Religious freedom &amp; law

CICNS Questions and Answers: The Association's English FAQ

Nineteen questions and answers in which the CICNS sets out, in its own English, what it does and does not claim: that abuses exist but are rare and are matters for the courts, that the word applied to spiritual minorities is the instrument of their stigmatisation, that brainwashing is a demagogic concept, and who exactly is behind the association.

To Win a Case, the Magic Word: Cult

Grenoble lawyer Jean-Pierre Joseph on how the word cult functions in French courtrooms: an accusation that needs no proof, that no judge goes to verify, and that turns ordinary choices into offences.

Anti-Cultism Is a Decoy

Guy Delaunay's long essay arguing that anti-cultism does not fight the cults but constructs the cult object, from Coupat's account of antiterrorism to the 2006 commission's 80,000-children figure that its own civil servants refuted on camera.

Selected Extracts from Our Interviews

CICNS's own anthology of its interview archive: Morelli on who awards the label, Duval on the French axis of evil, Baubérot on asking the manipulation question of everyone, lawyers Biro, Florand, Canonici, Pérollier and Joseph on the legal machinery, and a dozen more voices, in their spoken language.

The Witch-Hunt Is Open

Olivier Golinvaux's Québécois Libre essay on the French cult panic: from sequi and secare to Weber and Troeltsch, how the word was secularised into 'dangerousness', why the ten Gest criteria self-destruct, and what the State's hold on the market in beliefs really protects.

Commentary on the 2005 Raffarin Circular on Dérives Sectaires

CICNS annotates the full text of Prime Minister Raffarin's 27 May 2005 circular, reading its abandonment of cult lists as a change of form that leaves the policy's intentions and intensity untouched.

Letters to the Government on the Reappearance of Deprogramming in France

CICNS's December 2009 letters to the Interior and Health ministers over Maître Picotin's Aquitaine exit counseling cell, tying it to the banned deprogramming lineage and asking what legal framework covers it. Unanswered as of April 2011.

QED, or the "State Spanking"

Claude-Gérard Sarrazin's polemical epistemology lesson: acts of faith beneath scientific knowledge, measuring instruments that cannot measure what they deny, the placebo as unexplained process, and the argument from authority that rules the paranormal inadmissible.

Irrelevant and Arbitrary Criteria for Denouncing Dérives Sectaires

CICNS contrasts the Amour et Miséricorde community, dissolved under media pressure after a Fenech visit, with France 24's respectful coverage of a Buddhist three-year retreat that would tick the same criteria.

State Cynicism or Political Pragmatism Facing the Spiritual Minorities

Émile D'Albret dissects MIVILUDES council anthropologist Nathalie Luca's colloquium paper: a definition of the cult that studies the state's vulnerabilities, a Jonestown retold with five dead, and prevention as politics.

Cult and Democracy

Sociologist Françoise Champion, co-editor of the reference volume Sectes et démocratie, interviewed in Les trois mondes: politicians who privately admit the phenomenon is marginal and publicly forget it, media that no longer know what religion is, and the case-by-case method that would depassion the debate.

A Certain Feeling of Desolation

Daniel Fradette, president of Montreal's CINR, interviewed in Les 3 mondes on the French exception seen from Quebec: a witch-hunt conducted in the name of rationality, a repressed religion-State dispute resurfacing, and the mediation experience Quebec could lend.

On the Refusal of Difference: Nostalgia for the Inquisition and Vichy?

Claude-Gérard Sarrazin sets his own Quebec experiences, from the Mensa school project to the charismatic group that made him a 'sorcerer', against a history of the refusal of difference: Inquisition, Terror, Vichy, Hitler, Stalin, and today's secular fundamentalism.

The State Is a Cult: Hervé Duray Applies the Parliamentary Criteria to the State

A contributed essay from La Page Libérale, republished by the CICNS with an explicit disagreement note: Hervé Duray takes the parliamentary commission's seven cult indicators - mental destabilisation, exorbitant financial demands, indoctrination of children and the rest - and applies each one, point by point, to the French State itself, before dissecting the About-Picard extension of the abuse-of-weakness offence.

Sociological Study of a Pentecostal Assembly Labelled a 'Cult': The Porte Ouverte Chrétienne Case

The CICNS's reading report on the 2004 Willaime and Amiotte-Suchet study of the Mulhouse Pentecostal assembly Mission du Plein Évangile - La Porte Ouverte Chrétienne: how a theological quarrel and some disappointed members were transformed, by the CCMM, the AVIPOC and a national anti-cult climate the sociologists call paranoid, into a full stigmatisation process, with long extracts on the semantic career of the word 'secte'.

The Interior Ministry's Conflict with the Cults Advice Sheet

CICNS reproduces the ministry's family-security advice sheet, which steers citizens to ADFI and CCMM and explains how to place a relative under guardianship, and annotates it as a state instruction manual for persecution.

Gilles Bottine's 2005 ENM Speech on the Cults

The MIVILUDES secretary general tells trainee magistrates the word 'cult' is stigmatising, that membership of a minority of conviction is no dérive sectaire, and that most of Europe handles the matter with ordinary law.

Le phénomène des sectes: The CICNS Reads Quebec's Info-Secte

The CICNS presents and criticises the Info-Secte book by Mike Kropveld and Marie-Andrée Pelland - the most balanced French-language treatment it has found, and still, it argues, marked by cult-phobia - then reprints long extracts on why people join groups, on Quebec's law of religious freedom, and on the difference between a good guru and an infantilising, abusing or swindling one.

