When the phone rings at Patrick Ryan and Joseph Kelly’s home in Philadelphia, chances are the caller is desperate. One couple rang because their son was about to abandon his medical practice to follow a new-age guru in Spain. Another call came from a husband whose wife was emptying their life savings for a self-proclaimed prophet in Australia. Yet another family phoned about their niece, who was in a relationship with a man stealing from her, maybe drugging her, probably sexually assaulting her.
These families had tried everything else. When nothing worked, they heard there were two men in Philadelphia who might still be able to bring their loved one home.
What Ryan and Kelly do is unusual: they help people leave cults. Over the past 40 years, they have handled hundreds of cases – some simple and local, others stretching across borders and decades. They have been hired by families of both modest and considerable means. They say they have even been hired by government agencies, and that some cults they have investigated have left them genuinely afraid for their lives.
The goal is to untangle the family dynamics that might have made someone vulnerable to a cult in the first place
Although many people are involved in cultic studies and education, fewer than 10 people in the US do anything like what Ryan and Kelly do. And among those, only Kelly and Ryan practice their strange and unique method: embedding themselves in families’ lives, pulling on threads like marionettists, sometimes for years.
Their method goes something like this. A family reaches out about their daughter, husband, nephew or grandchild. Ryan and Kelly conduct an assessment that can take anywhere from a day to a week (they would not say exactly). They charge $2,500 for the assessment, then $250 an hour after that, interviewing the family until they understand the dynamics well enough to devise a strategy. Then, over months or sometimes years, they work to create the conditions in which a person might begin to question the beliefs their life has been built on.
Normally, Kelly and Ryan work by strengthening the existing relationships in a person’s life. It can be a long game. They will educate the family about the cultic group, and give advice about what to say (or not to say). They will bring in experts: psychiatrists, lawyers, priests that can provide perspective and counsel. The goal is to untangle the family dynamics that might have made someone vulnerable to a cult in the first place.
Very occasionally, they meet face to face with the person involved in a cult. But these encounters look nothing like a drug intervention, with friends gathered in a circle and the reason for the meeting laid bare. Instead, Ryan and Kelly will act covertly. In one case, a son (the cult member) came home for a few days. His parents told him that Ryan and Kelly were friends of theirs, “family mediators” who happened to be “in town for a few days, to meet with some colleagues” – both technically true. The pair made sure to “forget” a book at the family home, and return the next day to collect it, as they began to build rapport.
I met Kelly and Ryan at their place in south Philadelphia, a three-story house they share with a big dog named Kenny and a bright green parrot named Greta.
Greta was a consolation prize Ryan bought for himself after a failed intervention, the second he ever attempted. It was the 1980s and his client, a woman who had recently finished her master’s at a prestigious university, had been drawn into a scam job. It was essentially a pyramid scheme built around a health regimen. Before you could sell it, you had to try it, so you knew what you were selling.
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