Playboy Interview: Ted Patrick

Few social movements in American history have been quite so baffling as the rise of the religious cults of the Seventies. Who would have predicted a decade ago, when America's campuses were in upheaval, that within two or three years, those same young college students who had been organizing, marching and even fighting in the streets for peace abroad and civil rights at home would now be selling flowers on street corners, hawking books in airport lobbies and selling life insurance and vacuum cleaners from door to door in the name of such unlikely "causes" as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the Children of God, the Divine Light Mission and the Church of Scientology?

And who, in his wildest imagination, could have made up a more horrifying story than the murders of a U.S. Congressman and three newsmen, to be followed by the mass suicide and murder of over 900 followers of Jim Jones's People's Temple in the jungle of Guyana three months ago? But even before that, it wasn't just the names of those new religious groups or even their divergent philosophies and beliefs that were beginning to perplex people. There was something about the members that was surprising and disconcerting. Many of the parents of those individuals, alarmed by the changes they said they had witnessed in their children, began to claim that they had been "brainwashed" by one cult or another. They told of their children's shaving their heads, changing their names, signing over their money and possessions to their group leader and denouncing their families and society as a whole as agents of "Satan's world." For their part, however, the young cult members denied all allegations of insincerity or skulduggery. They claimed that they had found peace, love and happiness in their new religious groups, and that their freely chosen forms of worship, however unusual, were entitled to full protection under their First Amendment right to freedom of religion. In response, desperate parents began kidnaping their children from the cults in an effort to divert them from their new beliefs. Cult members started suing their parents and having them arrested for violating their constitutional rights. Law-enforcement officials, attorneys and judges were stumped by the legal predicament, and the news media reported the proceedings with a mixture of skepticism, confusion and mild amusement.

Ted Patrick seems to be one of the few persons who have steered an unwavering course through the various controversies. Right or wrong, the notorious figure who prides himself on the nickname Black Lightning has been waging a no-holds-barred, one-man crusade against the cults since 1971, helping parents abduct their children from them and practicing his controversial "deprograming" technique on unwilling subjects. His goal was to free them from what he termed cult programing or mind control and return them to their families, their schools and the world they had abandoned. From the beginning, Patrick's deprograming techniques have met with furious opposition from almost every camp. The various cults have opposed his every action as a flagrant violation of their members' personal freedom. The majority of clergymen and leaders of larger organized religions have also decried Patrick's activities as dangerous transgressions of religious freedom that may lay the groundwork for still broader inquisitions. And both the legal community and the media have condemned deprograming.

For Patrick, however—and maybe for Patrick alone—the distinction is an easy one: freedom of religion versus what he calls freedom of thought. His claim is that cult rituals and techniques destroy the cult member's ability to think and make choices for himself. When that happens, he says, the individual is no longer entitled to his constitutional right to freedom of religion. It then becomes his parent or guardian's right, even duty, to remove him from the cult.

Patrick's argument is unprecedented in American legal history: Our society does not acknowledge as he so readily does that an individual can be stripped of his free will or that he can be induced to say or do anything in the absence of actual physical coercion. Since 1971, Patrick has been arrested and convicted on numerous charges, including kidnaping and unlawful detention; and he has served time in New York, Pennsylvania, California and Colorado.

In several important trials, however, Patrick has won. In one celebrated case in Seattle in 1974, the court ruled that the kidnaping of a cult member by Patrick acting as her parents' agent—was a justifiable act committed to prevent a greater harm. In a more recent case in Rhode Island in 1978, where a lawsuit for unlawful detention was dismissed, the court ruled that deprograming itself was not an illegal act.

At 48, Ted Patrick is a most unlikely person to be setting court precedents and attracting the attention of leading psychiatrists and psychologists. He has had no formal legal training nor background in medicine or mental health. On the contrary, he is, by his own admission, "a tenth-grade dropout with a Ph.D. in common sense."

Following his first highly publicized abductions and his initial, almost incomprehensible deprogramings, Patrick achieved instant notoriety and nearly universal condemnation. Nobody, it seemed, accepted his claim that the cults were dangerous and damaging to the minds of their members. And nobody believed that his deprograming technique was different from the brainwashing methods he attributed to the cults.

Within the past year, however, many people have begun to reassess the things Patrick has been saying since the early Seventies. Last August, 11 members of the Church of Scientology were indicted for infiltration, bugging and burglarizing the offices of the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service in Washington. In October, after an 18-month probe, the House Subcommittee on International Organizations recommended that a Federal task force be established to investigate Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church for violations of U.S. currency, immigration, banking, tax, arms-export-control and other laws. And since last fall, representatives of Synanon, the once-respected drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, have been suspected of committing a number of terrorist acts, including attempting to commit murder by placing a four-and-a-half-foot rattlesnake in the mailbox of a Los Angeles attorney who had won a $300,000 judgment against the group. Then, of course, there was Guyana, with its incomprehensible ritual of faith and carnage.

Patrick has deprogramed members of almost all those groups and hundreds more from the estimated 3000 religious and pseudoreligious cults that have been active in the United States in this decade. Since 1971, he claims to have deprogramed nearly 1600 people from the "big five" international cults—Krishna, Moon, Scientology, the Children of God and the Divine Light Mission—and from religious groups, fringe therapies and extremist political groups as varied as their names: the New Testament Missionary Fellowship, the Worldwide Church of God, Dianetics, Transcendental Meditation, the U.S. Labor Party and the Move.

As psychologists, sociologists and the press have latched onto the convenient new buzz word cult and have applied it to encompass everything from radical socialists to charismatic Christians, so, naturally, has public confusion ascended to dizzying heights. How does one distinguish between a cult and a legitimate religious movement? What constitutes freedom of thought and how does one determine if a person is under some form of mind control? What medical and psychiatric criteria should be established for the regulation of deprograming? And what legal safeguards must be instituted to protect the individual from personal abuse and the society as a whole from anarchy, on the one hand, and inquisition on the other? To broach some of these questions, and with the hope of unraveling the enigmatic personality and activities of Patrick, Playboy Executive Editor G.Barry Golsen (who was himself in on some of the questioning) called on free-lance writer and veteran interviewer Jim Siegelman and on Flo Conway, a communication researcher with eight years of doctoral study in group dynamics and interpersonal relations. Together, Siegelman and Conway have been studying various cult movements for more than five years. Last year, they co-authored "Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change," an exploration of the impact of cult religious rituals and therapeutic techniques on the workings of the brain. Siegelman and Conway report:

"This was not our first encounter with the infamous Ted Patrick. We had interviewed him twice before in connection with our research: once, in early 1977, while he was serving a one-year sentence in Orange County Jail in California, and again, briefly, several months later, in the Denver jail, where he had gone voluntarily to serve out his remaining time on an earlier kidnaping conviction. On both occasions, however, and in those surroundings, we were unable to get a complete picture of the man and his technique.

"The hardest part of the 'Playboy Interview' turned out to be just tracking him down, but we managed to intercept him between deprogramings. He was en route from Miami, where he'd just deprogramed a 73-year-old woman from a nameless Christian cult, to New Jersey, where he was scheduled to confront a young Hare Krishna member who had been lured home by his anxious parents. When we got to Patrick, we locked him in a hotel room in midtown Manhattan and over the next 36 intense hours proceeded to conduct our own deprograming of sorts.

"We found Patrick to be a much less forbidding figure when not in prison garb and under harsh lights. In fact, his physical appearance didn't seem at all like the thing to strike terror into the heart of a Moonie. He takes his work seriously, but not life in general; and we found him to be a most pleasant person to spend two days with.

"We had no premonition, of course, that 12 days after our last session with him, events in Guyana would make Patrick's seemingly melodramatic prophecies come true in a terrible way. We were able to talk further with him after the Guyana murders and suicides, but we'll start with what he had told us earlier."

(The following portion of the interview was conducted on November fourth, fifth and sixth, 12 days before the massacre and mass suicide by People's Temple cultists in Guyana.)

[Q] Playboy: You've been convicted and imprisoned for kidnaping and unlawful detention. Yet you continue to engage in your deprograming activities, holding young people against their will and attempting to change their religious beliefs. How do you justify kidnaping and violating people's First Amendment right to freedom of religion?

[A] Patrick: What I do is not kidnaping. What I do is rescuing. When I deprogram a person, he has already been unlawfully imprisoned. His mind has been unlawfully imprisoned by the cult. But the cult members don't know a psychological prison from a physical prison. They don't know right from wrong, because their minds have been destroyed.

[Q] Playboy: You may call it rescuing. Most people would call it kidnaping—and a felony.

[A] Patrick: What most people don't know is that I only go in with the approval of the person's parents; and the courts have recognized that a parent cannot kidnap his own child. The charge that is usually brought against me is unlawful detention, or holding a person against his will, which is not a felony but a misdemeanor; and I have been acquitted on that charge many more times than I have been convicted. And what most people aren't aware of is that most states have a law of justification that permits a person to do something that would ordinarily be considered illegal if he was committing that act to prevent a greater harm, the greater harm being what is happening to the mental and physical health of the person in the cult. In the common law, this doctrine is centuries old. It's called the lesser of two evils, and judges in New York and Washington have acknowledged this with regard to deprograming. In Seattle, the only time I was ever tried on felony charges, I was acquitted hands down. In fact, the Federal judge there said that if the parents had not tried to get their daughter out of the cult, they would have been "less than responsible, loving parents."

[Q] Playboy: So then you're claiming that you haven't broken the law, is that right?

[A] Patrick: That's right. The courts have recognized that what I'm doing is legal under the law of justification.

[Q] Playboy: But you don't deny that you have taken the law into your own hands?

[A] Patrick: I have taken the law into my own hands, but I haven't broken it.

[Q] Playboy: That's a fine semantic line. What about the two times you have been convicted and imprisoned for your deprograming activities? Why aren't those legal rulings as valid as the two you just cited?

[A] Patrick: Because I never should have been convicted. In the biggest case, against a Hare Krishna girl in California, I didn't even take part in that deprograming. The girl had gone home of her own free will, and I was just asked to go in for a few minutes to see if I could help. When I arrived, I didn't say a thing to her—only asked her her name, and I never touched her. Then she threw a glass of water in my face and jumped up and ran out of the house. She wasn't even going to press charges until her leaders told her to. Then I was tried in Orange County, one of the most racially prejudiced areas in the country; and the jury didn't even try the case. The judge called all the shots and I wound up with the maximum sentence.

In the other case, in Denver, I had been placed on probation, but when I was convicted in California, the judge revoked my probation and sent me to jail.

[Q] Playboy: What makes you so certain that the people you deprogram aren't there of their own free will? How can you claim that they haven't sincerely dedicated their lives to these new religious movements?

[A] Patrick: Because I have proof. The people themselves are my proof. I've deprogramed hundreds of people from these groups, and when I deprogram them, they come out of it and tell the truth about what has happened to them. They say that they have been duped, brainwashed, hypnotized and mesmerized by the cult. That's the proof, the people themselves.

[Q] Playboy: Don't the people in these groups say that they are there of their own choice?

[A] Patrick: Yes, but that's because they have been programed to respond that way.

[Q] Playboy: That's an easy out. How do you know that they have been programed? Isn't it just your word against theirs?

[A] Patrick: No, and I can prove it with a simple discussion. I don't even need to deprogram a person to present proof that he has been programed. All you have to do is put us in a room—a living room, a courtroom—and allow me to talk to that person, and I can show that he is under mind control. In almost every case, you'll see that he can't think for himself, that he can't make decisions. You'll see that he can't even answer a simple question that requires a yes or no answer, that it is psychologically impossible for that person to hold a normal conversation.

[Q] Playboy: Aren't most of the people who get involved with these groups psychologically disturbed to begin with?

[A] Patrick: No; on the contrary, they are some of the brightest, most intelligent kids in the country. Of course, you find some kids in any group who are naïve and idealistic, and others who have been approached at particularly vulnerable times of their lives—they've just lost their girlfriend or they're down on their luck. But the vast majority of the people I have deprogramed are intelligent, outgoing, popular kids. Many of them are sensitive, artistic; others are handsome and athletic. A large proportion of them come from Catholic and Jewish backgrounds where religion was a strong part of their family upbringing. But all of them are searching for something, searching for better ways to make the most out of life, searching for the same things most of us are searching for.

