Quote:
Originally Posted by jillio
I have a good friend that works at a treatment center designed to treat ex-cult members. They get people from all over the world. It is the only mental health facility in the world that specializes in this kind of treatment.
I've been talking to her quite a bit since the children were taken from the ranch. She seems to think that they have a very good chance for recovery if they are provided with the proper support and treatment, but it will take awhile. All of the media attention and court cases, etc. just serve to reinforce everything they have been taught about the outside world right at first. A therapist has to be able to develop trust with a client, and it takes a long time to get an ex-cult member to trust anyone outside the cult.
I find the whole situation to be incredibly sad. I have visited the facility where she works, and they do amazing work for people like this.
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Yeah, cult members are often the hardest to work with since those are usually long-term "brainwashing" and takes a longer time to "un-brainwash" them.
A lot of those kids probably thought that everything that happened in the cult was okay because that's how things are supposed to be.
I've read about kids who were abused for a very long time by their parents. Then when they are removed from home and placed in a foster home, they still act the same. If they do something wrong, they will bend over getting ready for their foster parents to give them a beating. The foster parents will be like, "Huh? What are you doing?" "Oh, I'm bending over so you can paddle me." "Oh, no... we don't do things that way!" "No? But I did something wrong!"
I knew a foster child who was so severely verbally and physically abused that he never thought about his own birthday. When someone asked him how old he was, he kept thinking he was 5 when he was really 6.