She came out of retirement to take cults to court.

[00:00:04] What up kids? Another episode of the ALBC. Sarah's gonna try something a little bit new today. Well, I have some housekeeping and this is gonna be short because yes, Nippy and I are going to go watch after this the Nathan Fielder Elizabeth Holmes documentary. You can see everything. But can you? Yeah, I think Nathan Fielder broke the internet is I think what has happened but we're not gonna comment on it until we've seen it and we'll do a special episode about it on this feed so stay tuned.

[00:00:34] Are you excited? Am I excited? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, we're building our YouTube studio. We're gonna be on video any second now and also other housekeeping is that on Patreon not only can you buy our book for cheaper but you can also purchase private zoom sessions with Nippy and I if there's something you've been wanting to talk to us about privately, a consult, you know, wanting to know if you're in a cult or how to get somebody you love out of a cult, that's available on our Patreon zoom call. How cool is that? We have a store.

[00:01:02] We will see how cool it is. We'll see if anybody wants to talk to us. We will see. Maybe you don't want to talk to us. I'll tell you somebody who we did want to talk to. This felt like a very long overdue episode with our guest, Nippy. Oh, you're doing segue Sarah? That was segue. Okay. Today's guest. Is Carol Marchesin Carol Marchazin. She is like kind of a goat, the goat in the space. Tell us about her, Nippy. Okay, I'll do it.

[00:01:30] She's an attorney, an investigator, and the president of ICSA. What's ICSA stand for? Just banded the whole script. The International Occultic Studies Association. With more than 40 years at the intersection of research, education, human rights, and survivor support, ICSA, helps unpack how coercive control, undue influence, and psychological manipulation work, and why leaving a high control group is rarely as simple as walking out the door, as you well know.

[00:01:58] As we know, Carol brings extensive experience investigating sexual misconduct in religious and spiritual communities, including Shambhala International and Sivinyanda Yoga Vedanta. Yeah, yeah. As well as decades of litigation, workplace investigations, and civil rights advocacy. She came out of retirement to get back to work in this space, and we're so glad that she did. It's like the second or third time she's come out of retirement. Yeah. She's one of those people. Just loves to work. It's like when I say to my dad about retirement, he's like, retire from what?

[00:02:28] Exactly. I think that would be Carol's answer. Anyway. She has stuff to do. Yeah. This is...oh, that chair. That chair has got to go. You love it when I squeak. Thank goodness we have new chairs being built right now for our new studio that hopefully will not squeak. They swivel. They swivel. This is going to be a sexy studio, everybody. Stay tuned, but for now, we really enjoyed this chat with Carol Marchesin, and we hope that you do too. Enjoy. Enjoy. Carol, thank you so much for joining us on A Little Bit Culty. What a treat. Thank you.

[00:02:58] I'm delighted to be here. I feel like this is just overdue, really. Like, this should have happened so long ago, but... It should have been our first episode. You're here, and... Yes. This is amazing, and we're going to spend enough time with you to cover your history as a litigator, and then your work now in ICSA, and I think that you have a perspective that is so important. And we're just so excited to get into it. An objective pushback. I'm looking forward to our conversation for sure. Sure.

[00:03:28] Amazing. For those of any listeners, and I'm actually really excited because we have a couple of podcast episodes that I really consider to be like resource episodes. You know, Rachel Bernstein about how to talk to family members and how to write a cult memoir and things like that. So, this is, I think, going to be another resource episode for the legal components and understanding the resources that are out there. Less trauma in these. Less trauma.

[00:03:57] Less trauma because you yourself are not a cult survivor, but you have come into the space. Tell us about your journey and how you got to where you are now. Yeah. Well, you know, I am not a cult survivor. Yes. Not in the way that the people that we're, you know, that I deal with are cult survivors. Mm-hmm. So, how did I get here? It laid in the game, in a way, because I was a lawyer, in fact, in Philadelphia, where I am now.

[00:04:27] And I was a partner in a large law firm. I did employment law. I was on the defense side. So, I represented companies. But what I did, probably from the 90s onward, was work with companies to deal with sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. So, these were the years in which we had Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas.

[00:04:56] We began to see companies concerned about, you know, in all honesty, their legal liability. Maybe not out of the goodness of their hearts, but out of legal liability issues. How do we deal with sexual misconduct in the workplace? And so, I started working in that field. I started doing training, consulting, and investigations. And that's important because I then retired.

[00:05:26] I moved to Mexico. And I continued to do consulting work from there. A lot of that work was investigations. So, in 2018, which I think of as the year of Harvey Weinstein, I think. Mm-hmm. Then someone came to me and said, I have these, I am doing this project.

[00:05:51] It's about sexual assault in a religious community. And it happened to be a Buddhist community. And I thought, well, I just, I'm not, I don't think so. Do you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. I was an investigator. Yes. I'm, I'm like trained to remain neutral. But nonetheless, your mind goes to where your mind goes. And I was like, I can't imagine that this is the case. But I volunteered to help her out and do an investigation.

[00:06:21] And of course, it was true. Mm-hmm. And then. And this is Shabala. Correct. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes. Correct. And then that was on the front page of the New York Times. And then I started having people, and I was doing this pro bono, by the way, because I was retired. Mm-hmm. And so, I started having women come to me and say, well, I had the same thing happen. I didn't know what to call it. Mm-hmm. This was my spiritual leader.

[00:06:50] This was my religious, you know, person that I trusted. Mm-hmm. And, but that's, it was all wrapped up in religion. And so then I spent four years doing investigations that were brought to me by people who said, this is what happened. I met with the organizations or tried to meet with organizations because in my world view,

[00:07:16] which was extremely naive, I thought that like any company, they would want to do something about it because they would be concerned about legal liability, at least. At the very least, I thought that a religious organization would care about harming people. Mm-hmm. But that was often not the case.

