Born into Children of God, Now She Demands Justice

 

Cult abuse, mind control, brainwashing, child exploitation, Children of God survivors, religious trauma, coercive control, trafficking, second-generation cult survivors; In this powerful episode of Cults, Culture, and Coercion, Steven Hassan speaks with psychologist and survivor Maria Esguerra about growing up inside one of the most extreme high-control cult groups.

Dr. Hassan welcomes Maria Esguerra, a registered psychologist from Australia who was born and raised in the Children of God (also known as The Family). As a second-generation cult survivor of one of the most oppressive cults, Children of God, Maria brings both lived experience and clinical expertise to a deeply important conversation about cult abuse, trauma, and holding cults accountable for the damage they've caused.

Together, they explore the realities of being raised in a high-control, authoritarian cult environment, including systemic child abuse, lack of medical care, exploitation, and the long-term psychological consequences for survivors. Maria shares how her work with support groups and advocacy aids cult survivors, including helping cult victims pursue justice and speaking before government inquiries into cults.

This episode examines:

• The distinction between adult coercion and child victimization in cults
• Why minimizing abuse or “both sides” framing can retraumatize survivors
• The role of governments, institutions, and mental health systems in failing survivors
• The concept of trafficking, exploitation, and coercive control within cult environments
• The importance of centering victims—especially second-generation survivors
• Accountability, justice, and the ethics of healing in the aftermath of abuse

Maria also discusses her work in mental health and trauma-informed care, highlighting how systemic failures continue to impact survivors who were denied basic rights like education, legal identity documentation, and medical treatment.

🔗 Learn more about Maria Esguerra and her work: https://www.mariaesguerra.com/

Chapters:

• You Can’t Be Nuanced About Abuse” (Opening Statement)
• Born Into the Children of God: Lived Experience
• Inside the Cult: Abuse, Exploitation & Control
• Escaping & Why Survivors Still Lack Justice
• Trafficking, Coercion & Criminal Reality of Cults
• Cult Apologists & Denial of Abuse
• Survivor Gaslighting & “Minimizing Harm” Debate
• Why Victims Must Be Centered First
• Brainwashing vs. Personal Responsibility
• Identity Loss, No Documents & Lifelong Impact
• Crime vs. Coercion: Where Accountability Lies
• The Danger of “Neutrality” in Abuse Cases
• What Real Accountability & Restitution Looks Like
• Predators in Cults: Who They Attract & Why
• Systemic Failure: Governments Ignoring Abuse
• Parents, Power & Complicity in Cult Systems
• Ongoing Trauma & Ethical Failures in Therapy
• Survivor Advocacy & Fighting for Justice
• Final Reflections: Listening to Survivors

Mohawk Mothers announce injunction motion

 

The Mohawk Mothers, also known as the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnistensera, say they will be filing an interlocutory motion with Quebec’s Superior Court in the coming weeks, the latest move in a years-long court battle concerning excavation work at the sites of the former Royal Victoria Hospital and the Allan Memorial Institute.

The Mothers and their supporters gathered on Tuesday morning, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, addressing the media before Montreal’s Every Child Matters march.

A group of more than 50 people attended the event, wearing orange and occupying the grass in front of the Allan Memorial Institute, where the illegal psychiatric experiments were undertaken on human subjects in the 1950s and 1960s.

Those experiments include a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) mind control project known as MK-Ultra, and at least one survivor of the facility, Lana Ponting, has given sworn affidavits in court testifying that she believes Indigenous victims were killed and buried at the site.

That site and the neighbouring site of the former Royal Victoria Hospital are part of the New Vic Project, led by McGill University and the Societe quebecoise des infrastructures (SQI). The project, which was recently renamed “The Sustainability Park” will serve as a teaching and learning site for multi-disciplinary researchers.