[Q] Playboy: So for a lot of people, cults must provide some sort of answer in terms of that search.

[A] Patrick: They'll tell you they've found God, or the truth. They'll tell you they find friendship and love in a group. Lots of "God bless you" and "We love you, brother," and putting their arms around you and hugging you. But that is after they've been psychologically kidnaped. It's not the so-called love and friendship that hooks them. They're already mesmerized at that stage. No one can claim he's found an answer to anything when he's a willing slave, when he's given up everything he owns to unseen masters he doesn't even know, when he's spending 18 and 20 hours a day lying and cheating and raising money. When they come out, when they get deprogramed, they all say that it wasn't an answer, that they were miserable and filled with guilt and hate—not love.

[Q] Playboy: You're throwing out a lot at once. Let's take things one at a time. First, you talk about "cults" as if it were a brand name everyone were supposed to recognize. Just whom do you mean when you use the term cults?

[A] Patrick: I mean the Moonies, the Hare Krishna, Scientology, the Divine Light Mission, the Children of God, the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation, the New Testament Missionary Fellowship, the Way International and hundreds of other groups in the United States that use techniques of mind control that destroy their members' free will. NBC estimated that there were 10,000,000 cult members. My figure is closer to 20,000,000.

[Q] Playboy: You claim that cults damage a person's mind. What kind of evidence do you have to back up that charge?

[A] Patrick: Many of the kids who were in the Children of God when I started investigating it are being kicked out now, because they've reached a point where they are no longer able to serve the purpose of the cult. After years in the cult, the members' minds cease to be, and they develop a mental condition, become a vegetable or become suicidal. Only recently have the cults begun to kick people out. Then they go back to their families and sit around the house like vegetables. Recently, I had three who were gone to the point of no return. They had to send them to a mental hospital, because there was nothing I could do with them. Their minds had been completely destroyed.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean destroyed? Physically?

[A] Patrick: Mentally and physically. In one case, the parents knew before they called me that they were looking for some miracle. There was one boy who had a long beard and hadn't left his room for weeks. He had a jug in there and he urinated in it. He hadn't eaten in 15 days when I got there. I made him eat, but I couldn't help him. They had to put him in a mental hospital.

[Q] Playboy: Have you heard of any kids who have died as a result of being in cults?

[A] Patrick: Oh, yes. Plenty of them die and plenty of them commit suicide. There's just so much a human mind can take. A lot of Moonies have died. Two fell down an elevator shaft at the New Yorker Hotel. Another committed suicide. There have been others who have been so fatigued that they have gotten in car wrecks. Then there are some cases where cult members have gone insane and killed each other. They have the capability of destroying themselves or someone else.

[Q] Playboy: Presbyterians fall down elevator shafts, get into car wrecks and commit suicide. What does that prove?

[A] Patrick: Presbyterians aren't programed to use violence to further their aims the way cult members are. Two members of Synanon were recently accused of putting that snake in an attorney's mailbox—I deprogramed the first people he got out of that group. Other cults have started training their members to use guns. Every one of these cults has the capability of turning into another Manson family, and, in fact, they're more dangerous than Manson, because Manson wasn't organized. You take some of the cults with tens of thousands of members. Those people will do anything they are told to do, including killing themselves, their parents, police, political leaders, anybody they feel is necessary.

[Q] Playboy: That seems very exaggerated. Since you referred to the Manson murders, which occurred nine years ago, don't you really think the cult movement has died down somewhat?

[A] Patrick: No, it's getting bigger every day, it's getting stronger and stronger.

[Q] Playboy: Why does one read so little about it?

[A] Patrick: Because people are afraid. Those in the anticult organizations are afraid of being sued. They're afraid of bad publicity. And the cults are going after them now, threatening them, arming themselves.

[Q] Playboy: How bad do you think it is going to get?

[A] Patrick: I don't know. It's getting pretty bad now. I think it has already gotten way out of hand, but nobody is going to do anything until something bad happens to great numbers of people. I'm convinced of that.

(The next portion of the interview took place several days after the Guyana events.)

[Q] Playboy: How did the murders and suicides in Guyana affect you?

[A] Patrick: I feel very sad. I've said it would take something like this to wake people up, but it makes me very, very, very sad to see what happened.

But I also feel strongly that those people shouldn't be blamed for what they did. Congress, the Government officials who refused to investigate those cults years ago are responsible. Important members of the A.C.L.U., the National Council of Churches and everybody who has supported those cults are responsible. They're the ones who killed those people. The blood is on their hands.

[Q] Playboy: Were you aware of the People's Temple before the tragedy in Guyana?

[A] Patrick: Yes. For years, I had tried to get people in Washington to do something about the People's Temple. Jim Jones had been on my list for a long time. I had had numerous reports and requests for help, but nobody could move on them, because nobody could locate the individuals. I came close to deprograming one 16-year-old girl, but before I could get up there, she disappeared. She vanished. Then, when we found out that she was over in Guyana, it was too late to do anything.

[Q] Playboy: Did you hear any reports of violence prior to last November?

[A] Patrick: Yes, as far back as '74. Many people knew about it, especially in San Francisco. It was known that they had beaten people up and killed people. They killed people long before they left for Guyana. It was a report of one such killing that started Congressman Ryan on his investigation.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the potential for Guyana-type violence exists in other cults?

[A] Patrick: Unquestionably. The potential exists in the Moonies, in Krishna, in Scientology—and they are much larger and much better organized than the People's Temple. Each talks about eliminating its enemies. The Reverend Moon has said that those who oppose him will die—that's a quote: "Many people will die." I deprogramed a Krishna who told me that he had been taught to flee anyone who was "being blasphemous," to kill that person or, if all else failed, to kill himself. At one time, Scientology's so-called code of honor stated, "Never fear to harm another in a just cause." They also had a fair-game policy that stated, "Enemies of Scientology may be tricked, sued, lied to or destroyed." Interestingly enough, the People's Temple is reported to have had its own fair-game doctrines. When you confront them with those policies, all the cults deny that they are meant to be taken literally, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

[Q] Playboy: What about suicide pacts in the other cults?

[A] Patrick: I already told you what Krishna teaches its members to do if they should feel threatened. I've also heard about Moonies who were instructed to slash their wrists rather than face deprograming. I know of one instance where that did, in fact, occur.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think we could have a tragedy here in this country on the scale of what happened in Guyana?

[A] Patrick: I think they're going to start happening like wildfire.

[Q] Playboy: Murders and mass suicides?

[A] Patrick: Yes. Those organizations are multimillion-dollar rackets, and if Congress is forced by the public to do something, the cults are not just going to give up their paradise without a fight.

[Q] Playboy: You're not claiming that anyone who is in a cult is potentially a killer, are you?

[A] Patrick: Potentially. And I don't mean the way you and I could potentially kill. I mean real potential. Cult members can only do as they're told. They can't question anything. So if their leaders tell them to kill someone else or to kill themselves, they'll do it.

[Q] Playboy: That's quite a dogmatic statement. You don't see any gray areas, any possibility that some cult members may be more heavily indoctrinated than others?

[A] Patrick: Of course, there are degrees of mind control. But I do believe those major cults have the potential of doing what Jim Jones did or what Charles Manson did. The Jonestown suicides and murders weren't anything compared with what's going to happen. There's going to come a time when thousands of people are going to get killed right here in the United States.

[Q] Playboy: Sounds like a paranoid's fantasy.

[A] Patrick: Paranoid or not, I warned of things that sounded much more fantastic eight years ago. This mass violence could take place without firing a shot. Water supplies could be poisoned. They could make blackouts happen. They could stage underground operations that would involve killing many people.

[Q] Playboy: They could; anybody could. Saying so doesn't constitute proof. Let's stick to what you know about firsthand. For instance, you've deprogramed about 100 Krishnas, by your count. And you've told us they've used violence against you when you've had them locked up in a room with you. Well, so might most people. But what evidence do you have that a peaceful cult like the Krishnas actually programs its members to be capable of violence, especially when there have been reports that the Krishnas have dropped some of their Eastern trappings and have moved toward the mainstream of respected religious sects?

[A] Patrick: The temple leaders teach them that when argument fails, violence may be necessary. Hell, they feel they have a divine sanction to kill.

[Q] Playboy: Facts, Mr. Patrick, facts. Do you have that in writing? Is there a Krishna manual that orders the members to do as you claim?

[A] Patrick: The facts are that every Krishna member I've deprogramed, from temples across the country, has told me the same thing. The one question I always ask—it's part of my standard list—is, "Would you kill for your faith?" or "Would you kill for your leader?" They say yes.

[Q] Playboy: How many of them have said yes unequivocally?

[A] Patrick: Almost every last one of them.

[Q] Playboy: Every last one of them has said he'd kill for his leader?

[A] Patrick: Yes, and I can go further. I make it a point to ask them, "Would you kill your parents?" And they say yes.

[Q] Playboy: That reminds us of the test of Abraham in the Bible. Any deeply religious person might tell you that at a hypothetical level.

[A] Patrick: Perhaps, but virtually all cult members say the same thing. I've videotaped most of the more recent deprogramings, so anyone can see for himself. Just the other day—to change cults for a moment—I deprogramed a girl from the Divine Light Mission. I asked her, "Would you kill yourself if the Guru Maharaj Ji told you to?" She hoo-hahed around for a while, and I asked her again: "If the guru walked into this very room right now and told you to kill yourself, would you do it?" She said yes. That's on tape, too.

[Q] Playboy: That's only what they're telling you. It doesn't constitute proof that they're capable of violence.

[A] Patrick: But that's the point. If they were thinking for themselves, admitting something like that would be the last thing they'd tell Black Lightning. That's ammunition for me. The fact is that they respond to that question that way because they've been programed to say that. They can't say anything else. As to whether or not they'd carry it out, there's only one way to prove that.... Here's another example: A wealthy psychologist I deprogramed from a tiny Christian cult on the West Coast had two beautiful children, a daughter seven and a son nine. I asked him, "If someone came into this room and put a knife to your children's throats and told you that if you didn't stop going to these cult meetings, if you didn't give up your faith, he'd slice their throats, yes or no, would you let them die?" Without frowning or anything else, he told me, "Yes. Anything that would interfere with my serving the Lord...." He meant that. He meant that.

[Q] Playboy: If what you're saying is true, if these cults really do put people under mind control, how is it possible that they have been able to attract so many willing participants in recent years?

[A] Patrick: They do it with deception and with love. These people have the ability to walk up to you on the street and talk to you about anything they feel you're interested in. Anything—sports, politics, religion. But they rarely tell you who they really are or what group they're with. Their technique is to get your attention and your trust, and the split second they get your trust, they can create a kind of on-the-spot hypnosis.

[Q] Playboy: Come on. People can't be hypnotized that easily. Give us an example of what you mean.

[A] Patrick: OK, take Krishna, for example. Many times I have watched them at the airport. They come up to you, stand inches away and talk to you or they touch you on the shoulder. Then they stare you straight in the eye. If they can make eye contact and get the person's trust, then they can put him in a brief hypnotic trance and get $20 from him, just like that.

[Q] Playboy: That's going against what many experts on hypnosis say. How can you claim a person can really be hypnotized as easily as that?

[A] Patrick: We have a natural ability to slip into this unconscious state. We use it every day. I'm sure anybody who has ever driven a car has driven up to a traffic light in an unconscious state of mind. You stop on red and as soon as the light turns green, you pull off. Then, once you're through the light, you snap back to consciousness and look back to see whether or not you've run a red light. When you went through it, you were acting in an unconscious state of mind. Everybody does the same thing when he gets up in the morning and goes through his daily routine. But cult recruiters take advantage of this to place suggestions in your mind. You may walk away from them and say they're stupid or crazy, totally unaware that they've already started working on you. Days later, you may feel a strong urge drawing you to look into the cult. Your mind has already been opened to suggestion.

[Q] Playboy: Once a person is drawn to a cult, what techniques are used to keep him there?

