A Conversation with Steven Hassan

Hello and welcome to Inside Out, the program in which we talk to extraordinary people with big ideas on how the Mormon Church can change and improve. I'm your co-host, Ian Wilkes, and as always, I'm here with my partner, Jim Bennett. Hello, Jim. How are you today?

I am doing very well. Very excited about this podcast. Very excited about our great guest we've got today.

Me too. I, I, I'm always excited to do these conversations with you, Jim. We've had some amazing guests and this one is gonna be, uh, quite extraordinary. So, uh, this, uh, our guest today is a licensed mental professional, uh, mental health professional. Uh, he's an internationally recognized cult expert and one of the foremost authorities on cult recovery. He's the founder of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, and with nearly 50 years experience, he brings a unique blend of personal and professional experience in the field of cult recovery, thought reform, and mind control. His goal is to reassert the precious human attribute of freedom of the mind. He is himself a former cult member who was successfully deprogrammed. He's dedicated his entire life to helping individuals and families recover from coercive control systems and organizations across a wide array of contexts. His expertise isn't just limited to religious cults. It extends beyond that to destructive one-on-one relationships, institutional abuse, corporate environments, multilevel marketing, political extremism. And even human trafficking. As a consultant, coach, and expert witness, he provides intervention and recovery services, actively working to combat the power of undue influence in all its forms, including, and most interestingly, running a Recovery After Mormonism workshop. Welcome, Dr. Stephen Hassan.

Pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Uh, may we call you Stephen?

Of course.

Okay. I, I wanna start by asking you a couple of opening questions, or a question that's in two parts, uh, which you'll have heard many times, and your response, Stephen, I think will help frame our conversation today. You've developed a unique model known as the BITE model. What is the BITE model, and to what extent does the Mormon Church meet the BITE model criteria?

So I, uh, appreciate jumping right in and I kind of wish I could give you the backstory for how I developed the BITE model, uh, if I may, and just say that indeed I was recruited into a front group of the Moonies cult in 1974 and got radicalized and dropped out of school and cut off and thought that Moon was the Messiah. Who was talking to God all the time and then, uh, got deprogrammed after I nearly died in a van crash due to sleep deprivation. And it was in a period of a few weeks of not being in the group, but being in the hospital where I reached out to my sister, which led to a deprogramming. And I was a fanatic. I didn't think I was in a cult. I didn't believe I was brainwashed. And when my family confronted me and took my crutches away and said, we want you to talk to ex-members, I was furious because I thought this was Satan trying to take away my spiritual experience. But my father cried and he said, how would you feel if it was your son who'd got recruited by a controversial group and disappeared, dropped out of college? And I wanted to prove to my family that I wasn't in a cult and I wasn't brainwashed. So I listened. And so what helped me a lot was learning about Chinese communist brainwashing and in particular the 8 criteria of Robert Jay Lifton, who had written a book in 1961 called Thought Reform: The Psychology of Totalism, a Study of Brainwashing in China. And Lipton was a number of former military intelligence that was trying to figure out what was communist brainwashing all about. We need to protect our troops from it if they get captured. And so we're, we're now talking to me in 2025. There's been this whole evolution of me learning about models of brainwashing from China initially, but then learning about psychology, becoming a mental health professional. And when I learned about cognitive dissonance theory, it was from a 1956 book called When Prophecies Fail by Leon Festinger about a UFO cult where people sold everything, went to a mountaintop expecting a UFO saucer to show up and didn't come. He was surprised that people believed more and not less. They didn't get disillusioned and leave. So he posited this theory that looked at behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. And he said, if you can, if you can get people to do an extreme behavior, they rationalize it and justify it to feel good about it. And I thought that was really very apt because in fact, the whole Moonie recruitment and the indoctrination process was really a system of changing behaviors and then inculcating the belief system into my mind and into a whole Moonie identity. So I then started thinking about, if I think about all of the stuff the Moonies were doing about behavior control, thought control, and and emotional control, I started writing a list of all the different things. And then I thought there's something missing, and I realized it was about information manipulation, deception, propaganda, having people turn each other in if they break rules, etc. So, so when I wrote my, my master's thesis back in '85 and then published my first book, Combating Cult Mind Control, I talked about the four components. But they weren't organized as BITE. That came decades later when a minister friend of mine said, you know, Steve, if you change the order, you can call it BITE and then people would remember it better. And I'm like, that's great. So what I'm trying to convey is that my work is just, I really believe in human rights and I really believe as a spiritual person that God wants us to think for ourselves and make decisions and not just be coerced or indoctrinated into a pseudo identity in the image of an institution or a cult leader and such. And so you're meeting me decades later. When my book first came out in 1988, I did not include the Mormons. I did not include the Jehovah's Witnesses. But I started getting letters from former members saying, I loved your book. How come you didn't include us? And I was like, why? Why would I include you? And they're like, are you kidding? I underlined your whole book. I still was— the Mormon Church was not on my radar for a long time. And they got on my radar through my work with the fundamentalist Latter-day Saints. Cult of Warren Jeffs, where I was asked by the attorney generals of Utah and Arizona to do trainings for going after the, you know, Warren Jeffs and the polygamy cults. So, and that was very obviously and clearly a destructive cult. And then I was actually asked on, excuse me, by Dr. Phil to please help two runaway 15-year-olds from the FLDS. Uh, and, um, would I counsel them for free? And I said, sure. So I did that. But what happened after that was I got an email from the Ex-Mormon Foundation saying, thank you for your work with FLDS. We would like to invite you to Salt Lake City to attend our conference so you can learn about the mainstream Mormon Church. And I was like, really? And they're like, yeah, really. We'd like you to present your BITE model. And it was when my second book, Releasing the Bonds, first came out. It was the year 2000. So I went and I'm teaching about behavior control and information, thought, and emotional control. And I had about 250 former Mormons bobbing heads while I'm lecturing, which was shocking, but that was interesting. And then there was a lecture right after mine by a former trainer at the, I guess, the training institute, the Missionary Training Institute. And his lecture was on deception as a, what was the exact title? Deception as a corporate technique of the Mormon Church. And he did this whole presentation about Joseph Smith lying, and it ended with him recording an interaction with his boss saying, you mean I have to lie to my students if, if I, if you, if I, to keep my job here? And his boss said, yes. And he said, well, then I quit. And so again, this was part of my education and I'm still learning and wanting to understand. So to answer your question, what, what's happened over, over decades now is people have been reading my books and contacting me. Some who have gotten disillusioned, wanted to help their wife or wanted to help their husband, didn't want. To have a divorce, et cetera. And it's been quite a journey of learning about the, this organization. So to answer your initial question, Ian, what do I think? I, I say, look at the BITE model and we have it up on my, it's now my Substack, um, uh, filled out with what fits of the BITE model, what doesn't fit. But people can have very, very different experiences within the same institution. And it can be very different for someone born and raised in a group versus recruited into a group. And depending on what country and whether they're a man or whether they're a woman, there can be vast differences. But what I'm really interested in is just human rights and just for people to have the freedom. To decide whether something is healthy or not. So that's a long-winded answer, Ian. I hope it wasn't too long.

