January 1976, National Enquirer, Inside the frightening world of fanatical "brainwashing" sect Moon sect, by Malcome Boyes,

January 1976, National Enquirer, Inside the frightening world of fanatical "brainwashing" sect Moon sect, by Malcome Boyes,

It was a voice I couldn't escape because it spoke to me from deep inside my throbbing head – “You're loosing your mind, you're losing your mind, you're losing your mind…”

Three days and three nights of the most intense indoctrination – a torturous regimen of chanting, singing, shouting, praying and relentless brainwashing by the fanatical Moon sect – had pushed me to the breaking point.

“Fight it, you’ve got to fight it!” I kept telling myself.

I’m not particularly religious, but I was raised by Christian parents to believe in God and the teachings of Jesus. Yet I found myself struggling to maintain a grip on my faith under an unceasing bombardment of absolutely absurd religious and historical mumbo jumbo concocted by the sect’s zealous founder, Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon.

I knew that what I was being asked to believe was rubbish – but there were fleeting moments toward the end of my stay with his trained followers, called Moonies – when I began questioning my own beliefs.

“If what the Moonies say is true, then everything you believe is wrong, the frightened voice in my head would tell me.

It was then – in panic and confusion – that I slipped away to a telephone and called my editor.

“Don’t send me back! For God’s sake, don’t make me go back! I just can’t take it anymore. I’m losing my mind.”

My incredible ordeal began when I posed as a footloose traveler and was approached by a Moonie recruiter Tony O’Neill outside the New York City Public Library.

“Today could be the turning point of your life,” he said with a disarming smile as he invited me to join a Moonie workshop.

I was night when I entered the three-story house on a tree-lined street in Forest Hills, N.Y. It was also Halloween, an appropriate day for what was to follow.

Several other recruits and I were greeted by smartly-dressed Moonies with fixed smiles and blank eyes. We were ushered to our sleeping quarters in the basement – a windowless, badly ventilated room in which sleeping bags filled every inch of floor space.

After depositing our belongings, we were ushered back upstairs to a small room with orange carpeting and bare, yellow walls.

We were a mixed group that included Roy, a 26-year-old cowboy from Tulsa who called himself a “half-breed”; Don, a 17-year-old Brooklyn kid whose parents had just split up; and Jim, a 30-year-old Wall Street financial analyst who was undergoing psychiatric treatment. In all, there were 17 young men and women, many of whom would pledge at the end of their indoctrination period to abandon their pasts and dedicate their lives to the Rev. Moon.

In this oppressive yellow room they would be brain-washed to believe in Rev. Moon’s “Divine Principle.” They would come to accept him as a Prophet of God . . . “as the only person who can pull our crumbling world together.”

Many would end up back on the streets begging money for Moon’s multimillion-dollar organization, as many Moonies spend their days doing.

Hirachi Ikoma, a converted Buddhist from Japan, our workshop leader, stood in the front of the room next to a big, green chalkboard.

“You will find much love, much emotion here,” he said as we sat cross-legged on the floor.

One by one, he asked each member of the group to introduce himself. And after each person spoke, Moonies in the room would lead a round of wild applause.

The events of that Friday night took off like a whirlwind, setting a terrifying pace for the days ahead. We linked arms, sat in a circle and sang songs while one of the Moonies pounded a piano. We swayed back and forth chanting prayers which were almost impossible to follow. Moonies pray by blurting out anything that comes to mind and punctuating virtually every sentence by shouting “Father!”

The assault on our brains continued without letup. Over and over we repeated, “Please, Father, I pray that out brothers will open their hearts and accept what they have been told.” Then the prayers would go straight into a song: “Father, make me a rainbow to bridge old and new. Father, make me a gateway for many to come through … Father, make me a prism held in your hand.”

I felt myself gripped by strange tensions. Everywhere I looked, I saw Moonies watching us with those fixed smiles and blank eyes.

When we finally turned in at midnight I was exhausted and upset.

I felt like I had just drifted off to sleep when a Moonie switched on the bright ceiling lights. It was 7 a.m. Saturday. “Good morning everybody, good morning. Time to get up, time to get up.”

He was wearing that same ridiculous smile that I would come to hate. Out 17-hour day had begun.

At 7:30, Ikoma rushed into the yellow room literally screaming “Good morning!” Then we plunged into 30 minutes of furious exercise “to clear our heads and open our hearts for the spirit of the Divine Principle.” At 8 o’clock we charged into 15 minutes of prayer and song, followed by a cornflakes breakfast.

At 9:45 we received our first lecture by 26-year-old John Raucci, an ex-Catholic brother with a psychology degree who joined the Moon sect nearly two years ago.

“The Rev. Moon has discovered secrets unknown to men for all time,” he said, as he proceeded to blitz us with incredible statements.

We were told, for example, that Satan’s number was 6. Therefore, World War 2 was Satan’s war because it started in “1941” and if you add 1, 9, 4, 1 you get 15 and 1 plus 5 is 6.

Whenever I raised my hand to ask a question or to challenge a point I was told, “perhaps we’ll have time for questions later.” But we never did.

The lecture was followed by more songs and prayers, games and exercises, followed by another lecture, followed by more games and prayers – and so it went throughout the day and into the night.

By Sunday my head was swimming in the non-stop verbal barrage, my nerves were shot, my muscles ached. I began to realize the meaning of brainwashing.

And as the incessant drumming of the Divine Principle continued, the yellow room seemed to get smaller and smaller until I feared it would crush me.

I sat there rigidly, in a cold sweat. “No, no, no!” the voice inside my head screamed. “Push the walls back. I’ll do anything you want.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I feared that if I remained on day longer I might succumb in this crazy mental pressure cooker – might even start to swallow the Moonie line. That’s when I managed to slip away and call my editor.

My immense relief at having broken free from the sect’s influence was marred only by the pity I felt for those I left behind.