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.

A month after South Australian police raided more than a dozen properties associated with the bizarre Adelaide-based Agape Ministries doomsday cult, several questions remain unanswered.

But for independent senator Nick Xenophon the weapons found during the raids are a chilling reminder that decisive action must be taken to prevent cults getting footholds in Australian society.

Law enforcement and welfare officials have begun their attempt to bring ‘polygamist cult’ leader Goel Ratzon to justice, but experts told Ynet Tuesday that the process of rehabilitating the women ‘married’ to him would be a lengthy one.

Gabi Zohar, a social worker with years of experience caring for cult victims, explained that even the women who are rehabilitated will probably remain emotionally fragile.

Three generations of an aristocratic French family have “awoken” from the spell of an Oxford-based guru who is accused of spinning a lurid fantasy to rob them of their fortune.

At least eight members of the Védrines family, aged between 96 and 24, are now said to be ready to give evidence against Thierry Tilly, a self-proclaimed financial genius, master spy and agent of an age-old secret order.

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”.

A doctor accused of kidnapping his daughter in order to get her to leave a religious cult will have to wait another month before he learns his trial date.

Also accused in the case are the woman’s mother, 55-year-old Lucie Brun Del Re, a French teacher in Georgetown; her brother Giancarlo Brun Del Re; and family friends Alan Honner and Theresa Honner.

The church, Dominion Christian Centre, denies it is a cult…

A Tucson woman who is accused of killing her 5-year-old son was thoroughly brainwashed into believing a satanic cult was out to kill her and her son, and those closest to her were part of the plot, a forensic psychologist told jurors Wednesday.

Within a couple of months of meeting Tompson, Marsh testified, she became estranged from everyone she knew, including a pastor she was convinced was part of the satanic group.