| Rick Alan Ross | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 24, 1952 Cleveland, Ohio |
| Occupation | Founder and Executive Director, Rick A. Ross Institute |
| Website | |
| Cult News The Rick A. Ross Institute |
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Rick Alan Ross (born 1952 in Cleveland, Ohio, as Ricky Alan Ross) works as a consultant, lecturer, and intervention specialist, with a focus on exit counseling and deprogramming of those belonging to cults. He runs a blog at CultNews.com,[1] and in 2003 founded the Rick A. Ross Institute, which maintains a database of press articles on controversial groups, court documents, and essays.[2] Ross has worked as an expert court witness and as an analyst for the media in cases relating to such groups.[3]
In 1995, he reached an agreement with Pentecostal Jason Scott over his forcible deprogramming in 1993. The defendants had been found liable for conspiracy to deprive Scott of his civil rights and religious liberties. They were awarded $2,500,000 against Ross, who later settled for $5,000 and 200 hours of his time.
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Ross was adopted by Paul and Ethel Ross in Cleveland, Ohio in 1953. The Ross family moved to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1956, where Ross grew up. Except for attending one year South Carolina's Camden Military Academy, Ross completed all of his education in Arizona. He graduated from Phoenix High School in 1971 and did not attend college.[4]
In 1974, Ross was convicted of the attempted burglary of a vacant model home and sentenced to probation.[3] The following year, he robbed a jewelry store in Phoenix. Ross confessed to the crime and received five years probation.[3] In response to questions about his criminal background, Ross later said, "I had been in trouble as a young man, and I turned my life around ... I never again in my life made another mistake like that."[5]
Following high school, Ross went to work for a finance company and then a Phoenix-area bank. In 1975, he began work for a cousin's car-salvage company, later becoming vice-president.[3][4] He continued working in the car-salvage field until 1982.[4]
Ross first became concerned about controversial religious groups in 1982 following a visit with his grandmother at Phoenix's Kivel Home, a Jewish residential and nursing facility where she lived. Ross learned that missionary affilates of the locally produced Jewish Voice Broadcast had infiltrated the home as staff members in order to specifically target Jews for conversion to Pentecostal Christianity.[6][3][4][7] After bringing the matter to the attention of the home's director and to the local Jewish community, Ross successfully campaigned to have the group's activities stopped.[3][4] He then began working as a volunteer, lecturer and researcher for a variety of Jewish organizations.[3] He worked for the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix,[8][9] and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations appointed him to two national committees focusing on cults and inter-religious affairs.[10]
During the 1980s Ross represented the Jewish community on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Arizona Department of Corrections. Later the Committee elected him as its chairman,[11] and he served as chairman of the International Coalition of Jewish Prisoners Programs sponsored by B'nai Brith in Washington D.C. Ross's work within the prison system covered inmate religious rights and educational efforts regarding hate groups.[12] Ross also worked as a member of the professional staff of the Jewish Family and Children's Service (JFCS) and the Bureau of Jewish Education (BJE) in Phoenix, Arizona.[13]
In 1986 Ross left the staff of the JFCS and BJE to become a full-time private consultant and deprogrammer.[3][4] He undertook a number of involuntary deprogramming interventions at the requests of parents whose children had joined controversial groups and movements.[3][4] By 2004, Ross had handled more than 350 deprogramming cases in various countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel and Italy, typically charging around $5,000 per case.[3][14] Ross claimed a success-rate of 75%, and journalist Nick Johnstone credited him with having "rescued many people from harmful situations".[15]
In 1989 the CBS television program 48 Hours covered Ross's deprogramming of a 14-year-old boy, Aaron Paron, a member of the Potter's House Christian Fellowship.[16][17] Aaron refused to leave the organization, and saw his mother as "possessed by the devil".[18] Most of the hour-long program focused upon Ross's efforts to persuade Paron to see the Potter's House as "a destructive Bible-based group" bent on taking control of its members' lives.[16] The case resulted in the parties entering into an agreement that Potter's House would not harbor Aaron, entice him away from his mother, attempt to influence his behavior or take any action that would interfere with his mother's parental rights.[17]
