CULT WITNESS | Free Full Crime Documentary | Dangerous Cults (Love Bombing)

[Music] there comes a point in our lives when we might feel that there's something missing i was reaching that point when i was 19 years old [Music] who am i and what is my purpose in life shortly after it was as if the sky had heard my call i met someone who offered guidance help and understanding for the next 10 years i lived a cult experience that wasn't fulfilling but brought a lot of pain and suffering instead why didn't you just leave you might ask well i eventually did but leaving a cult is one hell of a struggle in my case leaving wasn't a conscious decision but the result of my survival instinct some members of the cult drove me to the forest they were given the order to punish me to threaten me and to break my will again [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] is it possible to make sense of all this for the next three years i went on a journey on this journey i talked to experts and former members of cults hoping to find some answers this is jill i was amazed by the fact that she seemed to understand the things i was talking [Music] about how long is it since you left um two years a little bit more than two years so not long really yeah tim seems long to me yeah it's it's a new life it's wonderful it's like an awakening from a bad bad bad dream now i say it isn't long because uh in the grand scheme of things two years is not very long to get over an experience like that but i guess you're still on that journey we're genetically programmed to be group animals we most of the time that human beings have been on the earth we've traveled and lived our lives in small hunting and gathering groups the holy grail of researchers into cults was to find what was called the cultic personality or the cult vulnerable personality and many many tests were devised and measures were devised to try to find those traits that would help us predict who was vulnerable seduced by or influenced by a cult and those efforts um all ended in failure the conclusion one could draw from that is that we're all potentially vulnerable to cults [Music] [Music] there was a friend at college who actually introduced me to a man a nation and a vietnamese his name was phong he described as a master as a spiritual master and i should absolutely meet him because he could really help me on my to find my path so i was interested you're curious i was curious yes yeah they welcomed me uh very well i was the atmosphere was really warm friendly and almost euphoric you know and i felt quite comfortable with them there was lots of food chinese food special things that i never had before in my life you know seafood and all that kind of stuff and it was really interesting quite a different world so when so before you met this this master you were kind of in a in a state that a lot of teenagers are in asking questions searching for the meaning of life and where they're going to go in life and so on and somehow this um spiritual person that the idea of a spiritual person who might help you find that pathway was very appealing to you and then i guess the particularly the warmth and the love that they shout you with there is actually um a phrase that psychologists use it's called love bombing which you often find when people are trying to get uh new members into their into their group because it's very flattering and it's it's very affirming makes you feel wanted and loved and in ways perhaps you know you haven't experienced before [Music] this is jim and judy bergen back in the 80s they were the owners of a successful publishing company in new york city back then jim and judy had no idea that an author in the company was one of the leaders of a cult it was called gentlewind project [Music] one time we made the mistake of asking her for help with one of our children because she was a counselor and the help that was bestowed on us was a little bit weird the help was based on a piece of our son's hair we've got a little piece of his hair and sent it to her and she took this hair and did a reading about the soul of our son on the tape she referenced that the information was coming from another source that she referred to as the teacher the teacher was telling her this stuff so we listened to it and it seemed dead on knowing our son and uh so we were sort of enraptured by that and so then we then once that happened we wanted more information from this teacher and so we got tapes done of ourselves what happens in that situation is somebody is really interested in you now i can't spare too much here but i did send it and so now i've got this information and what's captivating is this person really knows the real gym the teacher knows the real gym and there's somebody out there teacher in the spirit world who knows me and is interested in me so it's very flattering um this is information for jim bergen and the date is june 25th 1987. jim bergen is someone who could be thought of as moving spiritually by traveling his way through evolution that is that he is someone who tends to take side roads and excursions when he's on the main road he feels quiet and he feels calm inside and when he travels on his own excursions he feels confused he feels that his life gets chaotic and it gets overwhelming we would say that this is a period for him now to make a decision about which way he wants to go and how he wants to use his resources [Music] [Applause] [Music] here we have a metal ball sitting on the table let's suppose that is the person the object of the uh of the influence attempt the ball is about to be influenced let's say my hand is the influencing agent it's the one that's going to lead to change and in behavior and position of this target now to start with let's say that this is what we call dependent influence this is what we call dependent influence here you see the ball moving around across the table its speed its direction its manner of movement is very much affected by my hand it's socially dependent on my hand