The Megyn Kelly Show - What Happens in Cults, and Escaping From Them： A Megyn Kelly Show True Crime Special

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00:00:14.400 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:17.500 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:27.220 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:28.880 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:30.800 For today's episode of Hot Crime Summer, we are diving deep into the world of cults with

00:00:37.140 two former cult members.

00:00:39.100 Later, we'll be joined by Dr. Stephen Hassan, one of America's leading cult experts.

00:00:44.840 And as a former cult member himself, he'll tell you how he got recruited.

00:00:48.140 He was a totally normal guy.

00:00:49.320 He was an adult.

00:00:50.160 He was like in his 20s when he got lured in.

00:00:52.780 He now helps individuals and families who have been trapped in cults.

00:00:56.480 But we begin with the story of Michelle Dowd.

00:01:00.200 Michelle was born into the ultra-religious cult called The Field, run by her maternal grandfather.

00:01:07.320 He convinced generations of followers that he would live 500 years and ascend to the heavens

00:01:12.940 when doomsday came.

00:01:14.820 Michelle spent 10 years of her childhood living on a mountain, suffering from all sorts of abuse

00:01:20.320 and severe poverty, there she was forced to learn skills necessary to survive.

00:01:26.460 Michelle eventually gained the strength to flee the cult at 17 years old and is now a professor and author

00:01:32.600 and totally candid about what life was like for her in that environment.

00:01:38.500 She tells her story in her new book, Forager, Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult.

00:01:44.060 I'm fascinated by your entire story.

00:01:47.920 If you don't mind, I'm sure you've told it a million times, but if you don't mind, let's start at the beginning.

00:01:52.800 So you were born into a cult.

00:01:57.380 So how did that happen?

00:01:59.300 Well, yes, indeed I was.

00:02:01.160 In fact, my mother was born into the same cult.

00:02:03.880 My grandfather was a young man from Oklahoma, was orphaned in his teenage years.

00:02:09.760 There's some debate on how old he was because he often exaggerated the truth or sometimes completely misled people.

00:02:18.620 But in any case, he came to L.A., Hollywood area sometime in his teenage years and began working as a Boy Scout leader.

00:02:25.100 When he was unable to have the control that he wanted as a Boy Scout leader, then he left.

00:02:31.720 He kind of segmented off and created his own organization, which by 1931 started to show up in newspapers.

00:02:37.440 So I was able to look back at that.

00:02:39.920 So for sure, they were an organization by then.

00:02:42.920 And he started taking boys up to the mountains.

00:02:45.640 Then he started a Bible band and he started giving young boys opportunities to, I don't know, just like to be part of a community if they didn't have a sense of belonging.

00:02:55.920 So in the 1940s, my father was, he came to California with his mother, who was a single mom, who was running away from an abusive husband.

00:03:05.520 And he she was hiding in California in a chicken coop, actually.

00:03:09.120 And my father joined my grandfather's cult when my mom was a young girl.

00:03:14.840 And so they were married off to each other later.

00:03:17.540 And I came along a couple of decades later, along with I was a second of four children.

00:03:23.000 So this cult had been around for a very long time before I was born into it.

00:03:27.420 And you were you where did you live?

00:03:29.600 It's hard for me to understand because I know when you were little, I know you lived sort of more.

00:03:33.620 And I don't know if we if we would say a city environment of I remember reading it was like nearby a town dump.

00:03:38.680 So you were with people and things and access to, you know, things that we all know in our towns for some time before you went to this just remote mountainous area.

00:03:50.300 Absolutely. My grandfather actually started the organization in Pasadena, which is just east of L.A.

00:03:55.680 We were living when I was a baby and into my early years until I was seven on the border of El Monte.

00:04:03.940 So there was a dump that we lived next to. And there was also a area that they kind of dug out at the end of a cul-de-sac where even before I was born in the 1950s, my grandfather leased land from a business owner.

00:04:19.660 So it was private land that he leased. And my father was one of the teenage boys who literally constructed the buildings there out of cinder blocks.

00:04:27.740 So I was raised on the border of that until I was seven.

00:04:33.080 So I went to public school when I was five, six and seven. And then after a fire and some other occurrences, we had nowhere to go.

00:04:40.640 And so my grandfather, who had leased a mountain property, I believe in 1947 from the government, then moved our nuclear family up onto the mountain.

00:04:50.300 And I stayed there until I finally left the cult, which you'll have to read the book to find out.

00:04:57.040 Yeah, no, no. Right, right. But that was about 10 years later?

00:05:00.620 Well, yeah, I stayed there for 10 years until I got out.

00:05:04.000 Mm hmm. It's crazy to me how you lived. You know, part of me, I speak only of the survival skills here, but part of me was envious of all the things you learned about how to take care of yourself.

00:05:17.800 And then there was the sexual abuse and other abuse and lack of love and all the other things which we'll talk about.

00:05:23.240 But can we just spend a minute on the survival skills and how you did survive up there and how your mother knew all of this to teach you?

00:05:30.960 I want to pay tribute to my mother who passed last year for teaching me how to not only survive in the wilderness, but how to appreciate the great intricacies and interdependencies of the ecosystem that is north of Los Angeles.

00:05:49.160 And that has served me in many ways throughout my life, not because I any longer need to survive in that way, but because I know that the earth can provide for us.

00:05:59.660 And it is also just a wonderful gift to be able to recognize different birds, different animals and many, many, many plants.

00:06:09.700 My mother's knowledge was self-taught. She was, I guess, obsessed would be the word.

00:06:18.340 She was obsessed with learning every single thing in our ecosystem.

00:06:21.440 So she was so skilled, in fact, and knowledgeable that government workers at the ranger station that was not too far away, we weren't allowed to go there, but my mother did when the men weren't around.

00:06:33.240 So let me just go back one second and say that it used to be an entirely male organization.

00:06:38.120 And my mother was born into this 100 percent male organization.

00:06:41.860 She had three older brothers. And so she was very used to figuring out how to get around whatever the rules were.

00:06:48.340 And her father actually did find her unique and intelligent.

00:06:52.860 And he gave her more leeway, I think, than anyone else had in the cult.

00:06:58.700 It's tough for a cult that has only men to survive.

00:07:01.900 So they eventually brought in women.

00:07:05.680 But yes, you're very astute at that.

00:07:07.840 But let me say that at the beginning, my grandfather just had followers that he demanded be celibate.

00:07:12.640 So in the 1930s, he had some young men who followed him, who stayed with him all the way until his death in the 1980s.

00:07:21.260 And so I know for a fact, because I knew these men, they I can't attest for sure that they're celibate, but they were alone.

00:07:28.200 And they stayed with him for a very long time.

00:07:30.800 And it wasn't until my mother got into her 20s that I think he recognized that he needed to allow women to be in the organization.

00:07:37.900 So she married one of his early followers.

00:07:41.040 And after she was the very first marriage at the fields.

00:07:44.740 And there were women who then married into the organization afterwards.

00:07:48.260 And there were lots of girls still male dominated.

00:07:51.500 But there were girls and women after my mother got married.

00:07:55.040 So how did you live?

00:07:58.200 Were you in a tent?

00:07:59.140 Like, describe your living circumstances to us.

00:08:02.400 Well, when we first came to the mountain, which was in the fall when I was almost eight, we lived in a mess hall.

00:08:09.360 So a mess hall is, you know, that's what it was called, kind of military quarters.

00:08:13.320 But it was one room and there was a big stone fireplace.

00:08:16.140 So we were not out in the cold.

00:08:18.580 We had an outhouse down the hill.

00:08:20.940 So I don't know how far away the outhouse was, less than a quarter of a mile.

00:08:24.240 And we would walk down to the outhouse and there was a sink.

00:08:27.900 So there was some running water and in the kitchen and the kitchen and the great room and all these army bunks.

00:08:34.260 It was all in one room.

00:08:35.220 And so we slept on army bunks.

00:08:37.800 And what were you eating?

00:08:39.300 Because I know food was always an issue.

00:08:42.520 Well, interestingly, and I have this a little bit in the book, we did forage for acorns and other lots of nuts.

00:08:50.820 We were not killing animals.

00:08:51.860 We were living off of plants, so plant-based diet.

00:08:54.620 But the government actually gave us surplus.

00:08:57.940 So there were times, not immediately, but I don't know exactly how long in, where they would come by and unload from a truck whatever was available.

00:09:06.520 So cans of peanuts or caro syrup, sometimes fruit cocktail.

00:09:10.740 And sometimes blocks of butter and sometimes cheese, depending on what the government had as surplus at the time.

00:09:20.320 So it's very interesting that we were living on government land, even though the government didn't know what we were doing there.

00:09:26.140 Yeah, and that must have felt like such a delicacy to get some fruit cocktail and some cheese after foraging for acorns.

00:09:35.120 Absolutely.

00:09:35.740 I don't even know if we were supposed to eat it, but we used to go into, there was kind of a dug-in walk-in.

00:09:40.760 And my sisters and I would sneak in there and get the food because we had a can opener.

00:09:45.180 So we would, yeah, it was an incredible delicacy.

00:09:47.940 And I'm very grateful to the government, actually, for that program, at least at that time.

00:09:52.260 So it was, we had an army jeep that my father also got from a government surplus.

00:09:56.960 So he had been drafted and he was very militaristic.

00:10:01.880 That was the training that he got that he believed helped him become a man.

00:10:05.800 And so he trained all his children, girls, and the one boy that he had to work in a military system, you know, which we were not military, but we were trained to behave as if we were.

00:10:16.600 Well, I was going to say that the deprivation was a feature, not a bug.

00:10:19.840 So can you expand on that?

00:10:21.200 Because it was a life of deprivation.

00:10:24.900 Thank you for noticing that.

00:10:26.640 You have very astute observations.

00:10:29.320 It was a feature.

00:10:30.240 It was intentional.

00:10:31.240 The deprivation was to help us, for one, leave the army of God in the time of the apocalypse.

00:10:37.880 So they believed that there would be a thousand years of a reign of terror on the earth and that we would have to live without.

00:10:45.380 And that as we were hiding in the rocks of the mountains, that if we could survive on very little, then we would be able to outwit the, I mean, honestly, it was, I think, a little psychotic.

00:10:58.300 Like, well, very psychotic, but both we received things from the government, but they also feared the government.

00:11:03.980 So they thought that whatever political leaders might be coming next would be our enemies.

00:11:09.140 And so we would need to survive without having access to the things that ordinary citizens had access to.

00:11:16.240 Beyond the food, a very strange approach to love, tenderness, affection, even by your parents toward their children.

00:11:26.640 Yes, you know, they would not have called it a cult.

00:11:32.600 They did not call it a cult.

00:11:33.820 They called it a community.

