Accounts about shady Unification Church practices told by people who called a government hotline for victims offer a disturbing glimpse into the dark side of the religious organization.

Why did the government fail for so long to respond to the proliferation of money-related problems involving the organization, now formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification?

Many of these problems stem from “reikan shoho” fraudulent sales of goods or services claimed to bring supernatural benefits and pressure by the church on followers to make huge donations.

The information obtained through the hotline should be used not just to provide relief to victims but also to uncover the reality of how the church operates.

The government hotline, which was set up in September by the Justice Ministry, the National Police Agency, the Consumers Affairs Agency and other entities, received more than 1,300 consultations.

This is a surprisingly large number and underscores afresh the seriousness of the problem. The government’s decision to extend the service indefinitely makes perfect sense.

About 70 percent of all the cases concerned money matters. And nearly half of them were complaints about donations.

One caller was from a family borrowed money for a family members who was a follower and wanted the money back.

There are limits to what can be done to provide relief to victims under existing provisions of the consumer contract law.

A panel of experts reporting to the Consumer Affairs Agency is discussing legal steps to deal with the problem, including regulations on seeking donations in unscrupulous ways.

The panel should swiftly propose effective measures, starting with those that can be put on the agenda for the current Diet session.

Some of the cases shed light on the plight of “second-generation” followers, or adherents’ children, who often suffer from poverty and mental anguish.

“I developed depression because of the environment in which I was raised,” one caller said. “I want to live away from my family,” said another.

The education and health ministries, which joined the government task force operating the hotline, should work with other ministries and agencies to ensure that victims receive adequate help.

We support the government’s decision to widen the scope of support by involving the internal affairs ministry as well as the Foreign Ministry, which is responsible for the wellbeing of Japanese followers overseas, in the task force.

But the absence of the Cultural Affairs Agency, which is in charge of administrative procedures to regulate the activities of religious organizations, in the government task force does not make sense.

The agency has an obligation to share what it knows with other government ministries and agencies to determine which of the church’s activities were appropriate and clarify the process leading to its decision to allow the church to change its name as well as what social impact the decision had.

A raft of court rulings handed down since the 1990s concerned cases involving reikan shoho and huge donations to the church.

Some of the rulings acknowledged “organizational illegal actions” or the church’s “vicarious liability.” The latter refers to a situation where an employer can be held liable for the unlawful actions of an employee.

Selling goods without disclosing ties with a religious group has also been ruled unlawful.

In 2009, a court found church followers, including the president of a Tokyo company selling seals, guilty of fraudulent sales by using a “manual that is inseparably integrated with the tenets” of the church.

The church issued a “compliance declaration” following the conviction. It claims there has not been a single case of reikan shoho involving its followers since then.

However, a group of lawyers who monitor the church’s reikan shoho activities and provide support for its alleged victims said many people had fallen victim to the group’s devious tactics to recruit members through invitations to “fortune-telling sessions” and other measures even after the church issued its compliance declaration.

The group estimated that such shady activities of the church caused damage worth at least close to 800 million yen ($5.52 million) to the victims.

Of the money-related problems handled by the government hotline, more than one-third involved payments made within the past 10 years.

The church recently announced a “reform plan” which promises to closely monitor excessive donations collected from followers.

But it should start by asking a neutral and independent third party to conduct a serious investigation into past actions involving its followers, including cases in which the church’s liability was recognized by the court.

The church should then publish objective and convincing findings stemming from the inquiry.

That is the very minimum the church, as an officially registered religious corporation, must do.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 7