Carol Merchasin - The Cult Assassin: Suing High-Control Groups

Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation

Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

True Crime, Talk Radio, Comedy, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Attorney Carol Merchasin didn’t set out to expose cults, but after investigating allegations about a high-control Buddhist organization and discovering that the abuse had run more rampant than she’d imagined, she became a lawyer and focused her practice on getting justice for survivors of cults and abusive groups.

Carol discusses the legal ins and outs of suing cults and spiritual leaders, where American law stands in recognizing coercion and human trafficking, and why the differences in ideologies between high-control groups really don’t matter. Plus: the patterns and red flags she’s learned to spot, why spiritual language is often used to disguise harm, and what to do if you get sued by your group for speaking out.

SOURCES:

BITE MODEL of Authoritarian Control

Heartwood Center

McAllister Olivarius Law

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is exactly right.
0:07.4	Trust me.
0:08.8	Do you trust me?
0:10.5	Would I ever lead you astray?
0:12.1	Trust me.
0:13.0	This is the truth.
0:14.2	The only truth.
0:15.5	If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't!
0:19.3	Welcome to Trust Me, the podcast about cults, extreme belief, and manipulation from two
0:24.6	L. Woods fans who've actually experienced it.
0:27.5	I'm Lola Blanc and I am Megan Elizabeth.
0:30.6	And today our guest is Carol Murchison, a lawyer sometimes referred to as the cult assassin
0:36.2	because she specializes in suing cults and high control groups for sexual misconduct.
0:41.9	She's going to tell us how she started off as an investigator, how her work uncovering abuse in a Buddhist organization that she was initially skeptical about, led her down this professional path,
0:51.5	why the differences between various religions and ideologies are actually
0:54.9	not that important when it comes to the abuse of power, and how we determine whether abuse is a
0:59.7	bad apple problem versus a systemic problem. Yep, she'll talk to us about why human trafficking
1:05.2	is more subtle than we typically imagine, how the law in the U.S. is behind on legally recognizing coercion that happens to
1:12.6	an adult or doesn't involve immediate physical violence, how cults threaten to sue as a weapon
1:18.5	to silence people who speak out about them, and what tools are available if you do get
1:23.6	threatened with a defamation lawsuit. Which you have been, babe. Which I have been. Congratulations. My God, when's it going to happen again? Can't wait. It's like a, what do you call it? A ritual, a thing you pass through. Oh, oh. What's it? A hazing. No, it's a right of passage. Thank you.
1:44.5	Yeah.
	...

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