00:11:36.220 And my younger brother, who I call Danny in the book, he came to me after reading this book.

00:11:42.120 He hasn't read a book since he was a teenager and he got a copy in the mail and he read it the first night.

00:11:48.460 And then he drove to my house from Santa Barbara and he said, you know, the one thing you got wrong is it's not that they would sacrifice us, it's that they did sacrifice us.

00:11:59.240 And so he was able to have a conversation with our father and who is still alive.

00:12:03.560 And our father said, it's not a cult and he won't read the book or have anything to do with me.

00:12:08.000 But my brother stood up and he said, but dad, if grandpa had told you to put us all in the mess hall and set it on fire, you would have done it.

00:12:16.600 And he said, yes, I would have, but I didn't.

00:12:20.780 So it wasn't a cult.

00:12:22.480 So my father knows that he was absolutely at the mercy of whatever our grandfather, which was not his father.

00:12:29.860 Remember, it was his father-in-law who he didn't really call that.

00:12:32.560 He called him mister, but he really, truly believed that our grandfather would tell him he was the God's prophet and he would tell him how to behave in the world.

00:12:44.780 And my father resigned all forms of critical thinking.

00:12:47.940 He just gave up any sort of alliance to us, any sort of caretaking.

00:12:53.000 And my mother as well, they believed that God was in control and that God's word would be given to them through grandpa.

00:13:00.960 When you're, you spoke a little bit about this, but when your dad arrived into the relationship with your mom, like what was, what had been his background?

00:13:08.800 You mentioned military, but what had been his background that he was, I mean, I suppose we're going to get into this later, but like that made him susceptible to that.

00:13:18.300 Well, first, I think almost anybody is susceptible to the kind of mind control and these high control groups that really charismatic leaders know how to orchestrate.

00:13:28.600 But in my father's particular case, he was 12 years old when he met my grandfather.

00:13:34.320 My father came from the East Coast.

00:13:36.580 He came from Connecticut with his mother on a bus.

00:13:39.480 He didn't know where he was going because they were running away from an abusive man who my mother was married to.

00:13:44.380 Sorry, my grandmother was married to.

00:13:45.780 His father was abusive to him and to his mother.

00:13:49.660 And so they ran away and they came to California and they were living in a chicken shed when my father met my grandfather.

00:13:56.660 So my grandfather provided a father figure and also provided some someplace for my dad to go because his mother was working in a factory.

00:14:05.320 She was the only woman working in a post-World War II factory in the 1940s when they arrived here in California.

00:14:11.420 And I don't think she knew what her son was doing.

00:14:14.240 I think she was a wonderful, she did her best to be an attentive mother, but she just didn't have the time.

00:14:18.900 She had an eighth grade education.

00:14:20.160 That's the furthest she ever got in her life.

00:14:21.940 She lived to be in her 90s and I had the great blessing of being with her during her death.

00:14:27.800 But at the time, she just didn't have any resources.

00:14:30.820 And so her son went and joined this cult and she tried to get him out later when she realized it, when he was like 18 or 19.

00:14:36.880 But he wouldn't leave at that point.

00:14:38.440 It was too late.

00:14:39.580 So, yeah.

00:14:40.620 And this particular cult preyed on only children.

00:14:44.380 So they didn't, you couldn't be an adult who joined the cult.

00:14:46.940 They culled from, at the time, only boys, but they had an after-school program and lots of boys joined.

00:14:54.180 Not all the boys were hurt by the organization.

00:14:56.680 A lot of boys, I think, got training, sports training that was really useful in their lives.

00:15:01.100 But if a parent was capable of seeing that it was a high control group, a lot of times the kid was a play for two or three or four years on the sports teams.

00:15:10.280 And then the parents would say, that's enough now.

00:15:12.500 We're going to go to high school or, you know, whatever they were going to do.

00:15:15.000 And they were allowed to leave.

00:15:17.220 But it was the boys who were compelled and who worshipped my grandfather and who really found their greatest sense of belonging there,

00:15:24.440 who were taken through layer after layer of testing and basically training to be bullies.

00:15:30.740 And they would not be allowed to then, they signed a commitment for life forms.

00:15:36.240 They couldn't sign those until they were 18 years old.

00:15:38.540 But nobody could come there at 18.

00:15:40.380 They all had to be groomed during their early years in order to get to the point where they really would sign their lives over as adults.

00:15:47.860 How were they getting girls?

00:15:49.420 I mean, you were born into it, but how were they getting girls?

00:15:53.240 Well, the word I used was groomed.

00:15:55.540 But the women were also, they didn't get girls until my mom was of age.

00:16:00.140 So they would just be celibate.

00:16:01.780 They didn't get married.

00:16:02.500 But my father was the very first boy, they called him.

00:16:07.320 He was almost 30.

00:16:08.880 But he was the very first boy who was allowed to marry at the organization.

00:16:12.460 And so he married my mother, who's the founder's daughter.

00:16:16.060 And that was kind of a royal wedding.

00:16:17.980 They had it at the fields.

00:16:19.420 My grandfather officiated.

00:16:21.180 I've seen all the pictures.

00:16:22.520 And then I was the second child born out of that marriage.

00:16:26.360 But there were no, there weren't marriages before that.

00:16:28.820 And so once we were born, then there had to be something, they had to figure out what to do with the children.

00:16:33.980 And so they allowed marriages then.

00:16:35.660 And those women were the sisters of the other members.

00:16:39.060 And they were also then groomed to be wives and mothers.

00:16:43.140 And to be fair, some of those women had access to resources from their parents.

00:16:49.820 We didn't because my mother, you know, was born there.

00:16:52.820 And then my father didn't have any resources.

00:16:54.700 His mother, after he was 19, I believe, she moved to the East Coast and we didn't see her for decades.

00:17:00.660 But my understanding and my knowledge of the other families were there were families who were there that their parents sometimes, especially if there were children involved, would send the grandkids money for food and other things.

00:17:13.060 We just didn't have access to that.

00:17:14.440 And the other cult members who were raised there, I'll just give you an example, the first nine kids that were born there.

00:17:21.300 So even though I was the second in my family, I was the fourth oldest child who was born into this cult.

00:17:27.740 And of the first nine of us, which were all within two years of age, the other eight are all still there.

00:17:35.240 Just to put that in perspective.

00:17:36.940 How many people were in the cult when you were there?

00:17:39.260 So there were about 150 in the inner workings of the cult, but they were culling from about 1,500 boys at any given time.

00:17:48.900 So they would bring boys in and they wouldn't stay, you know, and they also would hide what they were doing from their parents.

00:17:55.460 And I don't think this is happening anymore, but at the time it had been happening for decades.

00:18:00.900 So this, of course, helps explain to some extent some of the sexual abuse.

00:18:08.280 I mean, just the sheer numbers of boys versus girls, and you were one of very few.

00:18:16.660 It's interesting how you write about it and how your mother talked to you about it.

00:18:20.060 I, again, there's like a tinge of affirming life advice in here, but it doesn't discount the overall trauma of the event.

00:18:32.040 Like you were sexually abused repeatedly from what you write in the book.

00:18:37.540 And tell us how, let's talk about that first, then we'll talk about your mother's messaging to you on it.

00:18:42.320 So I am aware that I was not the only one who was abused, but I also am aware that it was not something that happened to all the girls.

00:18:54.020 In our particular case, we were very vulnerable because our mother would go on these trips, which she'd be gone for two to three months, and she would go with the men.

00:19:05.320 So like all the men would go, but she would go with her husband.

00:19:07.480 So she was protected on these trips.

00:19:08.980 She was also with her father.

00:19:09.980 And we were often left with, I have since I, since I read the book, some of the caregivers that I had when I was a baby have come out of the woodworks who left the cult and have written me letters and asked to meet me.

00:19:24.220 I went to coffee with one recently.

00:19:25.640 She was only 15 when she left the cult, but she was my caregiver when she was, you know, 12, 13, 14, 15, until my mother's no longer allowed girls to take care of us.

00:19:39.320 But in any case, um, our particular family was very vulnerable because we just didn't have any other relatives other than the ones who were there and the boys, they called them boys.

00:19:49.900 I believe, I believe, I do not believe anyone under 18 ever assaulted me.

00:19:55.300 I believe that the, the youngest one that I know of who I did know very well was 19 at the time I was seven.

00:20:01.520 And I think that they were babysitting us and they had access to our bodies and I don't know that it was condoned, but I think that it was, it was overlooked.

00:20:15.520 And these, these young men really, honestly, I'm not, I'm not obviously condoning it, but I, they were very unhealthy and they did not have access.

00:20:24.560 They were not allowed to masturbate.

00:20:25.760 For example, my grandfather was adamant about that.

00:20:27.660 So like very strict and like vocal, um, requirements that they stay chased and then they just sort of like put them around young girls.

00:20:39.700 So again, it was a really unhealthy environment for them.

00:20:42.220 And I feel that, um, you know, they were, I, I do feel that they were victims too.

00:20:46.640 You know, it was a different kind of victimhood, but I think they were.

00:20:49.040 May I ask how often this happened to you?

00:20:54.480 Well, I, I went through this frequently for about a year when I was seven.

00:21:00.480 Um, I don't know that it happened, um, before that I don't have memories of really being younger than seven, but the thing about being seven was there was a big fire.

00:21:09.000 A lot of things happened.

00:21:10.200 And this type of abuse ended for me at that point, because we left up to go up to the mountain.

00:21:16.800 And when we first got to the mountain, it was just our nuclear family.

00:21:19.320 And my father was not sexually abusive.

00:21:21.500 So my father was very militaristic and, um, can be unkind, but he was not sexually abusive and neither was my grandfather to me at least.

00:21:30.360 So we were separated from that culture.

00:21:32.960 And then we had a lot of young men living with us and things were, um, I would say inappropriate, but I, I did not get physically violated.

00:21:45.040 I think it was just sort of an emotional thing after that.

00:21:48.060 And I'm very, very, very grateful for, um, spending the time we did on the mountain because it removed me from the really most damaging effects of the cult.

00:21:57.880 Can we talk about what your mom said?

00:22:01.140 Because the reason I said, there's like a tinge of something positive that you could take away.

00:22:06.320 If you, you know, God forbid you find yourself in this situation.

00:22:08.940 And it was, it was basically to try not to think too much about it.

00:22:16.780 And I know that sounds absurd.

00:22:18.580 That sounds absurd.

00:22:19.640 I realize, trust me, I know enough sexual abuse victims that it sounds absurd, but if you can do it,

00:22:25.320 it's a very useful coping technique for a lot of people.

00:22:29.480 And I know somebody, a Hollywood star who told me this story about when she was young and she was raped by a few boys in the neighborhood and sexually assaulted.

00:22:43.920 And she didn't really understand what it was fully.

