Reflections on Child Custody and Cults

Assumption Two: The Need for Security and Predictability

Cultic groups foster unhealthy forms of dependency by focusing on submission and obedience to those in authority. Such groups operate under a dynamic of deception, dependency, and dread (the "DDD syndrome") in order to win and maintain control over members. Research studies, most notably the work of Dr. Paul Martin and associates, demonstrate that psychologically abusive groups tend to create a state of anxious dependency in their members. Such a state maximizes the leadership's capacity to control members, in that members' dependency on leadership reinforces their isolation from outside sources of information while their anxiety (typically stimulated in subtle ways by leadership) prevents them from becoming complacent about their relationship to leadership. Hence, they are always trying to please while never feeling that they measure up.

Such a state of affairs can have serious consequences for children. First of all, the children are raised in an environment in which dire threats (the "devil") and regular criticism of their failings make them feel insecure and dependent upon leadership for whatever intermittent reinforcement leadership provides. Such an environment is the opposite of what the psychological community would recommend for the rearing of children.

A second detrimental consequence of such psychologically abusive environments results from the tendency for leadership to treat parents as "middle management" with regard to their own children. Parents are seduced and/or pressured into relinquishing primary responsibility for making decisions that impinge upon their children's welfare. Thus, educational decisions, disciplinary measures, medical decisions, etc., will frequently issue from the group's leader, directly or indirectly. If the leader does not value children or subscribes to a belief in corporal punishment, severe harm can be inflicted upon the children. There have been many such cases in the literature.

Parents' becoming "middle management" with regard to their own children is most detrimental when leadership uses the children as pawns to test the loyalty of parents. Jim Jones's suicide drills (there were dozens of practice runs before the actual suicide in Guyana) tested parents' loyalty to him because they had to give their children the poison. Although Jonestown is obviously an extreme example, the extreme merely underlines the principle, which can be very destructive even in much less extreme situations.