Who Are Abductees?
The UFO Contact Center International, established in Washington State by certified hypnotist Aileen Bringle in 1978, initially served two functions: as think tank and research center, and as a haven for traumatized abductees. The importance of support groups to survivors of trauma is obvious, and even more obvious when the trauma inspires disbelief in strangers, friends, and even family members.
Although movies and television give us some familiar alien abductee “types”—usually toothless yokels or unusually attractive women—real-life people with accounts of abductions diverge not at all from the American mainstream. Results from the first wave of the ambitious Baylor Religion Survey, released in 2006 and conducted with help from the Gallup organization, show that people associated with the UFO Contact Center and with other abductee support groups across America were more educated and more apt to pursue white-collar occupations than the general U.S. population. The average abductee respondent’s age was forty-four; the average age of all Americans was forty-six. Abductee marital status—55 percent married—paralleled that of the general population (53 percent).
A survey conducted by American sociologist Brenda Denzler in 2001 indicated that although males comprise 56 percent of the UFO community, females account for 58 percent of abductees.