Ep 1275 ｜ Cult Survivor： Child 'Maiden' Escapes & Is Set Free by Jesus ｜ Lindsay Tornambe
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 7 minutes
Words per Minute
165.11035
Summary
Lindsay Tornambe was raised in an abusive cult. It wasn t until she was 23 that her eyes were opened and she left that cult. After 13 dark and tumultuous years, she finally heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and he saved her.
Transcript
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Lindsay Tornambe was raised in an abusive cult.
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It wasn't until she was 23 that her eyes were opened and she left that cult.
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But then, 13 years after she left, after 13 dark and very tumultuous years,
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she finally heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and he saved her.
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Her testimony is heart-wrenching, but it is also such a beautiful and powerful reminder
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Our episode today is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Lindsay, thanks so much for matching me on my podcast today.
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Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?
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I work from home, which has been such a blessing being a single mom.
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I have such a testimony of faith and survival that I'm now sharing with the world,
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And a lot of people have no idea what that really entails.
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Before we get into that part of your testimony, though, I want to know how you were brought
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My parents were involved in something called The Way International, which was started by
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a man, Dr. Victor Paul Rarewill, I believe in the 1950s in New Knoxville, Ohio.
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And there were some major differences that they believed.
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So God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit were all three separate beings, which is really
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And so we believed also in speaking in tongues, interpretation and prophecy.
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So I grew up having a genuine love for the Lord, reading the King James Bible, praying
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at such an early age, my mom would tell me stories of even in preschool, kids were afraid
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to walk into school, and I would grab their hand and ask to pray with them and lead them
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And so, yeah, I would say grew up pretty normal from what I thought, you know, still seeing
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family members and celebrating Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays.
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But yeah, learning about Jesus and God at home, not going to a traditional church.
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Because this is kind of reminding me a little bit of Jehovah's Witness, but of course, Jehovah's
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Witness, they don't celebrate things like Christmas.
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I'm not sure if Jehovah's Witness speak in tongues.
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So it seems like a convergence of a lot of different Christian beliefs, but also polytheistic
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I, yeah, just thought that he was a man, you know, God was his father, but he himself was
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But did you believe that he died on the cross for your sons?
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I believe that he died on the cross and that, you know, Romans 10, 9, and 10, once I can
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believe that he was my Lord and Savior, confessed it with my mouth, that I was saved and would
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We had, or we started getting homeschooled when I was in the fourth grade.
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My parents met this man, Victor Bernard, when I was nine years old.
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The founder had died in 1985 and things kind of broke up, but we still had, you know, church
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And he came to visit, it was November of 1996, and he carried this, you know, when you meet
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someone and they, like, carry this authority and you can just tell that they are someone
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And I was nine, so I didn't really see any red flags or anything.
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My sisters and I put on a dance, you know, for everyone in the living room.
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And, but I do remember after he left, my parents made it very clear that we were going back to
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scripture, that they had gotten involved in something called Amway.
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And so, you know, our house was filled with pictures of cars they wanted and the dream homes.
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You had gotten involved in Amway before, before Victor.
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He told us that God had audibly spoken to him and had told him to go shepherd his flock
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and define people who had once belonged to The Way International and bring them to his ministry.
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He said that God had ordained him and that he was an apostle and called of God to now be our shepherd.
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Had he been a part of The Way International previously?
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He did at one point get assigned to Dr. Werewolf's wife to kind of, you know, walk with her to
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And it was after, I believe it was after Dr. Werewolf had passed away that he was assigned
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This Victor guy was assigned to his wife after her husband died, who started it to try to,
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I don't know, kind of be her guardian, be her helper and things like that.
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So he felt tasked by God as an apostle to go shepherd the flock of The Way International.
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And he came to your parents' house to say, you know, this is not over.
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You might have felt like this was breaking up because the doctor had died, but we're getting
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And y'all are going to, you know, come back into the fold.
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And your parents, after his visitation, they had a renewed vigor that, okay, we have to get
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My mom, my dream at that time when I was nine years old was to be an Olympian and I was
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And my mom pulled me aside and told me that when Jesus Christ comes back, he's not going
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to care how many gold medals I won and that none of that mattered in this life, which in
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So, you know, like I, now I want my life to completely glorify the Lord.
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It was in light of what Victor just kind of shared with them, the urgency of Jesus Christ
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And her point to me was that none of this stuff mattered.
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And so we're just going to live our lives for Christ.
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Um, we started really only hanging out with people who had been involved in the way ministry.
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So my parents reconnected with some friends, former friends who had been involved in the
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And so we started having fellowship in the home.
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Together, um, started visiting their house a lot more.
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Um, they started making plans for us to visit Minnesota, which is where Victor was from and
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Um, and what was the significance of Minnesota?
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I know you said that he lived there, but why were people visiting there?
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Um, basically to hear him preach, um, they had a compound there, uh, it was called the
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shepherd's camp where they had a bunch of staff housing, a big chapel, the dining hall,
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And so my family, my parents really wanted to be around Victor to learn more about God's
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Um, I think they definitely saw him as a shepherd, as somebody who was ordained of God.