[00:07:39] And so, after four years of doing that, I took a position with a law firm outside of London, McAllister, all of various, doing plaintiff-side litigation work, which I had never done before. I wasn't a plaintiff's lawyer. I hadn't done litigation for a very long time.

[00:08:03] And, but the challenge was to build a group that dealt just with what we called sexual misconduct in, in spiritual organizations. And so, I did that for three years. And then I retired again. I think this was actually, to be honest, like my 14th retirement somewhere around in there. And I'm still working in this space.

[00:08:31] So, I had an opportunity to work with a really talented group of lawyers. And we did. We built a practice group that dealt only with these kinds of cases. But interestingly enough, along the way, what I found out is that it wasn't about religion. It was about high control, high demand groups, right? Mm-hmm. It didn't matter what the doctrine was. Correct. It was all about controlling and demanding from people.

[00:08:59] Now, did, how would you describe your understanding of what you were looking at when you entered this case? And like, did you go into it understanding this is what I'm looking at? This is the pattern recognition I'm looking for? No. Okay. So, how did that evolve? Yeah. It evolved because at first it was bad apple, the bad apple theory, right? Right. This is a bad apple. And, but this isn't about the organization.

[00:09:29] But after I have, by saying this, I reveal myself as a slow learner probably. But after four years, I was like, wait a minute. There's something else going on here.

[00:09:41] And particularly, as I got involved with the organizations themselves or tried to get involved with the organizations, what I found was there was, they were remarkably the same no matter what the spiritual or religious part was. Yes. And then I began to say, well, this is something else. This is something else.

[00:10:07] And that's when, I think that was probably the first time I got involved with ICSA, with the International Cultic Studies Association. Mm-hmm. Because I was like, wow, there's a lot to learn here about what's going on. Mm-hmm. Because it isn't just one person who's carrying all this out. It requires an organization to do it. Mm-hmm.

[00:10:32] That's so fascinating to have come to this work from that angle. Yes. Mm-hmm. It is. And it, as I said, in the beginning, it was very much, wait a minute. You know, if you were doing this, I had just done, because it was the Harvey Weinstein year, I had just done two big investigations in a big fortune pen company. Mm-hmm.

[00:10:59] And because they have, if you think about it, they have an HR department, they have a legal department. Mm-hmm. They are not the same kind of authoritarian figure at the top with no accountability and no control. So, no matter who the president of the company is, if there is something bad going on, there are other safeguards in place that are watching out.

[00:11:29] There's a board of directors. It's not necessarily a board of directors that is loyal to the person at the top, which is what you find in some of these organizations. It's, they have worries about their own liability. And so, while none of that is perfect, it was very revealing to me that it was not the case in these other groups that I was encountering. Right.

[00:11:55] So, there isn't an executive board where all the women are sleeping with the, like with Keith and Neri, right? I would imagine, too, the incentives are more to protect the company and the dollar, so they're a slave to the dollar, whereas in the other organizations, they're a slave to the ideology. Or the guru. Yes, exactly.

[00:12:12] So, that's kind of my evolution to how I came to see these things as, you know, using the word cults as some kind of spectrum of a lot of different, what should we say, elements and factors. The high control, the authoritarian leader, you know, the necessity of reducing people's identity, the control of information.

[00:12:43] All of those kinds of things began to fall into place for me as I looked through all of these investigations that I had been doing that had not been successful. They were not successful. Would it be safe to say, like in a company, it's more bureaucratic, but when you look at like a religion or high control group, would you say it's a little trickier because everyone's got plausible deniability and they can appear happy? Yes.

[00:13:11] And appear on board with it? Yes. And what were the challenges in putting language to that and making those distinctions for you? Yeah. You know, that's one of the difficulties of the legal remedies that are available to us is that, you know, the question is always, were you on board with this? So, this is really where coercion. Right. Yeah. Right? Comes into the, you know, into play.

[00:13:41] So, it's really difficult because we don't know, I think as a society, we don't understand coercion as well as we need to. Right? Because here's the question. It's hard to let it get coercion. Believe me. That's the trench that I'm in. Right. So, yes, it is difficult.

[00:14:09] And so, we need, I mean, that's one of the things that when we talk about where we're going and what we need, we, it really is about an understanding of coercion. So, if I go somewhere, for example, and somebody says to me, because, you know, the people that I probably hang out with the most in my life have white hair like I do. And so, they say, oh, what are you doing? We're right behind you.

[00:14:39] We're going to catch you soon. People will say, you know, or what are you doing these days? Oh, I'm litigating against cults. You know, and people, and if you tell people what that means, inevitably, people say, oh, that's terrible. Two things, actually, that they say. Number one, but it would never happen to me. Correct? Yeah. Of course. And number two, they say, well, but why didn't they leave? Right. Yeah.

[00:15:05] And the question, why didn't they leave, is one of the… Fair questions, too. Yeah, they are. Totally, yeah. And it requires us to understand coercion more. But particularly under the legal system, we are constantly dealing with, but why didn't you leave?

[00:15:23] And that's why we have to try to help jurors, judges, the system, understand what coercion does to people, what it looks like. So, that's a challenge.

[00:15:40] It depends on the case, but the law that I probably have used the most is the human trafficking law, which sounds strange because of the word trafficking. Yeah, right. Well, but to you it doesn't, right, because you've lived through this. But for most people, trafficking means crossing borders, and it doesn't require crossing borders.

[00:16:07] So, like the NXIVM case, I use both sex trafficking and labor trafficking because it is one of, I think, I'm not positive about this, but I will posit that it is one of the only laws in, certainly in the United States, and I think perhaps even internationally, in which coercion is applied in a different context than just domestic or intimate partner situations.

[00:16:36] So, it gives us only two things to go after, sex and labor, but it allows us to use coercion as one of the basis for that. So, it's force, fraud, or coercion. We can't use force if it's a, I mean, excuse me, we don't usually have force. We can't use fraud if it's a religion. We have to use coercion most of the time.