No, that was an excellent intro into this. Jim has been in— speaking about this, he's been— his entire family legacy, Jim's been in the church since Joseph Smith, all the way through. His life is completely connected at every level, in the church. Mine, uh, is an experience of a convert at the age of 16 in England and being approached by the missionaries, but in a situation where I was incredibly vulnerable emotionally. And I wanna get into that a little bit later. So Jim Bennett and I met each other on our missions in Scotland years ago. We were missionaries. We went through the MTC, very strict regime. Very strict rules. We'd landed in Scotland. Uh, we had a mission president when I got there, Jim. We had President Joel J. Dunn, who was like a sergeant major. Everything was— you had to report on everything. What time you woke up, you study, and you literally had to go from one half an hour of whatever it is you're doing to the next one. And then you had a very strict regime throughout the day in order to find and convert people to the church. So the missionary training experience was very at a different level. If I go back before that, the temple experience. So I don't know how much about the, how much you know about Stephen, about the pre-1990 temple endowment experience.

Yeah, I heard that it changed after my name, my book came out, Combating Cult Mind Control in '88. I heard that, that it, the secret temple rituals had been altered or something. I don't, I doubt it had anything to do with my book coming out, but you never know.

You never know.

But I do, I do want to just, um, comment that the, the training program for missionary work, the 2-year thing, seems to me to be the most extreme demonstration of the BITE model where people are having to have somebody with them, and as you were saying, everything is prescriptive and controlled, etc. So again, it could be very different for different people in other parts of the church.

Go ahead, Jim.

Well, that was my reaction when I read your BITE model descriptions that you provided to John Delinn. Where the church applies. And as I read through that, I went, this, this applies almost precisely to the mission experience. Uh, you know, I just took your test with regard to, you know, I'm still an active member of the church, and I came up with a 53, uh, response because I think what happens for the rank-and-file members outside of the missionary experience is far less The BITE model, I think, is far less applicable to that experience, but I think for the mission experience, I think you're dead on.

So if I can just elucidate, Jim, what you were just describing is a research study that I'm doing with Fielding Graduate University at bitemodel.com where we're testing out a 20-question versus a 40-question survey. And we're asking people with the pyramid and the, you know, the circles at the base of the pyramid where you were in the group that you're going to categorize, etc. And it will give you a number on my influence continuum of how authoritarian. So in terms of authoritarian, we've yet to have 100%. And if we did, it would be the Moonies in my experience. Cause I wrote the original thing, but it really can vary a lot.

So, and just for the benefit of our listeners, the BITE model acronym stands for, represents behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control. I just want to go, I want to go back to the mystery training experience because I appreciate Jim Bennett's input. Again, going back to our own experience, which has been incredibly deeply entrenched and immersed in the Mormon Church. Jim Bennett's got his own experience. I've served as a bishop on a stake presidency. And so my experience, especially with the pre-1990 temple endowment, which was frightening, it terrified nightmares. It was, it was the most shocking cult experience I've ever experienced. I remember being in the endowment in this, in London, in the London Temple in England, and seeing all the people that I knew and loved and trusted who had brought me into the church and kept me in the church, all there doing the most strangest things, saying the most strangest things, wearing the most strangest things that I have never experienced. And I was absolutely terrified. It was the most frightening experience. Fast forward, um, again, before you go into the mission, you're supposed to take your endowments out. So you do the temple experience, you then go on to the missionary training center. And then fast forward, uh, to my experience, and Jim Bennett can speak about his experience. I've trained bishops and leaders in the church to be obedient, to essentially implement, I would say, almost all the programs at that level. Across different stakes, different organizations, et cetera. And a lot of those programs, uh, uh, have within them almost all your points in your BITE model. So I wanna go back to a question, uh, about why you think the missionary training experience, uh, aligns more strongly with your BITE model.

Uh, I'm a student. So I don't have your, the depth of your experience, Ian. So I want to learn from you. I am not an, I do not consider myself an expert on the Mormon Church. I'm an expert in the psychology of influence and association and all kinds of related fields. But I do want to comment that when you are a convert, And how old were you when you were recruited?

I was 16.