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And so they really wanted, I think they were seeking someone to follow.
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And do you remember the first time you went to Minnesota to visit him?
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They brought me and my sister right after me and another friend from the fellowship.
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I remember my dad joking that if you blinked, you would miss it.
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Um, the camp, it was down this long dirt road and you turned in pine trees everywhere, very,
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very secluded, but also it was beautiful, absolutely beautiful.
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Um, there were so many families that lived there and lots of kids.
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I had a blast pretty much the whole time I was there because I was just playing with
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Um, there were a few things that scared me though.
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Um, we would have meals that would last for a really long time and people who disagreed
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I saw him spit in people's faces and throw chairs, um, at people.
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He just definitely gave me the impression that I never wanted to make him mad.
00:10:49.420
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We did, this was pre-cell phones and iPads, so me and a couple of the kids would write
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Um, my parents did listen to a lot of the tapes that Victor had given them of teachings
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And he had given them a bunch of books he had written to read.
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So September of 1998, Victor flew to Pennsylvania, which is where my family lived, and pretty
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much gave them an ultimatum that we either needed to move to the camp and join his ministry
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And, um, I wasn't in the meeting, but I know from just seeing my parents afterwards, it
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They decided to sell the house and pretty much get rid of everything besides what some
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Um, and I don't even really remember my parents making it a big deal of us moving.
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You know, like, I don't remember it being a big deal with my grandparents or aunts and
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And looking back, I almost feel like it was on purpose because if I had known that I would
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really never see them again, I don't know that I would have wanted to go because we were
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very close with my mom and dad's side of the family.
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Um, and I found out later after I finally left in my 20s that my mother had actually written
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a letter to her parents and siblings saying that if anyone tried to stop us, she would
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So she definitely knew, I think, what she was getting herself into.
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Um, so you moved there 1998 and what did it look like actually living there?
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Um, it was four kind of mini apartments, you know, with like a mini fridge, a tuna burner
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So because we were a family of seven, they split us up.
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Um, and there were 80 people living at the camp.
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Um, there were 80 people living at the camp at that time.
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Um, for a while, Victor had, he kind of made the rules and everyone had to follow.
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So if he wanted to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner all together, that's what happened.
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If he only wanted to have dinner all together, that's what happened.
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Um, but many long meals, lots of teachings and sharing, um, for me as an 11 year old,
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you know, animal care, being homeschooled, skating on the lake, sledding.
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I don't even remember if my dad, I know at that time, I don't think he did work.
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Um, later on, he did work at a cabinet shop that was run from one of the locations by the
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So is the food and all of this stuff being paid for by like tithing or donations or how
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I've always wondered where the money came from.
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Um, I know people did tithe, um, 10% was what they gave.
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Um, but other than that, I'm, I'm actually not really sure where all the money came from
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So for the most part, this kind of felt like a normal childhood, at least at first, but
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you said that you noticed that Victor was very angry, that he would shun people, he would
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Um, you told a story about an elder shook your five-year-old sister so much that she ended
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Um, it's tough, you know, it's hard because your parents are there and they trust these
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And as a kid, I was seeing all these things and getting scared, but my parents, you know,
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I've, I felt like I trusted them at that time to do what was best for us.
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And they were okay with letting this stuff happen.
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And, you know, my parents, they did use corporal punishment on us growing up, not to that extent,
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but it wasn't not normal to get, you know, hit with a rod or, um, you know, smacked around.
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So, I think, yeah, it definitely made me scared, but I just thought this was life now.
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And just to close the loop on this, you mentioned Amway earlier, that your family had been in
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I think it just, it, for me, I guess it kind of showed that we, my parents were really into
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the word when I was younger and then they kind of drifted away to more worldly things.
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And then when Victor came, they kind of went back to the word.
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And kind of pulled y'all out of everything that was seemingly worldly, materialistic,
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And really went back to kind of like what they considered a fundamentalist peer view of the way.
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Did you see, as you were getting older, into your preteen and teen years, things that started
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When I was 12, at this point, my family or the church had acquired another property about
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Victor was really honing in on all the women at the camp, really portraying himself as our
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shepherd, using the Song of Solomon as a reference to kind of relate to him and the church.
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September of 1998, before my family moved to the shepherd's camp, Victor had taken off
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He took off his wedding ring and said that just as Jesus Christ is married to the church
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and the bride of Christ, he was now married to the church, which I think is important
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to know because of especially how we viewed God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit being
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It was almost like him saying he is Christ in the flesh, you know, being married to the
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There was about three other properties that the believers lived on at this point.
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I think there was about 150 people involved in this cult.
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And so, they were all spread across these three properties.
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So, he would take his RV and travel to the three different properties where some young
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women are, including me, and I was only 12 at the time.
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He would do things we called grazing the sheep, where we would go out.
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He would take his shepherd's staff and blankets and lay down in the grass with us and even the
00:20:05.560
married women and share stuff from the Bible or just things that he was thinking about in
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And he didn't do this with the men or young men.
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He was very strategic on targeting the women and the young girls.
00:20:23.520
You know, roses being placed where he would go to meetings.
