Dossier on deprogrammers and ‘kidnappings’

Press, 12 November 1977, Page 3

Dossier on deprogrammers and ‘kidnappings’

PA Hamilton A dossier on religious deprogrammers and evidence of six "kidnappings” in recent months has been coma piled by an Auckland businessman in his fight to have deprogramming activities outlawed. Mr Romilly Fraser, secretary of the Family Unity and Freedom of Worship Society, said yesterday that the ’ deprogramming campaign in Auckland was building up. “It has to be stopped before somebody is hurt,” he said. Mr Fraser yesterday presented his findings to the Auckland Race Relations Conciliator (Mr H. P. Dansey) and today he will solicit support for a private member’s bill from the members of Parliament for Auckland Central (Mr R. W. Prebble) and for Mount Albert (Mr W. W. Freer). He said he was having talks with another politician whom he had asked to present the bill making deprogramming a criminal activity. The “kidnappings,”

according to Mr Fraser, have taken place in Southland, Rotorua, Wellington, and Auckland. The most recent had been in Southland, where a Children of God sect member had been taken and held prisoner while deprogrammers worked on him. Mr Fraser said the Aucks land! deprogramming group had been working secretly, and since its introduction to the city earlier this year, five persons had been wrenched away from their religions with “Clockwork Orange”-style techniques. Deprogrammers overseas charge up to $4OOO a person. “I don’t think it is an out-and-out business here yet. But it has to be stopped,” he said. Mr Fraser wants an amendment to the Race Relations Act to cover acts of incitement of hatred against minority religious groups. The act says it is an offence deliberately to “excite hostility or ill will against, or bring into contempt or ridicule, any group of persons in New Zealand on the grounds of colour, race, ethnic, and national origins.” Mr Fraser wants to see reli» gion included as one of the rrrn>;nHc in thp art.

In an open letter to politicians and to Mr Dansey, Mr Fraser outlined the methods of infiltration used by New Zealand deprogrammers: Unfavourable news clippings from overseas are shown to the parents and relatives of the convert or devotee;

The parents and relatives are organised into anticult groups, fanned with brainwashing stories;

Polarisation ensues, the convert or devotee becoming more afraid to return home in the face of hostility. This is cited as proof of alienation caused by the religion; A “hue-and-cry” campaign is mounted by the anti-cult group to further depopularise the target religion;

Deprogramming is sold to the worried parent as the “only solution” to a “lifetime of estrangement.”

Deprogrammers overseas had indulged in prolonged torture of their captives, who were kept awake for long periods while their beliefs were ridiculed and they were subjected to personal abuse.

Mr Fraser is backed in his fight against the deprogrammers by a number of Auckland clergy and social workers.

His society’s advisory board Includes Dr George Armstrong, a senior lecturer at St John’s theological college, and the Rev. Alun Richards, the former editor of the "New Zealand Methodist.”