"I don't care if Moon is like Hitler;I've chosen to follow him, and I'll follow him to the end!"

(the Believers - Meet a Former Cult Member)

- This was me just before being recruited into the Moonies. - Look at that!

Steven Hassan is a counselor, cult expert, and former cult member.

We went to talk to him about his experience.

My name is Steve Hassan, I'm a licensed mental health counselor, and I'm an author of three books about cults, the most famous of which is "Combatting Cult Mind Control".

I got interested in this whole subject after my family deprogrammed me from a two-and-a-half-year involvement with the Moon Cult in the early '70s.

The Moon Cult, or "Moonies", refers to the Unification Church founded in the '60s by Sun Myuan Moon.

The group was known for its mass weddings and staunch anti-Communist beliefs.

The world view of a member of the Moonies was very "us" versus "them".

We are the chosen, we are the elite, we are gonna take over the world.

Only Korean will be spoken, all other religions will be abolished.

When and why did you join?

So, I was 19, I was gonna graduate, I was gonna be a poetry writer.

But my girlfriend dumped me, and I was lonely; three women, well, flirted with me.

And I remember asking at one point, "Are you part of some religious group?" and they said, "Oh, no, not at all."

They invited me over for dinner, and they were like, "Hey, we're going away for the weekend; it's gonna be so cool, you need to come."

And I was very naive and trusting, and everyone was smiling and sincere and warm, and I was just like, not getting that this was a cult, this is how they operate.

What was your life like when you were with the group?

A lot of recruiting or fundraising or political actionizing⏤those were the three major roles.

They... they would say you have to look three inches into people's eyes, like this.

Hi, there.

- How are you? - Stop.

Right, I was there for for two-and-a-half years, but I was made a leader, and that was the part of the allure, I guess?

So, when and what was the turning point that led to you leaving the cult?

Well, my last job in the cult was as a fundraising captain in Baltimore, and we were selling flowers on street corners.

Everyone on my team had to make a minimum of $100 a day, otherwise they couldn't sleep at night.

I would never ask of my members what I wouldn't do myself.

So, while I was sleeping three to four hours a night, normally, now I was not sleeping at all.

And it lasted three days, and I fell asleep at the wheel of a van.

Woke up as I was driving into the back of a tractor trailer truck at 80 miles an hour or so.

That accident put me away from the group for a few weeks⏤sleeping, eating away from the constant indoctrination,

which led to me reaching out to my sister, who is the only person who hadn't said I was in a cult and I was brainwashed.

So, she lured me to her house, basically, didn't tell my parents who had been wanting to find me to help me.

- So, it was actually the near-fatal accident that saved your life in the end? - Yeah.

Have you been in contact with anyone since the day you left?

So, as soon as I woke up, I wanted to get all the people I recruited out.

Obviously, naturally, I felt ashamed and embarrassed and guilty.

And I've reached out to them all, but nobody wants to talk to me⏤they think it's too wrong.

What was it like to reintegrate back into wider society?

It took me months to admit I was in a cult and speak out publicly.

It took me a year before I could kiss a woman and not have the indoctrination in my head.

It was very traumatic.

Is there such a thing as a benign cult?

Definitely.

Yeah, of course.

I believe in there are positive religions and that spiritual experience is a great thing.

If people know what they're getting into, if people are free to leave, if people are allowed to read whatever they wanna read and talk whoever they want.

What are we getting wrong about people who've joined cults?

Nobody joins the cult to deceptively recruit it.

Citizen of the world look at someone in the cult and says there's something wrong with them.

They're weak, they're stupid, they're this, they're that, instead of going...

Wow, there was a very systematic mind-control regime that was implemented on them, and they just didn't understand what was happening to them, so they got programmed.

What techniques do cults use to recruit and influence followers?

They use deceptive recruitment so people don't know what is happening to them, thought-stopping, loaded language, totalist black-and-white ideology.

Those are the universal techniques.

As someone who's being in a group that has been called a cult, how do you help people in those same situations?

My influence campaign is oriented to empowering people to think for themselves and give them information to reality tests so they can actually make a choice.

I can tell you what you shouldn't do is say, "You're in a cult!" and try to argue the person rationally out of it

because they've already been programmed to expect prosecution from people who are ignorant.

What it isn't is a quick fix.

I'm very grateful that I was rescued by my family, and I wish everybody had family who cared as much as mine and had the means to be able to help.

And most people don't.