Original subtitles

WILLIAM SHATNER: Masters of manipulation,

mind control...

and deadly practices committed by...

...ordinary people.

The Manson Family, Heaven's Gate,

Jonestown.

All are examples of deadly cults.

But what makes a gathering of people a cult?

And why do many cult leaders

possess the power to control minds

and make people do unspeakable acts?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

♪

Former United States Marine Omar Rosales is at a crossroads.

Three years after graduating from law school,

he is struggling to get his career off the ground.

After a series of dead ends,

Omar decides to enroll in a professional development course

run by a company known as NXIVM,

in the hope that it will help bring him greater success.

I think at the time, I was a little bit lost.

I was looking for guidance.

I had been out of the Marine Corps for six years,

finished law school and I still felt a bit empty.

I was told about NXIVM and I was recruited by a friend

who told me that these were good courses

to become more successful.

And the group had a lot of accomplished members.

So I thought it was a-a good way to improve myself

and get to know more people.

SHATNER: NXIVM claimed that its Executive Success Programs were designed

to put members on a path toward experiencing more fulfillment

in their lives and achieving self-actualization.

But Omar soon found that the company's training methods

were a bit unusual.

ROSALES: It was decided that Keith Raniere

would be called Vanguard.

He was the leader of this new movement,

and so you were not supposed to say "Keith,"

you're supposed to talk to him as Vanguard.

That's how you would address him.

"Yes, Vanguard. No, Vanguard."

The lessons were very long during the courses.

We would sometimes go 12 or 14 hours straight.

It was almost hypnotic.

What I also noticed was, playing volleyball with Keith,

when women would enter or leave the room,

they had to kiss Keith on the mouth.

Every single woman had to do this.

And I just thought, "That's kind of unusual."

That's not a normal social custom,

to make a woman kiss you on the mouth before they left.

It's almost like the women were subservient to Keith

or servants controlled, and it was done without thinking.

And that kind of struck me as-as off.

As something that's going wrong.

SHATNER: Fortunately, Omar was able to get out of NXIVM

before it brought him any more harm.

But sadly, many others, especially women,

were unable to break free.

The suspected head of an alleged cult that reportedly

branded female members now faces charges in the United States

after he was arrested and extradited from Mexico.

JIM MORET: It became a cult primarily for him,

of women who were his sex slaves.

And it's fascinating, because you're talking about

young, attractive, smart, successful women

often coming from money, and you think, "How is it possible?"

How could you lure these people who are intelligent and educated

and have them become sex slaves?

The women would be brought into a room

and they would be told, "Disrobe."

They would be told to be blindfolded.

They would lie down on a table,

and then, for ten, 20, 30 minutes,

another member of that cult would literally brand them

just above the pelvic area with Keith Raniere's initials.

I think my reaction to NXIVM was what most people's reaction was:

"Uh, how is this possible? That can't possibly happen."

But it didn't start like that. It developed very slowly.

Keith Raniere, like many cult leaders, had allure,

had an attraction, had a charisma.

And that charisma was intoxicating.

And you think to yourself, "This is impossible."

But imagine now that you've gone through with this.

The only way to rationalize this

is you must tell yourself this is okay, this is important,

because otherwise you'd say that's crazy.

Actors are the perfect advert

to attract cult members.

Society values actors and their opinions.

Catherine Oxenberg, the actress who was initially part

of this group, her daughter became involved,

and she came to us at Inside Editionand began pleading.

"Please, help me. Please, get the word out.

"I haven't seen my daughter. She won't talk to me.

I don't know where she is. I'm worried for her safety."

She admitted to me that she had been branded,

and she didn't think that it was problematic.

When you heard that she had been branded

and she was okay with it, what was your reaction?

Really sad.

Really, it's like, "What have they done?

"What have they, um, how have they spun this to make it

a good thing for woman to be doing to themselves and others?"

So that's, that was really, really hard to figure out.

How do you make sense of that?

MORET: When the alarm bells start to ring,

and then investigative journalists get involved

and you think to yourself, "This can't get any stranger,"

and then it does.