Right. So, um, and, and, and so you were not even, your brain wasn't fully matured yet. It's now 25, 20, age 25, 26 is what the latest neuroscience tells us. Um, you had a reference point for reality for 16 years. Therefore, when you had this exposure, it was shocking to you and upsetting to you. But when you're born into a system and you're trained to be obedient and you're in this corporal punishment, etc., my work with people born into groups is they don't, they don't know what's normal. Like for them, that was normal. Growing up in a, in a, in a very controlled religious experience. So it's a very different subjective experience. And so, but, you know, for me, I'm, I'm seeking to try to have an objective scientific framework that the law using trafficking law, which says fraud, force, or coercion. The BITE model describes all of these three in robust detail. And so my quest is to create something that's really useful for all of humanity. And in terms of the fraud piece, one of the biggest things I've heard over the last couple of decades, you know, decades, was people being very angry that they were lied to about Joseph Smith and the history of the Mormon Church. In fact, I remember a New York Times front page article with people in Europe who were now seeing things that were starting to be put online, original documents, and just, they were traumatized that they were taught these lies. And so for me, I think fully informed consent is necessary to be involved with anything that, especially a religious group, because, and this is, uh, uh, uh, something that I use regularly in my work is I explain to people in Jewish cults, Christian cults, and, and Muslim cults, however you want to understand the story of the Garden of Eden. Almighty God didn't brainwash Adam and Eve to be dependent and obedient robots. There was something in the divine plan to give his children choice and to follow out of faith. And so this is part of what I'm encouraging in my work for people to contemplate whether or not Genuine religious experience, um, uh, is, is benefited by coercion or deception or manipulation.

Yeah, that's fascinating. Um, Jim, my, our experience is in many ways is very different. You know, you grew up in the church, uh, you were part of that culture. I wasn't. What, uh, was there any time, Jim, in your experience growing up in the church where you learn or realized you were part of a very, what the church describes themselves in their words actually, as a peculiar organization, to quote the church. Was there a time you felt you were in a, a, a quite a very different, unusual organization?

Well, I don't know if there was a time where I didn't feel that. And, and I think I still feel that to some degree. Stephen, I really, really appreciate everything you've said here, and I really appreciate your work. I want to come at it from sort of a different perspective because Ian has talked about, yes, I was raised in the church, but one of the accusations that I get, I've sort of, my son calls me a D-list Mormon celebrity because I authored a piece that was a direct response to the CES letter. I don't know if you're familiar.

Yes, I've heard of the CES letter. S letter. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I wrote a response to it. Um, and, uh, and part of the thing that, that, uh, and I've, I sort of lost my train of thought here.

Uh, but while you're thinking about it, please send me your response because I'd love to hear it.

Oh, sure. Sure. Um, so, so, um, no, I just remember what it was. Jeremy Runnels, who wrote the CES Letter, and I have since met, and I consider him a friend. We had a really good experience when we met each other. But, you know, one of the things that he's done in his response to my response is say, Jim Bennett is not defending Mormonism. Jim Bennett is defending Jim Bennett Mormonism. And he puts little see copyright to that, that, that my religion, my version of Mormonism is different from what Mormonism really is. And I own that 100%. I think he's absolutely right. I would push back on him and say, everybody does that. To some—

I would agree with you, Jim Bennett. Everyone has their own version of what, what it is that their life experiences.

And so, you know, so my, you know, Ian talks about me being raised in the church, and yes, I have this sort of, uh, two of my great-grandfathers were presidents of the church, David O. McKay and Heber J. Grant. My middle name is McKay. I'm named after David O. McKay. So yes, I was absolutely steeped in all of this. At the same time, uh, I was raised in an environment where critical thinking and question were welcomed. And I recognize that that is very different from the experience of many people who are raised in the church. But I had an experience, and I've talked about it way too many times on this podcast, and we've gotten emails from people saying, please, Jim Bennett, stop talking about this. But I'm just going to give—

I want to hear.

I read a book called The Godmaker. When I was 18 years old, which was an evangelical sort of assault on the church. And it rocked my world, and I didn't know what to do. And I had the benefit of a father who was not afraid of the kinds of critical questions that it raised, and we sort of worked through this together. I also was living with my uncle, who was a leader in the church. He was a stake president, if that means anything to you, and was also very open to having these kinds of discussions. And, and one of the things that came out of that was I never really felt any kind of, oh, you know, as I took your, as I took your survey and I came up with the 53% response, a lot of the questions I went, okay, this wasn't my experience, but I think it very much was the experience of many people who are members of the church. And it was very much my experience as a missionary. I mean, I really do think your BITE model just defines the mission experience to a T. Uh, and, and I look back on that and I look at my sons who served missions and I think, you know, there's so much of that where they're there, you, you, you accept that this is the reality you're given. For instance, when I was a missionary, we weren't allowed to call home ever. Well, most missionaries in our time when he and I were serving were allowed to call home on Christmas and on Mother's Day. We were not. Uh, and my sons served missions and they called home every week.

Mm-hmm.

And, and when I was a missionary, I just kind of went, Well, there must be some, you know, important godly reason for this restriction and for this isolation that I just don't understand. And then as I get older and I have these sons that are serving missions, I went, oh no, there wasn't, there wasn't, there was absolutely no reason for this. And I think you're right on the money when you talk about the people who are so disillusioned from the church when they find out the church has been withholding information from them. Because in my response to the CES letter, I sort of addressed the doctrinal and historical problems. But what I have found in talking to people who leave is that they aren't as upset about a lot of the doctrinal problems as they are about the idea that they feel like they were lied to. For instance, the whole issue, you know, I was taught growing up that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon by looking in a pair of magical spectacles that were attached to a breastplate, and he would look at the golden plates and be able to read them and comprehend them as a result. Well, it has since been admitted by the church that that was incorrect. Joseph Smith took a brown sort of rock, tossed it into a top hat and looked into the top hat.

That's my remembrance.

Yeah. Well, yeah, that, that is now, that is now the church accepts that and realizes that. Now, from my point of view, that didn't really disturb me as much because how is that any weirder than the magic spectacle But, but what disturbs so many members of the church is not that it's weird or wrong. It's that, well, why didn't you tell us? Why, why was that information withheld? Why didn't, why didn't you let us know? And, and that seems to be the bigger issue now. So in terms of the BITE model, would that be information control?

Or, I mean, how do you It's under deception. That's the under-information. So I do want to say you, you've taught, you've given me very important feedback on my survey because it is a scientific research project. So thank you because I could see how somebody could fill it out just on their experience or fill it out as they believe the entire organization was or is. Is that what I did do? And that's what I did do.

Did I do it wrong?

