The Providence cult that Elizabeth was a part of was one Ross was well-acquainted with and had been following for some time. In 1986, Ross left to become a full-time private consultant and cult deprogrammer. Here, too, Ross discovered that prisoners were a "prime target for cult groups." He started designing a curriculum and teaching about destructive cults through the Phoenix Bureau of Jewish Education. A year later, Ross started working for the Jewish Family and Children's Services in Phoenix in the prison system creating social services for Jewish inmates. He wrote up a brochure on the cult phenomenon in Arizona. Outraged, Ross campaigned to have the group's activities stopped, bringing the attention of the group to the home director and the local Jewish community. It was on those visits in 1982 that Ross felt the nudge towards pursuing what would become his life work-work his "bubbie" could be proud of. The message struck a chord at a moment Ross describes as his "rock bottom," and after getting out of jail, he started visiting his grandmother in her nursing home every week. Messianic Jewish missionaries became employed and started threatening Jewish residents, many of whom had survived persecution in Europe, that they'd "burn in hell if they didn't convert." While in jail waiting for a sentence, Ross remembers a rabbi encouraging him to get back in touch with his Jewish faith and to give his grandmother something to be proud of.Ī fringe religious group was targeting the residents in his grandmother's nursing home.
Ross was sentenced to four years probation. Then, an elaborate jewelry heist that involved a fake bomb threat to get $50,000 worth of jewelry. First, there was an attempted burglary of a model home with a friend, which was pled down to trespassing. Want more psychology and health stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist.Īfter high school, during a stretch of unemployment, Ross fell into a brief criminal career. He skipped school so often that his father sent him to a military academy. He grew up in Phoenix his father was a Jewish plumber, his mother worked at the Jewish Community Center, and as a child he was a bright but restless truant. There was nothing about Ross' early years that foreshadowed a latent interest in cult deprogramming. (The International Cultic Studies Association estimates there are 10,000 cultic groups in North America, up from 5,000 in 2003.)
He's written multiple books about deprogramming, has testified as an expert in dozens of court cases, has been sued and tracked by Keith Raniere, the founder of NXIVM, and was on David Koresh's "enemy list." With over 500 interventions throughout the world under his belt and a 70% success rate, he is considered an expert in his field as cults continue to increase in numbers. For the last 40 years, he's made a career out of assisting family members and friends who hire him to help loved ones leave a cult. Ross is the preeminent cult deprogrammer in the United States and the head of the Cult Education Institute, a nonprofit library with archived information about cults. Walking in right behind him in a suit and carrying a briefcase was a man she didn't recognize, a man her mother had secretly paid and flown in from the United States: Rick Ross, a cult deprogrammer.
They reluctantly allowed her mother to take her to the emergency room, where the attending physician found her at risk of heart failure if she didn't get medical help.Įlizabeth - who prefers to keep her surname anonymous for safety reasons - was at her parent's home for several weeks recovering when she got a visit from her uncle. At 5'10'' and just under 110 pounds, Elizabeth's weight loss and daily panic attacks had become so acute that even her housemates - members of the notorious Providence cult, a Christian religious group founded in Korea in 1978 - couldn't spiritualize it anymore. But it was in a hospital bed, laying under her mother's watchful eye, that was her greatest torture. had been living with a high-control, dangerous cult founded by a convicted rapist.
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