Ep 1275 ｜ Cult Survivor： Child 'Maiden' Escapes & Set Free by Jesus ｜ Lindsay Tornambe
Episode Stats
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. But then, 13 years after she left, after 13 dark and tumultuous years, she finally heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and he saved her.
Transcript
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Trust and safety is becoming a key driver of customer experience,
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influencing how users engage, how safe they feel,
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but if I've had too many bad experiences on a platform,
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This is the intersection we're here to explore today.
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Tap to keep listening to how trust and safety redefined CX
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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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she finally heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and he saved her.
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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,
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I was brought up, my parents were involved in something called The Way International,
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which was started by a man, Dr. Victor Paul Werewolf, I believe in the 1950s in New Knoxville,
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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,
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which is really important to remember as my story continues.
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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,
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My mom would tell me stories of even in preschool, kids were afraid to walk into school,
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and I would grab their hand and ask to pray with them and lead them in.
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And so, yeah, I would say grew up pretty normal from what I thought, you know,
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still seeing 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.
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But of course, Jehovah's 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,
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I, yeah, just thought that he was a man, you know.
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God was his father, but he himself was not God.
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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,
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once I can believe that he was my Lord and Savior,
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I confess it with my mouth that I was saved and would be going to heaven.
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We had, or we started getting homeschooled when I was in the fourth grade.
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Um, my parents met this man, Victor Bernard, when I was nine years old.
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Uh, the founder had died in 1985 and things kind of broke up.
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Um, but we still had, you know, church in our home.
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And he carried this, you know, when you meet someone and they, like, carry this authority
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and you can just tell that they are someone who wants to be respected.
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And I, I was nine, so I didn't really see any red flags or anything.
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Um, my sisters and I put on a dance, you know, for everyone in the life.
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And, um, but I do remember after he left, my parents made it very clear that we were
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going back to 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, um, God had audibly spoken to him and had told him to go shepherd his
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flock and define people who had once belonged to the way international and bring them to
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He said that God had ordained him and that he was an apostle and called of God to now be
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Had he been a part of the way international previously?
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Werewolf's wife to kind of, you know, walk with her to meetings.
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Werewolf had passed away, um, that he was assigned to her.
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But this Victor guy was assigned to his wife after her husband died, who started it to
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try to, 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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Um, 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, uh, doctor, the, the doctor had
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died, but we're getting back at it and y'all are going to, you know, come back into the
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fold and your parents, after his visitation, they had a renewed vigor that, okay, we have
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Um, my mom, my dream at that time when I was nine years old was to be an Olympian and
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I was in gymnastics and my mom pulled me aside and told me that, um, when Jesus Christ comes
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back, he's not going to care how many gold medals I won.
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Um, and that none of that mattered in this life, which in a sense is true.
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So, you know, like I, now I want my life to completely glorify the Lord.
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Um, it was in light of what Victor just kind of shared with them, the urgency of Jesus Christ
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And, um, 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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Church in the home 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
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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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Uh, it was called the shepherd's camp where they had a bunch of staff housing, a big chapel,
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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.
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Very, very secluded, but also 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 kids
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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 with
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Victor, 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.
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So me and a couple of the kids would write letters to each other back and forth.
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My parents did listen to a lot of the tapes that Victor had given them of teachings he
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had previously recorded, 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 much
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gave them an ultimatum that we either needed to move to the camp and join his ministry there,
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And I wasn't in the meeting, but I know from just seeing my parents afterwards, it was very
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So they decided to sell the house and pretty much get rid of everything besides what some
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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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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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And what did it look like actually living there?
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It was four kind of mini apartments, you know, with like a mini fridge, a tuna burner stove,
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So because we were a family of seven, they split us up.
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There were 80 people living at the camp at that time.
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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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But many long meals, lots of teachings and sharing.
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For me as an 11-year-old, 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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Later on, he did work at a cabinet shop that was run from one of the locations by the church.
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So is the food and all of this stuff being paid for by, like, tithing or donations, or how does that work?
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I've always wondered where the money came from.
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But other than that, I'm actually not really sure where all the money came from for everything.
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So for the most part, this kind of felt like a normal childhood, at least at first.
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But you said that you noticed that Victor was very angry, that he would shun people, he would throw things, yell at people.