No, no. You're, I'm, this is a le— this is what we do in science is we do things and we get feedback and we refine, uh, because the goal is to pursue truth and, you know, and evidence to the best of our ability. And I, my experience in the Moonies was because I was a top leader. Was far more extreme than, than a lot of members. And that said, I was in the cult for 2 years and I saw a group of full-time fundraisers, uh, people who would sell things on street corners, lying to the public about where the money was going to. But as a, as a fully brainwashed leader, and I saw these members, I said, these people are brainwashed. And yet I was fully brainwashed. So there's this subjective experience relative to your experience that really, this is part of being human that, you know, we're all trying to make sense of reality from our own, you know, orientations and such.

Well, so you're saying when you were a leader, you would look at the rank and file members and say they're brainwashed.

This was a subgroup of the rank and file members, and all they did 7 days a week was go out on the street and sell to make money. And when I went to one of their workshops and was listening and interacting with them, I thought they were brainwashed. Yes.

That's fascinating. Isn't it? Well, because One of the other things, and when, when my, when I was really excited to be able to talk to you about some of this, because my relationship with the word cult is a bit complicated.

Mm-hmm.

Because when, when I read The Godmakers and I was sort of processing this, I started listening to a radio show back when radio shows were still a thing. Uh, but, uh, it was called the Bible Answer Man. Hosted by Dr. Walter Martin.

Oh, Kingdom of the Cults.

Kingdom of the Cults. Yeah. I would listen to this and feel my faith sort of slipping through my fingers. But he was coming at it from an entirely different perspective.

Completely theological framework from his point of view of fundamentalist interpretation of scripture as he understood scripture. Scripture. But what I've come to learn, because I've been hanging out with a lot of theologians, because I'm, I'm a lifelong learner, I love to meet people with different experiences and knowledge bases, is that a lot of the New Testament, a lot of the translations are incorrect from the Hebrew and the Greek and the Aramaic. So, um, but yes, I, I have his book, uh, Martin's book, and I don't, I, my framework is Chinese communist brainwashing and modern social psychology and neuroscience. And the last, since the internet got created, I've been researching AI and, and how people's brains are getting rewired by being online and how people can be radicalized online. And, you know, reality's changing before our very eyes because I'm like you. I was, I grew up, my first memory was we had radio in my house. Then we got a black and white TV. Then we got a color TV. So I have a history to go back to where I want to meet people in real life and I want to see them. I don't want to text. Like young people only want to text. And it's like, that's bizarre to me.

Yeah. I mean, the, the whole way we communicate is, it's just very strange to watch my children grow up in a world that's so different from the one that we grew up in. Right. But, but in, in terms of, uh, in terms of cults, so the way Dr. Walter Martin would frame cults was that Mormons were just not theologically pure enough.

Correct.

And, and it had nothing to do with high demands because I think he was sort of advocating for something that I think the BITE model would very much apply to there as well.

Sure.

And so what, what came to frustrate me, basically what I'm trying to say is I don't like the word cult because it's very difficult to come up with any kind of objective definition. As to what it means.

It has many, had many meanings over the decades. I think the first use of it was in the 1600s, but this is, um, a free graphic from freedomofmind.com, my website. It's called the Influence Continuum, ethical to unethical. This is where you got your number because 100 would be very destructive. Of authoritarian, but I, my position is cults exist along the entire continuum. There are people who are like Rocky Horror Picture Show cult members, or I'm in a book called The Cult of Mac, because when I started computers, I only was using Apple products, or I'm a scuba diver, etc. So for me, I'm trying to neutralize just the pejorative use of cult, and I'm trying to use the adjective destructive or authoritarian cult for the problematic groups that undermine people's human rights. Essentially, I'm a human rights guy. That's what makes sense to me is, and, and when I think of human rights, I think women should have equal rights to men. I believe that gay people should have equal rights to heterosexuals. I believe indigenous people should have equal rights to the colonializers that took them over and indoctrinated them. But you can say, Steve, you're just a liberal. Okay, guilty. This is my belief system.

Well, th— this is where I get into trouble in the church is that You know, my— so not only do I have these church leaders in my background, my father is former senator, or he's passed away, the late Robert F. Bennett, former senator from the state of Utah for 3 terms. And my grandfather was a former senator from Utah for 4 terms. And, uh, hardcore Republicans all the way down the line. And my father Um, had a stroke in 2016. He was already suffering from pancreatic cancer and had a terminal diagnosis.

I'm sorry.

Uh, well, thank you. He passed away in 2016. He's passed away about 9 years ago. Uh, but we all gathered around his bedside at the time that he, right after he had a stroke and it was George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC. And he turned to me and he looked at me and he said, are there any Muslims in this hospital? Which I thought was a really bizarre question. I thought it was the stroke talking. And I said, I'm sure there are, Dad. And he says, I want to apologize to every one of them on behalf of the Republican Party for Donald Trump. And I ended up telling that story on MSNBC to Lawrence O'Donnell and Andrea Mitchell. That made it into the Wall Street Journal. But what it's done is made me to some degree an outcast within the church because Republican politics are so inextricably linked to so much of the rank and file experience. And so I now find myself just getting all kinds of pushback. The people who hate me the most are my fellow church members because I'm not nearly orthodox enough when it comes to politics. And so do you— you talk about, you talk about the spectrum of the BITE model. I mean, do you see organizations like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints becoming— I mean, can you see make allowances for the fact that it's moving in the right direction or is becoming less and less authoritarian and more and more healthy? Or do you see that as something that, that, uh, you know, once a cult, always a cult kind of thing?

Wow.

