The Man Who Calls Mormonism a Cult: Steven Hassan and the Machinery Behind the Attack on the LDS Church

The BITE model is deceptively simple. Behavior, Information, Thought, Emotional control. Any group that exercises control over these four domains can be classified as a cult. That’s it. That’s the whole test.

The problem is the test has no floor. Hassan himself says it: “Destructive mind control can be determined when the overall effect of these four components promotes dependency and obedience to some leader or cause; it is not necessary for every single item on the list to be present.” Not every item. Not even most items. A “few major behaviors under each of the four components” is enough. The evaluator — Hassan — decides which behaviors count and how many are sufficient. The framework doesn’t diagnose; it labels.

And the categories are broad enough to catch anything. Behavior control includes regulating what you eat, what you wear, how much money you give, and how you spend your time. Information control includes limiting outside sources and discouraging critical inquiry. Thought control includes asking members to accept doctrine as truth. Emotional control includes teaching about sin, guilt, fear, and consequences. Any religion with a behavioral code, a membership covenant, a set of teachings, and a concept of divine judgment fits the model. The framework doesn’t distinguish between a cult and a church. It defines church as cult.

Hassan’s attack on the LDS Church is a sustained, multi-year campaign that touches every aspect of Mormon belief and practice. The church itself he calls “an authoritarian cult” that “meets every criterion” of his BITE model “and sits on the destructive end” of his trademarked “Influence Continuum.” Its missionary recruitment of minors he calls “deceptive recruitment,” insisting “healthy religions do not work this way.” The conversion experience he describes as “the signature of effective mind control” that “never feels like coercion” but instead “feels like falling in love.” The temple endowment ceremony he labels “group identity indoctrination,” describing the new name, the garments, the handshakes, and the penalties as “phobias engineered into the body.” The church’s legal defense of its reputation he characterizes as “Information Control in the BITE Model,” accusing the church of “using its legal resources to chill speech.” The practice of shunning former members he calls “a feature, not an accident.”

Tithing — a practice common to many religious traditions — he calls “inherently wrong” and “evil,” framing the church’s $300 billion investment fund as proof that “the Mormon Church is worth over $300 billion, yet demands the poor pay 10% of their income or be denied baptism and temple access.” The church’s emphasis on family he calls “instrumental in destroying some families,” because “if one spouse in a Mormon marriage loses faith, they are sometimes told that their spouse will divorce them if they leave the church.” The church’s own history he dismisses as “a long history of teaching inaccurate, incomplete, and/or whitewashed history to its members and to church investigators.”

The ministering program — the assigned home visits members make to check on each other — he frames as surveillance, asking “Ministering or Monitoring?” The doctrine that children reach the age of accountability at eight years old he treats as psychological harm to children, publishing a piece titled “Better Off Dead Before Eight Years Old.” Mormons’ role in American institutions he frames as evidence of undue influence, publishing a piece titled “Mormons: They’re Secretly Shaping America.”

The pattern is total. There is no aspect of Mormon life — tithing, garments, ministering, the age of accountability, the missionary program, the temple ceremony, the church’s history, its members’ civic participation — that Hassan has not characterized as evidence of cult control.

Hassan’s attack is not limited to writing. He has built a sustained program of activities specifically designed to characterize the LDS Church as a cult and to “recover” its members.

The LDS Church is not just facing Steven Hassan’s personal campaign. It is facing an ecosystem of actors who are perpetuating the same framework against the church, independently of Hassan but using his theory.

Direct attackers. Zelph on the Shelf, a YouTube channel with ~85,000 subscribers run by two ex-Mormon women, produced a video titled “Why the Mormon Church is a Cult” (October 2023) in which they apply Hassan’s BITE model by name and conclude: “The Mormon Church is a cult. It’s not just a high-demand religion. It’s a cult.” Infants on Thrones, a podcast with ~50,000 monthly downloads run by ex-Mormon men, produced an episode titled “Is Mormonism a Cult?” (January 2024) in which they conclude: “Yes, Mormonism is a cult. It meets every criterion of a high-control group.” These platforms are not Hassan’s. They are independent media channels that have adopted his framework and are applying it to the LDS Church without his involvement.

Academic legitimizers. Janja Lalich, a professor of sociology at California State University, Chico, and one of the most-cited academic authorities on cults and “bounded choice,” describes the LDS Church as having “cult-like characteristics” — high-demand, high-control, punishing exit — without using the word “cult” directly. Steven Kent, a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta and one of Canada’s most prominent cult researchers, describes the LDS Church as “totalistic” — demanding “total commitment” from members, controlling information, and punishing dissent. Their frameworks are functionally identical to Hassan’s BITE model, and their academic credentials give the “Mormons are a cult” argument scholarly legitimacy that plaintiff attorneys cite in legal filings.

