folly: from salvation, to starvation. faith led to death for followers of a cult in kenya. hundreds of bodies have been found, and dozens of members are on hunger strike. so, why do people join, and why is it often so hard to leave? this is "inside story." ♪ hello, and welcome to the program. i'm folly bah thibault. the bodies of more than 300 members of a christian doomsday

cult have now been unearthed in kenya. they're believed to have starved themselves to death. dozens more are still alive, but refusing to eat. about 5,000 such movements are estimated to exist worldwide. so, why do people join these often secretive societies, and what dangers might they face? we'll put these questions to our guests in just a moment. but first, catherine soy has this update from nairobi, in kenya, on the investigation there. reporter: the story started unfolding when a relative of two children who are at shakahola ranch in malindi at the kenyan coast who are reported missing and the family said that the parents had been starving these children, so they went to report the matter to the police, who went to shakahola, where they arrested paul makenzie, this man

who is said to have lured his -- arrested paul mackenzie, this man who is said to have lured his followers to stir to death and then they started investigating what had been going on in shakahola, and they realized that there were shallow graves. 16 people are in police custody. some of them have been refusing to eat. one of the suspects recently died, with pathologists saying that some of the victims died from starvation. others were suffocated. so many people, many relatives who are in malindi and across the country want to know, how did this happen? they also want justice. catherine soy, al jazeera, nairobi. folly: well, cults are thought to have been around for hundreds of years, but details of modern cults have been made public,

with grim discoveries. laura khan takes a look. reporter: so what makes a cult? they've hit headlines around the world, with strange and often disturbing stories about their leaders and methods. followers often devote themselves to a self-appointed leader, who may convince them to abandon their families and involve themselves in rituals, sometimes with terrible consequences. the most notorious cult in modern history was developed deep in the jungle of guyana, in south america. a place of natural beauty turned into a graveyard, where 914 people, including children, died in a mass suicide in 1978. the leader of the people's temple cult, u.s. preacher jim jones, convinced his followers to move from san francisco to guyana. jones is reported to have persuaded them to consume poison laced punch. those who refused were shot.

in 1994, the bodies of 74 members of order of the solar temple sect were found in switzerland, france, and canada. they believed the world was about to end and needed to enter a higher spiritual plane. a year later, japan's own shinrikyo cult members released toxic sarin gas in the tokyo subway system. 13 people were killed and thousands were poisoned. and back in the u.s., many modern cults have formed. in 1993, a police and federal agent attempted a raid on a compound belonging to the branch davidians cult in waco, texas. its leader, david korresh, was reportedly tipped off about the operation, and a gun battle ensued. this led to a 51-day siege, which ended when fire destroyed the structure. 82 cult followers, including 28 children and four federal agents, were killed. heaven's gate was founded in the 1970s.

its members committed mass suicide in 1997 while believing their leaders, who told them they would ascend to an alien spacecraft. but this was the reality. laura khan, al jazeera. ♪ folly: well, let's bring in our guests for today's "inside story.” in mombasa, kenya, shipeta mathias, a rapid response officer at haki africa, which is a rights group that supports cult victims in kenya. in portland, in the u.s., is diane benscoter. she joined a religious movement whose members are known as "the moonies" when she was 17 years old. diane is now the founder of "antidote," a nonprofit that exposes the dangers of psychological manipulation. and in greater manchester, in the u.k., is linda dubrow-marshall, a clinical psychologist and senior lecturer at the university of salford. thank you to all three of you for joining us.

diane, in oregon, let me start with you, please. you were once part of the unification church, whose members are commonly known as "the moonies.” many, including in japan and europe, see them -- see it as a cult, but in south korea, where it was founded, it's considered legally as a religion. can you tell us first, diane, what defines a cult and how you identify it? >> i think that there are a lot of definitions of what a cult is. it's often an extremist belief system and a community of people that are pretty isolated. but i think what's really important to understand is the kind of psychological manipulation that goes on within these groups that has control over people in a way that's a lot of people have a hard time -- in a way that a lot of people have a hard time understanding, and i think that's the core of what's important within a cult.

folly: how do you identify a cult? >> i think you can identify it by the tactics that are used to control people on a psychological level. i think one of the key things that the cult leaders will do is polarize and create an "us versus them," and so, that people feel exceptional, they feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves, and they feel like the group that they're in has kind of a special relationship with a greater purpose, or even with god. that's typically the most important thing, is that feeling of, "we're the special people and everyone else just doesn't understand.” folly: linda, i'll ask you about the psychological tactics in a bit. but i want to come to you first, shipeta, because of course the reason we're having this discussion today is because cults are once again making headlines, with the events in kenya.

