Showing posts with label Bikram Yoga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bikram Yoga. Show all posts

Feb 10, 2020

Creditors closing in on ‘hot yoga’ guru Bikram Choudhury’s cars


Noah Manskar
NY Post
February 9, 2020

Authorities have seized nearly two dozen vintage automobiles owned by the disgraced yoga master, capping a three-year pursuit by creditors including women who have sued him for sexual harassment, The Post has learned.

Bikram ChoudhuryGetty Images
Half of Bikram Choudhury’s luxury car collection has finally been chased down — and it’s ready for the auction block.

Authorities have seized nearly two dozen vintage automobiles owned by the disgraced yoga master, capping a three-year pursuit by creditors including women who have sued him for sexual harassment, The Post has learned.

The pervy guru — who lured stars like Madonna, George Clooney and David Beckham to his “hot yoga” classes, only to flee the country amid a slew of rape and sexual assault allegations from former students — had stashed the 22 cars in a Miami warehouse in 2016 to keep them out of at least one of his alleged victims’ hands, court documents say.

But in December, Miami police quietly seized Choudhury’s fleet, law-enforcement officials confirmed to The Post. Among the pricey rides are a 1937 Rolls Royce Phantom III — the same model that appeared in the 1964 James Bond flick “Goldfinger,” and that was used by its namesake villain to smuggle gold.

The eye-popping collection boasts a dozen Rolls-Royces in all, as well as five Bentleys, a 1966 Jaguar M10, a 1971 Pontiac Lemans, a 1969 Murano, a specially constructed Ford GT40 and a 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1, court records show.

The rest of the collection, which includes three Ferraris and six Mercedes-Benzes, is allegedly still at large.

The seized vehicles — whose “hypothetical” sales value could range from $800,000 to $1.5 million — are set to be auctioned off March 20 and March 21 at Palm Beach International Raceway, paving the way for some of Choudhury’s alleged victims to get paid, court records show.

Nevertheless, the women — including Minakshi Jafa-Bodden, an Oxford-educated lawyer who won $6.6 million from a wrongful termination suit against Choudhury — are only likely to get a small fraction of what they’re owed.

“The projected revenue generated from the car sales will nowhere be enough to satisfy the creditors,” Robbin Itkin, the trustee appointed to handle Choudhury’s corporate bankruptcy, said in a November complaint against him.

That’s partly because the bankrupt yogi has bent over backwards to hide the extensive car collection from creditors, according to court papers. The cars went missing after a Los Angeles jury ruled that Choudhury had illegally fired Jafa-Bodden after she started investigating his alleged sexual misconduct.

A few months after the verdict, Choudhury in December 2016 enlisted the help of a businessman known as “Elo” in spiriting at least 23 of his rides from Las Vegas to the Miami warehouse, court documents allege.

Less than a year later in November 2017 — facing some $16 million in legal judgments, mostly for his accusers — Choudhury filed for bankruptcy protection. Itkin was appointed as trustee the next year at the behest of the Justice Department, which cited Choudhury’s “gross mismanagement” of his own companies.

Itkin snapped up 22 of Choudhury’s cars at a Jan. 22 sheriff’s sale in Miami, a step that she said allowed her to avoid lengthy litigation to get them back. They’re now technically the property of Choudhury’s estates, but Itkin plans to sell them at auction.

Anything is better than nothing,” Itkin told The Post. “Anything we can do to try to give something back to the people who are owed money is better than the situation where we are now.”

A lawyer for Choudhury did not provide comment for this story.

Choudhury found international fame and fortune through his signature routine of 26 yoga poses performed over 90 minutes in stifling 105-degree heat. But his cult of personality also gave Bikram Yoga a seedy underbelly of sexual predation, his former staffers and students have alleged.

Jafa-Bodden and at least eight other women have accused Choudhury since 2013 of rape, sexual assault or harassment, allegations that got renewed attention last year with the release of the Netflix documentary “Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator.”

Choudhury has denied the accusations, saying he would not need to force himself on anyone because women line up to sleep with him. He has not faced criminal charges.

