Outrageous Betrayal: The Real Story of Werner Erhard from Est to Exile

Outrageous Betrayal: The Real Story of Werner Erhard from Est to Exile by Pressman, Steven. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780312092962.

As the founder of a human-potential movement known as "est," which stood for Erhard Seminars Training, Erhard in the 1970s and 1980s attracted hundreds of thousands of followers who sat through grueling sixty-hour "training" sessions that promised personal transformation and profound insights into human relationships. But Werner Erhard was eventually plagued by problems and controversy, culminating in horrifying allegations, which he hotly disputed, that he had forced his wife to live apart from her children and sexually abused two of his daughters. Erhard also became the focus of renewed charges that his est movement had taken on some of the trappings of a cult. At the same time, the Internal Revenue Service persisted in claims that Erhards est-related companies owed millions of dollars in back taxes. A bitter divorce battle between Erhard and his second wife further helped to fuel speculation that ests approach to personal transformation was both cruel and hollow. Finally, in early 1991, Erhard left the United States, preferring the solitude of self-imposed exile to the glare of harsh publicity. Based on scores of interviews and an exhaustive examination of court records, testimony, and crucial documents, Outrageous Betrayal provides the first comprehensive account of Werner Erhards meteoric rise and crashing fall.