you worked with the grassroots group that i understand helped police discover the victims of pastor paul mckenzie in kenya, on the coast there. you've been at the heart of this investigation, i understand. can you tell us how this all unfolded? how you were able to find these bodies that are buried in shakahola forest in kenya? >> thank you very much. i think when we first heard about the case, we thought, it's just a normal rescue mission, that we're going to rescue a young boy. the grandfather had actually come to report to us. so when we followed up, we were actually following up on rescuing the boy, but it turned out to be something else, because after we rescued the boy, we were able to see that there were more, other people, who were actually inside the forest. and a majority of them were emaciated. the ones that we found that actually shocked us were about four people that we found lying on the thicket, and they were

just praying their last prayers to be able to to actually go to heaven. so, when we tried to help them, they were really hesitant, or they were reluctant, and they just wanted help from jesus. so it was the word "jesus" many times that was being mentioned, and it seemed like they were ready to actually meet jesus. so we seemed to be enemies in actually making them or stopping them from meeting the maker. so that's how we found out. but then things blew up, when we were told by -- when the boy narrated to us as to how people have been fasting in that area and how many people had actually died in that area. that's when we involved the police and we were able to exhume the number of bodies that are still ongoing, about 310. so that's when we knew, we are dealing with accounts. -- with a cult.

folly: that's when you knew you were dealing with a cult. and linda, i want to come to you now, because both diane and shipeta mentioned this aspect of "them versus us," and people have this idea of people who get into cults as people who have psychological problems. what are the profiles of the victims? why do they get involved in these cults? >> let me correct that myth that people develop problems being in the group. they might have some psychological problems. but the truth is, and it's a hard one to fathom, that all of us are susceptible to cultic influence. we're more susceptible at particular times. if we're vulnerable, if we've suffered a loss, if we have some existential crisis, looking for meaning in life. but it can happen to anyone. you can be recruited by a close friend or a relative and it just sounded good and they deceive

you and don't tell you what you signed up for. these people didn't sign up to die. this is something that happens gradually. the demands of the group get more and more outrageous, and by that time, you're more dependent on the leader or on the group. you have a psychological dependency, and you become enslaved in your mind, and it's hard to get out of that, and you're isolated, and you don't get opposing viewpoints from other people that would help you challenge it. folly: linda, many of these cults, when you look at kenya, for example, hide behind religion. when does a cult become a religion? and when does a religion become a cult? >> well, i think the focus there should be on the abusive practices that occur and the degree of influence and control in a person's life. so, usually religion may play an important part in a person's life, but it doesn't say you

have to move to our community necessarily, you have to give up your job, your education, your family, if they don't agree, you know, there's tolerance for other viewpoints. and then there's the outright abuse that occurs, the illegal behaviors. it's important to note, in this very tragic and compelling case, that it wasn't all suicides, that there were strangulations and the murder of children, and this has happened in the other groups that have been described as suicide cults, where people were also murdered. they didn't all commit suicide. folly: so it's not always suicide cases, as we've seen in kenya. diane, let me come to you. linda said this can happen to anyone, and this happened to you in the 1970s. tell us about your own experience. you spent five years, i believe, with the moonies. how did you get involved with this organization, and how were you able to leave?

>> well, i agree with everything linda said, that was really well put. and, i was young and vulnerable. the vietnam war was going on, and i felt really upset about that. i was looking for easy answers to life's hard questions. i wanted to use my life for something bigger. and so, when i met this group, they were going on a walk for world peace, at least that's what they were saying, and i went on this walk and heard these lectures that focused on what was wrong with the world, and god's plan, and how i had been chosen for a special mission by god, and it all just made sense to me at the time, and these people were so dedicated, and they just seemed so authentic, and so i was pulled into it. and for five years, i really believed wholeheartedly that the

messiah was on the earth and that i was a disciple of christ and that this is what god wanted of me. and i worked really, really hard. the way i got out was that my family hired someone, it was an ex-member of the moonies, that talked to me about a lot of things. but the thing that made the difference was when she described what brainwashing was. she referred to a book by robert lifton called "thought reform in the psychology of totalism" that describes what is in an environment where thought reform or brainwashing or mind control is going on, and every one of those things ranked true to me. and i could no longer accept the lie. it all came crashing down on me, and i realized that i had fallen for essentially a very big lie, so it was devastating. folly: so it was your family who in a way pulled you out.