The Mothers have long claimed that both the Allan Memorial Institute site and the Royal Victoria Hospital site could include the unmarked graves of Indigenous people, a claim that they say is backed up by findings from an S4 Subterra Grey Probe, a type of soil analysis designed to detect potential burials, as well as alerts from human remains detection dogs.  (more...)

Mohawk Mothers announce injunction motion

Tavistock: The Creepy Forces Behind the New Age

 

Exploring Tavistock's history, MK Ultra ties, occult influences, transgender scandals, New Age technocracy, Game B, and Hegel's gnostic dialectic for control.

Key topics:

➤ The dark history of the Tavistock Institute, from its origins in 1920 treating shell shock (PTSD) and ties to British War Propaganda Bureau, to its role in transgender clinics, MK Ultra mind control experiments, and group dynamics research.

➤ World War II involvement: "Invisible College," Operation Phoenix restructuring, influence on corporate culture, organizational psychology, and creating change agents.

➤ Connections to occultism (e.g., Rosicrucianism), utilitarian principles antithetical to Judeo-Christian values, and the New Age movement as a "technological manifestation of the Age of Aquarius" via Game B.

➤ Hegel's dialectic as a "gnostic Jacob's Ladder" for control, freedom vs. free will, social emotional learning for global citizens, and combating manipulation through strong self-identity.

➤ Promotion of Courtenay's upcoming book on Hegel's dialectic.

Read Courtenay’s Article: https://courtenayturner.substack.com/p/hegels-dialectic-a-gnostic-jacobs

A Class Action Against MKUltra Was Just Certified

 

The Canadian medical establishment is not what you think it is.

Canada’s ‘father of abortion’ was a Holocaust survivor. Did trauma make him a killer?

 

It has long haunted me how Henry Morgentaler, sometimes referred to as Canada’s “father of abortion,” survived Nazi concentration camps only to go on to perpetrate similar horrors against the smallest and most vulnerable members of the human family: preborn children.

How did a Jewish Holocaust survivor from Poland—someone who endured the worst of man’s inhumanity to man at the infamous Nazi camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and later Dachau—go on to dehumanize and destroy tens of thousands of preborn human beings, robbing them of their most fundamental right: the right to life?

Morgentaler’s biographies provide vivid accounts of his survival, though some critics question the credibility of those accounts. Eleanor Wright Pelrine, in her 1975 book Morgentaler: The Doctor Who Couldn’t Turn Away, wrote about how Nazis rounded up the 21-year-old Morgentaler from a Jewish ghetto in August 1944, herding him along with his mother and younger brother, Mumek (Mike), onto an overflowing train bound for the dreaded Auschwitz-Birkenau camp where over a million people were murdered.

It was during the “selection” process after arriving that Morgentaler saw his mother for the last time. He and his brother were selected for work, their mother for the gas chambers. Prisoners had their belongings confiscated, they were stripped naked, shaved from head to foot, and provided striped prison garb along with wooden shoes. A huge chimney nearby spewed forth black, stinking smoke, a brief testimony lingering in the sky to those who were murdered in the gas chambers and were later cremated.

Morgentaler was soon transferred to the Dachau work camp, where—in a deliberate effort to dehumanize prisoners—he was stripped of his name and identified only by a number: 95077. The camp routine consisted of 12 hours of hard labor and 5-6 hours of sleep. Food, consisting of watery soup and bread, was rationed and insufficient. Prisoners died from malnutrition, exhaustion, and exposure. There were constant beatings. Fear was everywhere. One day, Morgentaler, starving and sick, reported to the infirmary. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror. The emaciated figure he saw staring back at him filled him with horror.

“I looked like death incarnated—and I started to cry. I thought it must be the end,” he recounted.  (more...)

Canada’s ‘father of abortion’ was a Holocaust survivor. Did trauma make him a killer?

COINTELPRO Operations Helped Create Today’s Dystopian Political Environment

 

Saboteurs working for U.S. intelligence agencies created violent cult-like groups in the 1970s, such as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), which helped marginalize the political left

Today’s bleak political landscape, with two essentially right-wing parties and no effective political opposition, has its roots in the McCarthy-era and Cold War FBI counter-intelligence operations (COINTELPRO) whose purpose was to infiltrate and destroy the political left.

