Written by Gianmarco Crinieri for you-ng.it
In a world in which information goes at a furious pace and in which data reaches us with an exorbitant frequency, often conflicting with each other, the only certainty we have is represented by professionals, by those we imagine perhaps wearing white coats, who have the abbreviation Dr. or Dr. ssa in front of their names.
But, and Covid has taught us this very well, it is not always the case that those who sport a certain title have the competence to express an opinion, especially on subjects about which we generally know very little, or which are potentially problematic if treated lightly.
In Italy, in fact, when pronouncing the word ‘sect’, imaginations immediately lead back to gloomy scenes, shady individuals with subversive and manipulative desires.
To avoid replicating, even remotely, the Jonestown phenomenon, and thus protect individuals who might fall, or have already fallen, into the plots of cults, an ONLUS was founded in 1999 with this specific intent.
CeSAP (Centre for the Study of Psychological Abuse) has exactly this purpose, and on paper it is noble and of public benefit.
It is also true that with great power comes great responsibility: the mere public accusation of possessing sectarian dynamics is a dangerous weapon, as it is enough to make the community suspicious, and consequently ruin an individual’s reputation (and life) and/or force a company to close its doors.
Dr. Lorita Tinelli, founder and president of CeSAP, has repeatedly taken sides against systems she considers psychologically abusive or manipulative – including Jehovah’s Witnesses.
In support of her arguments, Tinelli boasts a degree in psychology and – more than anything else allegedly – experience in sects. It is a pity, however, that on more than one occasion, what she claimed has turned out to be unfounded, incorrect or even totally false.
Around large urban centres you may have come across the promoters of one of Tinelli’s victims, the course called ‘Genius in 21 days’.
CeSAP – through the figure of Tinelli – has, in several venues and persistently, defamed the course and those who provide it, labelling it a ‘sect’, with methodologies designed to mislead the minds of those who follow it.
However, there is no evidence to support this position: everything is based on the testimonies of self-styled former students and on the doctor’s participation only in the trial lesson, as she herself declared.
In the excellent dossier provided to us by EMAAPS, it is pointed out that the company that owns the ‘Genius in 21 days’ brand in Italy, YTG Net, has made itself available to provide any material to certify its transparency and the total lack of foundation of Tinelli’s thesis. Thesis that in 2011 led CeSAP to request, through the consumer association European Consumers, a parliamentary interpellation against the company that owns YTG Net: Your Trainers Groups & High Consulting. Interpellation that resulted in a nullity.
However, this is not the only case in which certain dynamics have arisen, otherwise we would not be here talking about it. So who is Lorita Tinelli and why are we mentioning her?
Tinelli claims to be a psychologist with a clinical and community orientation, a graphologist and – as mentioned above – president of CeSAP. We are therefore talking about a person, at least on paper, qualified, who makes arbitrary accusations. Why?
Let us go by points and analyse the facts.
Let us start from the website that the doctor has created ad hoc to collect her Curriculum Vitae, and thus allow those who wish to know her better to have a more in-depth picture. From a purely practical point of view, we only have to thank the doctor, because the meticulous care with which she describes each of her experiences makes fact-checking very easy.
In the interminable list of things done and people seen that represents this curriculum, there is, among others, the section ‘studies and publications’, in which the publications of the aforementioned expert are theoretically collected. Apart from the books that, as we know by now, almost anyone can publish and self-publish, what remains falls under the term ‘publication’ in a rather distorted, inflated way.
Publications’, in fact, are nothing more than observations, blog posts or magazine posts dealing with psychology or health (like a Focus) but which have no proven reliability, not having been subjected to the review characteristic of scientific publication.
A small explanatory note on this.
If one intends to publish a piece of research, in order for it to be valid it needs to be verified by an external person qualified in the same field, in technical language this is called a peer-review. Otherwise, we can speak of a document that has the same value as the publication of personal thoughts and reflections on a blog or social networking site, without any value from a scientific point of view.
For example, the list includes an article called Psychological Abuse and Mind Control, published in a journal called ‘Medical Leadership’, on which very little information can be found. This alone should ring a few fuffy bells, but it is the publication’s own website itself that removes all doubt, stating transparently: ‘Any content on this site […] is purely illustrative and/or informative, and is therefore not intended to provide any indication of self-treatment and/or to replace the opinion and/or function of a physician or health professionals in general. The opinions and information expressed by the authors do not necessarily and/or automatically imply endorsement by the Editorial Board […]’.
All this is indeed extremely debatable from a professional point of view, but the ‘Genius in 21 days’ case is rather minor, unimportant, did not really, in the end, harm anything or anyone.
However, those who followed the news in 2010 probably remember Arkeon, described by the media as ‘Italy’s biggest psycho-sect’. All sorts of things were said: that there was sexual abuse during seminars, that followers gave alms disguised as homeless people, and that the ‘guides’ promised miraculous cures for illnesses that have no cure – AIDS, tumours and the like.
But to make people understand what the Arkeon method was, at least on paper, no one is better qualified than the man who elaborated and developed it: Vito Carlo Moccia, who, when questioned by the magazine ‘Psychologies’, defined the project as ‘[…] a path of personal development and knowledge that aims to help rediscover who one really is, through work on one’s origins, on the behaviours and experiences that have influenced and conditioned one’s life. […] Through the body, emotions, thoughts and life experiences we go to the origin of our own history, of the tensions and automatisms that unconsciously create energy and emotional blocks and limit personal expression. Arkeon’s work is realised through weekend-long group seminars and recalls values from the archaic model of peasant civilisation that have been progressively lost in today’s society’.
