The Sullivanians:Through a Blue Window ((c) 2019 shelley feinerman's Podcast
CULT! This podcast chronicles the rise and fall of the Sullivanian Institute and its members. The psycho-sexual therapy] and institute existed on Manhattan's Upper West Side from the 1970s through the 1990s. Directed to abandon family and friends, as we all were, after five years my life was inextricably altered. The podcast begins with my childhood, then goes on to my time in the Sullivanians, and 20 years later, its self-destruction when it was characterized as a cult. It is entitled Through a Blue Window: The Sullivanians and is dedicated to mother, Ruth.
The Sullivanians:Through a Blue Window ((c) 2019 shelley feinerman's Podcast
Rescuing Rosie and the end of the Sullivanians
Imagine being a mother separated from her infant by an oppressive group like the Sullivanians with cult-like control. In this episode hear Annie's heartbreaking journey to rescue her daughter Rosie from the Sullivanians. With the crucial help of a women's shelter's dedicated legal advocates, I helped Annie orchestrate a daring escape and go into hiding. There is urgency and tension in every step of her plan to reclaim her daughter.
Listen to the emotional turbulence that eventually culminates in the courtroom battle for custody that exposes the spurious workings of the Sullivanians, threatening their existence. The episode also sheds light on the broader experiences of former members of the Sullivan Institute, including the emotional and social challenges they faced. Through gripping accounts from individuals like Ben and Karen, who risked everything for their freedom, and the eventual downfall of the group under Saul Newton's erratic rule, this is a poignant exploration of life within a cult.
When joining a cult you are unaware of the full level of commitment you are about to make, or the extent to which your autonomy is about to be curtailed. I hope that by sharing my personal story and shedding light on the Sullivanians, I've helped to explain why people are attracted to cults in the first place. In Annie's case, some are born into them, for some, it is the promise of a community or to better themselves, or the promise of sexual availability, but it is usually during a time of vulnerability in a person's life.
This is the final chapter. My name is Shelley Feinerman. I hope you have found the podcast of interest and I thank you for listening. I went on to have a successful career, married, and have an amazing son. My artwork can be seen on Instagram. @ThroughaBlueWindow
The complete documentary Through a BlueWindow can be seen on my youtube channel shellfein1. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you
children's song butterfly, butterfly outside my window, fly, fly, fly all the way home. At Saul's whim, rosie was placed in the group nursery to be looked after by group babysitters. Annie was allowed visits for breastfeeding, but then Saul decided even that much contact was detrimental to the infant and breastfeeding was stopped without appropriate weaning. Annie was threatened with expulsion if she tried to see Rosie, and her movements were monitored by her therapists and roommates. Annie knew she had to get away, and that was when she reached out to me. And that was when she reached out to me. I helped her because it was the right thing to do. I helped her because, despite the many years of therapy since leaving the group, trying to undo the Sullivanian's discordant legacy of suspicion and anger, I'd finally come to accept the underlying sadness within me, as I did, being the unwanted child of an unloving father. I did it because of the guilt that roiled in the pit of my stomach whenever I thought of my mother dying without knowing that I loved her. I couldn't change the past, but I could help Annie save Rosie. Nabokov said the future is but the obsolete in reverse. It was a little after 6 am and as my eyes adjusted to the dawn, I could see a figure standing in the shadow of the group's apartment building. I wasn't alarmed. The shadow belonged to the bodyguard I'd hired when Annie and I set the action into play. He would slip in behind the wheel of the car and start the motor. Though it had been years, I didn't want to take the chance. I'd be recognized. I was sitting slumped in the backseat of the innocuous dark green rental, dressed for a fight jeans, black turtleneck and heavy work boots, my hair tucked under a Yankees cap. I'd been sitting there for hours, but the darkness lingered and my legs cramped as I massaged them. Not wanting to risk the getting out of the car to stretch, I swept the street for movement. After agreeing to help Annie, I'd contacted the Women's Safe Haven located in Ludway, vermont, and they'd sent me a packet of information including a list of approved bodyguards. Two were necessary one with us and the other waiting in a second car parked beneath the George Washington Bridge, ready to take Annie and Rosie to the safe house. Hanny had to ensure her actions.
Speaker 1:The night before the extraction appeared normal. I glanced at my watch Six am. Annie would be crawling out of bed, her date asleep, sedated by the valium she'd slipped into his drink. The night before, on the nursery floor of the building, rosie would be rousing as well, wanting to be fed and then taken for her usual morning outing to the dinosaur park at Riverside Drive.
