Cult I was born into finally exposed.

@petewxyz said
To give an example of the extreme end of the spectrum, you might have a psychotic illness in which you held the fixed delusional belief that this was the right way for a teacher to behave. The law would see you as incapable of keeping a child safe from abuse and society would have a responsibility to find appropriate care and safety for your child, looking first within your ...[text shortened]... warning signs that a teacher or a social worker would be expected to pick up on in regular practice.

A family were members of a sexually abusive cult. Their daughter was raped by a leader and the parents and wider family did nor report nor do anything to prevent further rapes occurring. They remained in the cult with their daughter.

@divegeester said
A family were members of a sexually abusive cult. Their daughter was raped by a leader and the parents and wider family did nor report nor do anything to prevent further rapes occurring. They remained in the cult with their daughter.

Really you need a very detailed investigation of why this was possible. A part of that would involve a thorough examination of what the family believed that allowed this to continue. A part of this would be about why wider society failed to act. Was there a culture in which people who had managed to leave would be most likely to make statements regarding what they had witnessed allowing society to act? Was there a culture in which they would anticipate a sensitive debrief without encountering victim blaming or mistreatment? Were there clear services looking for them?

I think it is helpful to consider the history of whistleblowing in the health service. People are not good at creating cultures in which it is easy to speak out and raise the alarm. People fear that they will be blamed and viewed as the problem and shunned by their medical community. I think you have to imagine the extent to which that would be amplified by the processes within a cult. You would really need a lot of detail to figure out what everybody might have done to make this go better.

@petewxyz said
To give an example of the extreme end of the spectrum, you might have a psychotic illness in which you held the fixed delusional belief that this was the right way for a teacher to behave. The law would see you as incapable of keeping a child safe from abuse and society would have a responsibility to find appropriate care and safety for your child, looking first within your ...[text shortened]... ligent as might any other agency that had known of your beliefs and/or failed to Safeguard your son.

You seem to be talking about a parent who is mentally ill or delusional to the point of there being some kind "diminished responsibility" in terms of legal and/or moral responsibility. What I have been talking about in terms of moral obligation obviously does not apply to people incapable of understanding or being able to act upon moral obligation because of psychiatric problems. If parents who saw their children raped by staff at KwaSizaBantu - and did nothing - use this defence, so be it.

@petewxyz said
So, if you move from the above to the complex scenario of a cult forcing the beliefs on to its members that child abuse was okay and a part of proper religious ritual you have two problems. Were the non-protective parents simply holding fixed beliefs that left them unable to parent as opposed to complicit in abuse?

"Parents believing that child abuse was okay and a part of proper religious rituals" can, I think, be described as BOTH "complicit in abuse" AND "unable to parent". You are posing a false dichotomy.

@petewxyz said
Really you need a very detailed investigation of why this was possible.

Let me go through some of the possibilities you have floated so far. dj2becker, who was a victim of the cult, has not attributed his parents' inaction [a.k.a. "this" in your sentence above] to [1] "psychotic illness", [2] being "incapable of keeping a child safe from abuse", [3] being "negligent", [3] thinking "child abuse was okay and a part of proper religious ritual", [4] being "unable to parent", [5] being "complicit in abuse". Perhaps he will adopt some of your suggestions.

@fmf said
You seem to be talking about a parent who is mentally ill or delusional to the point of there being some kind "diminished responsibility" in terms of legal and/or moral responsibility. What I have been talking about in terms of moral obligation obviously does not apply to people incapable of understanding or being able of moral obligation because of psychiatric problems. If parents who had children raped by staff at KwaSizaBantu - and did nothing - use this defence, so be it.

I don't know the detail of the case so I can't comment. You would need a lot of background.

Here is a weak analogy. If I try and coerce my 16 year old daughter into a marriage that I planned when she was 12 you might be more concerned than average that I was psychotic. This would be because the beliefs that were informing my actions had never been a part of my subculture. You might encounter somebody else doing exactly the same thing with exactly the same impact but you would not suspect psychosis because of your knowledge of their subculture.

When you are dealing with an extreme subculture like a cult you might get scenarios that would require psychosis to otherwise explain the level of fixed beliefs in the parents. As such the example of the level of fixed beliefs normally only seen in mental illness might apply. If you abuse a child as a result of the fixed beliefs that what you are doing is not abusive then society must protect all children from you as well as your own, but you are not necessarily guilty of a crime and sometimes society (in the form of public services) is in fact guilty for neglecting to find out what was going on.

I agree that if there was due process and the defence was accepted so be it, but with one caveat. What should society have been doing to make this come to light earlier. How do you create a culture in which 'whistleblowing' is more likely?

@petewxyz said
A part of this would be about why wider society failed to act. Was there a culture in which people who had managed to leave would be most likely to make statements regarding what they had witnessed allowing society to act?

A part of this would be about why wider society failed to act.

