The audio clip of Ms. Layton from the PBS Documentary DVD, Jonestown The Life and Death of Peoples Temple is part of the epilogue of her courageous and insightful book.
I recommend the PBS DVD, but know that there is some very adult language and the subject matter is of course gruesome - you will hear the voice of Jim Jones encouraging mothers to kill their own children. It is horrific.
Printed below is the opening of the epilogue of the book. If you haven't read this book, you need to now. If your local library doesn't have this book it, beg them to get it.
Seductive Poison is available inexpensively as a paperback. You can order it from Amazon.com using this link: CLICK HERE
The audio clip is also provided below.
Click the Play Button above to hear Deborah Layton - "Nobody Joins a Cult" audio clip from the PBS Documentary DVD - Jonestown: Life and Death of Peoples Temple
(c) copyright 2007 WGBH Educational Foundation and Firelight Media
From the Book Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple, by Deborah Layton*:
Epilogue
Looking back, there a few things I have come to learn. People do not knowingly join “cults” that will ultimately destroy and kill them. People join self-help groups, churches, political movements, college campus dinner socials, and the like, in an effort to be a part of something larger than themselves. It is mostly the innocent and the naïve who find themselves entrapped. In their openhearted endeavor to find meaning in their lives, they walk blindly into the promise of ultimate answers and a higher purpose. It is usually only gradually that a group turns into or reveals itself as a cult, becomes malignant, but by then it is often too late.
I hope my book will give my daughter some answers about how I got caught and how the Jonestown tragedy happened. I hope it will provide clues about the workings of a cult and shed light on the darkness of deceit. There are essential warning signs early on. Our alarm signals ought to go off as soon as someone tells us their way is the only right way.
When our own thoughts are forbidden, when our questions are not allowed and our doubts are punished, when contacts and friendships outside of the organization are censored, we are being abused for an end that never justifies its means. When our heart aches knowing we have made friendships and secret attachments that will be forever forbidden if we leave, we are in danger. When we consider staying in a group because we cannot bear the loss, disappointment, and sorrow our leaving will cause for ourselves and those we have come to love, we are in a cult.
If there is any lesson to be learned it is that an ideal can never be brought about by fear, abuse, and the threat of retribution. When family and friends are used as a weapon in order to force us to stay in an organization, something has gone terribly wrong. If I, as a young woman, had had someone explain to me that cults are and how indoctrination works, my story might not have been the same.
I hope my book will give my daughter some answers about how I got caught and how the Jonestown tragedy happened. I hope it will provide clues about the workings of a cult and shed light on the darkness of deceit. There are essential warning signs early on. Our alarm signals ought to go off as soon as someone tells us their way is the only right way.
When our own thoughts are forbidden, when our questions are not allowed and our doubts are punished, when contacts and friendships outside of the organization are censored, we are being abused for an end that never justifies its means. When our heart aches knowing we have made friendships and secret attachments that will be forever forbidden if we leave, we are in danger. When we consider staying in a group because we cannot bear the loss, disappointment, and sorrow our leaving will cause for ourselves and those we have come to love, we are in a cult.
If there is any lesson to be learned it is that an ideal can never be brought about by fear, abuse, and the threat of retribution. When family and friends are used as a weapon in order to force us to stay in an organization, something has gone terribly wrong. If I, as a young woman, had had someone explain to me that cults are and how indoctrination works, my story might not have been the same.
*An Anchor Book published by Doubleday a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing, New York, New York. (c) Copyright 1998 by Deborah Layton
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Thanks again, Allan McConnell