Rick Ross of the Cult Education Institute on Cults, Inside Out

In this episode of the Lions of Liberty Podcast, host Marc Clair welcomes in cult expert and deprogramming specialist, Rick Ross of the Cult Education Institute. Rick describes how he first became entrenched in the subject of cults when he realized his grandmother was being preyed upon by one at her nursing home. Since then, Ross has become one of the leading specialists on cults in the United States, and has worked to "deprogram" many who have fallen under the influence of destructive cults. Rick describes the defining characteristics of cults, and how they differ from mainstream religions. Rick and Marc discuss the types of people who are vulnerable to cults, how cult leaders exert such a strong influence over their followers, and just how those who have fallen into a cult can be deprogrammed. In the wrap-up rant, Marc has some thoughts of his own on how cult-like thinking has become pervasive in many aspects of our society. Marc then shares a personal story about his own experience with a cult. Rick Alan Ross is a private consultant, lecturer, and cult intervention specialist. He began his work as an anti-cult activist and community organizer in 1982. Ross first became concerned about controversial groups and movements in response to a radical religious group that had covertly targeted his grandmother’s nursing home. Since that time he has raised awareness about cults and facilitated more than five hundred interventions to rescue people from cultic situations. Ross is one of the leading experts on cults in the world today. He has consulted with the FBI, the BATF, and various other law enforcement agencies, as well as the governments of Israel and China, on the subject of cults. Ross has been qualified, accepted and testified as an expert court witness in eleven different states within the United States including US federal court. He has worked as an expert analyst for CBS News, CBC of Canada, and Nippon and Asahi in Japan. Ross has lectured at more than 30 universities and colleges including the University of Chicago, Dickinson College, Carnegie Mellon, Baylor, Wuhan University of China, Assumption University of Thailand and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He has also been published within peer-reviewed academic journals on the topic of cults. Regarding his cult intervention work Ross states that historically about 75 percent of the people that he conducts an intervention with decide to leave the group by the end of such an effort. He has done interventions across the United States and around the world. Ross did two successful interventions with the notorious Branch Davidians led by self-styled messiah David Koresh. Ross has appeared in fourteen documentaries and has been interviewed and quoted in media all over the world. For more information about this, and much more: www.CultEducation.com www.twitter.com/RickAlanRoss