If victims and/or their families [1] warned other families and [2] alerted "wider society" outside the cult and [3] removed the women or girls from danger, then I think will have met their moral obligations.

If no victims did [1], [2], and [3] then that would be the reason "why wider society failed to act".

@petewxyz said
I don't know the detail of the case so I can't comment. You would need a lot of background.

dj2becker gave loads of information about it here in the past in more than one extended discussion. If you didn't read any of that, then I suggest you don't comment on his case specifically.

@petewxyz said
I don't know the detail of the case so I can't comment. You would need a lot of background.

Here is a weak analogy. If I try and coerce my 16 year old daughter into a marriage that I planned when she was 12 you might be more concerned than average that I was psychotic. This would be because the beliefs that were informing my actions had never been a part of my subculture. ...[text shortened]... ke this come to light earlier. How do you create a culture in which 'whistleblowing' is more likely?

If this...

petewxyz said When you are dealing with an extreme subculture like a cult you might get scenarios that would require psychosis to otherwise explain the level of fixed beliefs in the parents. As such the example of the level of fixed beliefs normally only seen in mental illness might apply. If you abuse a child as a result of the fixed beliefs that what you are doing is not abusive then society must protect all children from you as well as your own, but you are not necessarily guilty of a crime and sometimes society (in the form of public services) is in fact guilty for neglecting to find out what was going on.

...says something significantly different from this...

petewxyz said So, if you move from the above to the complex scenario of a cult forcing the beliefs on to its members that child abuse was okay and a part of proper religious ritual you have two problems. Were the non-protective parents simply holding fixed beliefs that left them unable to parent as opposed to complicit in abuse? Was wider society and it's relevant public services in fact negligent of under investigating the possibility of both the abuse and the non-protective parents? In fact if the parents were truly indoctrinated was it the wider society that carries the greater burden of guilt for not acting? The warning signs were probably more apparent than the warning signs that a teacher or a social worker would be expected to pick up on in regular practice.

Please indicate what the salient differences are.

@fmf said
dj2becker gave loads of information about it here in the past in more than one extended discussion. If you didn't read any of that, then I suggest you don't comment on his case specifically.

I can assure you that I don't comment on his case specifically and I only comment on the themes in this thread. Whatever the level of detail given by one person, the fact that it was entirely from one person would make it insufficient to comment on a complex case.

The broader issues are well worth commenting on because you can see some of the processes illustrated in the thread which will work against survivors speaking out and raising the alarm. I came into the thread at the point where I was reading extreme judgemental victim blaming statements. That is what I am referring to when I ask what wider society could do better. Safeguarding children is everybody's business.

@petewxyz said
If you abuse a child as a result of the fixed beliefs that what you are doing is not abusive then society must protect all children from you as well as your own, but you are not necessarily guilty of a crime and sometimes society (in the form of public services) is in fact guilty for neglecting to find out what was going on.

Rape is certainly a crime even if the perpetrator has "fixed beliefs that what [he is] doing is not abusive" and whether or not parental/adult neglect - that leads to rapes going unreported and women and girls getting raped - is a "crime" or not in a legalistic way does not have a bearing on the morality of neglect and turning a blind eye.

@fmf said
If this...

petewxyz said When you are dealing with an extreme subculture like a cult you might get scenarios that would require psychosis to otherwise explain the level of fixed beliefs in the parents. As such the example of the level of fixed beliefs normally only seen in mental illness might apply. If you abuse a child as a result of the fixed beliefs that what you ...[text shortened]... expected to pick up on in regular practice.

Please indicate what the salient differences are.

The first states the principal. The second attempts to open a conversation about how easy should it have been to see the signs. Was society negligent?

@petewxyz said
Really you need a very detailed investigation of why this was possible.

The parents and family of the raped girl did nothing to report the rape or the other sexual abuse which was allegedly occurring; and dj2becker himself has apparently done nothing in that respect since himself leaving the cult something like a decade ago, and reestablishing his life as a teacher, getting married, having children of his own etc.

That scenario, the one being discussed here in this thread, seems more than a little odd to me.

@petewxyz said
Was society negligent?

You are suggesting that rape of the girl and failure of the parents and family to do anything about it is a “negligence by society”?

@petewxyz said
I came into the thread at the point where I was reading extreme judgemental victim blaming statements.

Why are you addressing me rather than Rajk999 then? My focus is on what people OUGHT to do in such circumstances - from a moral standpoint - rather than on the myriad of justifications and mitigating circumstances which I have discussed aplenty in the past. You have mentioned "psychotic illness" and "psychosis", for example. Fair enough. If that's the reason people let rapes go on without alerting others, so be it. It does not affect discussion of what people OUGHT to do. If I talk about X having moral obligation Z, and you say 'Oh well X may have mental illness Y and so does not recognize or understand obligation Z', so be it.