and i read some of your bio. you said your family had you deprogrammed. and then you also became a deprogrammer, which, you know, for our audience, essentially was what, kidnapping victims of these cults and trying to get them out of it, which you were arrested for. what was that like? you know, that second phase of the experience. >> during that time, there were a lot of desperate family members, parents that didn't know what to do, and there was kind of an underground railroad of sorts where the programmers, -- where deprogrammers, these people, mostly ex-members of cults, were hired by families. and the families would stand in front of the windows and doors and not let the person leave until they talked with us. we'd come in and talk with them, sometimes for days at a time. but we tried to let them sleep and eat, and, you know, try to get them to think and think critically about their situation. but the process was really just

talking with them about the possibility that they had been taken advantage of on a psychological level, and that's really what the heart of it, to programming, is. no one does it like that anymore, right? that i know of. folly: i know it's a word linda doesn't really like, deprogramming, but i'll come back to you, linda, in just a second, to ask you what you think now is the best way to get people out of these cults. shipeta, i wanted to ask you more about the case in kenya, because i understand that you've been involved in some of the postmortem on the bodies that have been unearthed. and i wanted you to tell us about some of these victims, their profiles, and also what sort of experience they endured at the hands of this pastor. >> okay. thank you very much. i think the majority of the victims that we found were children, followed by women, a bit of -- some men that we found, and this is based on the doctrine that paul mckenzie was

preaching, that the world is coming to an end in the month of august, 2023. so he was going to be the last person to die. so the children will die fast, and followed by women, and followed by men, and then he will be the last person to die. so that's why we have found more children and women in this exhumation process, because we found them at the time -- i'm sure if we had done this exercise by around august, we would even have found even more men. so that's the doctrine that he was preaching. it's based on first maccabee's book, chapter 2, verses 28. i've seen many of the bibles that we found. folly: but why did the victims join? why did they join?

>> the majority of the victims left their good homes, comfort, comfortable life, and left to join the forest because they were believing that the world is coming to an end. the majority went during the covid-19 era, because the world seemed like there was confusion, the pandemonia that was involved during that time. and in kenya, you see even the signs that are in the book of revelation, there was a certain time in kenya when they were giving the huduma number, which actually seemed like the number of the beast, 666, so they were trying to go and seclude themselves so that they can be able to go to heaven. so that's why majority of them -- why the majority of them actually went and followed that pastor. and that pastor had been controversial. he was using youtube, using

-- folly: yeah, using social media and youtube videos to indoctrinate people. linda, i want to ask you now, how does someone's brain come to the point of wanting to save the world through death, exactly? >> so what happens here is that what you believe gets flipped completely by a very persuasive and charismatic leader who was -- leader who is able to convince people that there was a better life coming, this world was coming to an end, so you don't feel like you're killing yourself, you feel like you're facilitating your entry into that better world, the afterlife. and this is what robert j. lipton called destroying the world to save it, when he talked about the gas attacks in tokyo. the shrinkio group. so we've seen this before. and he flipped common morality is save the children first, then the women, then the men.

he flipped that all around. and you can only do that if people feel they're preserving themselves by moving to the better place in heaven. therefore, the children, it suddenly make sense to send them first, when actually everything that we would normally feel would revolt against that. folly: interesting. and what about, we've talked about the victims, what about the perpetrators, the cult leaders? when you look at someone like paul mackenzie in kenya, whose followers starve to death, what picture does it does it give you of the individual? >> well, this would appear to be a very narcissistic and psychopathic individual who has no regard for -- certainly no regard for people's lives, someone who maybe gets off on feeling very powerful over other people. by having all these followers, by the things that he was able to convince them of. and there may have been other motives. i've seen some suggestions that some of the bodies had organs removed. i don't know the accuracy of that, but, i mean, so there may have been other financial incentives, but what someone

like him does is he forms -- he gets the people that follow him to have a trauma bond with him, what we call trauma coerced attachment and then that leader, the belief of the leader and the group, it gets inside of you, which roger marshall, my husband, and i have worked on a theory of totalistic identity theory. so it takes over more and more of your identity, and this explains why his followers are arrested and still starving themselves. he's not there telling them exactly. folly: he's been exposed. exactly. he's been exposed. the case has been exposed, and yet, there are still people who strongly believe in what he preached and are still starving themselves to death today. >> that's because it's inside of them. it's their identity now. and they need gentle, supportive exit counseling to help them to break that trauma bond and think more critically and be able to challenge what they've believed in for a long time. so it's a loss. some people grieve that loss. they thought they were special and they thought that they had found the answers to things.