Forced Psychiatric Commitments

Valérie Dole's sourced inquiry into forced psychiatric commitment in France: 52,000 forced hospitalisations in 2000, the I3P infirmary operating outside the law, and the ministry advice that ties guardianship to the cult accusation.

Laïcité, Cults: Is There an Alternative to the Foot-in-the-Dish Politics?

Éric Bouzou surveys the storm around Sarkozy's Latran and Riyadh speeches and the Mignon 'non-problem' episode, from Baubérot and Debray to the Protestant federation, and asks why France cannot debate laïcité calmly.

LCP Channel - "Beware of the Gurus"

CICNS's running commentary on the parliamentary channel's October 2011 report marking ten years of the About-Picard law: Waco and Solar Temple images out of context, a poll figure misattributed to Ipsos, an ongoing trial prejudged, and 'mental manipulation' presented as technical science.

Individus et pouvoirs face aux sectes: Nathalie Luca on Why the Threatening Movements Change from Country to Country

The anthropologist who resigned from the MIVILUDES steering council argues that a group's dangerousness is read from a state's symbolic frontiers rather than from the group itself: the same movements, a different threat in each country. Long extracts on Germany's refusal to publish a list, Britain's case-by-case approach and the Accoyer witness law, with the CICNS's own commentary of March 2009.

The Impossible Tolerance? The Mariani Thesis on French Cult Policy

CICNS reviews Lionel Mariani's IEP thesis on French political responses to the cult question, saluting its balance while contesting its acceptance of the intrinsic-dangerousness frame and its refusal of the word 'hardening'.

Local Authorities Facing Dérives Sectaires: the New MIVILUDES Guide

Éric Bouzou reads the MIVILUDES guide for local authorities as a paranoid manual that treats the 'cult movement' as an omnipresent enemy and legal protections as pitfalls, quoting the guide against itself.

The Unification Church of Sun Myong Moon

Laurent Ladouce's history of thirty years of his movement in France, introduced by CICNS: how Ouest-France coined 'la secte Moon' in 1975, how Boyer's 'Empire Moon' replaced it under Mitterrand, and how brainwashing, deprogramming and State harassment mirrored the thing they denounced.

Anne Morelli: Extracts from Lettre ouverte à la secte des adversaires des sectes

The historian of Christianity who served as an expert to the parliamentary commission sets religions and cults side by side term for term - priest and guru, catechesis and indoctrination - and finds no objective criterion separating them: on work, money, sexuality, conversion, the courts, politics and harmfulness measured in deaths.

MIVILUDES Descent on the Moulin des Vallées

CICNS documents the October 2009 MIVILUDES visit to an ecumenical monastery in Ille-et-Vilaine, reproducing the residents' letter to their prefect describing an intrusion conducted with journalists in tow.

The New Age as Seen by the Written Press in Quebec

CICNS's reading digest of Eric Forgues's essay: page by page, how Quebec's French-language press covered the new age from outside, as catch-all, plague and infiltration, and what that says about an elite estranged from a quarter of its readership.

Compulsory Schooling: Chronology of the Death of the Freedom of Instruction

Valérie Dole documents the 1998 law that made home education 'exceptional' in France: the parliamentary session verbatim, the annual inspections and mayoral inquiries it created, and the cult panic that carried it unanimously.

Parenthood, Convictions and Children's Rights in the MIVILUDES 2009 Report

CICNS reads the report's custody case-law study against its missing context: judges writing 'cult' into their reasoning, divorce accusations as windfall, and the 80,000-children figure quietly absent from the mission's own pages.

The Current Policy of the MIVILUDES Is Condemned to Fail

CICNS's 2009 assessment turns Roulet's own exit balance sheet against the mission: no credible victim inquiry ever done, discriminations institutionalised, the secular pact breached by doctrine evaluation, and a groundswell misread.

The Question of the Cults: Institutional Deregulation or French Singularity?

Baubérot and Milot's ASSR 2002 discussion of Hervieu-Léger's book: the cult fight as public-hygiene campaign, the allergy to pluralism behind French regulation, and the Canadian counter-model where ordinary law suffices.

Reductionists and Enlargers: Two Forms of Intelligence, and What Happens When One Wins

Claude-Gérard Sarrazin's chapter on the ontological frontier between those who admit only matter and those who admit more: how the free-thinkers were right against religious hegemony, and how their heirs, he argues, are now taking up the torch of the fundamentalists they defeated - by refusing publication, by dismissing intelligence tests, and finally by curtailing the right to live according to one's conscience.

Hide That Religion I Do Not Wish to See

Alain Bouchard, sociologist of religion at Université Laval, on the 'religiously correct': the implicit norm that religion be private, rational and undemonstrative, and how the mediatised church and the mediatised cult are its two mirror images in Quebec.

Anti-Cult Law: The Poisoned Remedy for an Imaginary Ill

Raphaël Verrier's lmsi.net essay dismantles the ten Renseignements Généraux criteria behind the Guyard list one by one, asks why Opus Dei escaped it, and reads the About-Picard bill as a menace to the associative world itself.

The Renseignements Généraux (1)

Part one of the CICNS dossier on France's political police: the 1995 order article by article with plain-language glosses, the three files, the wiretap cards marked Secret Source, and how informers are recruited and paid.

