ICSA International Conference 2026
- Theme: Expanding the scope of coercive control: Understanding abusive dynamics and their impacts across interpersonal, institutional, and cultic contexts
- Location: Hilton San Diego Bayfront, San Diego, California
- Dates: July 1–4, 2026
🗓️ Event Schedule Overview
The conference, running from July 1–4, 2026, in San Diego, features a comprehensive agenda on coercive control, including:
- Wednesday, July 1: Workshops focusing on worldviews, former member experiences, and financial influence.
- Thursday, July 2: Plenary sessions on ethics and autonomy, followed by breakout sessions on trauma, digital control, and survivor support.
- Friday, July 3: Sessions covering food/fear in coercive systems, financial trauma, forensic insights, and AI in cults, alongside open discussions.
- Saturday, July 4: Final presentations regarding identity, legal perspectives, and ethical leadership.
For the complete, detailed, and up-to-date schedule of speakers and sessions, please visit the ICSA conference agenda page.
Thursday, July 2: Plenary sessions on ethics and autonomy, followed by breakout sessions on trauma, digital control, and survivor support
Morning Sessions
- 07:30 CET – Registration (All day)
- 08:00 PDT – Coffee and connections (Plenary)
- Speakers: Carol Merchasin, Debby Schriver
- 09:00 PDT – Opening remarks and welcome (Plenary)
- Speaker: Carol Merchasin
- 09:40 PDT – Ethical dilemmas: Autonomy vs well-being (Plenary)
- Speaker: Constantine Psimopoulos
- 10:40 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Childhood trauma and campus cult susceptibility (Room 4) – Dylesia Barner
- Patriarchy and coercive control across contexts (Room 3) – R. Dubrow-Marshall, L. Dubrow-Marshall, K. Amber
- Big history context of coercive control (Room 1) – Jeremy Sherman
- Changing minds & laws: Mandated shunning (Room 2) – P. Haeck, W. Grendele, S. Bapir-Tardy, R. Kelly
- Traumatic Narcissism and survivor recovery (Room 5) – Daniel Shaw
- 11:30 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- College student stigma toward high-control groups (Room 4) – Youngjin Choi
- Cultic dynamics through 'anti-wisdom' lens (Room 1) – Eric Kessler
Afternoon Sessions
- 12:30 PDT – Lunch Break (90 min)
- 14:00 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Personality disorders and belief systems (Room 4) – Joyana Santini
- The Perfect Storm: Cult experience contributions (Room 1) – P. Ryan, R. Bernstein, J. Kelly, E. Falconer, D. Whitsett
- Internalized control and expressive arts (Room 5) – N. Bigger Stockdale, F. Rosario
- Story as Sanctuary: Spiritual abuse workshop (Room 5) – Nicole Hardy
- 14:50 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Harms of Law of Attraction groups (Room 4) – Andrew Jasko
- Online Christian counter-movements (Room 5) – John-Mark Rieser
- 15:50 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Research overview: Cults, trafficking, and families (Room 3) – Roderick Dubrow-Marshall
- Digital environments and cognitive security (Room 5) – Vincent Starnino, Michael Ross
- Forced labor and cultic economics (Room 2) – Carol Merchasin
- 16:40 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Coercive dynamics in mainstream religions (Room 3) – Elise Heerde
- Supporting a loved one who stays (Room 5) – Molly Koshatka
- Shame in alcohol recovery and trauma (Room 1) – Zoe Lambert
- Transitioning from scripted belonging (Room 2) – Ryan Lee
- 17:30 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Dismantling control in Buddhist communities (Room 4) – Maxine Christopher
- Freedom of Mind in human rights law (Room 3) – Matt Bywater
- Twelve-year journey inside a cult (Room 5) – Tatiana Badaro
- Peer-led queer and trans support groups (Room 2) – M. Mora, Micah Damsky
- Evangelical Christianity and narcissistic control (Room 1) – Andrew Jasko
(Friday, July 3) of the 2026 ICSA International Conference preliminary agenda:
Morning Sessions
- 08:00 CET – Registration (All day)
- 09:00 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- The controlled body: Food, fear, and fidelity in coercive systems (Room 5) – Jonna Fries
- Soft coercion in transformational communities: Ecological and psychological patterns of control (Room 3) – Rebecca Wildbear
- Scaling clinical competence: Lessons from the Collaborative Certification Training Model of the Lalich Center on Cults and Coercion (Room 2) – Janja Lalich, Natalie Fabert, Melanie Friedman, Kristina Berger, Nichole Nelson
- Financial trauma after coercive control: Rewriting money scripts for long-term recovery (Room 4) – Heidi Clemons
- 09:50 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Online solicitation: The new frontier of coercive control (Room 4) – Robin Boyle-Laisure
- America's cult of wellness: Wellness, wealth and the war on modern medicine (Room 3) – Kim Peirano
- Sanctified submission: When male headship becomes coercive control in evangelical marriage (Room 1) – Bethany Jantzi
- The effect of coercive control within purity culture (Room 5) – Elizabeth Sallows, Dresden Andrea
- 10:50 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- When coercive control becomes a crime: Forensic, clinical, and survivor-centered insights from Finland (Room 4) – Pia Puolakka
- Interpreting power: Sacred texts and coercive control: Evidence from Jewish sectarian contexts (Room 1) – Lea Lavy
