Oprah interview - daughters of Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Educate yourself. Videos - Interviews - We address the topic of RSE, Cults and Recovery.
Open for discussion and exchange of views.
User avatar
David McCarthy
Site Admin
Posts: 2892
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2008 1:09 am
Location: New Zealand
Contact:

Oprah interview - daughters of Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Unread post by David McCarthy »

Found an old Oprah interview with the daughters of Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT)
Did you know these people Joe?
I wonder how they are doing now?
David
Oprah - Elizabeth Clare Prophet
Links...

CUT/Summit Lighthouse on Oprah 1 - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZzEcLYe ... re=related

CUT/Summit Lighthouse on Oprah 2 - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p556PCNH ... re=related

CUT/Summit Lighthouse on Oprah 3 - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc8DyDF6 ... re=related

CUT/Summit Lighthouse on Oprah 4 - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NHTVF23 ... re=related

CUT/Summit Lighthouse on Oprah 5 - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrsr11I9 ... re=related
But he has nothing on at all, cried at last the whole people....
joe sz
Posts: 1010
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2008 2:43 am
Location: Birdsboro, PA
Contact:

Re: Oprah interview - daughters of Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Unread post by joe sz »

this oprah show goes back a ways. I met Moira after she defected from CUT. She wrote a memoir w an author but later racanted her effort to expose her mother, so the memoir was scrapped. the 3 daughters have basically reconciled. The oldest Sean of course is an embattled atheist, and the 5th child a son is not in public eye. Erin Prophet, who defended "Guru Ma" on Oprah, did publish her own memoir that strikes a kind of balance without denying that CUT under her mom was a harmful cult.
http://www.amazon.com/Prophets-Daughter ... 1599214253
joe sz
Posts: 1010
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2008 2:43 am
Location: Birdsboro, PA
Contact:

Re: Oprah interview - daughters of Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Unread post by joe sz »

the last video. I noted Murray Steinem, who has been a staunch CUT ember, the guru's astrologer and lately was her co"guardian" with Erin until Prophet died of alzheimer's complication. the exchange between Hassan and Steinem brought back a smile--
I was suppose to be on that show....folks in the cult business who seek media attention usually get call--I do not seek media, so Hassan and Rick Ross most often appear on shows among my peers--Oprah producers had me on standby on phone for the hour, but did not use me.


btw, did you see the Oprah video walking in "fire" with Tony Robbins--he's still using that trick pony to make money off the gullible
http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/vi ... ks+on+fire
joe sz
Posts: 1010
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2008 2:43 am
Location: Birdsboro, PA
Contact:

Re: Oprah interview - daughters of Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Unread post by joe sz »

video 5 towards the end allows a female CUT member, Lauri, to complain about a failed intervention in which she "almost drowned"...Hassan mentioned "joe tried to save your life"
yeah, that was me and i was on the case around 1987-8. Of couse, I saw the entire event differently UP CLOSE and in the freezing cold water of the Trinity River near Redding CA.
not going to go into complex details, but she did not have to run away (she walked around outside alone every day of the 3 we were there), and certainly did not have to swim that river---crazy.
Her mother was screaming for help: "she's going for the river". I came out of the cabin and saw what was happening, a surreal event to be sure, but instinct took over as i was the only one there in shape enough to do anything about it (there were no security guards as the CUT member claimed), so I sprinted down the slope. she was already in the water when i got there. she got across the river okay. I turned to swim back once I knew she was safe on other shore which was my only concern, but I got caught in rapids and was about to lose consciousness....

if it were not for some stranger (sent by an angel in my book) who happened to be checking on his cabin that day and tossed me a rope, i may not be writing this....

this is one reason why there are so few exit counselors and no one getting into the business anymore :-)
Lost in Space
Posts: 375
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2008 12:49 am
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Re: Oprah interview - daughters of Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Unread post by Lost in Space »

Joe, I wonder if you want a chance to explain the difference, raised in the show but heckled to pieces, between exit counselling and deprogramming? I do believe there must be a considerable difference, but I am not precisely clear about it.
I had a school mate who joined the Hare Krishnas, and disappeared from home. His father had him found and 'deprogrammed'. Apart from causing trauma, this did nothing, and Graham went back to the Krishnas, and also severed all ties with his father, shortly thereafter. As far as I know, he is in their main temple in India. I did see him singing and playing music on a street corner after the deprogramming, which is why I know about it. He said he was happy. He did not seem reluctant to talk to me, or fearful of people in general.
joe sz
Posts: 1010
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2008 2:43 am
Location: Birdsboro, PA
Contact:

Re: Oprah interview - daughters of Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Unread post by joe sz »

LiS
good question but no simple answer...did you expect anything less ;-)

early in the recent [since 1970] wave of cult intervention, deprogramming meant both coercively initiated intervention thru house arrest and or kidnapping AND non-coercive, meaning that the cult member could call it off or leave anytime.

