This is a massive and emotionally-charged topic. I have about a thousand links and quotes scattered. This will eventually be quite a large thread. Forced-Kidnapping deprogramming has since become a crime in most countries, as it should, but I believe it still happens in Korea and Japan. And in the 1970s and 1980s, some courts and juries in Western countries were sympathetic to the plight of parents of members. At the moment, I've yet to post articles exploring the dark side of forced deprogramings, but I certainly intend to.
Dec. 3, 1978: Parents Given Aid In Moon‐Sect Fight (https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/03/archives/parents-given-aid-in-moonsect-fight-connecticut-neighbors.html) (The New York Times)
QuoteCarolyn and Elton Helander have spent more than $60,000 in a four‐year physical and legal battle with the Unification Church over control of their 21‐year‐old daughter, and their friends and neighbors are stepping in to help them.
"It's just devastating to lose a daughter like this," said Mrs. Helander. The daughter, Wendy, was a 1974 honor graduate of Guilford High School. "It just finishes you." ...
A month after she returned to her parents for the last time, she drove into town on an errand, leaving a pot of barley soup bubbling on the stove and bread rising in the kitchen. The car was found later, but not Wendy. Her parents, who suspected that she had been frightened into rejoining the group by Moon followers who were raising money in Guilford that day, then went to court to seek her return. They charged that she had become "pale and anemic" and that her ability to reason had been "extensively impaired."
April 13, 1980: An Ulster County Grand Jury Dismissed Unlawful Imprisonment Charges (https://www.upi.com/Archives/1980/11/13/An-Ulster-County-grand-jury-dismissed-unlawful-imprisonment-charges/5927342939600/) (UPI)
QuoteAn Ulster County grand jury dismissed unlawful imprisonment charges Thursday against a cult deprogrammer and three others who had been charged with kidnapping a follower of the Rev. Sun-myung Moon. The grand jury dismissed the charges against Galen Kelly, his wife Elizabeth and two associates, Eric Shufelt and ex-Moonie Paul Suart-Kregor.
Related to the above:
August 2024: Galen Kelly Obituary (https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/galen-kelly-obituary?id=55782895) (Legacy)
Oct. 28, 2017: Retired Doctor Reminisces About Rescuing Moonies Cult Followers in the 1970s (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-28/retired-doctor-kidnapped-moonie-cult-followers-in-1970s/9092394) (ABC)
QuoteIn 1979, Dr Stuart-Kregor's stepson was spending his Christmas holidays in California with a friend. "We subsequently found out he was befriended by a young couple at the bus station when he arrived in San Francisco," she said.
"They asked him to coffee and then to dinner, where by some remarkable coincidence they had someone speaking about the subject my stepson was studying ... it just went from there. "When we hadn't heard from him, we called the police and then we rang friends in America and Canada to see if they had any idea what could have happened to him.
"They immediately said 'Oh he's been picked up by one of the cults'." That might elicit just a shrug of the shoulders now, but in 1979 being "picked up by one of the cults" would send a shiver through any parent. The previous year, almost 1,000 followers of the self-appointed Reverend Jim Jones, were part of a mass murder-suicide at that cult's settlement in Guyana.
Dr Stuart-Kregor said she was told by police they couldn't search for her stepson because he was an adult. By the time the family arrived, the British consulate had established the young man was indeed with the Moonies. A staff member took them to the group's property just outside of the city.
"[The Moonies] said they'd never heard of my stepson, they didn't have any idea of what we were talking about ... so we were walking through a dormitory and I saw my dilly bag," Dr Stuart-Kregor said. "That bag was crucial, if I hadn't have seen it, they just would have continued to deny and deny and deny, and we'd have never seen him again.
"When we finally saw him, I just couldn't believe that someone had changed so much. "He said, 'hi, what are you doing here?'. I was just furious and I said 'what the hell do you think we are doing here? We've been worried out of our minds about you'."
With the help of former Moonie members, the Stuart-Kregors spent 16 months trying to get their son, and others out. In the end, with the tacit approval of local authorities, the Stuart-Kregors snatched their son off the streets of San Francisco. "We'd hired an unmarked white van with a sliding door and no side windows ... it was my job to slide the door shut," Dr Stuart-Kregor said. "We stepped well outside of the law. We had to, we wouldn't have got him back otherwise." Dr Stuart-Kregor's stepson eventually returned to his studies and went on to a distinguished professional career.
Traces of a 1981 documentary - no longer online:
1981: Whose Mind Is It Anyway (https://www.macearchive.org/films/whose-mind-it-anyway) (Mace Archive)
QuoteThe film centres on the case of Paul Stuart-Kregor, a student from the University of Bangor who had to be forcibly removed from the Moonies religious cult in America and 're-programmed'. Sue Jay talks to Paul about his experiences with the Unification Church and to his parents Ian and Rosemary who paid a New York based detective Galen Kelly to carry out the 'kidnapping' in San Francisco. Sue also talks to Galen about the ethics of his job; Michael Marshall who is a spokesman for the Unification Church and to Carol Williams who is a counsellor for the Deo Gloria Trust who do not advocate de-programming; and to sociologist Eileen Barker from the London School of Economics who has made a study of cults.
Slightly different angle - the counselling of former members after exiting:
March 23, 2026: Why I Love Counselling Cult Survivors (https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/w3ct6wr5) (BBC Radio - 41 Minutes)
QuoteWhen Gillie Jenkinson was 18 years old and studying at secretarial college, a woman approached her with a promise: God's eternal love. Captivated by the idea, Gillie threw herself into the evangelical charismatic Christian movement and eventually into a radical offshoot she calls 'The Community'.
Life inside was suffocating. Members surrendered all their money to the group, lived together under one roof, and obeyed their leader without question. Disobedience, or even the suspicion of 'sin', was met with physical punishment. Gillie herself was beaten with a bamboo cane. It was amid this brutality that she found an unexpected kindness in a new arrival named Tony.
After seven years of total devotion, Gillie saw The Community collapse. As it fell apart, Gillie confessed her love to Tony. They escaped together and married, but found themselves gravitating toward other churches she considered controlling. It would take another 14 years before they finally left.
Since then, Gillie has trained as a pastoral counsellor and earned a master's degree in Gestalt psychotherapy. After two residencies at the Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center, she decided to specialise in counselling cult survivors. She has also written a book, Walking Free from the Trauma of Coercive, Cultic and Spiritual Abuse (https://amzn.to/47AmDDX).