"[1][2] In the 1970s, Patrick and other anti-cult activists founded the Citizens' Freedom Foundation (which later became known as the Cult Awareness Network) and began offering what they called "deprogramming" services to people who wanted a family member removed from a New Religious Movement.
[3] He dropped out of high school in tenth grade to help support his family, worked a variety of jobs and opened a nightclub, then became co-chairman of the Nineteenth Ward in Chattanooga.
In the same year, Patrick founded FREECOG (Parents' Committee to Free Our Sons and Daughters from the Children of God) and began developing his theory and practice of deprogramming.
According to Patrick, cult recruiters had the capacity to place individuals in a hypnotic trance, without their knowledge or permission, by projecting brain waves out of their eyes and fingertips.
[5] Patrick's counteractive treatment for the brainwashing consisted of: (1) abducting the NRM member; (2) isolating them at a carefully guarded, remote location; (3) haranguing them about the "cult" in question, while pointing to the love and distress of the relatives present; (4) threatening to never let them go.
[6] Physical restraint, detention over days or weeks, food and sleep deprivation, prolonged verbal and emotional abuse, and desecration of the symbols of the victim's faith, were all used as part of the effort to deprogram the individual.
[1]: 346–48 Despite a lack of formal education and professional training, in the 1970s Patrick was hired by many people (usually parents of adult children) seeking to have family members "deprogrammed".
The process involved four deprogrammers (or "thugs" as Wirth called them) shoving her into a van and gagging her, after which she was handcuffed to a bed for two weeks, denied food and water, and repeatedly threatened.
[14] In February 1973, Daniel Voll of Farmington, Connecticut,[15] summoned Ted Patrick to New York City Criminal Court on assault charges for a botched attempt to deprogram him from the New Testament Ministry Fellowship, part of the burgeoning Jesus Movement.
[16][17][18] In May 1974, Patrick held Dena Thomas Jones and Kathy Markis against their wills with some of their acquaintances in Denver because they were believed to be controlled by a "satanic group.
"[19] District Court Judge Zita Weinshienk sentenced Patrick to a seven-day jail term and a US$1,000 fine (approximately $6,200 now) in June 1974 in order to teach him he "can't play God or the law".
Kathe Crampton, who called herself Dedication Israel after joining the Love Family, was brought to San Diego from Seattle to be deprogrammed by Patrick and her parents in 1973.
[17] In January 1975, Wendy Helander alleged that Patrick attempted to deprogram her from the Unification Church for fourteen hours straight after her parents tricked her into coming to a house in northern Connecticut.
[21] A tape was played to Judge James Belson of the Washington D.C. Superior Court on 21 August 1975, where psychiatrist Harold Kaufman recorded a conversation with Helander about her experience with Patrick and her parents in January.
[22][23] In May 1975, Patrick was convicted of holding Joanne Rogin Bradley, a 19-year-old convert to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), against her will in Orange County, California.
[24] In June 1976, Long Beach, New Jersey, authorities charged Patrick with false imprisonment of Richard and Alan Mezey who converted to the Divine Light Mission.
[25][26] On 3 March 1978, Jessica Marks, a member of the Church of Scientology, filed a lawsuit naming 13 defendants, including Patrick, in a deprogramming incident in Portland, Oregon, in June 1976.