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Roses being placed, like someone would have to go before him and put roses there before
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It was something that Dr. Werewolf did or had done for him in the Way Ministry.
00:20:45.160
Did you ever think, as a 12-year-old, this whole grazing the grass thing is weird?
00:20:55.260
Um, he at one point shared with me and my sister that before he came and found us in
00:21:02.560
1996, he was sitting in that exact same pasture, crying out to God and praying to find survivors
00:21:11.440
And he told my sister and I that we were the joy of his tears and how we were the fruit
00:21:20.720
So, he, you know, as a young kid, and this is the person that God had put in our life,
00:21:27.700
I feared him, but I also felt I am special, you know?
00:21:35.260
Was she going on these ventures out into the pasture?
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And you never got any indication from your parents at this time that this is kind of
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That was the first summer that my parents agreed to have us, me and my sisters, sleep
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So, 11 or 12 at this in 1999, that this is happening.
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And Victor approached your parents and said, hey, I need them to sleep in the RV with me.
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It was actually one of the older young ladies who was serving where we lived at Three Taverns.
00:23:47.440
I think she was maybe 19 at the time, and she had asked my parents if it was okay.
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And they said yes, which, as a mother now, like, I just, I don't know.
00:24:03.020
I still cannot understand why my parents said yes to that.
00:24:12.920
But that was the first time he ever wrote us a note, and it just said, I love you, and
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Or, but yeah, that just, I never really understood.
00:24:23.920
It seemed like he was wanting love from us, but I did, definitely did not have it back for
00:24:31.540
I respected him and feared him, but it wasn't that I was, like, actively seeking to be right.
00:24:51.040
Later that summer, he had a bunch of girls my age who had, you know, I'd known them since
00:25:00.420
And they were all at the location where I lived.
00:25:05.840
And that same girl who asked my parents if me and my sisters could sleep in the camper,
00:25:11.760
she asked all of us who wanted to sleep next to him.
00:25:27.640
And she told me it was because I didn't raise my hand.
00:25:29.720
And I remember just laying there as stiff as a board, not wanting to move, afraid to breathe
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And you know when you can feel that people are jealous of you and they're, that's what
00:25:49.080
I, but nothing, again, he did not touch me that night.
00:25:54.220
Um, nothing happened until it was, I think, January of 2000.
00:25:59.360
So I, I think had just turned 12 at this point.
00:26:03.060
And his camper, again, was at three taverns where our family lived.
00:26:08.500
And somebody had asked me, I think it was maybe to go bring him the mail or, you know,
00:26:14.600
And I walked into his camper and he was standing in the back in the bathroom completely naked.
00:26:21.980
And again, I'm 12, you know, not developed, looking like a little kid and, um, walked,
00:26:33.000
And, um, I just stood there, you know, very unsure of what to do, very nervous.
00:26:38.920
And he grabbed my hand and had me put it on his penis.
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Um, and I, I don't even know if I was breathing at that point, you know,
00:26:50.160
I just felt very alone and, um, he had me lay in the bed next to him.
00:26:55.680
And I, I remember him telling me that I could do more if I wanted, but I didn't.
00:27:00.680
And I think he got the hint that I was not going to do anything else.
00:27:05.660
And so he told me not to tell anyone that nobody would understand, um, that this was just between
00:27:13.540
him and me and God and, you know, that I was special and, and I didn't, I remember
00:27:22.520
And, you know, my mom never had these kinds of talks with us.
00:27:25.860
She never talked about inappropriate touching or inappropriate behavior.
00:27:30.360
Um, and from my, what I saw from my parents and from the rest of the adults, everyone loved
00:27:38.620
Um, but I was just so closed off and nervous and I just like shoved it in the back of my brain.
00:27:49.260
Um, no, um, that summer of 2000, Victor gave a teaching, um, to the church about how in
00:27:59.480
the Old Testament, the firstborn children were to be sacrificed to God.
00:28:08.340
Um, and basically said that we could give our lives to Christ and dedicate a life of service
00:28:14.240
to the church, um, and how much honor it would bring on our family.
00:28:19.440
Um, I, you know, I, I saw all my friends deciding to do this, all the girls that I had been growing
00:28:27.880
And I didn't, not at the time know that it was a lifetime commitment.
00:28:32.620
And, you know, I have it in my memoirs that I wrote while I was there in 2008, that it
00:28:37.720
became a, almost a running joke in the maintenance.
00:28:39.860
Oh, Lindsay didn't know what she was getting herself into.
00:28:42.440
So, um, and I told my parents, so I want to go, I want to go serve in the summer.
00:28:47.700
And in my mind, I thought I'll be back to being homeschooled in the fall.
00:28:52.180
You know, I'm only 13 and they were very serious.
00:28:58.380
And my dad was crying and I was like, yes, absolutely.
00:29:05.740
And so he just said, sacrifice your firstborn, here's your life of service.
00:29:11.340
Did y'all, did he say what the life of service would be?
00:29:14.760
Basically just serving at the camp and, um, you know, dedicating our life to just, um,
00:29:21.480
just helping out, you know, serving, whether it was getting ready for meetings.
