Fear creates a recipe for exploitation
Cults, lifestyle leaders and multi-level marketers all read the same play book, which Ros Hodgkins knows only too well. Her life’s work is to shine a light on the charlatans
WITH ANN WASON MOORE
HAS there ever been a better time to create a cult?
After all, the world has prepared the perfect recipe: take one part pandemic, add economic uncertainty, crack a few conspiracies, whip up some social discontent, stir until thoroughly vulnerable, then drink the Kool-Aid.
And unfortunately, the Gold Coast is starting to simmer with radical activity.
If the megachurches of the fundamentalist religions – which are faiths, not cults – aren’t enough for you, then there are plenty of more radical options freely available.
It is a recipe for disaster, according to Cult Information and Family Support founder Ros Hodgkins. And she should know, having fought to free her own daughter from the hellfire of mind control and emotional abuse 25 years ago.
Since then, she has made it her life’s work to make cults more visible to the public and curb their harm through political action. Despite the name of her organisation, it’s not just cult activities Ros is concerned with. She also keeps tabs on lifestyle leaders and manic multilevel marketers looking to find new followers. And no sooner is one radical fire extinguished then another starts.
The current climate, both globally and at home in Australia, has her worried.
“We think there are many thousands of cults we don’t even know about, but we do know about hundreds, many of which are in Australia – even if with just a few members. They come and go, they never totally disappear, they just pop up in new states and cities,” says Ros, who lives in Nowra, NSW.
“Cults feed off the vulnerable. We all think we’re too smart to be drawn in, but they prey on vulnerabilities and right now, we are all very exposed. Just look at all of the conspiracies circulating.
“I’ve been dealing with cults for decades. I know how the recruiting goes. It starts with the love-bombing, making people feel so special and necessary. For those who feel cut off from the world or lonely, nothing feels so good.
“But they draw you in and then tear you down. It’s like domestic abuse writ large. It starts with mild behaviour control, you’re cut off from friends and family and before you realise it you are under someone else’s control.
“Now we’ve got the internet with so much information about cults, but sadly it’s recruiting people as well.
“We’ve actually done a huge amount to try to get our Australian Government to look at the problem of cults.’’
Ros says the region has long been a siren for all sorts of radicalism, whether of religious, health or business persuasion.
There’s the Brisbane Christian Fellowship at Samford, where female servitude has been the focus of former media scrutiny. And there’s the little town of Tyalgum in northern New South Wales, which Ros says is essentially owned and run by the group Hermes Far Eastern Shining. The group was founded by Gerald Attril, a clinical psychologist from Queensland, who changed his name to “Jessa O’ My Heart’’ and led the group with absolute authority until he died in 2012.
“That area in northern NSW has always had a volatile atmosphere, it really attracts the different. It’s always been like that and probably always will be,” says Ros.
“Followers are often just lovely people who are looking for love and acceptance and the sad thing is when they finally get out and look back, they realise they lost 15 to 20 years of their lives.”
Ros says one of the hallmarks of cults is separating followers not just from their families but their money.
If a cult isn’t for you, then how about a lifestyle leader? Non-religious, mainstream members of society – these are the people with the loudest voices, claiming to speak with authority and making money doing it.
“And then there are multilevel marketers, or MLM, which are basically legal pyramid schemes.
“That area is very interesting, they’ve just ripped their marketing material straight out of the cult book.
“MLM is all about indoctrination … love-bombing people, especially women at home with children, with the encouragement that they are special, that they can make a lot of money, run their own lives, be free and fabulous, when really they are signing up for an indentured servitude.
“The vast majority, something like 99 per cent, of people in MLMs lose money. When all is said and done, they are supporting the 1 per cent at the top. They all have a very specific way of speaking and introducing the idea. You never give all the information at the start. You reel people in slowly and lock them down.
“We need to make more people aware that it’s about power, money and control.”
Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, Ros proudly calls herself a Christian. But for her, it’s a simple belief, about giving back to the community and bringing families together, especially her own.
Almost 30 years since her daughter Emma escaped from the Boston Movement, later known as the International Churches of Christ, Ros says the techniques of manipulation remain the same.
“Religions respect individuals’ autonomy. They try to help individuals rather than dictate to them,’’ she says.
“For Emma, that was not the experience at all. She was in that vulnerable state herself, she was lonely. She had moved to Sydney and was looking for a nice church. She always had good friends at our Uniting Church. She found this Boston Movement and they were just so welcoming she thought she had really found a home.
“But they slowly and surely started to control her and brainwash her, to cut off her family. They told her that I was Satan and she believed it.
“My husband and I were desperate. We found someone in America to coach us on how to get her out and we finally were able to get her home. After three days of talking and gentle questioning, she made the decision to get out.
“The important thing is to keep the contact and to ask open-ended questions, not to tell them they’re in a cult and not to put that chasm between them, but to try and keep that communication going.
“But it was so terribly hard for her. She was devastated to lose those friends, they just cut her off. But she stayed strong, she went on Four Corners to talk about her experience and it’s what made me decide to set up CIFS.
“We get dozens of calls every month and given the state of the world, I’m expecting more to come.”