One of the tactics adopted under COINTELPRO was to infiltrate left-wing parties and groups—like the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Black Panther Party, and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)—in order to foment divisions within them and internecine conflict.

Agent provocateurs were planted who would adopt extremist positions and promote violent and counter-productive protest activities or initiatives that would alienate the public and destroy the credibility of legitimate protest movements.

Further, U.S. intelligence agencies created violent cult-like groups that adopted leftist rhetoric while carrying out criminal activities in order to further provide the state with a pretext to expand police powers.

Brad Schreiber’s book, Revolution’s End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA offers important insights into the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a radical California-based group in the 1970s which kidnapped Patty Hearst, heiress of the wealthy Hearst family, and went on a crime spree that helped to turn off the public from left-wing causes.  (more...)

COINTELPRO Operations Helped Create Today’s Dystopian Political Environment

Exposing Minnesota Shooter Vance Boelter's CULT TIES

 

In this urgent episode, Dr. Steven Hassan and special guest John Collins expose the disturbing truth behind the Minnesota mass shooting carried out by Vance Boelter, who murdered two people and critically injured two others in a targeted attack. Boelter reportedly had a “hit list” of 45 Minnesota politicians and public officials, and was deeply entrenched in a dangerous authoritarian belief system tied to the Christ for the Nations group, the William Branham cult, and far-right religious extremism. This is not mainstream Christianity—this is a case of cultic mind control, political radicalization, and stochastic violence in action.

🧠 Learn how mind control, phobias, and authoritarian influence turned one man into a killer—and why mainstream media gets the story dangerously wrong by lumping this in with regular "conservative Christianity."

⛔ This is not about faith—it's about undue influence, radicalization, and stochastic terrorism.

📌 Topics Covered:

• Who is Vance Boelter, and why did he target Minnesota lawmakers?
• The dark legacy of William Branham and his cult offshoots
• New Apostolic Reformation, Trumpism, and apocalyptic prophecy
• How media misrepresents cult violence and fuels confusion
• Deprogramming and ethical influence explained

📚 Resources & Links:

🔗 Reports about Vance Boelter and Christ for the Nations: https://tinyurl.com/2pvpke99

🎧 John Collins’ podcast Leaving the Message: http://william-branham.org

📖 Read More about William Branham: https://amzn.to/4e2oRhe

GOD'S CHOSEN? How Certain Churches are Fueling the Rise in MAGA Conspiracies

 

Did God really choose Donald Trump? Discover how Pentecostal Christianity, MAGA prophets, QAnon conspiracy theories, and the New Apostolic Reformation are fueling a dangerous blend of faith, politics, and authoritarian control. Dr. Steven Hassan dives deep with award-winning journalist Elle Hardy, author of Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World.

In this gripping episode of Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum, discover how modern-day prophets, charismatic megachurches, and Dominionist leaders like Paula White and Lance Wallnau are reshaping democracy in the name of Jesus—and how they helped fuel Trump’s rise, the January 6 insurrection, and the global spread of authoritarian religion.

🎙 Topics include:

• The explosive growth of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and its global political network
• How faith healing, prosperity gospel, and spiritual warfare indoctrinate and radicalize followers
• Why Trump was declared “God’s chosen” by self-anointed apostles—and what that means for 2024
• The disturbing overlap between QAnon, charismatic Christianity, and MAGA
• The influence of Norman Vincent Peale, Christian nationalism, and spiritual mind control
• How vulnerable people are recruited, manipulated, and exploited under the guise of religion

🧠 Dr. Hassan and Elle Hardy break down the cult psychology behind authoritarian religious movements—and how we can reach those under undue influence before it’s too late.

📚 Elle also teases her upcoming exposé on the Moonies and new findings on their CIA-backed global influence.