[A] Patrick: They use a combination of fear, guilt, hatred, deception, poor diet and fatigue. First they isolate you from your family, then they isolate you from the world. They give you a very poor diet and very little sleep, and that's where the brainwashing begins. They sit up there 24 hours a day, saying over and over that everything outside the cult is evil, that it's Satan's world. They program you with repetition until you have no desires and no emotions left. You feel no pain, no joy, no nothing. They destroy everything about you. Then, in order to keep a person in that frame of mind, they make it impossible for him to ever think or act on his own, and they do that with self-hypnosis, autosuggestion. That kind of self-hypnosis comes in a million different forms, and every cult uses it. It can be induced by repeating a chant, a word, a group of words, by meditation, yoga, tapes, records, the Bible, the cult's books, any card in the deck.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that the chanting and meditation cult members do are really done under hypnosis?

[A] Patrick: That's right. The reason most people don't believe that, though, is that when you talk about hypnosis, they relate it to its clinical form, in which somebody sits you down and tells you that he is going to hypnotize you. But in the cults, nobody tells you that you're being hypnotized, and every time you begin to think or have doubts or any emotions at all, the cult teaches you to hypnotize yourself. It tells you that your mind is evil, that thinking is the machinery of the Devil and "If you think, you stink!" Then it tells you that you are supposed to use your mind only to serve God—and God is always the leader—or that you are supposed to use your mind only to read the Bible or to do whatever they want you to do.

[Q] Playboy: But still, Moonies, Krishnas, Scientologists ... you're certainly tarriag every one of those groups with the same broad brush.

[A] Patrick: They all use the same set of techniques to turn their members into zombies.

[Q] Playboy: But couldn't many of those same claims be made about the Catholic Church or any other strict religious order that makes demands on its members' time and energy? How do you distinguish between a cult, as you use the term, and a legitimate religion?

[A] Patrick: You look at the facts. Organized religions—Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism—don't totally cut people off from the world. They don't teach people to hate their parents, their government and everything and everyone but them. They don't teach people to lie, cheat, steal and beg in the streets. They teach you to honor your father and mother, to love your neighbor as yourself and to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You can't compare having a child in a cult with having a child in the priesthood. When you enter the Catholic Church to become a priest, first you've got to qualify. Then they tell you exactly what you're getting into. You know what you can do and what you can't do. If you go to become a priest or a nun, you know you aren't going to be able to get married. You know you've got to study for so many years. You know exactly what you're going to do before you go in there. But these kids don't know what they are getting into. They find out after the mind control begins, after they have been hypnotized.

(The rest of the interview, with the exception of the final section, was conducted before the Guyana tragedy.)

[Q] Playboy: You've been skipping around, using examples from various cults. Which cults are the ones you find dangerous?

[A] Patrick: Every one of them. Every cult uses the techniques in some form.

[Q] Playboy: Then let's get down to specifics. Take the Moonies, for starters. What do they believe, what techniques do they use and what do you feel is wrong with them?

[A] Patrick: In my opinion, the Unification Church is public enemy number one as far as the cults are concerned. Moon calls himself a Christian, but his movement has been denounced by Christians the world over. In truth, he is a wealthy Korean industrialist who wants to rule the world. He's said that over and over again. In 1973, he said, "I will conquer and subjugate the world." In another speech, he said, "The present United Nations must be annihilated by our power." And in 1974, he said, "Every people and organization that goes against the Unification Church will gradually come down or drastically come down and die. Many people will die—those who go against our movement."

That man is a multimillionaire with factories in Korea that make munitions, air rifles, pharmaceuticals and titanium products. He owns vast amounts of real estate in the United States, hotels, mansions, a daily newspaper in New York, two big yachts: and he has bought up huge fishing operations in Massachusetts, Maryland and Alabama. He has between 7000 and 15,000 full-time members in this country who work for nothing or next to nothing; and all of them believe he is the Messiah, the Lord of the Second Advent who will come from the East. That's how he controls them. He makes the whole world out to be Satan, then he proclaims himself to be God and the world of his cult to be the only path to salvation. The Moonies come up to you on the street and they start working on you with what they call love bombing. They smother you with love, warmth, friendship and total acceptance. But they're so deceptive. They don't tell you who they really are, they say they're with the New Age Fellowship or the Creative Community Project. They have a doctrine called heavenly deception that instructs them to say anything they have to to further Moon's mission. Then, once they get you into the group, they start indoctrinating you with the Divine Principle, Moon's version of the Holy Scriptures, which claims that both Adam and Jesus Christ failed in their missions on earth and that Moon has been sent to earth by God to breed a new ideal race of men who are free from sin.

[Q] Playboy: What about the Hare Krishnas?

[A] Patrick: Krishna is one of the most dangerous cults in this country—as well as one of the richest. It preaches a life of strict asceticism and self-denial, forbidding meat and alcohol and discouraging sex. Krishna's form of mind control is through chanting, plain and simple. They get up at three or four in the morning and start chanting, over and over, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Hare, fingering their prayer beads to keep count. They chant two to five hours a day, then go out on the street to recruit members. They sell books, pamphlets, incense, orange juice. They hire advertising agencies and travel around the country training their members in high-pressure selling techniques.

[Q] Playboy: So far, you haven't mentioned anything that either nuns in a convent or a typical businessman might not endorse. What about the Church of Scientology? The press has reported that 11 of its leaders were recently indicted on charges of infiltrating the Justice Department, stealing documents from Government offices and bugging IRS meetings. But there has been relatively little reported about their beliefs and practices. What do you know about them?

[A] Patrick: Scientology is probably the biggest cult in the country, perhaps the world. It's estimated that there are 600,000 members in the U.S. and more than 3,500,000 world-wide. It was founded in the Fifties by a former science-fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard, who created a new vocabulary to describe and cure people's mental and emotional problems. He talks about "clearing" people of traumatic experiences and "aberrational behavior," and of universal spirits called Thetans that are reincarnated in every person on earth. Top-ranking Scientologists I have deprogramed told me that they believed they could leave their bodies at will and travel through space and that they had all been friends trillions of years ago on other planets.

They have filed multimillion-dollar lawsuits against people who have criticized the cult. And, like the rest of the cults, they bring in millions and millions of dollars each year. They have a huge estate in England, more than two dozen centers in the United States, including a big celebrity center in Hollywood, where they have recruited movie stars and rock stars, football players and jazz musicians; and they use their names and pictures to recruit more members. They don't tell you that Charles Manson studied their techniques when he was in prison in the early Sixties and that he probably used a lot of what he learned to get women to join his family.

When the FBI raided Scientology's offices a couple of years ago, it found blackjacks, pistols, eavesdropping and lock-picking equipment, knockout drops, and files on Federal judges, Government officials, lawyers, journalists and parents of kids in other cults. They had a file on me marked Operation Blackout and a memo about stopping publication of my book. They had one on Paulette Cooper, who wrote a book called The Scandal of Scientology. It was marked Operation Freak-Out and its purpose was to "get PC [Cooper] committed to a mental hospital or a prison"—which they almost succeeded in doing. They had one on the American Medical Association marked A.M.A. Doom Program.

[Q] Playboy: What about the Divine Light Mission?

[A] Patrick: I've deprogramed a lot of people from the D.L.M. They claim to have 40,000 members, but I doubt if they have that many left. That cult was started by a fat little dude from India who calls himself Guru Maharaj Ji. At one time, his empire included a film company, a recording studio, a publishing company, an airline, a travel agency, a skyscraper in Denver, big cars, fancy jewels. He's still around and going strong; like a lot of cults, though, they keep a pretty low profile these days. His members do everything from selling life insurance to painting houses, cutting grass and doing automobile- and plumbing-repair work. It's all big business and, like Krishna, D.L.M. depends on meditation for mind control. As you practice its techniques, you learn how to hypnotize yourself, and you get trapped, just like you do in Krishna or any other cult.

[Q] Playboy: We haven't discussed any of the Christian cults you named. Do those groups use mind control, too, and, if so, how is what they do any different from the practices of other evangelical Christian sects?

[A] Patrick: The Children of God, the New Testament Missionary Fellowship, the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation, the Way International and every other Christian cult use the Bible as a of form of self-hypnosis. The Bible is the most misused book in the world. They take verses out of context, they twist them around and they make you keep your head in the Bible until you get so engrossed that you become mesmerized. Most of those groups use the charismatic practice of speaking in tongues as their primary technique of mind control. They teach you how to speak in tongues—there's nothing magical about it—and they tell you to do it all the time. Even when you're talking to someone, you're supposed to be thinking in tongues. Plenty of other Christians speak in tongues, but they do it only once a week or so and the effect lasts for only a little while.

[Q] Playboy: What do you consider a tolerable degree of speaking in tongues?

[A] Patrick: These cults do it all the time, until people can't get it out of their minds. Then, as usual, they send the kids out on the street to raise money. In the Children of God, some of their prettiest women have been turned into "Happy Hookers for Jesus." Some of the other groups have farms and communes where the members work around the clock and sleep on wooden floors and turn over everything they have to their leader—their money, cars, personal possessions.

[Q] Playboy: How are those Christian cult practices different from other evangelical rituals? Take Billy Graham, for instance. Would you call him a cult leader?

[A] Patrick: No, Billy Graham is not a cult leader. He doesn't teach hate, he doesn't isolate his followers from the world and he doesn't turn them away from education or their families. However, Billy Graham does use many of the same techniques as the cults to get a lot of money from people. Billy Graham's whole thing is making money, and he is a genius at it. But I've never seen Billy Graham do anything to help anybody. I never heard of Billy Graham going to the site of a flood or a city that had been wiped out by a tornado and holding out a helping hand. The only thing I have ever seen Billy Graham hold out is a begging hand.

[Q] Playboy: Would you say that his followers are under the influence of mind control?

[A] Patrick: A lot of them are. They don't think he can do anything wrong. They don't worship God, they worship Billy Graham. Whatever he says is the Gospel. That is the same kind of adoration you find in the cults. I disagree with Billy Graham on a lot of things, especially when he says you've got to have the Word. Well, you don't have to have the Word—and that means the Bible. The Bible will drive you crazy if you take it literally.

[Q] Playboy: Do you consider some of the political and therapeutic groups that don't call themselves religions to be as objectionable as the cults? Have you ever deprogramed anyone from, say, est.

[A] Patrick: Oh, yes, I've done them all. I don't care which ones you're talking about, they all use the same techniques. Est uses a lot of Scientology. Synanon uses fear, guilt and physical intimidation. TM uses a very damaging form of meditation——

[Q] Playboy: Wait a minute. You think TM is dangerous?

[A] Patrick: TM is one of the most damaging forms of meditation. It's also one of the biggest cults in the nation.

[Q] Playboy: But don't millions of Americans—housewives, executives, artists—practice TM every day without any adverse side effects?

[A] Patrick: If they do it just 20 minutes, twice a day, they usually don't have any problems. Three quarters of the people I deprogram tell me that their first experience with cults was with TM and that it opened their minds to all types of suggestion. TM doesn't care what people do, it doesn't want to start a lot of communes, but it prepares people to be taken into other cults.

[Q] Playboy: That sounds like the old argument that marijuana leads to heroin.

[A] Patrick: Well, I happen to think there may be a lot more to TM's chief guru, the Maharishi, than just opening people up. My personal belief is that he is one of the top people involved in a conspiracy to meddle seriously in world politics.

[Q] Playboy: You better explain that.

[A] Patrick: All right. I've had a number of calls to deprogram TM instructors who have been in the organization for many years. I got a call last week from a woman who said her son, who is a TM instructor, was part of a team of 50 that the Maharishi is sending around the world to bring calm to areas of political turmoil. He wrote her a letter from Guatemala, where they had been sent at the request of a group of wealthy Central American businessmen; and they were convinced that their going down there and meditating was bringing peace! They claimed responsibility for stopping the strikes and riots and getting the newspapers publishing again. They had been to the Middle East and they claimed they were responsible for the peace talks there. When the woman called me, her son was on his way to another secret mission to Rhodesia. He told her they were instructed to keep those operations very quiet.