And then, fortunately, in this case,

you find people are eventually brought to justice.

Keith Raniere was convicted of racketeering

and sex trafficking.

He'll be sentenced in January,

and faces a possible sentence of life in prison.

Keith wanted to get as many people as possible,

so his message was always a message of love.

It says, "I love you just the way you are."

There was no overt agenda. It was just an acceptance.

MORET: It's all designed to lure people in.

A kind of a multilevel pyramid scheme.

But the, at the pyramid, there's only one person on the top,

and that person is the guy who gets all of the money.

And in NXIVM, got all of the women to be subservient to him.

It's just fascinating to see how people are so willing

to put themselves beneath somebody else

who's going to tell them all the answers.

SHATNER: While the power of cults to draw in the unwitting

and convert them into true believers

has long been a subject of intense

and terrifying fascination, one has to wonder,

what makes cults so powerful?

And how does a person keep themselves

from falling into their deceptive clutches?

JANJA LALICH: People generally are looking for something

to belong to, to be a part of,

to find purpose in their life, or meaning.

And today, that's a very common phenomena.

In ancient belief systems, "cult" was not a negative.

Uh, cult is related to cultivate,

to tend or, uh, take care of.

You had the Mithraic cult in ancient Rome

or the Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece

or the Cult of Dionysus that bridged both of them.

There were cults in India, the Thuggee.

These were religious bodies with practices that promise

various possibilities of enlightenment,

and all seen as a constructive part of the community.

DAVID WHITEHEAD: There's a virtue to seeking out

a spiritual expression

or a religious expression towards orientating yourself

to the truth, to answering the big questions of life,

which are, "Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?"

That's a natural human endeavor.

LALICH: Cults are led by and founded by

a charismatic or someone who's considered

to be a charismatic leader.

Often narcissistic and authoritarian,

and they always demand total devotion from their followers.

There also needs to be some type of indoctrination program

that is meant to change or transform the person

into who the cult leader wants you to be as a cult member.

WHITEHEAD: If we look back at figures such as Charles Manson,

he ended up indoctrinating his followers to the point

where they were willing to do things that they otherwise

would never have been capable of doing.

SHATNER: Humans are hardwired to form social relationships.

Bonds that identify our tribe and keep us together.

Friend groups, sports teams, community organizations.

[cheering, applause]

All of them speak to our instinctual urge

to be part of the group.

Could the basic human need to belong

explain how a cult could make an otherwise normal person

lie, enslave or even kill?

LALICH: We always say, "In Rome, do as the Romans do."

So that kind of peer pressure, that's why cults are groups.

ROSALES: There's something in our psyche

that draws us to the dark, the other.

We're intrigued by it, because we want

to maybe experience it vicariously.

But there are people that will take advantage of that

and manipulate you because they want your money, your life

and your soul.

SHATNER: Is it possible that cult leaders

are drawing on powers that are even stranger and stronger

than we think?

Perhaps the answer can be found by taking a closer look

at what many believe to be the cult leader's

most powerful weapon: charisma.

SHATNER: Port Kaituma, Guyana.

November 18, 1978.

News cameras broadcast shocking images from a commune

that lies deep within the Guyanese jungle.

Hundreds of men, women and children,

most of them families, lie dead,

victims of a mass cult suicide.

It was an event so horrific

that it would eventually come to be known around the world

as the Jonestown Massacre.

Jonestown is the quintessential example after World War II

of what a cult is.

It started off as an idealized church vision,

based in Christianity,

advocating racial integration and harmony.

It gradually devolved, however, into a commune in Guyana,

based around the pathologies of Jim Jones.

LALICH: He took his followers to Guyana

because there was going to be an exposé

in one of the San Francisco magazines

about his phony faith healing.

They were really in a bounded reality.

And Jones' voice was on loudspeakers all the time.

He was in total control.

And he also got more

and more demented and more and more drug-addled.

SHATNER: When reports of abuse surfaced,

Congressman Leo Ryan of California flew to Jonestown

with a delegation to investigate.

