In the UK a jury convicts Chris Brain, founder of Sheffield’s Nine O’Clock Service, of rape and further indecent assaults on women in his congregation. Prosecutors drop obstruction cases against 14 residents of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light community in Crewe, Cheshire.

The High Court in England blocks a bid by trustees to strip the president of the Hindu Yogi Divine Society of his powers over its UK charity.

In Italy carabinieri arrest Bruno Antonio Malatesta, the self-styled “Maestro” of a yoga community in Almese, west of Turin, on slavery and sexual violence charges. A Bulgarian court remands a Spanish “shaman” held near Kalofer after a liquid seized at his retreat tested positive for mescaline.

Romanian police search the homes of a defrocked priest accused of running an unlicensed chapel in Botoșani county. In Ireland a former garda is spared jail for coercive control of his wife.

In France the head of the Eiffel Tower’s operating company is to step down after female staff were sidelined during a visit by monks of the Hindu movement BAPS. A Paris City Hall inquiry finds no explicit request to exclude women.

Germany’s independent abuse commission in Münster sets out demands after a study of spiritual abuse in Catholic communities. Spain’s Pontifical University of Salamanca opens a postgraduate diploma on psychological abuse and cults.

Le Figaro interviews Jean-Yves Camus on Alain Soral as an ideological guru, and Belgium’s La Libre reports on the People’s Mojahedin (MEK), an exiled Iranian opposition group. A French comparison site ranks cult documentaries on Netflix.

RedUNE is taking papers and registrations for a November symposium in Madrid on coercive groups. The University of Lille is seeking adults for an anonymous online study of psychological experience after belonging to a group.

Beyond Europe, the mayor of Richmound, Saskatchewan, steps down after years of conflict with Romana Didulo’s Queen of Canada group. Peter Thiel likens effective altruism to a cult, a minister at James Talarico’s Texas church calls evangelical churches “almost cult-like”, and Iran’s Press TV marks 14 years since the US delisted the MEK.

Nine O’Clock Service founder Chris Brain convicted of rape at retrial

A jury at Inner London Crown Court on Friday 2 October convicted Chris Brain, 69, of raping a woman in his congregation and of four indecent assaults on three other women. Brain founded and led the Nine O’Clock Service (NOS), a rave-style Church of England congregation that drew hundreds of young people to St Thomas’s church in Crookes, Sheffield, England, in the 1980s and 1990s.

A first jury convicted him in August 2025 of 17 indecent assaults on nine women but could not agree on five counts. The Times reported that the same jury acquitted him of 15 further indecent assaults, and that Brain, from Wilmslow, Cheshire, now stands convicted of 22 offences against 13 women. None of the women can be named.

He was remanded in custody. Judge Freya Newbery said the women would be able to give victim impact statements at a sentencing hearing likely to last two days, the paper reported.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said the prosecution’s case was that Brain created a “cult” in which the young women he targeted were made so emotionally reliant on his approval that they could not freely consent. Opening the retrial on 4 September, prosecutor Tim Clark KC told the jury:

This was a cult, in which the young women were reduced to such an emotional reliance on the defendant’s approval that they no longer had the capacity to freely consent to the sexual behaviour involved.

Julie Moss, Senior Crown Prosecutor for CPS Yorkshire and Humberside, said after the verdicts:

This was not consent. It was forced submission, caused by the culture of fear and dependency Brain had deliberately created.

Both trials heard that several of the women were part of a “homebase team” that cared for Brain around the clock and was expected to “put him to bed” with sexual massages. One said that by displeasing Brain “you were displeasing God”. Another told the court:

I didn’t have the freedom to consent. I was frightened all the time.

A third asked: “He was my priest. Who was I to question his authority?” The Times reported that Brain lured the woman he raped to his home, plied her with whisky and raped her in an attic bedroom.

Others described “Chris-napping”, when he would draw up beside women in his car, invite them for a drive, and sometimes touch them and berate them as sexually repressed.

