Convinced her children were about to be brainwashed by their “cult leader” grandparents, a young mother in Australia decided her family’s only salvation lay in death.

Last April she placed her three children, aged 16, 10 and 2, in the family car and crashed head-on into a tree at 100km/h.

A man who claimed he was ‘brainwashed‘ into signing over his £800,000 home to the spiritual guru of the Self Realization Meditation Healing Centre has won a court battle to get his property back.

Marcus Wesson committed the worst mass murder in Fresno’s history — killing two adults and seven young children.

Neighbors’ accounts led police to believe that Wesson controlled his family in a cult-like manner, and that he possibly had fathered several of the deceased children with his own daughters and nieces.

Several of Wesson’s sons initially rose to his defense, but in tonight’s ABC Primetime they tell ABC News correspondent Jay Schadler that only now, years after the crime, can they see their father for what he was: psychotic, delusional and narcissistic.

Thierry Tilly, an Oxford-based Frenchman, has been arrested over allegations that he kidnapped, tortured and brainwashed several generations of an aristocratic family into giving up their fortune.

Thierry Tilly, 45, allegedly posed as a secret agent to convince the rich and highly educated De Védrines family that they were the lost descendants of an ancient society called L’Equilibre du Monde (The Balance of the World), and that he had “superhuman powers” to help them reclaim their illustrious past and its “limitless treasure”.

Cult expert Steven Hassan, a licensed mental health counselor from Massachusetts, has spent the last three decades using his two-year experience in the Moonies cult to dissect brainwashing that occurs when someone joins a cult or is abducted.

He shared his story during a speech titled “Psychology of Mind Control Over Abducted Children” at the National Amber Alert Training Symposium, which is sponsored by the Justice Department.

Jason Beghe is the bravest actor in Hollywood. He’s come clean about his 14 years in Scientology, the religion that Tom Cruise reveres. He says the purpose of Scientology is to create a “brainwashed, robotic version of you.” [video]

Between hysterical sobs, the women of the Yearning for Zion Ranch in rural Texas tearily pleaded Monday for the return of their children from state custody, but at the mere turn of a phrase, those tears mysteriously, uniformly stopped. So, are these women just fanatically, independently religious, or are they victims of something more sinister, like mind control? Mental health professionals told ABCNEWS.com that it may all depend on how you define brainwashing.

Patients were put in isolation, tied down or drugged, and subjected to hours and hours of taped recordings meant to brainwash them. They were subjected to massive electroshocks, experimental drugs and LSD, all at the behest of the CIA, a federal court was told on Wednesday. Now it’s time for the federal government to compensate the hundreds of victims whose lives were damaged, argued lawyer Alan Stein.

A counsellor who brainwashed her client into giving her more than £200,000 has been jailed for five years.

Brainwasher conned £250,000

Charles Clarke is studying proposals to combat Islamic terrorist groups by treating them as religious cults.

Director Jonathan Demme fiddles with the classics again. After a remake of "Charade," he now offers up "The Manchurian Candidate" for a nervous, post Sept. 11 era.

WAKAYAMA -- A man who brainwashed an adopted son into killing himself so he could claim a hefty insurance payout on a car took elaborate measures to make sure his plan would work, police said.

Deleting memories is simple with computers, but as the movie Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind shows, it's still - as far as humans are concerned - the stuff of science fiction. Or is it?

For Fort Lauderdale church, quick dismissal would be a spring break