Fearing that the congressman would blow the whistle

on the strange and abusive behavior

happening at the compound, Jones ordered

his armed guards to attack Ryan and his companions

before they could leave the country.

Congressman Ryan and four others were killed.

Jones then summoned his followers, one by one,

to swallow a cup of powdered fruit drink

mixed with cyanide,

before taking his own life.

All told,

909 people died

in what Jones called "a revolutionary suicide."

Jim Jones wielded a level of control over his followers

that to this day, remains hard to comprehend.

But what makes these leaders so different from the rest of us

that they are capable of making people do

almost anything?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining one such person

whose influence extended, not just within a community...

but across the entire United States.

Self-help guru and author, James Arthur Ray,

takes the stage to speak to a packed audience

at his "Harmonic Wealth Weekend" seminar.

It isn't long before he has the crowd

hanging on his every word.

He was very compelling,

very, um, masterful

from the stage.

And knew how to move an audience.

GINNY BROWN: James Ray was famous from The Secret

and from being on Oprah and all the morning TV shows.

He was a very charismatic, powerful speaker.

He had an amazing ability to rally the audience

and to synthesize Eastern and Western

religious concepts and modern science.

We all have a special purpose and a,

and a mission to fulfill in this lifetime...

SHATNER: On the strength of his seminars,

media appearances,

and best-selling book,

James Arthur Ray became a household name

in the field of personal development.

In October of 2009,

he held an event at the Angel Valley Retreat Center

near Sedona, Arizona,

that was designed to be the apex

of his personal development curriculum.

The Spiritual Warrior Retreat.

TUCKER: Spiritual Warrior was

described as the highest pinnacle.

It was appealing to me because it was a smaller group.

I had done all of the successive workshops.

It was an 18-month journey for me.

And so, I saw it as a bit of a finish line.

BROWN: My daughter Kirby was a very physical person.

She loved adventure--

she mountain biked, she hiked.

And she went there to grow and expand her life.

SHATNER: After four days

spent meditating in the desert heat,

and having already undergone 36 hours of fasting,

the retreat members took part in the culmination of the program:

a vision quest inside a sweat lodge.

TUCKER: The sweat lodge

was explained as a ceremony with the intent

to celebrate transformation and rebirth.

They pulled out razors with the expectation that

if someone was serious, you would shave your head.

And I did.

I remember that we went in in a line,

and circled around on the inside.

When the sweat lodge began,

one thing that surprised me was when the flap

was closed, how dark it was.

SHATNER: With the only source of light

and oxygen cut off,

and hot rocks brought in to raise the temperature even more,

Ray asked the participants to push themselves

past their discomfort,

in hopes of being spiritually transformed.

But as they spent many hours

baking in the temperatures of the sweat lodge,

many people began slipping in and out of consciousness.

By this point, the heat's radiating from our bodies.

It was very chaotic.

It was discombobulating.

The sweat lodge was extremely hot,

possibly up to, uh, 200 degrees.

He pushed people beyond physical limits.

He told people,

"You may think you are going to die in this, but you won't."

SHATNER: Despite what Ray believed,

several people were, in fact, teetering on the edge

of losing their lives in the suffocating, oppressive heat.

Until the inevitable finally, and tragically, happened.

SHATNER: As officers flooded the compound in response to a 911 call,

it became apparent that the Spiritual Warrior Retreat

had gone wrong.

Very wrong.

Two people were dead,

including 38-year-old Kirby Brown.

And a third would die a week later.

All killed by the excruciating heat in the sweat lodge.

When the police arrived on the scene,

they couldn't find James Ray,

because in the midst of all of this chaos,

in the midst of people standing over my daughter's body,

trying to revive her,

he was up in his... room

having dinner and taking a shower.

SHATNER: For people like James Arthur Ray,

the ability to exert absolute power over others

was as natural as breathing.

But why do so many who have this power

use it for harm?

KENT: Ray had been a bodybuilder.