Because Brain still denied his 2025 convictions, prosecutors recalled women to give their evidence a second time. They included a woman he assaulted in her bed while she was traumatised after helping people find the bodies of friends and relatives killed in the Hillsborough disaster. The Daily Mail reported that one woman, giving evidence from behind a screen, told jurors:

My brain was frozen, he (Brain) was telling me how to think, he used God to, I suppose, mess with my mind.

Clark told the jury it was telling that Brain had wanted to be ordained in robes like those Robert De Niro wore in the film The Mission, the act, he said, of a “raging narcissist”.

Brain’s defence was an attempt to escape conviction. He told the jury the contact with two of the women, including the woman he raped, had been consensual, and that there had been none with the other two. Clark told jurors:

His evidence is all lies and avoidance. He’s not a reliable narrator of events. He’s a lifelong conman trying to con one last rube, and that’s you, members of the jury.

The jury convicted him on all five counts after more than 14 hours of deliberation. Det Supt Eleanor Welsh, the senior investigating officer at South Yorkshire Police, said:

Brain is a devious and arrogant sexual predator who caused lasting harm to these women.

Freedom Times followed the opening weeks of the retrial in last week’s edition.

The warnings started more than 30 years ago, and were set aside. Stephen Lowe, then Archdeacon of Sheffield and later a bishop, told the Revd Dr Marilyn Parry, Brain’s ordination tutor, to stop voicing her concerns. The course principal overruled her refusal to sign off his ordination.

At the trial, the Revd Dr Mark Stibbe said David Lunn, then Bishop of Sheffield, answered his warning with a rebuke and the words “we don’t conduct witch hunts in the diocese”. Lowe later dismissed a complaint from Brain’s mother-in-law, Shirley Taylor, as “making mountains out of molehills”, The Independent reported in 1995.

Roy Arnold, the diocesan spokesman, dismissed an earlier complaint to the bishop as “of a general nature”, The Independent reported in November 1995. In a BBC documentary that year, Lunn said a further inquiry would serve no useful purpose.

The Times reported that Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, talked of wanting “a NOS in every town and city”, and that Anita Roddick, the late founder of the Body Shop, gave a large donation towards a planned expansion of the group to California.

The Bishop of Sheffield, Pete Wilcox, said on Friday that the unreserved apology he offered in 2025 “stands in full”, and that where concerns were raised in the past and not acted upon properly, “that was a failing of the church”. The independent Safeguarding Practice Review he paused for the retrial will now begin. Richard Scorer, who represents the women, said in 2025 the case “could and should have been prosecuted 30 years ago”.

On BBC Radio 4’s Sunday on 4 October, Andrew Graystone, a theologian and advocate for church abuse survivors, said victims went to the church in the early 1990s and, they say, it seemed “more keen to sweep it under the carpet”. He said survivors he has spoken to are not reassured by the bishop’s review.

What needs to be done is that the church needs to ask, why does this keep happening?

Freedom Times will publish a midweek follow-up on the safeguarding failings. Readers can subscribe to notifications at the foot of this article, to be notified as soon as it is published.

Obstruction cases dropped against 14 at Crewe’s Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light

Prosecutors have discontinued cases against 14 residents of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL) who were charged with obstructing police during April’s raids on the group’s headquarters in Crewe, a town in Cheshire, England. A court official confirmed the discontinuances on Monday 28 September, the day before a case management hearing, BBC News reported.

More than 500 officers searched three addresses linked to the group on 29 April in an investigation into alleged sexual abuse, forced marriage and modern slavery. The Press Association reported that in June, 24 people appeared at South Cheshire Magistrates’ Court on public order charges. Prosecutors alleged residents had tried to stop officers entering rooms at Webb House, some by linking arms.

Ten residents who pleaded not guilty in June face trial next April. Six pleaded not guilty to obstructing a constable: Jahmeel Musa, 33, Laure Delogne, 31, Rad El-Kanami, 47, Aun Haideer, 26, Mammadagha Abdullayer, 35, and Alireza Khatib Haghighi, 40. Ramazan Demirovic, 59, pleaded not guilty to assaulting a constable.

