they're cultists, ryan

nicki clyne

kristin kreuk 

are currently under investigation for sexual abuse and manipulation as part of a group called NXVIM.

sex trafficking

forced labor

blackmail/extortion

forced/under duress branding of members

and the cult’s leader keith raniere is also under suspicion of pedop.hilia

https://people.com/crime/allison-mack-nxivm-sex-cult-branding-her-idea/

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzxnqx/these-actresses-have-been-linked-to-an-alleged-sex-cult

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/magazine/sex-cult-empowerment-nxivm-keith-raniere.html

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/nxivm-what-we-know-about-alleged-sex-trafficking-forced-labor-204958/

*** there have been conflicting reports on kreuk’s involvment, and she says that she left before it got bad but there was a report (mentioned in the vice article) that says that she was still a coach well into 2011. i don’t want to incriminate her if she was simply a victim on the fringes but the paperwork released seems to point otherwise.

Is a cult just any new religion that you don’t understand? In short, no, at least not on this blog. I am very religion positive, be it a free sort of solitary practice or an organized religion with rites and rituals. These are not inherently bad-- though this took a lot of wrestling with to come to terms with. Some religions see other religions as evil or of the devil or some other outside force that is manipulating them. This is not what makes a cult a cult.

On this blog, I don’t see religion as inherently evil. What happens is when people with their own goals in mind, or maybe simply not knowing better or lying to themselves to some degree, use those religious practices to isolate, control, and hurt their flock or their fellow followers. And yes, religious abuse is not just from a leader to his followers. It can be within a family or among friends who are in the same religious community. 

The thing that, at least if you are going to ask me, makes something a cult is that it involves control of income, self-esteem, sexual or physical safety, and emotional well-being. Another large factor is isolation, which is normally not kept a tight leash on until things in a cult get very bad. One of the major warning signs of a cult is asking someone to cut off contact with non-believers. This allows for this better control of someone’s income, self-esteem etc.

dumb question but would anyone who is ok reading slightly upsetting things be willing to help proofread a small series i’m starting on this blog about destructive practices aside from just murder/suicide? Because a lot of fictional cults focus on only those two things. This sometimes makes it hard to recognize other real life cults that have more subtle destructive measures such as income control or healthcare failings.

you are valid even if your cult only took money or over-controlled you or your loved ones. the abuse didn’t have to be physical to be damaging. some cults simply destroy your self esteem to isolate you, some use finances or blackmail, some use actual force. none are any less traumatic, only traumatic in different ways. 

please take some time to consider why your character joined a cult. there’s a few things to take into account;

- they are born into them

- they are looking for something nice and the cult slowly veers into a darker direction and they “stay along for the ride” due to either brainwashing, isolation, or simply not wanting to give up something (a sort of cost-sunk fallacy)

- the cult takes a dark turn and the person is unable to leave due to a real or perceived lack of resources or money to escape

- they are looking for some sense of belonging even if it’s harmful. better to have bad attention than good attention (this is commonly seen with people who have escaped one cult and end up in another)

- it’s set during an era of guru culture (which is currently getting a revival but was mostly popular around the 70s and 80s, in which ‘joining a cult’ wasn’t actually out of the norm)

- someone is lost and looking for guidance and joins the wrong person but is too lost to look for anything else

this blog is still a heavy WIP but i am here to help write about cults as someone who has escaped from both a destructive baptist cult and a (less destructive cult but still isolating) new age cult. cult covers a wide vareity of topics from new religious movements to actual destructive cults, but since most “cults’ on tumblr RPC are the destructive kind, that’s what i will focus on.

this is also, hopefully, a safe place for survivors to tell their own stories if they feel like it, to help change the views of cults in the rpc.

please please don’t write about cults unless you’ve done research. these things can and have destroyed lives. if you’d research judasim or abuse or historical periods, please please research how cults actually affect people.

and i don’t mean reading about the tragedies and writing about it as a creepy thing. i highly recommend looking at survivor’s own stories, not just the news reports or scholars writing articles. you should research cults from the perspective of those who have survived them otherwise you’re doing a disservice to the damage that they cause