Claire Martin's testimony. Belgium
(He entered New Acropolis at age 20. At 23 he entered the Viva Forces, within the group of the Women's Brigades. He was in New Acropolis for 10 years and served as Chief of Filial in Belgium.)
Testimony - My step through New Acropolis (2025)
When I entered New Acropolis, I was a happy, optimistic person, very curious about life. I loved philosophy, Greek mythology, ancient cultures, Buddhism... At the age of 20 he had an authentic love for knowledge and for sharing experiences with other people who also sought meaning and depth. At that time in my life, I was full of enthusiasm and did not suspect that I would end up trapped in an organization that, behind a cultural and philosophical facade, functioned like a sect.
The first years were apparently bright. There were interesting lectures, classes that were intellectually feeding me, debates where we could talk about philosophy and spirituality, experiences of social, artistic, ecological volunteering, etc. Everything was attractive to me and, precisely from there, a sect is fed: good moments and links that seem genuine. If everything was dark from the start, no one would stay.
Once I became a member, I saw some practices that seemed quite dubious to me, the worst was during the course of Practical Psychology; one of those tests was to slap in the face with another partner, unable to turn away or show reaction. And that was the first time I experienced cognitive dissonance. I justified what was making me uncomfortable because I felt that I was part of something greater, of something spiritual. In addition, there was the group pressure, which pushed you not to question anything so as not to become weak or unfair. And above all, what in psychology is called "learned defenceless," they convince you that you must not question those above you, that it is right to submit to the hierarchy, as nature works. All this is explained through master classes, notes and data based on ancient philosophers and civilizations.
Within the group, the demand was immense. There was a constant duty, a total commitment. And the worst thing is that I myself, unconscious, was raising that demand. I wanted to show myself worthy, to show my fidelity to the acropolitan ideal. That led me to extreme physical and mental exhaustion, there was little room to rest, to think for myself, to be just me. She had to show that she was a good disciple with monthly reports on the "School of the Discipulated," where we noted the acropolitan qualities: generosity, sacrifice, devotion, mystical (combination of good will and effectiveness), etc.
Before I met NA, I had a university career with academic success and I was very well with my family. However, every year I spent was leaving friends behind because my thought (already kidnapped by NA) told me that people were not able to understand as much as I was, what I did, what I lived. An acropolitan is educated on the basis of moral pride and believes that others do not understand anything because they are not lucky enough to acquire esoteric knowledge.
You end up adopting everything, behaviors, terminology, everything... Sacrifice, obedience, duty are terms that are recorded with fire, even satiety. They even compare it to the priesthood when you start teaching, making you think you're special, different, better, the one or the one chosen. In New Acropolis, the "hashados" and commanders are treated as kings with their privileges and attentions.
In the meantime, I saw things that had a profound impact on me. The national leader of Belgium, F.F., publicly humiliated his own wife, calling her a fool when she gave a conference, with a machismo so brazen that she didn't even try to conceal it, as other leaders did. He confessed to me on a couple of occasions that he admired Franco and Hitler and that Jorge Ángel Livraga (or JAL, the founder of New Acropolis) had admired José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange. As for women, the doctrine reflects the servitude of women, wrapped in a quasi-romantic halo of "the lady, the gentleman and honor." As for clothing, for example, women who did not have the habit of wearing a dress or skirt were "invited" insistently to wear, as it was the same as a lady.
My experience as head of branch in Belgium
People who have been living forces will recognize evenings in which the old acropolitan glories are counted. There are anecdotes of JAL that impress anyone, narrated by some hashado (leader with merit) or "dinosaur" (so they call those who have been in NA for 30 or 40 years), all of them having received classes of prayer, the feelings they cause are to want to eat the world, to "live and die for the ideal." The emotional or "astral" plane grows at exorbitant limits, listening to great words about the ceremonies, countries and subsidiaries of the first 20 years of NA, as if it were quijotesque and laudable adventures.
In one of those ashes, my partner raised his hand, as possessed by a delusion of greatness, and said he wanted to open a subsidiary. It was the best news New Acropolis Belgium could expect, as it is a very old country, with a maximum of 20 live forces and just a few members.
National directors should be completely transparent, they should say what each of these heads of government charges, instead of hiding their use by saying that all members of Acropolis are volunteers without exception and that the members' money is spent only on headquarters maintenance. I had been a few months as head of the subsidiary and I saw how, in addition, in the national reports there were sections intended to cost the travel of the national director. At first, I did not give it importance and I did not look at these reports with a critical eye, as I had become a "small leader" and gave more and more money to the organization. This was also seen by the "hashados," who, for example, made great donations when a new subsidiary was opened. The fact that the higher you were, the more you paid, made me think that the directors put the same amounts of money or more, but it's not.
One last curious fact, when my ex and I bought our private house and in much of it we set up the subsidiary, F.F., he urged me one good day to make a will in case my partner and I had something happen, to leave the house in the name of New Acropolis. Now in time it's all creepy.
