CHAPTER 8

Around this time the first forcible deprogrammings of Way believers occurred. The explosive growth of cults in the 1970s triggered the rise of an anticult movement that became infamous for its most radical operatives. These were the professional deprogrammers who would kidnap cultists, lock them up and expose them to information meant to snap them out of cult indoctrination in a matter of days.

Sometimes it went without a hitch: the cultist agreed with his captors and was glad to be back at Mom and Dad's house again. In other cases the cultist escaped and went straight back to the cult, planting the seeds of a thousand rumors about how the deprogrammers bound, starved and sexually abused their captives.

The most famous of these operatives was Ted Patrick, a black man from California who became a deprogrammer after the Children of God tried to recruit his son. He was known as "Black Lightning," and was feared and reviled by Way believers, Moonies and Hare Krishnas alike.

In his book, Let Our Children Go, he describes how he and his confederates operated, kidnapping young cultists with the help of their parents and isolating them long enough to talk some sense into them. If the cultist didn't manage to escape, the deprogrammers were usually successful.

Del Duncan said of Ted Patrick: "He knew psychological warfare very well, so he understood debriefing and the military approach to brainwashing. He used his talents in a way that was very effective. Actually, he was pretty tough."

What did V.P. think of seeing Way believers kidnapped and brainwashed against him?

"We just felt that if they're going to do it to us, we're going to do it to them," said Del. "And if they're going to come take our people, we'll go take them back. And we'll give you a message, you shouldn't be doing this to The Way Ministry, it's the wrong organization to do this to."

Duncan was put in charge of forming a five-man commando team to rescue kidnapped Way believers from the deprogrammers. In the latter stages the team grew to seven. He led 12 operations in Ohio, California, Florida and West Virginia.

"It was a team just like a Seal team," he said. "I trained them -- we did POW extraction, it's the same operation as POW extraction." He said his Seal team had pulled off six successful POW rescues in Vietnam.

The deprogrammers would usually take the cultist to a local motel or a nearby house, and they weren't very good at covering their trail. Duncan's men found them by calling around and asking the kind of questions any detective would ask.

"Most all the time, they were very sloppy," he said. "They never expected, never, never expected that somebody would come and get them -- that was the furthest thing from their mind, so there was a flaw in their approach."

Once they found out where the deprogrammers were, Del's team watched and waited until the parents left. They didn't want to deal with "a dad wanting to defend his daughter to the death." It was much cleaner to deal with the pros.

"So once they were gone, every time, this is what we did," he said. "We would cause a diversion. We'd wait till dark, nighttime, then we would enter, in total blackout clothes, we would enter three in the back, two in the front. One in the front would knock on the door and go, 'Your pizza's here.' They'd go, 'Pizza? We didn't order pizza.' And they'd open the door.

"Well, whoever opened the door was immediately confronted and subdued. And then the one behind him came in right after. And then, sometimes we'd cause a diversion in the back like set fire to a trash can, and everybody would come running out. We had all the deprogrammers out in the back yard. So we just dealt with them, tied them up or bound them in some way.

"The worst we ever did, we broke some limbs, 'cause there was a few pretty tough guys. We broke some limbs, we probably knocked a few teeth out here and there, and knocked people unconscious, but the idea was: as peaceful as possible."

They always carried handguns, and never drew them. They went in with police batons, baseball bats, weighted gloves. "And we used chokeholds, we used very devastating chokeholds. There's several where you can get somebody unconscious. They're unconscious at least for two minutes or three because it cuts off all circulation to their brain." In only one case were the deprogrammers armed, but they never had time to get to their guns.

"We weren't willing to take lives, although if self-defense meant that, we would have, and it never did," he said. "In each and every case, they were so overwhelmed and surprised and bewildered."

Motel rooms were the hardest target, because there's only one way in. "A couple of times we had 40-foot ladders we put up to the back window of a room we knew they were at, and we went banging into the back window to cause a diversion, and all of a sudden banging in the front door, and you were there, you know. We had rams, like the SWAT team uses to break in a door, like the cops use. Hand-held rams, we made them ourselves."

© Karl Kahler 1999