Ahmed Elhaouss, 21, and Raimah Batul, 18, pleaded not guilty to assaulting a police officer. Soufiane Ben Abdeslam, 32, pleaded not guilty to assaulting a police officer and to obstructing a constable.

Cheshire Police said 14 people arrested over the forced marriage, modern slavery and sexual abuse allegations remain on conditional bail and that the investigation continues. Freedom Times reported last week on File on 4’s return to Crewe.

High Court blocks bid to remove the Yogi Divine Society president from its UK charity

The High Court in England on Wednesday 30 September blocked an attempt by trustees of Yogi Divine Society UK to strip the movement’s India-based president, Prem Swami, of his controlling powers over the charity, Civil Society, a UK charity-sector publication, reported. The paper describes the Yogi Divine Society as a Hindu sect.

The Times reported that the society has about 500 centres in countries including India, the US, Canada, Australia and South Africa, and that its UK headquarters is a former church in Harrow, north-west London. Its founder, Hariprasad Swami, resigned as president in India in 2018 while suffering illnesses including Alzheimer’s, the court heard. The resignation was treated as “something of a secret” because it “would have been extremely unwelcome news to the faithful”.

After Hariprasad’s death in 2021, followers split between two monks, Prem Swami, now 80, and Prabodh Swami, 73. Trustees backing Prabodh voted in November 2021 to remove Prem’s role. Mr Justice Gleeson ruled that they “connived in a scheme to mislead” Prem’s supporters by presenting the meeting as being only about converting the charity into a charitable incorporated organisation.

The 2021 amendments never took effect, the judge found, and Prem remains “Member A” under the charity’s 2013 constitution, with veto and appointment powers. Gleeson said:

One way of looking at the outcome of their actions is that their coup has failed. However, another would be that both sides have proved their devotion to their respective Swamis.

The charity, registered in 1990, had income of £679,000 in the year to 31 July 2025. The Times reported income of £1.62 million in 2024.

Italian carabinieri arrest the “Maestro” of an Almese yoga community

Carabinieri in Turin arrested Bruno Antonio Malatesta, 59, at dawn on Wednesday 1 October in Almese, a town in the lower Val di Susa west of Turin, Italy. La Stampa reported that he drew vulnerable people into a residential community he ran through yoga, meditation and self-defence courses.

Online he presented himself as maestro Śivakṣatriya Śivānanda, Rai’s regional newsroom TGR Piemonte reported. Sky TG24 reported that the inquiry is called Operazione Asmodeo, and that his official biography described him as a national judge for CSEN, an Italian amateur sports body, a yoga teacher-trainer and an operator of bioenergetic rebalancing with crystals. Open reported that Asmodeo is the Italian name of Asmodeus, the demon of greed, wrath and vengeance.

la Repubblica reported that he ran a YouTube channel, Shiva Shakti Tv, with 128 subscribers. Il Messaggero reported that a Rai programme had already covered him in 2018.

Prosecutors accuse him of riduzione in schiavitù (reduction to slavery, an Italian offence), mistreatment within the family, aggravated sexual violence and aggravated fraud against the state. ANSA, the Italian news agency, reported that the community revolved around the Fondazione Fiore della Pace and that he called himself “il Prescelto”, the Chosen One. Investigators say he feigned being unable to walk and drew more than €80,000 in invalidity pension.

Il Fatto Quotidiano reported that deputy prosecutor Davide Pretti coordinated the inquiry, which began in March 2024 after complaints dating back to 2017, some later withdrawn. Investigators allege sexual abuse of adolescents aged 16 and 17 at the time. Malatesta is held in Turin’s Lorusso e Cutugno prison.

Open reported that the preliminary investigations judge, Andrea Bonato, ordered him jailed. The community has been seized and its residents moved to protected housing.