[00:17:05] And so, that's where we are. So, wouldn't you say that coercion is a form of force? Yes, in a way. And the trafficking law recognizes that, that the serious harm that is done can be psychological.

[00:17:22] So, that's also very important because we are working within a system where certainly within the last, I hope I can say this, it's not 100%, but I think within the last decade or two decades,

[00:17:38] we've come from rape and the issue of consent moving away from what were you wearing or what did you do as the plaintiff? And we need to, you know, I don't know exactly how we've done that, but we do have a better understanding of that, I think, as a legal system.

[00:18:02] That consent is not necessarily negated by not fighting back. In other words, I don't have to fight you. Right. In order to prove that I don't consent. Right. That's changed. Are you familiar with Nina and Joyce? Yeah, I just signed their…

[00:18:27] Yeah, if you're not, I have to connect you, but they've been huge advocates of changing the consent laws in New York. Putting language to it. Putting language to it. Yes, I do know. I know their work. Very important work. And I've read their definition of consent.

[00:18:43] And because of that, for me now, what I feel like is that also in this arena that we're talking about, where we're talking about coercion, where it's not necessarily rape, but where we must have a definition of consent. Where we need to give jurors an idea of what we're talking about here. Loving the podcast? Now you can listen to the book, too.

[00:19:11] A Little Bit Culty, Navigating Cults Control and Coercion is now out on Audible. Yes, it is narrated by us. So you get the stories, the hard-won wisdom, and even a few tangents that didn't make it into the paperback. The book takes what we've learned from our own experience inside NXIVM and from hundreds of conversations with survivors and experts, and turns it into a practical, compassionate guide to spotting coercive control, getting out, and healing from it. Because culty shit is everywhere, and it doesn't always look like people wearing matching robes in the desert.

[00:19:41] These dynamics show up in relationships, workplaces, wellness communities, churches, social media, anywhere someone claims to have all the answers. And we're pretty proud that the book has been endorsed by powerhouses like Leah Remini, Bethany Joy Lenz, Dr. Romney Dervasala, Tia Lovings, Evan Rachel Wood, Jessica Willis Fisher, and so many more. So whether you've been meaning to read the book or you just want to hear us tell it to you ourselves, grab the audiobook on Audible and hit play. And if you love it, leave us a review.

[00:20:08] It helps more people find the book and maybe recognize the red flags before they're in too deep. Enjoy. And that was a word from our sponsors. Let's get back to the show. Right. Yeah. Because it's so hard for survivors to hear that you chose to be there, which, of course, as you probably know, was so key in our trial with Keith. Yes.

[00:20:38] So how do you explain to a judge or a jury that someone can technically be free to leave but still not feel psychologically free to leave? Like, how do you explain that to them? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, the way that I try to do it in the cases that I'm working on and have worked on is to build what I think of as systems of coercion, institutionalized coercion.

[00:21:03] So I'll give you an example from a case that I have filed on and I'm working on at the moment. First of all, some of this is, and there's a whole variety. This is like a checklist where you say, you look at the case and you see what applies here.

[00:21:27] In this case, for example, there was physical and technological informational isolation. So isolation is key for showing coercion.

[00:21:42] So if I can show that, for example, people were encouraged to cut all ties with other people in their lives, if they were informationally denied access to telephones, to the internet, to information. So I'm trying to build a picture of what coercion looks like because it's never just one thing. Correct. Correct. Mm-hmm.

[00:22:12] So if you look at, for example, Steve Hassan's bi-bottle. Right. So I look at that and I see what in this situation has coerced people to stay. Some of it is what I think of as engineered financial dependency. Mm-hmm. So a lot of organizations you are forced to give not, again, what is the force? Yeah, right.

[00:22:42] That we're talking about here, right? Yeah, right. It's psychologically forced when you enter before you know what this is about to give up all your assets. And then under the forced labor laws. Mm-hmm.

[00:23:11] You, how can you leave? Mm-hmm. You don't have any money to leave. And so that's a part of the coercion. Sleep deprivation is a part of coercion. Mm-hmm.

[00:23:23] And so I try to go through and build, as I said, it's almost like a checklist of the things that operated together so that we're educating judges and juries on how, so that they could relate.

[00:23:43] So that you could say, oh, yeah, well, if you worked, even if you didn't give all your money in the beginning, if you work two or three years for nothing, you don't have any money. You don't have a credit card. Mm-hmm. You don't have any credit. You can't just leave easily. Correct. It's not like walking out and starting your life over again.

[00:24:07] And so we see all kinds of things that these organizations do in order to keep people in. And in the case of the labor, forced labor is to keep them working. Mm-hmm. So that's how I try to, I try to peel the picture. Yeah.

[00:24:27] And I imagine the challenge, I mean, what I think Western culture has done so well is that we have an apparatus of law enforcement that recognizes physical abuses right away. And we have a system in place that says 911, this person did X, Y, Z, and we can prove it. We have it on there. Mm-hmm. And we can take it. And I imagine, you know, extenuating circumstances aside, you can prove it and people can feel safe in their culture and society from at least, for the most part, physical.

[00:24:57] When it comes to coercive stuff, there's not a 911 to say, this guy's coercing me. And it can go on for a long time before someone even recognizes that it's an emotional abuse. And we don't have an apparatus of force to stop people from emotional abuse. Yes. This is, they're going to have to go through.

[00:25:25] And you have to have a lot of evidence and a lot of abuse. Yes, you do. To put someone like a Keith Raniere away or Harvey Weinstein. And I imagine these people know that. It's like good luck proving it. Good luck inconveniencing your life and shaming yourself through the process. Yes. Because all these things, all these things end up being like, oh, well, they did this. They wore this skirt. Why would you want to put yourself through that? And it's in our best interest as a culture.