- Moral injury after religious exit: A qualitative study of former members of high-control faith communities (Room 5) – Windy Grendele
- EMDR Therapy: Applications for survivors of coercive control (Room 2) – Jonna Fries, Erin Hwasta, Briana Messerschmidt
- 11:40 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Planned obsolescence in personal growth: Coercion, capitalism and cult dynamics in large group awareness trainings (LGATs) (Room 1) – Dave Boodakian
- Why media voices matter: The impact of Decult (Room 4) – Anke Ricter
Afternoon Sessions
- 12:30 PDT – Lunch Break (90 min)
- 14:00 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Cults and confidence: An examination of cult recruitment rhetoric targeting women and its presence in mainstream confidence culture discourse (Room 4) – Jeannette Mulherin
- A reckoning in the Troubled Teen Industry: Survivor voices, legal accountability, and institutional harm (Room 2) – Jennifer French Tomasic, Felicia Rosario, Kelly Guagenty
- How to provide legal support to victims of coercive control who suffer harm in their interpersonal relationships and with institutions (Room 5) – Maleine Picotin-Gueye
- 14:50 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Posttraumatic growth in survivors of abusive groups: Which factors facilitate recovery? (Room 3) – Andrea Escudero
- Why trauma disrupts sleep: Understanding insomnia and recovery (Room 1) – Nicole Moshfegh
- Mandated shunning as coercive control: Legal and human rights perspectives (Room 5) – Savin Bapir-Tardy
- 15:50 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Fawning as survival instinct: Integrating human biology into therapeutic pathways for healing and restoring agency, post-high control religious group experience (Room 4) – Heidi Hewett
- Expanding coercive control research through community-based participatory methods (Room 2) – Brooke Harmon, Annjanette Alejano-Steele, Marla Sutherland
- Shunning and suicide: Much more than silent treatment (Room 3) – Raquel Cuesta
- Reclaiming spirituality after cult indoctrination (Room 5) – Nicola Ranson, Ronald Auerbacher
- 16:40 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- When culture becomes the perpetrator: An analysis of how spiritual coercion may be systematized and reproduced across organizational contexts (Room 4) – Fabienne Harford, Rod Dubrow-Marshall
- Justice delayed or justice served? The High Court appeal of the Unification Church dissolution order and the challenges of the dissolution process (Room 1) – Takashi Yamaguchi
- ICSA open discussion (Room 2) – Carol Merchasin, Debby Schriver, Jackie Johnson
Saturday, July 4: Final presentations regarding identity, legal perspectives, and ethical leadership.
Morning Sessions
- 09:00 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Identity (trans)formation following disengagement from High Demand Groups (HDG): Understandings and treatment implications using systems theory (Room 1) – Catherine de Boer
- How leaderless cults demonstrate coercive control: The pseudo-law sovereign citizen movement (Room 3) – Lynne Feldman
- The U.S. legal perspective on coercive persuasion (Room 4) – Linda Demaine
- Beyond intimate partner violence: Developing and validating a coercive control measure for high-control religious groups (Room 5) – Savin Bapir-Tardy
- 09:50 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Exit costs: The aftermath of cult conditioning and coercive control — Re-traumatization, identity collapse, and the silent pathways back into exploitation (Room 1) – Kelsey Decker
- When silence speaks in color: Expanding coercive control awareness through art therapy (Room 5) – Natalee Bigger Stockdale
- 10:50 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Born into captivity: Children raised in cultic systems and the hidden architecture of coercion — An insider perspective from a cult leader's daughter (Room 1) – Sonta Bella
- Olive Leaf Network: A trans-cultic model of coercive control from survivor-led advocacy in Australasia (Room 2) – Maria Esguerra, Miriam Francis, Lindy Jacomb
- Coercive control in religious groups and adverse religious childhood experiences: A large-sample quantitative study of Japanese second-generation adults (Room 4) – Martina Bottazzo
- Black families in religiously abusive organizations: Considerations for mental health providers (Room 5) – Alisha Powell
- 11:40 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- From dogma to data: Artificial intelligence as a mechanism of coercive control within The Watchtower Society (Room 4)
- Hypnosis and coercion: What people believe vs. What we know (Room 1) – Steve Eichel
- After the world of the cult: My 50-plus-year journey with ICSA and beyond (Room 5) – Paul Engel
Afternoon Sessions
- 12:30 PDT – Lunch Break (90 min)
- 14:00 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- The Red String Project: Identity, belief, myth & meaning (Room 4) – Liz Gale
- Coercive control is not just about fringe groups anymore: Using neuroscience to inform recovery from unethical influence across different social contexts (Room 5) – Ronald Burks
- 14:50 PDT – Concurrent Sessions:
- Epileptic cult leaders? (Room 4) – Yuval Laor
- Integrity as antidote: Addressing destructive leadership and coercive control in the modern workplace (Room 5) – Kim Peirano
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