Or is that—

we've been talking for an hour on this, what you're, what you're unpacking here. And, um, So first of all, I believe organizations can evolve and change. My religion, Judaism, was a temple cult that did animal sacrifices, and it's evolved over the millennium to be a rabbinic interpretation. And there are many spheres within Judaism. Some are ultra-Orthodox, the of cults, in my professional opinion, and Reconstructionists, where they, they, they see, uh, Torah as metaphor and storytelling, etc. There's a very big range, but I do believe that, that religions should be honest about their history. And if their founder did things that were morally wrong or corrupt, they shouldn't own it and not try to cover it up. And that's where I hear from people who say that Joseph Smith had sex with underage girls. Now, of course, different culture, different times, lifespan was 30 years old, whatever. So there's lots of allowances for that, but I think a group should be honest. That said, I have problems, if I can be honest, with any pyramid structure group that claims to have a living prophet who's in touch with God and can tell everybody what God wants. God doesn't like black people one year and blacks are okay the next year. Or polygamy is in, but we want to be a state, polygamy is now out. Um, and, and, and for me, um, I, I don't know if you want to edit this out, but I wrote The Cult of Trump and I grew up in Flushing, Queens, 1.3 miles from Donald Trump's childhood home. And I grew up as a New Yorker knowing that he was not a good man. So when my book agents and Simon Schuster wanted me to do The Cult of Trump. All I knew was he was a malignant narcissist and a racist and a misogynist. But what I didn't understand was that there were authoritarian cults that were influencing Trump and that were bringing their millions of followers. That said, I talk about the Family, the group that Jeffrey Charlotte wrote two books about and a Netflix series, Opus Dei. I talk about New Apostolic Reformation, uh, organizations with individuals who claim to be prophets or apostles who say, God told me Trump won the 2020 election. Don't listen to Satan. And they have cult members following them. I did, I, I look back and I did not include the Mormon Church. Church, and I believe I should have because I think the base of the Mormon Church is, like you were saying, Republican. Like, don't think twice, you got to vote Republican for anything. And backing Trump and even turning on Mitt Romney when he voted for one article of impeachment in Trump's first impeachment, that shocked me. I live in Massachusetts, so Mitt Romney was the governor who was doing healthcare for us.

Sure.

And so when I saw Mitt Romney go against the Republican, uh, and vote for impeachment, I was like, wow, the guy has conscience. He has some integrity. And then when I saw how horribly he was treated by Mormons, I was like, whoa. They're eating their own. Like, this was a presidential candidate. So, but in the end, I, this is a question I have for both of you guys, because this is, this is something that's really very much on my mind is I am aware that there's an extraordinary number of people in the FBI and the CIA and Homeland Security who are Mormons, and if they are swearing an oath to follow the Constitution, but they're also committed Mormons where they're sworn to follow the prophet. Where's their allegiance? Is it really to the Constitution or is it to the Mormon Church? And how do you tell?

Yeah, that's a great question. My brain is firing on so many fronts here listening to you. Uh, I would answer that question that the— these individuals who are Mormons in these organizations, their allegiance is to the prophet and to God first. And the reason why I say that is the temple endowment experience, because in the temple, as you have researched to some extent, Stephen, you'll know that you have to make certain covenants on a very, very personal level. Romney had to make these covenants at some point, right? And so you covenant to give, all that you have to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, not God, but to the church, all your materials, your time, and everything you've got, uh, as a sacrifice on the altar of God in the temple. That's the most important, uh, priority of your life, your time, your thoughts, your feelings, your family. Your work, your tithing. People have described it when you're so immersed at that level, they described it as being church broke. As a, as a former temple officiator and temple ordinance worker and temple trainer myself, I have, uh, was so involved, so immersed that I, looking back, I can see my influence on controlling being part of this control system, being part of one of these cogs in this very controlled piece of machinery. When I was influencing people, how they think, how they feel, what they wear. In fact, I would suggest from my experience at least that your bike model describes the temple experience for me in its entirety. Jim Bennett talked about the at Mission Training Center. Just on that, and because there's something that I find the BITE model and this conversation extraordinary, but there's something that I want to kind of highlight that is not in the BITE model that you may have discussed on a podcast somewhere or another conversation. And it goes back to my experience when I was joined, when I was investigating the church, because I'm, I've resigned from the church. I now see it as a cult in almost every way, a very sophisticated cult and a cult with qualities, believe it or not. And I just want to just real briefly speak about that. So there I was at the age of 16, living in a very dysfunctional family, feeling lost. I won't go into too much detail because it's quite personal, but it was a very, very difficult time in my life. I was not safe at home. I was at risk in many ways, and the missionaries came into that area and they started attracting, and I came in contact with the missionaries. Somehow I, well, I started the first discussion. They invited a group of us that were playing football, soccer, in the street. We started to become friends. Uh, one was British, one was American. We played, um, American baseball, Jim Bennett. Uh, so we, we learned about that. And so we got, we developed a friendship with the missionaries. They invited a group of us, including myself, to, to these discussions. I, um, was taught the discussions, went back to my family, my mother, who were Church of England, and they reacted very negatively, very strongly. They described the church as a cult. Had nothing to do with it. In fact, they threatened the missionaries that they would call the police if they had anything to do with me.

And you were underage, so they had rights to do that.

I absolutely had rights to do that. But anyway, the missionaries still approached me and said, would I like to continue with the discussions? I said, well, yeah, but we'll have to do it in secret. So they taught me in secret. I had the Sikh discussions. They had me on my knees praying. I had these profound spiritual experiences. I went to the youth programs and I did this all without the knowledge of my family. But what happened, I, here's the thing I want to highlight here. I went from a very vulnerable emotional state and environment into an organization that everybody told me was a cult, but at the time I didn't see it. When I went to the meetings and the events and the youth activities, I was befriended. I was accepted. People were interested in me that they were not interested in my home. And they taught me that I could be this amazing, have this amazing life and be this amazing individual and achieve so much if I became a member and if I committed myself to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

And they didn't smoke, they didn't drink, they didn't gamble.

