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Rob Nanninga
Roelof Hendrik "Rob" Nanninga (6 August 1955 – 30 May 2014) was a Dutch skeptic, writer, board member of Stichting Skepsis and editor of its magazine Skepter. He became known for his critical writings about sects, alternative healers and therapists, paranormal claims and pseudoscientific trainings and courses.
Nanninga completed his Ubbo Emmius teacher education in the summer of 1980 as a high school teacher in Dutch and English. After only a month in military service he was discharged. Nanninga was a teacher for only a short time, being unable to keep order in class; his East Groningen pupils wanted no part of his Skinnerian ideas about rewarding and not punishing. He concluded educating rebellious teenagers was not for him.
In 1976, Nanninga got involved in a skeptics discussion group in Groningen via a school project of the college. He told them he knew how Uri Geller bent spoons. In the same year, the American skeptical organisation Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) was founded; its magazine Skeptical Inquirer also attracted several subscribers in the Netherlands. Around 1979 Nanninga's interest in sects grew, and he visited several of them with his working group "Opkomende religies" ("Emerging religions"). It was in this club that he met his girlfriend Jolanda Hennekam.
In the early 1980s, Nanninga performed an experiment with a Transcendental Meditation follower, who claimed to be able to make a floating jump of over a metre, starting from a meditation position and without pushing off the ground. Nanninga requested him to jump from a plywood plate that was lying on marbles onto a mattress half a metre away. The test subject, who beforehand claimed that the meditation gave him a "flying feeling", was confronted with the hard truth that one cannot push oneself off of a rolling plate.
At the end of 1987, Rob Nanninga was among 25 Dutch Skeptical Inquirer subscribers who convened at the Humanistisch Verbond in Utrecht, with Paul Kurtz present, to found a CSICOP-like organisation in the Netherlands, which led to Stichting Skepsis. Nanninga got involved in its formation because he was writing his book Parariteiten – Een kritische blik op het paranormale ("Paranormal Oddities – A Critical View of the Paranormal") at the time, which was published the next year. At that convention he met many of his later colleagues such as mathematician Jan Willem Nienhuys and astronomer Cornelis de Jager, who became chairman. Nanninga himself became secretary from the end of 1988 until 2003. On 1 March 1988, the first issue of Skepsis' magazine Skepter came out, of which Nanninga became an editor, becoming its editor-in-chief in 2002 until his death.
In December 1994, Nanninga was tipped off by an ex-employee of the Groningen-based Instituut voor Video-Gestalttherapie (Institute for Video Gestalt therapy, IVG), where victims of incest were referred to by the Municipal Health Service (GGD) and Social service (that subsidised the IVG for thousands of guilders). The IVG was allegedly being run like a sect. Nanninga then spoke to several former clients, students and therapists of the IVG, after which he sent a report with his findings to the director of the social service and the chief inspector of Healthcare in January 1995. After coming up against a brick wall with them, he decided to seek publicity to the press.
On 3 March 1995 Nanninga wrote a piece full of fierce accusations against the institute in Intermediair. The core of his charge against the IVG was its leader Wies Moget, whom he described as a 'paranoid and ruthless woman', who claimed to help victims, as long as they did exactly what she told them. Nanninga exposed how Moget told them all kinds of fantastic stories that were highly questionable. According to Moget, she and her daughters had undergone horrible mistreatment at the hands of an obscure cabal that she referred to as "The Group" ("De Groep"). This allegedly consisted of so-called 'satanic' figures, including her ex-husband that supposedly were after them. Through her therapy, they armed themselves against them. From 1991 on, Moget recruited students from among her own clients for her expensive training to become therapists. With her 'sect' in the city centre of Groningen she 'terrorised the neighbourhood', on the one hand by manipulating her own coworkers with threats and drumming into their minds that they had been the victims of various "repressed" crimes in the past, including sexual and ritual abuse. On the other hand, she identified certain people, sometimes among her own students, as members of "The Group". With her stories, Moget managed to have her adepts break their ties with friends and relatives, and become dependent upon herself. Participants who protested were subjected to hypnosis sessions by Moget, or expelled when they became too dangerous for the IVG's stability.
After the publication of Nanninga's piece, the GGD and social service decided not to refer new clients to the IVG for the time being, and several more ex-students came out with complaints. In a new article in the newspaper Trouw of 18 March, Nanninga provided new evidence from a series of former clients and employees. Because of the commotion, the IVG decided to set up a self-appointed commission to investigate potential abuses (the Inspection for Healthcare refused to investigate the matter because it did not recognise the institute), but Moget's new boyfriend and spokesman Vincent Schochron declared beforehand in the very same statement that the institute, having dozens of clients at the time, did 'nothing wrong'. Moreover, Moget sued Nanninga for defamation and slander, demanding financial compensation for causing "material and immaterial damage" to the institute. The court in Groningen rejected the demand on 15 December 1995, because it concluded Skepsis had not been unnecessarily offensive or grievous, and Nanninga had backed up all of his claims well. Moget had to pay for the legal costs. After that it became quiet surrounding the IVG; the authorities did not undertake any action, despite attempts by ex-students to have it shut down.