“Why I have to harass women? People spend $1 million for one drop of my sperm,” Choudhury said in a 2016 interview with HBO’s “Real Sports.”

One of Choudhury’s alleged sexual exploits even took place in a car. Petra Starke, a former Obama administration staffer who went to work for Choudhury in 2013, said in a lawsuit that she saw Choudhury demand a 23-year-old yoga instructor give him oral sex in a limousine from New York to Atlantic City.

It’s unclear from the complaint whether he owned that limo.

https://nypost.com/2020/02/09/half-of-disgraced-yoga-master-bikram-choudhurys-car-collection-seized/

Jan 7, 2020

From Bikram Choudhury to Gurmeet Ram Rahim, why does India have so many disgraced gurus?

Indian spiritual guru Gurmeet Ram Rahim was jailed in 2017 on rape charges. Photo: AP

For the country’s holy men, international notoriety is as common an outcome as global fame

But their influence is hard to shake at home, where people looking for a purpose or cause too often turn a blind eye to spiritual leaders’ crimes


Kunal Purohit
This Week In Asia
January 5, 2020

A mysterious video surfaced in India last month, and soon became the source of memes and guffaws across the country. A man with a neatly trimmed beard is in the centre of the frame, with ash smeared all over his forehead and long gold and bead necklaces around his neck. Sitting in what looks like a studio, against the backdrop of a snow-clad mountain, he is wearing nothing but a maroon waistcloth.

This is Swami Nithyananda, an Indian spiritual guru, and the video was the unveiling of his own Hindu nation, “Kailaasa” – a nation that does not exist on land, but with boundaries “in the universe, in the cosmos state”. It even has its own website, which describes Kailaasa as the “Greatest Hindu nation” and even promises universal health care, education and food security.

This utopian fantasy might have evoked much mirth, but it concealed a darker side – Nithyananda is a fugitive in India, where he faces charges of rape as well as illegal confinement of children. Days before the video’s release, police in western India’s Gujarat state raided his ashram after the allegations against him surfaced. By then, however, he had already fled India, with local media reports saying he had bought an island near Ecuador to be the site of Kailaasa.

Nithyananda might be the latest Indian spiritual leader to gain international notoriety, but he is not alone. Bikram Choudhury is the subject of the recent Netflix documentary Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator, which details the yoga teacher’s meteoric global rise and the allegations of rape and sexual assault that have followed in the wake of his ascent. The list of gurus who achieve mass popularity before suffering a sharp fall on account of their own misdeeds is long – and is only getting longer.

Bikram Choudhury teaching yoga in Hong Kong in 2006. Photo: SCMP / Edward Wong
ASPIRATIONS AND TRADITION

Before expanding internationally, many of these leaders first shored up their support base in India. One factor helping them achieve domestic popularity is the country’s increasing religiosity. Some 54 per cent of Indians surveyed believed that religion played a bigger role in society today than it did two decades ago, according to analysis by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre released in April last year.

People feel like they have no control over their lives, that their lives are controlled by these higher powers Avinash Patil, MANS

This, combined with unquestioned beliefs in religious ideas, left many Indians feeling helpless about their own lives, said Avinash Patil, head of Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (MANS), an organisation that promotes rationalism and fights belief in superstitions.

“People feel like they have no control over their lives, that their lives are controlled by these higher powers. In moments like these, they need someone to make sense of things and give them a feeling of control,” he said.

These feelings are often complicated, however, by systemic failures in a developing country such as India. These include sheer poverty – 13.4 per cent of the population earns less than US$1.90 per day, according to a 2015 World Bank estimate – as well as widespread hunger and deprivation. On top of this, unemployment in 2019 hit a 45-year high, while government services are often difficult to access or nonexistent.

“People often feel that their problems can’t be solved by such a system. Hence, they turn to godmen claiming to have supernatural powers that can heal or make life better for their devotees,” Patil said.

Across India, spiritual leaders look to fill this vacuum by carrying out charitable activities, from running free schools and hospitals to carrying out small-scale developmental works, especially in rural areas.

