Cult recovery center product of experience

by Laura Withers
Staff Writer

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series examining the effects of cult experiences.

ALBANY — “Mental rape” is the term Paul Martin, director of Wellspring cult recovery retreat and resource center, uses to describe the mind control and manipulation cult leaders use on members of their cult.

Martin said this type of control is similar to drugging cult victims to make them feel good while taking away part of their personality.

“Cult leaders are serial killers of the soul,” he said.

Martin founded Wellspring in 1986. Wellspring was the only cult recovery center in the world until two German cult researchers, Inge Mamay and Dieter Rohmann, developed another retreat in Germany last year.

After completing his doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh, Martin, who was involved in a cult-like Christian movement in the 1970s, moved to Athens with the intention of opening a cult resource center. Martin had a private psychological counseling practice for two years in Athens before opening Wellspring.

Martin said he chose Southeast Ohio because it offered a serene setting and a feeling of internal peace.

“We thought this would be a great wonderful place for a counseling center,” Martin said. “It is a beautiful, peaceful setting.”

Two years after it opened, Martin and his wife worked full time at Wellspring, but the amount of requests for help required them to start looking for more counselors and psychologists.

Many Wellspring clients, averaging age 33, find out about the recovery center by doing research on the topic. Ex-cult members can read about other cult survivors and how to get help on Wellspring’s Web site, http://wellspringretreat.org. Once they contact someone at Wellspring, they can receive information about beginning treatment.

Although only three to five clients stay at Wellspring at a time, the number of clients who are treated each year at Wellspring has grown drastically during the last 16 years. Wellspring’s clientele grew from just six clients in the first two years to 32 in the third year of treatment, and more than 60 clients last year.

Martin said he has never thought about making Wellspring larger to accommodate more clients at one time because he fears the atmosphere would become more like an institutionalized hospital.

“I think (expanding) would ruin it,” he said. “It would ruin the personal touch.”          

Instead, Martin would like to train other people who can create their own cult resource centers.

Like Martin, the majority of Wellspring’s 20 paid staff members were involved with a cult at some time during their life.          

Liz Shaw was a patient at Wellspring in 1990 after leaving a cult that practiced new-age holistic healing. In 1998, Shaw joined Wellspring’s staff as the director of development. She helps to treat people who are from many countries and have a wide background of cult experiences.

Most clients stay at Wellspring for two weeks of intensive counseling that includes group workshops and one-on-one therapy to restructure their lives. However, some clients require more treatment and stay up to five weeks.

Clients who have support from their families usually recover more quickly than clients who have been cut off from family and friends, Shaw said.

One way friends and family members can help cult victims is by staging an intervention to convince the person to leave the cult. Most of the time families will hire an intervention counselor to help them in this process, Shaw said. The cult victim in this situation will suffer the least amount of trauma.

Another way a person will leave a cult is through expulsion, or being kicked out, she said. In this case, the person is asked to leave because they have betrayed the group in some way or caused problems.

A person also can leave a cult by walking away on their own, Shaw said. Some cult victims are so psychologically and emotionally harmed they make the decision on their own to leave the group. This type of person can suffer from a lot of psychological trauma after leaving the group.

But victims who take it upon themselves to leave the cult aren’t the only ones who face a daunting recovery.

For most cult victims, the healing process is a long, difficult road.

Cult recovery workshop leader and cult researcher Larry Pile, who was in the same Christian movement as Martin, helps Wellspring clients understand what happened to them.

Pile said he shows videos to his clients during group workshops. The videos illustrate what it is like to be in a cult, and how cults are formed.

“It helps to demystify what happened to them,” Pile said. “People can really identify with it.”

Clinical counselor Ron Burks helps clients move past their damaging experiences during one-on-one counseling sessions. He recognizes there are many difficulties patients face when leaving a cult.

“Probably the hardest part is letting go of the (group’s) idealism,” Burks said. “It's very hard to duplicate the sense of friendship and community outside (of a cult) because we live in a very individualistic culture.”

Burks said recovering from being in a cult is similar to recovering from a rape. Victims might have low self-esteem and a negative opinion of themselves during the recovery process.

“The person who has been in the cult blames themselves for the abuse,” Burks said. “They feel that they are an unfit person in some way.”

Cult victims, just under 70 percent female and more than 30 percent male, often blame themselves for the psychological abuse because they buy into the stigma that people who join cults are stupid and easily fooled, Shaw said.

Martin said Wellspring has played host to cult victims who were medical doctors, lawyers and graduates of Ivy League schools. The average recovering cult member has more than 14 years of education.

“You would be amazed with who decorates the halls of cult membership,” he said.

Cult leaders recruit intelligent people who are going to help them reach the group’s goal or purpose, Martin said.

“Cult leaders have some sort of a mission,” he said. “They want to recruit people to help them achieve this goal. This is why they’re going to go after bright, intelligent people.”

Another reason victims have difficulty understanding what happened to them is because many cult victims don’t realize they are victims of a cult until they leave, Burks said.

“People who are in a cult generally don't know they're in a cult,” Burks said. “There are always positive things about the experience that make you think everything's okay. Once they get a hold on the facts they're much better able to cope with the experience and then put it behind them.”

Cult victims have some kind of unmet need that is manipulated by cult leaders, Martin said.

Fortunately, Martin said, cult victims can live well after recovering from their experience.

“Our goal is to help them live a life that is better than what it was before they got involved (with a cult),” he said. “If we can work on (their unmet need), and unravel how that was exploited in the group, then they’re better off than before they were even in the cult.”