and this is what we mean by socially dependent influence on the other hand let's try another form of influence my hand will influence the movement of this ball over the table but now it continues to move [Applause] in a direction which is unaffected by my hand no matter what i do it doesn't change it goes in its own way that's what we call socially independent change one of the things i've noticed about cult members is that have been very idealistic young people and very open to learning that is they'll meet someone who seems older wiser perhaps and be open to what that person has to say to them about a better way to live or what's wrong with the world so really the ones that i've seen have been um young people to admire they're among the best of the students that i taught the ones who got involved with cults and what happened is that once they were open in a beautiful way someone who didn't have integrity used that openness to the students detriment so there's something to me that cult members have in common the young ones which is this beautiful openness to wanting to learn the one thing that attracted me most i guess is that he said that that i would have really great or a huge potential right so he said like i i'm seeing a lot of potential in you mm-hmm but there's always there was always always a part yes you need to you know try to find try to live spiritually and more spiritually you know we need to be on the right path and obviously the right path was to be with him with him yeah that was really clear and so if ever you felt perhaps unhappy with something or a little bit troubled in spirit it would be because you were not on the right path anymore at this age i was also really um passionate uh pionist and musicians could be could become a really famous musician you know of course with his help that's kind of encouraging you to be dependent on him isn't it absolutely yeah because you could be a great pianist as long as you follow his pathway you will be happy and contented and fulfilled in your life if you follow him yeah [Music] this is leah her parents joined a cult when she was 11 years old the cult had several names including janus project [Music] my name is [Music] [Music] foreign there are many people who hear the cultic message who hear a message and there it just leaves them entirely cold and they look on and in wonderment is you know how can anybody believe this stuff it's so obviously drivel that that that they can't they can't imagine how anybody can believe it and at the same time the person another person just hears it and they're we're ready to just give up their entire life and double schweitzen and we called him tubby and in the name tubby it displays some of the characteristics of cult leaders because they will generally portray themselves as being just regular people you know just a regular guy however there's the information about this regular guy the mantle that this person carries and in tubby's case was that he was sent from another place and he was a spiritual messenger and that he was sent to in so many words save the world on my second or third weekend there for instance i was helping to make a salad and i was told that he was coming over for dinner and suddenly there was this whole thing about being so careful about the salad as if i wouldn't know how to make a salad i mean i was in my late 30s but you're treated like a child and um [Music] i went over in the workshop and he was there and he would do this thing with his fingers you know which is of course a hypnotic thing too but he's sniffing yeah and i bet it's going around in circles and it's maybe pointing at your abdomen and you will feel something really strong and at that time i was it was really a hard sensation like an energy that you would feel inside the body and i didn't i even now i don't know if that was kind of a hypnotic suggestion yeah it was very strange feelings and i thought he must be a master too much [Music] to bring the grandson john miller who's you know ugly and fat is directing there may be four or five women there maybe two maybe i never had a one-on-one with him but i have since heard that it did take place which is disgusting so but he would direct who was going to be with whom and what they were going to do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] b if we go into a cult we go with a prior set of beliefs that have been inculcated in us over many many years and in order to make room for the new beliefs the new loyalties the new attitudes of the cult before they can be programmed on us the old beliefs have to be washed away this is celeste she was born into the cult children of god she left at the age of 23 the cult was founded by david bird after burke's death in 1994 karen serbi known as queen maria took over leadership of the group david berg very early on wrote a letter called one wife where he said that there were no small families and that parents weren't to love their own children it was all the children were everybody's and that he was he was the father maria was the mother and then everyone else was their children that's why children of god yes he said that the bible had only one law the law of love and that there were no other laws so everything done in love was okay and he applied this that sounds wonderful it sounds idyllic but in reality the way he applied this was with sex with children that that was all right because he said we're doing it in love so this led to widespread abuse certainly for myself i was sexually abused and the children that were around me by the adults of course we weren't told it was abuse it was they were sharing god's love with us and we were to be unselfish and to share love with them so love was actually um it was something that actually hurt you [Music] when i was invited to go to queen maria's home i was about 21 20 21 years old it was a huge honor because not very many people saw queen maria no one knew where she lived or even what her real name was what she looked like so it was all very