Said journalist Bhavdeep Kang, author of the 2016 book Gurus: Stories of India’s Leading Babas: “If you are at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid, these gurus can offer you not just spiritual help, they also offer financial and medical aid, and even education. Often, they subsume the role of the welfare state.”

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, centre, with the Beatles in 1967. Photo: AP
HOW THE WEST WAS WON

What explains the international popularity of these gurus? According to Kang, the answer lies in the slow but sure spread of Hinduism and its spiritual ideas through the West in the 20th century. “Sometime in the 1960s, there was a growing realisation, in the Western world especially, that despite enjoying material prosperity, many felt disenchanted and were looking for a higher purpose. That’s when India’s spiritual gurus stepped in and filled in the void,” he said.

Kang points to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose success opened the door for other spiritual leaders. The Maharishi was one of the earliest global spiritual leaders to hail from India, and the founder of the 1960s Transcendental Meditation movement. He at one point counted the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys among his followers.

According to Amrit Wilson, a London-based author and journalist, another way that Indian spiritual gurus sought to expand their base of followers was to adopt a language they would understand. “Many of these gurus tried reaching out to diverse, non-Indian audiences through propagating yoga, meditation and health fads, all of which ultimately radiate back to particular godmen,” he said.

As Patil of MANS explains, this growing influence worked for both the guru and his followers. “The guru found fame and influence, while the followers received the guidance and the path to spiritual enlightenment they believed they needed.”

Celebrity endorsements, widening political influence and expanded networks of patronage slowly gave these gurus the status of cult leaders. As spiritual organisations started operating like multinational corporations, the gurus themselves started leading famously lavish lifestyles.

According to his BBC obituary, the Maharishi lived in a 200-room mansion, with a fleet of cars and helicopters. Osho Rajneesh, who was the subject of the popular Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country, had a large collection of Rolls-Royce cars and a clutch of international bank accounts.

Both Kang and Patil believe it is the accumulation of power and influence that ultimately corrupts many spiritual leaders.
“Many of them are charlatans who are only pretending to be gurus. Others … become victims of what they warn their followers against – wealth, power and influence. Proximity to these factors eventually gets the better of them,” said Kang.

CRIMINAL ACTS

MANS, the organisation dedicated to fighting superstition, until recently had an investigative team that would conduct “sting operations”, using hidden cameras and recorders, against thousands of so-called gurus in India who claimed to perform miracles. These operations stopped after the provincial government of Maharashtra – where the group did much of its work – passed an anti-superstition law in 2013.

MANS head Patil said the organisation had conducted at least 150 such exposés annually for the past three decades. “When we investigated these tip-offs, we realised 70 per cent of them were criminals who were trying to conceal previous criminal acts by becoming spiritual gurus. But the police would often not be very comfortable taking complaints against such high-profile gurus.”

Even in cases where the complaints were registered, some spiritual leaders’ popularity showed no signs of diminishing. In recent years, major gurus Gurmeet Ram Rahim and Asaram have been sent to prison after being found guilty of rape; after Ram Rahim was jailed in 2017, his followers, many of them women, rioted across Northern India.

In Nithyananda’s case, the whistle-blower was a former devotee of his, who found that only two of his four daughters backed his move to approach the police; the other two continued to side with the guru, despite being the victims of his actions.

Journalist and author Kang said this had much to do with the central role that such gurus often came to play in the lives of their devotees. “Many are looking for a purpose, a cause, in their life. They want a guru to guide them and satisfy their spiritual needs. Ultimately, in such gurus, they find a person who they can trust absolutely in a world where it is very hard to find such people.”

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3044578/bikram-choudhury-gurmeet-ram-rahim-why-does-india-have-so-many

Dec 6, 2019

CultNEWS101 Articles: 12/5/2019

Neo-Nazi, Muslim Uighur, Bikram Yoga, Scientology, Legal
"The youngest person to be convicted of planning a terrorist attack in the UK identified potential targets in his hometown, began drafting a "guerrilla warfare" manual and tried to obtain a chemical used in terrorist bombings. But the case also focused on the radicalisation process itself, hearing the 16-year-old's preparations for an attack involved a deliberate effort to dehumanise himself and become like the "living dead".