📖 Read Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World

The Cruel World of MKULTRA Doctor Ewen Cameron

 

Scotland to America to Canada: A CIA odyssey

Descent into Hell: CIA MKULTRA Doctors, Scientists, Spies, & Politicians: Hall of Shame Rogues Gallery

 

Descent into Hell: CIA MKULTRA Doctors, Scientists, Spies, & Politicians: Hall of Shame Rogues Gallery with Dr. Eric Karlstrom

Evidence Of Historic Human Remains at Former Hospital Site

 

Kanien’keha:ka Kahnistensera announce that multiple remote-sensing techniques have identified evidence of human remains at the site where unethical medical experimentation, abuse and neglect was conducted during the infamous MK-Ultra project and throughout the hospital’s history

TIOHTIÁ:KE (MONTRÉAL, QC) – The Kanienʼkehá:ka Kahnistensera (Mohawk Mothers) gathered with dozens of supporters near the former Royal Victoria Hospital site to hold a vigil for the victims of unethical medical experimentation and a press conference to share new scientific findings from several investigations led by independent experts.

Three techniques have been used to detect historic human remains and identify probable burial sites at the former Royal Victoria Hospital: ground-penetrating radar, historic human remains detection dogs, and, most recently, the S4 Subterra Grey probe, which is designed to detect burials by analysing soil contents and compactness. To date, the probe has been used in one location near the Allan Memorial Institute. The Kahnistensera announced that the results of all three remote sensing methods support the presence of human remains at this location.

“In one area near the Allan Memorial Institute, investigations using three separate remote-sensing technologies have finally been completed,” said Kahentinetha, one of the Mohawk Mothers. “We have received a report combining these results that states, quote, ‘The combination of three separate lines of evidence supports the presence of human remains’ near the Allan Memorial Institute.”

In addition to being on unceded traditional Kanien'kehá:ka territory containing important precolonial burials and other sites, the grounds of the old Royal Victoria Hospital are suspected to contain the unmarked burials of Indigenous children and other victims of psychiatric experiments conducted as part of the CIA's Project MK-ULTRA, a project that developed “mind control” and torture techniques. Burials on-site may also be the result of the neglect and mistreatment endured by those incarcerated in medical and pedagogical institutions.  (more...)

Evidence Of Historic Human Remains at Former Hospital Site

MKULTRA and the kidnapping of Native children w/ Mohawk Mothers

 

Since 2015, the Mohawk Mothers has engaged in a legal battle against McGill University's plans for Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital. The Mohawk Mothers are "committed to searching the grounds for unmarked graves, as well as undiscovered evidence related to the CIA’s MKULTRA medical program."

For more information https://www.mohawkmothers.ca/

More:

“Injun’ Country”: The Mohawk Mothers’ Trail of Tears

“A Republic if we can Phoenix it” - Bret Weinstein’s Tavistock Cure to Save the “Demented” West by Burning the Village to Save the Village

 

And How Eric Weinstein is in charge of lighting that Fire through a Manufactured Migration Crisis

“When children absorb the content of their culture, it isn’t just facts and skills, the most important things we pass between generations are myths; stories that are so powerfully important they are encoded in a special sacred layer. And in our case, the myth we need comes to us from the Greeks, the founders of the ancient West. The one from which the modern West ultimately emerged.

It is the story of the Phoenix.

A mystical bird that instead of making chicks lights its nest ablaze and raises anew from the ashes. Watching the modern West burn, I believe it is no accident that this story points us to a hidden solution, a remedy for which we just so happen to have the ingredients.

…

In 1787 Ben Franklin was asked if the constitutional convention had produced a monarchy or a republic and Franklin famously replied “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

Today…What we must deliver is a Republic if we can Phoenix it.

… And so in closing I ask you to think about the job we must do to Phoenix our Republic…It is for such moments that the Hopi Elders tell us - we are the ones we have been waiting for.”