00:22:48.300 You know, she didn't totally understand what had happened to her.

00:22:50.120 And her mother told her, you just forget about that.

00:22:55.540 Like that, don't, don't give that any mind.

00:22:57.460 You know, that's what boys do.

00:22:59.000 Some boys, whatever.

00:23:00.080 But like, that doesn't have anything to do with who you are.

00:23:02.480 That wasn't nice to them, but don't dwell on it.

00:23:04.760 And I was like, when I heard the story, I'm like, that's terrible.

00:23:07.560 My God, the amount of damage that must've been done.

00:23:09.960 And she was like, no, it actually really, it gave me this box to put it in.

00:23:15.160 I managed to put it in there and I was fine after that.

00:23:19.860 So that's when I was reading your story.

00:23:22.120 I'm sure a lot of people have the same reaction of like, oh my God, that's horrible.

00:23:26.200 But were you able to compartmentalize?

00:23:28.820 Cause your mother was very dismissive of this.

00:23:33.100 I definitely compartmentalized.

00:23:34.160 Compartmentalized.

00:23:35.200 And I think that there is value to that when you need to move on and survive.

00:23:42.420 And so there were, yes, I had compartmentalized, I had boxes for everything, including literally

00:23:48.400 a box where I kept my writing, which I was able to finally break the lock on literally

00:23:54.080 when I was getting ready to write this book.

00:23:56.400 And I had not read what I had written in, you know, 35 years or some ridiculously long

00:24:01.880 period like that.

00:24:02.680 Um, but when it comes to, and I, I'm not going to make a claim for what is healthy for

00:24:07.360 anyone else, but I will say for my healing process, the, the fact that my mother made

00:24:13.220 it seem as if I was not damaged, but that it was again, a by-product as you said, of sort

00:24:22.400 of what boys will be boys.

00:24:23.720 There is something that is useful about that because you don't blame yourself later.

00:24:30.340 I ended up blaming myself because I got very sick and, um, there was a lot of complications

00:24:35.100 about that.

00:24:35.660 But at the time it really helped me see myself as just kind of a, a vessel, which sounds horrible,

00:24:45.600 but like I was a vessel for God's will or whatever.

00:24:48.300 But I looked like I'm a vessel that the boys used and then, you know, they were done.

00:24:52.920 And so then I became myself again.

00:24:55.200 And even at seven, Michelle, I mean, seven is a baby.

00:25:00.260 Yes, yes, it is.

00:25:01.700 It is.

00:25:02.180 And, and I'm not saying there was no damage, you know, but at the time I was able to, um,

00:25:08.560 to function.

00:25:09.360 And it wasn't until later in life that it's not that I had memories.

00:25:13.480 I mean, I always have the memories, but I also felt that there was a lot of deprivation

00:25:19.420 and a lot of difficult things and I just put them all in boxes and I think that it came

00:25:25.020 to me later.

00:25:25.580 And, and this is a story I know I've written about that I couldn't sit still.

00:25:29.400 I had an inability as a young adult to sit still.

00:25:32.480 I had children very young.

00:25:33.500 I moved through life, uh, very quickly, um, the stages of adulthood.

00:25:36.960 And it wasn't until I first sat still that I had to deal with the ramifications of sexual

00:25:42.940 abuse.

00:25:43.800 Yes.

00:25:44.380 Okay.

00:25:44.580 So that's one of my questions.

00:25:45.940 If you're born into a society that doesn't attach, you know, the, the obvious negative

00:25:52.580 labels to that and help you understand how wrong it is morally in every other way, does

00:25:58.360 the damage still happen?

00:26:00.580 Do you carry it forward?

00:26:02.000 How does it manifest?

00:26:05.560 Well, you know, I, I did exist in a wider society to some degree.

00:26:11.800 And certainly by the time I was 17 and moving, for example, when I moved into a co-ed dorm

00:26:16.620 in college, then the, I was very afraid of men because I did not know.

00:26:22.520 I didn't know men that were strangers in any other way than violent ways.

00:26:28.320 And so it was very scary to me, even though the boys in college did not hurt me.

00:26:33.120 I was scared.

00:26:33.860 That's the irony.

00:26:34.500 I didn't, this is not something that it's not something boys do, you know, I mean, some

00:26:37.800 sick criminals do it, but like the most boys would never do it.

00:26:41.720 Right.

00:26:42.420 Right.

00:26:43.000 And so there were wonderful young men at my college, but I was afraid of them.

00:26:47.500 And so I had all sorts of, um, they called me the ice queen.

00:26:50.900 I was very distant.

00:26:52.180 I was very careful.

00:26:53.540 Um, so there were those ramifications at the beginning, just that I didn't know how to

00:26:56.700 have normal social relationships.

00:26:58.640 My God, were you like, I was raised in a cult.

00:27:00.580 What's wrong with you people?

00:27:01.700 Don't give me such a hard time.

00:27:03.340 It's a miracle I'm here.

00:27:05.420 You know, I didn't talk about it.

00:27:06.900 I was very shamed of where I came from.

00:27:09.340 I mean, there was a lot I didn't know, Megan.

00:27:10.640 There was a lot of things like I didn't know songs.

00:27:12.840 I didn't know pop culture.

00:27:13.840 I didn't know movies.

00:27:14.540 I didn't know the things that other young people knew.

00:27:17.440 So I just listened a lot and started gathering all that information.

00:27:22.100 Um, and I don't know.

00:27:23.080 Was there no schooling?

00:27:24.220 No, I can see why you had no pop culture.

00:27:26.040 I'm not sure there's no TV, but was there no schooling?

00:27:29.220 So after I was seven, so I went to public school through second grade.

00:27:32.560 And then after that, we were not officially homeschooled, but they did have this, when

00:27:38.100 we would be at the field, they had a seriously one room schoolhouse.

00:27:41.860 It was in the church and they would put kids five through 12 in this room together.

00:27:46.340 The kids of, um, that were at the field.

00:27:48.520 And we had some sort of instruction.

00:27:50.440 We had, um, we played a lot of flag football.

00:27:53.760 We, um, listened to stories of the Bible.

00:27:56.600 And as I talk about in the book, I read the Bible cover to cover when I was eight.

00:28:00.260 And that is an education in and of itself.

00:28:02.420 You could learn a lot from that.

00:28:04.260 And I did have access to my mom's brothers who I can ask questions about the Bible.

00:28:09.920 And I started cross-referencing as a very young child.

00:28:13.140 And so by the time I got to college, I could understand the language of Shakespeare, for

00:28:16.520 example, really well, because it is the same language of the King James Bible.

00:28:21.720 But is it true you never learned, for example, the presidents?

00:28:25.260 I did not know the presidents.

00:28:27.520 I still don't know the presidents.

00:28:28.780 Oh, wow.

00:28:31.180 Like, do you know the big ones?

00:28:32.460 You know, you probably know the big ones.

00:28:34.200 I know the big ones.

00:28:35.340 I don't, I don't really want to be tested on it, but yes, I could, I could tell you the

00:28:38.260 big ones.

00:28:38.960 Right, right.

00:28:39.380 Like, like, I'm not going to quiz you on Martin Van Buren because nobody cares.

00:28:44.400 Okay.

00:28:44.900 So yeah, I wouldn't answer those well.

00:28:46.920 So you're living this existence and, and part of the problem was your mother did not show

00:28:53.180 you really any love.

00:28:54.680 I mean, that was one of the saddest parts of the story, which was, I mean, yes, there was

00:28:58.440 the physical and sexual abuse, not to diminish that, but doesn't a human being come into this

00:29:04.120 world needing affection, a baby, a toddler, a little one needing to be told they're loved

00:29:11.260 and to feel loved?

00:29:12.840 I would say that not having my mother's love was the greatest heartbreak of my life.

00:29:21.980 It was the love I was seeking my entire life.

00:29:24.920 I know a lot of women go around seeking love for men, but I felt that I wanted a mother figure.

00:29:30.100 I wanted a maternal figure.

00:29:31.320 I wanted that kind of affection.

00:29:33.980 And I worked very hard to try to get that from my mother.

00:29:37.340 To be fair to her, she was raised in a very rigid, high control group, right?

00:29:44.660 So this, she was raised in this cult and she gave up her children upon giving birth.

00:29:51.480 She, she handed them over to the group.

00:29:53.760 And I think that she had to put armor on to keep herself from loving what she thought would

00:30:01.020 be taken away from her.

00:30:02.080 My grandfather thought that the world would end in 1977.

00:30:05.880 So my mother had these babies that she thought she was just going to have to give over in

00:30:09.640 1977 when they were like little children.

00:30:12.840 And again, she believed this.

00:30:15.360 She really believed it.

00:30:16.600 And so she was not able to attach because attaching, I think would have been wrenching for her.

00:30:22.960 And again, not excusing her coldness, but understanding it.

00:30:27.920 I just don't think she really wanted to risk attaching to something that she thought she

00:30:34.800 had no control over.

00:30:36.280 So she didn't attach.

00:30:38.240 You're 54 now?

00:30:40.200 Mm-hmm.

00:30:41.220 Okay.

00:30:41.640 So you're two years older than I am.

00:30:43.020 So you were born in 68, right around there.

00:30:47.820 So you were alive and cognizant in 1977.

00:30:52.800 And so what happened when the world did not end?

00:30:55.340 Nothing.

00:30:59.600 That's an interesting thing, right?

00:31:02.220 The first thing my grandfather said is that they got the years wrong because he said that

00:31:06.320 when it was all based on when Jesus was born, you know, the understanding when Jesus was

00:31:10.800 born, but because of Caiaphas and, you know, he gave all the names of the Sanhedrin and just

00:31:17.380 different people who would have controlled Pontius Pilate.

00:31:20.060 And his understanding then was that the years were off.

00:31:24.660 And so we were on the wrong calendar.

00:31:28.720 Hmm.

00:31:29.280 Okay.

00:31:29.760 That's, I mean, that's how it works.

00:31:31.100 I think in a lot of these cults when, you know, the end of the world doesn't come.

00:31:35.440 Nature sounds actually have hidden health benefits, like calming your nervous system and improving

00:31:43.880 your cognitive abilities.

00:31:45.880 Discover more ways to see healthy living differently with Manulife at manulife.ca slash health.

00:31:50.940 Let's talk about how you got out because it's a miracle you got out.

00:31:58.280 I mean, you're talking to you now, you're perfectly normal, you're dynamic, you seem

00:32:02.040 happy, you know, I forgive me for being so judgmental in that implication there.

00:32:06.920 But, you know, I would have expected you to appear more damaged given this childhood.

00:32:11.760 So talk to us about how you got out.

00:32:14.500 Well, first of all, thank you for the compliment.