secret very hush even the date of when i was going to they didn't want anyone to know like the airplane time that it left just in case anyone could try to figure out where the destination might be so they said we'll just pack i pulled out the ticket and it said porto and i had no idea where porter was and because it didn't save the country anywhere so i got on the plane and even the first hour and a half hour of the flight i still was figuring out where where i was going quite a large house with about maybe 10-12 bedrooms and everyone lived in their bedroom and worked in their bedrooms you had a bed you had your desk right there and a computer and that was pretty much your world in that room there was a certain wing of the house that was where queen maria stayed and her um top her someone who took care of her full-time and her secretary and there was a curtain sort of dividing that wing of the house and you weren't allowed to go there at any at any circumstances at all the biggest shock for me going to queen maria's home and seeing how things worked behind the scenes was realizing that the prophecies that we received um the way that they were got um when we read them they were from jesus and we were taught to respect them as the words of the lord but when we were there i realized that uh queen maria would ask questions and she would tell us what to get in prophecy and that those were you know she had her agenda and her plan and she never got prophecies herself she obviously she said well i don't have enough faith for me but she made everyone else get prophecies and part of my job there was getting prophecies and i didn't even believe in the prophecies i got uh get this right i mean you all got your computer your room your desk yes and what you do the entire day is writing prophecy for the entire cult entire group throughout the world yes that's right yes that was that was what we were there for what kind of prophecy did you write for example there was one prophecy where she asked me to there were there were followers or people who wanted to school their children more and there was a question about whether maybe they should go to schools and so she asked me to get that but she was saying well i don't think that you know basically she'd tell you what to say you know and so i sat there and but actually in my prophecy i said that actually it would be really good if the children had more schooling and learned to read and write and i sent it to her and of course that was never published lord acton once said power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely i guess i'd agree with that that if we change it slightly power may corrupt and power absolute power may corrupt absolutely uh it depends on the effects that it has on the power holder and often it's true the power holder can be very much affected by the power that he uses or she uses as such there's nothing negative about social power as some people would describe it it can be positive or negative you can use it for good purposes or bad purposes so we define social power [Music] as potential influence the ability of a person to affect change in another person so he said you need to take your your life in your own hands you need to go work you know earn your own money which essentially is not it's not a bad advice but of course i had to a part of this money i have to give him him as a recommendation for the seminaries for what i have for what i was learning learning from him yeah so you were were you still living at home at this point i was you're still living at home maybe after one year a friend in that group and i moved together yeah but that was arranged by him right by the guru it's kind of closing the boundaries isn't it it's kind of beginning to put a fence round around you and and him and the rest of the group and cutting cutting you off from from the rest of the world from your family and friends yeah yeah because that's how cults will control they'll they'll look to control everything that is in your life your time or even what you eat whether you you know when you go to bed when you go to sleep what you do during the day sometimes they'll deprive people of sleep yeah that was that was later that was late that happened as well yeah um intense seminaries um talk hearing him talking all night long without sleep go to school afterwards yeah that happened the way at the beginning the sleep deprivation the confessions the uh alternation of love and and and disdain um and the various other techniques that you find repeated in one cult after another after another whether they're religious cults or political culture psychological cults they all seem to find their way to the same bundle of of techniques it's really important to um being to become to become master over of the material world over the body or so you have to work hard and like discipline your body and your mind so really it's like a meditation work is like a meditation so go to work and you also resolve your karma whilst working that was also a good point you know a good trick to say uh when you work and earn money and give me that money by the way yes you are gonna yeah decrease your karma which means decrease your guilt towards whatever universe so it's a win-win situation you go work and the the whole thing about the rewards and punishments because that's kind of what you're talking about you know i'll be pleased with you is what he was saying i'll be pleased with you uh if you do what i say and when when you when you according to him when you strayed from whatever path it was he wanted you to follow then he would withdraw his attention that meant that that love that you felt at the beginning was actually very conditional it was conditional on you doing what he wanted you to do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] one of the main aspects of this kind of leaders is his omnipotence that means omnipotence yeah omnipotence is a trait of personality is myself i'm grandiose i'm the best of course i'm the eunuch in