[Q] Playboy: Let's go back to Synanon for a minute. What happened when you deprogramed the first kids who were brought out of Synanon?

[A] Patrick: Synanon is one of the worst cults I have ever been involved with. They made everyone cut his hair so you couldn't tell the men from the women. They trained people to use guns. A 15-year-old boy told me that they were preparing for a lot of killings. He said he had attended meetings where they talked about killing and about suicide. They said never give in or give up.

I deprogramed three members of Synanon at one time. Their parents were in the cult, the mother had died there, and they were taken to their grandmother. When I got to the scene, I couldn't tell the girl from the two boys. Their heads were shaved and all three were wearing men's clothes. They had already done a lot of damage. They had torn up furniture. They made almost $500 worth of telephone calls on their grandmother's bill. The grandmother had left the house, because she was afraid one of them was going to kill her.

[Q] Playboy: How did you handle them?

[A] Patrick: Well, I don't care who they are, how large they are. They can be black belts in karate, weigh 250 pounds—I always let them know who's the boss. When I step in there, I get that straight from the very beginning, especially with the guys. I work on the theory that a human being is just as good as you make him and as bad as you let him be. So I went in there and I told them, "Look, now I want all of you to sit right down and don't move an inch. Keep your damn mouths closed, and I don't want no bullshit from you." I said, "Now I'm not your grandmother. If any of you jump up, I'm going to put you out of action real quick " Then they became just like three little babies with me. I don't care how big they are, once I show them I'm boss, they always become like babies.

[Q] Playboy: What did you do then?

[A] Patrick: The next thing I did was to separate them. I realized that the strongest one was the girl, and I always try to take the toughest one first, so I put each of them in a separate room and started with the girl. She was a brilliant girl and she spoke very well, and she made fun of the way I talked. But if they want to get nasty, I can get nasty, too. I was prepared to use whatever method was necessary. I've got better techniques now, but sometimes I have to revert to my old techniques, where I get real nasty with them. It's the only way to gain their respect. So I just told her, "Girl, you're a bitch. You've got the gall to talk to me that way and you don't even know me. You're sitting there looking more like a man than your two brothers. You're in a cult that took a beautiful girl and made a lesbian out of her"—I really got down with her—"you hate your own grandmother. You would kill your own grandmother for this leader. You take orders from that no-good son of a bitch, you will eat his shit." When I started talking about her leader, she really got steaming mad. That's what brought her out of it, though.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever lay a finger on her?

[A] Patrick: No, but if it had been necessary, I would have put her out of action. I told the two boys, "If you so much as move, I'm going to put you on your ass so quick it will make your head swim."

[Q] Playboy: From the description of the threats you use, some of your techniques don't seem very different from those you claim the cults use. How is cult deprograming different?

[A] Patrick: Deprograming is opening up a person's mind so that something other than the programing of the cult can go in for the first time in so many days, weeks, months or years. The cults' type of programing consists of putting suggestion into a person's mind, constantly, until they've destroyed his ability to think. They take a person's mind away from him and make it impossible for him to act on his own, and they teach him self-hypnosis to keep him in that trance. I restore the individual's free will and his ability to think. That's the difference. I bring him out of the trance. I force the mind to start working again.

[Q] Playboy: How do you do it?

[A] Patrick: I force them to think. When I deprogram people, all I do is shoot them challenging questions. I hit them with things they haven't been programed to respond to. I know what the cults have told them, so I shoot them the right questions and they get frustrated when they can't answer. They think they have the answers, they have been given answers to everything, but I throw them off balance and that forces them to begin questioning. I get them to start comparing and evaluating, and that is the key, because that makes them start thinking. Then once they start thinking, they deprogram themselves. They come out of it and their minds start working again.

[Q] Playboy: How do you choose your subjects?

[A] Patrick: I don't solicit any work. I never go to anyone's parents. They always come to me.

[Q] Playboy: How can you tell if a parent's claim is legitimate?

[A] Patrick: When they come to me, it's always with a legitimate claim, because when a parent comes to me, I know he's reached bottom. First they go to their religious leader, their spiritual leaders, the minister, and they don't get anything there. Then they go to their legal advisor, their attorney, and they don't get anything from him, because he doesn't know. Then their psychiatrist, the family doctor, the police, the FBI, their Congressman, Senator, the President, the U.S. Attorney General. When they finally come to me, I'm the bottom of the barrel. They have struck out everywhere.

[Q] Playboy: Yet many people claim that what you do is not deprograming but reprograming, forcing an individual to change his religious beliefs to those of his parents or to those that society deems more acceptable.

[A] Patrick: They don't know the facts. I don't tell anyone what to believe in. I don't tell him anything one way or another. As I said, I get the mind working again. They can live their own lives.

[Q] Playboy: How can a person be sure someone isn't going to have him kidnaped and deprogramed by you simply because he doesn't think the way someone wants him to?

[A] Patrick: I don't go out and take a person just because he doesn't think the way somebody wants him to. Before I agree to deprogram somebody, I conduct a thorough investigation. I look into his entire history and I ask a lot of questions that enable me to evaluate the situation.

[Q] Playboy: How does deprograming work? Give us a typical example.

[A] Patrick: OK. When I start a deprograming, I don't need to know anything about the cult. If I didn't know the name of the cult, it wouldn't matter at all. You can bring someone to me and I can read his mind, to a point where I know not what he is thinking but how he is thinking, how his mind is working. I watch the mind.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean? The mind isn't visible.

[A] Patrick: No, but I can see the mind in a person's face. Whatever you are—a genius, a wino—is going to show up in your face. If you can read a person's face, you can practically tell his entire personality. Their eyes are not always glazed, either. They've gotten beyond that point to where their pupils are no longer dilated. Those are the ones who have been in the cult for a long time. Then you have to watch how they answer even the simplest questions.

For example, a person may say to me that he has been in a cult for six years and that everything he did was for God and that everything he gave, he gave to God. And I'll say, "You gave all your money to God? You gave $50,000 to God? How did you give it to Him? Did He come down to pick it up, did you send it special delivery? Or did you send Him a letter? How did you give all that money to God?" And if he tells the truth, he's got no answer, because he's done nothing for God. Everything he did was for the leader.

[Q] Playboy: Can you get the person you're deprograming to admit that?

[A] Patrick: No, because everyone in the cult looks upon the leader as God. Even if they admit he's not God Almighty or the Messiah, they say he alone is appointed by God or God speaks through him only. Then I say, "Well, how did God appoint him?" Or I refer them to the Bible and I say, "Well, if what you're telling me is true, then what about the 14th chapter of John, where it says, 'I am the way, the truth and the light: No man cometh unto the Father but by me'?" And I say, "Your leader claims he's the way, the truth and the light. Which one is telling the truth?" And every time, I don't care what cult they are from, they say neither one is telling a lie.

[Q] Playboy: What do you do then?

[A] Patrick: I don't let it stop there. I go into detail on everything the cult has programed them to say. I keep hitting them with challenging questions that show them they don't know right from wrong, that they don't know it's wrong for a person to destroy somebody's free will and program him to beg and lie and cheat, that they don't know it's wrong to hate your parents and wrong to isolate yourself from everything and everybody. When they see that they don't have any answers, they start searching for something to say. That forces the mind to start thinking again and they come out of it.

[Q] Playboy: Is that it?

[A] Patrick: Yes, it's just talk. You push the mind with questions until you break through.

[Q] Playboy: How do you know when you've broken through?

[A] Patrick: From the first time I lay eyes on a person, I'm watching his face. Then I start moving his mind, pushing it with questions, and I keep pushing and pushing. I don't let him get away with the lies he's been told. Then there'll be a minute, a second, when the mind snaps back and he comes out of it. The only way I can describe it is that it's like turning on the light in a dark room or bringing a person back from the dead. It's a beautiful thing, the whole personality changes, it's like seeing a person change from a werewolf into a man. Where they showed no emotion, you can see feeling again. One minute it's like talking to a stone wall, the next you are able to reason with them. They're able to relax and respond with intelligent answers.

[Q] Playboy: You mentioned that you often threaten to put someone "out of action." The cults have accused you of actually using force and brutality in your deprogramings. How do you reply to those charges?

[A] Patrick: A lot of the cult members get very violent, especially at the beginning of a deprograming session. Krishna members have spat in my face and called me a demon. One girl came at me with a kitchen knife, someone else came at me with a broken bottle. The Moonies, as I said, tell their people to slash their wrists rather than talk to me. But the only thing we do is restrain them, to keep them from hurting me or hurting themselves.

The cults tell their people that if I ever show up, I'm going to rape them, beat them, drug them, lock them in their closets, put ice down their backs, stuff chicken bones down their throats, deprive them of food and sleep. Those are the stories circulating about Black Lightning. They don't realize that they're making my job easier. They come in scared to death of me, find that I don't do what I'm accused of, and suddenly they're wondering, Why? So their minds start to work again. They'll say, "Don't touch me! Don't touch me!" and I'll just sit back and deprogram them just like that.

[Q] Playboy: It can't be as simple as that. Would you give us a more detailed example of a deprograming?

[A] Patrick: All right. Let's take a Moonie deprograming. I remember one in particular; the fellow had been on the dean's list at a good Eastern college before he dropped out to join the Moonies. His parents got him to go home by telling him that his cousin was getting married and his grandfather from Israel was going to be there, but he figured he would go home for a few days, play it cool, and take $1000 out of his bank account to give to the cult. When we surprised him at the airport and got him into the car, he didn't struggle at all. He withdrew into himself, stared straight ahead and started praying to the Reverend Moon for protection. Another deprogramer talked to him for six hours before I went in, but nothing would go in. He didn't say a word. He sat on the edge of the bed with a smile on his face, but he didn't speak, he didn't move a finger.

Finally, I went into the room and said, "Hello, I'm Ted Patrick." I sat down on a chair across from him and got close enough so that our knees were almost touching. Then I stared him in the eye and got right down to it. I said, "You think you are a Christian. You think you are doing the Lord's work. But you don't worship the Lord. You worship Moon. Did the Lord ever tell you to hate your father and mother? Where does it say in the Bible that you should hate your father and mother? Where does it say that? And where does it say in the Bible that you should spend all your life, 20 hours a day, out on the street cheating little old ladies, lying to them and robbing them of their money? Christ told the rich man to give away everything he owned. But he didn't say, 'Give it to me.' And he didn't say, 'Give it to Moon.' "

Then I reached down into my briefcase and took out a picture of Moon and a felt-tip pen. I drew a pair of horns on his head, then a mustache, pointed ears, and as I was doing that, I kept talking. I said, "Why would you give up your mind? God gave you that mind, a good mind, a brilliant mind. You are a brilliant boy and you have everything going for you. Why would you give up that mind to worship Moon? You're not doing the Lord's work. You worship this son of a bitch. See him? There's your god. Satan the snake!" Then I ripped the picture into pieces and tossed them into the boy's lap.

I kept going. I said, "You think God can't speak English. Why's that? Think about it. Why?" I said, "You're not going to talk. That's OK. You want to smile at me. Well, I'll smile right back at you. We'll smile together. I've got nothing else to do. I can stay here three, four months. Even longer. Nobody's going anywhere." That's very powerful when I say that. Even though it rarely takes more than three days, once I convince them that they're going to be there forever, they begin to weaken.

I kept throwing questions at him. I said, "How can Moon be the Messiah if he was born of woman? The Bible says Christ was born of a virgin. We know Moon wasn't born of a virgin." It wasn't until the next day that he even started to talk. Then he kept repeating, "You don't understand. You're distorting the truth. The answer to that is in Divine Principle." But I knew Moon's Divine Principle better than he did. I tore him apart on Divine Principle. Then I played tapes for him of other Moonies I had deprogramed in which they talked about how they had been duped. And I showed him newspaper stories about the mansion Moon lives in while his followers sleep on the floor and eat peanut butter. I kept asking him, "Where does the money go? Where does the money go?" But he couldn't answer. Finally, his parents went into the room with the other deprogramer who was there. His father said, "I don't know What they've done to you, but I'll stay here for six months to get you out. If it means my job, my career, my life, I'm prepared to do it." Then they asked him, "Who do you love more? That pimp—or your father?" And he said, "My father. I love my father," and he got up out of his chair and hugged his father, and both of them started to cry. The cap was unscrewed. He was out of it.