00:29:25.820
He didn't really give a laid out plan of all that it looked like.
00:29:32.740
So even if there was a firstborn boy, he was not someone that was chosen for a lifetime
00:29:41.180
Did anyone say, well, hang on, I have a firstborn son.
00:29:50.160
Maybe secretly, but they didn't protest publicly because obviously Victor had already kind of
00:29:54.860
created that environment where you don't question him or you're going to be shunned.
00:30:05.560
Uh, that became what the 10 of us were called maidens.
00:30:09.020
Um, so my parents, yeah, July 23rd, 2000 dropped me off at the shepherd's camp.
00:30:15.680
And ironically, the 10 of us lived in that fourplex, which was what, you know, my family
00:30:23.000
Um, and things in the beginning were kind of okay.
00:30:27.820
Um, we were assigned two by two, you know, kitchen duty, gardening, cleaning.
00:30:34.600
Um, two people were assigned to help Victor, which was basically everything that a wife
00:30:41.140
would do, maybe even more stuff than a wife would do.
00:30:43.580
Waking him up in the morning, making his breakfast, picking out his clothes, helping him out of the
00:30:54.300
So he didn't actually need physical help getting out of the shower.
00:30:59.760
But it would be like handing him his towel, putting lotion on his legs, things like that.
00:31:12.360
And so he didn't select you for the more intimate things.
00:31:25.220
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There was a feast that Victor would have us celebrate every, I think, early September from
00:32:09.180
the Old Testament, the Feast of Tabernacles, um, which kind of referenced, you know, bringing
00:32:14.280
in the harvest and thanking God for all that he had done for us that year.
00:32:17.840
Um, and so I was under the impression that I would serve there and live at the camp until
00:32:23.660
that, and then I would go home and be homeschooled.
00:32:30.180
Um, and I was talking to, we'll call her Jan, if anyone listened to my story on the turning,
00:32:41.500
And we were gardening in front of the chapel and she was asking how things were going.
00:32:49.440
I'm really excited though, to get home, to see my family.
00:32:55.060
And she looked at me and she goes, Lindsay, you're not going home.
00:32:59.900
And I just kind of looked at her and I was like, what do you mean?
00:33:07.940
And I said, well, what about homeschool and my winter clothes?
00:33:12.280
And she's like, well, your mom will send it over and we'll take care of schooling here,
00:33:20.420
Um, and it was shortly after that, that, um, I was raped by Victor for the first time.
00:33:37.220
We called it the lodge one night and he was sitting, you know, just how we are.
00:33:43.080
There was a fire going in the fireplace and it was small talk at first.
00:33:47.740
And then he looked at me and said, have you ever masturbated before?
00:33:51.320
And I, honest to God, didn't even know what that word meant.
00:33:54.840
You know, again, my mother had never talked to me about these things.
00:33:58.320
Um, and I, you know, pretty sheltered being homeschooled and we didn't really have TV, uh,
00:34:06.980
Um, and I don't know why he thought I was lying and he kept asking me again and again.
00:34:12.840
And I kept saying, no, I didn't know even what he meant.
00:34:16.340
And he slapped me across the face and yelled at me to get out of the lodge.
00:34:20.540
And I had been sweating so much that it felt like the couch was leather.
00:34:25.800
It felt like ripping band-aids off of my legs when I got off of the couch.
00:34:29.820
And I ran down the dark road back to the fourplex, just sobbing and cried, you know,
00:34:41.220
And I kept thinking at that point, God, why is this happening?
00:34:48.380
Um, it was about 45 minutes later, one of the maidens came and said that Victor was on
00:34:53.460
the phone for me and he asked me to come back to the lodge.
00:34:56.840
And when I got back in there, his whole demeanor had changed.
00:35:02.560
He was very nice, didn't bring up anything that had happened.
00:35:06.780
He started off by telling me that, um, Jesus Christ had Mary Magdalene and the Apostle Paul
00:35:15.360
had Phoebe and probably other women as he traveled throughout Asia.
00:35:19.440
And he is a man of God because of his calling, um, and my calling dedicating to
00:35:26.820
my life to God, that it was spiritual and natural for him to have sex with me.
00:35:31.840
And that even though he would be having sex with me, I could remain a virgin spiritually.
00:35:43.900
I feel like I was just a deer in headlights, unsure of what to do.
00:35:48.600
Um, he led me back to his bedroom and I remember he put a towel on the bed cause he told me that
00:35:55.120
sometimes the first time you have sex, the woman can bleed, which made me even more scared.
00:36:01.320
And, um, it was almost like a out of body experience in a way.
00:36:06.440
He had a, um, deck on the back of the bedroom with glass doors.
00:36:12.300
And it was like, I was looking and seeing what was happening to me.
00:36:19.780
And he got really mad at one point that I wasn't being passionate enough.
00:36:32.420
I mean, he just sent me back to the fourplex after that.
00:36:35.400
And I remember just again, asking like, why God, why is this happening?
00:36:45.840
And, um, yeah, that was the first of many, many times of being raped by him.
00:37:03.320
And so was there at any point, obviously you were so scared and so hurt the first time,
00:37:11.680
but was there at any point before you left that you were like, yes, I love him.
