Hello, I'm Dr. Stephen Hassan with another episode of the influence continuum.

And today I'm speaking with Nigel Denning from Melbourne, Australia, a colleague, a friend.

Nigel's a counseling psychologist and managing director of the Integrative Psychology

organization in Melbourne, Australia.

And I'm just going to not say all of your all auditories, Nigel, but you have master's degrees in English, as well as counseling

psychologists, formerly a member of the Victorian State and National Executive of the

College of Counseling Psychologists, where you were responsible for creating many learning

opportunities for psychologists.

You got interested, Nigel, a long time ago in the issue of high-demand groups and cults in the 90s,

where you first encountered respondents of the now infamous Melbourne or Archdiocese response developed by the late Cardinal George Pell,

which intended to silence complainants of abuse within the Catholic Church.

However, he went on to take a significant role as a whistleblower supporter to the abuse that was taking place

and that led to the deep involvement with the Pell prosecution that eventually delivered findings

during a group visit to the Vatican in 2017.

You also were involved with the infamous Hindu cult based in outer Melbourne in 2013,

where you co-developed a group approach to support almost 100 survivors of this cult.

And since then, you've had direct experience with survivors of more than 20 different groups,

ranging from religious cults, self-development groups, new age groups.

And I should also say, Nigel, you and I both share a teacher together, Daniel P. Brown, both for clinical psychology education, as well as learning about his Tibetan Buddhist approach to meditation pointing out way.

And we met in person when you came to the States.

And we talked about like, let's do something together.

And it's been many years since I've last been to Australia.

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