The Renseignements Généraux (2)

Part two of the CICNS dossier on France's political police: the daily minister's dossier, the unheaded white notes, the Salamandre election simulator, the covert OCSS polling office, and the cult database that became a reference.

Sarkozy on Religions, Cults and Hope: Extracts from La République, les religions, l'espérance

CICNS's page-cited extracts from the sitting minister's 2004 book: no wave of dérives sectaires, a witch-hunt gone too far at times, ordinary criminal law as the test, and a positive laïcité as the liberty to hope.

France in the Time of the Witch Hunt: Christian Singer on the 2001 Law

Extracts from a fiercely polemical account of the About-Picard law and the climate that produced it: a text at once very precise and very vague, the two execrable faces of French laïcité, the checklist of habits that will mark a relative as being under a cult's hold, and the parliamentary debate in which one deputy's own warnings dissolve into reassurance.

Régis Dericquebourg: The Sociologist's Point of View

An interview with the Lille psycho-sociologist on the church-sect distinction, on why there is no legal definition of a sect and why a pluralist State should not supply one, on the five sociological conditions that lead someone into a minority religious group, and on the turnover that sees followers stay four or five years.

The Uncertain Fruits of a Historical Journey through France after 1789

Historian Paul Airiau's paper from the MIVILUDES 'Sectes et laïcité' seminar: a BnF catalogue chronology of the cult question, the associations and laws that built it, and laïcité arriving late, partly as an answer to America.

Journey to the Heart of French Specificity

Christian Decoeur turns the argument from French specificity back on itself: from the Chevalier de La Barre beheaded for keeping his hat on to two schoolgirls expelled for keeping their scarves on, and through a catalogue of what that specificity has actually produced - record psychotropic consumption, a justice system under the executive, a medicine that hurls anathemas, and a list of therapies that all end at the same guillotine word.

André Delelis on Lending the Stade Bollaert to the Jehovah's Witnesses

Régis Dericquebourg's 1998 interview with the socialist mayor of Lens: an atheist's case for lending the municipal stadium to a minority the ADFI wanted banned, resting on Guy Mollet and the plain rule of law.

Landmark Education - Right of Reply - France 3

Landmark Education's reply to the May 2004 Pièces à Conviction broadcast, as compiled by CICNS: the unnotified listing it could never be struck off, the promises France 3 made and broke, the experts the channel declined to consult, and a viewer's comment from the channel's own forum.

From the MILS to the MIVILUDES: French Cult Policy after the Socialist Government

Régis Dericquebourg's CESNUR 2003 Vilnius paper: the 1905 framework, the Vivien and Guyard reports, the About-Picard law, the new mission's contested composition, and what fifteen minority groups expected of the right.

Investigation into the ADFIs, Part 1

A dossier on France's ADFI/UNADFI anti-cult network republished by the CICNS, gathering an ex-member's testimony, book extracts by Paturel, Barrucand and Anne Morelli, and two 1999 newspaper reports.

The Hearings of the 2006 Parliamentary Commission on Cults

CICNS's 28,000-word annotated dossier on the 2006 French parliamentary commission on cults and minors, covering eleven hearings from MIVILUDES president Jean-Michel Roulet to the Machelon report.

Hearing of Serge Blisko, President of the MIVILUDES, before the Senate Commission on Cults and Health

CICNS's twelve-part commentary on Serge Blisko's November 2012 Senate hearing: the MIVILUDES's rhetoric, the About-Picard Act's record of convictions, and the child-victim figures its president could not substantiate.

The CCMM

CICNS profile of the CCMM, the anti-cult association founded in 1981 by Roger Ikor, with quotations from Ikor's own articles and speeches of the 1980s.

The Case of FECRIS

Rudolf Vis's memorandum to the Parliamentary Assembly arguing against consultative status for FECRIS, republished with a CICNS introduction, and taking each of the federation's six stated objectives in turn.

Extracts from the October 2006 Hearing of Didier Leschi

The head of France's central bureau of religious affairs tells the 2006 parliamentary commission on cults and childhood that he has no evidence of public-order disturbance, and warns that stigmatisation may itself become one.

Parliamentary Reports and Their Legal Value

CICNS on the French parliamentary cult reports from Vivien (1983) onwards: official texts deny them normative value, yet courts, administrations and the media use them constantly.

Georges Fenech's 2008 Report "Justice Faced with Dérives Sectaires"

Éric Bouzou's section-by-section commentary on the MIVILUDES president's 2008 report to the Prime Minister, from its opening word "teratology" to its unfounded child-victim figures.

In-Depth Inquiry into an Anti-Cult Commission: The Harms of Façade Rationalism and of Scientism

CICNS on the 2013 Senate commission on cults and health: four months in, not one targeted practitioner had been heard, while officials asserted victim numbers they admitted they could not support.

CICNS Commentary on the Presentation of the Parliamentary Commission Report on Cults and Childhood

CICNS's point-by-point rebuttal of the 19 December 2006 presentation of the French parliamentary report on cults and children, including the Tabitha's Place visit and the 40,000-80,000 figure.

Senate Commission of Inquiry on Cults: the Hearing of Jean-Pierre Jougla

CICNS's timecoded analysis of Jean-Pierre Jougla's 6 November 2012 Senate testimony, counting his disqualifying terms and answering each passage of his argument.