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You told a story about an elder shook your five-year-old sister so much that she ended up, like, wetting herself out of fear.
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It's tough—you know, it's hard because your parents are there and they trust these people, you know?
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And as a kid, I was seeing all these things and getting scared, but my parents, you know, 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, but it wasn't not normal to get, you know, hit with a rod or, 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 Amway.
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I think it just—for me, I guess it kind of showed that we—my parents were really into the word when I was younger.
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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 you all out of everything that was seemingly worldly, materialistic, earthly success.
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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 to disturb you?
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So, yeah, when I was 12, at this point, my family or the church had acquired another property about five miles from the camp.
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Victor was really honing in on all the women at the camp, really portraying himself as our shepherd, using the Song of Solomon as a reference to kind of relate to him and the church.
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So, September of 1998, before my family moved to the shepherd's camp, Victor had taken off his wedding ring.
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He took off his wedding ring and said that just as Jesus Christ is married to the church and the bride of Christ, he was now married to the church.
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Which I think is important to know because of especially how we viewed God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit being all separate.
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It was almost like him saying he is Christ in the flesh, you know, being married to the church.
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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 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 married women and share stuff from the Bible or just things that he was thinking about in the church.
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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.
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You know, roses being placed where he would go to meetings.
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Like, someone would have to go before him and put roses there before he-
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It was something that Dr. Werewolf did or had done for him in the Way Ministry.
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Did you ever think, as a 12-year-old, this whole grazing the grass thing is weird?
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He, at one point, shared with me and my sister that before he came and found us in 1996, he was sitting in that exact same pasture, crying out to God and praying to find survivors of the Way International.
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And he told my sister and I that we were the joy of his tears and how we were the fruit of what God had told him to do.
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So, he, you know, as a young kid, and this is the person that God had put in our life, I feared him, but I also felt I am special, you know?
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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 creepy?
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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, like, older young ladies who was serving at where we lived at
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I think she was maybe 19 at the time, and she had asked my parents if it was okay, and they
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said yes, which, as a mother now, like, I just, I don't know.
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I still cannot understand why my parents said yes to that.
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We slept out in the kitchen area, but that was the first time he ever wrote us a note,
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and it just said, I love you, and he slid it under the door.
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But yeah, that just, I never really understood.
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It seemed like he was wanting love from us, but I definitely did not have it back for him
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I respected him and feared him, but it wasn't that I was, like, actively seeking to be, right.
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Later that summer, he had a bunch of girls my age who had, you know, I'd known them since
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I was 10 when we first visited, and they were all at the location where I lived.
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He had set up a tent, and that same girl who asked my parents if me and my sisters could
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sleep in the camper, she asked all of us who wanted to sleep next to him, and everyone raised
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I couldn't believe why the rest were, and she picked me to sleep next to him, and she
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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 that's what I was feeling
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from the other girls, like they wanted to be me, and I just didn't understand it, you
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But nothing, again, he did not touch me that night.
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Nothing happened until it was, I think, January of 2000, so I think had just turned 12 at this
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point, and his camper, again, was at three taverns where our family lived, and somebody had asked
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me, I think it was maybe to go bring him the mail or, you know, give him a message, and I
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walked into his camper, and he was standing in the back in the bathroom completely naked.
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And again, I'm 12, you know, not developed, looking like a little kid, and walked, he told
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me to come towards him, and I just stood there, you know, very unsure of what to do, very nervous,
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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?
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I just felt very alone, and, um, he had me lay in the bed next to him, and I remember him
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telling me that I could do more if I wanted, but I didn't, and I didn't say anything, and
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I think he got the hint that I was not going to do anything else, yeah.
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And he told me not to tell anyone, that nobody would understand, um, that this was just between
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him and me and God, and, you know, that I was special, and, and I didn't.
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I didn't tell my parents, no, and, you know, my mom never had these kinds of talks with
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She never talked about inappropriate touching or inappropriate behavior, um, and from my,
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what I saw from my parents and from the rest of the adults, everyone loved him and adored
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Victor, um, but I was just so closed off and nervous, and I just, like, shoved it in the
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Um, that summer of 2000, Victor gave a teaching, um, to the church about how in the Old Testament,
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the firstborn children were to be sacrificed to God, and he read off a list of names.
