To offer

• information and support to people who have left cults or related groups and to persons concerned about family members or friends in cults.

To provide

• ongoing support meetings at regular intervals for the purpose of educating and supporting one another.

To run

• an annual weekend workshop for people who have left cultic groups and relationships.

To provide

• education and information to policy makers, the general public and the youth of Australia on the dangers of cults.

CIFS does this through:

• A dedicated e-mail info@cifs.org.au and phone answering service. Maintaining a website www.cifs.org.au providing archives of relevant Australian and overseas news stories, articles, links to help sites, books, news of conferences and videos, links with relevant information.


• Holding regular general support meetings throughout the year for families and former members. Organising an annual weekend workshop with qualified counsellors to assist former members in their recovery.


• Speakers and educational evenings for members of the public and health professionals. Keeping abreast of clinical research studies undertaken worldwide through conferences, journals and articles. Memberships to ICSA International Cultic Studies Association www.icsahome.com, Info-Cult Canada www.infocult.org , FECRIS European Federation of Centres of Research and Information on Sectarianism www.fecris.org and through contact with other overseas associations working in these fields.


• Recommending action through submissions to Federal and State political bodies when applicable to advocate for improved constitution and laws to protect and prevent harm to citizens from psychological abusive cultic groups and individuals. Providing educational material aimed to bring awareness to young people on how to protect themselves from being recruited into cultic high demand groups or cultic relationships.

The late Dr Margaret Singer points out six conditions for an abusive thought reform program:

1. Gaining control over a person's time, especially his or her thinking time, and physical environment.


2. Creating a sense of powerlessness, fear, and dependency in the recruit, while providing models that demonstrate the new behaviour that leadership wants to produce.


3. Manipulating rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to suppress the recruits former social behaviour and attitudes, including the use of altered states of consciousness to manipulate experience.


4. Manipulating rewards, punishments and experiences in order to elicit the behaviour and attitudes that leadership wants.


5. Creating a tightly controlled system with a closed system of logic, wherein those who dissent are made to feel as though their questioning indicates that there is something inherently wrong with them.


6. Keeping recruits unaware and uninformed that there is an agenda and a process to control or change them.

   If the person knew of these conditions before being recruited they would not allow or give consent for another person to carry out a thought reform program that takes away personal freedom.

    

   International bodies we recognise include:
   ICSA USA  |   FECRIS Europe  |   InfoCult Canada