Commentary on Senate Hearings of Practitioners in Non-Conventional Therapies

CICNS commentary on the 2013 French Senate hearings of naturopaths, kinesiologists and energy healers, arguing that practitioners who adopt anti-cult language against each other feed the repression.

Was the Anti-Cult Machination Losing Its Momentum?

The full text of Philippe Vuilque's 2006 resolution creating the parliamentary commission on cults and minors, annotated line by line by the CICNS, with the Assembly debate that adopted it unanimously.

The Guide for the Public Official Facing Dérives Sectaires

CICNS walks through the 2004 MIVILUDES guide for civil servants: criteria of dangerousness with no legal basis, and 192 of 54,000 child-welfare files.

The 2010 Miviludes Guide: A Machiavellian Will to Exclude

CICNS takes apart the 2010 MIVILUDES guide on minors: the unfounded 50,000 child victims, "mental hold" as pseudo-science, and criteria that fit any family.

The Guide for the Mayors of France against Cults

Emile D'Albret reads the 2001 MILS guide for mayors as a manual for using planning, tax and schooling law against spiritual minorities.

The New 2010 MIVILUDES Guide: The Politics of Fear

CICNS reads the 2010 MIVILUDES guide on protecting minors and finds a doctrine that asks officials to detect a dérive sectaire before it exists: risk in place of established harm.

The MIVILUDES Report: Dramatic Hysteria and Incompetence

CICNS on the MIVILUDES 2010 annual report: the "2012" apocalypse threat, resettlement in the countryside as a new cult indicator, and alternative medicine as danger.

Seminar 2003-2004, Cults and Laïcité

CICNS presents extracts from the MIVILUDES university seminar: Danièle Hervieu-Léger on three lines of dérive, and Jean Baubérot on the rhetoric of the Republic under threat.

Commentary on the 2005 MIVILUDES Report

Patrick Le Berre turns the nine "cult mechanisms" back on MIVILUDES itself, counting the 2005 report's conflations, defamations and abuses of dominant position.

The 2005 MIVILUDES Report

André Tarassi on the MIVILUDES 2005 report, which abandoned the pledge not to name groups and became an inventory of spiritual minorities and their "dangers".

The 2004 MIVILUDES Report

André Tarassi on the MIVILUDES 2004 report: professional secrecy urged towards denunciation, the About-Picard law's nil record, and doctrine equated with danger.

The 2006 MIVILUDES Report

Two CICNS commentaries on the MIVILUDES 2006 annual report: André Tarassi on the mission's academic screen, Éric Bouzou on its psychology of "mental hold".

The 2006 MIVILUDES Report: Michel de Courtelle's Analysis

Michel de Courtelle's long reading of the MIVILUDES 2006 report, with the Leschi and Dupuis hearings that put 8 cult-linked cases against 19,000 child reports.

The 2003 MIVILUDES Report

André Tarassi's line-by-line CICNS commentary on the first MIVILUDES annual report, from the "consensus" not to be broken to the criteria of dangerousness.

The 2007 MIVILUDES Report: Denis Mathieu's Reading Report

Denis Mathieu's chapter-by-chapter digest of the 234-page MIVILUDES 2007 report: 41 referrals since 2005, the OSCE chapter, and a tour of central Europe.

The 2007 MIVILUDES Report: Éric Bouzou's Commentary

Éric Bouzou on the MIVILUDES 2007 report: the mission cast as martyr, preterition as method, mental hold as an argument, and the missing figures.

The 2009 MIVILUDES Report

CICNS commentary on the MIVILUDES 2009 annual report: Fenech's claim of "effectiveness", a long study of shamanism, and the mission's attack on judges.

MIVILUDES 2007 Report: Michel de Courtelle's Analysis

Michel de Courtelle measures the MIVILUDES 2007 report against its predecessors and takes apart at length its chapter on "induced false memories".

The 2008 MIVILUDES Report

CICNS on the MIVILUDES 2008 report: figures Fenech gave the press that the report never printed, and the Interior Ministry's circular against lists.

UNADFI Before the Courts

CICNS case file on the 2005 suit before the Paris tribunal de grande instance seeking the dissolution of the anti-cult association UNADFI, with press coverage of the hearings and the judgment.

The Belgian State Condemned for Damaging the Image of the EURD

CICNS case file on the 2005 Brussels appeal ruling that condemned the Belgian State for damaging the image of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in its 1997 parliamentary cult report.

Police Assaults on Spiritual Minorities

CICNS dossier of violent police and gendarmerie raids on spiritual minorities in France from 1989 to 2011 (Longo Maï, The Family, Beljanski, Tabitha's Place, the Mandarom and others), with CICNS's advice to victims.

The Steiner Schools Defamation Trial: Botched Investigations and Prejudice

Martine Lagattier's account in Alternative santé - l'impatient of the February 2000 defamation trial of deputy Jacques Guyard, sued by the Federation of Steiner Schools, the Mercure fédéral and the NEF over the 1999 parliamentary cult report.

Defaming "Cults" in All Good Faith

CICNS legal analysis of the Guyard and Brard rulings, in which French courts found defamation of movements labelled cults proven yet excused it under the good-faith doctrine.

The Suicide of Doctor Jullien

CICNS case file on Dr Yves Jullien, who took his own life in March 2000 after a cult rumor and administrative harassment closed his Epinoïa centre at l'Isle-sur-Serein.