He was very concerned about his hair, his clothes,

his presentation, and so some people think

Ray as an adult was reacting against, uh, his childhood.

He, in fact, talked about himself being a geek.

He made comments about the size of his glasses,

his teeth and so on, and so, later on in life,

Ray became very concerned about his appearance.

Cult leaders are often sick, troubled individuals.

So, in the case of James Arthur Ray,

it's exactly what we see with so many of these leaders.

It's like they can't deal with who they really are,

so they're living their fantasy.

They're living out their perverted hopes.

Most people think that charisma

is-is a characteristic inherent in an individual.

But, in fact, charisma is a social relationship.

Everyone sitting there and they're oohing and awing,

and you don't want to be the odd one out.

Which gives them the ability to then demand things of you.

And you are obligated to carry out the wishes

of your so-called charismatic leader.

What was it that compelled James Arthur Ray's followers

to stay in that sweat lodge,

three of them to the point of death?

Was it peer pressure... or something else?

Perhaps that question will be answered after we investigate

a cult that was responsible for an even deadlier event...

Heaven's Gate.

15 members of the apocalyptic UFO cult

known as Heaven's Gate,

gather for the sighting

of the much-anticipated Hale-Bopp comet.

They believe the arrival of the comet

is a signal that the time

for final salvation is at hand.

After observing the comet, one by one,

the members of Heaven's Gate

ingest a lethal concoction of phenobarbital--

a powerful sedative

mixed with pudding...

...and chased down with a shot of vodka.

Over the next few days, two more groups

follow their brethren into what Shakespeare called

"the undiscovered country from which no traveler returns."

We don't care to cling to the life of this body

until it naturally gives up.

We don't care to be aborted

by the body that we're wearing.

We care more to abort it

in proof to our Heavenly Father

that we're ready to leave this place.

[siren wailing]

SHATNER: In all, 39 bodies,

including that of cult leader Marshall Applewhite,

are found dead in their bunk beds.

All of them wear identical black shirts and sweatpants,

Nike tennis shoes

and purple cloths covering their faces.

BILL KOLENDER: Based on the conditions at the scene,

all indications are that this was a mass suicide.

SHATNER: It was, and still is,

the worst mass suicide ever committed on U.S. soil.

WHITEHEAD: Marshall Applewhite was a failed cult leader.

He had tried starting up many other cults before.

Welcome to Beyond Human.

WHITEHEAD: He was in a psychiatric institution.

I mean, all the warning signs were there.

Yet he blended new age UFO-logy and Christianity

and was able to swindle these people

and start a very successful cult.

SHATNER: The notion of committing suicide

so a spaceship can beam your soul up to Heaven

is certainly misguided, but how could

a group of highly intelligent people,

most of whom were skilled computer experts

and web designers, come to believe something so irrational?

LALICH: This is a perfect example of

what we call cognitive dissonance,

when reality doesn't match what you believe.

So if you actually believed,

"I'm an alien and I'm gonna go out into this world

"of human beings,

nobody's gonna believe me. How am I gonna fit in out there?"

If people would just know that we're not forced into this

in any way; it's, you know, our own choosing to do it.

LALICH: At the end,

most of the people who died, had been with them

for 20-some years, I mean, a-a huge part of their life.

SHATNER: Investigative journalist and radio host, David Whitehead,

travels to the Museum of Death,

which houses authentic artifacts from notorious deaths,

including the Heaven's Gate suicides.

Meeting David is museum curator, Erek Obrist.

And here it is.

OBRIST: Yes, indeed. You are looking at a recreation

of the crime scene of the Heaven's Gate

suicide cult from Rancho Santa Fe.

WHITEHEAD: So everything in here is authentic?

Everything that you are viewing right now is 100% authentic.

[shudders] That is chilling.

This is how it went down.

This is all the real clothing, the purple scarves,

the Nike shoes.

Everything that wasn't evidence or religious material

was auctioned off to the highest bidder.

They've actually got the comet on there.

This one says, "Earth Exit: Monasteries."

OBRIST: I believe they referred to

the mansion they were living in as the Monastery.

