Letters to the Government on the Reappearance of Deprogramming in France

Letters to the Government on the Reappearance of Deprogramming in France

Letters addressed to the Minister of Health and the Minister of the Interior (with copy to the MIVILUDES) following the announcement made by Maître Picotin, lawyer, of the creation of an exit counseling cell in Aquitaine. Exit counseling is presented as an improved form of a method for extracting members of a spiritual minority by force, banned in the United States in the 1980s, called “Deprogramming”. The controversy around these methods is not extinguished, for the names and forms of this method for compelling individuals to renounce their beliefs keep changing in the wake of abuses. The attempted “exfiltration” in England, a private initiative of Maître Picotin and his team, of the “recluses of Monflanquin”, well illustrates this will to “get the member out of his group” against his will, and before even having spoken with him. Exit counseling, in our view, represents only an extreme form of the intolerance and blind repression manifested by the primary anti-cultism of our era. These letters have remained unanswered to this day (April 2011).

For the attention of the Ministers of the Interior and of Health

Montpezat de Quercy, 1 December 2009

Subject: Concerns about the methods known as: Exit Counseling, Thought Reform Consulting and Deprogramming in France Ref: cicns/EC/no.1 Monsieur le Ministre, The affair known as that of the “recluses of Monflanquin” has agitated the media world for several weeks. Our association (Centre d’Information et de Conseil des Nouvelles Spiritualités), which has worked to balance the debate on the fight against dérives sectaires for nearly 6 years, has noted the usual exaggerations and defamations on the part of the media. But we are contacting you more particularly about a piece of information which slipped in amid the avalanche of dispatches and interviews and which arouses our keen concern. Maître Picotin, lawyer for the civil parties in this affair, revealed in the course of his excursion to England that he had created in Aquitaine a “team of exit counselors” to help members leave a group judged to be a cult (even if these persons have asked for nothing). You are perhaps aware of the stormy past of deprogramming practices in the United States and in France, which have taken in turn the names of “exit counseling” and then, more recently, “thougt reform consultation”. We invite you to read our dossier on the subject (Document A: Deprogramming) as well as our recent communiqué (Document B: Communiqué) . These practices, little regulated but often tolerated because they seem to suit distraught family members, are in total contradiction with the current directives concerning the regulation of psychotherapies in France, which require that all psychotherapists be qualified. Indeed, if in the past (the 1970s-1980s) deprogramming was the work of veritable gangsters (kidnappings, violence, harassment), some of whom served prison sentences, the methods of exit counseling, presented thereafter as an improvement, are, by the very admission of their promoters, often practised by persons without any training other than their personal and often passionate involvement in the anti-cult fight (which is the case of Maître Picotin, to our knowledge). We had occasion, in another affair, to bring to light the case of parents who confined their daughter and administered medication to her by force to make her renounce her beliefs. Their testimony was presented in 2007 on a television programme (Document C: Télévision) . We ask that light be shed on the exit counseling body founded in Aquitaine by Maître Picotin (and his associates, whose names were curiously kept secret during their attempted “exfiltration of the members of this group at Oxford) as well as on any other body with the same objectives. We therefore thank you to let us know the information at your disposal on this subject, and the existing legal framework for these practices which are developing in the shadows. The French spiritual minorities have the right to know whether the government supports these methods, whether they are therefore official or represent a marginal and unrecognised activity. Awaiting your reply, we beg you to accept, Monsieur le Ministre, the expression of our very high consideration.