-          Bret Weinstein’s closing of his speech at the Rescue the Republic event Sept. 29, 2024

“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

-          quote from an American Major during the Vietnam War, reported by journalist Peter Arnett

The shocking statement “A Republic if we can Phoenix it” was how Bret Weinstein decided to end his speech during the “Rescue the Republic” event in Washington DC this past Sept. 29, 2024 – followed by an unblinking audience who clapped and cheered loudly with clearly no understanding whatsoever of what Bret was in fact calling for.

Bret was prescribing a cure for the West’s “demented” “senility” - where death and destruction were the “hidden solution” and that we “just happen to have the ingredients” for. The ingredients for a crisis that is to see the West burn. And we have Bret’s brother Eric who has played a leading role in manufacturing the migrant crisis hitting the United States as we speak to thank for those very “ingredients”. But more on that later.

Let us first start with the relevance of Bret’s emphasis on the Phoenix as our myth, our story, that we now need to embrace in order to “save the Republic.” ...

The symbol of the Phoenix within the United States should already be well-known, in fact, it should be infamous. It was the symbol chosen by the CIA to represent Operation Phoenix that was executed during the Vietnam War.

This is how the phrase “burn the village to save the village” became known around the world. After all, the program was named after the Phoenix for that very reason. According to the myth, the Phoenix obtains new life by rising from the ashes after it dies in a blaze of fiery flames before being born again.

Weinstein adds that it can only create anew by lighting its nest on fire – for which he is clearly calling for the West to light itself on fire in order to “save itself.”

That is, the Phoenix can only achieve Birth through Destruction and thus, so must we, if we accept this as our creation myth.  (more...)

“A Republic if we can Phoenix it” - Bret Weinstein’s Tavistock Cure to Save the “Demented” West by Burning the Village to Save the Village

Introduction to Psychopaths and Ponerology

 

Doctor Andrew Lobaczewski, a Polish psychiatrist, wrote the ground-breaking book Political Ponerology, exposing the psychopathic personality that is so common in the political, institutional and media spheres. In his book he breaks down some of the techniques used by psychopaths, such as ‘reversive blockades’ (big lies), ‘projection’ (ascribing one’s own negative qualities, actions, or intentions to others), ‘paralogisms’ (logical-sounding but wrong statements), ‘paramoralisms’ (inversions of common morality meant to appeal to our innate moral sensibilities), ‘eliciting maladaptive responses’, and using ‘pathological egotism’ to terrorize and coerce. These all share something in common: they are designed to deceive and to influence others to do something they otherwise wouldn’t do.

Introduction to Psychopaths and Ponerology by Notes From The Past

by guest author Harrison Koehli

Read on Substack

Did Kurt Lewin Subvert Gestalt Psychology?

 

Courtenay Turner and Matt Ehret talk about Gestalt Psychology, and how one particular gestalt psychologist devoted himself to the service of Tavistock.

Planned Madness--The Tavistock Institute

 

The Tavistock Institute, in Sussex, England, describes itself as a nonprofit charity that applies social science to contemporary issues and problems. But this book posits that it is the world's center for mass brainwashing and social engineering activities. It grew from a somewhat crude beginning at Wellington House into a sophisticated organization that was to shape the destiny of the entire planet, and in the process, change the paradigm of modern society. In this eye-opening work, both the Tavistock network and the methods of brainwashing and psychological warfare are uncovered. With connections to U.S. research institutes, think tanks, and the drug industry, the Tavistock has a large reach, and Tavistock Institute attempts to show that the conspiracy is real, who is behind it, what its final long term objectives are, and how we the people can stop them.

Tavistock: 'mother' of planned madness

Gnostic Book Review Christmas Special (Nag Hamadi, Jung and More)

 

Matt Ehret delivers an update on his research into the gnostic mysteries, the Pagan mystery cults of the ancient world, Aleister Crowley, Albert Pike and Carl Jung. The works of Elaine Pagels, Richard Noll (on the Jung Cult), the Nag Hamadi Scriptures, 50 Shades of Grey Aliens, Plato and the architects of the Council of Nicea are discussed.