[Q] Playboy: What about the charges that have been made on television that you have been known to drug or sexually abuse your deprograming subjects?

[A] Patrick: There's no truth to them. You know, we're dealing with kids from some of the best families, and their parents are responsible people, not skid-row bums. We're dealing with some of the most brilliant minds in the world, and the parents are not going to bring in anyone who is going to harm their child. There's no way we would hurt them. We don't drug anybody—their minds are already messed up. We try to give them the best food and we encourage them to sleep as much as possible in order to rebuild the mind. The parents are present throughout the deprograming, and if you want more proof, you can see for yourself. I've video-taped hundreds of deprogramings I've done in the past few years.

[Q] Playboy: What happens to someone after he is deprogramed? Does he go back to the life he led before he joined the cult?

[A] Patrick: When we deprogram a person, we restore his ability to think and make decisions, but he is still going to have problems for a long time to come. There's a lot more to deprograming than just talking to the individual. In most cases, you've got to deal with every problem the whole family has ever had. It could be a small problem they had in the past that has become magnified. Sometimes the parents need to be deprogramed more than the kids.

[Q] Playboy: Do you find that many young people go into those groups because their parents have been too narrow-minded or too strict?

[A] Patrick: Not as a rule, no. But I find a lot of cases where parents will try to raise a child to be what they want him to be, not what the child wants to be. They want the child to live for their happiness, not for his own happiness. Then, after the deprograming, they tell him who to marry, what school to go to. They don't realize that his mind has been damaged. It has deteriorated, and the mind doesn't heal like a regular sore or a cut or an operation. I deprogramed a very brilliant girl in Canada who called me after three and a half years to say that only then, for the first time since she had been out of the Divine Light Mission, did she feel completely normal again. That is why every person I deprogram goes through a period of rehabilitation.

[Q] Playboy: What happens during rehabilitation?

[A] Patrick: Rehabilitation is like if you don't run your car for six months or a year and the battery runs down, you jump it to start it, but then you don't turn the key off right away or it will go dead. You let the motor run long enough to build up its own power and recharge itself. Well, the mind is the same way. If you have been incapable of thinking and making decisions for so many days, weeks, months or years, once you get the mind working again, you've got to keep it working until the person gets in the habit of thinking and making his own decisions. After deprograming, a person tends to float. He'll slip into a trance state without even knowing it. I don't care how strong they come out of it, they'll still float. That's why I say we're dealing with a person with a damaged mind. During rehab, we keep a team with the person at all times. When they slip into that trance state, you can always tell by the hypnotic stare and you bring them out of it by getting them to do things, by talking to them and keeping them busy, and by getting them to go places and keep actively using the mind. When we go out to dinner, they have to decide what they want to eat; if we go to the movies, they have to choose what we are going to see. In the morning, we ask them, "What are you going to do today, go to the beach, go swimming, play records, go for a walk?" They have to make the decisions.

[Q] Playboy: How long after deprograming will a person "float" like that?

[A] Patrick: It varies. Some float for two or three days, others float for two or three months. Some never recover completely.

[Q] Playboy: You've made some pretty harsh charges. In view of your lack of formal education and the serious nature of the work you are engaged in, don't you think people have a right to ask what qualifies you to speak as an expert on the human mind?

[A] Patrick: I think my experience and the proof I have presented speaks for itself. I've deprogramed almost 1600 people. I have a success record. Each and every person I've dealt with qualifies me to do what I'm doing.

[Q] Playboy: What about your highly publicized failures? Haven't there been numerous reports of cult members' going back to their cults after they were deprogramed?

[A] Patrick: Well, I'd say of the 1600 I've deprogramed, fewer than 30 have returned to the cults, and most of them escaped before we had a chance to take them through the full process of deprograming and rehabilitation. Only about five people that I know of went back after going through the full process, and even they wouldn't have gone back if their parents had done what we told them to do.

[Q] Playboy: How do people escape?

[A] Patrick: Somebody lets his guard down and they break out. They jump out the window or slip out the door. When I deprogram someone, I work with a security team. We have somebody accompany the person to the bathroom. Then, at night, one person sleeps across from him and another sleeps in front of the door.

[Q] Playboy: You seem to have quite a system. How did you get into such an extraordinary line of work? Tell us a little about your background.

[A] Patrick: I was born in Chattanooga, the second of four children. We were very poor and all of us had to work. I lived in one of the worst neighborhoods you will find anywhere in the country. In 1948, they broke the world's record for killing each other. They had areas called Death Alley, Blue Goose Hollow and Murderer's Field. Death Alley was so bad the police didn't even go down there. I lived right in the middle of all that. In those days, you could kill another black man and you wouldn't go to jail. My father was a chauffeur and a butler as far back as I can remember. Then he went to work in the racket, the numbers racket. He was a pickup man. The racket was the major industry in Chattanooga, especially for the blacks. I was in my teens before I realized that the slot machine was illegal. If the rackets didn't survive, people wouldn't survive, because they wouldn't have any spending money.

[Q] Playboy: That doesn't sound like the most wholesome environment for a young boy to grow up in.

[A] Patrick: Well, my family was very close. You know, where you find people who are poor like that and don't have too much, that kind of hardship brings people together.

[Q] Playboy: What, was your own religious training?

[A] Patrick: I come from a preaching family. My mother was always very religious. Her father was a Baptist preacher and I had some uncles who were Baptist preachers. So we all grew up in church. We had to go to Sunday school every Sunday, then to the Methodist church, and then we would go to prayer meetings throughout the week.

[Q] Playboy: Is that where you became familiar with the Bible?

[A] Patrick: No, I learned the Bible in school. In elementary school, we took Bible and went from Genesis to Revelations, story by story. But the most important thing about my boyhood days is that I was born with a very bad speech impediment. You just couldn't understand what I was saying. I couldn't pronounce the words and my sister had to interpret for me. There was nothing anyone could do for me. My mother took me to every fortuneteller, faith healer, holy roller, false god and prophet who came into town. One night, Sweet Daddy Grace came to town. My mother took me down to the holy-roller church and they prayed over me damn near the whole night. They were speaking in tongues and slobbering at the mouth and shaking and falling down, and I got so angry because I knew it wasn't doing any good. She took me to Father Divine and Prophet Jones, and they would get up there and speak in a language you could not understand and lay hands on my head. Then they would tell my mother how to bathe me so my speech would get better. They took her money, everybody took her money, but nothing happened.

[Q] Playboy: How did you learn to speak normally?

[A] Patrick: It happened when I was in my teens. After going to all those faith healers, I had to ask myself, "Is there a God?" And finally it dawned on me. I said, "Are you asking God to do something that you are not willing to do for yourself? Have you tried?" And I knew I hadn't. So I cured myself. I started correcting myself over and over and over. I'd spend all my time, even when I was talking to someone, correcting words in my mind, until I got to where I could talk and people could understand what I was saying. Since then, though, I've always been afraid of words, but that has worked to my benefit. I've learned how to speak through action. All my life I have organized things and created projects to speak through action.

[Q] Playboy: Did that experience turn you off to faith healers once and for all?

[A] Patrick: No, we lived two blocks from the holy-roller church, and it used to be entertainment for us. They'd get to shouting and jumping up and down and we used to go down there and stare at them. We got a big kick out of it, we laughed at it, but then these false gods and prophets would come into town and hold big tent meetings and rip people off. That has started to happen in the white community in only the past 20 years or so, but it has always gone on in the black community. In segregation and even up from slavery, that is all black people have had to hang on to. They didn't have much of anything else, so they took to faith healing and fortunetelling and black magic and voodoo and all that stuff. Everybody has to have something to believe in. But that movement has always been a rip-off. You were always told to give a lot of money or as much as you could give, and those people were straight-out con artists. I learned that at an early age. Father Divine used to have what he called heavens. You had to give up everything you owned, he even said to cash in your insurance, your clothes and give everything to Father Divine. So did Prophet Jones and Prophet Brooks; I can go on and on. And people believed that they were God Almighty. But in the black community, their followers were your neighbors, your best friends, some of them were my relatives. I don't know many people back in those days who weren't hooked one way or another. It wasn't until I came along and started my investigations that anyone began to realize those people were in cults. A cult was just a word before that, something you read about in books. I remember in 1971, when I first used the label, people crucified me, but I was simply relating what was going on to everything I had experienced from birth.

[Q] Playboy: When did you first get involved with the cults?

[A] Patrick: At the time I was working in San Diego as Special Representative for Community Relations for Governor Reagan. I didn't have any time for my family. We couldn't be together and do things like we used to, so starting in '68, I used to rent a hotel suite at the Bahia Hotel on Mission Beach. Every Fourth of July, we would entertain our family and friends for three days. We had a ball every year. But then, in 1971, they had a big fireworks display at the amusement park across from the hotel. My kids and their guests wanted to go to the amusement park, and I said, OK, but be back in the hotel after the fireworks. Afterward, everybody was present and accounted for except my oldest son, Michael, who was 14 at the time.

After about an hour and a half, we got worried. We organized teams and went all over the beach looking for him. Finally, after about four hours, we went back to the hotel and started calling the police and local hospitals, when Michael walked in the door. The first thing I noticed was his eyes. The pupils were dilated, and the first thing I thought about was drugs. I went to take hold of him and he told me, "Dad, we were on our way back to the hotel when some people stopped us on the street and asked if we believed in God and if we had Christ in our hearts and if we knew that Christ died on the cross for our sins and if we were happy at home. Then they said they had a family and they called it the Children of God and that the world was going to end within seven years and that they were the chosen family and if we weren't in their family, we were going to burn in hell. But if we joined the Children of God, we wouldn't ever have any more problems. We wouldn't ever be sick or have to go to school, because it was of the Devil, and we wouldn't ever have to be bothered with our parents anymore, because they are of the Devil. The only thing we would have to do is live in peace with God."

I told him he was stupid for standing up there talking to them for four hours. And he said, "Every time we'd go to walk away, they grabbed us by both arms and started repeating Bible verses and trying to get us to stare them back in the eye." He said, "You know, they had very strange eyes. I've never seen anyone's eyes like that before. And every time I went to look in their eyes, I got dizzy, like the sky was turning around and around." He said, "I thought they, were something from outer space." At that point, I got very angry and said, "Look. Michael, don't you say another word. You come home four hours late telling this fantastic lie."

[Q] Playboy: You didn't believe him?

[A] Patrick: No one believed him. We read some of the material they had given him, but it didn't make any sense to me. I was going to send it up to Sacramento the next day to be checked out, but by then I had forgotten about it. When we got home from the beach, Michael went to his room and stayed there. He stayed up there with his head in the Bible, and his eyes looked like he had had a dose of LSD. After about a week of that, my wife called me at the office and said I should go home and talk with Michael. I said OK. This was a boy who had never read the Bible before. If someone had told me that could happen in my family, I would have called him a liar. And Michael was the last one it would happen to. He was an outdoor boy. He holds two titles in karate, a track scholarship, plays football, basketball. Nothing could keep him in the house.

So I went home and asked him, "Michael, are you sick?" He said, "No." "Do you feel bad?" "No." "Are you angry with somebody?" "No." "Well," I said, "Michael, this is not you." Then he started telling me about how the world was going to end and we were going to burn in hell and all material things were of the Devil and my wife and I were of the Devil. And I said, "Mike, I don't want to hear that. I know I've been working hard and haven't been home. Are you on drugs?" And he really blew his stack. He said, "I just want to be alone and read the Bible!" I said I didn't see anything wrong with that.

Then, about a week later, a woman came into my office in San Diego to turn in a complaint. Her son had disappeared. He was last seen on the Fourth of July on Ocean Beach. Then, five days later, she got a call from him saying, "Mom, I found God. I'm not coming home anymore. You are all of the Devil." It was the same thing my son was saying, but it didn't hit me right away. She had found out where her son was and went up there to see him, and when they brought him down, five people were with him. Every time she would ask him a question, the leader would answer. And she said, "Mr. Patrick, you know, all those people are nothing but zombies. They have very strange eyes, and every time I looked in their eyes, I got dizzy, like the ceiling was turning around and around."

