The Concerned Relatives were there to see if-as they strongly suspected-those in Jonestown were being held against their will. Only some of these visitors-Reiterman and a few of the other journalists, Ryan and Speier, and a small number of the group of relatives-were finally and reluctantly admitted in by Jones, on the stern advice of Jones’s lawyers. Every member of the group had defected from the Temple in San Francisco. The visitors included, among others, eight members of the press Congressman Leo Ryan and his aide Jackie Speier and thirteen representatives of the “Concerned Relatives,” their own name for the group. Reiterman is a fine investigative journalist who was part of a group to visit Jonestown, Guyana in November of 1978. Raven is the best, most comprehensive, and most thoroughly researched book on Jim Jones, Jonestown, and Peoples Temple. Troubled teen institutions still exist, modeled after Synanon, whose roots began in the 1950s. It is essential to place a hold on this book because it provides one of the most in-depth investigations of the beginnings of Synanon, which later morphed into Straight Inc., spread into churches, and advocated for severe behavioral modification to be inflicted upon teenagers. The accounts of survivors of the troubled teen industry are extremely upsetting due to the cultic practices of the industry, which include shunning, abuse, the use of forced labor, sexual assault, and more. This book packs a punch, and its story is an important one in the ongoing battle against cults that recruit parents to give over their children under the guise of improving their quality of life. The culture of Synanon was one of abuse and deviation. She would later find out that one of those women was her mother, whom she had not seen for more than two years at the time of the kidnapping. In this novel, which is set in the late 1970s, the protagonist, Celena, is abducted by two extremist women who are members of the Synanon cult. Escaping Utopia: Growing Up in a Cult, Getting Out, and Starting Over is chock full of original and ground-breaking research that has been compiled into a well-crafted collection of real-life cult child survivor stories. Many of these individuals eventually made the decision to leave the cultic lifestyle on their own, which is something that is very unique to the research and their accounts. Lalich conducted the first in-depth study of its kind, conducting interviews with sixty-five individuals who were either born into or raised in thirty-nine distinct cultic groups spread across more than a dozen countries. I am honored to be one of those people.ĭr. This book chronicles the lives of several people who were raised under the sway of repressive religions. As someone who grew up in a cult, I am grateful that she spent the time to concentrate on the children, as they are the ones who almost always fare the worst. Lalich, and during that time I found her to be witty, funny, and extremely interested in the experiences of children who were raised in cults. I had the privilege of spending some time with Dr.
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