[00:25:54] And I think this is where we got a little bit lucky is a lot of people came forward. And then the language, I could tell by the questions people were asking me, they didn't understand what they were looking at. And that's where I think Sarah and I and Mark and a few other people were extremely motivated to go, no, this is how they do it. This is the language that you need.

[00:26:14] And then having that language kind of, I don't know, having law enforcement understanding it so that when they see a branding of someone, and this is where I think a lot of credit goes to Moira Penza, is that was a symptom of the emotional abuse. And I think the people that can recognize that quickly and have language to how this happens, you can expedite these things much more. And I think we got a little lucky in that regard.

[00:26:44] Yeah. And you know, we can talk more about this, but, and I'm not saying this because I'm on your podcast, by the way. What I'm, what I, what I know is that because of that case, someone just said to me the other day, you know, all of us who are out there in the legal system working in this, you know, world of cults,

[00:27:10] we are able to say to lawyers to take these cases because there are precedents, right? And so that's what that does for us. That says, wow, Moira did this in New York, you know, this is what she was dealing with, are all a little bit different. And that, of course, was a criminal case.

[00:27:36] In the civil field, of course, the burden of proof is lighter. And so when we can look at the same law that she used and put it into the civil context and say, all you have to prove is more likely than not, as opposed to beyond a reasonable doubt, then we can motivate lawyers to take these cases.

[00:28:02] Because it isn't until we begin these cases that we begin to develop a body of law. Ah, right. Right? That's the way the legal system works. So they can cite other cases. Yes. And, you know, the law business is a business. Yeah. So I'll give you an example. We saw that part, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:30] And maybe even so, still. But I had a woman come to me probably four years ago, and she had a forced labor claim that she wanted to bring, and we investigated it, and we did not bring her claim. Because all of the cases that we saw, and I don't think that this was more than four or five years ago. All of it. So what we do is we look at cases. You know, we look at how are the cases that are, are there similar cases out there?

[00:28:59] And because the plaintiff's law business is on a contingency basis, then we don't take cases that we don't think we can win because we can't afford to. So we look, can we win this? And obviously, all of it is a risk. But it's like, is it possible? The cases that we saw mostly at that time on forced labor were people who were held in chains.

[00:29:27] They were locked in overnight. Yes. And so in the civil cases. And so we were like, you know, this was not a person who was, she was very much coerced, believed her, all of those kinds of things. I think four or five years later, we would take that case now. Right.

[00:29:50] Because there are a bunch of other cases that have been successful, not to trial necessarily, but even successful over the first motion to dismiss hurdle. So there are a number of hurdles, one line. If we can get past one, then we're into a bigger, wider, open field of discovery.

[00:30:09] So that's the business part of it, is that we need these cases so that lawyers will take them because they can see that they can be successful. Are there criteria that have been established for them to be continued to trial yet? Is there anything like that that's been still in the process? Yeah. And it's all about the precedent.

[00:30:31] So, for example, in the case that I was talking about, I had a woman who was in a house, free to come and go. That made us go, huh, is this going to be enough to show coercion that she was coerced? There was lots of elements of it, but there were not a lot of cases out there.

[00:30:56] But then somebody, some brave, fabulous lawyer whose name I can't even remember, if I did, I would shout them out here. Because they took a case in which a person actually went home at night. They were free to travel. But there was all of this other coercion, and they made it past a motion to dismiss.

[00:31:20] And so, we could read the motion to dismiss decision, and we could see that in that case it was possible. And there are way more cases now in which it's possible. And so, that's what we need lawyers to understand coercion and to understand that it is possible to prove it. And that's why high-profile cases and documentaries on high-profile cases are so important.

[00:31:50] Absolutely. I have a question that's going to be tangential. It was related. It was related. I was just wondering what it was like for you as an expert and a lawyer in this space to, A, watch the vow, but B, see Keith Ranieri get 120 years plus? Five years per week. Yeah. My children will tell you I have a huge revenge gene. You know, so it's like, yeah, okay, good. Yeah. What was it like for me? I had to surgically remove mine. Yeah.

[00:32:23] You know, here's what I will tell you. I don't watch cult documentaries very much, but I've watched that one. And so, first of all, I found it very, I don't want to say enjoyable, but certainly something that I would watch. You know, when you do this stuff all day, you know, people will say, oh, did you see this? And you do see that. And I'm like, I need a break. Yeah, I do it all day.

[00:32:52] I don't think I want to do it at night. But I did watch the vow. And I will tell you a story about the vow. And I'm like, yeah.

[00:33:04] And I'm like, yeah. My sister and I were in this cult.

[00:33:31] And we were allowed out to go to some kind of funeral or something for a relative. So, they got out and went to the relative's house. And they were there for two or three days. And they watched the vow. And when they finished the second episode, the one sister looked at her other sister and she said, we're in a cult. And they got out. Wow. So, this is the power. And that's not the only one that has said that to me.

[00:34:01] People have said, when I saw this, I was like, oh, my God. This is a cult. It took that into the second episode. That's pretty good. I love that feedback. And truly, Carol, we've been doing this for eight years now? Seven. Seven years. We left almost nine years ago, NXIVM. And we have ups and downs. And we always wonder how long we will continue to do it.

[00:34:25] But hearing stuff like that certainly motivates us to keep going and knowing that we can contribute to the space. And precedent-wise. But also to know that people have laughed because of the vow and our podcast and stuff is incredibly motivating and rewarding to hear that. Time to have a little word from our sponsors.

[00:35:00] And that was a word from our sponsors. Let's get back to the show. I heard you in a previous podcast talking about the P. Diddy case. Oh, yeah. I wanted to ask about that, too. I kind of have a theory here. Oh, yes. And I'm asking you because you're kind of in the ground in this and would know.

[00:35:20] But my theory is, you know, as the Keith Raniere saga unfolded in front of us, it kind of was pretty clear to me he was low-hanging fruit and didn't have a lot of power. And the power that he was able to abuse was mostly convincing people to use their fortune to support him. P. Diddy, on the other hand, seems to me to walk in different circles.

