To Another Planet--and Back

Cynthia Slaughter was 24, not long out of the University of Texas at Austin, when she fell under the sway of the Moon cult. After two months, she was deprogrammed by Ted Patrick last September, and now frequently speaks out against Moon. She wrote this account of her experience for TIME:

A blind advertisement in the Denver Post read: "Sincere, conscientious person interested in the betterment of mankind call this number..." Out of curiosity I called, and the young woman who answered explained that she worked for an organization similar to the Peace Corps that operated out of a community center in Boulder. She asked me to come for an interview.

The center was located across from the University of Colorado in an old Chi Omega sorority house. I talked with a young man from Austria named Lorenz Wuerrer. He said that he belonged to a youth movement and asked me if I'd like to come to a weekend retreat to learn more about it. I really liked the atmosphere in the place. Little did I know that my mind had begun a journey from which it might never return.

Starting at 9 a.m. on Saturday, a group of about 15 of us heard lectures lasting all day long. That night we were told that the end of the world was at hand, but before this, the Second Coming of Christ would occur. We were also told that the person who had brought these new truths to the world was Sun Myung Moon, a Korean. When I wanted to leave, I was told that Satan would try to pull me away from God because I had been chosen to build the kingdom of heaven. I felt that someone had placed a psychological bomb on my head, and if I left it would explode.

That week I was driven to spend a few days on a farm in Noble, Okla. We heard lectures every day, then worked and sang in the yard. We all ended up the week by joining, then went back to our own centers. When I arrived in Boulder, I was allowed to go into the Prayer Room to see Moon's picture. We prayed out loud for 20 minutes, heard a leader read from Moon's works, sang songs, then bowed before Moon's picture, saying, "Good morning, true parents" (Moon and his wife, we were taught, are the true parents of mankind).

The schedule was always the same: up at 6:30, prayer meeting, breakfast with more songs and prayers, then fund raising. We all went in a van together to the towns around Boulder, singing and praying. Even if we could only wrangle a penny from someone, it was a victory for God. The more money we raised the more God-centered we were. We even had to go to bars at night to raise money, arriving home anywhere from 11 o'clock to 1:30 a.m. After two weeks of this I was so tired that, as I arose in the morning, I would fall against the wall. In five weeks of fund raising, I made $3,000 for the organization.

At the end of August I had to return home to handle some unfinished business. The day after I arrived, we-were eating breakfast when the doorbell rang. Suddenly a black man entered the room and introduced himself as Ted Patrick. The church had warned us that Patrick kidnaped people, gagged, beat them and tried to "deprogram" them.

Patrick and I argued and yelled at each other for eight hours. He showed me documents from Korea about Moon, and played tapes from other deprogrammed Unification members. He asked if I would kill for Moon, I said, "Yes, if he asked me to," although I had never thought of this before.

What finally affected me was a Bible passage that Patrick read to me: "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." As I started to think, I felt as though a light had been turned on in the room and a burden lifted from my shoulders. I really was free.

The months that followed were hard. Adjusting to the outside world again was like arriving on another planet. Driving my car, balancing my checkbook, watching TV and reading books besides Moon's Divine Principle were strange. It took a long time to fill the vacuum that had been created inside me. It was like withdrawing from a drug. Since then, I have met many others who have left the movement with the fear and guilt I experienced; their stories are almost identical to mine.

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