4,300 Victims: Huge Ignored Deprogramming Scandal

Ignored: Over 4 decades, thousands of adults in Japan were abducted, confined, and subjected to coercive “deprogramming” – all under guise of family concern and with tacit legal and societal support

Despite Japan’s Obligations Under International Law, Systemic Rights Violations Were Carried Out with Impunity

1st part of a speech by Attorney Patricia Duval at a side event organized by the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) at the 59th session of the Human Rights Council, in hall 25 of the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland 16th June 2025. Patricia Duval is a member of the Paris Bar Association, specializing in international human rights law. She has defended the rights of religious and faith minorities both in France and internationally. 

See part 2: Abduction Called Rescue – It Was Confinement

See also Appealing Verdict Based on Mind Control Myth

After this appalling and very revealing testimony, I will just make a few comments to explain the situation.

First, the power of family in Japan.

All the kidnapped and confined so-called deprogrammed members were adults. Still, even if they were 50 years old – I don’t know what age – they had to follow the tradition, follow their parents’ advice and choices for them.

It’s just a factor that I wanted to mention to explain the situation and how deprogramming [See editor’s note below] was raging in Japan in the 1980s and 90s mostly. Even if the tradition and family authority are a bit less strong with the young people now, in the 80s and 90s, it was really very, very strict.

And his father [the father of Hirohisa Koide] had been trained in the military, and he was influenced also by that.

But I wanted to stress the power of family because this is one thing I was wondering about in my report to the UN: Is there freedom of religion or belief for adults – overage – in Japan?

I mean, if there is no choice, if they have no choice as regards their religions, it’s a big problem.

Japan is committed to protect freedom of religion or belief by signing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. And it should follow and respect its commitments. This is one big point that has to be changed and evolved in Japan.

But anyway, this situation did not happen by chance. There was a group of lawyers, like Koide mentioned, and a group of pastors. They had converging interests.

This group of lawyers was close to the Communist Party. They fought the Unification Church because it opposed the expansion of communism in Asia after World War II. Communism was therefore threatening spirituality in the area because communism was atheistic and eliminating religions.

The Unification Church and its founder Reverend Moon started to oppose communism and started to have enemies in this regard.

The group of lawyers who were politically motivated started to attack the Church and openly state they were going for the destruction of the Unification Church.

They are the same who are still operating today and pushing for dissolution of the religious corporation, which they obtained in the first instance at the District Court. Now the decision is appealed to the High Court.

It is still the same lawyers, and they are still with their agenda to this day.

Pastors had also started deprogramming on their own because they saw the Unification Church as a competing religion. I think it’s an important point to know that at some point the pastors and the lawyers started to announce a common agenda and a common practice. They called it “rescue of believers”.

It was actually deprogramming [See editor’s note below]. They didn’t say openly that it was confinement and abduction, but this is what it was. And coerced persuasion to leave the faith.

The parents who had been made anxious about their children’s choice to join the Unification Church started to look around for solutions. They turned to the pastors because they were proposing their “help”, so-called “help”, which was actually coercive “rescue”.

And the lawyers recommended the deprogrammers to the parents. They recommended to the parents to use the “rescue services” of the pastors.

This is how it became a nationwide activity. It’s from the testimonies of the deprogramming [See editor’s note below] pastors themselves in court we know it became a nationwide activity. They admitted it. It was a nationwide activity to deprogram the believers of the Unification Church.

And this is how we come to the figure of 4,300 believers who’ve been subjected to that very violent practice successfully or unsuccessfully.

Fortunately, most of it was unsuccessful because they only have 32 civil court cases that they rely on to ask for the dissolution of the Church – 32 court cases over 40 years, and 4,300 deprogrammed members.

So you see, the results are very few. But anyhow, they relied on these very old cases to now ask for a dissolution of the Church, using the same campaigns – media campaigns saying the Church has made lots of victims and so on.

But where are the victims? The victims are victims of deprogramming! [See editor’s note below]

Edited version.

Continued in part 2.

See part 2: Abduction Called Rescue – It Was Confinement

See also Appealing Verdict Based on Mind Control Myth

Featured image above: Attorney Patricia Duval speaking at the United Nations Office at Geneva, Switzerland 16th June 2025. Photo: Screenshot from video recording by UPF.

[Editor’s note: Coercive faith-breaking (“deprogramming”) in Japan refers to the practice of coercively attempting to separate individuals from their religious affiliations or beliefs, typically through intervention by family members, professional faith-breakers (deprogrammers) or organizations hostile to new religious movements (NRMs). This phenomenon often targets members of such movements, e.g. relatively large faiths like the Family Federation or Jehovah’s Witnesses, but also smaller groups like Happy Science (Kōfuku no Kagaku) and other newer religious movements.

However, also Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist-based lay organization with more than 8 million Japanese members, and affiliated with Nichiren Buddhism, has occasionally been subject to faith-breaking attempts.

The practice gained attention in the latter half of the 20th century, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. Parents or concerned family members often hired faith-breakers who taught them how to abduct and forcibly detain believers. Almost all such cases involved confining the individual believer and cutting him or her off from the religious community. During the confinement, the believer was subjected to intense questioning or indoctrination designed to break his or her faith. The aim was to “rescue” the person from what the family often had been tricked by faith-breakers or lawyers to regard as harmful influence from the religious organization.

Critics of forced de-conversion argue that it violates fundamental human rights, including freedom of thought, religion, and association. Reports of psychological trauma and accusations of unlawful detention have sparked debates over its ethical and legal implications. In response, some religious groups, particularly NRMs, have lobbied for greater protections against such practices.

Japanese courts have been inconsistent in addressing cases of coercive faith-breaking. While some verdicts have condemned the practice as illegal detention, others have been more lenient, citing family concerns about “mental health” or alleged “exploitation” as mitigating factors.]

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