The teenager chronicled his regression in a journal, writing "at one point or another I can look back and see if I was any different." Aged 14, he noted: "I wasn't always a fascist, my red pilling process was slower than most", adding that less than two years earlier he advocated "punk rock ideals and Marxism".

The trial heard much about his ideology: an amalgam of neo-Nazism, Satanism and misanthropy, allied to the belief that a collapse of civilisation should be "accelerated" through acts of violence and criminality."

"Leaked documents detail for the first time China's systematic brainwashing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in a network of high-security prison camps.

The Chinese government has consistently claimed the camps in the far western Xinjiang region offer voluntary education and training.

But official documents, seen by BBC Panorama, show how inmates are locked up, indoctrinated and punished.

China's UK ambassador dismissed the documents as fake news.

The leak was made to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) , which has worked with 17 media partners, including BBC Panorama and The Guardian newspaper in the UK.

The investigation has found new evidence which undermines Beijing's claim that the detention camps, which have been built across Xinjiang in the past three years, are for voluntary re-education purposes to counter extremism.

About a million people - mostly from the Muslim Uighur community - are thought to have been detained without trial."


" ... Bikram Choudhury reportedly made time to watch Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator. Publicist Richard Hillgrove, who was retained to represent Bikram, told the L.A. Times that his client had indeed watched the Netflix film. Here's how Hillgrove shared Bikram's feelings on it:

Bikram Choudhury totally refutes all the allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment presented in the film and is deeply upset by the continued character assassination. Bikram believes that the concerted effort by money-motivated lawyers to proactively send letters to a database of all his clients, offering people free legal representation and the promise of $1 million insurance policy pay-outs is the primary motivation for this reputational catastrophe. Bikram believes the Netflix film is nothing more than a repetition of old material."


"The Church of Scientology is attempting to distance leader David Miscavige from a harassment lawsuit stemming from actor Danny Masterson's sexual assault scandal.

In California court documents obtained by RadarOnline.com, three witnesses filed declarations on November 18, 2019 to say that the Chairman of the Board could not be served in the lawsuit, and therefore should not be a defendant.

Specifically, they argued that Celebrity Centre (CC) — a Scientology church that caters to celebrities — was not run by or managed by Miscavige, so he should not have been served at the location.

According to the filing, the receptionist of Celebrity Centre, Lewis Miranda, claimed that the man who attempted to serve Miscavige with papers did not specify who he was delivering them to, or where the documents were meant to be served.

"The Man insisted that he had to deliver the papers at 6331 Hollywood Boulevard. He then placed several documents on the security desk in front of me and left the building," Miranda wrote. "During the conversation on October 10, 2019, the Man never mentioned Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International or Religious Technology Center or indicated that he was delivering anything for Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International or Religious Technology Center."

Miranda continued: "During the conversation on October 10, 2019, the Man never mentioned David Miscavige or Daniel Masterson or indicated that he was delivering anything for Mr. Miscavige or Mr. Masterson."

The second declaration came from a security officer and secretary at Celebrity Centre, Margaret Marmolejo, who also identified herself as the 'designated Custodian of Records for CC.'"




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CultNEWS101 Articles: 12/6/2019



Mormon, BYU-Idaho, Sexual Abuse, Tony Robbins, Bikram Yoga
" ... Casey Wilson took some time off from school last year when she found out she was pregnant with her second baby boy.

The young mom had hoped to miss only a semester or two at Brigham Young University's campus in Idaho. She was just a few credits away from earning her degree in art education and set a goal of finishing before Kelvin, who's 4 months old now, started to talk.

But before Wilson could sign up for classes beginning in January, as she planned, the college announced it no longer would allow students to enroll with only Medicaid as their health insurance.

And now, she can't afford to return at all.

"I am devastated," Wilson said, choking back tears as her baby cooed in her arms. "I love school. I want to graduate. But we're a struggling family, and we don't have the money for [private insurance]."

The controversial decision from BYU-Idaho — a private school owned by the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — came as a surprise to students last week. School administrators announced the change in an email one day after Idaho received approval letters from the federal government for its Medicaid expansion plan, which voters in the state overwhelmingly supported last year."