00:32:18.320 I don't know what damage looks like.

00:32:20.440 And also I have had many years in the wider world to, to not just, I don't, I haven't spent

00:32:29.740 that much time in therapy really, but I have spent time doing what I would consider healthy

00:32:33.740 work.

00:32:34.520 My profession has been a one of service.

00:32:37.140 And I felt that working with young people has done a world of good for me, understanding

00:32:41.260 the ways that many people are damaged by their upbringings and not to the same, you know,

00:32:47.160 degree necessarily I was, but there are many people who struggle with upbringings that didn't

00:32:52.220 serve them.

00:32:53.560 So I will say, first of all, that we all have something to recover from and that we are capable

00:32:58.660 of recovery.

00:32:59.240 I will also say that reading books and being in a profession that enables me to talk about

00:33:06.520 those things has been very useful.

00:33:09.280 And as far as how I left, I think that one of the main ways that I got out really was using

00:33:16.680 the advice that my mother gave me.

00:33:18.440 So while she wasn't able to give me the affection I needed, she was able to give me the skills

00:33:23.580 that would help me really scrounge.

00:33:27.960 And I mean, we can use the word forage.

00:33:30.220 It's true.

00:33:30.640 But like I used the forging for words and the forging for, you know, how to find what

00:33:35.860 you need anywhere if you know what you're looking for.

00:33:38.840 So once I knew that I wanted to get out, I had all the skills to do that.

00:33:43.140 And I owe that to my mother.

00:33:44.580 Not because she necessarily prepared me for that purpose, but it did indeed serve me.

00:33:51.580 And I'm very grateful.

00:33:52.060 It was a side effect of all the other things she was teaching you.

00:33:55.480 Yeah.

00:33:55.700 And so the book Forger, if any of you have a chance to read it, does actually go into

00:33:59.680 the details of to some degree what led to me leaving.

00:34:03.560 But the details of what it was like right after I left, I'll have to say for the next

00:34:07.320 book because I can give a little bit now.

00:34:09.300 But that was a long process.

00:34:10.640 And I felt like it is a story in and of itself because I did not naturally acclimate to I

00:34:16.600 was very fortunate that a college took me in, that I was living there at 17, that I was

00:34:20.620 able to have the ability to learn and a passion for learning.

00:34:25.260 And I was really grateful that it led me straight to grad school and that I was able to get a

00:34:29.620 teaching job very young and I was able to support myself.

00:34:33.440 But emotionally, I think I was very stunted and it took me a long time to figure out how

00:34:37.660 to make connections with other human beings who are healthy.

00:34:41.820 And that was a long journey for me.

00:34:43.240 Miraculous.

00:34:44.140 I mean, it's truly miraculous that this happened.

00:34:46.440 I do recall there was an injury, not an injury, there was a disease.

00:34:51.180 You came down with an autoimmune disease that landed you in the hospital.

00:34:55.500 And I wondered, like, were there big medical problems in, quote, the field, you know, like

00:35:01.940 where you were living that would have required you to go to the hospital?

00:35:06.820 Did your family support modern medicine and understand that certain things like you break

00:35:11.360 a femur, you got to go get a cast?

00:35:13.240 Well, to some degree, yes.

00:35:17.520 And to some, no, there's a lot of modern medicine that we didn't have access to.

00:35:21.320 We didn't have insurance, for example, or money to pay for things.

00:35:25.100 We actually didn't break bones, interestingly enough.

00:35:28.780 So that none of my siblings ever broke a bone, neither did I.

00:35:32.820 And we didn't need antibiotics.

00:35:35.100 You know, there's just some kids who get through without that.

00:35:37.380 But I had an autoimmune disease called idiopathic thrombocytopenia prepara, which was and is still

00:35:42.940 of unknown origin.

00:35:43.980 It doesn't have a genetic component.

00:35:46.000 There is some speculation that perhaps, well, I'll just say what the disease is, is your

00:35:51.520 body is coating lots of cells and platelets with antibodies so that your organs, like your

00:35:59.880 spleen, filter the blood and kill off what they perceive as invaders in the process of killing

00:36:07.080 off what they perceive as invaders, they, the spleen and the liver and kidneys and this filter

00:36:12.880 out the platelets themselves that are necessary to clot blood.

00:36:16.080 So in my case, I really was down to nearly zero platelets.

00:36:19.420 So like even a little cut, I could have bled to death.

00:36:22.520 Now what this comes from is very uncertain.

00:36:24.820 But when I got to the hospital, they didn't know what it was.

00:36:27.480 And I've had, you know, some public a little bit critique and just saying that wouldn't

00:36:31.620 the hospital recognize that I was a victim of abuse.

00:36:33.980 And I would say no, not in the late 70s and the early 80s.

00:36:37.640 And those questions weren't being asked of young children.

00:36:39.660 And once I was in the hospital, our, my parents were very busy.

00:36:44.700 And that was also normal that if you had a working mother, and if you had other children

00:36:49.200 in the family, I was in a children's hospital and there were other children, not all, but

00:36:53.340 there were other children who were left without their parents during their duration of their

00:36:56.920 stay.

00:36:57.460 And the nurses and the doctors were working on our bodies and helping us understand what

00:37:01.680 was going on while we were present in the hospital, but not necessarily concerned with

00:37:08.060 our mental health.

00:37:08.700 I just don't think that that was something people talked about in those days to children.

00:37:13.340 You were, it was very tough love.

00:37:15.120 I know you wrote, your mother was like, there'll be no crying, period.

00:37:20.520 And again, you know, I think a lot of us can look at some of these little hints and say

00:37:24.160 like, well, you know, you do want to raise tough children.

00:37:27.780 You want your children to be resilient.

00:37:29.900 You don't want them licking their wounds and feeling sorry for themselves all the time.

00:37:33.980 But as with all of these examples, it just, it was next level.

00:37:38.260 And it was at a place, you know, if you get really hurt, you're going to cry.

00:37:42.400 If you get raped, you're going to cry.

00:37:44.040 If you've got the right context for what's happening to you.

00:37:46.600 So how do you see that now?

00:37:48.980 That sort of very tough love, I guess.

00:37:51.400 I went through, um, I would say about 14 years from the age of 11 to into my twenties without

00:38:01.680 crying ever.

00:38:02.540 And my mother strongly believed you do not cry when you get hurt.

00:38:05.960 You do not cry when you get raped.

00:38:07.420 You do not do those things that you act like nothing happened because then you will not

00:38:11.980 become a perpetual victim.

00:38:13.280 There was also mental illness, um, in her family that I later found out from her and

00:38:18.480 the, my editors didn't want me to, um, reveal medical things about the family because, you

00:38:23.340 know, that could be a violation of their privacy.

00:38:24.760 But, um, my mother knew that there was mental illness, not, not her own or her father's,

00:38:31.480 but other members of the family.

00:38:32.980 And when I asked her later in life, why she didn't let us know this, if, if we were really

00:38:39.340 honestly being put in danger and she said, well, I didn't want you to worry that that

00:38:44.440 would happen to you.

00:38:45.760 And she's, and she just really, truly believed that you wouldn't become mentally ill if you

00:38:49.220 didn't, um, know that it was possible.

00:38:51.700 And so she thought that kind of toughness kept you.

00:38:54.740 And I think it's really old school, but I think she just felt that being really tough,

00:38:58.100 which again, I'm not advocating.

00:38:59.500 I'm just putting it in the context that I don't think she saw that as being abusive.

00:39:02.720 I think she saw it as kind of an interesting experiment.

00:39:05.460 I mean, it's, I'm not recommending it, but you know, now that you've been through it,

00:39:09.160 it is interesting to ask, you know, like I was saying about abuse, if you, if, if, if

00:39:14.520 you don't know what file to put it in, is it less damaging in some way?

00:39:20.100 If, if, you know, she doesn't tell you about mental illness, is she right?

00:39:23.000 It can't manifest.

00:39:24.220 That doesn't sound, none of this sounds right, but you were part of an experiment.

00:39:31.340 Yes.

00:39:31.740 And Southern California, by the way, was a Mecca of small cults.

00:39:37.220 This one was particularly successful, honestly, but there were a lot of people in California

00:39:42.360 who were experimenting in communities with what would happen if you lived alternatively

00:39:47.280 to the wider culture.

00:39:49.420 And a lot of those cults were religious, but not all.

00:39:52.060 There were just people who had very strong ideologies.

00:39:54.620 And what made them cults is that they had a high control group mentality led by a charismatic

00:39:59.960 leader who would then make mercurial decisions about what was or wasn't allowed within said

00:40:04.640 cult.

00:40:04.940 So, yes, we were very experimental.

00:40:07.620 And I think after my grandfather's death, it got a little bit more rigid, which just happened

00:40:12.120 to be really vulnerable years for me.

00:40:14.060 But then the cult softened because it couldn't continue to maintain that.

00:40:18.560 And since we were the very first children born there, it was an experiment and it was

00:40:23.260 kind of a failed experiment.

00:40:24.700 And I don't think, for example, my mother would not have told you that I turned out well.

00:40:29.740 She would have said that I was like a bad seed and that I had made choices to leave and

00:40:38.240 to leave the calling that she believed I was always meant to be, which is to be a leader

00:40:43.100 at the field.

00:40:44.080 And she thought the work that I do, I teach college, that I work in a secular field.

00:40:48.300 And that is negative for, she thinks it's just very negative to teach people secular worldviews.

00:40:54.560 And so she was not ever proud of what I did and she couldn't bear to hear a word of it.

00:41:01.200 You started to stray a little in your behaviors and beliefs, and it just led to, as I understand

00:41:06.820 it, irreconcilable differences where they didn't want you and you didn't really want

00:41:11.660 to be there and you left at a relatively young age.

00:41:14.080 I mean, how did you get into college?

00:41:15.580 Like, how did you even know to pick up an application, you know, that there could be,

00:41:20.060 you know, a dormitory and a food and beverage service?

00:41:24.100 Or you're like, how did all of this come to you?

00:41:27.040 Well, I was a house cleaner.

00:41:28.580 So because we didn't have any money, I started house cleaning when I was very young.

00:41:32.940 As right when I got out of the hospital, by the time, before I even turned 14, I was cleaning

00:41:38.300 a lot of houses and I went by word of mouth and I started working in wealthier areas because

00:41:45.480 I got paid more.

00:41:47.260 And I coming down off the mountain at this point, what do you mean?

00:41:50.040 Were you, were you still, where were you when you're doing the house cleaning?

00:41:53.000 Okay.

00:41:54.120 So my family still lived at the mountain and we had no other home, but my parents would

00:41:58.380 go away on these long trips.

00:42:00.640 And so I would sometimes stay down with my grandmother, especially after our grandfather

00:42:03.900 died.

