Talk:Rick Alan Ross

Request for edit: Richardson's description
The following statement represents a point of view per a particular academic and lacks balance.

"Professor of Sociology and Judicial Studies James T. Richardson describes deprogramming as a 'private, self-help process whereby participants in unpopular new religious movements (NRMs) were forcibly removed from the group, incarcerated, and put through radical resocialization processes that were supposed to result in their agreeing to leave the group.'"

It must be amended, both for balance and context.

I suggest the following:

There has been some controversy regarding the practice of deprogamming. Author and clinical psychologist Margaret Singer writes in her book "Cults in Our Midst" that deprogramming is "Providing members with information about the cult and showing them how their own decision-making power had been taken away from them." (Margaret Singer, Cults in Our Midst,San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers, 1995). But Professor of Sociology and Judicial Studies James T. Richardson, a defender of new religious movements called "cults," described deprogramming as the "private, self-help process whereby participants in unpopular new religious movements (NRMs) were forcibly removed from the group, incarcerated, and put through radical resocialization processes that were supposed to result in their agreeing to leave the group."[19] However, according to Vanderbilt Law Review "For purposes of legal analysis, there are three types of deprogramming. Voluntary deprogramming; forcible deprogramming; and deprogramming carried out with a court's sanction, usually in the form of an order of conservatorship." See https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2794&context=vlr Rick Alan Ross (talk) 19:30, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Please check and update the url. You may want to provide full citation information so it can be found in another manner. --Hipal (talk) 19:36, 16 November 2023 (UTC) That now works. Thanks! --Hipal (talk) 19:40, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Doing my best.Rick Alan Ross (talk) 20:52, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Won't you please make the edit including statement by Vanderbilt Law Review. This does offer needed objective factual balance from a legal perspective.Rick Alan Ross (talk) 18:54, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I a version of this, that avoids making unsourced claims about Richardson and about NRMs in general, like "a defender of new religious movements called 'cults, which is just your attempt to character-assassinate him and them. That he has views supportive of NRMs is already apparent to every reader from his quotation. "Author and" was also redundant when the same sentence says "in her book". And it's not "her book", but a co-authored volume.  A "But" construction followed by a "However" construction is poor writing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:32, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Understood. Thank you for including the findings of Vanderbilt, which add a legal perspective."Rick Alan Ross (talk) 16:07, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Cults in Our Midst is not a reliable source. It is based on Singer's work for the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control, but her findings were famously rejected by the APA for its bias and lack of academic rigor. Since then, Singer has consistently been rejected as an expert witness in court. I suggest that information from this source gets removed from the article or replaced with information from a source that is more credible. Theobvioushero (talk) 22:48, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * We should probably clarify in the material about Singer's reputation in this sphere, though we are not citing her work for a claim of fact, only for a directly quoted opinion, and her material (and its early influence, and its castigation by APA) is certainly evidentiary of the "There has been some controversy regarding the practice of deprogamming" statement. There cannot be a controversy about something without at least one participant in the debate being wrong, or there would be no controversy but an agreement. That is to say, Singer did much to popularize some notions, rightly or wrongly, so is a part of the encyclopedically noteworthy controversy and should not be suppressed out of the material; we just need to make sure that WP:DUE is being served here and not make Singer out to be something like a widely-recognized expert. Do you have any revision suggestions?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:20, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Singer is controversial for her work on brainwashing, not for her views on deprogramming. It would be very difficult to find anyone who supports Ross's deprogrammings.
 * While the term "deprogramming" used to refer to both voluntary and involuntary interventions, today, that word refers to involuntary interventions. Those who practice voluntary interventions typically call their work "exit counseling" to distance themselves from those who practice involuntary intervention. The involuntary deprogramming that Ross practices has been widely condemned by countless scholars and experts. I am not aware of a single authoritative person who supports this practice.
 * So, I would say to remove the Singer reference as being outdated and unreliable. However, it is also important to have at least a paragraph explaining the widespread criticisms of Ross's deprogramming methods, since these criticisms have had such a large impact on his public image.
 * I actually think the entire "Career" section should be split into "Career" and "Criticisms and Controversies" section, but that might be too large of a change to make in addressing this one issue. Theobvioushero (talk) 19:53, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Properly covering Ross–NXIVM matters
From the above threads, it appears that we are lacking some coverage of Ross's involvement in the NXIVM controversy or whatever one wants to call it. The present article text mentions NXIVM only with the non sequitur "NXIVM, in April 2004, unsuccessfully sued Ross's Cult Education Institute in NXIVM Corp. v. Ross Institute, claiming copyright infringement.", follwed later by "Ross has been interviewed for various documentaries ... including: The Vow, season 1, episode 6, "Honesty & Disclosure" (2020, HBO), about Catherine Oxenberg and the NXIVM cult; Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult (2020, Starz), about the same; ....".