The Case of the "Presumed Guru" Robert Lé Dinh

CICNS's 2012 follow-up on the Robert Lé Dinh appeal trial: UNADFI as civil party, the About-Picard law, psychological subjection, and the media's treatment of the case.

The Lé Dinh Case: Remarkable Defence Pleadings on the Relentless Mechanics of So-Called "Cult" Trials

CICNS commentary on the 2010 assize trial of Robert Lé Dinh, reproducing the defence pleadings of Maîtres Lebonjour and Martial on how the cult postulate shapes French courtrooms.

The l'Essentiel Affair

CICNS case file on the 20 November 2000 raid by sixty armed gendarmes on the small Terranova spiritual community in the Aveyron, and the five years of surveillance, custody and trial that framed it.

Complaint by a Spiritual Minority After an Abusive MIVILUDES Raid

The full text of the 2010 criminal complaint filed by the Moulin des Vallées community against MIVILUDES president Georges Fenech over an unannounced 2009 raid conducted with undisclosed journalists.

The Arnaud Mussy and Néo-Phare Affair: Revocation of Human Rights

A 2005 CICNS member's analysis of the Arnaud Mussy / Néo-Phare appeal verdict, the first application of the About-Picard law, and the role of expert witness Jean-Marie Abgrall.

Are the Banks Taking Part in the Repression?

A 2005 CICNS investigation into French banks jointly refusing accounts to a spiritual association, the legal right to an account, and the role of FATF blacklists, TRACFIN and the DGCCRF.

Cults, Rumours and the Courts: Laurent Hincker's Case Files

CAP-LC's 2003 review of Strasbourg lawyer Laurent Hincker's book on rumour-driven prosecutions of spiritual movements, from the Guyard anthroposophy defamation case to a Hindu movement destroyed by press inventions.

The Paturel Case and the European Court of Human Rights

Press coverage, the ECHR Registrar's communiqué and Christian Paturel's own testimony on Paturel v France (22 December 2005), in which Strasbourg unanimously found that his French defamation conviction over an anti-cult book violated Article 10.

Court Decisions in Favour of Spiritual Minorities (2007)

Three 2007 French rulings compiled by CICNS: Catherine Picard's defamation conviction over the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Cour de cassation finding Fournier and Picard's book defamatory towards AMORC, and the dismissal of Anne Hidalgo's suit against Christian Cotten.

Jehovah's Witnesses in the French Courts: A Case File

CICNS's compiled case file on the Jehovah's Witnesses in France: the Picard and Brard defamation convictions, the 45-million-euro tax battle, the court-ordered disclosure of the intelligence files behind the 1996 cult list, and local hostility to their places of worship.

The Law of 12 June 2001 against Cult Movements Infringing Human Rights

Patrice Rolland's scholarly anatomy of the About-Picard law's legislative debate: a law explicitly directed against cults that never names or defines them, and what that paradox reveals about French fear of the cult phenomenon.

The French Judge Facing 'Cult' Cases

Engineer and CICNS member Éric Bouzou surveys how French courts handle 'cult' cases, drawing on Vincente Fortier's case-law study and testimony from Raphaël Liogier and Laurent Hincker.

Analysis of the Law of 12 June 2001 Concerning "Cults"

Marseille lawyer Philippe Perollier's clause-by-clause commentary on France's 2001 About-Picard law: how the abandoned offence of mental manipulation returned as abuse of weakness, and the power the law's vagueness hands to the judges.

The Archives of Maître Paturel, Part 4: The Horus Case and the Conscientious Objectors

In this interview extract from his archives, Maître Christian Paturel recounts the gendarmerie operation at the Horus agrarian community and how he came to defend more than three thousand conscientious objectors, most of them Jehovah's Witnesses.

Police Raids, Searches and Garde à Vue: What Are Your Rights?

CICNS's legal guide to police raids, searches and garde à vue custody as experienced by spiritual minorities in France, with statutory rules, time limits and first-hand raid testimony.

McCarthyism: Another Precedent for Witch-Hunting

CICNS analysis of McCarthyism's surveillance machinery and civil liberties abuses, drawn as a historical parallel to France's anti-cult campaign.

The CICNS Interviews: A Guide to the Video Archive, 2006 to 2014

A guide to the roughly fifty-six interviews published on the CICNS YouTube channel between 2006 and 2014: scholars, journalists, practitioners and CICNS's own reports, grouped by voice.

17 July 2026

Raphaël Liogier on the French Cult Question: A Guide to the 2013 CICNS Interviews

A guide to the four-part 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier: the struggle inside the French State, why dissent on the cult question costs, why television forbids nuance, and his individuo-globalism thesis.

17 July 2026

Global Anti-Cultism and the Return of “Brainwashing” Theories

Massimo Introvigne traces three pathways (expanded coercive-control laws, the judicialization of “spiritual abuse,” and reinterpreted trafficking statutes) through which discredited brainwashing theories are re-entering courts and legislation worldwide.

6 July 2026

Anti-Cult France: Taking Stock (Part 2 of the CICNS Documentary)

Part 2 of the CICNS documentary: the 2006 'Enfance volée' report tested against its own hearings, and testimony from people accused of being in cults.

16 August 2014

Laïcité, a Struggle at the Summit — 2013 CICNS Interview with Raphaël Liogier (1/4)

Part 1 of the 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier, in English: the struggle inside the French State between the field ministries and the laïcité ideologues at Matignon, and the proposal of an independent observatory of spiritual minorities.

