objectively a tragic fiasco of the negotiations. The second is a long-standing anti-cult militant whose simplistic discourse on religious beliefs and the new spiritual movements peppers the entire film, ending with the assertion that what happened at Waco has the same cause as what is found in all the “cult movements” and in all the “gurus”. In short, he defends his position, his functions and his writings, which would lose everything if the Waco tragedy and membership of a spiritual minority were dissociated in people’s minds. For this abusive amalgam (like those of Guyana or the Order of the Solar Temple) is one of the pillars of a theory about the existence of a social scourge that the “cults” are supposed to constitute. The distrust and withdrawal of which the Davidians are accused stem from a very natural instinct in the circumstances endured by that community! But, according to Mr Jougla, they are simply an aspect of the fanaticism commonly encountered among the “gurus” and in the “cultic groups”.

According to the testimony of the few Davidians who survived the tragedy, nobody wanted to commit suicide, and David Koresh was not the raving madman depicted by the media. These people express themselves with emotion but with calm, and seem in full possession of their judgement. They would nevertheless have every reason today, having lost their loved ones and having been for years the victims of a rumour designating them as irresponsible victims, to disown their leader and their beliefs, if only to find peace. This fidelity, according to the French commentators, stems from “indoctrination” and “the incredible power of the gurus”. The programme’s presentation text, as well as Laurent Delahousse’s conclusions on the set, omit a capital fact, though clearly stated in the film: the final fire occurred following an assault ordered by the White House (President Clinton). To justify this recourse to force, Byron Sage explains clearly in the film that the Davidians had exhausted the authorities’ “patience”. Impatience, wounded pride, religious intolerance or an obscure “reason of State”? That could today be the honest title of a programme on the Waco tragedy. In conclusion of the documentary, the programme’s presenter declares, against a background of religious music and images of the famous painting “The Last Judgement”:

“The FBI agents underestimated the fanaticism of faithful convinced they were living the Last Judgement at the side of the son of God”

It should be underlined that Antenne 2 was not simply “presenting” a documentary that evening: the programme’s presenter was the voice-over of the documentary, whose different sections were linked by filmed comments on the programme’s set. There was therefore no precaution taken, no counterweight to the images and words, quite the contrary.

In contempt of the sufferings and the dead, but also of all journalistic ethics, here is the message delivered: spiritual inspiration, outside the great religious traditions, is dangerous.

This message is that of a public channel, at a prime-time hour. It is a worrying but, at the present time, unsurprising sign for the future of spiritual freedom in France.

”Ça se discute”, France 2, 19 September 2007, with Jean-Luc Delarue: “New cults, new gurus: Are we all manipulable?”

See also our video clip on the programme: “Are we all manipulable? The answer is yes. Demonstration by the example of the ‘Ça se discute’ team”

The CICNS was contacted at the beginning of July 2007 by an assistant of Mr Delarue, Virginie Dhers, with the aim of inviting our association to a new anti-cult programme (“your point of view would be interesting to balance our panel”, “We want precisely to open up the debate for the first time in the programme”, “your speech will be free”). We are accustomed to suspecting traps in this kind of programme, which never hesitates to resort to the crudest manipulations (even when it is a matter of denouncing them among the cults!) in order to warmly invite a contributor… who will unfailingly become, at his own expense, the programme’s ugly duckling. See below the statements of Virginie Dhers, sewn with lies (the programme was not live, contrary to her assertions, the day of the invitation was in fact that of the recording, the title was not the one announced (“the new religious communities”!) and the one that had been chosen - but not communicated to us - was in reality quite fixed, contrary to what she claimed, the debate was not at all “open” but slanted “for the prosecution” as usual, etc.). We chose to decline the invitation: “We keep an open mind and will watch your programme to see whether it reflects the openness you announce, but for our part, we place for the moment no confidence in the great majority of the media to truly give us the floor.”

From: Virginie Dhers

To: [email protected]

Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 4:20 PM

Subject: Programme Ca se discute (France 2)

Hello,

My name is Virginie Dhers and I am a journalist on the magazine Ca se discute, broadcast on France 2 and presented by Jean-Luc Delarue. We are preparing a programme for 5 September on the new religious communities.

I have found your association’s name in numerous articles and I think your point of view could be interesting to balance our panel.

I wanted to know whether you might be interested in having a representative of your association take part in our programme.

I would very much like to be able at least to speak with you by telephone. For more information you can reach me on 01.53.84.31.28 or by email… You can also leave me your details and the hours when you can be reached.

