Australia should introduce anti-cult legislation similar to laws operating in France, Independent Senator Nick Xenophon says.

“The current laws that we have just don’t deal with issues of psychological manipulation, effectively brainwashing, the way that people are deceived into handing over their money to these cults,” he said.

Senator Nick Xenophon says organisations claiming to be religious thrive on their tax-free status.

He says legislation he introduced to the Senate last week would help flush out dangerous groups.

“If a cult cannot get tax-free status because of its activities then clearly that would make it more difficult for it to flourish and to expand,” he said.

The Senate has agreed to launch an inquiry into the tax exempt status of religions and charities after allegations of abuse within The Church of Scientology.

However, the Senate inquiry will not focus on a single group.

Despite evidence of abusive acts by cults, the Senate rejected Nick Xenophon’s request for an inquiry into Scientology when both major parties voted against it. We’ve been down this road before. Through much of 2006 and 2007, the Greens tried to get a Senate inquiry into the Exclusive Brethren, and the major parties vetoed it.

This means that, in Australia, cults are thriving under the protection of politicians, the police and the courts.

Addressing a conference of cult survivors in Brisbane today, Senator Nick Xenophon said a new motion for a new parliamentary inquiry might include a push for police to take criminal action against cults.

He was also attracted to using the Trade Practices Act to prosecute groups for false and misleading conduct if they wrongly claimed to provide therapeutic benefits to their devotees.

The conference has heard a number of heart-rending stories from different religion-based and therapeutic cults.

Independent South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon will address a conference in Brisbane which claims to be the first specifically organised to help people who have left cults.

Senator Xenophon has been campaigning for an inquiry into the Church of Scientology and its tax exempt status.

Cult-like groups are on the rise in New Zealand. Now the two-part Inside New Zealand: How To Spot A Cult documentary uncovers what really goes on inside these often controversial groups.

The two-part documentary consists of ex-believers’ stories, and investigates the similarities they say exist between groups including the Exclusive Brethren, Scientology, Centrepoint, Gloriavale, Avatar and the International Church of Christ.

Raised as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Brenda Lee now educates people about cult involvement in communities across the world.

In free seminars, she addresses topics such as how to identify toxic organizations, the eight points of mind control and who is most at risk of joining a destructive group. [video]

An opinion writer with a poor grasp of the facts claims that the term ‘cult’ has fallen into disuse.

In doing so he merely apes the opinions of a handful of cult defenders, while ignoring the fact that the term ‘cult’ actually has precise sociological and theological meanings.

Used properly, these cult terminology is as valid today as it has ever been.

After the trial of Louis Lamonica, Richard Ofshe said he could have offered the jury insight into the nature of cults to help them understand what was happening at Hosanna. He said he could have told them there is no such thing as satanic cults that abuse children.

If the initial statements of the children and suspects indicate the abuse occurred as part of a satanic cult — something that has never happened — then the truth of everything alleged in that statement is questionable, Ofshe said.

The account of a woman recovering from critical injuries she said were inflicted by members of an occult group may be difficult to unravel because it doesn’t match the typical methods used by such groups, an expert in cult activities said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, police investigators released little new information about the case but cult experts and police documents raise some questions about the woman’s account.

Cult expert and exit counselor Allen Tate Wood has a series of brief but informative articles in The Faith Column of the New Statesman on the subject of cults.

Various scholars try, and fail, to answer the question asked in the headline.

In the aftermath of the raid by Texas authorities into the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints’ Yearning for Zion ranch, polygamous sects are an issue of discussion at the International Cultic Studies Association meeting this weekend at the University of Pennsylvania.

At the conference top officials for the Utah and Arizona attorneys general were peppered with questions about prosecuting polygamous crimes.

Reading about the child abuse in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Yearning for Zion community in Texas is painfully frustrating for cult specialists like me. Having worked with cultists and former cultists for more than 30 years, I am amazed and disheartened at the inability of authorities to learn from history.

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