1 July 2013

When a Commune Is Called a 'Cult': Mayor Caroline Yaffée's CICNS Interview

English translation of the CICNS interview with Caroline Yaffée, a Drôme mayor, on the 'cult' label, alternative medicine and Steiner schooling in France.

5 November 2012

Interview with Patrick Le Berre: A "Cult" Rumour at the CEA

English translation of the CICNS interview with Patrick Le Berre, a former CEA research scientist, on the "cult" rumour and harassment he says he endured.

5 November 2012

A Catastrophic Meeting for M. Fenech's Anti-Cult Theses

CICNS sets Fenech's cordial account of his 2011 meeting with Bishop Konstantin Bendas against the bishop's own published verdict: armed guards, gold watches, undefined menaces, and a translator's parting line.

1 July 2012

The Approach to the Question of the Cults in France

André Tarassi's Reflets article: an exclusive laïcité, a mission run like a militant grouplet, figures that swing from 8 children a year to 80,000 in danger, and the case for a neutral observatory instead.

1 April 2012

La laïcité falsifiée by Jean Baubérot: What the Book Says, and the 500,000 It Leaves Out

The CICNS's March 2012 reading report on Jean Baubérot's account of the new laïcité - a tele-visual construction, a magic word rebaptising a debate on Islam - accompanied by long extracts, and by two criticisms: the spiritual minorities are never mentioned, and without that omission the book's left-right thesis would not hold.

1 March 2012

France Has Been Fighting Minorities Obsessively for Thirty Years, without Safeguards

Éric Bouzou's history of the terminology shifts from MILS to MIVILUDES, the new subjection-based definition of dérive sectaire, the online denunciation form, and why a few hundred activists outweigh half a million citizens.

1 February 2012

Cults: Social Scourge or Scapegoat? Jean Baubérot at the CICNS Colloquium

English translation of Jean Baubérot's address at the CICNS colloquium: laïcité's Gallican roots, the 1905 law, medicine and school as sites of conflict with minorities of conviction, and the risk of charismatic domination everywhere.

24 November 2011

Claude Guéant's Anti-Cult Code of Laïcité

CICNS reads the Interior Minister's 2011 compendium of laïcité law: ten pages on dérives sectaires, an undefined 'cult movement' at their centre, and questions Guéant is never asked about the About-Picard law and the MIVILUDES list.

1 November 2011

Laïcité, a "Neutralizing Neutrality"? The French State and "Cults"

English translation of a CICNS-published talk on laïcité as "neutralizing neutrality", the 1905 law, and the French state's treatment of "cults".

29 October 2011

"The Judicial System Is Sick" — Raphaël Liogier at the CICNS Round Table

English translation of Raphaël Liogier's round-table extract at the CICNS colloquium: the arbitrary versus the authoritarian, unenforceable-yet-enforced parliamentary reports, and his first-hand account of testifying as an expert in a Soka Gakkai discrimination case.

29 October 2011

From Homosexuality to the Cults: Scourges, State Repression and History on a Loop

In 1960 the Mirguet amendment classed homosexuality among the social scourges, and an official repression followed that lasted until 1981. The CICNS sets that forgotten episode beside the 1995 Gest-Guyard report's use of the same word, and the 2004 description of cult membership as a pathology to be treated with or without consent.

1 September 2011

What Regulations for the New Religious Movements in the European Union?

CICNS's annotated digest of the Luca colloquium volume: Willaime, Rolland and the MIVILUDES on the French model, the Belgian CIAOSN and Swiss CIC compared, Barker on Britain, and the exchanges where CICNS pressed from the floor.

1 August 2011

Accused of 'Dérive Sectaire': Sabine, a Doula, on Her Police Questioning

A French doula's first-person account of a two-hour judicial-police questioning in Montpellier over suspected 'dérive sectaire' — CICNS testimony in English.

4 July 2011

Laïcité: Why, Where, When and How? A Synthesis, and the Test France Fails

A June 2011 synthesis of what laïcité is: the four principles of Baubérot and Milot, Milot's five types, whom it binds, how it differs from secularisation, the 1905 and 2004 laws, the Mexican precedent - then the test applied to the treatment of the spiritual minorities, principle by principle.

1 June 2011

The CSA Replies to the CICNS about a Programme on "the Cults"

CICNS's December 2010 letter to the French broadcasting regulator over a France 2 programme on people 'snatched by a cult': the unnamed-but-recognisable subterfuge, the 500,000-follower figure, and the association's May 2011 commentary on the reply it received.

1 May 2011

Anti-Cult France: The State of Play (CICNS Documentary, Short Version)

English translation of the short version of the 2011 CICNS documentary on France's anti-cult apparatus, the 2006 parliamentary inquiry and its unheard victims.

29 April 2011

Raphaël Liogier at the CICNS Colloquium (1/2): Defining "Cult", Defining Laïcité

First half of Raphaël Liogier's talk at the CICNS colloquium, in English: how Western Buddhism became a good religion while Soka Gakkai did not, three definitions of the word cult, and laïcité as a contested neutrality caught in a struggle of classifications.

19 April 2011

Raphaël Liogier at the CICNS Colloquium (2/2): Why "Cults" Became France's Scapegoat

Second half of Raphaël Liogier's talk at the CICNS colloquium, in English: liberty defined from above (Rousseau vs Locke), education and medicine as the privileged conflict domains, the Longo Maï case, and the declamatory function of the anti-cult law.

