'Deprogrammer' gets jail in abduction from cult

September 29, 1980

"Deprogrammer" Ted Patrick has been sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to stop abducting people in his efforts to "save" them from religious cults. Mr. Patrick was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Norbert Ehrenfreund for his conviction on kidnapping and conspiracy charges in the March abduction of Roberta McElfish of Tucson, Ariz. The conviction was Patrick's first for a felony in his long career as a deprogrammer, which began when one of his own children became a cult member.