Newsletter March, 1998

Dear FACTNet Supporter,

Congratulations to FACTNet! The FACTNet web site just received its millionth hit!

Not only is this an extraordinary landmark in itself, but it also attests to the acceleration of FACTNet's growth. FACTNet has already received as many hits this year as we received in all of 1997. Many, many thanks to all FACTNet supporters, volunteers, advisors, and directors! You have truly made it possible for FACTNet to provide a million hits worth of service.

The millionth hit came just in time to kick off FACTNet's spring donation drive. This is one of only a few times this year FACTNet will specifically solicit donations. We hope to raise $15,000 from this request, based upon the generous response we normally receive from our donors. Please help celebrate FACTNet's millionth hit by continuing to support us.

FACTNet has accomplished a great deal from our first hit January 1, 1997 after going back on-line, to our millionth hit this month. We have had the opportunity to provide cult awareness education and referrals to cult experts for thousands of cult victims, their families, friends, and communities, through the FACTNet web site and through services like this newsletter.

Both the web site and the newsletter have

undergone vast improvements over the last year, especially over the past few months. If you haven't seen the FACTNet site recently, I really encourage to visit at www.factnet.org. If you would like a friend to receive a free newsletter subscription, remit the form at the end of the newsletter to FACTNet or email manage@factnet.org.

While subscriptions to the newsletter, along with all FACTNet's services, are free, production of these services is funded completely by the contributions of individual donors like you. Reducing harms caused by cults and mind control is only possible with your help.

Please help us continue this work. Please continue to support FACTNet with a donation. Thank you so much.

Sincerely,
Justine Janette, Executive Director

FACTNet Scientology litigation update

August 4, 1998: Pretrial conference
January 4, 1999: Trial
Current legal bills past due: $186,000
Estimates for additional legal funds for trial: $300,000
Please be generous with your donation.

The mind control problem

"There are a good many people already dead or dying, ill or malfunctioning, crippled or developing improperly as a result of their involvement in cults. They are exploited; they are used and misused; their health suffers; they are made to commit improprieties ranging from lying to murder. Their lives are being gobbled up by days, months, and years."-Louis Jolyon West, M.D, Cultic Studies Journal, vol 7, no 2, 1990.

According to cult expert Dr. Margaret Singer , an estimated 5,000 groups have used tactics of coercive mind control to deceptively influence 20 million victims in the United States alone in the last ten years, including 2.5 million at any given time. Worldwide figures are even greater.

The cult problem is so prevalent, Dr. Paul Martin reports, the chances of a family member joining a cult are greater than a family member catching chicken pox,

four times greater than contracting AIDS, 90 times greater than contracting measles, and 45,000 times greater than contracting polio.

Individuals under the influence of mind control do things willingly that they previously may have detested, for the sake of the group's "higher purposes." Reports of members of diverse cults committing illegal and reprehensible activities are widespread. Child abuse in cults is common, and children are often cults' most devastating casualties. Of the 912 People's Temple members who died in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978, 276 were children, and of more than 80 who died at Waco, Texas in 1993, 25 were children. Even children not harmed physically rarely receive formal education or develop correctly on emotional, social, and cognitive levels.

Cult members not only abuse children, but also murder, lie, steal, falsify documents, perform satanic rituals, and attempt suicide. Many suicides are not highly

publicized as were those of Heaven's Gate and Jonestown, because they occur quietly, one at a time, as individuals are pushed beyond their capacity by mind control. Common cult conditions include severe sleep deprivation, food deprivation, periods of psychosis, and long, hard hours of work.

Even after people leave cults, the harms inflicted often continue to damage the ex-members, families, interpersonal relationships, and workplaces. According to Dr. Martin, even the most conservative estimates indicate that 185,000 Americans join destructive cults each year, and 25% of these "will suffer enduring, irreversible harm that will affect their ability to function adequately in emotional, social, family, and occupational domains." For every person who becomes a cult member, many more are impacted; parents, children, other family, and friends suffer personal and often financial loss.