Diane Benscoter

At 17, Diane Benscoter joined The Unification Church -- the religious cult whose members are commonly known as “Moonies.” After five long years, her distressed family arranged to have her deprogrammed. Benscoter then left The Unification Church, and was so affected by her experience that she became a deprogrammer herself. She devoted her time to extracting others from cults, until she was arrested for kidnapping. The shock of her arrest caused her to abandon her efforts for almost 20 years.

Diane is now dedicated to speaking out about extremism and how to lower vulnerability to what she defines ” viral memetic infections.” Her TED talk on the subject of how cults rewire the brain can be viewed at : http://www.ted.com/talks/ex_moonie_di...

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