That's when it struck me. Everything hit home. It upset me so bad I called my wife, and it upset her so bad she told my daughter to bring all the children inside and lock the doors. When I got home, I said to Michael, "I want you to take your time and tell me everything you can remember about that night." We stayed up all night, talking about every detail. And he came out of it. He changed completely and went back to being a normal human being.

[Q] Playboy: Was that your first deprograming?

[A] Patrick: Yes, but I didn't know it at the time. The next day, I dug in and started calling everybody, trying to get information. In two weeks, I had talked to 52 people who had lost kids or relatives to the Children of God. Then I started reading everything I could find on brainwashing, mind control, black magic and psychic power. I talked to everyone from witches to professors, trying to find out what they were doing, how they were putting people under and whether or not what people were telling me was true. It was unbelievable. I wrote up a report to give to the governor's office, but I had to see for myself. So I called my boss and said, "I've got my report ready, but there's one thing missing: Before you make me an appointment with the governor, I want to go in and infiltrate this group." My boss said, "Are you crazy?" And I said no. And he said, "Ted, I know you when your mind is made up, but remember, if something happens to you in there, I don't know anything about it." I said fine.

Well, I went in with the intention of staying a week. I stayed four nights and three days and I was hooked. I started thinking, these people can't be wrong. I must be the one who's wrong.

[Q] Playboy: How did you infiltrate them?

[A] Patrick: I went out to Mission Beach, where they had their bus. They served coffee, tea, cookies, sandwiches and cake. But I didn't eat or drink anything, because I had reason to believe they had put something in the food. Several years later, authorities in Bellevue, Washington, did find amphetamines in the cookies the Children of God were serving at their public meetings. But when they started talking, I started saying, "Praise the Lord!" and "Thank you, Jesus!" So they thought I was really hooked. Then they drove the bus up to their place at Santee, where there must have been 200 or 300 people. Everyone came running out of the house, hugging us and blessing us and saying, "We love you, brother." You'd think that was the greatest thing in the world. Then we went inside and sat on the floor and they started preaching, talking for hours, reading verses from the Bible out of context. They'd never give direct commands, always indirect suggestions. For example, they wouldn't come out and say you should hate your parents. They would quote a Bible verse out of context to make it read, "He that hates not his father, mother, brother and sister cannot be a disciple of Christ."

It was a pitiful scene. Everyone there was so spaced out. If someone fell asleep, another person would punch him in the ribs. When one guy would get through talking, somebody else would go up and talk for hours and hours. You couldn't go to the bathroom without having somebody next to you. You were never alone. And everything was Bible verses. You had to memorize six Bible verses before you could eat in the morning. Even while people were sleeping, they had tape recorders going, Bible verses over and over. They had records playing in the kitchen for the people who were washing dishes. After three days, I began to feel myself weakening. I didn't want to eat too much of their food, and with so little sleep, there's just so much a human mind can take. I began to think, There's no way these people can be wrong. The world is going to end in seven years. All material things are of the Devil. I began hallucinating, seeing angels and Christ and all the things they were talking about.

[Q] Playboy: How did you finally get away?

[A] Patrick: After three days, they thought we were all hooked to the point of no return and they gave us a little free time. I got to thinking, I better get the hell out of here. I told them that I had $15,000 in the bank—which I didn't—and that I wanted to go home to get my bank book and my car and my things and bring them all back. So they sent two guys with me in a van and as we were going by the bus station, I said, "Look, let me go in here and call home to make sure nobody's there." When I got away from them, I called a taxi and went out another door. I made it out OK, but I was so confused for six days. I would leave home at 7:30 in the morning and find myself 60, 70 miles away. I had to stop and figure out where I was and how I had gotten there. It took me four months before I was back to normal. All the Bible verses were constantly ringing in my mind. That's the power of suggestion.

[Q] Playboy: Did you submit your report to the governor?

[A] Patrick: I not only gave him my report, I took an entire delegation with me to Sacramento: mothers, fathers and people who had been in the group and gotten out.

[Q] Playboy: What did Reagan say when he read your report?

[A] Patrick: The only thing he could do was refer me to the state attorney general's office, the top law-enforcement agency in California. I went up there and spent many hours with the attorney general's representatives. But they didn't believe anything I said. They kept asking, "Can you prove this?" They refused to investigate. On the plane back to San Diego, I remember thinking to myself that the only way we were going to get anything done was to do it ourselves.

[Q] Playboy: Who? You and the parents?

[A] Patrick: Yes. I called a meeting the very next night. The place was packed with more than 50 people, and I told them, "OK, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that my meeting with the attorney general's office was fruitful. To be frank with you, they're not going to do a damned thing." I had sent a copy of the report to Nixon and Mitchell. We'd been to the police and the FBI. I said, "You're going to have to make up your minds tonight whether you want to fight this thing or just go home and pray about it and hope that everything works out all right. I'm doing all I can do legally. Now, if you want to fight it, I want to make it crystal clear, you've got to be willing to do what is necessary and the hell with what is legal. They're operating illegally in a legal world. We've got to do the same thing. And the first thing we've got to do is get somebody out of there and see what makes them tick. But you're not going to get them out by persuading them to go home. You're going to have to go in there and bodily rescue your child."

[Q] Playboy: As a government employee at that time, did you have any misgivings about breaking the law?

[A] Patrick: Oh, yeah, but I knew we had to and I was prepared to. I didn't know what I was getting into, really. I kept thinking once we got somebody out, I would report to the governor and it would be all over. I kept waiting for it to end, but it just kept getting bigger and bigger.

The following Sunday, I got a call from a lady in Miami. Her daughter, a straight-A student at USC, had dropped out of school and joined the Children of God. The mother had spent over $2000 hiring private detectives. I told her, "The only way you are going to get her out is to go in there and bring her out bodily." And she said, "Will you help?" And I said yes. We went up there one night and they happened to be having a meeting and the girl was sitting on the floor. When the door opened, she saw her mother and came to the door and we grabbed her, locked her arms down at her sides, got her in the car and took off. The whole thing happened so fast she didn't know what hit her. But when her mother went to kiss her, the girl slapped her almost unconscious. She said, "You bitch, you're not my mother!" She yakked and yakked all the way back to San Diego, saying, "You're all going to burn in hell," and repeating Bible verses. We checked into a hotel and just started talking to her, telling her everything we knew about the cult. After two days, she came out of it. Her eyes and everything changed. It was like seeing a person return from the dead. She started crying and she embraced her mother for about five minutes. Then she told her mother she was sorry. They just stood there crying and everyone was hugging and kissing. It was a very emotional thing. I said, "Now, you see, she is deprogramed."

[Q] Playboy: Was that the first time you used the word?

[A] Patrick: Yeah, and the word got around. We held a press conference and I started getting calls from all over the country. Reagan had to hire an extra secretary just to handle the inquiries.

[Q] Playboy: Do you mean you were abducting kids and deprograming them while you were still working for the governor?

[A] Patrick: Yeah. I started deprograming in '71 and I didn't resign until November of '72.

[Q] Playboy: Were you getting paid to do that at the time?

[A] Patrick: No. I wouldn't even accept donations, because I was afraid of a conflict of interests. I told people to put in a prepaid airplane ticket for me, but in each case, I would spend $50 or $100 out of my own pocket. I'd be in Texas one day and New York the next and maybe Ohio the day after that. That is where I got the name Black Lightning, because the cults never knew where I was going to strike next.

Eventually, the work load got so heavy it began to take up all my time. I had to make a decision whether or not I would quit my job and spend my full time deprograming or remain with the governor's office and give up deprograming completely. Finally, it got so hot and heavy I knew that even if I stayed with the governor's office. I would probably be asked to resign. So I left my job. I lost my business, my house, I almost starved to death in 1973. I had a wife and six children and I knew that I could lose everything. I could be arrested. I could serve time in prison.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you risk all that?

[A] Patrick: I was getting calls from all over and there was no way I could leave those parents with no place to go and nothing to do. There was no way I could turn my back on them, and already I had begun to get threats and letters written in blood and telephone calls from people claiming to be Satan. Then people began calling with kids in other cults. They were coming in like flies—Krishna, Scientology, the Moonies, the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation. I didn't know at the time I was taking on the world alone. I figured if I resigned from the governor's office, I would get all kinds of support from the parents and the churches and the law-enforcement agencies. I was never so mistaken in my life. I found that I was left out in the cold with no support. Nobody would touch me with a ten-foot pole. I had received help with every kind of movement I had been in in the past. I'd had community support, police support, NAACP support. You can kill a judge or a policeman, rape 40 women, do everything under the sun, and you are still going to get support from the A.C.L.U., the churches, the left or the right or somebody. But in this, nobody gave me any help. Nothing.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Patrick: Because of freedom of religion. Everybody is afraid of it. It's one of the biggest rackets the world has ever known, this religious bit. I had taken on a giant. It was not just a San Diego deal anymore; many of the cults had become world-wide operations.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever try to bring any of this to the attention of anyone in Washington?

[A] Patrick: In 1973, I took a petition to Congress. I explained the whole movement and what I was doing and I asked Congress to form a committee under the House Judiciary Committee, like it did during Watergate, and conduct a full-scale investigation. People who had been in and gotten out or anybody who could contribute anything to this investigation could come before the committee. Then we could prove everything. But they refused to investigate the cults, so I asked them to investigate me. But they still refused. Since I was in Washington, I figured I would visit the FBI and give them a copy of my petition. They were very nice. They suggested I go to the Attorney General's office, but when I went down there, I found a Scientologist working in the front office. That is just what they were indicted for last year—infiltration of the Justice Department. Then I went to serve my petition to Carl Albert, who was not only Speaker of the House at that time but Acting Vice-President of the United States. Agnew had just resigned. I went into his office to tell him about Scientology's infiltration of the Justice Department, and who did I find in his front office—three Moonies!

[Q] Playboy: How do you know they were Moonies?

[A] Patrick: I recognized all three girls from previous encounters.

[Q] Playboy: What were they doing there?

[A] Patrick: They were operating right out of his office. At the time, I couldn't believe it, but it was in the papers a couple of years later. Now nobody talks about it anymore.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever get a meeting with Carl Albert?

[A] Patrick: No. He was in there, but he wouldn't speak with me. He referred my petition to the Rules Committee, which was just like throwing it in the trash basket. I never heard from them. I never heard anything.

[Q] Playboy: Did you find Moonies working in many Congressmen's offices?

[A] Patrick: Yes. If they did the Korean investigation right, they'd probably find that the entire Korean operation was a lot more serious than Watergate will ever be. At least 100 Senators and Congressmen were paid off.

[Q] Playboy: Now, wait a minute; what's that got to do with the Moonies?

[A] Patrick: A Moonie I deprogramed was a top person on the Unification Church's public-relations team. She told me she saw a cardboard box filled with envelopes containing anything from $10 to $1000 as contributions for Congressmen. Another Moonie I deprogramed corroborated that and said he saw at least one Congressman being handed one of the envelopes at a Washington party. You see, the Moonies started off with a hotel suite in Washington, and it was their PR team's job to approach every Congressman and Senator and lure him there. That was all they did. They didn't care how they got them there. Once they did, they were served good food, and there was dancing and anything else that followed. It was a fabulous hotel suite, and in it were beautiful American, Korean and Japanese girls, and once those girls got them into the hotel suite, it was their job to get them into bed. Whenever they had sex with those girls, it was taped, and then, a few days later, they would call them up.

[Q] Playboy: Do you know for a fact that those kinds of things went on?

[A] Patrick: Yes. I deprogramed some of the top people from the Moonies' PR team. Moon himself had those girls line up and strip so he could inspect them. They had to perform and parade nude.

[Q] Playboy: Who told you that?

[A] Patrick: Several girls I deprogramed.

[Q] Playboy: Have you deprogramed any of the girls who claim to have had sex with Congressmen while they were members of the Unification Church?

[A] Patrick: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: How many?