As deprogramming gained momentum, it became mostly kidnapping and house arrest. Steve Hassan, Carol Giambalvo and others conferred with Dr Margaret Singer to come up with a different name for non-coercive approaches--thus at Singer's suggestion "exit counseling" was initiated in the late 1970s. However, as late as 1995, the film "Signs and Wonders" starring James Earl Jones as 'Diamond,' who calles himself an "exit counselor," had his "team" kidnap a cult member for intervention because "there was no other way" to help her--she was about to be shipped out to be the cult leader's mistress unknown to her from an inside spy source.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112161/

many people, who called themselves exit counselors after 1978, would still take cases wherein the family "held" the cult member against their will, at least for a time, until the "exit counselor" could convince them to stay of their own free will.

In 1991 a number of exit counselors further wanted to define the non-coercive, educational approach and establish a clear ethical code based on social worker therapy models. The neologism "Thought Reform Consultant" (TRC) appeared to define this group that, under no circumstances, would work in a coercive or potentially illegal case.

As you can guess, the TRC label never caught on--you probably never heard of it---and the TRCs could not get insurance or licensing despite their heroic efforts to create a curriculum for anyone who wanted to become a TRC.
see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_counseling

Dr Steve Kent and i wrote a paper about this
Kent, Stephen A. and Szimhart, Joseph: Exit Counseling and the Decline of Deprogramming., Cultic Studies Review 1 No.3, 2002

So, the field of cult intervention remains unlicensed and ill-defined.

yes, maybe half of the attempted "kidnap" style deprogrammigs failed--the member would return right away or maybe months later after struggling to adjust to life outside the cult. Many "survivors" of coercive intervention, experienced psychological trauma and some physical and sexually inapproriate behavior by a few deprogrammers i could name.

One really has to have an ethical core to operate morally within the highly charged, unregulated atmosphere of an intervention, especially if the cult member is "held powerless" to leave the scene. Two deprogrammers I knew were addicts who had relapsed and should never have been hired, but families were desperate. Others, incl Ted Patrick [accused of sexual abuse post-intervention with vulnerable female ex-members he had deprogrammed] lacked ethical boundaries that any counselor should never cross.

In any case, the kidnap approach to intervention has practically disappeared in the US and most 'Western' nations. I have heard of only 2 cases in the past 10-12 years.
But many cults still use that phobia induction of a potential deprogramming to prevent members from going home.

Having said that, many of the cult members I helped "that way" in the early days of my career, to this day thank me that I took the risk for them. They are thriving without trauma. others, still wish the family did it some other way. We could not predict who might be harmed, how they might react, and who could handle it, so I stopped participating in all such coercive cases in 1992.
Lost in Space
Posts: 375
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2008 12:49 am
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Re: Oprah interview - daughters of Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Unread post by Lost in Space »

Thanks, Joe, that does clarify the difference.
In the case of my Krishna friend, from what he said I take it that he was actually grabbed and muscled into a car, and driven to an isolated, barnlike structure. This was in the late 70's. There was no physical or sexual abuse. He said the most distressing thing about the experience was the impression he got that he could either return home and stay there, or face psych. ward. Also, there was relentless talk from the deprogrammers, lasting hours. And he was too intimidated to leave. They kept him there for 3 days.
I will say that there was already a problematic relationship with his father before he joined the Krishnas, so the fact that he stopped talking to him probably can't be entirely attributed to the deprogramming.
joe sz
Posts: 1010
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2008 2:43 am
Location: Birdsboro, PA
Contact:

Re: Oprah interview - daughters of Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Unread post by joe sz »

LiS
your Krishna friend is more typical than not re Hare Krishnas--most who I knew that were recruited back then were either misfits or came from dysfunctional family backgrounds, yet some were stellar students from wealthy families. and there was George Harrison, the Beatle, who supported the movement with millions in donations. Those were the years and into the late 1980s when the HK would dress in Santa Claus outfits and fund raise at Xmas, deceptively present themselves as "christian" at airports [most travelers would have no idea what ISKCon badges meant, and when a Krishna would mumble the god's name, it sounded like "christian"]. Nearly all interventions I did w HKs were totally voluntary with a high rate of success. Our approach was to go directly into the tradition of Bhakti and the Sanatana Dharma to expose it from the inside out, showing how Prabhupada's version was "fundamentalist" and how he twisted the Vedic scriptures to mean what he wanted. Some of the HKs would ask me if I was a Vaishnav because we appeared to show such respect for the main tradition.

So I have no idea who he talked to or their approach, but some naive deprogrammers would use the Bible to try to counteract Krishna---stupid.
Vanilla
Posts: 586
Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2011 10:51 pm
Location: Rome, Italy

Re: Oprah interview - daughters of Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Unread post by Vanilla »

She said she was the reincaranation of Marie Antoinette? DIdnt JZ lay claim to that one for one of her followers? uh oh, war of the channels.
Post Reply

Return to “TV Interviews - Videos -Documentaries - Educate yourself”