Linda Herrick: Following the leader

Two young members of the Exclusive Brethren. Photo / Supplied

I've never understood the allure of religious cults, and the first episode of the Gibson Group two-part series How To Spot a Cult, which started on TV3 last night, hasn't added any attraction. More the opposite: avoid like the plague. On the evidence presented, cults are led by a dominant person, always men, with banal names like Bert (Potter, the convicted child abuser from Centrepoint), Doug (Metcalf, the man who founded the heavily armed Camp David near Christchurch in the 70s) and Bruce (Hale, world leader of the Brethrens). Lafayette Ron Hubbard reduced his first name to a letter, a fitting metaphor for his repressive Scientology cult.

People who'd been involved in cults and managed to extricate themselves recalled how they had been targeted. Some were born into cults, others were vulnerable because of loneliness, depression, insecurity.

Once hooked, they lost the power of thinking for themselves. They became, as one person put it, childishly dependent.

The groups had an air of menace, none more so than the Scientologists. Ex-Sci defiers revealed struggles with the hierarchy who used bizarre and unreasonable excuses to control them, using laughable faux-scientific techniques.

I wonder if Tom Cruise has ever been subjected to an "auditing" or "confessional" by a panel of hardfaced ladies wearing uniforms with epaulets and caps. Barking.

Of course paranoia runs high within cults because, by their very nature, cults attract unstable people. The end result of a cult leader suffering extreme paranoia was the Waco tragedy, in which nearly 90 people died. A Kiwi man, Ualesei Vaega, who was lucky enough to get out before it all literally blew up, discussed his relationship with David Koresh, clearly as mad as a bat.

At the end of the show you couldn't help but wonder what people got out of joining cults when they seem so unrewarding. But naturally they don't like to let people go. Next week we'll find out how hard it is to get away from them.

Someone who developed a cult following without necessarily wanting one was Doors singer Jim Morrison, the subject of an interesting if ancient (made in 1981) programme which screened on the Documentary Channel last night.

No One Here Gets Out Alive had plenty of interviews and live footage to remind you of how good the band was; the music still sounds fresh and innovative. Straddling the divide between pop and avant-garde rock, the Doors were worshipped by teenybopper girls and hard rock fans alike, but for different reasons.

But Morrison became so famous, with audiences expecting more and more outrageous behaviour, he couldn't get away from himself. After the Miami "incident", when he was arrested for lewd behaviour (which he didn't do, according to guitarist Ray Manzarek), the man who regarded himself as a poet retreated behind a beard and a paunch and intensified the drugs and drinking. He finally lost himself for good in Paris in 1971. The pressures of cult worship, eh?