[A] Patrick: One who admitted it. I deprogramed others who could probably tell you more about it, but I don't know if they would want to. I think many of them feel ashamed to admit that they were involved. A lot of them were Korean and Japanese girls.

[Q] Playboy: How many members of Congress do you think had sexual relations or other illicit dealings with Moonies?

[A] Patrick: If they investigated this thing right, at least 100 Senators and Congressmen would go to jail.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think Moon was trying to accomplish in Washington?

[A] Patrick: That I don't know. I do know that Moon is not a South Korean. He was born and raised in North Korea, and he spent time in prison in North Korea and possibly in China. It is my opinion that Moon is a wolf in sheep's clothing, with all his talk about anti-communism. I think he knows that if he came here as a Communist, he couldn't get anyone to join him. But if he came as an anti-Communist, he could get a lot of people. Now he's buying up all these fishing companies. Can you imagine what he could do to people just through food, canned food, if he chose to?

[Q] Playboy: Let's stay away from some of your more farfetched conspiracy theories, if you don't mind. Now that the House International Organization Subcommittee has reported that it suspects Moon of a number of illegal activities, don't you think the Government will agree to investigate the Unification Church?

[A] Patrick: No, I think it's going to be quashed just like the Korean payoff scandal was. I think the Moonies concentrated on paying off the Democrats because they were the majority party in Congress. They controlled the Korean investigation and they are going to be the same ones to control any cult investigation. I was the one who exposed Moon in the first place, back in '73, when he was holding those rallies in support of Nixon. Nobody believed me then; he had letters from politicians, policemen, judges endorsing his world crusade.

[Q] Playboy: If the Moonies really have done the things that you claim and that the House subcommittee has charged, what should the Government do about Moon and his organization?

[A] Patrick: The Government should completely disband the Moon organization, and the money and property should be given back to the people Moon got it from. A lot of people went in there and gave millions of dollars, everything they owned in the world, and most of them worked without pay.

[Q] Playboy: And what about all the Moonies who are now in this country? What would happen to them then?

[A] Patrick: They should be deprogramed. But it won't happen. Congress is not going to touch Moon. It's not going to touch any of the cults.

[Q] Playboy: What about the Executive branch of the Government? Have you tried to contact President Carter?

[A] Patrick: Carter? Yeah, I've tried every President. Not only President but every U.S. Attorney General. They're not going to do anything.

[Q] Playboy: What did they say to you?

[A] Patrick: Nothing. They didn't even answer my letters. But they answer Sun Myung Moon. They answer Krishna. Jimmy Carter sent a signed letter to Krishna congratulating them on their book and the work they are doing. Krishna put it up on every wall. Go to their Detroit temple. You'll see it.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think the Government refuses to challenge the cults?

[A] Patrick: Because they've got the money. These cults are very powerful. Very powerful. They can buy anything or anybody.

[Q] Playboy: You've told us what you think the Government should do with the Reverend Moon. What do you think the Government should do about the cults in general?

[A] Patrick: The first thing it should do is have an independent investigation and it should be conducted in public hearings like Watergate was. It should let everybody who has been in a cult or who knows anything come before it and testify. Then it should pass laws to protect people from being psychologically kidnaped. We also need some laws governing fraudulent business practices in the name of religion. I'd like to see a law passed that removed the tax exemptions from all churches. Let's say a law that taxes all religious organizations, just one percent of their income. There isn't a legitimate church in the country that can't afford one percent, and it would allow us to see what's going on inside. Many of them flourish partly because they are not accountable for their money; they are immune to all governmental checks and balances. Then they should pass laws to protect the First Amendment from abuse, to prevent people from using the First Amendment as a license to kill, steal, lie, cheat, push drugs and rip off the public. The cults are using the First Amendment to overthrow the country. They're using it to destroy human beings.

[Q] Playboy: But, again, aren't you the one who is abusing people's freedom? Aren't you the one who is depriving them of their First Amendment rights?

[A] Patrick: I will fight and die to protect the First Amendment. That is what I am fighting for. I believe a person should have the right to worship the way he pleases, but when someone destroys your free will and your ability to think and takes your mind, you don't have any more rights. They have destroyed your human rights and your constitutional rights. And I haven't broken the law. These people have been rescued, not kidnaped, and we have a law of justification that states that a person is justified in committing an apparently illegal act in an emergency to prevent a greater harm, if it is the lesser of two evils. We now have conservatorship laws to give parents custody of their children when they are in that state of mind. Those laws didn't exist before I started what I am doing.

[Q] Playboy: There are a lot of people who won't grant you that premise. They say it is impossible to take away a person's mind.

[A] Patrick: Well, have they heard about Hitler and Mao Tse-tung? Do they know what happened to Korean prisoners of war, or what's going on today in Russia and China?

[Q] Playboy: What do you tell people who say that it can't happen here?

[A] Patrick: Well, it is happening here, and the techniques they are using are more sophisticated than ever. But don't take my word for it. Find out yourself. Where facts are involved, there's no excuse for ignorance.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about the cults' reaction to your campaign against them. What was their response when you started?

[A] Patrick: They came back fighting. They disagreed that they programed anyone. Every cult agreed that all the rest of the cults were bad, but they denied that they did those things. Each one said it was the good one. Krishna said Moon and Scientology were bad. Scientology agreed that the Moonies and the Children of God were bad. Brother Love down in Florida said, "I agree with Ted Patrick that the Moonies and Krishna and all of those cults are bad. But we don't deal in brainwashing. We deal in washing the soul."

[Q] Playboy: We've mentioned the criminal charges the cults have filed against you, what about lawsuits?

[A] Patrick: I've been sued so many times I've lost count. Right now, I'm fighting a $15,000,000 suit from Sun Myung Moon, a few million dollars more from the New Testament Missionary Fellowship, $2,500,000 from Krishna, and I don't know how many million Scientology is suing me for. I've got over $60,000,000 in lawsuits pending at the moment, and I've already spent over $200,000 in legal fees. But more and more people are beginning to understand what is going on.

[Q] Playboy: You mentioned money. There have been a lot of rumors about the exorbitant fees that deprogramers charge. Just how much do you get for your services?

[A] Patrick: Well, no matter what you start, somebody's always going to come in and make a racket out of it. There are some people out there now making a racket out of deprograming. I know of cases where people have paid $30,000 or $40,000 to have their child deprogramed, and in two of those cases, I was called in to do the deprograming and they paid me less than $2000.

[Q] Playboy: What are your expenses for a typical deprograming?

[A] Patrick: It costs me a good $3000 to $4000 every time. That figure is made up of transportation and hotel costs, car rental, food, telephone calls, out-of-pocket expenses, and what I pay people on my security team.

[Q] Playboy: How much profit do you make on deprograming?

[A] Patrick: I've never charged more than $10,000 for a deprograming—and I may come out $3000 ahead or I may come out $6000 behind. All of this is very expensive, especially the transportation, and I pay my people very well. I get my money up front and I tell the parents that we can't guarantee anything, any more than a doctor can guarantee anything. But I never leave a person hanging. If he needs some kind of follow-up, I don't charge.

[Q] Playboy: What about your competitors? What do they charge?

[A] Patrick: Their minimum is usually around $15,000, but a lot of their people wind up back in the cults.

[Q] Playboy: Why is that?

[A] Patrick: Because after they deprogram a person, they send him to a big rehab house. I went to one once. They had about 100 people there and they looked worse than they did when they were in a cult. They get all spaced out because they freak each other out. That's why I don't believe in rehab houses. I believe you should treat one person at a time. You've got to rebuild that person and he or she has got to be the king or queen. All your attention has got to be focused on that one person.

[Q] Playboy: What about the mental-health community? What has its response been to your work?

[A] Patrick: Most of them are totally unaware of the situation. They're still hanging onto their old beliefs that no one can be hypnotized against his will and that there's no way you can get a person to do things other than what he wants to do in the first place. They don't know anything about mind control or the type of hypnosis we are talking about. If you ask most psychologists or psychiatrists, they would disagree with what I'm doing, but some of them know I am right. I've got them coming to me by the dozens to learn my technique.

[Q] Playboy: Psychiatrists are studying your methods?

[A] Patrick: Yeah, now. Psychiatrists and psychologists, doctors, attorneys. Everyone is coming to me. They admire my work, but they won't take a stand. They're worried about their credibility. They're worried about ruining their reputations. They're afraid of being labeled, of being sued, of losing their licenses. They're afraid of a lot of things. Everybody is afraid of the word deprograming. Again, it's fear of appearing to meddle with freedom of religion.

[Q] Playboy: What about people who have studied brainwashing in China and Russia? Won't they lend you their support?

[A] Patrick: You know, I have met all the so-called experts on brainwashing. They make me glad I didn't go to school or to college. Those people don't realize that you don't have to use torture to brainwash people today. There's no torture anymore. It's all done with love and kindness—and deception.

[Q] Playboy: What about the A.C.L.U. and other civil-liberties organizations? Have any of them come to your defense?

[A] Patrick: The A.C.L.U. stands behind every cult in the nation. It defends all of them, but it won't defend me.

[Q] Playboy: Why should they? Isn't it reasonable to assume that the A.C.L.U. sincerely believes you are abridging cult members' First Amendment rights?

[A] Patrick: It would be reasonable to assume that, if it was being reasonable itself. But the A.C.L.U. is not interested in listening to reason. It has never really investigated the claims the cults make against me. I have invited it many times to travel with me and observe me in action, but it has refused.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't that because it doesn't want to be party to an illegal activity?

[A] Patrick: It doesn't seem averse to illegal activities as far as I am concerned. Members of the A.C.L.U. have lied to me. They have had me followed. They bugged my phone in California on at least two occasions when I was working on a Brotherhood of the Sun deprograming in 1976. Later, statements I had made only to my wife or my assistant were presented in court as evidence against me when the cult was represented by an A.C.L.U. attorney.

[Q] Playboy: How do you know it was the A.C.L.U. that bugged you and not the cult?

[A] Patrick: Because one time I spotted the bug and I saw the car a block away. I walked up to it and saw some men with bugging equipment and a tape recorder. One of the men was the attorney from the A.C.L.U. I called the police, but by the time they got there, the car was gone. Another time, the, same men walked into my house and took pictures.

[Q] Playboy: How do you know it was the same A.C.L.U. attorney who entered your house? Were you home?

[A] Patrick: No, but the pictures were published the next day in the newspaper and I was told he was one of the people who had given the paper the pictures.

[Q] Playboy: Well, it would be your word against theirs, and impugning the integrity of the A.C.L.U. because you say one attorney used those tactics doesn't seem very persuasive.

[A] Patrick: Believe me, it's more than just one attorney. I feel that, at the national level, the A.C.L.U. has been heavily influenced by the cults. It has practically become part of the whole movement. The A.C.L.U. defends every cult as if it were a legitimate religion.

[Q] Playboy: As perhaps it should, at least until a particular cult is proved not to be. a religion. Look, doesn't every form of religion use some kind of conditioning, or even hypnosis, no matter how subtle?

[A] Patrick: Everybody uses those techniques. Every parent, every teacher is a hypnotist, but it's their obligation to program you to know right from wrong. Every preacher, every salesman, the news media are all hypnotists, because they, too, have a certain amount of control over people. But the same techniques can be used for good purposes or for evil, and there are too many irresponsible people today using them for evil purposes.

[Q] Playboy: Yet it remains true that most of the people who oppose deprograming are not in religious cults but in major organized religions. What do you say to someone who says, "My God, if they're deprograming kids from cults, I may be next!"?

[A] Patrick: They can think what they want. If they think what I'm doing is bad, I would fight and die for their right to hate me. They can think I'm a no-good son of a bitch, as long as they've come to that opinion of their own free will.

[Q] Playboy: That doesn't answer the question we asked. How do you know if someone's using his own free will? What criteria do you use to determine if someone needs to be deprogramed?

[A] Patrick: Being programed is the only criterion. If you haven't been programed, you can't be deprogramed, and you can tell if someone's been programed, because that person has undergone a complete personality change. All of his old values have changed.