According to ANSA, members lived in terraced houses owned by companies linked to him, wore orange tunics and shaved their heads. Women recruited as “nuns” and “handmaidens” took vows of poverty and of chastity with their husbands or partners, but not with the Maestro. Investigators say sexual assaults were presented as “purifying therapies”.

Open reported that members worked 12 hours a day and slept on the floor, and that mistakes could bring beatings, a week without washing or a shaved head. One former “nun” wrote in a memorial quoted by the site:

Ero una monaca e la mia vita era finita: avevo 15 anni e dovevo chiedere a Bruno il permesso per fare qualsiasi cosa.

Another former “nun” said he forced one woman to eat a rotten tomato until she vomited, to teach her a lesson. The judge’s order counts seven victims, the women he called his ancelle, or handmaidens, La Stampa reported on 2 October.

A woman with multiple sclerosis who was promised a cure, and her husband, allegedly paid about €10,000 for crystals and €150,000 for a painting, ANSA reported. On 2 October a man told the television programme Dentro la notizia that Malatesta warned his then wife her son would die if she did not buy one of his paintings, Leggo reported. He said:

Quando ci siamo separati, quel debito l’ho dovuto pagare io di tasca mia: 16mila euro.

In La Stampa on 2 October, Elisa Sola interviewed a 27-year-old woman who uses the name Pandora. She was taken into the community at nine, where her mother already lived, left at 20, and filed the complaint that led to the inquiry. Her lawyer, Beatrice Manera, who has represented her for four years, told the paper:

Quando l’ho conosciuta quattro anni fa era molto diversa da quella che è fortunatamente oggi. Ma era forte e tenace.

Three associates are under investigation without arrest. Giornale La Voce, a Piedmont paper, named them as Paola Vit, legal representative of the Fondazione Fiore della Pace, Chiara Lisa, a psychologist, and Giulio Gibello, the group’s only male “monk”. It reported that the two women slept on the floor at the foot of Malatesta’s bed.

ANSA reported on 3 October that the inquiry papers cast the two women as both alleged accomplices and victims of the Maestro.

In La Stampa on 3 October, Gianni Giacomino reported that cameras caught Malatesta loading a heavy fridge into a car at an electronics shop in Pianezza in December 2024, months before he toured Turin’s Egyptian Museum in a wheelchair. After his followers gave a poor martial-arts display at a sports fair in Avigliana in September 2024, the paper reported, he told them:

Mi vergogno di voi! Vergognatevi... che cosa dovrebbe pensare la Madre Divina di voi? Ma andatevi a nascondere nel primo buco… vi piglio per la gola e vi sbatto come tappeti ...

Lt Col Diego Berlingieri, who commands the Turin carabinieri operations unit, appealed for anyone who believes they were a victim to come forward, Il Fatto Quotidiano reported.

On 4 October La Stampa reported that police and the Centro studi sugli abusi psicologici (Cesap), a centre for the study of psychological abuse, track a field estimated at 13 million Italians drawn into what it calls totalising groups, counting relatives and indirect contacts. About 530 cults are active nationally, the paper said, generating more than 3,500 requests for help a year.

Senators Tilde Minasi and Erika Stefani have tabled a bill to create a criminal offence of mental manipulation. The first signatories told the paper:

Un fenomeno in cui sono coinvolti sia uomini che donne, vittime inconsapevoli di psicosette che adescano le persone in momenti della vita di grande fragilità

Cult apologist Massimo Introvigne, director of Cesnur, the Centre for Studies on New Religions, told La Stampa that statistics on cults are often exaggerated. He said criminal religious movements exist and should be punished under ordinary laws on violence, sexual abuse and fraud.

Cesnur has a history of defending cults, including those found criminally liable. In January 2001 Stephen Kent, writing in the Marburg Journal of Religion, a German academic journal, called it the highest-profile lobbying group for controversial religions. He wrote that Introvigne gave evidence for Scientologists on trial in Lyon, France, and that the case ended in manslaughter and fraud convictions.

