Risks and Challenges of Cult Deprogramming

Whether you call it brainwashing, programming, indoctrination, or something else, cult members have been taught to think, feel, and act in certain ways. The goal of the cult deprogrammer is to empower the individual to think critically, to evaluate, to reality-test; and to exercise their own free will. Over his long career, Mark Blockson has participated in more than 100 interventions or kidnappings at the behest of families who are trying to rescue loved ones from religious cults. He talks about his own experiences with addiction and how that led to his involvement in rehabilitation and deprogramming and how the techniques involved have evolved over the years.  He’s also very candid about the rewards and pressures of the work and how it has impacted own life and eventually led to divorce, addiction and, even, time in prisonHeroes Behind HeadlinesExecutive Producer Ralph PezzulloProduced & Engineered by Mike DawsonMusic provided by ExtremeMusic.com