The initial responding officers

originally thought that it was all men.

Turns out that half, easily, were women,

but they couldn't tell because of the short hair, the dress,

the loose style of clothing.

The cult was very asexual.

They saw themselves as aliens.

Eight of the male members had actually

undergone castration.

- No way. - Yes. Willingly.

WHITEHEAD: What are those notes on the wall?

That is a very important piece within the exhibit.

A four-page handwritten note left behind

by one of the members trying to explain why they're doing it.

The note was left behind in a set of clothing

that was purchased at the auction, and naturally,

just like when you do your laundry, you go through

the pockets to see if anything had been overlooked.

The note itself is really amazing to read because

you can see how some things are crossed out.

Maybe they changed their mind a little bit.

Maybe they just wanted to express themselves properly.

They were excited about leaving this planet

and going to what they thought would be "home,"

to a better place.

It ends with the chilling line,

"I hope you may all experience someday what we've had."

Yeah, I'm-I'm just feeling an overwhelming sense of...

just this heavy feeling. Reading about it

is one thing, but coming in and-and seeing it...

OBRIST: I don't think people are aware there are

surviving members still to this day that maintain the website.

It's still active.

You can write them, they'll reply.

Really?

Yeah.

SHATNER: Will the remaining members

of Heaven's Gate repeat the horrific events of 1997?

The fact that they're still committed to their mission

suggests that such a frightening notion is possible.

It is also a testament to the insidious power

of cult leaders and their ideas.

But not all cults use the promise of Heaven

to control their followers.

Some are even able to turn the simple art of dancing

into something deadly.

Not all deadly cults involve the indoctrination

of hundreds or even thousands of followers.

Some cults only involve one.

An unlucky person under the spell of a cult leader

who uses something as benign as dancing

to lure their follower.

That's all very well and good, of course,

until the dance turns deadly.

29-year-old performer and yoga instructor, Sharon Stern,

enrolls at Naropa University

to earn her master's degree in Dance.

TIBOR: Sharoni was unbelievably happy.

She played piano, guitar, singing,

dancing.

MIZRAHI: She just had this way of taking

anything monotonous or anything repetitive

or anything routine and just, like, flipping it upside down.

She had a way of making any moment special.

TIBOR: She told me one day in 2007,

"Dad, I would like to go back to finish my master degree."

And she told me that she got Naropa,

which is a Buddhist university.

And I told her, "Sharoni, that sounds so good to me."

I was wrong. I was very wrong.

SHATNER: Soon after arriving at university,

Sharon enrolls in a class on Butoh,

a Japanese form of dance theater.

Translated as "Dance of Darkness,"

Butoh is known for its grotesque imagery,

controlled movements and taboo themes.

Performers wear corpse-like white body makeup

and use unnatural movements in order to appear that much more

inhuman.

MIZRAHI: Having been a dancer for most of my life,

it's like nothing I've ever seen before.

The facial movement

is completely expressionless.

There's no smiling, there's very little eye contact.

The movements are sort of robotic.

It's a little chilling.

SHATNER: Mesmerized by Butoh's strange motions and imagery,

Sharon immediately felt drawn to the unique dance

and to her instructor,

a world-renowned Butoh practitioner from Kyoto, Japan,

who operated under the name of Katsura Kan.

MIZRAHI: Sharoni seemed very excited to introduce me to him,

and he turned around and made very little eye contact

and sort of said "hi," and turned--

gave his back to me and barked some orders

at her and-and left.

There was definitely a very

powerful influence coming from this teacher figure in her life,

this mentor figure in her life.

He was intriguing to her.

SHATNER: Under Kan's tutelage,

Sharon devoted herself to the study of Butoh,

sacrificing everything in an effort to immerse herself

in this macabre ritual.

The Sharon before Butoh and the Sharon after Butoh

are two totally different people.

The Sharon after Butoh was malnourished in every way.

She looked skinnier than she had ever looked.

That energy

that was so, so characteristic of Sharon wasn't there.

It wasn't the same person.