00:37:16.820
And, you know, I believe that this is right and good.
00:37:35.760
Um, one thing that Victor would tell us is that the more we dedicated ourselves to him
00:37:42.380
in this life and to God, the better place in heaven we would have.
00:37:46.660
Um, and so I think the thought of not being in heaven with the maidens and with Victor
00:37:53.700
Um, and so, but it took five, six years for me to really get fully dedicated to him.
00:38:01.860
And finally, to the point where I was like, okay, I will die for him if necessary.
00:38:06.020
You know, I mean, he would tell us a story all the time of Silas, um, in jail.
00:38:11.780
And, you know, if that ever got to the point where he was in jail, would we stay in our faith
00:38:21.380
And, um, yeah, it was, it took a while, but I did finally get to that point.
00:38:37.800
Um, he had these, it almost looked like a tampon.
00:38:42.980
Um, and I don't even know what it is cause I've never researched it since, but it was
00:38:48.060
like a jelly that the woman would insert to herself to kill the sperm.
00:38:55.560
He wasn't necessarily trying to breed as many babies as possible.
00:38:59.320
He just, it was just about his pleasure manipulating y'all.
00:39:04.320
Um, okay, let's fast forward a little bit to, okay, at some point you think that you're
00:39:08.720
in love with him, I guess when you're about 18, 19 years old, um, in these last few years
00:39:15.560
that you're in the cold before you leave at 23, like, what does that look like?
00:39:20.960
And then what did those final days and hours look like?
00:39:24.920
Um, we had sold the shepherd's camp at that point.
00:39:27.660
So the maidens were living at a different location.
00:39:33.780
Um, we were just doing a lot of, a lot of things.
00:39:44.560
I'm trying to like, think of, um, it was kind of, it was a quiet time for the maidens.
00:39:52.040
You know, our life had been so public at the shepherd's camp.
00:39:54.580
And so moving to this other location kind of gave us time to grow.
00:40:02.820
Um, yeah, so it was, it was almost like a slowing down, really getting to, I guess, know one
00:40:11.840
another even more, not much jealousy, more of a working together.
00:40:16.280
Um, in 2008, one of the maidens, she was originally from Brazil.
00:40:32.760
And so he would send one of us down to live with her every six months and we would switch
00:40:38.540
Um, it also kind of during this time, it came out that he had been sleeping with some of
00:40:47.100
Um, one of the married women he had slept with went to the police and shared with them what
00:40:52.560
was going on, wrote a bunch of stuff about the maidens.
00:40:55.860
And in Minnesota, it's illegal as a pastor to be sleeping with the people you were pastoring.
00:41:02.420
And so he shared this all with us, but in a way that would make you feel bad for him,
00:41:08.240
you know, like David and Bathsheba and the temptation was too big.
00:41:11.180
And just as God forgave David, he would forgive Victor and we needed to find it in our hearts
00:41:18.660
Um, but he kind of went on the run at that point.
00:41:22.560
Um, sometimes we didn't even know where he was.
00:41:26.980
Um, so, and at that point, again, I, I did wrestle with the fact that he had slept with
00:41:37.060
I felt that that was wrong, but I didn't at that time even know that what he had done
00:41:46.740
Um, and so Victor sent me down to Brazil, September of 2009 to March of 2010, which was my first
00:41:56.400
time traveling alone, really getting away from the camp.
00:42:00.200
And I remember I sat in one of those seats on the plane and they had the TV screens there,
00:42:14.300
I thought everything was tracked, you know, the pilot's going to tell Victor, there's
00:42:18.600
going to be a bill somewhere, you know, I just thought everything I did, they would
00:42:23.720
Um, but I did, I watched a movie, just one though.
00:42:28.840
It was this British teenage rom-com called, um, Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging.
00:42:36.440
I, yeah, like, didn't even know what I was picking, but I remember watching and thinking,
00:42:42.200
oh my gosh, I wish I had a life like this, you know?
00:42:44.460
And I'd remembered being 10, 11, having crushes on some of the boys there.
00:42:51.360
I watched the movie and I was like, okay, that's enough.
00:42:57.320
Um, but living in Brazil, it was my first time almost remembering that there was a world
00:43:07.480
I didn't even see images of 9 and 11 until 2010.
00:43:17.720
Um, so yeah, and I remember kind of feeling distant and more distant from Victor and he did
00:43:28.720
He came down March of 2010 with his wife and one of the other maidens.
00:43:37.680
In fact, she lived in the house next door to where the lodge was at the camp.
00:43:47.880
In March of 2010 and overlapped my visit for 15 days and I purposely positioned myself to
00:43:54.880
where he would not be able to have sex with me.
00:43:56.880
I just felt very, um, distant from him and did not want that from him.
00:44:02.840
So then they sent me, um, at that point, most people had relocated to Washington state.
00:44:08.420
Um, and so I went back out to Washington state, the maidens again, we're living in one house
00:44:17.560
So we were going door to door, just giving our flyers and asking to clean people's homes.
00:44:22.880
And I remember going in and seeing tons of like family pictures on the walls.