NPR: After Complaints, BYU-Idaho Reverses Medicaid Decision

Nearly a month after changing its policy, BYU-Idaho has reversed course. Late last night [November 25th], the school issued a statement to students and the media, saying it would allow students on Medicaid to enroll and, quote, "we apologize for the turmoil caused by our earlier decision."


"Two impoverished Mississippi men who say they were sexually assaulted by Franciscan missionaries filed a federal lawsuit Thursday claiming that Catholic officials pressured them into signing settlements that paid them little money and required them to remain silent about the alleged abuse.

The lawsuit, filed in New York, claims the church officials drew up the agreements a year ago to prevent the men from telling their stories or going to court — a violation of a 2002 promise by American bishops to abandon the use of nondisclosure agreements, as part of an effort to end the cover-up of sexual abuse within the church."

"As evening fell on a eucalyptus-lined hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the teenage campers spilled out of a well-lit hall. They had spent the day enthralled by the self-help guru Tony Robbins, who had taught them how to reach for their dreams.

It was the summer of 1985, and Robbins, already rich and famous at the age of 25, was a star speaker at SuperCamp, an elite summer camp in Southern California on a campus with bubbling fountains and a grand Mediterranean-style villa. But what was about to happen would shatter the peace of the tranquil setting — and scar the memories of dozens of campers for decades.

The teens set off through the trees to the site of their next activity. Steffanie Scott, then 15, remembered jogging outside with a small group when she glimpsed something that brought her to an abrupt stop. She recalled seeing Robbins towering over the slight figure of a female camper, pinning her arms back as he kissed her forcefully. "He was going for her, his whole body was pressed up against her," Scott recalled. "I wouldn't want to be pinned," she said. "Not like that."

Nearby in the woods, close enough to see Robbins kissing a camper with his arms wrapped around her, stood 16-year-old Eva Bush. Her first impulse was jealousy; then it hit her that Robbins was a grown man, and her feelings turned to anger. That camper, she thought, was "definitely too young," and the self-help guru was in a position of power. You're taking fucking advantage, she thought at the time.

Under the trees with Robbins was Elle, a studious teenager who, along with the other campers, had been sent to SuperCamp by her parents to boost her grades, build self-confidence, and gain new life skills. To protect her identity, BuzzFeed News is not revealing her full name or exact age, but she was under 18 — legally a minor in California — at the time of the events described.

At the end of the last session, the guru had asked her to accompany him on a walk through the trees; they pressed on until they reached a clearing. There, she recalled in a 2,400-word account provided through her lawyers, he forced himself upon her — kissing her and groping her breasts in a prolonged sexual assault."

" ... Robbins adamantly denied kissing or groping the camper. His lawyers acknowledged a "situation" at the camp but said it was a "non-issue," which was 'addressed with the camp attendees, the young woman, and her parents, and no one suggested that there was a sexual assault.'"



"New Delhi: Once a hot yoga guru in Hollywood, Bikram Choudhury is today labelled a rapist, predator, racist and control maniac. How did his successful story turn around so drastically?

The new Netflix documentary "Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator" aims to answer that question. It traces the journey of how he built his "Bikram" empire, putting spotlight on the dark side of the movement, driven by stories of sexual exploitation, brainwashing, racist comments, rape and control on things outside the yoga studio.

Bikram started having his hot moment in the US when he went to Beverly Hills from India in the early 1970s. Wearing a tiny black Speedo and a tight ponytail, he started carving his story by showing the route of healing with 26 postures over a 90-minute routine practiced in a room heated to 41 degree centigrade. He even tried getting a copyright for his yoga postures.

His success was backed by star power, and his client list included names such as Madonna, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Aniston, George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr., Frank Sinatra and Jason Bateman. His clientele shone with names like Michael Jackson, Jeff Bridges, Shirley MacLaine, Barbra Streisand and Raquel Welch."