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Mine was on there, um, and basically said that we could give our lives to Christ and dedicate
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a life of service to the church, um, and how much honor it would bring on our family.
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Um, I, you know, I, I saw all my friends deciding to do this, all the girls that I had been growing
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up with, and I did not at the time know that it was a lifetime commitment, and, you know,
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I have it in my memoirs that I wrote while I was there in 2008 that it became a, almost
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Oh, Lindsay didn't know what she was getting herself into, um, and I told my parents, so
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I want to go serve in the summer, and in my mind, I thought I'll be back to being homeschooled
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in the fall, you know, I'm only 13, and they were very serious, and they're like, are you
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And my dad was crying, and I was like, yes, absolutely, it'll be fun, and.
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And so he just said, sacrifice your firstborn, here's your life of service.
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Basically, just serving at the camp and, um, you know, dedicating our life to just, um,
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just helping out, you know, serving, whether it was getting ready for meetings.
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He didn't really give a laid out plan of all that it looked like.
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Okay, so even if there was a firstborn boy, he was not.
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Someone that was chosen for a lifetime of service.
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Did anyone say, well, hang on, I have a firstborn son, why is it just, why is just my daughter?
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Maybe secretly, but they didn't protest publicly, because obviously Victor had already kind of
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created that environment where you don't question him.
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That became what the 10 of us were called, maidens.
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Um, so my parents, yeah, July 23rd, 2000, dropped me off at the shepherd's camp.
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And ironically, the 10 of us lived in that fourplex, which was what, you know, my family
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Um, and things in the beginning were kind of okay.
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Um, we were assigned two by two, you know, kitchen duty, gardening, cleaning.
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Um, two people were assigned to help Victor, which was basically everything that a wife
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would do, maybe even more stuff than a wife would do, waking him up in the morning, making
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his breakfast, picking out his clothes, helping him out of the shower, organizing his day.
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Okay, so he didn't actually need physical help getting out of the shower.
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But it would be like handing him his towel, putting lotion on his legs, things like that.
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So he didn't select you for the more intimate things.
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There was a feast that Victor would have us celebrate every, I think early September from
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the Old Testament, the Feast of Tabernacles, um, which kind of referenced, you know, bringing
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in the harvest and thanking God for all that he had done for us that year.
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Um, and so I was under the impression that I would serve there and live at the camp until
00:32:06.420
If anyone listened to my story on the turning, um, she was referenced as Jan and we were gardening
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in front of the chapel and she was asking how things are going.
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And I'm really excited though, to get home, to see my family.
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And she looked at me and she goes, Lindsay, you're not going home.
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And I just kind of looked at her and I was like, what do you mean?
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And she said, no, this is a lifetime commitment.
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And I said, well, what about homeschool and my winter clothes?
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And she's like, well, your mom will send it over and we'll take care of schooling here,
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Um, and it was shortly after that, that, um, I was raped by Victor for the first time.
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We called it the lodge one night and he was sitting, you know, just how we are.
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There was a fire going in the fireplace and it was small talk.
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And then he looked at me and said, have you ever masturbated before?
00:33:21.760
And I, honest to God, didn't even know what that word meant.
00:33:25.280
You know, again, my mother had never talked to me about these things.
00:33:29.480
Um, and I, you know, pretty sheltered being homeschooled.
00:33:32.900
And we didn't really have TV, uh, besides movies.
00:33:37.400
Um, and I don't know why he thought I was lying and he kept asking me again and again.
00:33:43.280
And I kept saying, no, I didn't know even what he meant.
00:33:46.240
And he slapped me across the face and yelled at me to get out of the lodge.
00:33:50.960
And I had been sweating so much that it felt like the couch was leather.
00:33:56.240
It felt like ripping band-aids off of my legs when I got off of the couch.
00:34:00.260
And I ran down the dark road back to the fourplex, just sobbing and cried, you know, went to my room and cried into my pillow.
00:34:11.640
And I kept thinking at that point, God, why is this happening?
00:34:18.420
Um, it was about 45 minutes later, one of the maidens came and said that Victor was on the phone for me and he asked me to come back to the lodge.
00:34:28.640
And when I got back in there, his whole demeanor had changed.
00:34:32.980
He was very nice, didn't bring up anything that had happened.
