\u2018trial and error method\u2019<\/em>. He or she tries somethings and what succeeds he continues and what doesn\u2019t work he adapts or stops with it. The leader is inventing himself over and over. He can\u2019t go back: things are going from bad to worse. It often starts relatively innocently with a nice story: deepening in the faith, coming to yourself. People go along with that. But slowly everything is getting stricter.\u201d
\nArjan van Dijk is an ex-cult member and with his knowledge he now helps (ex) cult members and their family. He was a member of an evangelical Pentecostal movement. Protestant Christian but then on the right flank. \u201cIt took a long time before I understood what I had really been into. At one point I became a counselor and through my knowledge acquired during my work it became clear to me that I had been in a cult. Still, it took years before I felt I was ready to help others.\u201d<\/p>\nAt some point, you want to go to your group more often. But that means you won\u2019t be able to see your friends that much as you would normally do. This way people slowly cut ties with their social life and increasingly come under the power of their cult leader. \u201cIt is a kind of organic process in which those cult leaders are very dominant and have something in their brain structure that is not quite right. Almost every cult leader wants three things: money, power and sex\u201d says Krake. Van Dijk recognizes this. \u201cWe had a fully stocked program, from 7:00 am to 10:00 pm in the evening. We were hardly allowed to leave the building, only with permission to get toothpaste, for example. I was rarely allowed to go to my parents, only once every four weeks for a day and a half. Then I often just slept. People have multiple roles for the cult: father, cousin, football player, tennis player. You see when someone is in a cult, these roles drop out and only one role remains. That of a cult member.”<\/p>\n
While many have the prejudice that people in a cult are most likely to be poorly educated, this seems to be not true. Krake: \u201cI always thought cult members lived on the street at first or that they weren\u2019t quite right in their head. I was shocked when I found out that the majority of the cult members have a very good education, can defend themselves very well, have a good social position and do have enough money in the bank.
\nA cult leader loves nothing more than good representatives of his movement. He prefers to bring in people who can also bring in other people.\u201d Van Dijk agrees to this. \u201cHelp seekers come to me and ask for help, but I have to say that I think that the less educated are more likely to stay in a cult all their lives. They probably won\u2019t look for help. Are they in the minority or are they less in the picture of social services? The less educated are often the cult’s \u2018foot soldiers\u2019. They make the food, they clean the building and take care of the garden, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van Dijk managed to get out of the cult because he became overwrought. By grace he was allowed to stay in a room in the place where the cult was located. “I still had to report every day, but it gave me more distance from the group. It was not a cult I wasn\u2019t allowed to leave, but a cult where I would have to stay on the right path forever.” Cult members who leave the cult are seen as apostates. The other cult members are also told that it is scum, that they are possessed by the devil and that all contact must be prevented.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the end of 2020, the majority of the House of Representatives was in favor of the reintroduction of the reporting point \u2018Sektesignaal\u2019. According to Krake, the reintroduction of a hotline is an important step, which is certainly necessary. “A support center coordinates all reports: everything comes together here. They know how to proceed and how they can help someone. Suppose you report to someone who is not that skilled, like a police officer, then you will hear exactly what your cult leader always said: they (the outside world) don’t understand us anyway. Your faith in the cult leader is only getting stronger, because he has already foreseen this.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cults. For many, an unclear indication of a group of people. Last year, various reports were published about Dutch cults and arrested cult leaders. The increasing number of cults is a growing problem that cult experts are concerned about. While most reports were received in 2019, \u2018Sektesignaal\u2019 \u2013 a special reporting point for people who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":1276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[78,39],"class_list":["post-1275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cbj","tag-cults","tag-the-netherlands","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The facts about cults in the Netherlands - International Journalism<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n