Do not hesitate to let me know whether your answer is positive or negative…

Thanking you for your attention,

Virginie Dhers

Journalist, Ca se discute (France 2)

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]

Sent: Saturday 7 July 2007 14:41

To: Virginie Dhers

Subject: re: Programme Ca se discute (France 2)

Hello,

To answer your proposal, we did an Internet search which allowed us to find your announcement posted on the Vigi-sectes forum. Compared with the email you sent us, it indicates more precisely the orientation you envisage giving your programme.

Many programmes are broadcast on this theme, and among them very few give the floor to any voice other than that of criticism, derision, stigmatisation and defamation. The jurists and academics we have met, who have studied the question of the so-called “cults” in the field (which few journalists have done), agree in saying that it is not possible today in France to make heard, outside informed circles, a neutral and dispassionate voice that would come to balance this debate.

The CICNS has been working for three years to gather information showing that the question of the cults in France is treated in a partial manner, and that the received ideas about the minority spiritual movements do not objectively reflect the reality lived in the field. The procedures are always the same: gather a few “specialists” convinced a priori of the harmfulness and dangerousness of the “cults”, most of whom have never visited the incriminated movements; gather testimonies from former followers disappointed in their expectations who do not take responsibility for their own choices; and finally, refuse all dialogue with the persons or spiritual movements supposed to be the subject of discussion.

In these conditions, it is not conceivable for our association to take part in a programme whose object is to answer the question: “CULT, GURU, indoctrination: how does one fall into the trap of manipulation?”, for such a title is already, in itself, a manipulation. It takes at face value notions that have acquired weight in public opinion because they have been repeated by most of the media for more than twenty-five years, without, in the great majority of cases, the slightest legal or sociological proof having come to support the argument. Our research on the subject has led us to conclusions very far removed from the assumptions contained in your programme’s title.

We invite you to visit our website: www.cicns.net, notably the page http://www.cicns.net/FAQ.htm, as well as our video interviews with sociologists, jurists and various social actors, and the testimonies of discriminated people, on the page: http://www.cicns.net/Video.htm. The site also offers a wide range of analyses and reflections on the place of spiritual minorities in our society.

It is possible that you will then become aware of the partiality of which most journalists make themselves the instruments, perhaps often unconsciously, for want of having taken the time to reflect genuinely on the subject treated.

We recently made the first part of a documentary film, “120 minutes for spiritual freedom”, which presents the genesis of anti-cultism in the United States and in France, evoking in passing, from documents often unpublished in our country, the great collective-suicide affairs that made the headlines. This film is dedicated to the rehabilitation of the spiritual minorities, and its making was concerned above all with truth and openness. You will find a fuller presentation on the page http://www.cicns.net/Film1.htm.

The CICNS is also organising in Paris, on Sunday 30 September 2007 from 9 am to 7 pm, a colloquium entitled: “Cults: social scourge or scapegoat?”. Sociologists, historians, jurists and discriminated people will take part in this day. You can consult the colloquium page on our site for more information: http://www.cicns.net/Colloque_Paris.htm.

We would be interested in collaborating with you on any programme aiming to restore the place of the new spiritualities in our society. If it is possible for you to organise a live programme in which the CICNS would be free, for a sufficiently long time, to present another view of this subject, so sensitive and touching thousands of people in our country, we are open to any suggestion in that direction.

Thanking you in advance for the attention you will give our proposal, we send you our cordial greetings.

The CICNS team

www.cicns.net

In an email dated 09/07/2007, [email protected] wrote:

Hello,

First of all thank you for your reply. I entirely understand your reticence, but we do indeed want, for the first time in Ca se discute, precisely to open up the debate, and I find it a pity that you refuse to take advantage of this occasion to make your point of view heard.

• As for the programme’s title, what you saw on the Vigisecte site, we had started with that title at the beginning of the investigation but we do not yet know what the definitive title will be. We will adapt it when we have finalised our panel and when we really know what the content will be (basically, who will agree to take part…).

• As for the guests, we will have, as in the classic programmes on the subject, testimonies from former followers, and there will also be representatives of the ADFI or the Miviludes, I will not hide it from you. Nevertheless, as I was telling you, we also want to give the floor to people who have a different point of view. We are in contact with former followers who do not position themselves at all as victims and who also set out a positive vision of their experience. (I do not know whether you know Eddie Smigiel, a former JW, a teacher-researcher in Strasbourg) We are moreover in contact with Thierry Bécourt of the CalPC, who would agree to debate on our set. On the other hand we are encountering a sizeable problem, which is that the representatives of the anti-cult side bristle as soon as your association or the CalPC is mentioned…

• 3rd point, the programme is live, your speech would therefore be free…

If you absolutely do not wish to take part, could you point us to jurists, sociologists or other historians who could bring a different discourse on the new spiritualities? I spent a long time on your website and saw quite a few names… I am counting on your advice…

In any case, if you want to reach me to discuss it, I am at your disposal

Hoping to hear from you very soon

Virginie Dhers

Journalist, Ca se discute (France 2)

In an email dated 09/07/2007, the CICNS replies:

Hello,

We thank you for your reply, which seems to indicate a will to openness.