[00:35:40] And I'm wondering if his connections to power, his blackmail of what seemed like people in positions of power were something that maybe could have protected him from the full force of the law. What's your take on that assessment and how, you know, it seems to me he was doing the exact same thing actually worse. Worse. Than Keith. How did he get less time? So. Yeah. Am I accurate? Is that fair?

[00:36:10] Well, and he did not get – yeah, he didn't get convicted on the sex trafficking thing. So, you know, I don't know. People have asked me this question. What I can tell you as a fact, because we don't know what the jury, you know, what the elements were. Yeah. Is that – I don't know. Yeah.

[00:37:07] Because it goes to where we want to go in the future. So, it was about the coercion. And look, the defense was able to at least create – now remember, again, we're talking about criminal. Yeah. Yeah. So, we're talking about a burden is, you know, beyond a reasonable doubt that she had consented. Right?

[00:37:36] So, this ties in with our conversation about what is consent. And this is where the testimony of the expert witness on coercion, I think, might have helped the jury to see it in a different way. To be able to tie all of the things together.

[00:37:58] There's been a lot of second guessing of the prosecutors, which I don't ever get involved in because God knows these things are hard enough – they're hard enough to bring. Yeah. And we're not always successful as lawyers, you know. So, I don't know. I think that it was a different case, a different jurisdiction. Yes? Or was it in New York? I forget now. I thought it was in California, but maybe not.

[00:38:27] Yes, I think you're right. It was. So, here we have – and the judge – I mean, I actually – another woman who's on the board of ICSA and I, she's a lawyer, a professor at St. John's University, the law school. She and I read the pleadings where the judge would not allow the expert to testify on coercion. And it was a blow for those of us who are working with that statute to not have a conviction on that. Devastating.

[00:38:55] On the other hand, they brought the case and he did not get 195 years as Raniere did.

[00:39:05] But it, I think, has helped, as the Winnery case did, to bring the issue of coercion and hopefully of coercion in the consent world so that it spills over not just in the human trafficking law but in sexual assault altogether. Well, I feel like one thing that's a real contradiction is this idea of free will and freedom and all these things that America is built on.

[00:39:34] And yet there's this religious freedom component which gives people a lot of range to be – I mean, all the things that we talk about in cults. So it's exploitable. Yeah. So – and like just the fact that Scientology is still running under a religion even though it's publicly said that they're not a religion but they're – like there's proof that they've said we're not a religion but we're going to pretend to be a religion so we get the tax write-offs. Like, what the hell? What's going on here?

[00:40:03] Why – like we're – I don't understand why some lawyer hasn't jumped on that and fixed this. Like – Well, Mike Reinder explained that. Mike – Yeah. I love it. I love it, the power that you have given to us lawyers. Could you just fix it, please, Carol? Well, so – yes, I – really, I'm free this afternoon so I'm positive I'll be able to do that. Let me tell you why it's not fixable.

[00:40:31] We have to work around it and that is because we have a whole – you know, when we were talking about legal precedence, before, you know, we have a whole centuries of legal precedence that say you cannot entangle yourself as a court in the religion and so – or in the beliefs.

[00:40:52] So let me give you a little example of this and how I ran afoul of it in my first naive cases that fortunately were not fatal. But – so looking at the Trafficking Act and there's a little bit of history there for me, which is that I saw in the New York Times that Harvey Weinstein – this is in 2019, 2020 –

[00:41:18] was a judge had determined that the plaintiffs against him in New York could continue under the Trafficking Act. And I was like, whoa, I thought I knew all about Harvey and what he was up to and I didn't realize that he was bringing women across state lines because I thought that trafficking meant, you know, trafficking.

[00:41:41] And so I actually had a conversation with the lawyers for them and they said, oh no, you know, this is almost nothing to do with trafficking. It has to do with force, fraud or coercion. And so I think that that was – so that when I went back into the practice of law then, I had this case and I was like, human trafficking. He was coerced. This was a cult. It was remote. It was like in an ashram away from everything.

[00:42:11] There was an authoritarian leader. There was no accountability. All of these things. And so – and also the perpetrator had said to her, you – this is not sex. This is your path to enlightenment. It's common, that path to enlightenment, amazingly enough.

[00:42:36] And so we were like – or I was like, oh, fraud. This is fraud. Right. And so we also pled coercion because there was plenty of coercion. And rapidly we found out and had to re-plead that a judge is not going to consider enlightenment fraud. Because the way it goes like this is, was it fraudulent? Well, I don't know. I'm the judge here.

[00:43:05] I'm like, I don't even know what enlightenment is. Right, right. I don't know whether that was fulfilled. Maybe the woman did get it. By the magical penis. Yes. I don't know if she did or she did. It was a magical penis, yep. Yes. Yes. And so long ago, the courts have decided that they are not going – they are not going to decide to Jesus walk on water. They are not going to decide anything that has to do with religious belief.

[00:43:33] But where we have to focus is on behavior. Because, and again, an example of bringing these cases and getting precedence. Just a few months ago, a judge in New York, Southern District issued a decision on a motion to dismiss saying against a religion, but against what you're talking about. Somebody who said, well, no, we're not a religion. But yet today we're a religion.

[00:44:03] And, you know, because we're being sued and we're going to take advantage of that, you know, that protection. And the judge said, basically, no, it's not about religion. It's about behavior. And when it's about behavior, we have lots and lots of precedents. Let's just look over here at the Catholic Church, for example. We have lots of precedents in which religions can be sued for their behavior.

[00:44:28] So that is – we just have to be smart and focus on behavior and not belief. If you believe that that's the path to enlightenment, you know, hey, as they say in Spanish, oh, hello. But – So that's where a lawyer will leave that component and focus on the behavior. Okay. Right. That's right. Would you also be comfortable commenting on the OneTaste trial and what happened there?

