Rick Alan Ross

Rick Alan Ross (born 1952) is an American deprogrammer, cult specialist, and founder and executive director of the nonprofit Cult Education Institute. He frequently appears in the news and other media discussing groups some consider cults. Ross has intervened in more than 500 deprogramming cases in various countries.

Ross faced criminal charges of unlawful imprisonment over a 1991 forcible deprogramming of United Pentecostal Church International member Jason Scott; a jury acquitted him at trial. In 1995, a civil lawsuit filed by Scott resulted in a multimillion-dollar judgement against Ross and his co-defendants. Later, Ross and Scott reached a settlement in which Ross agreed to pay Scott US$5,000 and provide 200 hours of professional services at no charge.

Ross was the only deprogrammer to work with members of the Branch Davidians prior to the Waco siege; some scholars later criticized his involvement with the siege.

Early life Ross was born in 1952 in Cleveland, Ohio, and moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1956. His mother worked for the Jewish Community Center and his father was a plumber. He was raised and went to school in Arizona with the exception of one year that he was sent to the Camden Military Academy in South Carolina. He graduated from Phoenix Union High School in 1971.

After high school, Ross worked for two years at a finance company and at a bank. In his twenties, during a period of unemployment, he got into legal trouble. In 1974, he was charged, along with a friend, for the attempted burglary of a model home. He pleaded guilty to trespassing and was sentenced to probation. While he was on probation, he worked for a cousin's car salvage business.

Career Ross became concerned about extremist organizations in 1982 when he learned that a fringe religious group had encouraged missionaries to become employees at his grandmother's nursing home where they were targeting elderly residents for conversion to Messianic Judaism. This led the Union for Reform Judaism to appoint Ross to two national committees focused on cults and inter-religious affairs In addition, he chaired the Coalition of Jewish Prisoners Programs, the umbrella organization for an international group of human services agencies providing assistance to Jewish inmates and their families. From his work in the prison system, Ross discovered that prisoners were a prime target for cult groups and through his role on the religious advisory committee, he helped develop a policy on proselytizing to inmates. According to John E. LeMoult, deprogramming is often "far more like 'brainwashing' than the conversion process by which members join various sects." Key court cases have found deprogramming to be illegal for violating the constitutional rights of members of new religious movements. Despite involving himself in many coercive interventions against individuals involved in new religious movements, Ross has no education or credentials in religion and no formal training in counselling or psychology. Ross worked as a deprogrammer with the Cult Awareness Network (CAN).

In 1989, the CBS television program 48 Hours covered Ross's deprogramming of a 14-year-old boy, Aaron Paron, a member of the Potter's House Christian Fellowship. According to his mother, when she distanced herself from the church, Aaron began viewing her as "possessed by the devil"; he became suicidal and ran away from home, refusing to leave the organization. Aaron's mother had made multiple calls to the police and, prior to filming, Potter's House entered into an agreement that they would not have contact with or harbor the minor, entice him away from his mother, attempt to influence his behavior, or take any action that would interfere with his mother's parental rights. Ross was the only deprogrammer to work with Branch Davidian members prior to the 1993 siege at Waco. The CBS television network hired Ross as an on-scene analyst for their coverage of the Waco siege and he was consulted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well. Ross was acquitted of these charges by the jury at trial. According to Eugene Gallagher, the Scott case marked a watershed for non-traditional religions in North America.

Scott later reconciled with his mother, who had originally hired Ross to deprogram him. Scott terminated his lawyer, Kendrick Moxon, a prominent Scientologist attorney, and was persuaded by his mother to settle with Ross. Under the terms of the settlement, the two agreed that Ross would pay Scott $5,000 and provide 200 hours of his professional services. Graham Berry, his new attorney, said that "it would be a mistake to assume that Scott's decision to make use of Ross' time was a vindication of Ross or his deprogramming methods", and refused to say what services Ross would supply under the agreement. In a book that Ross self-published in 2014, he wrote that after the Scott case he stopped involuntary deprogramming work with adults, advising against such interventions with adults because of the risk of legal consequences. According to Ann E. Robertson, the Institute "is an unusual source of considerable information about rather obscure groups".

By 2004, Ross had handled more than 350 deprogramming cases in various countries He has also contributed to a number of books, including a foreword to Tim Madigan's See No Evil and a chapter to Roman Espejo's Cults: Opposing Viewpoints.

In 2004, after Ross obtained copies of NXIVM's training manuals from a former participant who had signed a nondisclosure agreement with NXIVM, Ross posted some content from the manuals along with his critiques on his website. For publishing parts of their manuals, NXIVM sued Ross's Cult Education Institute for copyright infringement. In NXIVM Corp. v. Ross Institute, the use of the material for critique was ruled transformative and therefore fair use. In 2019, Ross testified in the racketeering, sex trafficking, forced labor and conspiracy trial of NXIVM's leader Keith Raniere as a cult expert who had spent years dealing with NXIVM, where Ross stated that NXIVM's teachings were not self-help but rather a cult of personality.

In June 2004, Landmark Education filed a 1 million dollar lawsuit against the institute, alleging that postings on its websites which characterized Landmark as a cultish organization that brainwashed their clients damaged Landmark's product. Ross was part of the creative team at Ubisoft for the 2018 video game Far Cry 5, involving a fictional doomsday cult. Ross has been interviewed for various documentaries on cults and other allegedly exploitative organizations, including: The Vow, season 1, episode 6, "Honesty & Disclosure" (2020, HBO), about Catherine Oxenberg and the NXIVM cult; Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult (2020, Starz), about the same; and a 2021 video piece for the YouTube channel of American magazine Vanity Fair, on cults in films and television.

In 2013, the organization was renamed from Rick A. Ross Institute to Cult Education Institute, and the domain name rickross.com was retired.