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Rob Nanninga
Roelof Hendrik "Rob" Nanninga (6 August 1955 – 30 May 2014) was a Dutch skeptic, writer, board member of Stichting Skepsis and editor of its magazine Skepter. He became known for his critical writings about sects, alternative healers and therapists, paranormal claims and pseudoscientific trainings and courses.
Nanninga completed his Ubbo Emmius teacher education in the summer of 1980 as a high school teacher in Dutch and English. After only a month in military service he was discharged. Nanninga was a teacher for only a short time, being unable to keep order in class; his East Groningen pupils wanted no part of his Skinnerian ideas about rewarding and not punishing. He concluded educating rebellious teenagers was not for him.
In 1976, Nanninga got involved in a skeptics discussion group in Groningen via a school project of the college. He told them he knew how Uri Geller bent spoons. In the same year, the American skeptical organisation Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) was founded; its magazine Skeptical Inquirer also attracted several subscribers in the Netherlands. Around 1979 Nanninga's interest in sects grew, and he visited several of them with his working group "Opkomende religies" ("Emerging religions"). It was in this club that he met his girlfriend Jolanda Hennekam.
In the early 1980s, Nanninga performed an experiment with a Transcendental Meditation follower, who claimed to be able to make a floating jump of over a metre, starting from a meditation position and without pushing off the ground. Nanninga requested him to jump from a plywood plate that was lying on marbles onto a mattress half a metre away. The test subject, who beforehand claimed that the meditation gave him a "flying feeling", was confronted with the hard truth that one cannot push oneself off of a rolling plate.
At the end of 1987, Rob Nanninga was among 25 Dutch Skeptical Inquirer subscribers who convened at the Humanistisch Verbond in Utrecht, with Paul Kurtz present, to found a CSICOP-like organisation in the Netherlands, which led to Stichting Skepsis. Nanninga got involved in its formation because he was writing his book Parariteiten – Een kritische blik op het paranormale ("Paranormal Oddities – A Critical View of the Paranormal") at the time, which was published the next year. At that convention he met many of his later colleagues such as mathematician Jan Willem Nienhuys and astronomer Cornelis de Jager, who became chairman. Nanninga himself became secretary from the end of 1988 until 2003. On 1 March 1988, the first issue of Skepsis' magazine Skepter came out, of which Nanninga became an editor, becoming its editor-in-chief in 2002 until his death.
In December 1994, Nanninga was tipped off by an ex-employee of the Groningen-based Instituut voor Video-Gestalttherapie (Institute for Video Gestalt therapy, IVG), where victims of incest were referred to by the Municipal Health Service (GGD) and Social service (that subsidised the IVG for thousands of guilders). The IVG was allegedly being run like a sect. Nanninga then spoke to several former clients, students and therapists of the IVG, after which he sent a report with his findings to the director of the social service and the chief inspector of Healthcare in January 1995. After coming up against a brick wall with them, he decided to seek publicity to the press.
On 3 March 1995 Nanninga wrote a piece full of fierce accusations against the institute in Intermediair. The core of his charge against the IVG was its leader Wies Moget, whom he described as a 'paranoid and ruthless woman', who claimed to help victims, as long as they did exactly what she told them. Nanninga exposed how Moget told them all kinds of fantastic stories that were highly questionable. According to Moget, she and her daughters had undergone horrible mistreatment at the hands of an obscure cabal that she referred to as "The Group" ("De Groep"). This allegedly consisted of so-called 'satanic' figures, including her ex-husband that supposedly were after them. Through her therapy, they armed themselves against them. From 1991 on, Moget recruited students from among her own clients for her expensive training to become therapists. With her 'sect' in the city centre of Groningen she 'terrorised the neighbourhood', on the one hand by manipulating her own coworkers with threats and drumming into their minds that they had been the victims of various "repressed" crimes in the past, including sexual and ritual abuse. On the other hand, she identified certain people, sometimes among her own students, as members of "The Group". With her stories, Moget managed to have her adepts break their ties with friends and relatives, and become dependent upon herself. Participants who protested were subjected to hypnosis sessions by Moget, or expelled when they became too dangerous for the IVG's stability.
After the publication of Nanninga's piece, the GGD and social service decided not to refer new clients to the IVG for the time being, and several more ex-students came out with complaints. In a new article in the newspaper Trouw of 18 March, Nanninga provided new evidence from a series of former clients and employees. Because of the commotion, the IVG decided to set up a self-appointed commission to investigate potential abuses (the Inspection for Healthcare refused to investigate the matter because it did not recognise the institute), but Moget's new boyfriend and spokesman Vincent Schochron declared beforehand in the very same statement that the institute, having dozens of clients at the time, did 'nothing wrong'. Moreover, Moget sued Nanninga for defamation and slander, demanding financial compensation for causing "material and immaterial damage" to the institute. The court in Groningen rejected the demand on 15 December 1995, because it concluded Skepsis had not been unnecessarily offensive or grievous, and Nanninga had backed up all of his claims well. Moget had to pay for the legal costs. After that it became quiet surrounding the IVG; the authorities did not undertake any action, despite attempts by ex-students to have it shut down.
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