In 1992 and 1993, Ross opposed actions of the Branch Davidian group led by David Koresh in Waco, Texas.[19] Ross had previously deprogrammed a member of the group.[20][21] Ross was the only deprogrammer to work with Branch Davidian members prior to a siege involving the death of many of the group's members at Waco.[22] Television broadcaster CBS hired Ross as an on-scene analyst for their coverage of the Waco siege.[3] Ross also offered unsolicited advice to the FBI during the standoff.[21] A later Department of Justice report on the matter stated that "the FBI did not 'rely' on Ross for advice whatsoever during the standoff."[21] According to the report, the FBI "politely declined his unsolicited offers of assistance throughout the standoff" and treated the information Ross supplied as it would any other unsolicited information received from the public.[21] Criticism of government agencies' involvement with Ross has come from Nancy Ammerman, a professor of sociology of religion, who cited FBI interview notes which stated that Ross "has a personal hatred for all religious cults." She claimed that the BATF and the FBI did rely on Ross when Ross recommended that agents "attempt to publicly humiliate Koresh, hoping to drive a wedge between him and his followers." She criticized them for doing so and ignoring the "wider social sciences community".[23][24][25] Other scholars also criticized Ross' involvement.[20][23][26][27][28][29] Ross characterized his critics as cult apologists who held the belief that cult groups "should not be held accountable for their action like others within our society".[30]
Stuart A. Wright, a professor, researcher and author who has written a book on the Waco incident and testified to the House of Representatives in regard to it,[31] has commented on Ross and others whom he refers to as "hardline anticultists". [32] While discussing news coverage of a recent mass suicide, Wright stated, "The event produced an endless stream of speculation, hearsay, unscientific claims by so-called "cult experts"..." He went on to say that the "experts" who appeared on network TV included Ross and others.[32]
In 1996 Ross started a website titled "The Ross Institute Internet Archives for the Study of Destructive Cults, Controversial Groups and Movements".[33] Ross has lectured at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago and University of Arizona,[34] and has testified as an expert witness in court cases.[3] According to the biography page on his website he has worked as a paid consultant for television networks CBS, CBC and Nippon, and Miramax/Disney retained him as a technical consultant to one of the actors involved in making Jane Campion's film Holy Smoke!.[4]
In 2001 Ross moved to New Jersey and two years later founded the Rick A. Ross Institute for the Study of Destructive Cults and Controversial Groups and Movements, a non-profit, 501(c)(3) public charity located in New Jersey, USA. The Advisory Board of the RRI includes Ford Greene, a California attorney specializing in cult-related litigation, as well as Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, co-authors of the books Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change and Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America's Freedoms in Religion, Politics and Our Private Lives. Psychologist Margaret Singer also served as a board member of the Institute until her death in 2003.
In June 2004 Landmark Education filed a US$1 million lawsuit against the Institute, claiming that the Institute's online archives damaged Landmark Education's product.[35] In December 2005, Landmark Education filed to dismiss its own lawsuit with prejudice, purportedly on the grounds of a material change in case law after the publication of an opinion in another case, Donato v. Moldow, regarding the Communications Decency Act of 1996.[35]
In 1993, Ross faced charges of unlawful imprisonment in the State of Washington due to the alleged forcible detention of Jason Scott, a member of a Pentecostal church, in 1991.[36][37] Ross was acquitted in a January 1994 jury trial.[38][39][40][41]
Scott sued Ross, two of his associates, and the Cult Awareness Network (CAN), for his abduction and failed deprogramming. Scott was eighteen years old at the time of the abduction. CAN was a co-defendant because a CAN contact person had referred Scott's mother to Ross.
The two men hired by Scott's mother seized him outside her house. Scott was handcuffed but never struck. After he bit one of the men, they taped his mouth, and both the handcuffs and tape were removed after he was put in the van to go to the hotel where they held the deprogramming. The deprogramming personnel restrained him and told him his release depended on the completion of the deprogramming.[42][43][44][38][45][46]
The defendants were found liable for conspiracy to deprive Scott of his civil rights and religious liberties and awarded $875,000 in compensatory damages, and punitive damages in the amount of $1,000,000 against CAN, $2,500,000 against Ross, and $250,000 against each of the other two individual defendants. The case bankrupted the Cult Awareness Network.[47][48]
In 1995 Ross filed for personal bankruptcy because of the damages award against him in the Scott civil trial.[49][42] Scott then settled with Ross, accepting $5,000 plus 200 hours of Ross's professional services "as an expert consultant and intervention specialist".[49][46] Berry, Scott's new attorney, said that Scott's decision to use Ross's services was not a vindication of Ross's deprogramming methods and refused to say what services Ross would provide.[46]
As a result of the legal risks involved, Ross stopped advocating coercive deprogramming or involuntary interventions for adults, preferring instead voluntary exit counseling without the use of force or restraint.[50] He states that despite refinement of processes over the years, exit counseling and deprogramming continue to depend on the same principles.[50]