Speaker 1:Moments later, when I looked up, annie was walking towards the car, dressed as though she was going to work, in a dark two-piece suit and high heels. The street was empty and she looked around, then quickly opened the back door of the four-door sedan and climbed in beside me. She'd been instructed to pack one bag which she had placed on the front seat. Is he here? She asked. I pointed to the storefront and Annie nodded. If you're wondering, I have to look like this because I'm going to work. When I approach Susan, I think it's her morning with Rosie, but I can still run in these heels, she explained unnecessarily in a whispered voice. Hopefully it won't come to that. I haven't craved a cigarette in 15 years, but I desperately want one now, I said, and after that we sat in silence, small talk impossible, as we were both poised to take flight.
Speaker 1:A few minutes later, the door of the building opened and Rosie's stroller appeared being pushed by Susan Morgan. All Annie had to do was calmly approach Susan, reach down, unbuckle the strap and carry her daughter safely back to the car. It was seven o'clock, exactly game time. Annie stepped from the car and I quickly fell in behind her as she moved steadily towards her daughter. Hi, susan. Annie spoke cheerfully, still in motion, as she had practiced. I'm back with Rosie now, it's okay. Pressing forward, she bent down and cooed to her child, deftly releasing the latch over Rosie's belly. It's mommy, rosie. Her voice calm as not to scare the baby. It's okay, I'm approved, she said to Susan. Susan lurched forward Stop, I have to check. But Annie already had Rosie in her arms. Stop, annie, you don't have her, you can't have her. Susan yelled, latching onto Rosie's arm.
Speaker 1:Another babysitter, deirdre Phillips, suddenly exited the building and immediately assessed the situation. Annie, what the hell is going on here? She screamed, trying to reach for Rosie too. That was when I stepped forward, summoning a maternal force of my own, kicking Susan in the shin as hard as I could. She released her hold on Rosie and then Annie handed me the baby, elbowing Deidre ferociously in the chest. Deidre fell down, pulling Annie with her, but by then the bodyguard was at our side. I had Rosie. He pulled Annie to her feet and sheltered all three of us with his massive arm until we were safely inside the car. As we pulled away, I looked back to see that Susan and Deirdre were still on the ground, unable to pursue us or run for help.
Speaker 1:A few days later, danny Lind, rosie's father, filed a habeas corpus action in New York State Supreme Court seeking sole custody of Rosie, danny's lawyer. Also, the group's lawyer had tried to portray the case as a simple custody hearing. Danny was the aggrieved father and Annie the crazed mother who, they said, drank and used drugs. The women's safe haven had supplied Annie with a lawyer who in turn had enlisted a renowned psychiatrist to testify. She issued statements on Annie's behalf depicting the group as having been a cult environment where every instinct, every movement and emotion is controlled by one man with a mercurial Personality. And at the core of this bizarre world is the continuing belief that the close bond between mother and child is evil and needs to be destroyed at any cost. In rebuttal, danny's lawyer had experts of their own turn it around and contended that Annie was part of a dangerous Marxist-Leninist sect allied with former group members wanting to take over the Institute to enforce their mission. Current group members turned out in force for the court date with walkie-talkies to spot former members like myself who had been asked to testify about their experience in the group.
Speaker 1:In the end, I think it was Annie's videotape, sent from where she was in hiding somewhere in the bucolic green mountains of Vermont, that spoke volumes in her defense. The tape began with Rosie playing happily on a blanket, annie by her side. Peek-a-boo, peek-a-boo, rosie Poozy, annie cooed. Each time Annie said the words, rosie would giggle and squeal with delight. Then Rosie rubbed her eyes, crawled into her mother's lap and fell asleep holding Annie's hand. While she slept, annie began to tell of her 12 years in the group, hesitant at first, her eyes darkened with concern and fear until a voice could be heard off camera reassuring her that she was safe. A year later, on the day of the custody hearing, the judge was informed that cars were circling the courthouse with Sullivanian group members inside communicating to one another on walkie-talkies. Once again, danny was granted limited visitation, but he was caught tape recording Annie in the hall in the hope of collecting damaging evidence to use against her at future hearings. My role was never exposed.
Speaker 1:After Annie left, another couple tried to leave and their story was all too familiar. Ben Martin and Karen Howard were in love in a focus in group speak. They had been dating each other three times a week for five years, as they continued to date other people. They wanted to have a child, but Newton's law dictated they needed his approval, as Annie and Danny had. Karen made her request through her therapist. Several weeks later she was told that Saul thought Karen was too unstable to be a mother, even though she'd been in therapy for 10 years. Ben was told he wasn't a good candidate to be a father, even though he was in the trainee program and about to graduate with his master's in social work from Hunter College.
Speaker 1:Ben knew the nauseating workings of the leadership from the inside that allowed the patient's private information to be shared and used against them. The patient's private information to be shared and used against them. By denying his request, saul hoped to keep him from disclosing what he knew. They were told to stop dating each other and that they would be monitored and perhaps they could have a child in the future. That was when they decided to leave the group together, threatening to use the information ben possessed about the institute. If their plans were exposed, karen would ask to redo her therapy, her history in therapy so that she might learn why she would be a bad mother and also how her history with her mother impacted her unsuitability, hoping this would deflect attention away from her and Ben's escape plan.