So, the "meat" of the Ross–NXIVM connection is missing.

All the above closed-out Edit-COI requests are likely to be moved to an archive page soon, so here's the relevant gist:
 * "There are many others who have commented positively about my work, for example concerning NXIVM." —Ross. So, these should be findable sources.
 * "my work did not end with the Scott case, but rather greatly expanded and continued, which also has been widely reported. See https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/who-is-cult-expert-rick-ross-whats-his-connection-to-nxivm ..." —Ross. That source has already been used as proof of participation in a documentary, though I'm not sure it has anything about direct involvement with the NXIVM case.
 * Some specific revision language that was suggested: "Ross testified for the prosecution at the criminal trial of NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere in 2019. Raniere was found guilty of racketeering, human trafficking, sex offenses, and fraud and sentenced to 120 years in prison and a $1.75 million fine. See https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/founder-nxivm-purported-self-help-organization-and-five-others-charged-superseding and see https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/nyregion/nxivm-cult-keith-raniere-sentenced.html ... In 2020 Ross appeared in the widely watched documentaries The Vow and Seduced concerning NXIVM and Raniere. See https://onezero.medium.com/cult-deprogrammer-rick-alan-ross-on-nxivm-qanon-and-what-makes-us-vulnerable-62f6c709562c and see https://seduceddocumentary.com/theexperts/rickalanross/" —Ross. Some of the latter of this (about docus) has been integrated (by SMcCandlish), but the stuff is what we're missing sources on (and any mention of in the article).
 * "Regarding the documentary Seduced see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduced:_Inside_the_NXIVM_Cult already established through notes here at Wikipedia." —Ross. I (SMcCandlish) did pull one source from that article to use for citing a documentary-related claim here, but there may be other relevant sources already cited there.
 * "NXIVM: Neither source [of two previously mentioned works earlier in a thread] contains the text 'Ross', so they are not sources for any Ross involvement in that case. Involvement seems very likely and probably provable, but these are not sources for it. One source mentioned below does mention involvement in the case, but in too little detail to be useful. NXIVM stuff should be a separate edit request, suggesting particular material to add that provides a summary of the Ross involvement in that case, and multiple independent, reliable sources with in-depth coverage." —SMcCandlish; who is now opening the present thread as a way of addressing this, without waiting on another request from Ross.
 * "Variety mentions my historical significance See https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/the-vow-where-are-keith-raniere-allison-mack-1234808846/" —Ross
 * "The Variety source ... [has] mention of 'Ross' .. in connection to the background [NXIVM] lawsuit" —SMcCandlish
 * "NXIVM and the Waco Davidian standoff are the most prominent cult events in my work history. But the Jason Scott case is not how I am known by the public, its meaningful to be included, but not equally prominent when compared to NXIVM and Waco.
 * "My book was the first book about cults to mention NXIVM. And the papers by two respected doctors published at culteducation.com was the first critical analysis by mental health professionals released about NXIVM. Raniere's 14-year legal battle with me, which he ultimately lost, was widely reported. And of course I worked with the Justice Department and FBI regarding his prosecution and testified as a fact witness at his trial. It seems to me that my battle with Raniere will be as important as Waco historically, due to legal precedents established. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NXIVM_Corp._v._Ross_Institute" —Ross.
 * "My work on ... NXIVM criminal trial testimony ... is notable and brings the bio up to date. ... My point is that my work did not cease in 2004 and in fact expanded and continued as reported." —Ross. This is reasonable and is why I (SMcCandlish) care enough to examine this; I don't like grossly outdated bio articles here, much less ones that have a non sequitur in them, introducing something like an NXIVM lawsuit with no context at all (and no information on how that case resolved).
 * "see from the many links regarding my documentary work, court battle with NXIVM and subsequent testimony at cult leader Keith Raniere's criminal trial ... there has been considerable work reported in the past 20 years that is both relevant and notable. So why isn't it in this bio? It is reflected elsewhere on Wikipedia. Certainly reliable and credible sources according to Wikipedia have reported it. NXIVM, by any objective measurement, is far more noteworthy than the Jason Scott case. ... put NXIVM in the lead and follow with Waco." —Ross. Overall this seems reasonable enough to look into, especially if other articles here have some sources cited already that can be re-used, though really just search-engining around for additional source materials should not be that much of a challenge.