00:42:04.460 She was alone.

00:42:05.600 She was a widow and I would stay at her house on the couch with all her dogs.

00:42:10.420 And then I borrowed one of the girls.

00:42:13.040 I knew one of her bike, I bought it.

00:42:15.380 And it wasn't one of her bikes was probably her only bike, but I borrowed a bike and I

00:42:18.780 would ride secretly and nobody really was around by my grandmother had Alzheimer's and

00:42:23.580 that wasn't diagnosed as Alzheimer's.

00:42:25.280 She later went into a home.

00:42:26.800 Uh, not that much later, uh, she was sort of just pushed aside out of the field, but at

00:42:33.060 the time she had Alzheimer's.

00:42:34.620 She was alone.

00:42:35.480 I slept on her couch and I took a bike and I went and did house cleaning jobs and I stored

00:42:40.860 the money.

00:42:41.720 I got cash and I put it in this cup and I like put it up on the top of her shelf and

00:42:46.320 she couldn't reach it.

00:42:47.120 And I just was very secretive about it.

00:42:49.920 So I did house cleaning as much as I could.

00:42:52.460 So I couldn't always, you know, once my parents were in town and we were up on the mountain,

00:42:56.060 I couldn't house clean, but it was something that I was very good at.

00:42:59.240 And one of the women whose houses I cleaned and I've been working for her for quite a

00:43:03.780 while, she gave me a college application and I filled it out in pencil and it just so happens

00:43:08.640 that, yeah, it's so interesting.

00:43:11.820 Um, but anyway, but the end result was I went to a very experimental college.

00:43:15.760 It's called Pitzer college and they started in the sixties and they didn't have general

00:43:20.540 ed, for example.

00:43:21.940 They, I mean, they, they were an accredited institution, but they were private and they really

00:43:27.260 liked that I had an alternative education and they did test me on things.

00:43:32.060 Um, but I was a wonderful writer.

00:43:34.440 I went to an event recently, one of my college professors was there and she said, Oh no, for

00:43:38.600 the moment I met you, you were just, you know, a wonderful writer.

00:43:41.400 I didn't teach you a thing that can't be true, but it is true that I tested out of writing

00:43:46.500 and I had very strong math skills from all the stuff I did with selling and from astronomy

00:43:50.560 and, um, from building because we would weld and we would build, you know, buildings and

00:43:55.820 it's a lot, you can learn a lot with hands-on education.

00:43:58.940 Sure.

00:43:59.360 Well, that's how it used to be done in this country.

00:44:01.760 So can I just ask you, so now you're, are you married now?

00:44:05.340 I know you've, you've got a family of your own now.

00:44:08.420 My family is, um, so no, um, I, I, I have my, I got married to a guy who was at the cult.

00:44:19.560 I had all my children with him and then, um, they are now, um, so we stayed married when

00:44:26.080 we raised our children, but then they are now, um, just, I just, uh, launched my youngest

00:44:31.440 daughter and all of my children now are in their twenties and partnered.

00:44:35.340 Actually my oldest, just, I have twins that are my oldest, um, and they're 30 now.

00:44:40.360 So they are, um,

00:44:42.160 You raised them outside of the cult?

00:44:43.740 Like the husband came with you?

00:44:45.080 He did.

00:44:46.940 Yeah.

00:44:47.840 Well, we got married outside of the cult.

00:44:50.200 Um, and, but we knew each other.

00:44:52.720 We grew up together.

00:44:53.520 He's older than I am, but we, um, he was one of the boys who used to stay at our house and

00:44:58.280 take care of us.

00:44:58.860 So it was kind of, you know, a brotherly figure to me, but I was young.

00:45:03.420 I was with him, um, starting, let's see when I turned 18 and I was with him after that.

00:45:09.060 And we had a lot of trauma.

00:45:10.900 You didn't stay married?

00:45:13.880 No, we wanted.

00:45:15.080 I mean, they couldn't possibly where you look at that, you think like, there's no way

00:45:18.340 more than 50% of marriages end in divorce, just like the odds or we're against you anyway.

00:45:23.060 But then with all this in your background, but I was just wondering what it would be

00:45:27.260 like, you know, now to, to meet somebody who wasn't in the cult and try to fall in

00:45:30.980 love and try to trust.

00:45:32.480 And I assume you've had other, you know, boyfriends and so on after your marriage.

00:45:36.440 Has that been strange to you or you were living enough sort of in the real world with

00:45:42.600 your first husband that you got used to that?

00:45:45.080 Before you had to date strangers.

00:45:48.220 Right.

00:45:49.340 So I only had one husband and he, um, we stayed together for a very long time and we are still

00:45:55.780 close because we have, um, really shared experiences and, um, we have shared family and we have nieces

00:46:03.220 and nephews and nephews and we have, you know, our, our children.

00:46:05.620 So we also really understand, um, our various forms of trauma.

00:46:11.100 And he would say, and has said to me, he's so grateful for the book, um, that his trauma that

00:46:16.420 he experienced there was more psychological abuse.

00:46:18.460 Uh, he was not born and he was, he came there at age seven.

00:46:22.680 So since then I have had, yes, I've had difficulty with, um, understanding, uh, necessarily how

00:46:30.260 relationships are.

00:46:32.160 Um, I, I can understand short-term relationships really well, but longer term relationship,

00:46:36.340 it's, it's difficult for me to trust.

00:46:39.420 And, um, that's something I'm working through.

00:46:41.020 Yeah.

00:46:42.480 Why is it awkward when I ask you if you are married and have a family?

00:46:47.800 I, I just think that one of the things that I said when I was coming into this, um, I guess

00:46:53.300 this, I don't know if you call it tour, but the talking about the book is that I would keep my,

00:46:58.280 um, personal life private.

00:46:59.880 That was just something I made for a boundary for myself and also for, um, the man I married

00:47:04.720 and also for my children, because they, they do feel really awkward about, um, our, our

00:47:10.660 past, I think that it's just maybe an area we didn't explore a lot.

00:47:14.780 And so, um, but the children had a traditional upbringing, like you, you raised them outside

00:47:20.140 of the cult.

00:47:21.380 Yes.

00:47:21.920 Um, all my children went to public school.

00:47:23.940 They've done very well.

00:47:24.960 They all got out of college, um, rapidly.

00:47:26.940 They've been, um, they're all partnered.

00:47:28.760 Um, two of them are married.

00:47:30.400 Two of them.

00:47:30.760 That's funny how you keep saying that that's from the cult, right?

00:47:33.000 The part, they're all partnered.

00:47:34.460 We, we say married.

00:47:37.420 Okay.

00:47:37.900 Well, they're not all married.

00:47:39.300 So some of them, um, my children have long, they're, have really, they're in relationships.

00:47:44.540 I could say it that way, but they're not all married.

00:47:46.840 Um, and I don't mean to belittle it, but it's just, it's like I said, you're just, you seem

00:47:51.660 like such a powerhouse.

00:47:52.500 So it's, there's something kind of sweet, these reminders of all that you've overcome

00:47:57.000 in the way you speak.

00:47:58.000 And so on, it's just, there's something endearing because you're seem like a, just a very strong

00:48:02.040 person and you must be so like, you know, that, that resilience is still in you.

00:48:06.620 Um, I did read that you can't see your sisters, like that seeing your family of origin brings

00:48:16.200 it all up for all of you.

00:48:18.540 So can you talk about that?

00:48:19.860 Are they, are they out of the cult and are in, what's that like when you're all together?

00:48:23.080 Um, so we're not all together really anymore, except for we were at our mom's, um, services.

00:48:28.720 So that was honestly wonderful.

00:48:31.420 Um, I, I don't know if it was something I'd written earlier.

00:48:34.460 I think we all had really difficult times being together for most of our adult lives,

00:48:39.700 but especially since the book came out, my younger brother and my younger sister, and

00:48:43.380 all four of us are, we're all born within five years of each other total.

00:48:47.200 So we're all the same age.

00:48:49.140 Um, my younger brother and sister came to the book opening.

00:48:52.060 Um, they come and stayed at my house.

00:48:53.840 My sister flew in from my younger sister from the East coast.

00:48:57.000 And, um, so we have had wonderful long conversations and I have, uh, I already had a relationship

00:49:04.820 with my younger sister.

00:49:05.640 We never really broke relationship, but she's lived on her East, on the East coast ever since

00:49:09.200 college.

00:49:09.520 So we haven't lived in the same town, um, any time during our adult life.

00:49:13.340 And, uh, my younger brother also, um, came and just, just talked about the book, said

00:49:20.120 that he is unable to talk to it.

00:49:22.180 He was unable to talk about it during his own marriage and that it has been so healthy

00:49:27.060 for him to be able to, um, be part of this conversation.

00:49:31.040 So I've spent a great deal of the time with my younger brother and sister since this book

00:49:35.060 came out, which is very recent.

00:49:36.680 And then, um, our older sister is the only one who chose to stay in the community.

00:49:41.420 And she would say the community is very different, um, but they don't, um, welcome outsiders.

00:49:50.340 Beat, beat, beatboxing actually has hidden health benefits.

00:49:53.760 It can help strengthen, strengthen, strengthen, and protect, protect, protect, protect your

00:50:00.320 voice from injury.

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00:50:06.940 Now let's get that beat.

00:50:11.420 Is it still going up?

00:50:22.080 Is it, I mean, are there children being raised in this right now who are underweight and possibly

00:50:26.440 getting abused?

00:50:28.380 No, I mean, there are still children there, but the organization has changed and it is

00:50:32.760 certainly, I mean, physically, I think that the children are very healthy.

00:50:36.300 I am not there and it was very difficult for me to understand how to put the parameters

00:50:40.880 on my conversation because I don't really know all the details.

00:50:45.020 Um, but it certainly doesn't exist in the form.

00:50:47.360 There's nobody who is being raised the way I was raised.

00:50:49.980 That is for sure.

00:50:50.840 It's certain.

00:50:51.280 But our sister, my sister, um, does, I call it our sister cause she's all of our sister,

00:50:55.900 but she is the one who then now has a school, but it is accredited now.

00:50:59.980 And she runs the school that raises, um, the kids there.

00:51:03.380 And she says, it's a really different place than it used to be.

00:51:06.060 And I do know that they have, um, you know, accreditation people come in.

00:51:09.900 So people are checking on it in a way that did not happen when we were young.

00:51:13.820 Accreditation.

00:51:14.300 But what about division of child and family services?

00:51:16.280 I mean, are there, is there anything and what, and how are people living now at, at the

00:51:20.660 field?

00:51:21.000 Are they living in mess hall still?

00:51:23.760 Or what, you know, what's the facility like?

00:51:26.480 So my understanding is that, um, families are now allowed to have regular jobs and that

00:51:32.800 they are allowed to.

