I found a very good article about the old CAN organization written by Anson Shupe and Susan J. Darnell.
the same folks that wrote the book "Agents of Discord: Deprogramming, Pseudo-Science, And the American Anticult Movement".
Just as a reminder - Shupe is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the Joint campus of Indiana University and Purdue University in Fort Wayne and is thought of by many to be one of the most respected sociologists of religion. Susan Darnell is a civil rights activist and journalist. Susan Darnell also works for a credit union. So just to clarify this is an article by a professional scholar and a civil rights activist and journalist. This article is a very good resource and is blunt and to the point.
CAN, We Hardly Knew Ye: Sex, Drugs, Deprogrammers’ Kickbacks, and Corporate Crime in the (old) Cult Awareness Network
by Anson Shupe, Susan E. DarnellA paper presented at the 2000 meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
Houston, Texas. October 21
Here is a snippet from the article:
On October 23, 1996 at 9:30 AM the Cult Awareness Network (CAN), a Chicago-based national anticult organization claiming to be purely a tax-exempt informational clearinghouse on new religions, closed its doors amid bankruptcy proceedings and its assets were auctioned off [see Document 1: Sale of CAN name]. The precipitating, but not lone, event that hastened its demise was a civil suit brought against both CAN and a trio of coercive deprogrammers who unsuccessfully tried to remove a legal adult, Mr. Jason Scott, from a United Pentecostal congregation.
Scott was violently abducted, physically abused, and forcibly detained at a remote Washington State location for almost a week. While CAN was meanwhile suffering many other lawsuits for alleged deprivation of the civil rights of members of minority religions, the Scott case became its Waterloo.
The jury was quite clear in its decision [see Document 2] to award compensatory and punitive damages to Scott. [1] CAN’s primary activity, this case and others have revealed, was to provide false and/or inflammatory opinion in the guise of "information" about minority religions to the media and other inquires. All or virtually all such "information" was derogatory, consistent with CAN’s goals of "educating" the public that various new religious movements (NRMs) are "destructive cults," that all of the members thereof are "cult victims," are "brainwashed," and are therefore at risk, possibly needing "rescue."
The jury’s decision, under the definitions provided in Washington law, was that CAN was truly an organized hate campaign. CAN described its activities in a euphemistic manner to make its activities seem less outrageous from a civil liberties perspective. The reason CAN ever became involved in the Scott lawsuit was that, consistent with its organizational pattern, it served as a conduit for referrals to coercive deprogrammers (later termed by CAN "exit counselors") who would, for a fee, abduct and during detention harangue family members into religious apostasy.
In a curt note to the defendants who tried to appeal the verdict [Document 3], including self-proclaimed Bible-based "cult expert" Rick Ross, who had thoroughly botched the Jason Scott deprogramming, United States District Judge John C. Coughenour concluded:
"Finally, the court notes each of the defendants’ seeming incapability of appreciating the maliciousness of their conduct towards Mr. Scott. Rather, throughout the entire course of this litigation, they have attempted to portray themselves as victims of Mr. Scott’s counsel’s alleged agenda. Thus, the large award given by the jury against both CAN and Mr. Ross seems reasonably necessary to enforce the jury’s determination on the oppressiveness of the defendants’ actions and deter similar conduct in the future." [2]
In this paper we do not rehash the Scott case, which was entangled in legal minutiae and appeals, nor do we chronicle the last days of CAN as it struggled frantically with a bankruptcy court to prevent its records and files from becoming public [see Document 4]. Instead, based primarily on the latter sources we present new evidence that CAN indeed illustrated the three levels of malfeasance recognized by criminologists:
- street crime -- direct, physical tactics of assaulting others (or their property) for personal gain.
- white collar crime -- insiders misappropriating or stealing from the organization’s resources for their own enrichment.
- corporate crime -- performance of illegal, harmful criminal behavior as standard operating policy for administrators.
Our purpose is to shed new light on a highly visible, late twentieth century counter social movement with ostensibly humanitarian intentions, to extend sociological/historical understanding of the cult-anticult controversy that has preoccupied the attention of many scholars, and to encourage criminologists’ further interest in matters usually taken up by sociologists of religion.
You can read the rest here:
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