How I got out of NA
To all this was added my personal life, I was in the organization with my husband and we were both very involved in the Living Forces and at the beginning of the foundation of a subsidiary, but there came a time when within me a deep desire arose: I wanted to be a mother and had already dedicated my best years to New Acropolis (from 20 to 30 years). And there I understood the root of the problem: having family, even if not said too openly, was seen as an obstacle to the "ideal." All the acropolitans I know, who have had a son without looking for him, spend their lives in repentance or in distress of not being able to serve the organization any more. Our whole life had revolved around the organization, and this contradiction was breaking me inside. I felt fractured. On the one hand, there was what I felt and I wanted it to be my own life in freedom; on the other, there was what the group imposed on me to believe and a life I didn't like. This together with all the physical and emotional wear ended up breaking me. The deal was to see my husband walk away from me and what he was. Like he stopped being himself. I even started to feel rejected for him, because I repeated "as a parrot" the same phrases about NA, about "a philosophy of practical life" and a whole reheated speech that I had used before but now seemed empty and false. There I fell into a deep depression with suicidal thoughts.
When I started to put my way out, my ex-partner didn't make me stay, but he didn't understand me either. The leader of New Acropolis in Belgium (F.F.) maintained a constant communication with him: e-mails, private meetings, letters where he repeated that more important than the family, more important than a wife, is the ideal. Little by little I saw my husband change, that he no longer treated me the same. I noticed a huge NA pressure on him.
F.F. told my ex-husband that my depression and my suicidal thoughts were my invention, a manipulation. Those thoughts had only been entrusted to my ex-partner, with total confidence and fear, not with the intention to act, but expressing the fear that those ideas caused me. Since, in New Acropolis, the leaders are "confidant" to whom everything can be trusted, my ex-husband told F.F. This message - that my depression was an invention - legitimizes affective abandonment and destroys empathy. It is a message that breaks the intimate ties, promotes exclusive loyalty to organization and normalizes the sacrifice of humanity itself in favour of the sectarian structure.
Later, Toni met with me to apologize and try to convince me to return to NA and open a subsidiary in Spain, he thought they would convince me again. Or maybe they were afraid of me talking and that's why I was being so well treated. I rejected every offer, but a few years later I realized that all Toni told me was lie and more manipulation by NA. He promised me he'd take F.F. from his national director position. For ten years everything has remained the same. F.F. has followed as national director and my ex-partner is still mounted on the meritocratic acropolitan pyramid, an instrument for any competitive "spiritual ego"; in reality what is promoted is the greed of power among those who have the desire to be chief and delusions to make this "a new and better world."
I confess that I myself, when I agreed to be head of a subsidiary, felt special, imbued with an exceptional mission. And, having been denigrated by my national director and, later, adulted by him as to my abilities, I understood this mechanism: they use you at their will.
I felt deeply brought and left a country that was not mine. Alone, misunderstood, betrayed by my husband, friends and acropolitan "family."
Why I tell my experience now
I report and write my testimony more than ten years later because for a long time I was ashamed. I judged myself for having believed and for having remained; I feared that those who read me would also judge me. He was afraid of reprisals, fear of being recognized and again conditioned, fear above all of reviving all the discomfort, of opening wounds he feared he could not bear.
I find it unbearable that a sectarian organization, present for more than fifty years in the world and subject to hundreds of complaints, is still active, and above all that one is forced not to be able to report because, if you do, NA responds by suing you for defamation for hundreds of thousands of euros. We're completely invalid.
It has taken me many years to leave behind my passage through NA, I never found any psychologist who could accompany or understand me, now I see that there are more specialists in these issues than 10 years ago. This blog was a before and a later, rereading testimonies with experiences and related feelings, made me understand and deepen, feel less alone, more understood.
When I left NA, I thought I was the one to blame for my marriage breaking up because the last two years our relationship was less. Our discussions in recent years began to appear, especially when we were leaving the meetings of living forces, I was increasingly exhausted, out and angry with what we were doing there. He blamed me despite the Belgian leaders' pressure on my husband for fear that he would also leave and want to separate him from me, which I knew, and he would burn me inside.
However, I am now aware of the emotional, moral and physical decline that I suffered in recent years by carrying more and more acropolitan responsibilities along with the incongruences that were being added as I entered the circle of leaders. From here I apologize to those who entered NA recommended by me, including my ex.
I feel the abuses of power that I committed when I entered the Acropolis automatic staircase to place myself above or below others. My only way to do something today is not to forget the injustices experienced by me and so many in this sect, not to silence lies and deception. In the end, my ex-husband chose to stay in New Acropolis. I chose to leave.
I proposed to live in Spain with me, to the country where I grew up and returned, far from the betrayal I lived in small Belgium. However, my ex owed NA Belgium loyalty. He belonged to the Security Corps and one of his codes of honor was protection and obedience to his DN, he told me that he had received so much in NA Belgium, that he could no longer leave there.
But the final trigger that saved me was the letter from F.F. addressed to my husband, the most flagrant adulteration of dignity and respect for a human being and for couple relations.
"We are the same as ever, we opened the bronze doors of history," JAL was vangled, as if only the acropolitans were dependent on the improvement and consciousness of the world. In addition to radical ideology, the structures of New Acropolis are completely rotten, and this is happening from the beginning, from JAL itself and, who is truly a lover of research, will be able to discover it in his writings, but always please, in a critical spirit, which in NA is neglected for the sake of restricting individual freedom.
If you are still inside and these words resonate in you despite the cognitive dissonance you must feel when reading them, you know that it is possible to get out. If you have managed to go out and see that, in reality, the cavern of Plato is the same Acropolis with slaves, my most sincere congratulations. The Truth, Justice, Love and Goodness are now closer to those who speak so much within.
Claire, 2025