MIVILUDES Descent on the Moulin des Vallées

MIVILUDES Descent on the “Moulin des Vallées”

See our video interview with the residents: broadband or low bandwidth (16 minutes)

Read the complaint filed in 2010

The Moulin des Vallées was founded in 1999 in the department of Ille-et-Vilaine in France. It presents itself as an ecumenical monastery, inspired by André Chouraqui, who contributed greatly to building up this place, where one can “find a little silence, a respite, for reflection”. It gathers about 70 qualified health practitioners around the teaching of the philosopher Brother Abel.

“Descent of the MIVILUDES”

On Tuesday 13 October 2009, the residents of the monastery received an unexpected visit, in any case an unsolicited one, which forms part of the French anti-cult policy, that is to say, in the classic manner, beyond the law, the rules of propriety, indeed of journalistic ethics. The letter sent by some of the residents to the Prefect of their department sums up their situation (reproduced with their permission):

The residents’ point of view

Monsieur le Préfet,

We were present at the Ecumenical and Secular Monastery of the Moulin des Vallées on Tuesday 13 October, during the visit of the MIVILUDES, which we experienced as extremely violent, a veritable “descent” as the journalist of “Aujourd’hui en France”, Madame Anne-Cécile Juillet, defined it in her article of Friday 16 October.

Looking back, a feeling of having been taken by the throat, of having been abused, remains. We witnessed, stunned and powerless, this astounding intrusion:

We feel such a procedure as a violation, so brutal was this descent of the MIVILUDES. We were dumbfounded that such procedures should be the rule in the name of the interministerial commission for the fight against dérives sectaires.

We endured an uninterrupted fire of questions, which we made every effort to answer, on the standing alleged by Monsieur Fenech, and we were particularly shocked by the cult-related insinuations he uttered, cutting us off at every moment.

Our answers received not the slightest credit: we were judged and condemned in advance.

Indeed, by a succession of assimilations, insinuations and inaccuracies, our choice of life was denigrated and compared to movements whose principles are in complete opposition to our values.

Why was Monsieur Fenech, who was acting in the capacity of a ministerial officer, accompanied by journalists to conduct an official inquiry?

We thought we had before us genuine investigators, wishing to look more deeply into what is lived in our Monastery, and from this lightning visit we keep the feeling of having been duped, cheated in our good faith.

Here is a succession of facts which seem to fit together marvellously well:

• Tuesday 13 October 09: “Descent” of Monsieur Fenech and his team on the Ecumenical and Secular Monastery of the Moulin des Vallées, following a failed attempt at intrusion into another supposedly cult-related place.
• Thursday 15 October 09: Debate on the infiltration of cults into medicine, at the National Assembly, presented by Madame Picard who, following the surprise law permitting the non-conviction of Scientology, visibly had nothing left “to get her teeth into”.
• Thursday 15 October 09: Visit of a photographer engaged by “Aujourd’hui en France” to take photographs of the place.
• Thursday 15 October 09: Fax sent to the director of the newspaper “Aujourd’hui en France” asking him to submit the article to us before publication; which was refused us.
• Friday 16 October 09: Publication of the article in “Aujourd’hui en France” which assimilates the residents of the Moulin des Vallées to the members of a cult, drawing an insulting parallel with the worrying excesses of Scientology. In this article, the arrangement of the photographs leads to a suggestive negative image: “Brocéliande” - “flying saucer” - “Bearded man” - “caption relating the suicide of a person and implying that it was his supposed membership of our Monastery that was the origin of it”. Which the police investigation refuted. Likewise, the arrangement of the other articles on this double page induces an assimilation of our Monastery to cult movements.

6. Tuesday 17 November 09: Planned television broadcast “Prise Directe”, programmed under the title “Worrying Disappearances”, in which the report filmed during this descent was to be included! It was by calling France 2 that the journalist Céline CRESPY (present with her cameraman at the Monastery on 13 October 2009) informed us of this. We opposed this broadcast by registered letters of 2 November 2009 1.

7. And what next?

Monsieur le Préfet, we ask for your help in understanding how Monsieur Fenech can legally enter a monastery, under cover of a ministerial inquiry, in reality to help journalists make an unauthorised report?

Please accept, Monsieur le Préfet, our respectful salutations.

1 Further information from the Moulin des Vallées: Dispatch of the registered letters to the director general of France 2 between 3 and 5 November. Call from the France 2 journalist on 10 November who, furious, declared at first that “it is a pity you are refusing this airtime because it could have allowed you to defend yourselves” and finally specified to us that “it was pointless to send the registered letters since you were off topic”. Yet, according to the content of the programme which we obtained from France 2, a slot was indeed planned, at the end of the programme, devoted to drawing an amalgam between discussion groups or spiritual communities, so-called cults, and the unexplained disappearance of children.