possession of the truth and capital letters the truth of course and this is one of the main traits of the valida yeah we can see that the leader in some sense tend to establish a perverse relationship with the followers yes i will introduce myself into your mind and later i will remove your history your relationship your identity suck it out suck it out of course and later you will depend on me yeah and you will depend more and more and more on me yeah is this kind of relationship of the the parasitic type i i absorb all your life and that's mine and you are nothing there was a prophecy given where there was inaccurate information given it was a prophecy that supposedly said that elvis presley's wife was in heaven whereas she's he's still she's still alive she's still here so they made a mistake i knew that they obviously well queen maria doesn't even look on the internet does she relies on people to give her information she's been so cut off from society for so long right we thought of these other cults as being weird you know they don't get it and you know the reality is the strangest cult that's out there and we we were being very sophisticated and you know we're exactly the same as these guys with the shaved heads and the tambourines you know dancing on the sidewalk you know you know hearing with my button-down shirt i am no different than some nanny but you know you know looking for money on the streets of new york and singing harry krishnan [Music] my family never knew what i was going through we had very little contact throughout these years [Music] now they support me in every way they can this is my sister teresa together we are visiting my lawyer in zurich [Music] foreign [Music] hmm there's something very basic too about the way the cult sets up a culture they come from the same root and in the culture some things become okay that really are not okay like harming people abusing people often the leader of a cult puts himself or herself above good and evil says the normal rules don't apply to me and because of that they get away with doing things that in a normal human context would be seen as absolutely wrong [Music] ecstasy comes from a latin ex stasis standing outside yourself there's there's nothing more ecstatic than a large group feeling the same thing people get this sometimes watching sports and um there's a dangerous side to it too we see that hitler's germany ordinary people doing extraordinarily horrific things they were outside themselves so there's there's um there's a continuum in our human experience of these things and when they're boundaried there can be in dance in sports there can be these wonderful moments of ecstasy and the cult experience can be very ecstatic is [Music] they ended up beating me and he had a revolver a gun and we were we were at his at his at his home in france uh in the living room all together just the flu shots of five of us and he would take out the bullets you know and would slowly slowly put put in the bullets in the gun and say yeah just go on go on say what you want to say and slowly put in the bullets in that revolver and suddenly got very angry you know he would come to me and put the revolver on my head saying you know i'm going to kill you right now after at this very moment because you're you're just you're not worth to live that's what he said pointing to revolver and well it went down like that you know for hours you know came back to me and putting you know pointing at me and go back to his desk and come back and yelling at me all the time so eventually maybe five o'clock in the morning at this meeting i signed an agreement at iom 3 million so that's an incredible story yeah and so would fill up the water at the bath with water stop with water and tighten my arms and legs and just put my heads in it for i don't know just 30 seconds take it out and again and again and again for one hour and that's just so that's i can't imagine what something more exhausting you just want to die you just don't want to live in that moment anymore and that's also an experience that really breaks you breaks you inside you're not any thought of opposition to that environment really is drowning literally in the water you're not you don't have to you don't have to the strength or the power to to resist so you accept anything and and that's how they broke me every may almost every day or every week they broke me again so i couldn't so this this inner force couldn't emerge my will to to to go away couldn't emerge even so almost every at the last half year almost every day they managed to broke to break my will he's just gone [Music] that's not down that's not him god i can't recognize him i can't recognize my own brother anymore i can't recognize my own brother anymore strange feeling yeah he's just come up to speak to me graham but he was so nervous he dropped everything he was very nervous with me [Music] yes so what do you expect um i don't really know what to expect because roger's here as well sure you know and he's my brother and it it just feels slightly weird you know i mean graham's my brother too but he's different it does feel very odd um you know giving a paper in front of the people that i'm talking about it's also we worked out the first time we've been together yeah in the same building for 47 or 48 years yeah when i was a child i believed that having roller skates was evil i made this assumption because i didn't have any my world seemed to me to be a dichotomous one not technicolored at all the things i had i assumed were good the things i didn't have i assumed were evil it wasn't until a few years ago that i discovered that my parents actually didn't regard roller skates as evil they just didn't know i wanted some i was born and raised in the brethren and left when i was 15 when my parents left in 1960. now you can work out how old i am the then leader of this group of the group james taylor jr had brought in a doctrine that stated we should not eat with um those not in fellowship with us to make this