[00:44:57] And what's your thoughts on that case? Yeah, well, I think more than what happened is what's happening now, which is that it's up on appeal in the Second Circuit. And there's been a lot of talk that what happened there was just persuasion.

[00:45:17] And so a lot of – there has just been what I would call an effort to get that overturned.

[00:45:32] So I think that it is an example of how the issue of coercion has become – is beginning to become a kind of a battleground, if you will. You know, the people who say, like, where is the line between persuasion and coercion? That is why we need research. We need academics.

[00:46:02] We need lawyers. This, you know, ties in for me with what ICSA is doing because we must be able to show that what happened, for example, in NXIVM was not persuasion. Correct. It was coercion. What's the difference from a legal standpoint? I think it's a – yeah, well, that's what's different. I think it's on a spectrum.

[00:46:27] So, you know, the simple way of saying it is – and it's simple, so it doesn't cover the kind of – the area that it should cover. But the simple answer is, could you leave? Mm-hmm. And then you have to back up and say, well, okay, but physically – are we talking physically, could you leave? Because that's not the end of the inquiry.

[00:46:56] The inquiry was, could you leave psychologically? And that, again, takes us back to coercion, which is the very important element. I don't think that One Taste was persuasion. I think it was coercion.

[00:47:14] I think that if you look at some of the testimony from the One Taste trial, that there was a lot of pressure to do certain sexual acts with certain people in order to remain, which was in essence a job for people.

[00:47:33] I think we can understand as a society that this exists and that what we're asking is not just physically could you leave but psychologically could you leave? That's actually the point. It's hard to prove too because then you can say, oh, that's buyer's remorse. You didn't – Yeah. You can minimize there.

[00:47:54] You know, that reminds me of something that I was at the ICSA conference in July in San Diego and there's another lawyer there doing a presentation. And I sat in her presentation and it was absolutely brilliant because you mentioned buyer's remorse. And what her premise was, was that we understand low-level consumer coercion.

[00:48:21] So, we have all kinds of consumer laws that have to do with were you coerced? Did the salesman, you know, give you a line that you bought and it was untrue and you had 30 days to return the car that was a lemon? Those kinds of things. And yet here we are, we are struggling to understand the big coercion.

[00:48:50] Not the low-level coercion but the high-level coercion. Because we do – there are – she listed them. It was brilliant. There were, you know, a dozen laws or more having to do with us as consumers and being coerced into buying something.

[00:49:09] And yet we have nothing on coercion in larger areas of our lives that are truly harmful to us, you know, on more of a level than consumer. That's such a great point. That's actually a great tangent or transition to the question of, like, you know, what would you want to see?

[00:49:31] Like, what's your hope for the future and, like, you know, if there was an organization that could come in and put some of those guidelines in place, what would some of those laws look like? Well, I think that first of all, we need to expand out maybe the trafficking law. So it – if you think of it, it says, okay, you get a chance to prove coercion.

[00:50:00] And it doesn't say this, but in essence, if you prove the coercion, it negates consent. So in P. Diddy, they did not – the jury did not buy the coercion in the trafficking, in the sex trafficking. They said this was consensual or something. They didn't buy that argument. So I think that we need to build that out. We're talking about sex and labor.

[00:50:29] The only two things that coercion is actually a defense to. So I think that we need to, for example, when cults take all of your money, I think you should be able to have some kind of law that says, if you were coerced, show me the coercion.

[00:50:52] And if it – you know, if it is sufficient, then you have a – you have a civil case. What did you sign up for? You can recover your money. What did you sign up for and did they deliver? And I think that's – like when people always ask us, like, oh, what is a – what makes this a cult versus, you know, just a group that's, you know, some – like people still are having a hard time defining what it is.

[00:51:19] And we always point to, like, just the fact that the experts can't even agree and start to show the different patterns of control, like you mentioned at the beginning. If we can show that the bait and switch, right? Like that's the fraudulent part. You're signing up for – I guess you can't use enlightenment, but you're signing up for this program. And it's actually just some – that's just a lure.

[00:51:45] It's just a hook to get people in and dedicated and giving their life force, their energy, their sexuality, their money, all that stuff, so that the leader can do X, Y, and Z. Like, I guess that's how you have to start. Is that the proof? Like you have to prove that it's a lie? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I mean, that's – that's what you said, the bait and switch, Nippy. That's the bait and switch. Well, it illustrates the distinction between what the law you were saying for the low-level consumer.

[00:52:14] Like, that seems like pretty binary. You said this car would do this. It doesn't. Now there's accountability. When you sign up for something like enlightenment, that's abstract. Mm-hmm. Right? So guardrails on. Yeah. Like, well, you didn't deliver your abstract. Well, you stayed for a year or two. So you can minimize the abuse by saying, you know, well, you were there for three years, four years, or whatever. Twelve years. Twelve years.

[00:52:40] And if we're signing up for success and we weren't successful, then they could always say, well, we didn't do the work. Yeah. Some people were. Yeah. You didn't do it. Yeah. Yeah. You didn't do the work. So you can see it is absolutely not as cut and dried as the, you know, as the consumer area where your car either runs or it doesn't at the end of 30 days.

[00:53:05] You either revealed the right speedometer, you know, mileage or whatever. It is. It's trickier, which is why it has taken us longer. And frankly, yeah. But I think. Frankly, if Keith and Nuri hadn't branded people, it would have been really difficult to prove that he. Even though that was nothing to do with the case, but that's what got the law enforcement or like the New York Times to write the article was the branding and then the Eastern District. Yeah.

[00:53:34] Because it was, you know, very. And salacious. I mean. All the things. Yes. And salacious. Yeah. All of the things. So I guess that I would say that we need to start branching out from just labor and sex. There are other things. Right. It's going to be hard for all of the reasons that we've talked about.