TIBOR: Sharoni called Kan "God,"

and anybody who tried to change her mind and bring her back

to normal life was enemy.

She became a zombie, and, uh,

she hardly remembered things.

At that point, two things had happened:

she lost her critical thinking.

She felt useless, worthless.

She couldn't cope with life anymore.

SHATNER: Over the course of the next four years,

Sharon's friends and family became more and more concerned

about what they believed was her obsession

with the world of Butoh and the disturbing nature

of her relationship with her teacher,

Katsura Kan.

LALICH: Kan developed a relationship with Sharon

that became sexual.

She became completely dependent on him.

We all know that that's verboten,

that's something you don't do, you know.

If it's a-a teacher and a pupil,

if it's a pastor and a, and a parishioner,

if it's a psychologist and his patient.

You don't take advantage of your students.

It's already a power relationship.

SHATNER: On April 25, 2012,

after years of psychological, emotional and physical decline,

Sharon Stern was finally overwhelmed

by this dance of darkness and ended her own life.

In 2019, in a civil case for the wrongful death of Sharon Stern,

a judge in Florida found Terugoshi Kotoura,

the real name of Katsura Kan,

liable for the young dancer's death,

a judgment that Mr. Kotoura is attempting to overturn.

But how could a bright young woman,

who had her entire life ahead of her,

become so consumed by thoughts of death,

that she eventually took her own life?

When you align physical states, like movements,

you align neural states, and you align psychological states.

In a sense, their brain states and their psychology

is also moving together at once.

I would liken it to the experience of hypnosis.

Some people are easily hypnotized,

some people aren't, and that feature,

that defining personality feature,

is usually called suggestibility.

Some people are highly suggestible,

especially if that is coming

from this highly charismatic authority leader or figure.

And it's because of that personality trait

that they're having those experiences.

TIBOR: He was teaching to lose your identity, authenticity.

And darkness

and death and suffer was the message.

SHATNER: Was it the psychosomatic power of dance

that led Sharon Stern

down such a dark, deadly path?

Sadly, that seems to have been the case.

Sharon's story is a testament to the destructive power

untethered belief can have on a single person.

But what happens when those same beliefs

infiltrate... an entire city?

SHATNER: In this coastal town

located 300 miles southwest of Sao Paolo...

19 children have mysteriously...

gone missing.

Vanished without a trace.

KENT: What happened in Brazil

in the late 1980s and early 1990s

was a shock to Brazilian society.

People were afraid.

They did not know why these disappearances were going on.

SHATNER: Todd Lewan, a foreign correspondent

for the Associated Press news agency,

is assigned to cover the developing situation.

LEWAN: This was a major story

going on in the country at the time.

It was being covered by the major news weeklies.

It was in the newspapers every day.

I immediately drove to Guaratuba,

and went straight to the police station

for my interview.

And I walk into the investigator's office,

and he looked at me and said,

"There's no need to tell me who you are.

I know why you're here."

SHATNER: As the number of missing children

continues to climb, the authorities are unable

to identify who, or why, the children of Guaratuba

are being targeted.

But then they receive a significant clue

when the body of one of the missing children

is found in the field near the local sawmill.

When these young children were executed,

when they were slain, it was done with a skilled hand,

indicating that this was a medical person

and that they did not act alone.

The state in which they found the remains of this young boy

indicated to the police there was a madness behind this.

The precise incisions,

the places of the incisions...

...this led police to believe that

there was a...

darker purpose here,

that perhaps a cult had been involved.

SHATNER: Police suspect the owner of the sawmill,

a man named Aldo Abagge,

who, shockingly, happens to be the town's mayor.

Abbage is soon arrested in connection with the killing

and accused of being a cult member,

along with seven other well-regarded members

of the community.

LEWAN: It was a bit of a shock.

But the most chilling thing about this was

he'd actually been played by the leader of a satanic cult,

a Brazilian woman

whose name was Valentina Andrade.

MORET: Valentina de Andrade was

this almost mystical occult leader

who merged religion and UFOs

and espoused the belief that Jesus Christ was an alien.

