Novel legal strategy for holding cults accountable

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One attorney whose practice focuses on sexual abuse allegations against religious groups, cults, or "spiritual communities," told Insider that (in some cases) the former members can seek some form of civil legal reparation through a federal law called the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA)

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which states that whoever forces or entices a person "through fraud or coercion" to "engage in a commercial sex act" is in violation of the law.

Carol Merchasin, an attorney at McAllister Olivarius who leads the firm's sexual misconduct in spiritual communities practice, said that it's often difficult to hold religious groups or cults accountable.

She argues in her paper about applying (TVPA)
to cults that these groups may cite "religious expression through the First Amendment" to operate as they please, and US law currently offers scant ways to bring a lawsuit "claiming coercive control."

But perhaps "the biggest legal obstacle," she writes in the paper, is the statute of limitations, which sets deadlines for victims to file a lawsuit. Some states, including New York and California, have enacted laws that provide sexual assault survivors a brief window to pursue cases even after the statute of limitations expired.

"We don't have enough resources and we don't have enough tools in the legal justice system to go after these cults and spiritual communities," Merchasin said.

The solution, according to Merchasin, could be through a nascent application of the federal human-trafficking law, and she turns to a case that was made against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein as a prominent clue.

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In 2018, a Manhattan judge allowed a lawsuit accusing the disgraced film executive of violating the federal sex-trafficking statute to proceed in court. Plaintiffs argued that Weinstein had promised some form of career advancement before they were sexually assaulted.

The trafficking charges were dropped after accusers agreed to a $17-million settlement, but allowing the case to proceed in court at all offered victims such as the former OneTaste employees an avenue for a civil lawsuit, even if women weren't moved across state lines as is often the case, Merchasin said.

The attorney argued that "if you entice, recruit, harbor or obtain, in our case, in these cult communities ... to engage in what the law calls a 'commercial sex act," then OneTaste could be scrutinized through the federal trafficking law.

In this case, "commercial sex act," doesn't have to have anything to do with money but something of value, Merchasin said in the interview, meaning that the law doesn't have to be limited to prostitution.