Cult-Related Abuse
Cult-related abuse is ritualistic abuse in the form of complex rituals taking place within an organized group.
Perhaps the problem with the word "cult" and the notion of cult-related abuse is that we're all too familiar with it. Probably all of us have been exposed to a variety of meanings for the word. Most of us, upon hearing it used, have an immediate negative reaction. Without necessarily being given clarification as to what particular meaning is being applied at the time, just hearing "cult" sends us into a bit of a shudder.
The most common use of the word "cult" is to describe pejoratively a group of people with beliefs or a lifestyle of which we do not approve. With one four letter word we can not only dismiss an entire group of people, but we can also send out a warning to others we would like to influence. We don't have to go into detail, nor in most cases do we have to qualify the term. Someone need only say, "Watch out for them, I hear they're a cult," and everyone listening will think they know what is meant. But it would be more helpful to suspend the notion that cult-related abuse is about people who adhere to "bad" belief systems. cult-related offenders do not commit sexual and other crimes against people because of deep belief in a philosophy or dogma. All the characteristics that apply to incest and ritualistic offenders apply to cult-related offenders as well, and these include a primary motivation of power and control over others.
There are rare occasions where organized cults kidnap someone for the sole purpose of murdering them. Under such circumstances, the victim may not have had a history of either incest or ritualistic abuse. (See Chapter Three, "Recognizing The Reality")
Cult-related offenders, in addition to these other characteristics, are a part of, make plans in accordance with, and have a strong allegiance to a group of other cult-related offenders.
Another common characteristic of cult-connected abusers is that they are involved in at least one criminal activity beyond the crimes committed directly againstlhe victim. These may involve pornography, illegal drug activity, prostitution, political manipulation, kidnapping, or murder. Victims and survivors may or may not be aware of any criminal activity apart from their own abuse. (And specific memories of that may even be vague at best.)
The size of a particular group of such criminals is immaterial, as is the nature and extent of the additional criminal activity. Such cults come in all sizes. They may be as small as two or three people who are neighbors, coworkers, or good friends; or, they may be as large as hundreds of people with powerful international dealings and connections. The criminal activity beyond victimization of individuals has an equally broad range of possibilities. It could be small scale "sex-ring" activities or highly profitable child pornography and prostitution. A victim's experience could be at the hands of a few local folks who have friends over for a night of sex with children, or who video-tape their own sexual assaults with young people and then distribute the tapes to friends and acquaintances. It might also be that someone has been victimized by countless individuals in a highly organized fashion, bringing them to many different countries and using them for long-term prostitution.
The Purpose of Cult-Related Abuse
The purpose of this type of abuse is twofold. With the individual victim, the aim is to maintain complete, day-to-day power and control over the victim's entire life. The intended result is to prevent the victim from having access to true individuality, independence, choice, or freedom.
The ultimate purpose of cult-related abuse is to use the individual victims as a front for larger criminal activity that supplies offenders with far-reaching social power and control. The horror of the crimes committed against cult-related victims is often, in fact, a protective mechanism to keep other criminal activities in place. The most obvious examples of criminal benefits for cult-related offenders are the child prostitution and pornography industries. Long- term and sophisticated abuse literally prepares children for the behavior demanded of them when they are being used as prostitutes. The filming of such horror is an international, big-time money maker.
How Cult-Related Abuse Offenders Get Away With It
In order to understand how both small and enormous groups of abusers can get away with such crimes, we must review the protections discussed under incest and ritualistic abuse. All of the security and protections that aid incest and ritualistic abuse offenders serve cult-related offenders as well. In addition, these offenders use highly sophisticated brainwashing methods in a full attack on the victim's sense of free will. Like the ritualistic abuse offender, cult-related abusers set up situations in which their victims are given "non-choices." This is what many survivors come to refer to as the "double bind." However, because of the greater level of sophistication available to and used by the cult-related offender, here the double- bind method is even more effective in making victims feel responsible for the abuse.
The cult-related offender uses very violent and torturous means to convince victims they "asked for" the abuse, and that any choice they make will result in some kind of horror. This type of offender is likely to say something like: "You will either stick this rabbit's paw up your rectum and tell us you love it, or we will kill these other three rabbits and stuff their guts down your throat." This type of technique is extraordinarily effective in keeping cult-related victims under the offenders' control. This is especially due to the fact that the abuse is enacted in ritual fashion, with similar scenarios being played out over and over again.
Another way cult-related offenders are able to continue committing such crimes without detection is through the forced identification of the victim with the offender. This identification of victims and survivors with the people who abuse them exists in incest and ritualistic abuse as well as in cult-related abuse. When we are faced with having to take action against these crimes, we are often dealing with criminals who are loved and depended on by their victims. This is one of the problems facing our society and child-protection organizations when determining what the appropriate actions and reactions should be. It is also one of the reasons victims and survivors have such a difficult time breaking free of the hold their abusers have on them. They initially feel a natural identification with their abusers because they are related to them or because those abusers have an important, ongoing role in the lives of those they victimize. And, beyond that, this identification is used by offenders for their own protection.
Many incest survivors feel a special burden because they look like the person who abused them. Or they talk about how they were often compared to their offender. Or the abuser herself encouraged the identification by saying, "We're so much alike. That's why I need your love. You're the only person who ever really understood me."
Identification with the offender of ritualistic abuse works in much the same way, with the addition of no-choice set-ups that convince victims and survivors they were culpable in creating the abuse to begin with.
Cult-related offenders add to this by committing an ultimate victimization: one they perpetrate in addition to the long-term, repetitive, carefully planned torture revolving around their victims' sexuality and very sense of themselves. It takes the form of forcing victims to commit the same sorts of atrocities that are being committed against them. This becomes the core of what protects offenders, making it nearly impossible for victims and survivors to break free.
Finally, the security and protection of cult-related offenders is found in a source beyond the individual victim, in the society in which we all live. This social and cultural assistance emerges when society's general moral, spiritual, religious, and political belief systems are used against the victims themselves.
We are surrounded by and inundated with symbolic and ritualized belief systems that are often institutionalized. The most obvious of these are our religious institutions, but established groups of all kinds utilize ritual, metaphor, symbolism, and dogma to propagate their purposes. These widespread structures designed for effective teaching of any variety of things are easily vulnerable to distortion at the hands of cult-related offenders.
Woodsum, Gayle M
The Ultimate Challenge
Chapter One: Looking at Incest, Ritualistic, and Cult-Related Abuse on a Continuum
(excerpt - no longer available online?)
http://www.ra-info.org/library/books/fav_books.shtml
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