Writing in Cesnur’s magazine Bitter Winter on 3 June 2026, Introvigne defended the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light. He called the 29 April raid on its Crewe headquarters disproportionate.

Bulgarian court remands Spanish “shaman” held near Kalofer

Plovdiv District Court on 30 September remanded in custody a 58-year-old Spanish citizen accused of holding high-risk drugs for distribution near Kalofer, a town in Plovdiv province, central Bulgaria. Banker, citing the state news agency BTA, named him as José Nicolas and reported that a thick brown liquid seized at the site tested positive for mescaline.

Officers of the State Agency for National Security (DANS) and Plovdiv police raided the site on 27 September. Prosecutors said they seized 35 pots of cactus, bottles of dark liquid and mushrooms believed to contain psychoactive substances. DANS said the man had formed a group of followers he manipulated through pseudo-spiritual suggestion and promises of mental and physical healing, presenting himself as the only intermediary with “higher spirits”.

Radio Bulgaria reported that he presented himself as a “shaman” with ancient knowledge gathered on travels in North and South America. Fourteen Bulgarian members were questioned as witnesses, and Fakti, citing NOVA television, reported that agents found a kind of greenhouse for the plants.

The retreat’s bungalows belong to an association, Slantse na Vodoley (Sun of Aquarius), which he owns and manages, Banker reported. Rituals advertised on social media were held for payment around the equinoxes and solstices.

His lawyer said all 14 witnesses said they were never offered the liquid and asked for bail or house arrest. He faces two to eight years in prison if convicted.

Romanian police search homes of a defrocked priest over a home chapel

Police in Botoșani county, north-east Romania, searched seven properties in Cristinești commune and Botoșani city on 30 September, targeting a 38-year-old man suspected of fraud and practising a profession without the right to do so. They allege that since 2018 he repeatedly held Orthodox services in an unauthorised room at his home fitted out like a lăcaș de cult, a place of worship. Police say he wore priestly vestments to give the services an appearance of legitimacy and obtain money from those who came.

TVR, Romania’s public broadcaster, reported that he was defrocked in 2014 and presented himself on social media as Father Efrem. Antena 3, citing Botoșani News, reported that he invited people to pray before a “miracle-working icon” in an outbuilding in the village of Fundu Herții and recruited through TikTok, where he had tens of thousands of followers. As a monk at Sihăstria Rarăului monastery he had taken the name Onufrie, and after defrocking he ran a chapel in two garages in Bucharest.

ProTV reported that the services were also streamed online, which drew police attention, and that relatives are witnesses for now. Lucian Apopei, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Iași, said it was the second case of its kind in a few months:

Așa cum o persoană care îmbracă un halat alb nu este un medic, așa și o persoană care îmbracă o reverendă nu este preot al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române.

Former Westmeath garda spared jail for coercive control of his wife

David Reynolds, a former member of An Garda Síochána, Ireland’s police, received an 18-month sentence suspended for eight years at Mullingar Circuit Court, County Westmeath, on 2 October after pleading guilty to coercive control of his wife, RTÉ reported. Ashley Masterson waived her anonymity so that he could be named. Judge Keenan Johnson ordered him to pay her €10,000 and to complete an anger management course.

The offence ran from 1 January 2019 to 18 July 2022. At a hearing in May the court heard that Reynolds controlled the finances, had a tracker on her phone, expected her to stay at home and made 13 hours of recordings of their conversations and arguments. Reynolds, dismissed from the force in August after 17 years, had a “gross misconception” of what marriage is, the judge said.

In her victim impact statement, Masterson said:

I feel like I’ve lost my own personality and nearly hate going places and seeing how happy and normal other family units are.

Eiffel Tower chief to step down after women staff were sidelined for a BAPS visit

Patrick Branco Ruivo, director general of SETE, the company that runs the Eiffel Tower, will leave at the end of the year after female staff were removed from their posts during a visit by the Hindu movement BAPS, the company said on 29 September. An internal investigation found “operational flaws and shortcomings” in organising the visit that led to the “unacceptable” removal of women staff, BBC News reported.