For 25 years in France, the minority spiritual movements have been the target of the most odious calumnies and the gravest accusations; the list is long and you doubtless know it as well as we do. Public opinion having been thus “formatted” throughout these years, the French today are either convinced that the cults are criminal and dangerous, or afraid to take up the question openly, even within the family.

The point of view of the associations fighting “dérives sectaires” is therefore perfectly well known, and the pan of the scales tips too strongly to that side for a balance to be restored within the framework of a programme like the one you propose. Without asking for equivalent speaking time (25 years!), we think it imperative to allow those who have never been heard to be heard, and that within a framework where their speech can express itself freely.

We keep an open mind and will watch your programme to see whether it reflects the openness you announce, but for our part, we place for the moment no confidence in the great majority of the media to truly give us the floor.

On 20 May 2005, we sent Mr Delarue an anticipatory reflection on the “Ça se discute” programme that was to be broadcast on 25 May 2005 on the theme: “How does one fall under the hold of a manipulator?” (a “classic” title, it seems?). That letter remained unanswered. We contacted Mr Delarue again on 1 June 2005, following the broadcast of that programme, with a letter in which we detailed all the points it was imperative to underline. That letter likewise remained unanswered. You will find these letters on the pages Courriers-france2-2.htm and Courriers-france2-1.htm of our site.

To be real journalism, the programme’s title should ask a real question to which the debate would help find elements of an answer, for example: “Beyond the received ideas, are the spiritual minorities really a social scourge for France?”. And from there, allow the viewer to hear the points of view of people who have to offer the fruit of their research, their studies, their experience of the subject, without bias or passion. The viewer will then be free to weigh that against what has been presented to him up to now and to decide for himself what he wishes to think.

We come back to our proposal: if you assemble a panel for a substantive programme allowing the realities of the situation of the spiritual minorities in France to be set out - which the programme of 5 September, as you present it to us, will not allow -, we would be interested in taking part. We could then propose to you a list of people who would be happy to share their knowledge.

Thanking you for the time spent reading our message, we send you our most cordial greetings.

The CICNS team

www.cicns.net

We received no reply from Virginie Dhers following this proposal.

The CICNS will publicise the details of these shameful procedures, as it will do from now on for every programme of this kind. Mr Delarue, who is not known for being a model of behaviour, has not gained in humility despite his recent troubles with the courts, and long ago lost the text of journalistic ethics which he ought nevertheless to reread before each of his programmes. Giving him a presenter’s role in a programme on so sensitive a subject is quite simply scandalous.

The programme needed “a second wind”, according to France 2 (source). What better than a story about cults, and even the departure of a guest who was given no possibility of expressing himself (Read Mr Labrique’s testimony + Read the list of cuts to his words catalogued by Mr Labrique)? Two million viewers in all witnessed the ritual lynching of everything that is not framed by the single-track thinking.

The detail of the programme:

Mr Delarue attacks from the introduction: “Their mere mention is enough to make those who managed to get out tremble”. The cults. There follows a short report, a masterpiece of anti-cult propaganda, in which Mr Roulet of the MIVILUDES appears. The programme continues in a very tense atmosphere which Mr Delarue attributes to people who have just been removed from the set because they allegedly tried to manipulate the programme. The witness-victims are questioned by the presenter in a palpable tension. Much demagogy, opportunism and genuine intent to harm in certain remarks.

A woman testifies at the very start of the programme, her adult daughter is in a “cult”. This woman opposed her daughter’s marriage by bringing in a bailiff. She was convicted for abusive opposition. This witness is not seen again for the whole of the rest of the programme.