They were, you know, and interestingly, I didn't want to do any of those things at all. I wasn't drinking, I wasn't smoking. For me it was, and they told me God had sent the missionaries to save me. And I saw the church and the missionaries, and I've talked about this in other podcasts, as a savior. And here's the thing I'm trying to get at. The reality at that time, Steve, for me, that was true. I was in a very unsafe environment and I went into what I believed was a very safe environment. And even now I've resigned and had just an extraordinary journey through the church and see it now. Very much, not entirely, but mostly a cult under the definitions of the, you know, the Mormon Church, I think meets almost all of the criteria in the Bible. Jim Bennett's got 53%. I'll take the test. I think it's easily in the 90s based on my experience, but we'll see. What I'm saying is that the church saved me, Stephen, and it did save me. They took me in. I was in the youth program. I served a mission. The mission was a great experience. Fast forward, became a bishop, uh, senior leader in the church, taught the same things, and then, and then, uh, discovered some very serious issues, very disturbing issues. And then in 2017, I resigned. And, uh, the reaction from family and church members was to shun me, to cut me off, and to describe me as a fallen angel, somebody who had been privileged, and somebody who had betrayed the church. And I would say almost all the members now, many of them, almost all of them have cut me off. They want nothing to do with me. So I've gone through this experience of, of, uh, joining and having a almost all entirely a wonderful experience. Came across these issues, very disturbing, left under my own accord, resigned. The church was very, uh, well, members were quite upset with that., and now I see it in a very different light. But I think the, what I'm trying to say is that the church saved me. And the last thing I want to say, and I'll hand the time over to you, is that I, having reached out to friends who were still in the church, I've asked them, are you aware of these issues with the church, the history, doctrine, Joseph Smith, just seemingly endless problems, frankly, with the church. And I said, and they said yes. And I said, why do you stay? And here's their response. They say to me, unlike you, Ian, we stay even though we know the issues because it's safe, because it's better than the real world. The real world, the real world sucks. Reality sucks. Reality is awful. And yes, we know there's problems. Serious problems, but they'd rather have that life in that bubble. And I get that, Stephen, even though I've resigned and I'm free of it and I've escaped a konya bike model, a cult. I miss that community, that safety, even now.

Sure. So I, I want to thank you for your honesty and your candor, and I, I I, I'm 71. I view at this point in my life, I want to train young clinicians on how to do therapy with people. And what you're sharing, both of you gentlemen, um, is what I'm trying to convey to the people that I'm training is that everyone is an N of one. You can have generalizations, you can have models, but in the end, everyone's experience needs to be viewed holistically within itself. And it is not the first time I've heard people say, my life was dangerous and I was being beaten and tortured and sexually abused. And I got into the Moonies and it was safe and it was structured and I had food and I had a warm bed and, and people were my brother and sister. As long as I, you know, followed all the rules.

Exactly.

And I, and I say, I understand.

Sure.

I understand. And, but I'll just add, Ian, most people that I've talked to who've left Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons, uh, they all say they stay because their family's still in and they don't want to be cut off. They want to have relationship with their children, with their extended relatives. And so, um, um, we call it PMO, physically in, mentally out. So they're, they're living in dissonance, but here's the thing. The outside world is scary. It just is. And if you think about You know, in my, with my religious background, it's like it was very regimented and ritualized. But if you think about the scariness of chaos, to be able to say, we're gonna, we're gonna take Shabbat off. We're gonna have it a day where we're gonna be with family and we're gonna worship God and we're gonna eat good food and we're gonna sleep and we're not gonna work. You know, and just like structuring reality that has real benefits, real pluses and such. And so, um, all I can say is, as a therapist, people come to me because they're not functioning. They're, they're not sleeping. They're having panic attacks. They don't know how to have an intimate relationship They have trouble trusting. That's the universal problem with ex-members is I don't know who to trust. I trusted my bishop. I trusted God. I trusted my prophet. Now I don't trust anybody. We need to learn how to trust ourselves. And that's where my whole orientation is. I say it's your mind and only you should control it. And let's model what is healthy development. If you had a healthy family, what would you have felt? You would have felt safe, secure, loved. You would have been fed, you would have been clothed, and your parents would have done developmentally appropriate parenting aimed at helping you become an independent adult, not being a clone of your parents and doing what they believe. And following the religion they believed in, but you finding your own path. For me, that's healthy parental, uh, parenting, I should say. Yeah. And when it, when you say, you know, I, I miss it, I miss the structure, I miss feeling special, I, I miss the titles. I mean, I was 19 when I was recruited. My vulnerability was my girlfriend dumped me. And I was at Queens College and 3 women flirted with me and lied and said they were students and they weren't. And they said they weren't in a religious group and they were. On and on and on. But, um, at the point that I understood that the Moonies were doing a version of Chinese communist brainwashing, for me, the bubble burst where I was a true believer and a fanatic and I would have died on command and killed on command and I truly believed Moon was the greatest man in human history. Once the bubble burst, I couldn't pretend anymore. And so in the end, we have to trust in the divinity that I believe that we have within ourselves and seek out real friends who don't want to be friends just because we believe what they believe and practice what they practice, but real friends who are very diverse. And who accept us wholly for who we are. Yeah.

Yeah. When I learned factually, independently, that the church had lied, at least on some things that I knew, you know, then I was absolutely devastated. What counsel or advice do you give to somebody who knows, who's in the church, knows that there are serious issues, knows that there's at least part of it that is built on lies, maybe not all of it. I think the Universal principles in the church are very, uh, good, like love, service, forgiveness, kindness. There's some universal principles and practices which are not unique to the Mormon church, that they cover all types of religions and faith organizations. But what advice or counsel to give somebody who's in the church, wants to stay in it for the reason that he talked about, because they've got the family and the kids and they're on missions and there's no way they can, uh, tear that away and rip that up, but they know there's issues. Do you counsel them to stay, or do you say, you know, be true to yourself? And they say, well, I feel safe and it's my tribe, it's my community, and the world sucks. And this, albeit it's not real, but it's better than what's out there. What thoughts or advice or comments would you have?

