European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - May 12, 1977, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Poge 20 the stars and stripes thursday May 12, 1977 _. A Cults Supply Vouno Neonile with Tho hint. .4. A.  tone  �. I 8h and experience of sacrifice and unquestioning belief about the nature of life contends a psychiatrist studying the sects. The act it must have been heart wrenching to Bethere. Five Young followers of Sun Kyungmoon s unification Church were freed from the custody of their parents by an appeals court Insan Francisco. The lower court ruling that had Given the Parent custody of the children All of whom were in their twenties was no longer an obstacle and the Youn people could do As they wished two returned to the Moon group on the spot As their parents  of which Side was right and which was wrong in All this clearly the Issue of Young men an women repudiating the values of their childhood to join what their parents see As alien religious sects Isone of intense emotion. The emotion is so intense that when one ask the most obvious questions the answers come Back in has Homon fashion antagonistic but plausible and fitting together in some macros Copic framework that does hold the truth some where. The questions Are who Are the Young people who join the sects estimates of Thi in number vary widely from a few thousand to Many thousand what do they get out of the sects what is the ration Al parental response or. George Swope. A Baptist minister who Heads a parents organization called citizens engaged in re uniting families is vehemently opposed to the sects. He describes the Young people who join themas no different from any others but recruited at a vulnerable time in their  then he says they Are brainwashed and forced to remain in the sects through physical deprivation and dread of what will befall them if they defect. Some he says remain because they wish Tobe part of the Power base they believe Moon a korean industrialist is setting up in the United Susan Rel Boll a spokesman for the Moonset which she said had 7,000 full time workers asserted that the majority of the Young people join because the teachings have meaning to them one of the most important of these teachings she said was that god is alive and has worked to re store Man since the fall and is working right  the Church she continued is a Way of plug Ging into god not Only do we need god. But god wants to love and know  Moon she said had brought life to the movement and his critics were telling incredible  m. Kelley who is executive for religious and civil liberties of the National Council of churches sees nothing new or atrocious in such movements As the unification Church or the Hare Krishna group. They have the same characteristics that High demand religious movements have had since the world began he said. Some psychiatrists and psychologists have by Richard Flaste new York times phenomenon begun looking into the sect phenomenon. One of the psychiatrists. Or. Richard Rabkin agree with Kelley that the Cults supplied Young people with the hug Lalemand experience of sacrifice and unquestioning belief about the nature of life. Rabkin who is 45 years old. Said that when he Wasa student at Harvard the University provided some thing Tike that feeling. I did t know All the questions but i was sure Harvard had the answers he said. He suspects students Don t get that feeling Oay. There Are some professionals who describe the joiners of sects As disturbed people who View them selves As having been failed by unloving parents an who Are looking for that perfect  Rabkin said that so far the reports on the emotions of these Young people and on what the sects did with those emotions had been largely anecdotal just opinion what s needed he said is research. Or. Marc Galanter a psychiatrist who teaches Talbert Einstein College of Medicine and who has associated himself with Rabkin in the attempt to Begina joint investigation of toe sects has in fact already done some  and a colleague or. Peter Buckley randomly selected 119 followers of the Maharaj i s divine Light Mission. With the cooperation of the sect which emphasizes Eastern spiritualism the re searchers presented the Young people with questionnaires that were intended to investigate their mental Well being before and after they joined the group. Galanter conceded that As with All such questionnaires it was difficult to determine How truthful the answers were or How much the Young people s experience in the group had biased their perceptions of their lives. Nevertheless the researchers came of with some provocative findings. Thirty eight per cent of the members said they bad sought some kind of psychological help before joining the group. Nine per cent said they had been hospitalized for emotional problems. Ninety two per cent said they had used marijuana sometime prior to joining. The majority said they Felt at least moderately tense in the time before they joined the sect and they said they were much less tense afterwards sense of Relief that appeared to be expressed in a precipitous decline in drug use although a few said that they continued to use drugs. Galanter said that the most important Factor i relieving emotional distress appeared to be the members sense of belonging to the group and at the same time feeling antagonistic toward outsiders. He said that in his View therefore the Comfort the members found in the group was a major reason they  did not seem  in talking to Many of the divine Light and unification Church members Galanter said he did not find that their membership related in any Way to an inability to think  Are the families of these Young people to blame Galanter did t think they necessarily were. Some of these people i spoke to came from Rattler sound family backgrounds he said. The parents loved them and took care of them. They just seemed to hit the movement at a transitional period and it was t so much some personal deficit As a Nat ural  the transition period he said was usually jus before graduating from College and just after when there was a great Deal of uncertainty in their  parents learn that their children have joined one of the sects they often respond with anger. The reason for the anger according to one viewpoint is that the parents Are too rigid to accept anything but contemporary Western values they become enraged by the thought of their children wasting what the parents View As their potential another viewpoint is that the anger grows from genuine concern for the loss of tree will they imagine in their  parents however appear to have accepted their children s membership in a sect. In one recent court Case a Mother testified about her son s be longing to the Hare Krishna  have always been a close family she said and after we accepted what he was trying to project to us we were Able to maintain an open relation ship but she added we still miss him on our traditional  what Are the possible courses of parental action the action that gets the most publicity is deprogramming in which the child is forcibly taken from the sect and through continuous verbal persuasion is induced to recant the sect s beliefs. The courts have disapproved of abduction. Swope of the anti sect group agrees that it s a bad solution but the Only one right  what he d like to see is legislation setting up a conservatorship i which the parents would be Given custody of their children for 30 Days. In that time he said a sect beliefs could be challenged. Rabkin sees the need for a middleman to oper ate Between the antagonistic parents on the one hand and their enemy the sects on the other  has found he said that the sects Are willing to hasten to reason if a child appears to be deeply Trou bled and needs Relief from the Rigours of the group they can understand that. A. A,2fr Wajeed to parental intervention May  l one a Zuffi involved. He said that since inimical feel inra k01T" the sense attack the group could be lil to Oon sects say they would there Are some observers who assert that with or without parental involvement the outrage from 0nsiderable a own Accord. Members of unification Church freed fro