High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Cult Awareness Network (CAN) was founded in the wake of the November 18, 1978 deaths of members of the group Peoples Temple and assassination of Congressman Leo J. Ryan in Jonestown, Guyana. CAN is now owned and operated by associates of the Church of Scientology, an organization that the original founders of CAN strongly opposed. Prior to its hostile takeover, CAN provided information on groups that it considered to be cults, as well as support and referrals to exit counselors and deprogrammers. From 1978 until 1996 when the Cult Awareness Network was bought out by associates of the Church of Scientology in United States bankruptcy court, CAN and its representatives were highly critical of Scientology, Landmark Education, and other groups and new religious movements that it considered to have potentially harmful tendencies. The Cult Awareness Network referred to some of these groups as "destructive cults." Cynthia Kisser, the then executive director of CAN, was quoted in the controversial 1991 TIME article, "The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power."