A report:

Parents who are living very badly with the distance their daughter is taking following her discovery of, and enthusiasm for, an “evangelist” group (which the parents admit they very quickly hated), contact an anti-cult association. There they find themselves comforted in their worries. “The association will help them step by step for six months,” according to the commentary. One evening in 2005, the parents “help their daughter a little to fall asleep”, then hold her prisoner for a week in her bedroom despite her supplications (the mother: “It was hard, we had to push the tablets into her mouth!”) in order to “detoxify” her of her new beliefs and relationships. It is, it seems, the threat of sending her to the psychiatric hospital that finally overcomes her resistance and sees her disown her new faith (throughout the programme, the mother holds the daughter’s hand without letting go, which Mr Delarue notes, saying to her: “Now she is going to lead her own life, no, isn’t she over 20?”). Such acts are of course punishable by prison, they are crimes punished by the law. The journalist commenting on the report nevertheless concludes, in the name of the “dangerousness of the cults”: “The parents were right!”. Nobody on the programme’s set objects to anything or adds the slightest qualification to this conclusion.

Another conclusion, given by Mr Boisset: “Most of these movements do not break the law, but they are all dangerous because they prevent people from thinking for themselves”, and he cites as examples the great scarecrow “cult affairs”: Waco, Guyana, the Order of the Solar Temple.

Throughout the programme, everything always goes in the same direction, the few concessions to balance are drowned in 98% crude anti-cult discourse.

A report on the “happy followers” (Belgian followers of “Krishna Consciousness”) mocks them and makes them out to be harmless cranks. The attempt to speak in more depth about their experience on the set is “broken off” by Delarue, who then makes “broad jokes”.

(Then Mr Delarue questions Mme Katz, representing the MIVILUDES: “The MIVILUDES pinned the Krishnas in its 2005 report?” Mme Katz, hesitant, replies: “I respect all movements, as a magistrate.. Your movement is, er… very demonstrative, I believe, and by its dress habits… it awakened worries and was the object of a vigilance…” Delarue comes to her rescue and prompts her: “With regard to the children too, no?” She replies: “Yes, the children too… but I believe, it seems to me that your movement has long since ceased to make itself talked about in France… I am going to astonish you, but I entirely respect all movements and I tell you that you have every right to do what you want so long as you respect the law… and of course if the situation were to evolve, that could be reviewed.”)

A condensed version of the message the programme tries to put across about psychotherapy: “Psychotherapy cannot heal the body, those who claim it can are charlatans. All the alternative therapists are in this deviance, even when they say they are simply accompanying a process, or systematically enjoin the sick to continue their treatment.”

Anne Morelli: Her argument, “There are double standards here”, greatly embarrasses Mr Delarue, who does not let her express herself, and Mme Katz, who reacts viscerally to her presence. Anne Morelli is rather alone on her line of comparison with the great religions, Delarue points it out to her several times: “You have a problem with your Catholic background, no?” Anne Morelli says at one moment: “There are plenty of people who are happy in the said cults”. A former follower exclaims (apparently to contradict her?): “but I was happy for 15 years!”. Jean-Luc Delarue cuts in very quickly and moves on to something else. And, to finish, a rapid dialogue between Anne Morelli and Jean-Luc Delarue: “We have heard this evening only people who were unhappy in a cult, whereas there are plenty of people happy in cults, but obviously ‘I am happy in a cult’ would not make a good title!” “I assure you, on the contrary, that ‘I’m having a blast in my cult!’ would pull in the ratings,” replies Mr Delarue. Anne Morelli: “I can bring you witnesses…”.

The ratings! A god venerated by many television actors, and an incitement to every manipulation…

Read Anne Morelli’s account of her experience on the set!

Read also: Techniques of manipulation on television

Read the conviction of Jean-Luc Delarue following Baudoin Labrique’s complaint

Programme on Canal + on 8 October 2007

”Cults, children under the hold”

Made by Stéphane Haussy and produced by Story Box Press.

This programme joins the long list of television programmes on the cults which claim to inform through a slanted enquiry, and which fall within a process of systematic discrimination one might believe unconscious, so repetitive is it.

For thirty years, the spiritual minorities have been presented as dangerous movements, with a completely reductive vision of their life project, by means of an amalgam between their spirituality and criminal behaviour. The reduction consists in taking a human group and reducing its communal or worship life to a set of problems, real or fabricated, more or less serious, such as exist in every human group. The amalgam consists in considering all the adherents as de-brained, or as manipulators using spirituality, innocently or by design, as a screen for delinquent practices.

It is quite evident that this partial and biased treatment of reality leads to distrust on the part of the minorities concerned. Who has a taste for media lynching? It is then easy to accuse them of not wanting to cooperate with journalists’ enquiries. The astonishment of the latter at the reticence of the two communities cited, Tabitha’s Place and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, is either in very bad faith or deeply cynical.