I'm really appreciating meeting you guys. I hope we can meet in person at some point. I think it would be really fun and Thank you. So a lot of people think, and I was deprogrammed, it was 1976. So the field has evolved over the decades to what I call strategic interactive approach to empowering people to think for themselves. And so my approach isn't to be content driven to convince people to leave. Anything. It's really to empower people to think for themselves. And so I see a large part of my work is psychoeducational, explaining social psychology. I teach the Asch conformity study, the Milgram obedience study, the Zimbardo prison study. I, in my doctoral dissertation, which is on my website, Freedom of Mind, You can read Lifton's criteria of brainwashing, Singer's criteria of brainwashing, Schein's criteria of brainwashing. And, and, and what I want is for people to parse for themselves what they do with, with what they've learned. And if they want to stay in, do it with your eyes open, out of choice, and not be out of phobia, a phobia that if you leave, you're going to kill yourself or you're going to become an alcoholic. And that's the universal mind control technique of all of these groups. And I'll make a distinction between a phobia and a real fear, because terrorist groups, if you leave, they will kill you. You know, if they know where you are and you haven't joined the Witness Protection Program, they will hunt you down and kill you. That's not a phobia. For me, I was taken to see The Exorcist movie in 1974 as a Moonie, brought up to Tarrytown to hear the Messiah give a lecture how God made this movie, and this movie is a prophecy of what would happen to us if we left the Unification Church. Oh my goodness. So for me, that was the moment where I could say I stopped thinking because I was so afraid. Any doubt wasn't me, it was a demon. And I didn't believe in demons before The Moonies, but that movie and that whole sleep deprivation and that whole indoctrination, I was afraid of demons. So I was taught thought stopping. I was sleeping 3 to 4 hours a night, and I was considered the model Mooney by Moon. I was held up as the person everyone should follow because whatever he told me to do, I would do it blindly.

That's extraordinary. I, I have a, a specific question. We're coming up to the end of a podcast and I wanna give Jim Bennett some time and then give you for your closing remarks. I could listen to you all day, Stephen. I think you were the most remarkable individuals I've ever had the opportunity to meet. Um, well, thank you. So grateful. I, I really could listen to you all day. Uh, it's connecting with me on so many levels. This is quite specific, and I've got so many of these types of questions. In our church, there's a— and we don't talk about it, but there's a big emphasis on repetition. Okay. And in the temple, in the Mormon temple, there's a lot of repetition. You have to repeat things 3 times. You're told what to do, where to sit, what to say, the specific words, very carefully choreographed words, right? Even outside the temple, there's a lot of repetition. When I listen to Trump, and I don't want to get too political here, I hear him literally repeating himself within the space of a minute. I've observed it, and I see that with certain people in politics. What's the relationship between repetition and mind control? Because I felt that it's had a big impact on me personally. Jim Bennett and I haven't talked about this, I don't think, but I think this has had a huge, uh, this is what kept me in, is just repeating over and over and over again until, um, and even the leaders say repeat your testimony in your own mind over and over until you get a testimony. That this is the only true church upon the face of the earth, that the gaining of a testimony is in repeating it over and over. Could you comment on that from your—

Absolutely. So we're learning organisms, you know, we learn through association, through experience. And so when something's repeated over and over again, it's programming. And if you can get a person to do it to themselves, it's even more powerful than doing it to someone. And if you can do it to a third party, which is what the missionary program is all about, and you can recruit and indoctrinate new people, it's even more convincing to you that it's really true. And, and what we now know through neuroscience is fascinating. I just finished a book by Emily Falk, F-A-L-K, called What We Value. And she's doing fMRI research on what parts of the brain are lighting up as we're making decisions and, and, and we're making evaluations. And, and part of the research says that if you are given a, a lie over and over and over and over, the brain's acts as if it's true. Strongly. Because evolutionarily, you don't hear the same thing over and over unless it is. But it's very interesting. We have a part of the brain that seeks to, um, adapt to, uh, approval to our social group. And that's where we see people online on cell phones. In these information silos where they're getting reinforced into one worldview, which is why I say always, like, look at Ground News. It tells you a news story from many perspectives. Read them and understand it's a story. Information can be tweaked. And you don't— and I haven't— I tell people this is part of the T of the BITE model, Beware any ideology that's black and white, us versus them, good versus evil, simple, because reality's complex. Reality is robust in color. When somebody's telling you it's black and white and it's all or nothing, you're either this or you're that, I have an allergy. I just like, no, no.

Thank you for answering that. Jim Bennett, any, uh, final thoughts, comments from your perspective?

Well, uh, two, two, two quick comments. Um, one, you, you asked earlier about the idea of the oaths of the FBI and CIA agents that, uh, are members of the church, as, and do they conflict with the temple oaths. Uh, I remember I ran my father's final campaign. He, he lost that campaign to Mike Lee of all people, which is just the biggest downgrade in Utah history as far as I'm concerned. But yes, I agree. But, um, we were filming a number of different, uh, ads. Uh, I think they were for just online ads. And one of them, he started talking about the oath that he takes when he— his oath of office to sustain the Constitution. I don't even remember what the language is. I think it's similar to the presidential oath, but I don't know if it's identical. But he says, I consider that to be, uh, uh, what? What was the language he used? I think he said, I consider that to be the most important oath that I will ever take. And when the camera was off, I said, Dad, you mean even more important than the temple oaths? And he says, I see absolutely no conflict between the two.

Whoa.

He says, I can, I can, I can take both oaths. And they are both equally important. He says, I just want to make it clear to anybody who thinks that somehow I'm going to be more loyal to the church than I will be to my oath of office, that I don't see it that way. So I don't know if that's the right answer, but I think most of the people who do that do not see competition between those kinds of oaths.