00:51:34.200 So it is more of a church now and they do have a strong faith system.

00:51:37.720 I think that many churches believe different kinds of interpretations of the Bible.

00:51:42.080 I'm not justifying their particular interpretation, but they do use, um, the traditional Judeo-Christian

00:51:47.700 Protestant version of the Bible.

00:51:50.180 And, um, my understanding is that the families have their, they are now allowed to be nuclear

00:51:56.580 families.

00:51:57.540 And I will also say that my sister's married to a boy that, or a man that grew up with

00:52:02.640 us as a boy.

00:52:03.380 Uh, she's been married her whole life to him and I knew him all growing up and that they

00:52:08.060 have two children, uh, my niece and my nephew who seem by all accounts there, um, they went

00:52:13.400 to college there in, you know, they're in their twenties now.

00:52:15.980 So it seems that it is a place where it is still a real tight community, um, but that

00:52:22.780 it would be no longer abusive.

00:52:25.260 Is it up on a mountain?

00:52:26.580 Is it still in the same location up on the mountainside in California?

00:52:29.740 So they have the mountain location, but they rent it out now to outside groups so that they

00:52:34.880 can make money.

00:52:36.400 Okay.

00:52:36.860 So it is not being used in that same capacity, but they do still have that lease.

00:52:40.940 How are you still religious?

00:52:42.380 No, I would consider myself a spiritual person and I did raise my children in, um, a faith

00:52:50.600 community in a United church of Christ congregational church, because I thought it was really wonderful

00:52:55.280 for them to get the opportunity to see healthy people who are, um, have a faith and, um, believe

00:53:01.900 in something.

00:53:02.520 And I thought it was really great.

00:53:03.800 And I did teach church school there.

00:53:05.360 I know the Bible very well.

00:53:06.940 So I raised them there, but I don't identify, um, directly anymore because I feel that for

00:53:12.380 me, it is a source of, um, a lot of anxiety and tension.

00:53:18.400 So, yeah, I mean, this is where now I, I'll quiz you on Martin Van Buren, you won't know

00:53:22.920 much and you quiz me on the Bible and I won't know much either.

00:53:25.540 So that, you know, one of us has studied a certain area and one of us has studied the

00:53:29.160 others.

00:53:29.360 Like we all have our deficiencies in how we're raised and what we focus on, though my mother

00:53:33.700 would not be happy to hear me admit this about the Bible.

00:53:36.720 Um, I won't tell her.

00:53:38.040 I, yeah, we should, um, she's probably not listening.

00:53:40.560 So I think we're safe.

00:53:42.620 Um, so can, can you just explain to me, like, because one of the things we're going to talk

00:53:48.240 about is getting out of a cult, like whether it's possible and how, how many challenges

00:53:52.820 it poses, you know, listening to you here, it sounds like it was kind of easy, but that's

00:53:57.540 probably not true.

00:53:58.500 So I think it's certainly possible to get out of any cult.

00:54:04.520 It is always a process though.

00:54:07.060 I do not think anyone, because it's, I feel like it's a little bit like leaving an abusive

00:54:10.400 relationship.

00:54:11.280 You can leave the relationship and still have the behaviors that put you in that abusive

00:54:16.980 relationship.

00:54:17.520 And, um, a lot of people enter another abusive relationship.

00:54:20.560 So, um, I, I, I guess I, I didn't know that I was making it look easy.

00:54:25.620 I think that I was trying really hard, um, with the book, not to just focus on the negative

00:54:30.060 aspects and not to just sort of pummel people with the pain of the experience, because, um,

00:54:35.920 I do think that we, we do all have a need for belonging.

00:54:39.420 And the reason cults are so attractive to people is because they do provide a source of

00:54:44.520 belonging and, um, not that they do it in a healthy way, but that that need is something

00:54:49.160 that is, um, innate and that we do need each other and we do need community.

00:54:53.360 Um, leaving was excruciating for me.

00:54:55.980 I, I married far too young.

00:54:57.520 I was not an adult.

00:54:59.280 I wasn't able to think clearly for myself when I had my own children.

00:55:02.840 I did tons and tons and tons of research to figure out how to raise them, but it did

00:55:06.900 not feel natural to me.

00:55:08.300 I felt the love was extremely natural.

00:55:10.280 I did all the things, you know, breastfed and was very into attachment parenting and,

00:55:14.120 um, was there with them.

00:55:17.080 Even, um, when I worked, I would bring them on my belly.

00:55:19.720 You know, I put my baby on my back or whatever, and, um, I mean, after your mom never hugging

00:55:24.500 you, this must've been so special for you.

00:55:27.980 It, it really was.

00:55:29.420 And I think that I was very fortunate that I was able to give birth to them in a hospital

00:55:33.800 and to have, um, I was in Boulder, Colorado, where I was in grad school and I was able to,

00:55:38.900 um, you know, just have, there was just lactation consultants and things like that around.

00:55:43.120 So then by the time I, you know, became a mother a few times, like I was just really,

00:55:48.200 really good at it.

00:55:49.580 You know, at least the parts that were, um, about physically caring for them and being

00:55:53.720 able to be emotionally present.

00:55:54.780 It was just, um, a wonderful to be able to give them that.

00:55:59.080 That is a miracle that you had that to give despite not having received it, Michelle.

00:56:04.600 I mean, so few people have that story.

00:56:07.020 There's, you know, something in you that, that made that happen, hard work, determination,

00:56:11.780 the sparks of knowledge and certainly your resilience, but it, your story is a testament

00:56:17.000 to human resilience and strength, despite many odds against you.

00:56:22.800 Thank you.

00:56:23.880 I think sometimes we teach what we most need to learn, you know, and I think that being

00:56:28.480 able to offer my children that kind of attachment really gave me the attachment that I needed so

00:56:34.440 much.

00:56:34.800 And even at my mom's death, I was able to physically be present for her and lie down

00:56:39.280 with her and even giving her, she was in a hospital bed, but she died at home, um, on

00:56:43.560 hospice.

00:56:44.220 I was able to physically be present with her through the whole process of dying.

00:56:47.500 And I was able to give her the same sort of comfort I needed from her in the hospital.

00:56:52.220 And I think it was like that with my kids too.

00:56:54.220 Like I gave them what I needed.

00:56:55.680 And I think because I needed it so badly, I knew, you know, I just knew how important it

00:57:00.720 was.

00:57:01.620 Do you ever have a moment where you're like, stop crying?

00:57:04.280 I'd like to, you know, the remnants.

00:57:06.640 Yes.

00:57:07.700 You know, my oldest daughter is a marriage and family therapist.

00:57:10.820 And she tells me, she said, um, you, you had a problem with crying.

00:57:14.220 And I said, I tried not to.

00:57:15.480 And she said, wow, you know, it's really healthy for children to cry.

00:57:18.400 And I said, I'm so sorry.

00:57:19.600 I probably, probably was not as welcoming of that as I could have been.

00:57:25.380 And I mean, not that I forbade them from crying, but I do not think I was that tolerant.

00:57:29.400 Um, but it's understandable.

00:57:31.720 Yeah.

00:57:32.380 But they were very close.

00:57:33.420 They are very, all very close to each other.

00:57:35.120 And I think that's another wonderful thing.

00:57:36.660 And they have not been, um, victims of abuse, which I'm also very proud of.

00:57:40.960 And when my twins were little, I was, um, breastfeeding both of them.

00:57:44.320 They never took a bottle.

00:57:45.020 And I just felt so deeply committed to really just being a hundred percent there.

00:57:50.160 So I'm just really grateful.

00:57:51.440 Michelle, when you go, now you're a successful writer and would teach at a college.

00:57:54.640 Like when you go to a cocktail party for the first time and you're meeting people and

00:57:57.980 they're like, Hey, where'd you grow up?

00:57:59.180 I mean, how do you short form this?

00:58:02.940 I've never been good at this.

00:58:04.380 I think that's why I wrote a book because I hate that question.

00:58:06.880 So I'm just here, read this.

00:58:09.560 And even in the book, I didn't really cover it because I really ended up focusing on my

00:58:12.960 story and not really fleshing out the community entirely.

00:58:15.700 So maybe I'll do that later, but I just say I had an unconventional childhood or complicated.

00:58:20.980 Yeah.

00:58:21.560 It's, it's really not an easy question to answer.

00:58:24.760 Yeah.

00:58:25.340 Wow.

00:58:25.820 Well, I thank you so much for telling your story and for being so open.

00:58:30.100 Uh, I'm grateful to know you and I'm so grateful that you're out there as an example

00:58:34.200 to others who may be struggling with childhood issues that somehow they believe are going

00:58:39.500 to define the rest of their lives.

00:58:40.840 And maybe not, maybe if you read Forager field notes for surviving a family cult, it might

00:58:46.940 be helpful to you even if you weren't in a cult, right?

00:58:49.180 Even if you just had some massive challenges that you don't think you can get past.

00:58:52.820 Michelle, all the best to you.

00:58:53.860 Thank you for coming on.

00:58:55.740 Thank you so much for having me, Megan.

00:58:57.360 It's been a pleasure.

00:58:58.580 Um, I appreciate all your insights.

00:59:00.780 Oh, thank you.

00:59:02.540 It's a pleasure for me too.

00:59:03.660 To be continued.

00:59:08.680 Beat, beat, beatboxing actually has hidden health benefits.

00:59:12.060 It can help strengthen, strengthen, strengthen, strengthen and protect, protect, protect, protect

00:59:17.660 your voice from injury.

00:59:20.000 Discover more ways to see healthy living differently with Manulife at manulife.ca slash help.

00:59:25.220 Now let's get that beat.

00:59:26.240 So I know that you were listening to Michelle's story and I thought it was a very astute observation

00:59:44.620 and one I know is true from your writings that there's, there's something about a cult

00:59:48.620 that provides a sense of belonging.

00:59:51.420 It's a sense of community.

00:59:52.720 There is a reason people are attracted to these organizations.

00:59:56.400 It's because you hear about the abuse, you hear about psychological torture and so on.

01:00:00.860 You think why?

01:00:01.900 Well, it doesn't start off like that and it does provide some pluses that are alluring.

01:00:07.380 Yeah.

01:00:07.600 So I, I want to just comment that there are some real differences then with people who are

01:00:14.040 born into a authoritarian cult as Michelle was versus someone like myself who was recruited

01:00:22.180 at age 19 while I was a college student through deceptive means into a cult, the Moonies.

01:00:29.980 And, um, and I'd say as a generalization, the public tends to look too much at the person

01:00:39.080 who's involved, uh, and too little at the deception and the control of social influence variables.

01:00:48.280 Um, but as you correctly said, there are always positives even in the worst of situations.

01:00:56.640 Right.

