There was nothing more precious to me in life than my family and no more important obligation than caring financially for my mother and my siblings. AMORC’s mind control disabled me and put me on the  wrong track for accomplishing goals I had seamlessly fulfilled in Haiti through earning a decent income even while going to school.

            Of course, when it comes to cults, their effects on their members can be incredibly disruptive and even dangerous. Singer gives the examples of William A. Lewis, the leader of the Black Hebrew House of Judah, a Michigan cult. In 1986, he was convicted of causing the death of a 12-year old, who was beaten to death, as well as conspiring to enslave children. Two years later, the so-called Ecclesia Athletic Association had fifty-three children removed from their facility following the beating death of an eight year old. Multiple charges were filed against the cult leadership for manslaughter and conspiracy to deny civil rights of two dozen children. Three years later, Tony Alamo, a relatively famous cult leader, who headed the Holy Alamo Christian Church Consecrated, was charged with ordering four of his members to beat a girl with a wooden paddle 140 times. According to a 2006 article, Alamo, was never actually prosecuted for this abuse because he had already been sentenced to five years in prison for tax evasion and prosecutors didn’t think the additional sentence, if he was convicted, was long enough to bother with another long and expensive trial.
            The above examples which Singer presents involve sad, violent acts. But there are all kinds of violence committed against families that just involve physical separation. For instance, the multiple mandates by Scientology leaders that separated members from their families or the famous “lost boys” who were younger members of polygamy cults whose older leaders expelled them to drown out the competition for the younger women to take as multiple wives. Many cults try to separate people from their families.

            But there are subtle ways of causing harm to families by taking away a family member and using mind control to create a false, compliant identity suitable for ‘enslavement’ by the cult for its own purposes, however big, however small.
            Singer is aware of many subtleties of cult conditioning and rightly presents a myriad of ways that cults hurt individuals and the society they belong too. One of the results related to my immersion in AMORC for so many years is mentioned in the following passage, had a profound effect on my relationship to my own family.

A further concern for our society is that cults are diverting some of society’s best minds away from education and rational thought. Numerous individuals are being prevented from contributing to humankind’s welfare through science, medicine, teaching, ecology, and other careers. Instead, they are being lured into cults, where they may end up spending years contributing only to the power and comfort of the cult leader. They lose some of the most important years of their lives, and when they emerge they may be unable to use their former abilities and talents because they will be behind in so many ways.

            I am very fortunate that I have been able to go back to school and gain a profession compatible with my talents and interests. Still, I lost 26 years- as Singer says above, “some of the most important years of my life.”

            One of my deepest tragedies which I recount in my memoir,  The Prisoner of San Jose, was during a time when my mother was dying of cancer. At the time, I was homeless, trapped in Brooklyn and imprisoned in my convoluted thinking. I desperately longed for the ability to heal my mother using the ‘magical’ methods of AMORC. In my distorted way, I looked for a way to amplify my healing ability.

            Owing to AMORC’s rants against traditional churches, I began to try to separate myself completely- inwardly- from my affiliation with the Catholic Church. I began to consciously blame the Catholic Church for all my troubles, thinking this would please the Rosicrucian masters who might bestow on me the ability to heal my mother remotely. Eventually, I found out later that, for much of the time I was going through this desperate yearning to help my mother, she had already passed away and never got to see her little Pierre for the very last time.

            Please understand, cultish thinking on my part put me in a position that I thought that magical thinking would somehow drop opportunity on my head when I came to America. I believed this opportunity would be funneled out of the egregor with the grace of my Rosicrucian masters to whom I paid homage by executing 24 hours a day my robust inventory of Rosicrucian tasks. Because of this contorted way thinking, I could not support my mother and siblings as I did in the past and could not visit my mother at a time of her greatest needs.
            So when Singer speaks about harming someone by taking away their chance at a profession, separating them from their families and harming society from keeping them from doing useful work, I know, first hand, she is right.             AMORC cannot necessarily be accused of being a violent cult in the physical sense but, in the personal and psychological sense, it is very violent and disruptive. And, consequently, for people who care about their rationality, inner unity and freedom, AMORC is extremely dangerous.
            That is why I continue  my work- to inform people about AMORC and the cult problem, in general.