The investigation laid suspicion mainly on eleven people between those who founded Arkeon and those who ‘taught’ it.
The latest update on the trial, which dates back to 2015, sees Vito Carlo Moccia definitively sentenced to two years and five months’ imprisonment for criminal conspiracy. The other ten defendants were either acquitted or the charges against them were statute-barred.
It should also be pointed out that, according to the verdicts, Arkeon was not labelled as a psychological, but an anthropological pathway – in fact, circumvention of an incapacitated person was never recognised – and in no way devoid of manipulative dynamics.
It is also important to point out that it is extremely complicated to delineate what is manipulation and what is not, especially in legal terms. But that’s not all: there is not even a proper definition of the word ‘cult’, and its use is purely a narrative contrivance that should therefore not be associated with a precise meaning, as it has no meaning.
The fact that Tinelli, a psychologist with a CV the length of which would make War and Peace envious, does not know this – or worse still, ignores it – is extremely serious.
The Arkeon affair was a bit of a stepping stone for CeSAP and, by extension, also for Tinelli, who was the first to call it a ‘psycho-sect with crazy therapies’. And it was precisely through Tinelli that many of the actors involved – such as Codacons and Favis (Associazione Familiari Vittima delle Sette) – later joined the civil action.
Anyone who expressed an opinion against the ‘Tinelli law’ at the time ended up in its crosshairs and pilloried in the forum on CeSAP’s claudicant website. This is what happened, for example, to Dr. Raffaella Di Marzio, a colleague of Tinelli’s and an expert specifically on minority religions and spirituality.
Di Marzio, having received a request for help from one of Arkeon’s top leaders, Pietro Bono, began researching the group in order to assess its mechanics and understand how much truth there was in the accusations made against it.
Di Marzio concluded that not only could Arkeon not be called dangerous, but that it could not even be said to psychologically mislead its ‘followers’. He then conveyed his thoughts on the matter through various media and on his personal blog.
Hurricane Tinelli then hurled himself at her with force and precision, firstly issuing her with a notice of indictment directed only at her, resulting in the blocking of her personal website, and secondly including her in another complaint against her and five other colleagues, allegedly for abuse of the profession.
In support of the police report, Tinelli claimed that his colleague Di Marzio was promoting a dangerous sect because she shared its thoughts. So much so that she and her husband allegedly intimidated former followers who were seeking help. All this in a delirious e-mail that Tinelli had sent to an unspecified number of people, in which she did not fail to play the part of the victim who gets hit hard and struggles, but hangs on. And, just to make sure we don’t miss anything, of a spotty entry to the Arkeon-themed forum on CeSAP’s website: what are you doing? Are you depriving yourself of it? Forum from which, moreover, according to Di Marzio, most of the completely fabricated accusations against him came.
Needless to say, both complaints led to nothing. The second was even remitted by Tinelli herself in 2017.
It is therefore clear that Tinelli has a big problem with people who dare to give an opinion contrary to her own, even in a civilised manner, and she has no qualms about exposing them to the public pillory by any means at her disposal.
On the website of the democratic psychologist we also find the entire excursus of the Arkeon case as seen through her eyes. In February 2012, Tinelli, informed by the court as to who would be the witnesses at Vito Carlo Moccia’s trial, publishes the magistrates’ papers in mockery, taking care to censor all the names except two: Raffaella Di Marzio and Silvana Radoani.
Radoani, to put it bluntly, is a former CeSAP collaborator. The two had a diatribe and it all ended up in caciara, to the sound of lawsuits – like dissing between rappers – always to get back into the discourse ‘if you don’t always agree with me, I’ll ruin you in every possible way’.
Alongside the names of the aforementioned, however, there is also the address of their residence – which, of course, is inappropriate to say the least, even more so if we are talking about a trial that, at the time of the publication of the post, was still in progress. The first convictions were in fact issued almost six months after the papers appeared on Tinelli’s website. Publishing the sensitive data of a witness, especially when dealing with a certain type of militancy, represents a not inconsiderable risk for him. Again: that Tinelli doesn’t know is bad, that she knows and doesn’t care is worse.
However, all this has not prevented Dr Tinelli from making her way in the media environment and managing to make it onto television. Her most famous appearance was certainly on Quarto Grado, Rete 4. To the doctor, as an expert on sects, was submitted an episode of crime news, specifically the Barilli and Venturelli case, two young men who disappeared in 2020 and whose stories intersected according to a shot in which the two are said to be together at Milan Central Station. In 2021, Barilli’s body was found, but there is still no trace of Venturelli.
Tinelli was asked if, in his professional opinion, the possibility of the two having strayed because they were in the yoke of one another could be considered. Tinelli does not hesitate for a second, the boys have undoubtedly fallen into the hands of a dynamic that has twisted their minds and driven them away from their families. Specifically, it is, according to her, a ‘personal growth’ group.
Despite herself, a month after the TV appearance, investigations ruled out that the boys had ever met, and that the contemporaneity of the events was a coincidence.
Lastly, I would like to point out that the doctor, being an established professional, does not lend herself to guest appearances for free, and therefore I suppose she receives some kind of remuneration.
According to Selvaggia Lucarelli – but this is hardly verifiable data – the cachet of the pundits/experts is around 500/1000 euros per episode, under the nice name of ‘attendance token’, which is a variable amount depending on the guest in question.
A lot? Little? You judge. We are only here to report the facts, namely that an avowed liar declares herself to be an expert on everything, profiting from it, while reality – once again – is extremely less colourful than the one she wants us to represent.