Speaker 1:With the help of the one person she could trust, karen began to pack her belongings and hired a mover, but her roommates caught on and told the leadership. Saul called her personally, she was a whore and she was told she needed to leave the apartment immediately without her belongings. She was persona non grata in the group and therapy. If she left, as Saul had ordered, it would mean losing everything no-transcript. Like others before her, karen's entire way of life changed when she became a Sullivanian. She came to believe that dating anyone in any sincere, caring way for very long was detrimental to her psychological development. She had been in therapy for 10 years and the Sullivanians had a significant impact on the course of her life and the development of her personality. On the course of her life and the development of her personality. Like most of the women in the group, she needed to numb herself to have sex with all the men. That was expected of her.
Speaker 1:Even though there was a built-in community of friends, members were never helped to understand how to love someone who held different points of view, like her parents. Instead, parents, particularly mothers, were turned into monsters and in turn, women would be monsters to any children they had of their own. The Sullivanians' basic premise was that parents were not just destructive but evil, and for most, there was no going back without a great deal of emotional suffering. After leaving the group, karen had no interest in reconnecting with her mother, like many others. It would take years to reconnect.
Speaker 1:Many members were told they were unfit to be parents and should give up their children for adoption. Their lives were read apart by the psychotherapists of the Sullivan Institute. Their lives were read apart by the psychotherapists of the Sullivan Institute, who felt empowered to act outside the moral code followed by the psychological community at large. The Sullivanian therapists were eventually brought to account by the Regents Board because of their lack of moral standards and for lacking common decency for their patients, who didn't support them in making life decisions from pursuing relationships and career paths that their patients wanted and were potentially satisfying and productive.
Speaker 1:When wanting to leave the group with their children, the men didn't fear any better than the women. Jonathan Kaplan was unceremoniously informed that he would no longer be able to spend the weekends with his son. At that point he realized that he needed to leave. He would be unable to be a good father, to provide his son with any security, if he had no control over his life. His decision to leave the Sullivanians came at the time when Annie's story was making headlines in the Village Voice, new York Magazine and the New York Times. Anyone you knew could become your enemy overnight. Members were in a state of turmoil, wondering if the group was going to be destroyed and that they would have to go into hiding or be forced to disperse due to the publicity.
Speaker 1:After Three Mile Island, the failure of Newton and Harvey's predictions about nuclear devastation, the Sullivanian Institute and the group began to change. The leader's paranoid vision had to stop the group from accepting new members and going against the tide of popular beliefs of their openness, and the political ideology became more isolated. In his 80s, saul Newton's physical and mental health was deteriorating and he was becoming erratic and violent, threatening members. He already had a history of physical violence. In the last years of its existence, the Sullivan Institute and the group that had advocated openness and free love adopted isolation. Paranoia escalated and, because of AIDS, dating outside the group was forbidden, with harsh financial penalties imposed and strictly monitored, and social privileges were revoked for any infraction. By the mid-80s, saul and the Institute were worth approximately $12 million, but its membership, which in 1985 was around 225 members, was in sharp decline from its height of 500 during the 1970s and it started to decline further. One member was designated to build a secret steel-lined room with quarter-inch plates so that Joan Harvey could edit her films at the recently acquired Catskills property without interference from the CIA.
Speaker 1:In 1991, saul was slowly removed from leadership and when he died in December of that year, annie was finally able to come out of hiding. The building on 101st Street was sold and group members scattered, some to other states, some to Brooklyn Heights, and some just disappeared. Annie's mother had remained in the group until its dissolution in 1992. When Annie went into hiding, her mother actively supported the group's position against her, as she did when Danny sued for custody. Her mother had burned the bridges of reconciliation and, because of her actions, what remained in the ashes was suspicion and anger. Almost 25 years had passed from the day her mother brought her preteen daughter to Ralph Klein for therapy and set in motion the cataclysmic events of her life among the Sullivanians.
Speaker 1:In 1997, ralph Klein and Joan Harvey surrendered their license to the New York State Board of Regents to avoid investigation. To the New York State Board of Regents to avoid investigation. The regents called this the conclusion of a disciplinary process that affected protection of the public. The same year, helen Mosins, the secondary leader and Saul's former wife, who had advocated that her patients have sex with Saul, had her license revoked as well, and she paid a $15,000 fine. Seven years later, moses' license was provisionally reinstated and, as for me, with my aunt's help, I reconnected with my family. I went on to have a successful career, married and have an amazing son. My artwork can be seen on Instagram. My handle is through a blue window. My name is Shelly Fineman and I thank you for listening to my podcast.