00:44:27.460
And at one point the Titanic soundtrack was playing and I was like, oh my gosh, I remember
00:44:33.800
And yeah, that was like 1997 and you were like, oh, yeah, I had a life before this,
00:44:41.520
which you had probably almost kind of forgotten about.
00:44:49.240
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Okay, so contact with the outside world is when things kind of started crumbling inside you.
00:45:36.960
So it was June of 2010 and I'm sitting on the couch with one of the, she was like the head
00:45:44.700
And I just looked at her and I said, I don't want to be a maiden anymore.
00:45:48.040
And I don't agree with Victor sleeping with the married woman and I want to leave.
00:45:55.340
And she immediately called her mother, who was Jan, and she came over and, you know, they
00:46:03.020
said all this stuff, you must not love God anymore and you're going to forget your first
00:46:12.880
Then they got Victor on the line and still to this day, I'm like, how did I stay strong?
00:46:19.040
Because there, I mean, there's been a few other times that I had tried to leave as a
00:46:23.420
teenager that I had told Victor I wanted to leave and it just did not go my way.
00:46:30.720
Called me Judas Iscariot, you know, just like said all these terrible things.
00:46:34.680
Um, so, but I told them, I was like, nope, I am leaving.
00:46:40.200
And they called my family who had, um, in 2009, I believe moved back to Pennsylvania because
00:46:49.560
A lot of things had kind of broken up in Minnesota.
00:46:52.380
Um, and they said, yeah, I can move in with them.
00:46:57.760
They gave me $500 and bought me a train ticket.
00:47:01.520
And I took Amtrak all the way from Washington state to 30th street station in Philadelphia.
00:47:09.820
But they were still, were your parents still in the way?
00:47:15.120
But I guess they weren't worried about going against Victor.
00:47:23.160
They still were sending money to him and had pictures of him up in the house.
00:47:27.320
My mom was very much involved with everything out going on in Washington on the phone with
00:47:33.700
I think my dad had kind of started slipping away from the ministry.
00:47:40.460
So I moved and, oh my gosh, I like, didn't even know what the internet was.
00:47:45.600
I, I remember somebody telling me what a cell phone was and how you could text on it.
00:47:52.300
Like, how is that faster than calling someone, you know, things were just so foreign.
00:47:58.220
I remember one of the first things I looked up was the Backstreet Boys because they were
00:48:05.320
I was like, oh my gosh, like, is he married now?
00:48:14.100
So when you moved back home to Pennsylvania, did you leave?
00:48:17.540
Or like, did, what it, like, what was your faith like at that point?
00:48:23.140
Um, I would say, I would say I still believed in God at that point.
00:48:29.080
Um, but I was not wanting to remain faithful to Victor and the maidens.
00:48:34.340
Um, I had gotten a few letters, a couple phone calls, and I would write back here and there,
00:48:41.460
Um, I really gave myself over to, or at that point I thought the only way to make a man
00:48:57.080
I didn't, at that point I didn't know what Victor had done still to me.
00:49:01.620
I would just tell people, oh, I was really sheltered because they would say, what have
00:49:18.180
Um, I joined three ultimate Frisbee leagues at one time.
00:49:22.520
I was just, anytime somebody said, Hey, do you want to do this?
00:49:29.840
Um, and I, oh, I made a lot of terrible choices though.
00:49:36.360
You know, I, I don't think I thought much about God.
00:49:40.840
I, I knew I believed in him, but I did not pray to him really.
00:49:47.780
Um, I just was really interested in exploring and living life and making friends and, and
00:49:56.320
getting away from my parents, you know, because they were still supporting Victor.
00:50:11.380
Um, so up until 13 years later, when you were 36, you were just basically living a secular
00:50:21.160
And you had a job, you had boyfriends, you had friends, but you were lost.
00:50:32.980
Um, oh gosh, would she, it's like cliche to say, but I know God gave her to me just at
00:50:39.740
I was really at a low place thinking of ending my life.
00:50:44.760
You know, I just kept thinking over and over again, if God is a God of love that I read
00:50:49.340
and believed for so long, why would he let this happen to me?
00:50:52.140
You know, if heaven is so great, why don't I kill myself now and, and not live in this
00:51:02.300
Um, and my daughter, Francesca, five or six years old, started asking questions.
00:51:11.740
Um, I remember driving down the highway in New Jersey and she said, mom, if a mommy has
00:51:17.340
a baby and that baby dies and goes to heaven and God sends that mommy a new baby, is that
00:51:23.680
like God giving her a new baby for her to care for?
00:51:30.060
You know, I, I did know that I didn't want to put my trauma on her.
00:51:33.680
You know, I had enough sense to, to think, okay, if she wants to go to church, I will
00:51:42.400
Um, but it wasn't until we moved to Texas, um, in 2022 that we met some friends in our
00:51:49.820
apartment complex and they just had this light about them.
00:51:54.040
You know, when you meet people and you're like, I want to be friends with them.
00:51:56.760
They just have exude this love and they were Christians.
