A free, private, research-informed tool that helps a person reflect on their experience inside a religious or spiritual community — across a first service, a week, a month, a year, and beyond — and see how patterns associated with high-control group dynamics shift over time.
It is not a diagnosis and not a verdict on anyone's faith or any organization. It's a mirror, not a judge: it surfaces known risk indicators, reflects them back across time, and points people toward outside support and their own judgment.
Coercive control in a group rarely arrives all at once. It escalates — a little more of your time, a few more questions discouraged, a relationship outside the group quietly costing you. By the time the pattern is obvious, a person is often too far inside to see it clearly. A single snapshot hides that gradual climb; this tool is built to make it visible.
- Adapts its questions to how long the person has been involved, and to their vantage point (currently involved, leaving, or worried about someone else).
- Tracks six research-based dimensions across each stage of involvement.
- Charts how each dimension shifts over time and flags when one is quietly escalating.
- Returns an overall reflection, a per-dimension breakdown, a side-by-side comparison of any two stages, a printable summary, and links to real support resources (US and international).
- Includes plain-language disclaimers explaining how every score is calculated and its limits.
The questions are grounded in established frameworks rather than invented:
- Steven Hassan's BITE model — Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional control
- Robert Lifton's criteria for thought reform
- Janja Lalich's work on bounded choice
- The clinical literature on religious trauma (including Marlene Winell)
Privacy was the first requirement, not the last. Everything runs in the user's own browser. There is no account, no database, and nothing stored or transmitted — because the people who need this most may have real reasons to fear being watched. Closing or refreshing the page clears all answers.
This is a reflection and awareness aid, not a clinical instrument. The question wording and result tiers have not yet been formally reviewed by a licensed mental health professional. It should not be used as a substitute for therapy, medical advice, or a person's own judgment. If you are in distress, please reach out to a trusted person or one of the support resources listed in the tool's results.
Built with React and Vite. No backend — it compiles to static files that can be hosted anywhere.
You'll need Node.js (LTS version).
npm install
npm run dev
Then open the local address shown in the terminal.
npm run build
This produces a dist/ folder of static files. Drag that folder to a static host (such as Netlify or Cloudflare Pages) to put it online. A full step-by-step deployment guide for non-developers is included as HOW-TO-DEPLOY.md.
sentinel-tool/
├── index.html # Entry page
├── src/
│ ├── main.jsx # Mounts the app + privacy footer
│ └── ReligiousHarmReflectionTool.jsx # The tool itself
├── package.json # Dependencies and scripts
├── vite.config.js # Build configuration
├── HOW-TO-DEPLOY.md # Beginner deployment guide
└── README.md # This file
This is built to be given away. If it helps someone recognize a pattern they couldn't see, or gives a worried friend a way to think through what they're observing, it's done its job. Please use it with care for the people it's meant to serve.
Built by Ben Biddick / North Bridge Solutions.