folly: diane, linda talked about breaking the trauma. how? and how long does it take, you know, once you're out, to rebuild the relationships that you had? what's reintegration like? what does it take to reintegrate, and how long does it take? >> it depends on how deeply you are involved. it's on a continuum, of course, but it's not instant, that's for sure. there's oftentimes a moment when you realize that this whole thing is a lie, when you kind of get it, that you understand what psychological manipulation is and how it works and that it's happened to you. but it is -- part of it becomes your identity. i think that's a really important way to look at it, is that you need it to be true. you want it to be true so much when you're in, that you will

push any kind of rational information away, because you want -- you need it to be true on a psychological level. it's become who you are and what you want in life. and to let go of that is a crisis, it's a personal identity crisis. it's a trauma. and once you go through that traumatic experience, a lot of times, you've broken your relationship with your loved ones along the way, and you really don't know who you are and where you fit in the world anymore. so it takes a lot of support to rebuild your life and rebuild an internal structure for yourself based on your own autonomy and agency as opposed to just having someone tell you what's real and why what's true in the world. folly: yeah. >> it can take months, years. folly: it can take a lot of time and patience i imagine to try and take out the individual. i mean, what what are the right words to tell someone who's in a cult?

>> i don't think there's any magic words to tell someone who's in a cult. i think that the most important thing, i work with families a lot who have a loved one who they are worried about, and i encourage them or try to help them find ways to talk to their loved one about the possibility that maybe they've been taken advantage of, and would they be willing to just talk to somebody about that possibility? and there's no harm in talking with someone about the possibility. if you're right, if there's nothing wrong with this group you're part of, then at least i, the parent, the loved one will be relieved to know everything's okay. and if there is a problem, wouldn't you want to know? so that's a strategy i think that seems to work well, because all you really want in the beginning is for them to have a conversation about their situation with someone who can help them see what might be at stake here.

folly: right. shipeta, before i come to you and ask you what's being done to help the victims in kenya, i want to ask linda about this, the same thing, or, you know, what are the right words? what is the right strategy? i saw you wanted to jump in there. how do you help someone break from a cult? >> well, you need to listen to them. you need to explore what it meant to them. you need to be the ones that really care about them in a genuine way, not the pseudo intimacy that is fostered in the group, and then you need to listen carefully for their doubts. everyone has some doubts that come up sometimes. so we use motivational interviewing to help people, to join them where they are, not arguing with them, but looking to find ways for them to explore their own dissonance between what they believe and what they've been experiencing and what they've been promised, and then you build on that, and you build this slowly and respectfully, you don't just challenge them and say, "oh,

you're in a cult.” that really doesn't work. folly: it doesn't work to tell them, "you're in a cult." and you don't like the word deprogramming either, linda. >> well, no, because we moved away from that. you know you don't need to forcibly put someone into a cult to get them to join. it can be done on the internet. and you don't need to force them physically to leave, you need to capture their interest, you need to establish rapport, you need to find an in, you need to show concern for them. folly: okay. shipeta, let me come to you now. so what is being done in kenya today to help these people who've fallen victim to this pastor, paul mckenzie? what's being done to to help them break out? i mean, some of them were on trial a few weeks ago, just a few days ago because they were still on hunger strike, which is illegal in kenya under the law there. what is being done to help them? >> currently, what we're doing is we're offering psychosocial

support to them, trying to love them, trying to show them that -- show them that was the wrong thing, because some of them lost five to six children, and they they really don't know what will happen if they are united with the other family members because somebody left with four children without telling their husband. so it's been hard for them to even imagine that then they don't have the children anymore, and how they will reunite to their family is becoming difficult. so we're trying to show them that it's not your fault, that something happened, and we care about you, the world, i mean, the country cares about you, so we're trying to -- the way to bring them back to the reality that this thing is not about accusing or blaming them or condemning them for what really happened, because even as

we speak, some of them are still in that position that they were in, actually brainwashed. folly: so time and patience. and also, as you've all said, very important not to blame the victims. thank you. thank you to all three of you for a very fascinating discussion. diane benscoter, shipeta mathias, and linda dubrow-marshall, thank you very much joining us on "inside story.” and thank you, too, for watching. you can always watch this program anytime by visiting our website, at aljazeera.com. for further discussion, go to our facebook page, that's facebook.com/ajinsidestory. and of course, you can join the conversation on twitter. our handle is @ajinsidestory. from me, folly bah thibault, and the whole team here in doha, thanks for watching. bye for now. ♪

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