19 April 2011

Cults: Social Scourge or Scapegoat? Laurent Hincker at the CICNS Colloquium

English translation of Laurent Hincker's address at the CICNS colloquium: defamation trials over the word 'cult', the 1995 criteria, the About-Picard law.

4 April 2011

Seven Years: Moral Balance Sheet and Perspectives of the CICNS's Action

André Tarassi's March 2011 stocktaking of the association's first seven years, and the strategic turn it announces: dialogue with the authorities having gone unanswered, 'stop complaining, file complaints' becomes the new direction.

1 March 2011

Is the Refusal of Care "Symptomatic of a Mental Pathology"?

The CICNS reads the proceedings of a GEMPPI colloquium on refusals of care for ideological causes and finds the professionals answering the associations' question in the negative: a prison psychiatrist explains that the obligation to undergo care cannot apply and that religious refusal is not a psychiatric pathology, and the National Consultative Ethics Committee's opinion 87 holds that one has the right to be mad so long as that madness harms no one else.

1 March 2011

The Affair of the Ardennes Social Intervention Directorate (DISA)

A CICNS chronology of the DISA affair: three child-welfare educators accused of cult behaviour in 2004, one imprisoned for three months, cleared by a discharge in 2010 after two SRPJ officers admitted inventing their confessions.

1 October 2010

What Do I Know? Mental Manipulation: The Concept, Its Origin and Why It Should Not Be in Law

Éric Bouzou traces the notion from the CIA's failed behaviourist experiments and Schein and Lifton's refutation, through Margaret Singer's defeat in an American court, to its French rebirth as mental manipulation and then as the psychological subjection written into the About-Picard law, and sets out the three questions the MIVILUDES has never answered.

1 September 2010

Anti-Cult France: The State of Play (CICNS Documentary, Part 1)

English translation of part 1 of the CICNS documentary tracing the French anti-cult movement's origins, from Jonestown to the 1996 parliamentary report.

4 April 2010

Interview with the Brahma Kumaris: Living on France's "Cult" List

Brahma Kumaris members in France describe fiscal audits, lost jobs, surveillance and an arson attempt after the 1996 parliamentary 'cult' list — CICNS video.

24 January 2010

Burqa, Full Veil and Dérives Sectaires

Éric Bouzou reads the 2009 full-veil mission as the anti-cult playbook applied to an established religion: fear vocabulary, absent data, one veiled witness heard, and Guy Carcassonne's demolition of every ground but public order.

1 January 2010

The Anti-Cult Fight: a Black Mark on Our National Identity

Éric Bouzou's 2009 essay on the Fenech offensive: the propaganda mechanics, the veil mission and France Télécom as the cases the MIVILUDES was kept away from, the science of brainwashing revisited, and the About-Picard law's avowed hypocrisy.

1 December 2009

On the Importance of Understanding Beliefs in Assessing Spiritual Minorities

André Tarassi dismantles the anti-cult movement's proudest claim, 'we judge acts, not beliefs': beliefs determine acts, rituals are unreadable without the inner experience that founded them, and the belief/act division is a discrediting device.

1 December 2009

Freemasonry and the Cults: An Order That Was Once the Sect Now Helps Name Them

The CICNS reads the masonic obediences' own websites, communiqués and press against the history of the accusations once made against them by Leo XIII and the anti-masonic literature of the nineteenth century, then applies the MIVILUDES's own criteria of dérives sectaires to the lodges and finds at least three of them fit.

1 September 2009

Interview with Stuart Wright on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with American sociologist Stuart Wright on leaving new religious movements, apostates, and the 1993 Waco standoff.

3 July 2009

La manipulation mentale by Arnaud Esquerre: A Sociology of the Accusation Itself

The CICNS's June 2009 reading report on Esquerre's Fayard study, with long extracts: how the totalitarian, mentally manipulating cult was a French collective invention of the 1970s and 80s, how the About-Picard law created a state of psychological subjection that has never dissolved anyone, and what the Interior Ministry's own head of the bureau of religions says he cannot find to control.

1 June 2009

Cults: Immunity, Impunity, Anti-Cult Action, a Tailor-Made Law? A CICNS Clip

English translation of a 2009 CICNS clip arguing that France's 2008 witness-immunity law reinforces the impunity of parliamentary anti-cult commissions.

9 January 2009

The Springs of the Anti-Cult Fight in France

On Fenech's 2008 appointment, CICNS assembles what Baubérot, Liogier, Morelli, Duval and Maffesoli told it drives the French fight against cults: Gallican surveillance, a classification struggle, a shared cake, and manufactured fear.

1 October 2008

Parental Controls on the Internet and the "Cults"

CICNS tests Orange's 2008 parental-control filter and finds a hidden proscription list: 'cults' the only named category, entries that contradict the operator's own stated precautions, and no source anyone can check. The remedy proposed is an independent observatory.

1 August 2008

The CICNS Submission to the UN Universal Periodic Review on France, 2008

CICNS's full UPR dossier: the 2001 law of exception, police assaults on calumnious accusations, the fivefold-varying child figures against the ministries' own counts, the lists, the divorce spectre, and the observatory it asks for instead.

1 May 2008

The Spectre of the "Cult" in French Divorce Judgments: Three Mothers Testify

Three divorced mothers and three lawyers describe how "cult" accusations were used in French divorce and custody proceedings, in a 2007 CICNS documentary.

