When I was growing up, there were all sorts of stories about families hiring "deprogrammers" to extricate (i.e. kidnap) people from cults and un-brainwash them in a safe house or other undisclosed location, but I've not heard of this in recent years,
Mia Donovan's stepbrother, Matthew, was deprogrammed at the age of 14. It was the early 1990s, Satanic Panic had spread across North America, and Matthew's father was worried that his son was involved in satanism.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/2020 07:46PM by anybody.
Although well-intentioned, these things backfired for a number of reasons. First, the deprogrammers did not have professional training or certification. They were usually people who had left ("exited") high-control groups like Scientology or the Moonies.
Secondly, they weren't always successful. Often enough, the subjects returned to the cult ("dog returning to eat its own vomit" trope).
Most importantly, there were serious legal problems. These were parents, or others, kidnapping their grown-up children, who had legal rights of their own. There were quite a few horror stories of parents being charged with kidnapping (unlawful restraint), physical abuse (e.g. tying the subject to a chair, sleep deprivation, etc.), and the subjects, once freed, suing the parents and other involved parties.
Unlike LDS, most of the aberrant religious groups of the 60s and 70s eventually withered and died, with notable exceptions such as Jonestown. What happened to their members? Don't know. Some returned to normal lives, some clung to small remnant groups, others may have joined other spiritual movements.