'He's been taught to hate me': Mother's horror after internet cult brainwashed her teenage son into cutting off ties - and claimed SHE was 'evil'
Barbara Weed's teenage son Tom cut off all contact six years ago
He had been watching podcasts made by 'philosopher' Stefan Molyneaux
Molyneaux also 'convinced him he was the victim of abuse' during chats
Canadian espouses cutting off family ties which he calls 'de-FOOing'
Molyneaux' operation has been described as a cult by critics
Ms Weed says her son has been taught to hate her by Molyneaux
In 2009, Tom Bell, then 18 and studying for his A-levels, walked out of his family home with all of his personal possessions and never returned.
The teenager, whose mother says he had been 'distant and distracted', left a note saying he was cutting off all contact with the family and did not want to be found.
Now, six years after he left, his mother Barbara Weed has revealed how she discovered that he had been brainwashed by a sinister online cult - and fears that he will never return.
'He seemed more distant, distracted, detached,' says Ms Weed of the weeks leading up to Tom's disappearance.
'He wasn't coming down for meals anymore. He wanted to cook his own food. He was vegetarian and then he was vegan. I assumed that he was going through the normal grumpy teenager phase.'
But unbeknown to her, Tom had been spending most of his time on a website called Freedomain Radio, which is run by a Canadian named Stefan Molyneaux.
Molyneaux, who claims to be a philosopher, regularly posts podcasts in which he expounds on everything from the evils of taxation to relationships.
He also espouses a process known as 'de-FOOing', which involves cutting off ties with family and friends, and is on record as saying he does 'not believe there are any really good parents out there'.
This, says Ms Weed, is exactly the sort of conversation he had been having with her son who, in podcasts later downloaded by his mother, can be heard being convinced that he had been a victim of abuse during his childhood.
Family: Molyneaux claims there are 'no good parents' and advocates a process called 'de-FOOing' which involves cutting off ties with family members and friends who disagree with your views
Sinisterly, the charge arose from Tom telling Molyneaux that he had seen his father John kick the family cat once.
'I think that you as a child were treated like an animal by someone who was cruel to animals,' adds Molyneux in the recording.
'I think the compassion you have towards animals, which is a good thing and which I respect, is a stand-in for something that's harder for you to face which is how you were treated.
'That's why I say to people, if your parents are evil, ditch them.'
Ms Weed was horrified. 'Even now, it's just so shocking to listen to the podcast and hear my son talking and asking quite innocent, reasonable questions: "Why do I feel so upset when I see animals being being mistreated?"
'Then, within a couple of sentences, Molyneaux is convincing him that he had not just seen animals being mistreated because his cats were yelled at but he was treated like an animal, he was a victim of abuse.
'Tom was just sobbing. And he believed he had been mistreated as a child.'
Listening to the recording after her son's departure was, she says, agonising. 'Listening to somebody do that to my son - it was the same as if I had watched them kicking and beating him on a newsreel. Why would anybody do that to my son?
'He [Molyneux] convinces people quite quickly that they have been a victim of abuse, that their parents never loved them, that they have been mistreated.'
Molyneux, who has insisted in past interviews that his outfit is 'not a cult' and that he doesn't encourage people to leave their families, can be heard doing just that in more recent posts - bizarrely claiming that family members who disagree with his adherents' views want them dead.
'Barbara's story is very sadly typical of parents who have lost their children or loved ones to cults -they get a letter saying, "I don't want to talk to you anymore", explains Professor Rod Dubrow-Marshall, the editor of the International Journal of Cultic Studies
'It's the way in which cults break up families and harm people psychologically by expecting members to split themselves off from their families in that way.'
Ms Weed, who has not seen her son for six years, did attempt to make contact shortly after he left by turning up at the coffee shop where he was working. She says she was swiftly rebuffed.
'I did say he could come back anytime, even in 20 years, and he'd be welcome,' she says, sadly. 'He just shook his head.
'He didn't speak. He just shook his head and looked at me as if to say, you fool. That's the last time I spoke to him.'
Chillingly, Tom went on to discuss the encounter and his mother's subsequent media appeals with Molyneaux on a Freedomain Radio forum.
The Canadian responded: 'She [Ms Weed] misses having a victim around and so she is using the media to victimise you ... Totally evil.'
His mother is not surprised. 'I'm not going to look for him,' she says. 'I wouldn't know where to begin and the chances of ever seeing him again are so minimal.
'There would be no point because he hates me - he will always hate me because that's what Molyneaux has trained him to do. He won't want to see me.
She adds: 'To parents, I'd say if you notice your child's behaviour changing, they're cutting themselves off from people who used to be their friends, try talking to them.
'Find out what they're involved in and find out as much about that as you can. It might be some religion they're involved in, it could be a gang, it could be drugs or it could be a cult.'
FREEDOMAIN RADIO: THE 'CULT' THAT HIDES BEHIND PHILOSOPHY
Set up by former IT worker and self-proclaimed philosopher Stefan Molyneaux, Freedomain Radio is a blog that produces regular podcasts on a huge range of topics, including family life and politics.
Molyneaux appears in most of the videos and claims they amount to 'the largest and most popular philosophy show in the world' with 100 million podcasts downloaded.
But his confrontational style and his enthusiasm for 'de-FOOing' have led to his organisation being dubbed a cult, with many of those who use it going on to cut off their families much like Tom.
Many of his rants err on the side of the bizarre, including one recent example in which he claimed family members with differing views really 'want you dead'.
'How can I even have a shred of pride if I'm willing to hang out with people who want me dead,' he continues.
'That is sick. That is self-denigration of the most revolting kind. If you're not willing to put your personal relationships to the test, that's fine. But don't imagine you're a libertarian or have anything to do with virtue.'
There is also a small but growing number of former devotees who have become disillusioned with Molyneaux's 'philosophy' and have created websites of their own to counter his narrative.
Jack, a user of one the websites, called freedomfeens.com, and a former devotee took to a forum to describe his experiences and described himself as a 'victim' of Molyneaux' brainwashing.
'Many of us were directly told to shun people,' he writes. 'Stef draws people into his little cult by telling them to leave their families, etc – then when he gets tired of specific people, directs others to gang up on them and shun them.
'Many of these people are very lost, some are mentally ill, and he draws them in and then cuts them off, leaving them without any sort of support network.'
In an interview with the Guardian shortly after Tom's disappearance, Molyneaux himself said his website 'couldn't be further from a cult'.
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