00:52:01.160
They did not pressure me to go to church though, which I really respected because a lot of people
00:52:06.660
They almost made me feel guilty for feeling the way I was feeling.
00:52:10.840
Um, and I shared my story with the wife one night after we had gotten close and, um, it
00:52:17.280
was a couple months after that we were sitting after dinner and I looked at her and I said,
00:52:21.060
this is going to sound crazy, but thank you for never inviting me to Bible study.
00:52:26.340
And she started crying and she said, Lindsay, when I heard your story, I went home and just
00:52:32.320
wept tears for you because the God I know is not the one who was preached to you.
00:52:38.060
And I think my heart, like God was just drawing me in.
00:52:44.960
They asked if I wanted to stay for devotions that night and I said, yes.
00:52:49.100
And they picked a hymn that they didn't know I knew, but I had grown up singing it since
00:53:01.660
Um, but the husband used to be a pastor and I told them later that night, I said, I would
00:53:08.060
love for somebody to sit down with me and I can go through things that Victor had taught
00:53:12.520
and then I want to open the Bible and I want to see what God actually says.
00:53:15.900
And immediately they said, we'd love to do that with you.
00:53:18.560
And I went home that night and opened the Bible.
00:53:23.800
And I sat on my couch and opened it and just cried.
00:53:29.640
Cause you know, like I did know him when I was little and I read through my journals now,
00:53:36.000
And it's always, thank you God for keeping me safe.
00:53:39.020
Like, thank you for providing bread for us today.
00:53:41.800
I didn't know where we were going to get any, you know, thank you for giving a shampoo and
00:53:47.540
And, um, it's just knowing and believing that he was there the whole time.
00:53:53.580
You know, even after I rejected him for 13 years that he was there carrying me, um, just so
00:54:01.160
overwhelming, you know, it's like that, um, he leaves the 99 to find one.
00:54:06.580
He was just all those years drawing me and drawing me in.
00:54:14.040
Um, and we started going to church and I remember the first few times I went, I, you know, we
00:54:19.440
were singing hymns that I had grown up singing and just crying through them because it was
00:54:25.040
just such an overwhelming sense of, thank you, Lord.
00:54:30.200
And I had tried before this, all of the self-help stuff, you know, the self-love, the crystals,
00:54:38.920
the, I bought a book on witchcraft, you know, like all the things that I always came up feeling
00:54:47.880
Um, and it wasn't until going back to church and reading the Bible and knowing and believing
00:54:54.880
truly in, in Christ and in God that I just felt so full again.
00:55:00.440
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What was it like learning that Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit are all one and that
00:56:03.460
Like I imagine some of those things you're like, what are you talking about?
00:56:07.520
It actually, when they explained it to me and we read it in the Bible, I was like, that
00:56:13.960
You know, it was like things just aligned for me because I grew up believing that they
00:56:19.660
were three separate beings, but not really explained why, you know.
00:56:25.160
But, and it almost, it took the, believing before that Jesus Christ was just a man, it was so clear
00:56:35.240
it being explained that he is God, how Victor twisted it to make, almost make it into himself
00:56:48.860
Me and one of the, the youngest maidens, Jess and I, we went to the police.
00:56:58.180
Okay, so this is 10 years before you became a Christian.
00:57:00.540
Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, we went to the police and it was two years of just telling our story
00:57:10.520
January of 2014, we got an email from Tom Lydon at Fox News.
00:57:15.220
He asked if we'd like his help and we said yes because the statute of limitations was going
00:57:19.880
So the media got involved and things kind of blew up.
00:57:22.640
Um, I was on Dr. Phil and John Walsh and from John Walsh's airing, Victor came on the
00:57:33.200
And they ended up finding him in Brazil and extraditing him back and we had the hearing
00:57:37.860
in 2016 and he was sentenced to 30 years in jail.
00:57:44.220
And your parents, what are, what are they doing now?
00:57:57.640
My mother supported Victor throughout the whole trial.
00:58:00.220
Her and two of my sisters wrote letters to the judge on behalf of him saying terrible things
00:58:09.780
Um, but, um, I did talk to both of them in 2022.
00:58:16.560
My mom and dad on a conference call and, oh man, I told, this was blatantly honest.
00:58:28.160
I have scars on my wrists from cutting, you know, from trying to deal with the pain.
00:58:34.620
And I said, but as, as a mother now, I want you guys to know that I'm doing really well
00:58:40.580
and I wish you both well in your life and, um, we'll never have a relationship.
00:58:46.040
You will never know my daughter, but I, I wish you guys the best and I want you to be
00:58:51.000
And I wasn't able to forgive them at that point.
00:58:53.820
Um, but I was a few months ago, I'm still in therapy, um, have a wonderful Christian counselor
00:59:00.980
and, um, we talked about forgiveness and in a way it's taking them off my hook and putting
00:59:09.800
And I, I felt this for a long time, this sense that I needed to be the one to get justice.
00:59:15.500
You know, I needed to hold people accountable, but really, truly believing that God has got
00:59:23.540
You know, we all have to face him in that day and I'm able to forgive my parents and
00:59:31.740
And it was honestly such a burden lifted, which I never thought it would be.
