Diane Benscoter

Shoes of a Servant. My Unconditional Devotion to a Lie

Diane Benscoter grew up in the heartland of America in a small Nebraska town with a loving family. At 17, motivated by her idealism and inspired by the lyrics of her favorite songs, she left home in search of a way to end war. She found easy answers to life’s hard questions in the form of a religious cult commonly known as the Moonies. In Shoes of a Servant Benscoter weaves a gripping story of her servitude in the cult, the deprogramming staged by her desperate family, and her subsequent involvement in the underground world of deprogramming, culminating in her arrest for kidnapping.

Often humorous and always heartbreaking, Benscoter’s story carries the reader on a journey into the world of mental manipulation, providing compelling insight on how human vulnerabilities open the door for extremism.

“…Read this book and share it with everyone – because everyone is vulnerable.” Dr. Joachim De Posada “Don’t Eat the Marshmallow…yet”

 About Diane Benscoter

At 17, Diane Benscoter joined The Unification Church — the religious cult whose members are commonly known as “Moonies.” After five long years, her distressed family arranged to have her deprogrammed. Benscoter then left The Unification Church, and was so affected by her experience that she became a deprogrammer herself. She devoted her time to extracting others from cults, until she was arrested for kidnapping. The shock of her arrest caused her to abandon her efforts for almost 20 years.

Diane is now dedicated to speaking out about extremism and how to lower vulnerability to what she defines ” viral memetic infections.” Her TED talk on the subject of how cults rewire the brain can be viewed at : http://www.ted.com/talks/ex_moonie_diane_benscoter_how_cults_think.html

“Science of Cult Behavior,” HuffPost Live, Oct 16, 2013, interview: http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/diane-benscoter-cult-brain/5249e8212b8c2a652b00041c

Shoes of a Servant: My Unconditional Devotion to a Lie

Print & Ebook

2013

Published by Lucky Bat Books, with Managing Editor Louisa Swann