01:00:57.200 And well, I'm fascinated by your story too.

01:00:59.740 So you, did you seem to have had a relatively normal childhood and you seem to have been

01:01:06.480 a rather well-adjusted young man and yet you got lured in.

01:01:11.720 And I remember growing, I remember hearing about the Moonies and they sounded like a bunch

01:01:15.720 of kooks.

01:01:16.640 So I don't know much about them, but looking at you now thinking you were in the Moonies.

01:01:20.720 What explain?

01:01:21.320 Yeah, so I should say that I was, um, dumped by my girlfriends, um, in 1973 in the Christmas

01:01:32.580 time.

01:01:33.180 And I got recruited in February of 1974 at Queens College.

01:01:39.540 Um, and that was the same month, by the way, that Patty Hearst was physically abducted by

01:01:44.680 the Symbionese Liberation Army.

01:01:46.720 Just for your listeners who are of an age, uh, to remember that.

01:01:52.000 But when I got recruited, nobody knew anything about the Moonies.

01:01:55.800 They didn't really get public until later that year when the group was fasting for Nixon during

01:02:02.740 Watergate.

01:02:03.680 And I was part of that fasting that God wants to forgive love and unite no matter what Nixon

01:02:10.540 did at Watergate.

01:02:11.620 And then, um, um, the, the media dubbed them the Moonies and some young moon who claimed to

01:02:18.420 be 10 times greater than Jesus Christ or any other religious leader loved that we were being

01:02:25.060 called Moonies.

01:02:26.700 Um, and I was promoted, uh, to a pretty high rank as an American leader.

01:02:33.720 Not that I had any power at all, but I was kind of a front person who was used to recruit

01:02:39.180 and indoctrinate people.

01:02:40.520 But wait, before we got to your promotion, we could, there was the luring in, uh, this

01:02:46.880 college, Queens college, women flirting and lying and pretending that they were students

01:02:52.660 and, and complimenting me and doing what's called love bombing.

01:02:57.080 And I, um, I had bicycle cross country when I was 16.

01:03:02.380 I should say I was raised in a middle, middle class family.

01:03:06.580 My father had a hardware store.

01:03:08.900 My mom was an eighth grade art teacher.

01:03:10.940 I have two older sisters.

01:03:12.340 We lived in the same house in the same community, uh, conservative Jewish upbringing.

01:03:18.680 I had bicycle cross country when I was 16.

01:03:21.600 I was very anti-group, anti-authoritarian.

01:03:25.940 Uh, I, I skipped eighth grade, uh, cause I, you know, was deemed a good tester or whatever.

01:03:32.980 Um, so yeah, I hadn't, I had no belief that anyone could con me or brainwash me.

01:03:41.960 It didn't enter my mind that anyone could brainwash me, but I became a, a fascist.

01:03:47.900 I became a total fanatic that needed, uh, a formal deprogramming intervention after a

01:03:54.780 near fatal van crash.

01:03:56.800 Um, before I started going, what, how can I believe who was the greatest man in human

01:04:02.900 history?

01:04:03.900 You went to the first meeting where they just said, Hey, come on over.

01:04:06.880 Let's hang out.

01:04:07.440 And you went fine.

01:04:08.500 And in, as I understand it, you had an instinct, this is a little off.

01:04:11.940 And you said, is this a religious group?

01:04:13.340 What is this?

01:04:13.920 No, no, no, no, no.

01:04:14.920 And you left kind of determined not to go back.

01:04:18.880 And then they all ran outside and the love bombing went, kicked off in earnest.

01:04:25.060 And most of us are, you know, we're susceptible to flattery and compliments and that kind of

01:04:31.620 love from people who want to accept you, especially if it's coming from a beautiful member of the

01:04:35.340 opposite sex.

01:04:36.600 Exactly.

01:04:37.200 We're, we're, we're all human beings and, uh, we all love to believe that we're special

01:04:44.500 and, uh, that we're smart and that we, uh, can contribute to, uh, to the world and make

01:04:52.600 the world a better place.

01:04:54.420 Um, but if I, I said, I did ask them, are you part of a religious group?

01:04:59.720 Oh no, not at all.

01:05:01.160 Uh, and they claim to be students, which they weren't, but this was part of heavenly deception

01:05:07.980 because members believe the world is controlled by Satan and therefore we need to use deception

01:05:15.380 to trick Satan's children into doing God's will is the ends justify the means.

01:05:22.100 Yeah.

01:05:22.720 What were, what were the Moonies about and what did, uh, Mr. Moon get out of all this?

01:05:29.620 So the Moonies, well, I should say that the stereotypical cult leader playbook is they all

01:05:36.940 want power, money, and sex, and it's always power.

01:05:41.440 Usually money brings more power and often they're sexual perverts.

01:05:46.120 And Moon was all three, um, the teachings varied based on who the cult was trying to influence

01:05:55.660 to recruit, uh, as a recruiter, I was taught to categorize potential recruits in terms of

01:06:04.140 thinkers, feelers, doers, or believers.

01:06:07.800 So if somebody represented the spirituality and religion as something important, then we would

01:06:14.920 shape the recruitment that way.

01:06:17.820 If they were someone who was a feeler, then we talk about how we're one unified family and

01:06:24.980 we're brothers and sisters.

01:06:26.260 And we have this idyllic view of the restoring the earth to the garden of Eden, uh, et cetera.

01:06:33.640 So, um, and the idea with, with influence and mind control is if you think about the influencer

01:06:41.000 and the influence, uh, there's this relationship of someone has a vulnerability and everybody

01:06:48.480 wants to improve themselves, it seems, or make the world a better place.

01:06:53.980 Some, some human need, um, if you're schizophrenic, cults will not want to recruit you.

01:07:01.880 Or if you have, uh, uh, are you're absolutely apathetic?

01:07:06.720 They don't want you either.

01:07:07.920 They want people with talent and abilities and passion who can work long hours for little

01:07:13.700 or no pay.

01:07:14.860 Let's try to raise money and give it to the cult.

01:07:17.840 So power, money, and sex.

01:07:20.360 So for me, I was mostly recruiting and doing public types of, of influence things, but they

01:07:27.100 had full-time fundraisers who were bringing in around $30 million a year cash lying to people

01:07:35.260 saying they were recruiting for drug, Christian drug programs or whatever.

01:07:40.280 Uh, and the money was then used to buy property and then loans were taken out against the property

01:07:46.360 to buy more and then invest in businesses.

01:07:49.700 And, um, there was a, a, a, a congressional subcommittee investigation in the seventies that

01:07:56.660 I wound up being an expert for, uh, looking into Korean CIA activities in the U S and as they

01:08:05.140 were researching the Moonies because they were part of that plan.

01:08:09.160 Uh, the researchers said, this is a group with hundreds of front groups.

01:08:13.960 Let's just call them the Moon organization because they're all following Sun Myung Moon.

01:08:19.160 And Sun Myung Moon was best known at that time for mass weddings where he would assign men and

01:08:25.520 women to marry.

01:08:26.540 They often didn't know each other or even speak the same language, but they believe that he, he was

01:08:33.400 God's greatest man on earth, sinless, and he had the power to match you with your ideal mate.

01:08:41.140 And, uh, so he had the, uh, I think the Guinness book of records, 30,000 couples at one time,

01:08:49.400 uh, in this particular call.

01:08:51.720 Were you, were you, did you believe that?

01:08:53.400 Did you think he had these powers and believe in his ability to just find the right mate with

01:08:57.920 people who had never met?

01:08:58.460 A hundred percent.

01:09:00.460 I was trained to not allow negative thoughts because I was programmed to believe negative

01:09:07.740 thoughts were coming from demons.

01:09:10.700 And we were literally taken to see the exorcist movie when it came out.

01:09:15.400 And then Moon gave a lecture, how God made this movie.

01:09:19.660 And it was a prophecy of what would happen if we left.

01:09:23.020 So one thing I want to explain to you and your listeners is that mind control is best understood

01:09:30.060 as a dissociative disorder.

01:09:32.740 So the old Steve Hassan, son of Milton and Estelle Hassan got replaced by Steve Hassan, son of

01:09:41.540 Sun Myung Moon and Hak Jahan, the true parents of the universe.

01:09:45.400 I was still in there, but I was being suppressed.

01:09:49.220 Think about a computer virus that hacks your computer and takes over your operating system.

01:09:55.140 That's an easy analogy for what it's like.

01:09:59.020 And in my case, because I almost died in a van crash due to sleep deprivation and was away

01:10:05.520 from the cult and then wanted to prove to my family I wasn't brainwashed.

01:10:09.580 I agreed to meet with ex-members and learn about Chinese communist brainwashing, etc.

01:10:17.240 The real me popped out.

01:10:19.400 And I had all these memories of things that should have made me run from the cult.

01:10:25.240 But again, this cult identity that had been programmed into me was in executive control.

01:10:32.300 The people think maybe this is just a small niche thing.

01:10:37.840 It's not.

01:10:38.620 There are a lot of cults in America, even today.

01:10:42.660 And I know, I mean, I've talked a lot about Scientology on this show and the other shows

01:10:47.560 I've had, but they have a lot of the features where you buy in at this level and then you

01:10:53.500 have to pay all this money to advance to the next level.

01:10:56.540 And that's also, I know, a feature of of cults, moreover, them learning what your weaknesses

01:11:02.560 are in these little sessions that they have where you've got to like pour your heart out

01:11:06.260 through these little Campbell's soup cans, the soup cans through the through the string

01:11:13.240 like we used to do when we were kids.

01:11:14.740 And then the other person knows all your vulnerabilities, which get used against you.

01:11:19.000 But like the cult Michelle talked about, like the Moonies, there's something for you in

01:11:24.180 there.

01:11:24.420 They're the Scientology messaging of don't associate with the negative people.

01:11:30.120 They're suppressive people.

01:11:31.240 Move on.

01:11:32.120 There's no reason to bask in that negativity.

01:11:34.180 You just get rid of them.

01:11:35.840 You know, there's something attractive and there's something positive about it.

01:11:39.440 So there's always something right.

01:11:40.960 They they do have something good to reel you in until you learn about all the other stuff.

01:11:45.640 But by that point, they're hoping it's too late.

01:11:47.480 So I want you to be clear and understand and your listeners that people don't understand

01:11:56.040 what the group is and what the beliefs are, what's going to happen to them.

01:12:01.120 If there was actual informed consent where people understood what the beliefs were, people wouldn't

01:12:09.580 get involved in the first place in my work and in my doctoral dissertation that I did.

01:12:16.460 I talk about behavior control, information control, thought control and emotional control variables.

01:12:24.800 I call it the bite model of authoritarian control.