About 100 people linked to the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), which strictly separates men and women, toured the tower on 5 September during celebrations for its new temple at Bussy-Saint-Georges, east of Paris. A staff union representative told the BBC that women “were asked to leave their places of work” and felt “humiliated”.

The tower closed on 7 September when staff went on strike over what a union official called “unacceptable” management instructions, Sky News reported. SETE admitted the delegation had asked to limit “interactions with women” and said the conditions should not have been accepted.

BAPS apologised “for any pain or inconvenience caused”. In a statement to Sky News, it said:

BAPS never requested that female employees be hidden, removed or excluded from the visit.

The Guardian reported that BAPS said several monks were present, including its spiritual leader, Mahant Swami Maharaj, 93, whose vows forbid contact with women. Paris City Hall apologised for failing to uphold the republican principle of equality.

Writing in The Conversation on 30 September, Bhakti Mamtora, a scholar of South Asian religions at the University of Arizona, said the monks keep an eightfold form of brahmacharya, a discipline of celibacy and sense control that includes avoiding eye contact with women. It does not require women around them to change their presence or behaviour, she wrote. She cited BAPS Paris telling CNN that the request was “never, at any point, intended as a request rooted in gender”, and said BAPS had asked for an early-morning visit.

The mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, had ordered an inquiry by the City of Paris General Inspectorate (Inspection générale de la Ville de Paris, IGVP). Business Today, an Indian business magazine, citing Le Parisien, reported that the inquiry found a “chain of errors in judgement, approval and execution” and “no explicit request from the delegation to exclude women throughout the route”. The original request concerned avoiding physical contact between the religious figures and women.

The News Minute, an Indian news site, reported on 3 October that the inspectorate, which shared its findings with elected representatives on 1 October, called the episode a “collective dysfunction”. Security posts were staffed only by men on the morning of the visit, women in customer relations at the North pillar were asked to move away, and a woman was replaced in a lift. The report said that “through word of mouth, the message was distorted” and that no “arbitration, legal opinion or ethical advice” was sought.

BAPS told Sky News that the inquiry “establishes this fact that BAPS made no such request for women to be excluded along the visitor route”.

In The Caravan, an Indian magazine, consulting editor Sushant Singh argued on 1 October that the episode exposed the Modi government’s use of BAPS in cultural diplomacy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent a video message to the temple’s inauguration the day after the tower visit.

Singh also cited a US civil lawsuit by workers on a BAPS temple in Robbinsville, New Jersey, alleging confinement and pay of about a dollar an hour, claims BAPS denies. He wrote:

A temple cannot be treated as a diplomatic asset when it enhances India’s image and dismissed as a private entity when it faces serious charges.

Münster abuse commission sets demands after spiritual-abuse study

The Independent Reappraisal Commission (Unabhängige Aufarbeitungskommission, UAK) for the Catholic Diocese of Münster, Germany, called for verifiable consequences from the University of Münster’s study of geistlicher Missbrauch, spiritual abuse, Kirche+Leben reported on 29 September. The study, published on 25 September, examined communities including Totus Tuus Neuevangelisierung in the diocese.

The commission wants the diocese to bring together the 2026 study, a 2025 law-firm review that did not substantiate allegations of “ritual violence”, and a 2022 sexual-abuse study, to act on them publicly and to have that independently checked. It asked for a clear structure of supervision and accountability for spiritual communities and spiritual direction:

Wer kontrolliert geistliche Leitung? Wo können Mitglieder außerhalb des eigenen Abhängigkeitsverhältnisses widersprechen oder Beschwerde erheben?

