FALLING INTO THE TRAP By RICK BELL -- Calgary Sun You don't have to be spinny or whacked out or a mantra-mouthing moron. You, your family, your friend or the guy down the block could be the one looking for God in all the wrong places.

Steve Hassan knows. He's been there. He was in a cult.

"A person's beliefs, their very identity changes, they turn into a stranger before your eyes," says Boston's Steve Hassan, one of the world's top experts on cults.

"They become disconnected from their own thoughts and think the cult leader's thoughts.

"Nobody sets out to join a cult. No one knowingly wants to give up their life, their needs, their goals.

"They come to believe they're improving themsleves and improving the world and it is then they are led into a psychological trap. It could happen to anybody.

"Many people are stressed out, overwhelmed, they've done the money route, they may be children of divorces, they look at the world and see a cesspool.

"Then somebody comes up and says: We have the answer, we can save everyone. You'd be a fool not to listen."

Some listen, a growing number listen.

"The cults are becoming more entrenched. This is happening more, not less.

"It works like this. Any thought critical of the cult leader, any thought differing from him and you are told to meditate or pray, or cast it out of your mind. You are told it is the work of evil, the thoughts of the devil.

"All negative thoughts are shut off and you are left only with positive thoughts, his thoughts."

Steve has been there. Back in the '70s, middle-class college kid Steve became a Moonie, a follower of The Unification Church led by South Korea's Sun Myung Moon.

"I was just 19 and I was vulnerable. I'd broken up with my girlfriend and I was approached by three women who wanted me to come over for dinner," says Steve. "They flirted with me and I said sure."

The girls were Moonies.

"If they'd told me Moon was the Messiah or I should drop out of college or they'd choose who I could marry I would have taken off."

But he didn't. Steve became a Moonie, moved up the ranks. He was willing to kill, or take a bullet for the cause.

Steve recruited other Moonies, raised money.

Then, after more than two years, it happened. "I fell asleep at the wheel of a fund-raising van and hit a tractor trailer at 80 miles an hour. It created a shock."

Steve's family found out where he was and they hired ex-Moonies to get him away from the group and deprogram him, rid Steve's mind of the cult's influence.

But Steve wanted to convert them. In five days of deprogramming he briefly thought of killing his dad.

"I was still a devoted member. I had a cast on my right leg so I couldn't fight or run away," says Steve.

Away from the group Steve had time to eat right, rest and think. "I'd had loads of disillusioning experiences but the group suppressed them."

"In a cult they play on your fears. If you leave, they tell you terrible things will happen. You could be hit by a car, you could get a deadly disease, you could be possessed by a devil spirit.

"But nothing terrible did happen. By the fifth day I was finally thinking Moon wasn't the Messiah."

It took Steve a full year to feel a part of society again.

"People have disillusionments, dreams, thought disorders of all types," reflects Steve.

"The cults usually recruit idealists. They go after people who haven't been exposed to con artists. If you tell somebody who's street wise that there's a free lunch, he asks how much it's going to cost.

"Remember, if you're in a group and you start nodding out, feeling confused, hearing hypnotic-sounding language or seeing someone berated by the leader, stand up and walk out. Unless we're alert, we can be controlled.

"I know. I was there."

***30***

Here is the response that I sent to the Calgary Sun, replying to Phillip Schanker's letter which was published on March 26, 2000:

"March 27, 2000 "Letters to the Editor
The Calgary SUN "To the Editor:

"Rev. Phillip Schanker's letter (Sunday, March 26, 2000) protests that followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon lead normal lives and 'drive to church on Sunday.' As a former ten-year follower of Moon (1976-1986), I can attest that this was not always the case, and indeed, the change only occurred quite recently.

"I knew Phillip Schanker before Moon gave him the title of 'Reverend' (there is no formal ordination process in the Unification Church). He was an assistant to various prominent church leaders. He would play guitar, work up enthusiasm, and generally put a human face on the often inhumane demands of the church leaders. In 1977 in Los Angeles I was part of a recruiting team led by a domineering German man who predicted bloody disaster for America if we did not recruit many more Moonies in a short period of time. Phillip Schanker was there, making the leader's dire predictions more palatable.

"In truth, the move to have Unificationists live in their own homes only occurred within the last ten years. The church reached its peak in the United States in the late 1970s, and by the early 1990s Moon could no longer hold back his aging membership from settling down and having families, so he simply made it official. But when I was a member, most Unificationists still lived in church centres, and many couples who had been through Moon's mass public weddings were still not allowed to live together as married couples. I was in a mass wedding in Madison Square Garden in 1982 with an Englishwoman I had only visited on three occasions. We were never allowed to live together, and in 1984, she quit the Unification Church, thus ending the marriage.

"Even Rev. Schanker's protestiation that the word 'Moonie' is a dehumanizing stereotype is ludicrous. This word was frequently used by Unificationists themselves until the mid-1980s. In 1981 I bought a T-shirt in the lobby of the Unification Church headquarters in New York that bore the slogan, 'I'm a Moonie and I [heart symbol] it!' Only around 1985 did the Unification Church decide that the term must no longer be used. For his part, Rev. Moon has said in several speeches that his followers should be proud to bear the title of 'Moonie.' Therefore, I would urge the Calgary SUN to continue using this word.

"You will note that Rev. Schanker signed himself as representing the 'Family Federation for World Peace and Unification of North America'. This is because Rev. Moon decided in 1998 to formally disband the Unification Church as such, in favour of the more loosely-defined Federation, which is a non-profit charity but not a church per se. In view of this move, Rev. Schanker's use of the title 'Reverend' must be regarded as questionable, since he is effectively a Reverend without a formal church to endorse his ordination.

"Sincerely, K. Gordon Neufeld"

-- "Can we say that the anus of a holy man is a holy anus?" - Sun Myung Moon at Belvedere, May 1, 1998, as translated by Peter Kim.

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