00:34:36.860
And he started off by telling me that, um, Jesus Christ had Mary Magdalene and the Apostle Paul had Phoebe and probably other women as he traveled throughout Asia.
00:34:49.920
And he is a man of God because of his calling, um, and my calling, dedicating my life to God, that it was spiritual and natural for him to have sex with me.
00:35:02.040
And that even though he would be having sex with me, I could remain a virgin spiritually.
00:35:14.320
I feel like I was just a deer in headlights, unsure of what to do.
00:35:19.740
Um, he led me back to his bedroom and I remember he put a towel on the bed because he told me that sometimes the first time you have sex, the woman can bleed, which made me even more scared.
00:35:31.540
And, um, it was almost like a out of body experience in a way.
00:35:36.880
He had a, um, deck on the back of the bedroom with glass doors.
00:35:42.720
And it was like, I was looking and seeing what was happening to me.
00:35:50.280
And he got really mad at one point that I wasn't being passionate enough.
00:36:02.880
I mean, he just sent me back to the fourplex after that.
00:36:05.900
And I remember just again, asking like, why God, why is this happening?
00:36:16.260
And, um, yeah, that was the first of many, many times of being raped by him.
00:36:34.620
And so was there at any point, obviously you were so scared and so hurt the first time,
00:36:42.040
but was there at any point before you left that you were like, yes, I love him.
00:36:47.260
And, you know, I believe that this is right and good.
00:37:06.200
Um, one thing that Victor would tell us is that the more we dedicated ourselves to him
00:37:12.820
in this life and to God, the better place in heaven we would have.
00:37:17.100
Um, and so I think the thought of not being in heaven with the maidens and with Victor
00:37:24.620
Um, and so, but it took five, six years for me to really get fully dedicated to him.
00:37:32.120
And finally, to the point where I was like, okay, I will die for him if necessary.
00:37:36.440
You know, I mean, he would tell us a story all the time of Silas, um, in jail.
00:37:42.200
And, you know, if that ever got to the point where he was in jail, would we stay in our faith
00:37:51.700
Um, and, um, yeah, it was, it took a while, but I did finally get to that point.
00:38:08.240
Um, he had these, it almost looked like a tampon.
00:38:13.420
Um, and I don't even know what it is cause I've never researched it since, but it was like
00:38:18.640
a jelly that the woman would insert to herself to kill the sperm.
00:38:25.960
He wasn't necessarily trying to breed as many babies as possible.
00:38:29.420
He just, it was just about his pleasure manipulating y'all.
00:38:37.860
At some point you think that you're in love with him.
00:38:39.620
I guess when you're about 18, 19 years old, um, in these last few years that you're in the
00:38:47.120
cult before you leave at 23, like, what does that look like?
00:38:51.380
And then what did those final days and hours look like?
00:38:55.340
Um, we had sold the shepherd's camp at that point.
00:38:58.100
So the maidens were living at a different location.
00:39:04.200
Um, we were just doing a lot of, a lot of things.
00:39:15.000
I'm trying to like, think of, um, it was kind of, it was a quiet time for the maidens.
00:39:22.460
You know, our life had been so public at the shepherd's camp.
00:39:25.000
And so moving to this other location kind of gave us time to grow.
00:39:35.680
So it was, it was almost like a slowing down, really getting to, I guess, know one another
00:39:42.580
even more, not much jealousy, more of a working together.
00:39:46.700
Um, in 2008, one of the maidens, she was originally from Brazil.
00:40:03.180
And so he would send one of us down to live with her every six months and we would switch
00:40:08.980
Um, it also kind of during this time, it came out that he had been sleeping with some of
00:40:17.500
Um, one of the married women he had slept with went to the police and shared with them what
00:40:22.980
was going on, wrote a bunch of stuff about the maidens and in Minnesota, it's illegal
00:40:28.180
as a pastor to be sleeping with the people you were pastoring.
00:40:32.840
And so he shared this all with us, but in a way that would make you feel bad for him,
00:40:38.620
you know, like David and Bathsheba and the temptation was too big.
00:40:41.580
And just as God forgave David, he would forgive Victor and we needed to find it in our hearts
00:40:49.080
Um, but he kind of went on the run at that point.
00:40:52.980
Um, sometimes we didn't even know where he was.