[00:53:58] But what we need is like, for example, I met with a group not too long ago who's doing research, academic research on mandated shunning. Mandated shunning? Which is shunning. Yes. Which means that you are, if you leave the group, that the group members are required to not have any contact with you.

[00:54:28] And so that separates children from parents and from family and all of that. It has a devastating effect on people. But it's very difficult to address under the law. Yeah. Because we believe in people's right to shun people, if you will, and use that word, that they don't, you know.

[00:54:52] I mean, I'm sure everyone has a number of people in their lives that they effectively shun because they don't want to be around them. And that's okay. So drawing these lines is very difficult. It's like walking a tight line. Yeah, it's tricky because I guess there's some situations where it's for your own safety. You need to shun somebody. Like if you have an abusive family member. And that should be someone's right. And it's so hard to prove. Wow. Okay. So you retired multiple times.

[00:55:20] And then somehow you're now the president of ICSA. So how did that happen? And tell us about that. Yes. All right. So I went to ICSA, I don't know, maybe four or five years ago. Right when I discovered that these were maybe cubs. And it was something that hadn't occurred to me in the first couple of years of working in these situations.

[00:55:46] And so I put in a proposal to do some kind of presentation on the Human Trafficking Act because it's based on coercion. And so I got accepted to do that. And I went there for the first time. And I really immediately appreciated the kind of interdisciplinary nature of it. You know, that there were clinicians. There were survivors.

[00:56:13] I ran into one of my own clients there that I didn't know was even going to be there. So there were survivors there. There were families of survivors, advocates for survivors, academics who are doing research into all of these things. That we need in order to be able to put up an expert witness in front of a judge and get accepted as an expert and know about coercion.

[00:56:38] So all of these people were like coming at the issue from different perspectives. And I really appreciated that. So I went back the next year and had the same experience again. And then I guess the same with the third year. And then I was invited to join the board. So I thought, oh, well, you know, why not?

[00:57:08] And so unfortunately, that's a question that got me into this in the beginning. You know, long ago when somebody said, well, you do this investigation into this Buddhist group. I was like, well, why not? And so anyway, I got on the board and now I'm the president of the board. And so, you know, that's what happens. That's what happens. I think. But it's been really, really gratifying because I think we're at a moment.

[00:57:36] I think I said at the conference, I think coercion is having a moment. Part of it is the Nexingham trial. You know, part of it is the P. Diddy trial, even though it wasn't successful. We're seeing a lot of other cases in the civil arena that are taking on cults. We're seeing the New York Times did an investigation, for example, on Shen Yun, which is the dance troupe. Yes. Part of Falun Gong.

[00:58:05] I haven't covered that yet, but I've been wanting to. What about Epstein? Yes. So there you are. What's your take on Epstein? I'm sorry? And what happened there? Oh. Well, yes, that's, I mean, he's, some of the, you know, one of the things about the, the trafficking law is that it allows you to sue beneficiaries of the trafficking.

[00:58:34] And so there are a number, I mean, I think one of the big New York banks was settled a case for many, many millions of dollars as a, having been a beneficiary of Harvey, excuse me, Jeffrey Epstein's trafficking. So, yeah, I mean, that's what he was doing. That was pretty obvious in his case. I heard you mention in another podcast that it's important to have people who have different

[00:59:03] perspectives so that we can understand the opposition. Can you speak a little bit to that? Because I didn't know that that was sort of part of the mandate. That is so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so here's, so if you think about ICSA as a kind of umbrella organization, which, you know, the umbrella has all of these different groups underneath it, then we're trying to

[00:59:30] move the needle forward on coercion. And we need all of these groups. We need survivors. We need advocates. We need, you know, academics, clinicians, all of that. So, but when you look at them, they all have some different needs within their own circle of work that they're doing.

[00:59:52] So, it is important that we understand where the opposition to some of this comes from. For example, part of the academic community has been resistant to the issue and the naming of cults because in their view, they are new religious movements.

[01:00:22] And so, you can see, for example, for the academics that come to ICSA, they want to hear what their studies are doing, what they're finding, because they are going to be going up against those studies in some form or another. So, they need to understand what they are. It's the same thing for lawyers.

[01:00:47] If I could hear the strategy of an opposing lawyer who held a different view about the trafficking act than I do, you know, I would walk from Philadelphia to New York to be able to do that. It's very valuable to me. And so, but it's not valuable for survivors often to hear people who have a different, what feels like an apologist opinion.

[01:01:16] I think that it's hard for us because we're in an era right now of tremendous division and divisiveness to actually be able to understand the benefit of understanding, even if not agreeing, with another point. I couldn't agree more. It's so important.

[01:01:42] And we've faced that in our own podcast as we're, we, that's, I don't know if you know this about us, but we very actively have, it's not that we're neutral. We're not neutral at all. We're very clear on, we were against abuses of power and we are, you know, against a number of things, but we don't publicly state our politics, right? Like, and not for the purpose of losing money or losing audience, but we want to be able to be a safe

[01:02:10] place to land if anyone comes out of an extreme political group on either side of the aisle. We want, we don't want to lose, we want to give people on in the whole spectrum, the tools to go, am I in something coercive? Is my leader a narcissist? Has this gone too far? Can I leave this group? Is this black and white thinking? Do I feel righteous? Just like we want people to have that. If we say, oh, you're this. So therefore you're in a cult, then that's going to push them away. And there's other variables as well.

[01:02:37] Most people go to podcasts and the internet to validate their perspective rather than challenge it. If you come to ours, you know, we're going to challenge your perspective a little bit. Also, a lot of times when you don't agree with someone, it devolves into character assassinations and public shaming. And name calling. Which is what, which is what we want to avoid. And I think making any sort of political stance provokes that out of people because a lot of people aren't mature enough to sit with a different opinion.

[01:03:05] And so in order to reach people, we have to kind of subjugate our own opinions. And who needs another opinion in this day and age anyway? And it's not why I do. You know, that is such a great point. I don't. So we love that you do that. Because another opinion is needed. Yes. You know, here's what it is also, is that every year there is some kind of little kerfuffle or something.

