Australia getting tough on cults

[November 12, 1998]

An official committee in Australia comprised of federal, state and territory legal advisers, submitted their recent recommendation that "significant emotional harm" inflicted by religious groups be classified as a criminal offense. The committee of top legal attorneys, commissioned by the federal, state and territory attorneys-general, were asked to create a more cohesive "model criminal code" and rebalance currently conflicting laws.

Their report states, "The committee is not concerned with, nor does it make any judgment on, the question whether the Church of Scientology causes criminal harm to other people in its evangelical activities. It is concerned that the criminal offense proposed (in the proposed national criminal code) catches the causing of significant psychological harm to people, accompanied with criminal intention. If a religious organization does that, it, like anyone else, should be guilty of the appropriate criminal offense."

Their findings are supported by a ruling cited from the California Supreme Court that "...coercive persuasion..." by religious sects may cause "...serious physical and psychiatric disorders." From this and other historical and current examples, the report identifies "...the techniques involved may include isolation, manipulation of time and attention, positive and negative reinforcement, peer group pressure, prohibition of dissent, deprivation of sleep and protein and the inducement of fear, guilt and emotional dependence."

The committee's latest report, Non Fatal Offenses Against the Person, further recommends criminal sanctions apply to any individual or group who: INTENTIONALLY or recklessly transmit a serious disease; SET traps to kill or seriously harm intruders; STALK another person; PERFORM genital mutilation or send a child overseas for genital mutilation.

" `Freedom of religion' is not freedom, for example, to defraud, nor is it freedom to cause significant psychological or psychiatric harm to any person," the committee report concluded.

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