00:40:57.420
Um, so, and at that point, again, I, I did wrestle with the fact that he had slept with
00:41:07.500
I felt that that was wrong, but I didn't at that time even know that what he had done
00:41:15.760
Um, and so Victor sent me down to Brazil, September of 2009 to March of 2010, which was my first
00:41:26.840
time traveling alone, really getting away from the camp.
00:41:30.640
And I remember I sat in one of those seats on the plane and they had the TV screens there,
00:41:44.780
I thought everything was tracked, you know, the pilot's going to tell Victor there's going
00:41:50.020
You know, I just thought everything I did, they would know.
00:41:53.480
Um, but I did, I watched a movie, just one though.
00:41:58.100
And I was like, it was this British teenage rom-com called, um, Angus thongs and perfect
00:42:06.860
I, yeah, like didn't even know what I was picking, but I remember watching and thinking, Oh my
00:42:14.880
And I'd remembered being 10, 11, having crushes on some of the boys there.
00:42:21.800
I watched the movie and I was like, okay, that's enough.
00:42:27.940
Um, but living in Brazil, it was my first time almost remembering that there was a world
00:42:37.900
I didn't even see images of nine 11 until 2010.
00:42:50.160
And I remember kind of feeling distant and more distant from Victor and he did overlap
00:42:59.140
He came down March of 2010 with his wife and one of the other maidens.
00:43:07.900
In fact, she lived in the house next door to where the lodge was at the camp.
00:43:18.340
In March of 2010 and overlapped my visit for 15 days and I purposely positioned myself to
00:43:25.300
where he would not be able to have sex with me.
00:43:27.320
I just felt very, um, distant from him and did not want that from him.
00:43:33.260
So then they sent me, um, at that point, most people had relocated to Washington state.
00:43:38.840
Um, and so I went back out to Washington state.
00:43:43.480
The maidens again were living in one house and they had started a cleaning company.
00:43:48.000
So we were going door to door, just giving our flyers and asking to clean people's homes.
00:43:53.320
And I remember going in and seeing tons of like family pictures on the walls.
00:43:57.900
And at one point the Titanic soundtrack was playing and I was like, oh my gosh, I remember
00:44:05.140
That was like 1997 and you were like, oh, yeah, I had a life before this, which you
00:44:14.900
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00:45:01.700
So contact with the outside world is when things kind of started crumbling inside you.
00:45:08.100
So it was June of 2010 and I'm sitting on the couch with one of the
00:45:13.160
She was like the head of the maidens and I just looked at her and I said, I don't want
00:45:17.540
to be a maiden anymore and I don't agree with Victor sleeping with the married woman and
00:45:24.820
And she immediately called her mother, who was Jan, and she came over and they said all
00:45:33.800
this stuff, you must not love God anymore and you're going to forget your first love,
00:45:42.300
And then they got Victor on the line and still to this day, I'm like, how did I stay strong?
00:45:49.480
Cause there, I mean, there's been a few other times that I had tried to leave as a teenager
00:45:54.220
that I had told Victor I wanted to leave and it just did not go my way.
00:46:01.140
Called me Judas Iscariot, you know, just like said all these terrible things.
00:46:05.100
Um, so, but I told them, I was like, nope, I am leaving.
00:46:10.620
And they called my family who had, um, in 2009, I believe moved back to Pennsylvania because
00:46:19.980
A lot of things had kind of broken up in Minnesota.
00:46:22.800
Um, and they said, yeah, I can move in with them.
00:46:28.120
They gave me $500 and bought me a train ticket and I took Amtrak all the way from Washington,
00:46:40.240
But they were still, were your parents still in the way?
00:46:45.560
But I guess they weren't worried about going against Victor.
00:46:53.580
They still were sending money to him and had pictures of him up in the house.
00:46:58.000
My mom was very much involved with everything out going on in Washington on the phone with
00:47:03.940
Um, I think my dad had kind of started slipping away from the ministry.
00:47:09.780
Um, yeah, so I moved and, oh my gosh, I like, didn't even know what the internet was.
00:47:16.020
I, I remember somebody telling me what a cell phone was and how you could text on it.
00:47:27.140
And, um, I remember one of the first things I looked up was the Backstreet Boys because
00:47:35.680
I was like, oh my gosh, like, is he married now?
00:47:43.620
Okay, so when you moved back home to Pennsylvania, did you leave?