[01:03:33] You know, so somebody says, well, you accepted this person to be a speaker, but this person hasn't had exactly my opinion, which is what I think is the exactly right opinion. We're like, no, good for you here, you know, and the reality is, if you think about it, Nippy, what you said reminded me of this. We are not in the business of making decisions for survivors and taking away their own agency.

[01:04:02] That's what happened to them in cults. What we're saying is this is what this is about. If you, if this is going to trigger you and make your life unhappy, don't go there. But we're not going to keep you from hearing it. We're going to tell you what it is. And if some people felt that they wanted to hear this, that it was useful to hear another perspective. And if you don't, it's okay too.

[01:04:30] But it's not for ICSA to make that decision because that was, those are decisions that are made for people in cults all the time. We're not going to do that. That's great. I appreciate that very much. Okay, so let's do a little plug for ICSA. I just saw today that it was announced Norway. That's exciting. Yes. Because you do what you do, one in Europe, one in North America, back and forth, right? Is that? Yes, more or less.

[01:04:58] We're an international group. And we are now in this conference supporting a lot of work that's being done in the Scandinavian countries that we are not aware of, right? Because we're not there and because we're not, you know, hearing about it.

[01:05:19] So being in Spain, for example, in Barcelona allowed us to hear a great deal of what the Spanish government is doing. And there's a lot of it. We can learn from that. So we're interested in the, what Norway, Finland, Sweden are doing, Denmark, and the area of coercion.

[01:05:48] And because it helps to inform us about what we could be doing. So Nippy, you asked me earlier about what kind of laws should we be having? I'm like, I need to get over there and figure out what are they doing? How are they dealing with it? The Australians are doing some very good work. The folks in New Zealand as well.

[01:06:09] So we need to expand our vision in order to include other countries that are, how they are dealing with this stuff. So, yes, I wasn't aware. Thank you for letting me know that. I wasn't aware that it just got the email. Yeah, I just got the email. It's so exciting. Oh, my God. And Oslo. Oslo. I understand it. And I'll be totally honest. We definitely, we will come one year. This year I turn 50 at the end of June.

[01:06:37] So I, and I'm hoping to be back in Canada for that. So I don't know if I can come back to, but we'll figure it out. It's usually over the July 4th, like the first five days of July, right? You know, it's going to be a little, I think it'll be earlier this year. I don't think we have the date totally nailed down. We wanted to put out the announcement, but the lot of reasons why, you know, when I tell you that the Norwegians take off five weeks in July and August, then, you know, you'll

[01:07:06] know that we should have been living in Norway. But. Well then. So we may do it at the end of June. Maybe it's a possibility. Because I'm planning on being in Greece for my 50th in mid-June. So maybe I can tag on a trip to Oslo, but it might just be me because Nippy's got the, the, the cult of the, of the, the sports industrial complex of, of, of spring and summer baseball. So that's his. My son's going to be a pro athlete at age 12. So that's where Nippy will be, but maybe I'll come and represent.

[01:07:36] We'll divide and conquer. We'll figure it out. So we are actually working with an organization that helps nonprofits like ICSA develop sponsors and funding of different programs, which is what we must have in order to, you know, kind of move forward. And so putting it right there, it is absolutely not sure it'll be possible this year, but maybe, you know.

[01:08:03] And if I, if I, if anyone comes to us through the podcast, I will connect them with ICSA. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. We, we definitely have a lot of things that we are now going to be able to do. We needed to do some kind of modernizing and infrastructure building. And now this is, we have already kind of been onboarded by the group that's going to be helping us.

[01:08:31] And we're doing an entire year that is devoted to raising funds. And, well, we're super grateful to ICSA and your team has reviewed both of our books and, and put it in, put us in the newsletter. So that's very kind. And we hope to be able to return the support through, through this podcast and our new book and, and whatever. Hopefully in person. It'd be so great to meet in person. I just think it's, yeah. It would be.

[01:08:59] Is there anything that we missed that, that you feel you need to say that we've, that we didn't ask you or do we cover, cover it all? Um, I think in the beginning you said my kind of hopes for the future. And so I think I would, I would just say that I do, I feel very optimistic about the future

[01:09:23] and that I, what I think what all of this is, what you are doing, what other, what Mark is doing, what the academics are doing, what the clinicians are doing are all tied together into a kind of, um, eco structure. That means that we're going to be able to, we need to be able to support and believe survivors because without them, we can't do anything.

[01:09:50] I can't go to the law and, and litigate something that I don't have a client for. I need that person. I need clinicians who are going to help them understand what happened to them and how to process it. All of these, um, things we need to create because the law alone is not going to do it. We have, there are too many obstacles in the, in the, in the short term. The law is not a finished product.

[01:10:18] And so what we need to do is, no, it isn't. And in fact, it is, um, it's not going to be able to deal with some of the things that we talked about, the first amendment and religion and those kinds of things. So we need to work around that and build a kind of structure and we need to do it internationally. We, right. Because we need to have a lot of force. We need to be able to share ideas. And I think that's happening.

[01:10:47] So I feel, um, I feel that maybe for my 15th retirement, they no longer even talk about a party anymore. You know, somebody said, oh, you're retiring? Are they doing a party? My husband was like, are you kidding? She'll be back to work on Monday. It's not even worth a cake, you know, but for my 15th, maybe I'm going to move into that different, wider sphere, um, than the law and, um, and see what, what we can do.

[01:11:16] But I think we're building the foundation for that right now. And thanks to you, it's, it's thanks to people like you and thanks to you that that's the case. Well, thank you. Happy to help our little, our little piece of the puzzle. Um, and I think most people would hope that you never retire because obviously your work is, is very important. And, uh, I hope we get to hug and high five in person very soon. Oh, yes. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks, Carol. Thank you. Thank you.