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Nov 24, 2019

CultNEWS101 Articles: 11/22/2019





Falun GongTimothy Leary, Psychedelics, Bikram Yoga, Unification Church
"One day in November, 2006, Jintao Liu, a 26-year-old chemical engineering student at the China University of Petroleum in Beijing, got a phone call from his lecturer, asking if he could come to the chemistry lab for a quick chat. It was about noon and Jintao was about to start lunch, but the lecturer was an important man, so Jintao did as he was told.

"I thought he wanted to talk to me about work," says Jintao. When he entered the lab, however, he saw his lecturer, together with two policemen and four plain-clothed members of the 610 Office, an extra-judicial body set up by the Communist Party with the sole purpose of eradicating Falun Gong, a spiritual movement the Chinese government regards as an evil cult and a challenge to its authority.

Jintao, who practised Falun Gong, had recently downloaded some material – music mainly – onto his desktop computer in the lab. When the policemen examined the computer, they found the Falun Gong material and arrested him. "I asked them if they had a search warrant or an arrest order and they scribbled on a piece of paper, chucked it at me and said, 'That's your warrant.' "

Jintao, who has anglicised his name to Tony, lives in a 1970s red-brick home in Epping, a quiet, leafy suburb in Sydney's north-west. He and his wife, Tina, fled China in 2013, coming to Australia where they were granted protection visas. (They are now Australian citizens.) At 39, Tony has broad-set eyes, a cautious smile and a pronounced liking for black tea, which Tina supplies in prodigious quantities throughout our conversation. He still adheres to Falun Gong, which he credits with far-reaching mental and physical benefits. In a country like China, where organised religion has been repressed, Falun Gong gave Tony what he calls "a deeper sense of meaning".

Following his arrest, Tony underwent four months of brainwashing in the Beijing Changping Detention Centre, where he was forced to watch videos and read newspapers detailing Falun Gong's alleged crimes. When he refused to denounce the movement, he was put in a cell with eight drug addicts who were induced by the guards to regularly beat him. 'One day, they were beating me around the back and waist when a guard ran in and told them, 'Don't damage his organs!' '"
"Fobes Ranch, once home to psychologist Timothy Leary, has been purchased by YouTube star Logan Paul. 

Located in the San Jacinto Mountains near Lake Hemet, the 80-acre ranch, which features a 500-square-foot residence, served as a gathering place for Leary and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, otherwise known as the Hippie Mafia. 

The ranch was on the market for $1.495 million, and Paul purchased it for a dollar over $1 million, as first reported by the Los Angeles Times. Known for a controversial video showing the corpse of a man who committed suicide in 2018, Paul is also an actor and has appeared on the TV series "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" and the 2019 film "Airplane Mode."  

The cozy getaway home in Duchess Canyon has one bedroom with sleeping loft, a three-quarter bath, slate tile shower, solar-powered electricity, Vermont soapstone wood stove and pine cathedral ceilings along with propane cooking, refrigeration and tankless hot water."

"Last year, Netflix proved our cultural obsession with cults is far from over with "Wild Wild Country," the hit docu-series about Rajneeshpuram cult leader Bhagwan Rajneesh and his followers. In the years since its massive international popularity has grown, yoga has attracted millions of devotees as fervent as any cult followers. But none as cult-like as Bikram yoga, or hot yoga, founded and popularized by Bikram Choudhury. A new Netflix documentary titled "Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator" tells the story of the cult-like figure, who abused his position to rape, assault, and harass multiple women in his ranks. The newly released trailer showcases countless interviews with his followers and victims, often blurring the line between them.

"He sees himself as a cross between Mother Teresa and Howard Stern," one male interview subject says in the trailer. Another woman recalls, "I'd see flashes of megalomania, but I didn't know how diabolical he actually was." The rest of the trailer is full of explosive interviews with women who remain supportive of Choudhury, as well as difficult to stomach archival footage of Choudhury literally standing on top of multiple women in supine yoga poses."

"The new documentary "Blessed Child" provides a fascinating look at the Unification Church, a movement founded by Reverend Sun Myung Moon, through testimonials of those who escaped."




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Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.
CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.
CultNEWS101.com news, links, resources.
Cults101.org resources about cults, cultic groups, abusive relationships, movements, religions, political organizations and related topics.