When news first broke regarding R.
Kelly’s alleged harboring and mistreatment of a group of six young women, much of the coverage centered on one aspect of the story: it sounded like the R&B performer was leading a cult, brainwashing women and holding them against their will. This involved everything from cutting off communication with their families, to telling them when to eat, how to dress, when they bathe and sleep, and how they engage in sexual activity – which he reportedly records. Kelly’s camp has vociferously denied the allegations, but if true, this is abusive, inappropriate behavior. But is Kelly really operating a cult?As a former member of a cult, Steven Hassan, the founder of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, and author of Combating Cult Mind Control is familiar with the devastating effects of undue influence.
When attempting to determine whether Kelly’s housing of women can be considered a cult, the first thing to understand is that there are different types of cults, Hassan explains, that can take various forms, including benign cults, destructive cults, cults of one, mini cults, macro cults, religious cults and therapy cults.
“It definitely sounds, from the behavior described – especially by the three former victims – like this a mini-cult, and that he preys on vulnerable admirers,” Hassan says.
A leading expert in combatting undue influence and cult mind control, Hassan has developed the BITE Model to describe the specific methods cults use to recruit and maintain control over people, covering Behavior, Information, Thought and Emotional (BITE) control. Hassan explains that Kelly is using a lot of the elements included in the BITE Model, including “information control, thought control, regressing these young women to childish thinking, isolating them from family, punishing them if they disobey and, in classic cult style, it sounds like he uses some of the senior members to potentially recruit and control some of the other women.”
And, he says, the fact that all six women are of legal age is irrelevant.
“Of course I don’t buy the police point-of-view that they’re over the age of majority and say they’re happy,” Hassan adds, noting that reaching a certain chronological age does not make people immune to mind control.
When it comes to coercion and mind control tactics, Hassan notes that in the alleged Kelly situation, “nothing is original.”
“It’s all very familiar,” Hassan says. “You make them fall in love with you, make them think they’re special, do intermittent positive reinforcement as well as violence if they break the rules, make them tattle on each other, isolate them from family and friends and make them believe like they’ll never be happy if they ever try to get away from him.”
But the parallels between Kelly’s group of women and a cult aren’t as clear-cut for others. To begin with, rather than the women taking up residence with Kelly in an attempt to…
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