Look, we can be engaged in a conversation on religion or politics, and you can have your opinion and I can have mine. We may sit up here all day and all night and discuss it, but you're going to leave with your opinion and I'm going to leave with mine. You may be able to persuade me one way or the other, and I may be able to sway you, but you won't have any fear whatsoever of discussing something with me. You would stand up and fight for what you believe in. If you've been programed, there is no way you would be willing to discuss anything with me other than what you'd been programed to discuss. It would be psychologically impossible.

You know, people talk about natural resources and the energy crisis and all that, but this cult movement is destroying one of our country's most important natural resources: our young people, our future leaders. If the cults continue for the next five or ten years, instead of producing some of the most brilliant minds and leaders the world has ever known, we are going to have nothing but a bunch of idiots.

[Q] Playboy: Would you say that it is primarily young people who are vulnerable to these techniques?

[A] Patrick: Everybody's vulnerable to them. Hell, we live in a controlled society, to a certain extent. When we go into a store, someone else has already decided what we should buy or what style we should wear. But at least with a free will and a free mind, you are able to reject. A person in a cult can't reject anything. He doesn't have that power. He can only accept.

[Q] Playboy: How can people protect themselves?

[A] Patrick: Knowledge is your only protection. People should become knowledgeable about brainwashing and on-the-spot hypnosis. They should participate in educating other people; they should stand up for what they believe is right. If their representatives don't do anything, they should vote them out of office; they should get out there and campaign against them. We've got to get these old rotten, gutless politicians out of office, because if you've got weak leaders, you're going to have a weak country.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think history is going to regard you as a hero or as a villain?

[A] Patrick: Well, it's like Mark Twain said, anyone who comes up with a new idea is always called a crank. A lot of people have invented or contributed things and never received any credit, especially the blacks. If I had been white and developed a technique like this, I don't think I'd have had the same problems. I would have had more support. Being black has made it much harder.

(The final portion of this interview was conducted after the events in Guyana.)

[Q] Playboy: Earlier, you predicted the outbreak of violence affecting large numbers of people. What happened in Guyana appears to have borne you out. In view of that, do you have any final thoughts on what steps the Government should take with regard to some of the other cults you've talked about?

[A] Patrick: I think the Government should disarm those cults before they take over the country. They should arrest every cult leader I can think of—because most of them are already violating laws.

[Q] Playboy: Another sweeping statement—and a call for a national witch-hunt.

[A] Patrick: I don't mean it to sound that way. I'm just saying that most local police and other authorities already know which are the biggest and most dangerous cults in their localities. And there are plenty of checks on police to conduct investigations legally and properly. They would be investigating complaints from parents and others; they would have to make sure they got a court order, a sample of ten members could be interviewed and deprogramed in the presence of witnesses, and the evidence taken to a judge and jury.

[Q] Playboy: Which sounds to us like an inquisition, to say nothing of Gestapo tactics.

[A] Patrick: I'm talking about moving against the big visible cults such as Scientology, Moon and Krishna, where there have been thousands of complaints received by every level of authority. I'm talking about simply investigating those complaints, which authorities now say they can't do because of freedom of religion. Why is investigating complaints a Gestapo tactic?

[Q] Playboy: We're not necessarily defending cults, but the sort of investigation you're calling for could sweep a lot of innocent people into the net, people who belong to sincere religious groups.

[A] Patrick: I'm saying it should be done legally and carefully. I'm saying there should be laws against psychological kidnaping: laws against cults that take all your property——

[Q] Playboy: Why? Why shouldn't a person be free to give all his property to anyone or anything he pleases?

[A] Patrick: If he's doing it of his free will, fine. But these people aren't giving anything of their free will. They have none. And the proof of that is the people themselves who get deprogramed. The minute they start thinking for themselves again, they're the ones who say they didn't give up their possessions freely. They were brainwashed!

[Q] Playboy: But you still don't seem to see the danger of the course you're advocating. If we allow police to investigate cults the way you're proposing, by forcing members into interrogations and deprograming, what's to prevent mistakes from happening, abuses from occurring?

[A] Patrick: I haven't made a mistake yet. I've made plenty of mistakes in my life, but not once have I deprogramed someone who turned out to be a member of a harmless religious group who was thinking for himself. Never!

[Q] Playboy: That doesn't answer the question. What if you did make a mistake?

[A] Patrick: I don't make mistakes.

[Q] Playboy: But what if you do?

[A] Patrick: All right, then, depending on the circumstances, I simply say I made a mistake under the law of justification that says a lesser evil is forgiven if it was intended to erase a greater evil, or I get prosecuted. But, look: I don't just go and kidnap a person on a hunch or on the parent's word. There are a lot of things we research before we move. We grill the parent and go over the whole history of the child—what he was like before, why the parent thinks it is a cult, what kind of personality changes occurred, when he dropped out of school, whether the parent tried to visit him, whether the parent visited the leader and what the leader said, what the neighbors observed and so forth. We do our homework so we don't make mistakes.

[Q] Playboy: But no matter how scrupulous you say you are, what's to prevent deprogramers, or police, or anybody, for that matter, from moving against people who behave oddly? How can you have laws that will protect the rights of eccentrics?

[A] Patrick: Well, first, there should be a national justification law that spells out very clearly what steps can be taken for what purpose to prevent a greater evil. Next, if a parent or a spouse notices someone's personality undergo a sudden (concluded on page 220) Ted Patrick (continued from page 88) change, and sees all his property being handed over, and the other criteria I've mentioned, he should be able to obtain—cheaply—a conservatorship. That just means that the parent has the right to have the child under observation by a psychiatrist or proper authority for, say, 15 days, to determine whether the person is acting free of mind control. That would protect both sides of the First Amendment.

[Q] Playboy: We're not so sure it protects the First Amendment, but let us put it to you another way: If you happen to be wrong, what's to protect people from someone like you?

[A] Patrick: Nothing. Under the justification law, as I said, a mistake is a mistake if it's well intentioned. And, considering the alternatives, having the opportunity to prod someone into thinking for himself can't be too bad a mistake. We have a lot more laws right now protecting the guilty than laws that allow us to protect the innocent.

[Q] Playboy: On the subject of legal remedies, what about another appeal to President Carter?

[A] Patrick: He isn't going to do anything. I'm more pessimistic than ever on that score. Hell, Jimmy Carter's sister is one of the biggest cult leaders in the nation. Ruth Stapleton uses all the same techniques they do. She's nothing but a cult leader.

[Q] Playboy: Why is she a cult leader if Billy Graham isn't?

[A] Patrick: Because she programs people. I've seen her do it in meetings, and she's got a mailing list like you wouldn't believe. I also have reason to think she's using the same technique on members of the Government. I saw one Cabinet member on TV talking about how he was born again through Ruth Carter Stapleton. He looked just like a Moonie, glazed eyes, the works.

[Q] Playboy: Which Cabinet member?

[A] Patrick: I honestly don't recall. It was a news show, on CBS.

[Q] Playboy: That seems like an irresponsible accusation, especially since you've repeatedly admitted that many people and institutions may use techniques of persuasion similar to those used by the cults. Almost no one would doubt that Ruth Stapleton is using her techniques for benevolent purposes.

[A] Patrick: All right, I'll grant you that she may be a good cult leader, but that's what she is, nonetheless. She uses hypnotic techniques in her faith healing and many of her followers endow her with godlike powers. More so than the followers of Oral Roberts or Billy Graham.

As far as I'm concerned, Larry Flynt of Hustler is a good example of what Ruth Stapleton can do. She had Flynt looking and talking like a Moonie. I think Flynt would have done anything for her.

[Q] Playboy: Come on! She couldn't even get Flynt to really change his magazine, which is what he announced he'd do, much less do the kinds of things you're suggesting.

[A] Patrick: They shot him before he could. And even before the shooting, his wife showed her distress at his conversion.

[Q] Playboy: What have you proved, though? You haven't said anything that would suggest Ruth Carter Stapleton—or any of the other religious figures you mentioned—has used those techniques for anything but benevolent purposes.

[A] Patrick: But that's my point. All the cult leaders who have gone bad started with benevolent purposes. Jim Jones was a highly respected political and social activist, and who knows when he started using his techniques to enslave his followers? Certainly not his followers, who were in no state to be able to judge for themselves.

Jim Jones wasn't a behind-the-scenes cult leader like the Krishnas or Scientologists have. He was more the TV type of cult leader, visible and wise to the media. He started out as a public figure in San Francisco before he took his people to Guyana. He was like Oral Roberts in terms of his style, which is why he was able to get those endorsements from everyone from Rosalynn Carter on down. Although I don't believe Oral Roberts could ever become as warped as Jim Jones. I'm just saying we should know about those techniques and crack down on them when there is evidence that they are being misused.

[Q] Playboy: Are you still pessimistic about the Government's doing anything about the situation as you see it?

[A] Patrick: I think it will do a little something—and then let it ride. There are too many Congressmen and elected officials involved in it all—directly or indirectly—for anything more than that to be done.

[Q] Playboy: One impression we can't help having is that you're as much a zealot about your beliefs as those you say you're combating. Looking back at the past eight years, have you ever had any qualms about what you've been doing?

[A] Patrick: There was one real moment when I had to look at the price I'd pay. Here I was, a tenth-grade dropout, making three times more money than I'd ever expected. When I had to decide whether or not to stay with this movement, I had to face the fact that I could get killed, my house could be bombed, my family could be harmed, I could lose everything I had, I could be arrested and thrown into jail, I could be hated and crucified in the press. That was the price, and I've paid most of it. And the fact that I accepted the challenge means I've accepted the price.

[Q] Playboy: But what about the issue of the ends' justifying the means? Haven't you ever felt any doubt as to whether or not it was right to break the law, no matter how good your intentions?

[A] Patrick: Maybe to some people I have broken the law, but I prefer to think that I am performing a service, a public service, which no one else is willing to perform. It's hard to find other areas of the law where there aren't perfectly feasible alternatives to taking the law into your own hands, and anyone who thinks I enjoy all those legal battles, the convictions, the jail sentences, must be crazy. But I know that the only way to develop blueprints for legislation to govern the cults is to produce evidence about what is happening inside them. No law-enforcement agencies will launch an investigation because of the First Amendment. A dog won't run from the smell of a skunk the way a politician will put his tail between his legs and take off at even a hint of controversy in the religious area. Believe me, before I started taking kids out bodily, I tried everything. I went to the governors, the Congress, the attorneys general, the Speaker of the House, the President. All I ever got were sympathy cards.

But it's not just the cowardice of Congress and so-called experts that protects the cults. The churches of America have to shoulder the blame. A lot of clergymen of various faiths have sat in on my deprogramings. They've seen firsthand what is going on, yet they refuse to take a stand. There is a moral vacuum in some churches of this country, and I think it's this vacuum that the cults are rushing to fill.

[Q] Playboy: Does it matter to you that a lot of people who read this, and may sincerely be concerned about the dangers of some cults, will nevertheless dislike what you've been saying and quarrel with the generalizations you've made?

[A] Patrick: Most people aren't going to believe me, anyway. Until it happens to them, they aren't going to pay much attention. I don't really care if people refuse to believe a lot of what I've said in this interview. If they've read it, at least, then someday when they're confronted with the cult phenomenon in their own lives, a lot of what I've said will flash through their minds. And it may help protect them.

"Courts have recognized that what I'm doing is legal under the law of justification. I have taken the law into my own hands, but I haven't broken it."

"After years in a cult, the members' minds cease to be, and they become a vegetable, or suicidal."

"TM is one of the most damaging forms of meditation. It's also one of the biggest cults in the nation."

"I'll say, 'You gave $50,000 to God? How? Did He come down to pick it up, or did you send Him a letter?' "

"I was born with a speech impediment. My mother took me to every faith healer who came into town."

"It's one of the biggest rackets the world has ever known, this religious bit."

"The cults are using the First Amendment to overthrow the country, to destroy human beings."

"There are people out there making a racket out of deprograming. I've never charged more than $10,000."

"This cult movement is destroying one of our country's most important resources: our future leaders."

"All the cult leaders who have gone bad started with benevolent purposes. Jim Jones was highly respected."