Over the Thanksgiving holiday, my cable company offered some free premium TV. How could I not binge a few programs. I got rather obsessed with Helter Skelter: An American Myth about Charles Manson and how he manipulated some very bright people into murdering for him. Manson holds my interest because he grew up in eastern Kentucky where I was also raised. Two other shows, The Vow and Seduced, tell the story of how some really smart and accomplished people were taken in by a man named Keith Raniere and his NXIVM cult. While Charlie and Keith are two different kinds of sociopaths, maybe even psychopaths, with different agendas, they do have a number of manipulative skills in common.

None of us are strangers to the dangers of cults. We’ve watched in horror at the tragedies of Jonestown, Waco, and Heaven’s Gate. These weren’t the first or only cults to end in tragedy but they were the first to be mass marketed over our TV sets. I bet that most of us thought, that would never happen to me, or how could those people be so stupid, and yet the victims of these cult leaders would be the first to tell you that they never intended to join a cult. The common trait I saw in the interviewees was that they all were trying to better themselves and most had an abiding passion for trying to do good in the world. Self-help and altruism are noble goals too often taken advantage of by cults.

The first time I was approached by a cult was in late ’70s. I’d moved to San Francisco the year before and was getting on my feet in terms of a career and a new city. Two friendly-looking guys stopped me on the street and asked if I knew where there might be a nice café where they could get coffee. I pointed in the direction of Polk Street and without realizing it, was led into a non-threatening conversation that I continued for several minutes—being new to the city, I was happy to pass on my limited knowledge to other newcomers.

I learned that they were at an apartment a few blocks away with a bunch of kids like themselves and that they also had a farm house up north that they visited where they mostly made music and had fun. They invited me to join them sometime. I didn’t give it a lot of thought, but thanked them, said my goodbyes and continued into my apartment building.

I must have mentioned my name in that conversation, because the next day there was a knock on my door and one the boys (I couldn’t rightly call them men as they were so young) stood there, smiling like I was his new best friend and again invited me to his building for music night. I made some excuse, wished him well, shut the door and thought, that was weird.

The following Friday, I was in the tub (no shower in that early SF apartment) getting ready for a date when another knock sounded at the door. I cursed under my breath, thinking my date had arrived an hour early. Hair wet, dripping water, I wrapped a towel around me and swung open the door only to meet the other guy. He stood there shocked at the near naked female in front of him. He mumbled something about getting together with his friends, and I let loose on him, telling him if I was interested in his group I’d let him know and to please never darken my doorway again. He didn’t, but I suspect it was my nakedness that scared him off.

Many years later at a writing conference, I had a conversation with a writer who spoke of a similar experience, but she had taken them up on that visit to the farm up north. She ended up having to dig her way under a fence to escape. I’d never considered going with the music boys, as what they offered didn’t interest me. Having arriving in San Francisco with $200 bucks in my pocket, my life was more about surviving than making music. But, had they offered a poetry reading with the chance to read my poetry, well, who knows?

In “Episode 106” of Helter Skelter: An American Myth, clinical psychologist and author, Gary Brucato, Ph.D. outlines five methods cults use to indoctrinate their victims:

1. Usually a cult leader who possesses a certain personality structure seeks out and softly recruits people who are vulnerable.
2. In the initial stages, the vulnerable person is bombarded with love and acceptance so that they feel that everything and everyone in life who has hurt them or made them feel as if they were not good enough is now unimportant. The group will help them achieve their goals, and they have found a place where they matter and outside influences are suppressive to their evolution and success.
3. The recruit is isolated and efforts made to keep the family, friends, and media away from them. If one of them gets through, then the message is that they are lying, and the cult leader should be believed.
4. Then, begins a period of treating the person badly through either forced sexual activity, beating or belittling them, or undermining their previous success. This psychologically causes the vulnerable person to think: “I want to get back to a place to get the perfect acceptance I was getting before.” The recruit will do absolutely anything to get there.
5. All the strengths that create boundaries between recruits and the leaders are disintegrated gradually and what the cult leader does is make people believe that the disintegration of their ego is philosophically driven for their own good when in reality it was only in the interest of the cult leader.

I don’t know that I have any solid advice to keep anyone from being taken advantage of by a cult. Any of us could miss the red flags. The two gents who approached me certainly pegged me as someone new in town who might be vulnerable. But here’s the thing about me. I’m not a joiner. At some point in my life, I realized that at the eighteenth month of involvement, groups encourage you to take more responsibility for that community, often at the expense of your own learning. I’ve observed this to be true of some classes, sports, church, even employment. Now, not all of these are cults, but they can demonstrate cult-like behavior. So if I have any advice, it would be to pick your loyalties carefully, assess the situation at eighteen months, and decide whether this association benefits you or only the leader/organization.

Before I left eastern Kentucky my Aunt Dorothy stood on my grandmother’s porch as I was getting ready to head to college and called after me. “Remember, it’s you. Think of yourself. Take care of yourself. You.” Maybe that’s the advice.