Institutional actors. Robin Boyle-Laisure, a professor of legal writing at St. John’s University School of Law and a board member of the International Cultic Studies Association, has published extensively on the TVPA’s forced-labor statute and its application to non-physical coercion. In a 2016 article in the Oregon Review of International Law, she laid out the case for using federal trafficking statutes to capture the leaders of “destructive cults” — coercive control without physical force. She does not cite Hassan by name, but her framework is functionally identical. Boyle-Laisure is the bridge between academic theory and legal application — she publishes the scholarship that converts the cult framework into TVPA doctrine.

The plaintiff bar. Attorneys filing cases against the LDS Church have appeared on Dehlin’s platform to discuss legal strategy and reach potential plaintiffs. Tim Kosnoff, the lead attorney in the Kitler case and the California MDL consolidation effort, has appeared on Mormon Stories at least three times and has publicly stated that the LDS Church’s abuse hotline “is designed to protect the institution, not the victims.” Anne Andrews and Kimberly DeGonia of Andrews & Thornton, the lead firm in the California MDL consolidation, appeared on Mormon Stories in February 2025 to discuss the application of the human trafficking statute to the church’s institutional practices. Neither Kosnoff nor Andrews & Thornton cite Hassan by name in their legal filings — but the pipeline is structural: the theory Hassan built is the theory available to them in court.

Federal infrastructure. The FBI’s Law Enforcement Bulletin has published the BITE model framework as a tool for trafficking investigators, and federally funded anti-trafficking training — supported at approximately $140 million per year — applies the coercive-control framework to religious organizations generally.

Hassan built the theory. These actors are applying it independently. The church is not facing one man’s campaign — it is facing an ecosystem that has adopted his framework and is using it against the LDS Church in court, in academic publications, in media platforms, and in federal training programs.

The most consequential part of that ecosystem is the partnership between Hassan and John Dehlin, a former Mormon who was excommunicated in 2015 and now runs the “Mormon Stories” podcast — over 50 million downloads, the biggest ex-Mormon media platform on the internet.

The machine has been running for over two decades. Hassan first presented the BITE model to approximately 250 ex-Mormons at the 2008 Exmormon Foundation Conference in Salt Lake City. He returned as keynote speaker at the Utah Valley Post-Mormon Association in 2018. He and Dehlin co-created the “Recovery After Mormonism Workshop” — an ongoing online course on Thinkific since 2022, plus an in-person 2.5-day intensive in Alpine, Utah, March 2023, attended by over 150 people. A second dated instance appears on Hassan’s CV as a September 27, 2024 presentation. He has interviewed at least a dozen former Mormons on his podcast and YouTube channel — a former bishop, a psychologist, an FLDS infiltration researcher. He does not interview current members or present the church’s perspective.

Dehlin provides the platform and the audience. Hassan provides the “expert” framework that recharacterizes their religious experience as cult victimization. Together they have built a pipeline that takes disaffected Mormons, reframes their experience through the BITE model, and channels them toward legal action.

This is not theoretical. The infrastructure Hassan and Dehlin have built is already producing results in court, and the legal theory behind it is expanding.

Kitler v. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (N.D.N.Y., 1:24-cv-01071) shows both the reach and the current limits of the theory. In an August 2025 decision, the federal court allowed one plaintiff’s TVPRA claim against the Church to proceed past a motion to dismiss, while dismissing two other plaintiffs’ TVPRA claims without prejudice. The surviving claim — built on the coercive-control theory that institutional religious authority, internal complaint routing, and social consequences for leaving constitute trafficking — is still being tested in federal court. If it holds, every religious organization with a membership covenant, a behavioral code, and social consequences for departure is exposed.

The statutory framework is permanent. Federal courts have held that consent is no defense to forced labor charges: a defendant can be convicted even if the victim initially consented, on the theory that coercion can vitiate prior consent. Approximately $140 million per year in federal anti-trafficking funding supports training judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement in this framework — roughly $1.1–1.2 billion in cumulative spending since FY2010.

The LDS Church is not facing a random assortment of plaintiffs’ attorneys. It is facing a coordinated pipeline. A self-appointed “cult expert” provides the theory. A podcast host with 50 million downloads provides the audience and the plaintiffs. A legal theory that has already survived a motion to dismiss in federal court provides the mechanism. The Kitler case is the proof of concept. If it succeeds, the template is set: any former member of any religious organization can be reframed as a trafficking victim, and the institution can be sued for forced labor. The framework Hassan built is not just an attack on Mormonism. It is a threat to every religious organization in America.