00:59:36.900
I was like, I don't need to forgive them, you know, like I'm doing fine, but being able
00:59:41.060
to truly forgive them and knowing, like just putting it in God's hand was so freeing.
00:59:52.400
Um, I have contact here and there with one of them.
00:59:57.700
I mean, my youngest, the youngest, my brother, he was five when I left home.
01:00:05.960
Um, and the others, I think they're doing well.
01:00:10.760
It's been tough for me because they supported my parents.
01:00:14.700
Um, and so it was hard for me to, you know, trust them, but I, I love them and.
01:00:23.480
Well, I fully pray and believe that God is going to use you to bring them to Christ and
01:00:30.300
that y'all will have that reconciliation and relationship one day.
01:00:35.820
Can you give a message to people who have been hurt by people in the church who claim
01:00:45.820
They could have been a Baptist church, but someone who claimed that they were doing this
01:00:50.560
on behalf of God and they were abused or they were betrayed in some way.
01:00:53.480
And they're feeling like, I could never, I could never believe in God.
01:00:57.800
I can never be a Christian because of what happened to me.
01:01:01.520
I would say what I've had to do is not put my faith in man.
01:01:08.900
I've had to put my faith in the Lord because it wasn't God who hurt me.
01:01:19.460
But that has really helped me be able to step back into a church and kind of have discernment
01:01:27.240
on where I'm placing my trust and my faith is that it is ultimately in God.
01:01:33.680
Not that we can't have people in our lives that we trust and we hopefully get sound advice
01:01:40.320
But yeah, I would say putting your trust and faith in the Lord, knowing he is good, he
01:01:48.060
is perfect, not in man, because we ultimately will be let down.
01:01:53.180
You know, I'm sure I'm going to continue to get hurt throughout my life, but I have the
01:02:12.300
I had a session with my therapist a couple months ago talking about I'd had a panic attack
01:02:20.440
in Kroger because I saw somebody that resembled Victor.
01:02:26.000
And I just really had to focus on grounding myself.
01:02:28.840
My daughter was with me and I didn't want to, you know, scare her.
01:02:33.960
I said, what if Victor does repent and I see him in heaven, you know, like, and it,
01:02:39.760
yeah, it's something that I'm still working through.
01:02:42.840
I think one thing that's helped is knowing hell, anyone who goes to hell, like how awful
01:02:50.780
And that scares me, you know, like thinking of people there.
01:02:54.200
I used to wish my mom was there and gosh, I hope to God she repented, you know.
01:02:58.860
I think truly believing we are all made in the image of God, you know, even Victor, even
01:03:07.220
somebody who hurt me so badly, he is made in the image of God.
01:03:11.500
So I do pray for his salvation, you know, but I think truly forgiving him in my heart, it's
01:03:24.140
Well, I love what you said about, it's really about putting someone off of your hook and
01:03:30.480
Like, because when I think about that, I don't want to think about forgiving someone like
01:03:37.480
Like if that happened to me or if that happened to my kids, like I'm not really interested in
01:03:42.580
that, but I am interested in God's justice, you know, and of course, yes, God's grace
01:03:52.240
But I love the idea of you trusting God's justice, that that is the release.
01:04:02.180
It's not being like, gosh, I just hope he's doing great.
01:04:05.660
Actually, like we're thankful that he is being punished.
01:04:09.620
That's why governments were instituted to do exactly that.
01:04:13.660
But like releasing that, it seems like that's kind of how you've defined forgiveness.
01:04:25.420
And I'm so thankful that God has given you the courage to share your story because you
01:04:30.360
don't have to be crying on this couch and reliving this pain.
01:04:33.820
But it's amazing what God does, that he is the God of redemption and he brings beauty
01:04:41.460
out of ashes and Satan would have loved to silence you and to keep you ashamed and scared.
01:04:48.380
Just say, okay, you have your nice little story, but just keep it over there so people don't
01:04:54.720
But God has really given you boldness and I'm just very grateful for that.
01:05:00.340
I keep thinking, you know, I may not know until that day the fullness of why it all happened,
01:05:06.280
but if I didn't use it now to bring glory to God to hopefully save, for him to save one
01:05:15.120
So I am just praying that people hear this and they hear.
01:05:31.240
Um, I, oh, this is, I don't even, I don't know.
01:05:45.360
And share this testimony, share this story so that more people, uh,
01:05:52.960
And also it's just good warning signs too, because the story that you told him like,
01:05:57.600
yeah, that red flag, I've talked to a lot of people who have left cults and I'm like,
01:06:01.560
it's the same story, like not the same story, but the same thing that the cult leader does
01:06:10.020
Um, what I think is interesting is that clearly from a young age, God put something in you that
01:06:17.520
Even though sometimes you convince yourself it was, it was like, he was working a long
01:06:21.620
time ago, sowing those seeds of doubt against the entire, you know, cultish mechanism there.
01:06:29.020
And, you know, you tried to resist that for a long time, but he had already kind of captured
01:06:39.900
Thank you so much for sharing your story, Lindsay, and we will be praying for you and
01:06:44.280
just praying that God uses, continues to use your life and your story for his glory.