The above can be distilled into a very rough draft along the lines of the following (using a bit of existing material in the article and the source for it, but without any other sources yet):

This is missing various details (What did Ross's book and the CEI papers say about NXIVM, in nutshell summary? How exactly did the case resolve? Why was it a copyright case, which is kind of weird?), but I think there must be sources we can use already cited at the case article, at the NXIVM article, at the Raniere article, and possibly at one or another of the articles on the documentaries. One part from the thread summary above that is not addressed is "legal precedents established", since I don't know what that refers to, though perhaps the case article covers this (I haven't pored over it yet).

If something like the above block can be properly sourced and put into the article, then it would also be appropriate to include a summary of Ross's involvement with NXIVM matters in the lead of the article, since it's arguably more significant than some of what is already in the lead. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:17, 7 December 2023 (UTC)


 * The case article NXIVM Corp. v. Ross Institute sums it up pretty well; but some statements there don't seem to be properly supported by the sources cited, so we'll need to investigate that some more. That article hopefully has enough sources to fill in all those details that seem missing above, like copyright: because NXIVM wanted to suppress the criticism and publication of their manuals; the precedent seems to be in the lead of the other article:"critical analysis of material obtained in bad faith, i.e., in violation of a non-disclosure agreement, was fair use since the secondary use was transformative as criticism and was not a potential replacement for the original on the market, regardless of how the material was obtained".  If we need more sources for specific info we can ask Mr. Ross. --- Avatar317 (talk) 00:05, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Court Expert Witness
The bio now states:

By 2004, Ross had handled more than 350 deprogramming cases in various countries[8] and testified as an expert witness in several court cases.[8][42][43] He has also contributed to a number of books, including a foreword to Tim Madigan's See No Evil[44] and a chapter to Roman Espejo's Cults: Opposing Viewpoints.[45]

But I have testified in notable cult trials including NXIVM criminal trial of Keith Raniere and recently the rape trial of cult leader Eligio Bishop.

I suggest the paragraph be revise to read:

By 2004, Ross had handled more than 350 deprogramming cases in various countries[8] and testified as an expert witness in several court cases.[8][42][43]. Ross testified as a fact witness in the criminal trial of NXIVM leader Keith Raniere and as an expert witness at the trial of Carbon Nation leader Eligio Bishop. Both alleged cult leaders were criminally convicted and sentenced to prison, Raniere for more than 100 years and Bishop for life without parole. He has also contributed to a number of books, including a foreword to Tim Madigan's See No Evil[44] and a chapter to Roman Espejo's Cults: Opposing Viewpoints.[45]

See https://www.timesunion.com/nxivm/article/Cult-expert-testifies-about-his-dealings-with-13972283.php

And see https://www.vice.com/en/article/j5wk88/what-its-like-to-be-surveilled-and-sued-by-nxivm

Also see https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/cult-expert-testifies-at-rape-trial-of-accused-cult-leader-eligio-bishop

And see https://hoodline.com/2024/02/cult-clash-in-the-courtroom-expert-brands-eligio-bishop-a-destructive-leader-amidst-atlanta-rape-trial-shockers/ Rick Alan Ross (talk) 21:44, 12 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I added info from the TimesUnion source; I didn't see it using the term "fact witness". I don't have time now to look at the other sources, so that's all for now. --- Avatar317 (talk) 01:50, 16 March 2024 (UTC)