Warning as number of cults soars

CAMPAIGNERS have demanded a change in the law to better protect the victims of the soaring number of sinister cults in Britain.

In a new report, The Family Survival Trust urges the Government to amend a section of the 2015 Serious Crime Act which makes it ‘illegal to engage in patterns of coercively controlling behaviour in an intimate or family relationship’ so that it also applies to those lured into the clutches of cults.

The number of cults in the UK is estimated to have soared from around 500 to as many as 2,000 since the 1990s.

Former Tory Home Office Minister Tom Sackville, chairman of the Trust which supports cult victims, said: ‘I strongly object to charlatans exploiting innocent people and there being no laws to protect them.

‘Coercive control is now considered a crime if it occurs in a domestic violence context.

‘The idea that exploitation, brainwashing and abuse is only a crime if the person you live with does it to you, but not a crime if your neighbour does it is odd, implying that mental manipulation cannot be a crime outside a relationship.

‘Government Ministers now need to do something about long-standing cultic abuse. It has been getting steadily worse over four decades.’

The Trust’s report – Coercive Control In Cultic Groups In The UK – features testimonies from 105 victims of 36 different cults.

Almost one in five (17 per cent) was raped and nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) worked for low pay or for nothing. Many described becoming separated from their families and friends and being fleeced out of their savings.

Dr Alex Stein, a former cult victim and now a trustee of the charity, said: ‘The psychological dynamics in a cult are the same as those of a coercively controlling domestic relationship. In both cases the victim is isolated, put down and abused in numerous ways, including the control of their close relationships. This often goes with sexual abuse of one kind or another.’

Dr Gillie Jenkinson, 69, who was recruited into a religious cult in the 1970s when she was 20 and now counsels victims, said: ‘The environment was one of coercive control, bullying, gaslighting and financial exploitation.’

Dr Jenkinson, who was beaten but escaped after eight years, added: ‘The Government has to extend the legislation to make coercive control a crime within cultic groups.’