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MIND CONTROL
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Here you will find specific information about the process used by destructive
totalists to control their followers. Excerpts from books authored by leading
experts offer penetrating insights into the world of thought reform, coercive
persuasion and brainwashing. You will see the criteria used to determine when a
thought reform program of control is in use. Examples range from one-on-one
cultic relationships to large groups.

Also covered in this section is the process of breaking free from mind control
and moving on to a road of recovery. This journey may begin with an
intervention, often called "deprogramming." This process is detailed through a
history of cult deprogramming, actual reports about specific cases and the most
common issues encountered during the recovery process.

Sleep Deprivation Can Be a Weapon in the Hands of an Abusive Partner

Unlike other types of physical abuse, sleep deprivation doesn’t leave a mark.
Vice/July 9, 2019
By Kimberly Lawson.
Alice’s former husband often woke her up by slamming his hand down on the bed.
He would keep her awake “until the wee hours of the morning,” she recalled.
Sometimes, it didn’t matter who went to bed first; he would still find reasons
to wake her in the middle of the night. “It could be because I was snoring. It
could be because he [had woken up] and I was asleep and if he couldn’t sleep, I
couldn’t sleep. [Or] he’d had a dream and I’d done something in his dream and
therefore he was really upset with me.”

Nights were terrifying, she said, though she often felt it was safer to go to
sleep after her husband. “It became a really big deal for me,” she said. “If I
was to fall asleep before he did, that’s usually when something would get out of
hand.”

It’s been 10 years since Alice left her husband, but she remembers those
experiences like they happened yesterday. To process her experience and help
others understand the complexity of domestic violence, Alice (whose last name
we’ve withheld to protect her children’s privacy) started a personal blog. One
of her most viewed posts was the one published in 2012 detailing how her partner
intentionally deprived her of sleep.

Victims of domestic violence often have trouble sleeping. But when a person
intentionally weaponizes sleep deprivation—including not allowing their partner
to go to bed, interrupting their sleep or punishing them for sleeping—experts
say it becomes a form of physical abuse and torture, one that often goes
unnoticed to the outside world. “I don’t know that anybody really would have
told me it was abuse [back then],” Alice said. “I had a very good therapist at
that time who pointed out that that wasn’t okay, but we didn’t spend a lot of
time on it either.”
Everyone needs sleep; it is a basic biological function that is critical for our
health. And it’s only now that we’re realizing how powerful, and devastating,
sleep deprivation can be.
A 2007 exploratory study in the journal Violence Against Women offered a glimpse
into how sleep loss leaves survivors feeling vulnerable to violence. Researchers
interviewed 17 women whose sleep was disturbed by an abusive partner; all
reported adjusting their sleeping patterns to minimize the daily threat of
violence they faced. Some said they were afraid to sleep “too deeply” and others
said they avoided sleep altogether when their partner was home.
“You would pretend to be asleep, then you would have to pretend to wake up.
Either way it would be better to be awake, trying to figure out what he wanted
or what he was going to do next,” one woman said.
As the study’s authors write, these narratives “bring into sharp relief the
connection between sleep deprivation and the establishment of a regime of power
and control by one person over another—the hallmark of domestic violence.”
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In a follow-up study, researchers determined: “Sleep deprivation was clearly a
direct strategy of abuse used by perpetrators. It also indirectly undermined the
mental and physical resilience of women.”
Unlike other types of physical abuse, sleep deprivation doesn’t leave a mark.
“Unfortunately, I think the only thing that society recognizes as abuse is a
black eye,” said Heather Frederick, a spokesperson for the National Domestic
Violence Hotline. “A lot of people who are experiencing sleep deprivation as a
part of abuse understand this isn’t healthy, it’s not sustainable...but they may
not make the connection that it’s about their partner trying to control them or
trying to strong-arm them or have power over them.”
At her organization, Frederick said sleep deprivation is classified as a form of
physical abuse, though it easily falls under emotional abuse as well. Similar to
stopping someone from taking medication they need, interrupting someone’s sleep
has a significant impact on their bodies and minds.
Victims of sleep deprivation often experience drowsiness, difficulty
concentrating, and eventually disorientation, hallucinations, and paranoia.
Chronic sleep loss can lead to serious health problems, including risk of high
blood pressure, depression, and heart attack.

According to data gathered by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence,

four in 10 women and four in 10 men have experienced at least one form of
coercive control (which includes any behavior a person uses to dominate their
significant other) in their lifetime. One example where sleep is a vehicle for
manipulation, Frederick said, occurs in the context of a long-distance
relationship: A partner may require the other person to videochat with them to
prove that they’re home alone or ask them to leave their phone on their pillow
all night to listen to them sleep.
In Alice’s case, her partner even justified the sleep deprivation with one of
the messages in the sermon given during their wedding, which had to do with
married couples never letting the sun go down on their anger. “He used that
against me for a long time,” she said, referring to her former husband. If she
begged for sleep, he accused her of loving sleep more than she loved him.

In these scenarios, abusers usually aren’t trying to reach any kind of

compromise, Frederick explained. “Their goal is to wear their victim out so that
they cave in and give in to whatever it is the abusive partner is wanting to
happen or whatever they’re looking for.”

As recently as 2014, the United Nations’ committee against torture called on the
United States to end its practice of using sleep deprivation on detainees,
calling it “a form of ill-treatment.”
In 2016, Tania Tetlow, then a law professor at Tulane University and now
president of Loyola University New Orleans, made a compelling argument for
states to pass laws “banning torture by private actors” as well, primarily as a
better way to address domestic violence. She included sleep deprivation among
the techniques that should be outlawed.
Imposing sleep deprivation on someone isn’t a crime in and of itself, Tetlow
said in an interview, but that’s why the analogy of torture and domestic
violence works. Domestic violence generally is a pattern crime, similar to
stalking. “Any one act in isolation will not seem that egregious. It is the
context of the pattern of behaviors and the intent of those behaviors and their
cumulative impact that really makes it terrible.”
Tetlow acknowledged that sleep deprivation is one of those abusive tactics that
may not seem like that big of a deal on its own. But it is an effective way to
render somebody unable to function and make good judgments. “The biggest risk of
lethality with domestic violence is not measured by the level of violence; it’s
about the level of control,” she said. “That is a bigger indicator of the chance
that someone will murder their victim.”
As an example, Tetlow pointed to one 2010 case in Louisiana: Jennifer Muse, 31,
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was shot and killed by her 78-year-old husband. Two days earlier, he’d been
acquitted of domestic violence battery, a charge stemming from a fight in the
middle of the night when she was upset that he woke her. According to Muse’s
testimony, he did so often.
Repositioning domestic violence in the law as torture—a legal argument that’s
yet to gain any traction—would send both abusers and the people they hurt a
powerful message, Tetlow said: “Describing domestic violence as torture focuses
the criminal justice system and the public on the defendant’s clear
premeditation and culpability. We see batterers as merely angry, whereas we
acknowledge torturers as cruel.”
For Alice, the survivor who left her partner over a decade ago, the long-term
pain caused by the abuse continues to disrupt her life. She still has trouble
going to bed at times. “I do feel like I’ve come a long way. I’m in a much
different spot than I was then, but I still have my triggers. I still have
things that can upset me quite a bit.”

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