Bishop Heiner Wilmer and the study’s other commissioners are due to respond in Münster on 5 October. In a Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger interview published on 1 October, the theologian Judith Könemann, who co-led the study, said:

Das Neue an unserer Studie ist zum einen die Breite der empirischen Basis. Und zum zweiten der wissenschaftliche Nachweis, dass Praktiken des Missbrauchs, die aus sogenannten Sekten bekannt sind, auch innerhalb der katholischen Kirche stattfinden. Die Mechanismen sind dieselben und damit muss sich die Kirche intensiver auseinandersetzen.

Könemann said church images of gender carry a high potential for harm, especially for women, who are by far the majority of victims of spiritual abuse. Freedom Times reported on the study’s publication last week.

Salamanca’s Pontifical University opens a diploma on psychological abuse and cults

The Pontifical University of Salamanca (UPSA), a Catholic university in Salamanca, Spain, on Thursday 1 October inaugurated the first edition of its Diploma de Experto en Abuso Psicológico y Sectas, an expert diploma in psychological abuse and cults. The online course from the Faculty of Psychology carries 25 European university (ECTS) credits and has 17 students, mainly from psychology, social work and education, El Diario de Salamanca reported.

Director Julián Cádiz Rodríguez said UPSA is the first university in Spain to address these dynamics directly with its own postgraduate qualification, SALAMANCArtv reported. He said:

Necesitamos aprender a mirar a través de las perspectivas de las personas y sus familias que han sufrido estas situaciones. No queremos quedarnos solo en cuestiones de captación o de pertenencia a estos grupos, sino también analizar y aportar soluciones para tener una reincorporación social plena.

Luis Santamaría del Río, of the Red Iberoamericana de Estudio de las Sectas (RIES), an Ibero-American network for the study of cults, gave the opening lecture on the Vatican document on sects published 40 years ago. He warned that newer groups now hide behind supposed health routines, personal training or coaching. The university’s release was also carried by Religión Digital.

Jean-Yves Camus on Alain Soral as an ideological guru

The political scientist Jean-Yves Camus, who heads the Observatory of Political Radicalism at the Fondation Jean Jaurès, told Le Figaro on 2 October that the far-right essayist Alain Soral had been an ideological gourou, guru, for a whole generation. The interview followed accusations that Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), wrote antisemitic messages as a minor, which he contests.

Asked about Soral’s weight in the Front National before he left in 2009, Camus said the real question was the weight of Soral’s ideas in a generation shaped by post-truth and conspiracy thinking. Soral thrived, he said, on the shift brought by the internet, discussion forums and video-sharing platforms in the early 2000s:

L’opinion ne se forme plus par l’école, le savoir et la lecture. Chaque individu croit pouvoir exprimer sa vérité, sur tous les sujets, hors de toute vérification, de toute science.

From the start, Camus said, Soral recycled the tropes of Édouard Drumont, the 19th-century French antisemitic writer, and of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the forged text alleging a Jewish plot.

The People’s Mojahedin and its clandestine campaign against Tehran

La Libre Belgique on 2 October examined the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI or MEK, OMPI in French), the exiled opposition movement based in Albania since 2013. Its decentralised “Resistance Units” claim clandestine attacks on regime targets inside Iran. Its political front, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), is led by Maryam Rajavi.

The paper reported that the movement remains accused of holding members against their will and of torture. An anonymous specialist on the organisation told La Libre:

Si vous n’êtes pas d’accord avec eux, vous êtes un ennemi. Ils fonctionnent comme une secte : leurs femmes portent toujours le voile, à rebours du mouvement d’émancipation en cours au pays.

Azadeh Kian, emeritus professor of sociology at Université Paris Cité, told the paper the movement lacks popular support inside Iran. The EU removed it from its terrorist list in 2009 and the US followed in 2012.

A French ranking of cult documentaries on Netflix

JeChange, a French price-comparison site for broadband and mobile deals, published on 30 September a ranking of five Netflix documentary series about cults. Florian Tostivint’s list puts Wild Wild Country (2018), on the Rajneesh community in Oregon, first.

