Educational tool only. All groups exist on a spectrum of control. Individual experiences vary. Based on publicly available reports, ex-member accounts, court records, and expert analyses — not medical or legal advice.
13 posts on CLCI Hub. See all posts.
A deep-dive case study of how NXIVM engineered exit costs — from executive-coaching curriculum to blackmail 'collateral' — and what the federal trial record reveals about manufactured consent.
Jonestown was not one decision but hundreds of small ones. A case study of how Peoples Temple accumulated control over 23 years — and why the last step looked unavoidable from inside.
More than 400 bodies were exhumed from Kenya's Shakahola forest in 2023–24. A case study of Good News International Church — date-setting, medical denial, and the regulatory gap it exposed.
Hong Xiuquan's God Worshipping Society conquered half of China and governed tens of millions. A case study of BITE-Model mechanics operating at the scale of a state — and the deadliest war of the 19th century.
From Holiday Magic's abusive trainings to LuLaRoe's inventory crisis — a cross-case study of the multi-level-marketing control pattern and the legal rulings that keep failing to kill it.
Aum Shinrikyo went from a Tokyo yoga circle to nerve-gas attacks in under a decade. A case study of the escalation ladder — and the doctrinal move that made murder an act of salvation.
Vatican dissolution of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (2024) followed twenty years of survivor testimony and joins a longer pattern: Legionaries of Christ, Society of Saint John, Miles Jesu, and the Focolare investigation. This piece traces the shared structural pattern.
South Korea has produced one of the world's most prolific Christian-NRM traditions — the Unification Church, Shincheonji, WMSCOG, JMS/Providence, Grace Road, Manmin Central, Salvation Sect. This piece traces the historical and cultural conditions that made it possible.
The February 2024 Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in the Two by Twos (Australia) documented systemic child-sexual-abuse cover-up across a century of operation. This piece explains what the inquiry found and how the deliberately-nameless 'Truth' sect enabled the pattern.
Five years of US evangelical celebrity-pastor accountability cases — MacArthur, Zacharias, Morris, Lentz, IHOPKC/Bickle, Driscoll — reveal a shared structural pattern: elder-board accountability failure, NDA-mediated cover-up, and post-disclosure institutional response.
Warren Jeffs has been incarcerated since 2011 in a Texas prison, serving life plus 20 years for child sexual assault. The FLDS still operates as a 6,000-10,000-member multi-state polygamous network under his smuggled-from-prison directives.
Modern Indian godmen — Sadhguru, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Ram Rahim Singh, Asaram Bapu, Nithyananda — operate at substantial global scale in the 2020s. The 2024 wave of Indian Supreme Court intervention is the most consequential public scrutiny in a generation.
Gloriavale (NZ, 1969-present) and Twelve Tribes Communities (1972-present) are the clearest contemporary high-control communal Christianity cases. The 2022-2024 NZ Employment Court rulings and the 2013 Bavarian raids are the most recent state-action records.