00:47:48.540
Or like, did, what it, like, what was your faith like at that point?
00:47:52.980
Um, I would say, I would say I still believed in God at that point, um, but I was not wanting
00:48:04.860
Um, I had gotten a few letters, a couple phone calls, and I would write back here and there,
00:48:12.760
Um, I really gave myself over to, or at that point I thought the only way to make a man happy
00:48:20.820
was to sleep with him, and so I slept around a lot.
00:48:27.520
I didn't, at that point I didn't know what Victor had done still to me.
00:48:32.080
I would just tell people, oh, I was really sheltered, because they would say, what have
00:48:53.220
I was just, anytime somebody said, hey, do you want to do this?
00:49:00.640
Um, and I, oh, I made a lot of terrible choices, though.
00:49:06.760
You know, I, I don't think I thought much about God.
00:49:11.280
I, I knew I believed in him, but I did not pray to him, really.
00:49:18.200
Um, I just was really interested in exploring and living life and making friends and, and
00:49:26.740
getting away from my parents, you know, because they were still supporting Victor.
00:49:42.500
So, up until 13 years later, when you were 36, you were just basically living a secular life.
00:49:51.240
And you had a job, you had boyfriends, you had friends, but you were lost.
00:50:05.540
Would she, it's like cliche to say, but I know God gave her to me just at the right time.
00:50:10.160
I was really at a low place thinking of ending my life.
00:50:15.100
You know, I just kept thinking over and over again, if God is a God of love that I read
00:50:19.760
and believed for so long, why would he let this happen to me?
00:50:22.560
You know, if heaven is so great, why don't I kill myself now and, and not live in this
00:50:31.740
Um, and my daughter, Francesca, five or six years old, started asking questions.
00:50:42.200
Um, I remember driving down the highway in New Jersey and she said, Mom, if a mommy has
00:50:47.760
a baby and that baby dies and goes to heaven and God sends that mommy a new baby, is that
00:50:54.100
like God giving her a new baby for her to care for?
00:51:00.800
I, I did know that I didn't want to put my trauma on her.
00:51:04.180
You know, I had enough sense to, to think, okay, if she wants to go to church, I will
00:51:12.840
Um, but it wasn't until we moved to Texas, um, in 2022 that we met some friends in our
00:51:20.240
apartment complex and they just had this light about them.
00:51:24.480
You know, when you meet people and you're like, I want to be friends with them.
00:51:27.180
They just have exude this love and they were Christians.
00:51:31.820
They did not pressure me to go to church though, which I really respected because a lot of people
00:51:37.100
They almost made me feel guilty for feeling the way I was feeling.
00:51:41.040
Um, and I shared my story with the wife one night after we had gotten close.
00:51:46.300
And, um, it was a couple months after that we were sitting after dinner and I looked at
00:51:50.540
her and I said, this is going to sound crazy, but thank you for never inviting me to Bible
00:51:56.020
And she started crying and she said, Lindsay, when I heard your story, I went home and just
00:52:02.740
wept tears for you because the God I know is not the one who was preached to you.
00:52:08.440
And I think my heart, like God was just drawing me in.
00:52:15.380
They asked if I wanted to stay for devotions that night.
00:52:19.520
And they picked a hymn that they didn't know I knew, but I had grown up singing it since
00:52:32.060
Um, but the husband used to be a pastor and I told them later that night, I said, I would
00:52:38.500
love for somebody to sit down with me and I can go through things that Victor had taught.
00:52:42.940
And then I want to open the Bible and I want to see what God actually says.
00:52:46.640
And immediately they said, we'd love to do that with you.
00:52:48.740
And I went home that night and opened the Bible.
00:52:54.920
I sat on my couch and opened it and just cried.
00:53:00.060
Cause you know, like I did know him when I was little and I read through my journals now,
00:53:06.680
And it's always, thank you God for keeping me safe.
00:53:09.440
Like, thank you for providing bread for us today.
00:53:12.220
I didn't know where we were going to get any, you know, thank you for giving a shampoo and
00:53:17.340
And, um, it's just knowing and believing that he was there the whole time.
00:53:24.020
You know, even after I rejected him for 13 years that he was there carrying me, um, just
00:53:31.320
so overwhelming, you know, it's like that, um, he leaves the 99 to find one.
