Join us Sat, Sept. 12, following the 2 p.m. matinee for a conversation on the contemporary cult experience. The panelists will speak about their own experiences and will take questions from the audience.
Author Jayanti Tamm, who chronicled her experiences in 'Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult" will be featured.
SATURDAY, SEPT. 12, 2 P.M.
Joseph Szimhart initiated his work as a cult specialist in 1980 after ending his two-year devotion to a large New Age sect. He began to work professionally as an intervention specialist after 1985 on an international scale. From 1985 through 1992 he was chairman of an interdenominational, cult information organization in New Mexico and lectured throughout the state. He has written reviews and articles about cultic issues for Skeptical Inquirer, Cultic Studies Journal, Cultic Studies Review, and other publications. He continues to consult for the media and maintains a website for information about cults: http://home.dejazzd.com/jszimharthttp://home.dejazzd.com/jszimhart. For family reasons, he reduced his exit counseling work since 1998 when he began a job with a psychiatric emergency hospital. Mr. Szimhart continues to pursue his fine art career.
From the time of her birth, Jayanti Tamm was declared the chosen disciple in the cult of Guru Sri Chinmoy. Jayanti lived inside the confines of the Guru’s inner circle, shuttling between her family’s home, Sri Chinmoy’s Connecticut headquarters, and his ashram in Queens, New York. Sri Chinmoy assigned Jayanti to court celebrities, infiltrate the United Nations, and find elephants for him to weight lift, all in an effort to transform the world. At the age of twenty-five, after multiple attempts to leave, she was permanently exiled from the group.
Jayanti chronicled her unique life in her memoir, Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult (Random House 2009) which has received critical acclaim from the New York Times, People Magazine, and Forbes. Jayanti is currently an English Professor at Ocean County College where she teaches writing. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, daughter, and is working on a novel.
David Clark is a thought reform consultant from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mr. Clark has been active in this field for more than 20 years and is the chair of ICSA’s Video Education Committee. Mr. Clark has been on the Board of the Leo J. Ryan Education Foundation and reFOCUS. He was a contributing author for the Practical Guidelines for Exit Counseling chapter in the W.W. Norton book, Recovery from Cults. In 1985 he received the Hall of Fame Award from the "original" Cult Awareness Network He was a founding member of the "original" Focus and reFOCUS, a national support network for former cult members He has been a national and international conference speaker on the topic of cults and has been interviewed by newspapers, radio, and TV stations on the topic of mind control and cults for over two decades. David Clark was the 2004 American plenary speaker at Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the Ukraine for the F.P.P.S. International Scientific-Practical Conference with the presentation title of "Thought Reform Consultation, Youth Cult Education Preparation and Sect Family Intervention Work." He was also the April 21, 2006 United States of America plenary speaker for the International Scientific Conference of Cardinal August Hlond Upper Silesian School of Pedagogy in Mysolwice, Poland. The topic was "Thought Reform Consultation, Family Youth Cult Education Preparation and Sect Intervention Work." Mr. Clark also contributed to a May 16, 2006 History Channel special on Opus Dei and was featured in John Allen's important book, Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church. He spoke on exit counseling/thought reform consultation at an international conference, "Myth and Reality of Psychological Abuse and Practical Ways to Resist It," at the Russian State University of Humanities in Moscow (March 13-14, 2008). He spoke on life in a cult and leaving a cult at a conference on cults and gangs, sponsored by Creighton University's Department of Psychiatry and the Douglas County (NB) Sheriff's Department (April 18, 2008).