It is followed by Twin Flames : Un troublant univers de rencontres (2023), Keep Sweet : Prie et tais-toi (2022) on Warren Jeffs’ FLDS church, Trust Me : Le faux prophète (April 2026) on the self-proclaimed prophet Samuel Bateman, and Danse avec le diable : Une secte sur TikTok ? (2024) on the 7M Films talent agency. All five are available on Netflix.

RedUNE symposium on coercive groups in Madrid

RedUNE (Red de Prevención del Sectarismo y del Abuso de Debilidad), a Spanish network working against cults and the exploitation of vulnerable people, is taking papers for a symposium in Madrid on coercive groups.

The meeting is on the afternoon of 20 November 2026 and the morning of 21 November, at the Faculty of Psychology of the Autonomous University of Madrid. Contact the organisers at simposio2026@redune.org.es.

University of Lille study after belonging to a group

The University of Lille is calling for participants in a scientific study, Étude sur le vécu psychologique après l’appartenance à un groupe (a study of psychological experience after belonging to a group). The aim is to improve support for people who had a negative experience in a group.

Those taking part must be 18 or over and have belonged to a group, including where the experience was negative, for example through excessive influence or control. Questionnaires on emotional state and experience in the group take about 25 minutes. The study is entirely online and anonymous.

The questionnaire is on the University of Lille survey site. More information is available from victor.laurent@univ-lille.fr.

Beyond Europe

Richmound mayor steps down after the Queen of Canada group’s exit

Brad Miller, mayor of Richmound, a village of 118 people in south-western Saskatchewan, Canada, is resigning after years of conflict with Romana Didulo’s Kingdom of Canada group. A village social media post on 29 September said his resignation takes effect on 14 October, SaskToday and The Canadian Press reported. Miller told CBC News he is stepping down on 15 October.

Didulo, the self-proclaimed “Queen of Canada” and a QAnon conspiracy theorist, moved into the village’s empty school with followers on 15 September 2023. CBC reported that the group refused to pay utilities, pumped raw sewage into a children’s playground and threatened Miller and others with public executions.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) raided the school on 3 September 2025 after a report that an occupant had a gun, and The Canadian Press reported that 16 people were arrested. The Crown stayed charges against Didulo in March, a decision Miller told CBC left him very disappointed.

We fought a lot of battles and wars, and I think it’s just time.

Peter Thiel likens effective altruism to a cult

The investor Peter Thiel compared effective altruism to a cult in a clip from Walter Isaacson’s forthcoming podcast The Builders, shared exclusively with Business Insider on 30 September. He said the movement’s followers were nonetheless right early about artificial intelligence:

It had maybe the good dimension of a cult, where there was one big thing they knew that the other people did not.

That one thing, Thiel said, was AI, which effective altruists predicted would be “enormously socially transformative” and that “it could be weaponized”. He linked the movement to Anthropic and said he was trying to “steel-man” a movement he criticises.

Minister at Talarico’s church calls evangelical churches “almost cult-like”

Texas Scorecard, a conservative Texas news site, published undercover footage on 28 September of the Rev. Babs Miller, minister to the parish at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Texas, has attended the church since childhood. Asked what was wrong with evangelicals, Miller said:

Evangelical churches are almost cult-like, and they’re just, I think, slightly or maybe greatly misguided about what is intended by anything that the Bible says.

In the footage, reported by senior editor Brandon Waltens, Miller also said some evangelicals treat the Bible as a “magic book”. She described what she called “white Christian nationalism” as rooted in white men in Texas fearing the loss of majority status.

Iran’s Press TV marks 14 years since the US delisted the MEK

Press TV, Iran’s state-run English-language broadcaster, published a long article on 29 September marking 14 years since the US removed the MEK, which it calls the MKO, from its list of foreign terrorist organisations on 28 September 2012. It calls the group a “terror cult” and recounts its 1980s alliance with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the paid speaking appearances by former US officials that preceded the delisting.

The article cites former members describing separation from family, intense ideological discipline and restrictions on leaving. It also recounts the June 2023 Albanian police raid on the group’s Ashraf-3 compound near Tirana.

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