Ancient Mystery Cults, Gnosticism and Cybernetics: Mapping the Mental Battlefield

 

Mathew Crawford and Matt Ehret discuss the contours shaping world history from a top down systems approach reviewing today's structure of power, synthetic cults and occultism as the product of a historical evolution from the ancient mystery cults of Rome, Babylon, Greece, Egypt and Persia, through the gnostic Christian movement, and its various incarnations through the centuries (leading from Mithraic, Gaia/Cybele cults, through Benedictine orders, Templars, Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and onward to the modern age of Theosophical sects (and sub-sects) interfacing with such imperial organizations like the Milner Round Table and Fabian Societies. Evidence of various misinformation agents infused within the so-called "truth movement" is also explored at some length.

Has Neuroscience Found the Key to What Caused Zombie Nation?

 

Please enjoy - to the extent you can - my Foreword to ‘The Indoctrinated Brain’, by Dr Michael Nehls. The book, which explains the neuroscience of propaganda, will chill your soul, but may explain a great deal.

‘The fact that the brain is plastic—modifiable—has become much better understood by the public in the past few decades.

General readers understand by now that the human brain can be altered; and that experiences can modify its reactions and processes. We understand now for example that PTSD leaves lasting changes in brain functioning. It’s been established that motherhood changes the brain and that bonding itself is a chemical process modified by the brain.

We also understand, as general readers, that propaganda is real. Some of us have studied propaganda in the past. We have a working knowledge of Joseph Goebbels, and of the artistry and craft that underlay his manufacturing of National Socialist consent. The work of Edward Bernays, one of the earliest practitioners of what became the field of public relations, has been widely read in English. Decades-old bestsellers such as Subliminal Seduction by Wilson Bryan Key exposed the fact that advertisers use every tool at their disposal to alter our reactions to their products—down to the level of the subconscious mind.

Modern general audiences also understand that governments use “messaging”—and often, heavy-handed propaganda—to lead us to take actions that can be against our interests or our better conscious judgments; to create prejudices and divisions that may not otherwise exist; to heighten fears and to trigger a sense of vulnerability in us, so that we can be better manipulated and guided to goals that are not our own.

But Dr. Michael Nehls’s thesis in this book is revolutionary because it brings together all of these fields of inquiry and proposes a set of questions so radical that they make the mysteries of the past three years fall into place. This is the indispensable book. In The Indoctrinated Brain, Dr. Nehls brings these areas of study together in a way that has never been done before. By applying neuroscience to the otherwise bizarre events of the recent past, he explains what has happened to humanity.  (more...)

Has Neuroscience Found the Key to What Caused Zombie Nation?

Technocracy's Seeds of Transhumanism

 

The ‘re-organization’ of the world’s societies, cultures, economies and politics seem to be occurring at an ever rapid clip. Groups like the WEF, UNESCO, the WHO and other hugely influential and interconnected bodies all seem to be telling us, and the governments of the world, ‘how it's going to be’, and why it is ‘all for our own good’. A relatively small group of individuals are actually redefining what healthy means, how we should think about money, food, technology, ideologies, the weather, and even each other.These people have formed a technocratic infrastructure with a reach and a wrongheadedness that boggles the mind, and when the implications of their policies are realized, terrorizes the heart.

But this juggernaut of pathological group-think did not spring up overnight, and did not come from nowhere. Someone, and their groups, had to have come up with the “scientific” and philosophical doctrines that dictated the “logic” and “reasoning” behind such transhumanist, socialist, authoritarian and eugenic policies and developments as we’re seeing today. And who better to point out such information and make the connections than researcher and journalist Matthew Ehret. Join us this week on MindMatters as Matthew puts some giant historical figures in a whole new light, and shows how these famous personalities’  thinking and huge influence have shaped an agenda for control that is as pervasive as it is monstrous.