I hear you, and I And I trust your father really believed what he said to his son. But I want to tell you a brief story. I know we're running out of time, but I, I, during the Waco standoff, I was trying to get to the FBI to say, you're doing it all wrong. You don't understand. The guy thinks he's Christ. He's, he's been prophesying Armageddon with fire. Let me help you. They're like, we got this. No problem. My congressman went to them. We contacted Reno. I eventually went on TV saying, you don't take mind control cultists and keep them up all night with loud radio music of Nancy Sinatra, These Boots Are Made for Walking. Like, this is not going to help cult members who think they're following Jesus. Long story short, It went up in flames. And I'm being interviewed for a documentary, and I'm being interviewed after Byron Sage, who was one of the FBI's top negotiators. And so we got to talking. I gave him my books to read afterward. He said, man, oh man. Later I interviewed Gary Nesner, his boss. Oh, his FBI negotiator. Man, we should have listened to you, not those religious scholars from, uh, from Baylor who kept trying to, uh, tell us that he would come out because he said he would. Anyway, um, so Byron said, you gotta come to Quantico and you gotta teach us about cults and mind control so we never have a problem like that again. And, and, and I should tell you, intelligence people have been using my stuff for years. Countering ISIS and other things. So I said, sure, I'll come to Quantico. And then he, 3 months later, he said, they're not interested in outsiders, Steve. And I said, huh? And he said, yeah, uh, I talked with my buddy. I said, tell me about your buddy. Oh, he's a Mormon. And it, and it, and it opened the door to the FBI doesn't want to learn about cult mind control because they're Mormons. How interesting. Isn't that a little bit of a contradiction if they're trying to fight terrorism and these are terrorist cults that are brainwashing people to be violent and to, and to be suicide bombers? And the government to this day just doesn't want to talk about cults and brainwashing and mind control. It's, it's really upsetting because this is what's happening from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea. You know, after, after Charlie, um, Kirk was unfortunately assassinated, there was overwhelming disinformation from Russia, China, and Iran. To the left and the right in America saying it's time for civil war. It's time to take the guns to reclaim your country, both sides. And it's like, these are foreign actors. They don't care. They want us to kill each other. They don't want peace. They don't want America to be, uh, you know, a world leader anymore. So people need to realize we're in psychological warfare land here. And the, the only solution is teaching people how to protect your mind, how to reality test, and how to look to trustworthy sources of information to, before you're making big decisions. So thank you for letting me add that story.

No, I think that's very helpful. And again, I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier in that I don't think my experience. Is representative of a lot of experiences of people within the church. And, uh, it may be that my experience with my father on this point is not representative of— I don't know any FBI agents, at least not as far as I know. Maybe they're all undercover. The, the only other comment I wanted to make is, uh, just how much I appreciate your point of view. And I, I grew up in Calabasas, California, which may not mean anything to anybody except That's where the Kardashians are now. I got out before they got—

it's not Utah.

It's not Utah, but it, and it's predominantly Jewish. Most of my childhood friends were Jewish. I went to a whole bunch of bar mitzvahs and, uh, I, um, I, we used to get Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur off for school.

We're in that period of time.

You're in that. That period of time. The rapture was supposed to happen on the first day of Rosh Hashanah and it didn't happen.

Yeah, there's only been 2,000 predictions of the rapture so far.

That's right. So the 2,001st will be the one. But, you know, we used to go to Disneyland every Yom Kippur because it was empty. It was a great, great—

You weren't fasting all day?

No, we weren't. But, uh, I, so again, I think that highlights in maybe how different my experience was because it is, it sounds very different.

And, and I just want to say again, especially for people who are clinicians, this is, this conversation is a, is, is really a masterclass in understanding two leaders from the same group describing describing different experiences and, and, um, but you're friends and you're wanting to talk with each other and try to understand and figure things out and help people. So thank you.

Well, thank you because it's very clear that that's what you're trying to do and that's what you've very successfully been doing for a very long time. And I just can't, I, words can't express how honored and grateful we are for you to share this time with us and to be able to share your wisdom and insight on this.

And thank you.

It will help people because, and I think it's, it's already helped me. So I've heard.

Thank you. And I invite you to read The Cult of Trump and tell me what you think. I think that I nailed it. I think I nailed it, except I left out groups that should be in there, like Falun Gong. Their Epoch Times should have been in there, and Council for National Policy was another major group that I was unaware of until after the book came out. But, um, we, we want to be free. People, people don't want to be enslaved and they don't want a dictator. And, uh, and, and we value free speech and we should encourage different perspectives. Because it'll help us learn and grow.

Stephen, I can't thank you enough for taking time out of your schedule to be with us today. You're an extraordinary individual. I could listen to you all day. It's been very personally, on a personal level, it's been quite extraordinary for me as I related to almost, well, everything you said is just so relatable to me. Our listeners will find this incredibly valuable. And I, I, this just still has so many questions. I'd love to have another conversation with you.

I'm sure. Well, let's do it again and come to my Substack and I do a weekly interview. I actually have a woman who was raised Mormon in my next interview next week. It was just coincidental that we're recording it now, but I try to cover a lot of topics and we've rebranded the podcast Cults. Culture and Coercion. So we got the culture there in the middle, which I think opens it up to lots of different, uh, important views.

And we would love to be part of those conversations and have another conversation. In fact, there's some stuff that I'm thinking of, made notes on that we didn't cover, which may or may not be in some of your material, which I think you'll find absolutely—

Yeah, let's do it again. We'll have another part 2.

Wonderful.

You wanna, do you have any final thoughts, comments, uh, anything you want to reference, uh, before, as we close here, Stephen?

I think people are fundamentally good. There are a small percentage of malignant narcissists who are wreaking havoc for the rest of us. I think we need experts. I think we need science, and I think we need rule of law and separation of church and state. I think all of those things are very important to uplift humanity. And I am someone who does believe I am my brother's keeper and that if people are suffering, I should do what I can to ease their suffering and to lift people up. And lastly, it feels good to help people. It just, it's, it's, it also makes you feel purposeful and fulfilled to help people. So that's part of what keeps— people say, how could you do this for 49 years? And it's like, because it, it's a journey, but I, yes, it's traumatic and it's stressful. And I hear a lot of horrible stories, but it's so fulfilling.

Yeah, this will help so many of our listeners, and I want to thank our listeners for being with us. We're grateful for our listeners. I want to thank you, Jim Bennett, for your always incredible value contribution from your insights. And again, another very special thank you, Stephen Wolfe, for joining us and being part of this very important conversation. Jim Bennett, thank you. Stephen Wolfe, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.