00:53:36.920
And he was just all those years drawing me and drawing me in and my heart was, was open
00:53:44.480
Um, and we started going to church and I remember the first few times I went, I, you know, we
00:53:49.880
were singing hymns that I had grown up singing and just crying through them because it was
00:53:55.480
just such an overwhelming sense of thank you, Lord.
00:54:00.780
And I had tried before this, all of the self-help stuff, you know, the self-love, the crystals,
00:54:09.340
the, I bought a book on witchcraft, you know, like all the things that I always came up feeling
00:54:18.940
Um, and it wasn't until going back to church and reading the Bible and knowing and believing
00:54:25.300
truly in, in Christ and in God that I just felt so full again.
00:54:30.880
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What was it like learning that Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit are all one and
00:55:30.660
that Jesus is God who died for you on the cross?
00:55:33.880
Like I imagine some of those things you're like, what are you talking about?
00:55:37.940
It actually, when they explained it to me and we read it in the Bible, I was like, that makes
00:55:42.840
so much sense, you know, it was like things just aligned for me because I grew up believing
00:55:49.600
that they were three separate beings, but not really explained why, you know, but, and
00:55:56.760
it almost, it took the, believing before that Jesus Christ was just a man, it was so clear
00:56:05.660
it being explained that he is God, how Victor twisted it to make, almost make it into himself
00:56:19.320
Me and one of the, the youngest maidens, Jess and I, we went to the police.
00:56:28.620
Okay, so this is 10 years before you became a Christian.
00:56:30.940
Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, we went to the police and it was two years of just telling our story
00:56:40.960
January of 2014, we got an email from Tom Lydon at Fox News.
00:56:45.620
He asked if we'd like his help and we said yes because the statute of limitations was going
00:56:50.320
So the media got involved and things kind of blew up.
00:56:53.060
Um, I was on Dr. Phil and John Walsh and from John Walsh's airing, Victor came on the
00:57:03.640
And they ended up finding him in Brazil and extraditing him back and we had the hearing
00:57:08.300
in 2016 and he was sentenced to 30 years in jail.
00:57:14.640
And your parents, what are, what are they doing now?
00:57:28.080
My mother supported Victor throughout the whole trial.
00:57:30.660
Her and two of my sisters wrote letters to the judge on behalf of him saying terrible things
00:57:40.220
Um, but, um, I did talk to both of them in 2022.
00:57:47.000
My mom and dad on a conference call and, oh man, I told, this was blatantly honest.
00:57:58.640
I have scars on my wrists from cutting, you know, from trying to deal with the pain.
00:58:05.140
And I said, but as, as a mother now, I want you guys to know that I'm doing really well
00:58:11.020
and I wish you both well in your life and, um, we'll never have a relationship.
00:58:16.480
You will never know my daughter, but I, I wish you guys the best and I want you to be
00:58:21.440
And I wasn't able to forgive them at that point.
00:58:24.240
Um, but I was a few months ago, I'm still in therapy, um, have a wonderful Christian counselor
00:58:31.400
and, um, we talked about forgiveness and in a way it's taking them off my hook and putting
00:58:40.280
And I, I felt this for a long time, this sense that I needed to be the one to get justice.
00:58:45.940
You know, I needed to hold people accountable, but really, truly believing that God has got
00:58:53.960
You know, we all have to face him in that day and I'm able to forgive my parents and
00:59:02.160
And it was honestly such a burden lifted, which I never thought it would be.
00:59:07.340
I was like, I don't need to forgive them, you know, like I'm doing fine, but being able
00:59:11.500
to truly forgive them and knowing, like just putting it in God's hand was so freeing.
00:59:22.820
Um, I have contact here and there with one of them.
00:59:28.220
I mean, my youngest, the youngest, my brother, he was five when I left home.
00:59:36.400
Um, and the others, I think they're doing well.
00:59:41.180
It's been tough for me because they supported my parents.
00:59:45.140
Um, and so it was hard for me to, you know, trust them, but I, I love them and, yeah, and
00:59:53.900
Well, I fully pray and believe that God is going to use you to bring them to Christ and
01:00:00.740
that y'all will have that reconciliation and relationship one day.