clear as i was still at school this would have meant i could no longer have lunch with my school friends now it's this doctrine of separation that former members say has led to many difficulties now children need to play with other children in order to develop social skills here are some quotes from leavers about their experiences of friendships and how they now feel they lack the necessary interpersonal skills sandy talks about the fact that in in the brethren she didn't learn how to make friends she just sort of inherited them so you don't learn the rules of friendship making and i can speak to that actually because i have a real struggle in knowing what the word friend means i actually find that really hard there is a continued stress for many people from the division of families children not able to see their parents parents not able to see their children husbands and wives separated i met several fathers last year who had left the group and they were not being allowed to see their children and i would like to thank all of you those of you that have been in contact with me um for being so supportive because i haven't just got one brother here i've got two brothers here my other brother is back there and i love you dearly roger and i miss you like crazy and this is the first time in 48 years that we three have been in the same room together [Applause] when i saw him sitting there in the audience it was really quite unnerving because i'm used to talking to a group of academics not people from my own family especially not somebody i hadn't seen for a long time so it was a bit difficult but i think what i did i had to kind of find a way of bracketing that off so that i could continue with the task which was reading my paper but there were times when it got very very difficult and i was quite grateful that i had the the paper written out because it meant i could that was kind of like a security blanket in a way so it helped me kind of control the nerves a bit because he was sitting right in front of me he wasn't even to one side so whenever i looked up i could see him there when he came up to me at the end at the front um just behind the desk there um it felt very strange because normally when people come up to me after a paper they've come up to ask me questions but he came up and it was as if you know the family had never been apart he was he was kind of wanting to know how things were and you know we were sort of talking about the sort of things families would talk about you know how's your mother how's your daughter how are your children getting on and it really felt almost surreal as if some kind of time warp had suddenly happened and as if the past 48 years just kind of hadn't been there he seemed strangely very pleased to see jane my daughter jane he gave her a huge hug um which and that was the really the only spontaneous piece of behavior and speech that i actually saw you know for him to sort of i introduced him to jane and instantly there was this kind of sudden hug from him this year has been quite a journey for me as i believe it has been for you too going out of the cult was like an opening in uh unknown world and really at first it was a kind of struggle it was a big struggle a lot i was really ashamed about my experience i didn't want to talk to anybody and also um i didn't know what to believe because there was nothing to believe and to believe in anymore so i had to discover that many people actually had similar experiences and that was quite helpful to know that to get to know that it can happen to anyone it's something that is innate in humans if you're in a group of people we might feel we might experience moments of ecstasy and in these moments we might get lost that sense of self it has to remain and you you don't you shouldn't kind of relinquish your own power just to another human being even when they're helping you i'm almost immune to get trapped again and yet i know that it is such a subtle process and requires lots of awareness [Music] self-awareness that feeling in yourself in which you are grounded in this moment which is all the reality there is this moment there's no future that's a story there's no past that's present that's a story and there are many different stories of the past but this now which is all we have is also extremely wonderful and precious and when you can be in that present the world opens up judy and i started this jail project where we go into the jail and we work with inmates or we call them jail residents that's doing something real you see and so we've now moved in that direction where we're trying to provide real service as as opposed to nonsense with plastic healing instruments and spirits and all that and so we we're trying to provide real something real for people and it's quite a it's a startling contrast to what we were doing for the world something we do together as a couple [Music] okay [Music] throughout my journey i have met some brave and wonderful people sharing our stories has helped me come to terms with what happened in my life for me there's only one thing left to do for the first time in three years i'm going back to kong a small town in northern france [Music] i want to see if the guru still lives at the place i find out he disappeared [Music] wherever i go i take my past with me [Music] but it will not keep me from living my life [Music] [Music] you

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Keywords: cult witness, cult witness documentary, cult witness samuel stefan, cult witness full length documentary, true crime documentary, free full length docomentaries, free full length crime documentaries, cult documentary, full length documentaries, full documentary, real stories, religion documentary, love bombing, real stories documentary, how people end up in cults, dangerous cult, stories of people who have escaped cults, filmisnow movie trailers, cult full free movies

Id: _cFtZRGCzYY

Length: 56min 9sec (3369 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 26 2020