LEWAN: On the surface,

Valentina Andrade cut the figure

of a sweet, genteel kindergarten teacher,

complete with a pretty smile.

It turned out that she was actually

the ringleader behind a cult...

called the Superior Universal Light.

LALICH: Another part of her belief system

was convincing her followers that all boys

who were born after the year of 1981,

uh, were evil and were to be murdered.

LEWAN: You have to wonder,

how could experienced politicians

be taken in by a Valentina Andrade.

Was it because she had done such a good job presenting herself

as a... woman of love and family?

MORET: She would lure people into her religion

and convince them that they had to sacrifice young children

in order to gain and maintain their power

and their level within the religion.

Federal investigators were stunned

when they realized that this cult had 2,000 members

not just from within Brazil but from around the world.

SHATNER: Of the 19 children

that the members of the cult were accused of abducting,

six were found dead,

their remains badly mutilated.

The rest were never found.

Valentina was ultimately arrested and accused

of coercing her followers by promising them good fortune

if they agreed to commit the murders.

When the case went to trial, the mayor and his accomplices

were found guilty,

but not Valentina.

Unlike Charles Manson, she was able to convince a jury

that she shouldn't be held responsible,

because she wasn't even there.

LEWAN: Her alibi was that

she was not at the scene of the crime for these killings.

It was almost too horrific to consider that a woman

with this matronly appearance

could be leading such a vicious, barbaric group.

And I think that's why she was not convicted,

and then she was able to slip away from justice.

That, to me, is deeply, deeply unsettling.

SHATNER: It may be one thing to convince cult followers

to do harm to themselves,

but it's quite another to harm others,

especially innocent children.

So when does the strange ideology of a cult

pose a deadly threat not only to its members

but to us all?

The answer...

may be more disturbing than you think.

SHATNER: After interviewing former cult members,

researchers from the Addictology and Psychiatry Department

at Nantes University publish the results of their study.

Their conclusion: What makes someone want to join a cult

is a feeling of deep dissatisfaction with life

and a need for personal development.

Although this may sound obvious,

it is also a bit frightening,

especially since those same traits

apply to millions of people--

perhaps even you.

You can have political cults, you can have therapy cults,

you have new age cults, you have channeling cults,

you have karate cults-- probably you could find

[laughs]: a chocolate chip cookie cult if you wanted to.

So cults can be built around any type of belief system,

and we see that not only in our country

but around the world today

with the rise of this sort of push for hatred and violence.

So it's something that, uh,

is very prevalent.

Unfortunately, this will not stop.

I don't want to be naive.

In our organization, we receive

about five to ten cult-related complaints a day

from families of the victims,

and they all surround the same place.

And we find out

that seven percent of our society

are psychopaths and sociopaths.

And worse than that, 25 to 30%

of our society, families,

somehow, directly or indirectly, are suffering

from cult abuses.

WHITEHEAD: Each one of us could be susceptible

to falling prey to many of these cult-like groups,

because every single one of us is seeking meaning.

We want to understand the big questions of life.

We want to know why we're here.

We want to have a sense of direction.

We want to have a sense of community.

We want to be a part of something.

And that's what a cult offers you.

It offers you all of the things that you're looking for,

except it's...

a wolf in sheep's clothing.

One of the difficulties is pulling yourself out.

Because if you look in long enough

and you're in deep enough, you don't have a way out.

And so I-I encourage people to be supportive

of former members, try to be sympathetic.

Don't be judgmental.

People join cults because they wanted to improve themselves.

They had no idea they were falling into these traps

or vortexes of-of pain and... and torture.

So could you be a member of a cult right now,

even as we speak?

No, not you? [chuckles]

Don't kid yourself.

Anyone who joins others in the collective demonstration

of shared needs could find themselves in a cult.

But whether that cult is benign or deadly

is the bigger question.

Hopefully, you or someone else won't have to die

before you learn the answer.

Till then, you'll just have to let the matter remain...

UnXplained.