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Steven Hassan
Summary
Steven Alan Hassan (pronounced hɑ:sIn; born 1954 is an American author, educator and mental health counselor specializing in destructive cults (sometimes called exit counseling). He has been described by media as "one of the world's foremost experts on mind control, cults and similar destructive organizations," though social scientists are divided on his work. He is a former member of the Unification Church, founded Ex-Moon Inc. in 1979, and in 1999 founded the Freedom of Mind Resource Center. He has written on the subject of mind control and how to help people who have been harmed by the experience. He created the BITE Model evaluation of controlling social groups to quantify cult-like behavior.
Hassan was born in 1954 and raised as a Jew. He is a native of Queens, New York, and as of late 2020, lived in Newton, Massachusetts.
Hassan reported that, at age 19 while pursuing a poetry degree at Queens College, he was deceptively recruited into the Unification Church, and spent 27 months as a member. Hassan was involved in recruiting, fundraising, and political campaigning for the Unification Church. He also claimed to have risen to the rank of assistant director of the Church at their National Headquarters, and personally met with Sun Myung Moon during numerous leadership sessions.
During his time in the Unification Church, Hassan reported living in communal housing and sleeping less than four hours a night. Part of his duties included selling carnations on street corners in New York. In an interview, Hassan reported that he believed Richard Nixon was an archangel, and during the Watergate scandal, he and other members of the Unification Church were involved in prayer and fasting to "prove their loyalty to the president". He also reported surrendering his bank account to the Unification Church, and quitting college and his job to work for the church. Hassan reported that "he was ready to kill or die for" Sun Myung Moon.
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