01:00:05.520
Can you give a message to people who have been hurt by people in the church who claim
01:00:16.240
They could have been a Baptist church, but someone who claimed that they were doing this
01:00:21.000
on behalf of God and they were abused or they were betrayed in some way.
01:00:23.920
And they're feeling like, I could never, I could never believe in God.
01:00:28.200
I can never be a Christian because of what happened to me.
01:00:31.940
I would say what I've had to do is not put my faith in man.
01:00:39.360
I've had to put my faith in the Lord because it wasn't God who hurt me.
01:00:49.880
But that has really helped me be able to step back into a church and kind of have discernment
01:00:57.680
on where I'm placing my trust and my faith is that it is ultimately in God.
01:01:04.100
Not that we can't have people in our lives that we trust and we hopefully get sound advice
01:01:10.740
But yeah, I would say putting your trust and faith in the Lord, knowing he is good, he
01:01:18.500
is perfect, not in man, because we ultimately will be let down.
01:01:23.620
You know, I'm sure I'm going to continue to get hurt throughout my life, but I have the
01:01:42.740
I had a session with my therapist a couple months ago talking about I'd had a panic attack
01:01:50.860
in Kroger because I saw somebody that resembled Victor.
01:01:56.700
And I just really had to focus on grounding myself.
01:01:59.280
My daughter was with me and I didn't want to, you know, scare her.
01:02:04.400
I said, what if Victor does repent and I see him in heaven?
01:02:08.020
You know, like, and it, yeah, it's something that I'm still working through.
01:02:13.280
I think one thing that's helped is knowing hell, anyone who goes to hell, like how awful
01:02:21.240
And that scares me, you know, like thinking of people there.
01:02:24.760
I used to wish my mom was there and gosh, I hope to God she repented, you know.
01:02:29.280
Um, I think truly believing we are all made in the image of God, you know, even Victor,
01:02:37.420
even somebody who hurt me so badly, he is made in the image of God.
01:02:46.500
Um, but I think truly forgiving him in my heart, it's something I'm still working through.
01:02:54.520
Well, I love what you said about, it's really about putting someone off of your hook and
01:03:00.920
Like, because when I think about that, I don't want to think about forgiving someone like
01:03:07.900
Like if that happened to me or if that happened to my kids, like I'm not really interested in
01:03:13.000
that, but I am interested in God's justice, you know?
01:03:17.360
And of course, yes, God's grace, if someone repents and if God chooses that, but I love
01:03:24.720
the idea of you trusting God's justice, that that is the release.
01:03:32.560
It's not being like, gosh, I just hope he's doing great.
01:03:36.060
Actually, like we're thankful that he is being punished.
01:03:40.280
That's why governments were instituted to do exactly that.
01:03:43.500
But like releasing that, it seems like that's kind of how you've defined forgiveness.
01:03:55.860
And I'm so thankful that God has given you the courage to share your story because you
01:04:00.780
don't have to be crying on this couch and reliving this pain.
01:04:04.920
But it's amazing what God does, that he is the God of redemption and he brings beauty
01:04:11.880
out of ashes and Satan would have loved to silence you and to keep you ashamed and scared.
01:04:18.800
Just say, okay, you have your nice little story, but just keep it over there so people
01:04:25.140
But God has really given you boldness and I'm just very grateful for that.
01:04:30.760
I keep thinking, you know, I may not know until that day the fullness of why it all happened,
01:04:36.600
but if I didn't use it now to bring glory to God, to hopefully save, for him to save one
01:04:42.540
person, what am I doing with my life, you know?
01:04:45.520
So I am just praying that people hear this and they hear.
01:05:01.440
Um, I, oh, this is, I don't even, I don't know.
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And share this testimony, share this story so that more people hear what God can do.
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And also it's just good warning signs too, because the story that you told, I'm like,
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yeah, that red flag, I've talked to a lot of people who have left cults and I'm like,
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it's the same story, like not the same story, but the same thing that the cult leader does
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Um, what I think is interesting is that clearly from a young age, God put something in you
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Even though sometimes you convince yourself it was, it was like, he was working a long
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time ago, sowing those seeds of doubt against the entire, you know, cultish mechanism there.
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And, you know, you tried to resist that for a long time, but he had already kind of captured
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Thank you so much for sharing your story, Lindsay, and we will be praying for you.
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And just praying that God uses, continues to use your life and your story for his glory.