MATTHEW PHELAN FROM DAILYMAIL
A French sports-car journalist promised ‘out of this world’ ecstasy and enlightenment to anyone (particularly women) who followed the teachings that he claimed to have learned via his alien abduction.
Now Claude Vorilhon — who adopted the name ‘Raël’ as his UFO ministry began in the 1970s — is under scrutiny again in a four-part docuseries premiering on Netflix.
In addition to accusations that Raël coerced women into signing ‘a contract’ making them ‘sexually exclusive’ to him, and wild accounts of nude ‘sensual meditation,’ the doc delves into the Raëlians dubious claim to have mastered human cloning.
As debates over ethics of human cloning reached to a fever pitch during the George W. Bush presidency, Raël was even dragged before Congress to testify.
But the journey of this oft-described ‘UFO cult’ to those tense public hearings on Capitol Hill spanned decades of controversy and sensational TV appearances.
In the early 1980s, the Raëlians bought a campsite in the South of France, which they used for mass nude worship ceremonies to ‘welcome the Elohim’ — the Biblically themed race of ancient aliens whom Claude or ‘Raël’ claimed his wisdom from.
