# The Anti-Cult Movement and the Cult Awareness Network · The Cult Dossier · The Atlas · The Congregation of Tomorrow

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The Cult Dossier · No. 150 · The Opposition / Anti-Cult
The Anti-Cult Movement and the Cult Awareness Network
CAN; Citizens Freedom Foundation; the deprogrammers
1974 – 1996 (successor bodies continue) · United States
XIV. THE OPPOSITION — WHAT WAS BUILT TO FIGHT THEM
NOT A RELIGIOUS GROUP. This entry is the organised opposition to the rest of this dossier, included because a file about these movements is incomplete without the apparatus built to fight them — and because that apparatus lost.
### Who led it
### What it worshipped and taught
### Who was in it
### How it ended, or where it stands
### The dead
### Of note
### Its timeline
- AUTUMN 1974 The CITIZENS FREEDOM FOUNDATION is organised in Denver by parents of members — the anti-cult movement begins, as most of it did, with families.
- 1985 CFF, having absorbed dozens of local and regional groups, is renamed THE CULT AWARENESS NETWORK. Some accounts date the change to the early 1980s. Its stated mission is to educate the public about mind control and support victims and their families.
- 1990 UNITED STATES v. FISHMAN, 743 F. Supp. 713 (N.D. Cal.). Steven Fishman, charged with mail fraud, argues he had been brainwashed by Scientology and seeks to call MARGARET SINGER and RICHARD OFSHE. THE COURT EXCLUDES THEM: the Singer–Ofshe thesis on coercive persuasion and religious cults IS NOT GENERALLY ACCEPTED WITHIN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY and is therefore inadmissible under the FRYE standard. With the related Green and Ryan rulings, this effectively ENDS BRAINWASHING TESTIMONY IN AMERICAN COURTS, criminal and civil, state and federal.
- SEPTEMBER 1995 THE JASON SCOTT VERDICT. On 29 SEPTEMBER a jury awards Jason Scott ABOUT 4.8 MILLION DOLLARS against the deprogrammer RICK ROSS, two assistants and CAN, for CONSPIRACY TO DEPRIVE HIM OF HIS CIVIL RIGHTS. Scott, then eighteen, had been seized in January 1991 at his grandmother’s home in Bellevue, Washington, at his mother’s arrangement and after a referral from CAN, to be deprogrammed out of a Pentecostal church. The punitive awards are 2.5 MILLION against Ross, 1 MILLION against CAN and 250,000 against each assistant, on top of 875,000 in compensatory damages; CAN’s share comes to about 1.1 MILLION. HIS LAWYER IN THE CIVIL SUIT WAS KENDRICK MOXON, A SCIENTOLOGY ATTORNEY, ACTING WITHOUT FEE.
- JUNE 1996 CAN files for bankruptcy under CHAPTER 7 after a federal bankruptcy judge refuses its attempt to reorganise.
- DECEMBER 1996 THE POSTSCRIPT NOBODY PLANNED. Scott reconciles with his mother, drops Moxon, and settles with Ross for 5,000 DOLLARS AND 200 HOURS OF ROSS’S OWN SERVICES. The judgment that destroyed the movement was itself settled for almost nothing.
- 23 OCTOBER 1996 THE NAME IS SOLD FOR 20,000 DOLLARS. In federal bankruptcy court, CAN’s name, stylised logo, office equipment, PO box, uncollected judgments AND ITS HOTLINE NUMBER are bought by STEVEN L. HAYES, a lawyer who had acted for the Church of Scientology; he said the money came from private donations. The purchase becomes final on 30 OCTOBER 1996. He licenses the name to the FOUNDATION FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, which operates it as the NEW CULT AWARENESS NETWORK. Families ringing the anti-cult helpline now reached the movement it had been built to oppose — as 60 MINUTES put it, the person answering was likely to be a Scientologist.
### Its people
### Robert Jay Lifton
—
Psychiatrist; author of the eight criteria of thought reform · 16 May 1926 – 4 September 2025 · active 1953–present
Before the law. Expert witness in numerous proceedings.
Where things stand. DECEASED — HE DIED ON 4 SEPTEMBER 2025 AT TRURO, MASSACHUSETTS, AGED 99. THIS FILE PREVIOUSLY SAID 'LIVING, AGED 100', WHICH WAS WRONG TWICE OVER: he had died the year before, and he never reached 100 — his hundredth birthday would have fallen on 16 May 2026, some eight months after his death. A STALENESS ERROR OF EXACTLY THE KIND APPENDIX D WARNS ABOUT, in the file of the single most important theorist in this dossier. NOTE, STILL TRUE AND STILL IMPORTANT: his framework describes ENVIRONMENTS, not a mechanism of involuntary mental capture, and he was careful about that distinction — more careful than many who cite him.
- 1953–54 Studies repatriated prisoners subjected to Chinese thought reform.
- 1961 Publishes Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism.
- 1976 Testifies for the defence in the Patty Hearst trial; the coercion defence fails.
- 1986 Publishes The Nazi Doctors.
- 1999 Publishes Destroying the World to Save It, on Aum Shinrikyo.
- 4 SEPTEMBER 2025 Dies at Truro, Massachusetts, aged 99.
Checked 2026-08-24
### Margaret Singer
—
Clinical psychologist; theorist of coercive persuasion · 29 July 1921 – 23 November 2003 · active 1950s–2003
Before the law. Expert witness whose theory was ultimately excluded from US courts.
Where things stand. Deceased 2003. Her exclusion is why coercive-control claims are now argued through labour, fraud and trafficking statutes rather than through brainwashing — which is how NXIVM and OneTaste were actually won.
- 1970s–80s Interviews thousands of former members; becomes the leading expert witness for the anti-cult position.
- 1976 Testifies in the Patty Hearst trial.
- 1987 THE APA DECLINES TO ENDORSE THE DIMPAC REPORT she chaired, citing lack of scientific rigour.
- 1992–94 Sues the APA and the American Sociological Association; the suits are dismissed.
- 1995 Publishes Cults in Our Midst.
- 2003 Dies.
Checked
The Atlas The Door