10 June 2007

Politics and Spirituality: Was Anti-Cultism Born on the Left?

André Tarassi traces French anti-cultism to 1981 and the Vivien mission, names its most committed actors on the left, surveys the 'without-religion' half of France, and reads the 1999 party-funding proposals as anti-democratic.

1 February 2007

Dialogue Between a "Free Thinker" and the Founder of the CICNS

The full January 2007 exchange between Michel Thys, Belgian free thinker and Grand Orient mason, and André Tarassi of the CICNS: twenty questions on belief and choice, the suicide and child-protection figures, the iceberg argument, and two spiritualities talking across the divide.

1 January 2007

An Independent Observatory of Alternative Spiritual, Educational and Therapeutic Movements: The CICNS's Proposal

The CICNS's full creation project, first drafted in 2007 and updated in March 2013: a map of every actor in the French cult question - executive, parliament, anti-cult associations, apostates, courts, media, researchers, neighbouring countries - the five reasons the current policy is not constructive, and a concrete structure modelled on Britain's INFORM, with its board, its mission and its financing.

1 January 2007

Interview with Bernard Biro on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with French lawyer Bernard Biro on 'cult' accusations in the courts, the About-Picard law and defamation remedies.

11 November 2006

The "Cults" Debate Seen from Québec: Eugénie Francoeur's CICNS Interview

English translation of the CICNS interview with Québec journalist Eugénie Francoeur on new spiritualities in Canada, Britain and France.

11 November 2006

Interview with Jean-Pierre Joseph on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Grenoble lawyer Jean-Pierre Joseph on the 1995 French parliamentary report on "cults" and the events around it.

11 November 2006

Interview with Christian Tal Schaller on the Theme of "Cults"

Christian Tal Schaller's CICNS interview: the 1997 gendarmerie raid on his health institute, the trials that followed, and the "cult deviance" label.

11 November 2006

Interview with Christian Paturel on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS video interview with Christian Paturel, the jurist vindicated by the European Court of Human Rights in Paturel v. France (2005).

10 November 2006

The Incredible Case of L'Essentiel: Report on a French "Cult Case"

Unnamed members of the publishing venture in France's L'Essentiel affair recount the raid, custody, house arrest and years of proceedings in this translated CICNS report.

10 November 2006

Interview with Philippe Pérollier on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Marseille lawyer Philippe Pérollier on French anti-cult case law, the 1996 list and the About-Picard law.

10 November 2006

Interview with Régis Dericquebourg on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with sociologist Régis Dericquebourg on fieldwork among healing churches and France's anti-cult climate.

10 November 2006

Interview with Pastor Dominique Kounkou on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with pastor and jurist Dominique Kounkou on the "cult" label, African-expression churches and the About-Picard law.

9 November 2006

Interview with Jean Baubérot on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Jean Baubérot on the 1905 law, the MILS, the MIVILUDES, and religious minorities in France.

9 November 2006

Interview with Jean-Marc Florand on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with lawyer Jean-Marc Florand on the legal void around "cults", the About-Picard law and France's anti-cult bodies.

9 November 2006

Interview with Pierre Barrucand on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Pierre Barrucand, CNRS researcher, on the history of French anti-cult campaigns.

4 November 2006

Interview with Massimo Introvigne: Full Transcript

Full transcript of the CICNS interview with sociologist Massimo Introvigne on the history of brainwashing theory, MK-ULTRA, deprogramming, and anti-cult laws.

1 November 2006

The DGAS Circular of 1 June 2006 on Dérives Sectaires

CICNS reproduces and annotates the social-action circular that wires every welfare directorate into the anti-cult watch: reinforced vigilance on accreditations, monthly correspondent meetings, and a dedicated reporting mailbox.

1 June 2006

Interview with Raphaël Liogier: Full Transcript

Full transcript of the CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier on French laïcité, state neutrality as intervention, and how 'good' and 'bad' religions are classified.

1 May 2006

Interview with Anne Morelli: Full Transcript

Full transcript of the CICNS interview with historian Anne Morelli (ULB) on who decides the label 'cult', media treatment of religious minorities, and freedom of conscience.

1 November 2005

Interview with Maurice Duval: Full Transcript

Full transcript of the CICNS interview with ethnologist Maurice Duval, in English: his four-year field study of the Mandarom, the censorship that followed, why the word 'cult' has no sociological meaning, and the manufacture of collective fear.

1 March 2005

The Anti-Cult Discourse as a Support of Neoliberal Ideology

Maurice Duval's 2005 article for L'Homme et la Société: a Montpellier by-law banning all proselytism on the public highway used against a Trotskyist paper seller, alternative groups listed as cults in the 1996 report, the Weberian typology tested on the Mandarom, and fear tracked as it moves from the nuclear industry to the foreigner to the cults - the bedrock, he argues, of a security ideology that makes neoliberal policy acceptable.

1 January 2005

What Is a Spiritual Minority? And What Is Held Against It?

The CICNS's founding definitional essay of January 2005: where the new spiritual currents came from, why gathering around a shared view of human destiny is an ordinary social act, and why the hostility they meet is aimed not at criminality but at a whole dimension of life.

1 January 2005

Leave Us Our Charlatans!

The December 2003 Le Monde text-petition by Marcela Iacub and Patrice Maniglier against the Accoyer amendment: patients asking the health authorities to stop protecting them from their own freely chosen therapists.

2 December 2003