The Modern Cult Operating in Plain Sight in Our Schools

By Laureen Boll | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

In the 1970s, the U.S. was gripped by a wave of predatory cults that preyed on the vulnerable, even children. Groups such as the Hare Krishnas and  Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church convinced their disciples that parents were outdated obstacles to living one’s best life, and often convinced these youngsters to leave their homes. 

Once parents were out of the picture, the cult leader became the child’s new point of authority. 

Thousands of families were shattered, with children vanishing into underground networks, never to be heard from again. As someone who came of age during that era, I remember the urgent warnings from parents like my own: stay vigilant, spot the signs of manipulation, and never let strangers insert themselves between you and your family. It was a dark chapter, one that exposed how predators exploit ideology to control and destroy.

Fast-forward to today, and the playbook hasn’t changed; it’s merely gone mainstream, cloaked in the language of “inclusion” and “belonging” within our public institutions. 

Too many public school districts are functioning as state-sanctioned cults, isolating children from parental influence and indoctrinating them with beliefs that erode family bonds. Predators haven’t disappeared; they’ve merely adapted, leveraging well-intentioned but dangerously naive policies to gain access to kids.

The assault on parental authority in Colorado began in 2013, when the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey (HKCS) was rolled-out by the Departments of Education, Public Health and Environment, and Human Services. 

HKCS is administered every odd year in the November/December timeframe, and most Colorado school districts choose to participate. On its surface, HKCS looks to be a helpful assessment to “understand youth health.” But dig deeper, and it emerges as a sophisticated instrument of psychological manipulation. Administered to middle and high school students without mandatory parental consent, it probes into the most intimate aspects of a child’s life: gender identity, sexual orientation, suicidal thoughts, sense of belonging, and even family dynamics like whether parents “help with personal problems.” 

These aren’t neutral questions; they plant seeds of doubt and alienation, much like how 1970s cults convinced recruits that their families were repressive forces holding them back.

By legitimizing concepts like gender identity or normalizing suicidal ideation as commonplace, the survey doesn’t just measure beliefs; it shapes them, priming vulnerable kids for further intervention. 

School districts use the data to justify expansions in mental health staffing, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs that enforce ideological conformity (reminiscent of Mao’s Red Guard youth brigades) and the promotion of “trusted adults” in schools as surrogates for parents. 

This is cult-like indoctrination at scale: children are encouraged to confide in school personnel or anonymous online platforms like iMatter (imattercolorado.org), creating a closed ecosystem where kids are groomed to view their families as irrelevant or even harmful. 

Just as 1970s cults trafficked in “free love” to enable abuse, today’s system opens doors for disturbed adults to exploit confused adolescents, potentially funneling them into school-sanctioned Gender & Sexuality Alliance (GSA) clubs – often rebranded with innocuous names like “Equity Club” or “Art Club” – under the guise of acceptance and “belonging.” 

In Douglas County, the battle over parental authority has come to a head. 

The outgoing conservative school board wisely shifted the HKCS from an opt-out to an opt-in model, requiring explicit parental consent. It’s a straightforward safeguard, aligning with the Supreme Court’s longstanding recognition of parents’ fundamental rights to direct their children’s upbringing. 

Yet progressive board members and newly elected candidates are in a panic, fearing low participation will weaken the data’s “robustness.” DCSD Board Director Brad Geiger insists the district needs to know that 14% of girls report non-consensual sexual contact in order to shape policy. DCSD Board Director Valerie Thompson expresses “terror” that over 30% of students have access to guns at home, and suggests the data is necessary in order to inform security protocols at schools. 

But these interpretations are fraught with bias: What counts as “non-consensual” in a teen’s mind? And does accessibility to guns really pose a threat, or is it indicative of family hunting trips? If zero students had access to guns, would security protocols be unnecessary? 

This line of reasoning on why intimate data should be collected is nonsensical.

This isn’t about helping kids; it’s about control. 

The data from HKCS drives grant monies to school districts and influences legislation that further entrench the state’s role over parents. When parents discover their child has been pulled into this web – adopting a new gender identity, forming secretive bonds with adults at school, or spiraling into mental health crises without the family’s knowledge – it’s often too late. 

The modern cult isn’t hidden in compounds; it’s embedded in classrooms and celebrated by administrators who are blinded by dogma. 

On December 16, the Douglas County school board will vote on rescinding the opt-in requirement for the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey. Douglas County residents have an opportunity to tell the school board that parental consent should be required for HKCS by signing a petition prepared by Colorado Parent Advocacy Network (click here for the petition: https://link.coloradoparents.org/widget/form/stNlDvXPmJiB2RPC9wF8). 

To every parent in Colorado, now is not the time to cede your sacred authority over your children’s upbringing. 

The fight over the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey is merely one front in a broader institutional campaign. 

Just as 1970s cults promised liberation while severing kids from their roots, today’s system risks the same outcome under the banner of “inclusion” and “belonging”: families torn apart, kids lost to manipulation, and predators empowered by institutional cover. 

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.