To Win a Case, the Magic Word: Cult

By Jean-Pierre Joseph, lawyer at the Grenoble bar

Today, before any court whatever, the word cult is the magic word that makes everyone bend. A contested child custody? It is enough simply to say that my spouse belongs to a cult, and the magic word is launched. It is even pointless for the accused to justify himself, either by saying that it is false, or that the group he belongs to is nothing like a cult. Everything happens as though he had already been struck dead.

A mother finds that her child cannot tolerate antibiotics. On the advice of her homeopathic doctor, she gives her child homeopathy. It would occur to nobody to say anything at all. Except if the mother is a member of a cult. The change of treatment becomes deprivation of care and the public prosecutor brings proceedings.

In every area of the Law, the mere fact of pronouncing the word cult has the effect of a conjuring trick, tipping the jurist into a kind of trance/fright, making him assert with hysteria facts he has not seen (except on television), and making him in any case refuse to verify.

And it is thus that numerous judgments have been handed down, in all matters (criminal, family law, etc.) referring either to rigged television reports, or to the parliamentary report, whereas the Ministry of the Interior was recently obliged to declare that this report had no legal effect.

Everywhere, one constant: no judge has ever gone to see for himself whether these clichés were true, as though the magistrates were unconsciously afraid of finding that they had been deceived.

“Cultophobia” affects almost the whole of the legal profession, even lawyers, traditionally the defenders of individual liberties, who, the moment the word cult is pronounced, begin to recite by heart, as though they were chanting a hymn, the same formulas: mental manipulation, misappropriation of funds, etc.

Today, it is entirely normal to pay a subscription to a football club, but it is suspect to pay one to a yoga club, even if it is half the price. Today, a person who is vegetarian, or who merely does not watch much television, has become suspect. But the person who regularly has 2 g of alcohol in his blood, who does his shopping at the supermarket, who takes antibiotics and who is vaccinated, that one is normal! His later cancer will therefore be reassuring… Was that not the main objective explaining all the anomalies of this psychosis?

See also our video dossier: The spectre of the cult in divorce judgments

To Win a Case, the Magic Word: Cult

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