Demonising people has never opened dialogue, which is the only way, need it be recalled, of resolving human problems. It is interesting to note, moreover, that the journalists’ insistence on the reference to Satan to designate the outside world, in the community of Sus for example, is in fact exactly their own attitude. From their point of view, Satan (a secular Satan, no doubt) is represented by Tabitha’s Place and the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

A real dialogue is not on the agenda in this report, since from the start of the programme we are warned that the groups studied are dangerous and that they put our children in danger: the subject par excellence that fills everyone with anguish and will allow the viewer to be led where one wishes. Disappointed at the flat refusal of the people targeted, the journalists “force their hand”, using the subterfuge of a hidden camera and passing themselves off as pilgrims of Compostela, thus seeking to give the programme the touch of journalistic exploit that will allow the “evil” to be brought to light. Curiously, these dubious methods are less appreciated by the newsrooms when they are used by a Pierre Carles to take apart the collusions of modern journalism with the sphere of power.

This hidden camera will, moreover, be little used in the community of Sus, since the floor is principally given to apostates: the now classic method for discrediting a spiritual group as a whole. We have visited the members of Tabitha’s Place: http://www.cicns.net/Tabitha.htm. The CICNS’s role is not to assess beliefs but to take stock of the respect for spiritual freedom and democratic debate. It seems to us essential that civil society as a whole offer a voice to the spiritual minorities so that they may express themselves, speak of their life choices and give their version of the facts on the situations that challenge that society. At Sus, we met welcoming people, open to visitors, as Mr Georges Fenech himself acknowledged, off camera, during his visit to Tabitha’s Place in December 2006. If the journalists of Story Box Press could not obtain a direct interview, it is not because this community is closed to dialogue, it is because French journalists come with preconceptions, dishonestly concealed most of the time, and reaffirmed at the editing stage.

That the public authorities should concern themselves with the situation of the children of Tabitha’s Place is legitimate, but then let the enquiry be made calmly, without media agitation, not only with one or two apostate families, taking into account in particular the already available work of the people in the field who know the community; the children’s schooling situation and their general condition do not seem to alarm the Education inspector, Mr Wolf, or the social investigators who have been following them for several years.

Let us widen the field of investigation with an example, for this community was evidently used as a scapegoat during the third parliamentary commission of enquiry on the cults, when four deputies proclaimed themselves specialist analysts of children’s personalities in a three-hour visit. More than 60,000 young people make a suicide attempt in France every year, it is the first cause of mortality, and education in the broad sense is necessarily an essential component of this sad state of affairs. The real tragedy is there. What is done? The public’s attention is diverted onto a community in the south of France: “children under the hold in the cults”. Another example relating to the weakest? We are told that tens of thousands of elderly people are ill-treated in retirement homes and hospitals. There again, people prefer to make a din about the manipulations and coercions that supposedly exist within the cults.

As for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, by dint of media drumming they must by now be reduced, in the French collective unconscious, to child-torturers refusing blood transfusions and concealing paedophiles. Is that not a great deal of contempt for these 6 million people across the world? It is not a matter of denying the seriousness of certain facts mentioned in the report (acts of paedophilia said to have been concealed), but of denouncing the process of global discredit of this minority that accompanies the treatment of the subject. An evolution of mentalities and behaviour, within a legal framework, will only be possible if there is mutual respect. Let us also note that there are double standards. The problem of paedophilia has tarnished the image of the Catholic Church, but that does not prevent the broadcasting of reports which rightly show other faces of that Church.

Finally and, one might say, inevitably, the programme evokes the necessary work of the Renseignements Généraux, the insufficiently supported action of the MIVILUDES, and the incontestable contribution of associations like the ADFI. One remains stunned by so little critical spirit about the action of these various bodies, whose doings contribute to turning French society against a part of itself by feeding the anti-cult psychosis. We invite the reader to consult our analysis of the latest MIVILUDES report, our analysis of the hearings of the last parliamentary commission of enquiry on the theme “Cults and minors”, whose figure of 80,000 children in danger in the cults, refuted by all the government departments, was nevertheless taken up by the journalists of Story Box Press, without any further verification (a work of verification certainly less intoxicating than the techniques for hiding a camera). Unfounded and frankly ridiculous rumours are, in the end, all that remains of a parliamentary enquiry that was a new example of disregard for the adversarial principle.

The journalists of Story Box Press seem to pride themselves on a free will of which they think certain children are deprived. It is a social subject that deserves to be taken up. But these journalists would first have to question the nature of their own free will. When the quality of one’s listening to the other is so reduced that it becomes a simulacrum, can one really assert that one has one’s own freedom of thought?

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