Shunning has been a common tool of cults and other organizations throughout the centuries.
Though it wasn’t always so, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ policy of shunning former members has developed into what Don Cameron in his book Captives of a Concept calls “one of the harshest instances among major organized religions.”
Such shunning serves to strengthen and protect the group. Not only does it remove burdensome members, but it can correct deviant behavior in such members because they will long to return to normal relationships with their former associates.
Groups become more cohesive when they ostracize dissenting members, and it provides members of the group a feeling that they are more powerful and have a higher level of control.
But shunning is a form of psychological torture.
Almerindo Ojeda, from the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, defines shunning as “the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons acting alone or on the orders of any authority, to force another person to yield information, to make a confession, or for any other reason.”
Shunning, therefore, “is torture” (emphasis his).
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