01:12:29.320 And I go through a laundry list of the most common techniques that all types of cults, political

01:12:36.140 cults, therapy cults, religious cults, cults, one on one cults even use on people.

01:12:43.460 And what's missing is for the public is to have an understanding that influence exists

01:12:50.260 on a continuum from ethical influence to unethical and what to watch out for.

01:12:57.280 So preventive education.

01:12:58.680 And that's why I'm so grateful that you had Michelle on your show and that I'm able to

01:13:03.940 do this show is because people don't want to be lied to.

01:13:08.220 They don't want to be tricked.

01:13:09.400 They don't want to be mind controlled and abused or trafficked.

01:13:13.460 And if they understood how to reality test for themselves, whether they're in a mind

01:13:19.220 control environment, then they'll, you know, won't join or they'll get out if they're already

01:13:24.580 in.

01:13:25.520 So I've had a long interest in this, including interviews in depth with Catherine Oxenberg,

01:13:30.920 who's she was a famous star.

01:13:32.680 She is a famous star and was very big in the 1980s.

01:13:36.800 And her daughter, India Oxenberg, who was lured into this cult NXIVM, which is from my

01:13:42.920 hometown, Albany, New York.

01:13:44.580 You wouldn't have thought I wouldn't have thought it could happen in an upstate New

01:13:47.480 York community.

01:13:48.160 People are very sensible.

01:13:49.460 You kind of always think it's not going to be me.

01:13:51.140 It's not going to be my hometown.

01:13:52.900 Where to sense?

01:13:53.980 No, wrong.

01:13:54.940 Can happen anywhere.

01:13:56.360 And here she is, this glamorous, absolutely stunning woman, you know, very well known and

01:14:01.000 her beautiful daughter.

01:14:01.820 And they went for a like self like female empowerment.

01:14:05.980 That's what they were told it was going to be about.

01:14:07.380 You know, start a business for female leaders.

01:14:10.280 And her daughter thought that was attractive.

01:14:12.180 And Catherine thought, sure, I'll go.

01:14:13.740 I'll support you.

01:14:14.680 And they went and then they took like maybe another seminar and then maybe a third.

01:14:18.620 And then Catherine was like, I'm good.

01:14:19.920 And India was getting more and more into it.

01:14:22.160 And of course, you didn't need to buy up to the next level of courses.

01:14:25.080 And it had all the features, right?

01:14:27.060 It was like they revered the one guy, Keith Raniere, this short, unattractive, disgusting

01:14:33.220 man.

01:14:33.900 They always are.

01:14:34.720 It's never the Robert Redford, Brad Pitt type who's at the center.

01:14:39.820 All the women, as it turns out, were having sex with him.

01:14:42.900 The women wound up being branded within this weird little sex cult that was like baked into

01:14:49.600 the cult.

01:14:50.020 Anyway, it was such a story as Catherine tried to get her daughter out of this, thank God,

01:14:54.880 successfully.

01:14:55.980 But the pulling out is so much harder than the pulling in.

01:15:02.680 Yeah, exactly.

01:15:03.400 I would say that I knew about Keith Raniere when he got busted by 20 attorneys general

01:15:09.940 for his multi-level marketing cult, Consumers Byline.

01:15:14.880 Multi-level marketing cults, you know, promise the pie in the sky, you'll make a fortune.

01:15:20.760 But it's all about behavior, information, thought and emotional control to make people

01:15:26.300 dependent.

01:15:27.160 He was forbidden from doing an MLM.

01:15:29.840 He recruited Nancy Salzman to be the front person and did an MLM for coaching.

01:15:36.480 And so the whole NXIVM program, I have a lot of information on my freedomofmind.com website

01:15:42.620 about NXIVM and all the techniques they've used.

01:15:45.480 And I'll also add, after my deprogramming in 1976 from the Moonies, I befriended ex-Scientologists

01:15:53.280 and started learning.

01:15:54.880 I befriended Paulette Cooper, who was unmercifully attacked by Scientology.

01:16:02.200 And I got labeled a suppressive person.

01:16:04.520 And I'm very close friends with John Atak, who's written the best books on Scientology,

01:16:11.980 being a former member himself and brilliant.

01:16:15.980 People need to understand it can happen to anyone.

01:16:20.100 And it makes a lot of sense for preventive education, consumer awareness.

01:16:27.540 Again, why I'm so grateful, Megan, that you're doing this show.

01:16:32.640 Well, how do you know, right?

01:16:33.780 Like, I know lots of people who pay to go to a self-help workshop or, I don't know, you

01:16:41.040 learn how to do some sort of stress management techniques, what have you.

01:16:45.600 There's all sorts of things out there and they bounce from one to another, but they never

01:16:51.320 get drawn into a cult.

01:16:53.740 Like, they don't wind up giving their money.

01:16:55.280 They, you know, they just sort of test different things.

01:16:57.440 But is there a personality type who is more likely to be susceptible to this?

01:17:04.320 A personality type?

01:17:06.120 I would say probably if you're oriented to being a people pleaser and you haven't been

01:17:13.240 taught how to be assertive, to say no, you're going to be more likely susceptible to being

01:17:21.540 manipulated, especially by trained recruiters who know a lot of social influence techniques.

01:17:28.980 But I want to state categorically that everyone is situationally vulnerable.

01:17:35.460 Death of a loved one, an illness, a breakup in a relationship, losing a job, moving to a new

01:17:42.900 city, state or country that throws you off balance, where somebody can come in and start

01:17:50.280 telling you with certainty how much your life can get better or how they can, you can be

01:17:56.740 a help to save the world and make the world a better place.

01:18:01.620 With Scientology, it's more about power than saving the world.

01:18:06.240 There's an element of clearing the planet and getting rid of all the evil mental health

01:18:11.180 professionals.

01:18:11.900 I'm one of those.

01:18:13.980 But mostly, it's a situational vulnerabilities and lack of awareness that it could happen

01:18:22.240 to you.

01:18:23.400 So if you're walking around thinking, oh, it only happens to weak people or stupid people

01:18:28.940 or uneducated people, then you're really very, very vulnerable.

01:18:33.980 Think again.

01:18:34.480 What is it about Keith Raniere or Sun Yon Moon or L. Ron Hubbard and now his disciple,

01:18:43.540 David Miscavige of Scientology?

01:18:44.960 What is it about them that makes them so good at persuasion?

01:18:49.000 That makes them, you know, you talk about Keith Raniere.

01:18:51.380 He's just some loser.

01:18:52.780 I mean, this guy never accomplished anything in his life.

01:18:54.880 So how does he have these enormous powers of persuasion to get so many people to follow

01:18:59.200 him?

01:18:59.480 That's a really good question.

01:19:01.920 So I want to cite Eric Fromm, who was brilliant, wrote in the 40s.

01:19:08.340 He talked about malignant narcissists.

01:19:11.660 And I have said in my books that this is the stereotypical profile of cult leaders, the

01:19:19.780 grandiosity, the certainty, the need for attention.

01:19:24.500 But the lack of empathy, but also thinking that they're above the law, the pathological

01:19:30.680 lying.

01:19:32.200 And there's a whole list that I have on my website.

01:19:36.100 So certainty is something that the average person tends to go, hmm, they're so sure.

01:19:45.340 Maybe they know something I don't know.

01:19:47.700 Well, as opposed to this person has a personality disorder, they're a narcissist, and I should

01:19:56.240 be more skeptical of anyone with that level of certainty and such.

01:20:01.120 But I also want to comment that I just finished two chapters for a textbook on hypnosis about

01:20:07.460 the dark side of hypnosis.

01:20:09.120 And I wrote about Hubbard being a hypnotist and that the entire system is based on hypnosis.

01:20:17.580 And Croneri learned neurolinguistic programming, which was based on the work of Milton Erickson,

01:20:25.260 who was the penultimate hypnotherapist, psychiatrist.

01:20:30.040 So what I want to say to your listeners is that human beings go in and out of altered states

01:20:38.400 of consciousness all day long.

01:20:40.760 And hypnosis is not sleep.

01:20:43.760 It's about a focusing and narrowing of your attention, which makes you more suggestible to

01:20:51.360 ideas.

01:20:52.240 And this is a great superpower for people who are super successful to enter into this kind

01:21:00.480 of flow state where they're able to super concentrate.

01:21:04.480 But if you're in an environment with someone with a hidden agenda who can start putting in

01:21:10.020 beliefs and ideas like you've lived before or that, you know, the world is filled with

01:21:16.520 body thetans, which is part of Hubbard's sci-fi ideology, the critical mind gets bypassed.

01:21:26.320 So again, the critical thing always to protect yourself is look at the source, look for credibility,

01:21:35.560 look for credentials, and always be open to listening to critics and former members.

01:21:42.720 And if you're in a group that says, don't ever listen to X members or critics, automatically

01:21:50.300 you should be going, that's information control.

01:21:53.480 I'm an intelligent human being.

01:21:55.880 Let me hear what the critics and former members have to say, and I'll decide for myself whether

01:22:01.380 or not that has validity or not.

01:22:03.600 This is what this is why I say when I was in Fox News, I was in a cult.

01:22:07.120 And it's not to say it wasn't a real cult, but there were there were cultish elements

01:22:11.920 in that you once you leave, you are otherized.

01:22:15.720 That is it.

01:22:16.300 You don't leave like you once you're out, you are banished, you know, you're shunned.

01:22:21.460 And when I was there, it was all about the reverence to dear leader who was Roger Ailes,

01:22:26.980 who ran that place with an iron fist and would absolutely be telling you not to listen to

01:22:32.640 anything the Libs said, you know, that was his political bias, but also there was something

01:22:37.860 different about it.

01:22:38.780 And just the way like the people would talk about Roger, like I hear remnants of it when

01:22:45.820 I hear stories about Scientology, about how, you know, well, Roger approves of this.

01:22:50.840 Well, Roger likes that.

01:22:52.080 Well, Roger thought this, you know, as if he was this deity that somehow had, you know,

01:22:56.980 greater divine knowledge than the rest of us.

01:22:59.420 And so where do you where do you draw the line between, well, they just love the guy

01:23:03.820 because he was a genius and he built a really powerful news organization.

01:23:06.920 And this is getting culty, right?

01:23:09.980 Like, I still don't know exactly where that line is.

01:23:13.400 So it's a really important point.

01:23:15.740 I just put up on my podcast an interview with a leadership professor of business about Elizabeth

01:23:22.640 Holmes and Theranos.

01:23:24.300 And he did a journal article talking about corporate cults and the qualities to to evaluate.

01:23:32.080 And it comes back to the charismatic figure who cannot be criticized, who is held up and

01:23:40.940 not accountable, not transparent, doesn't apologize and say that they're wrong.

01:23:46.620 But the control of behavior, information, thoughts and emotions in order to make people dependent

01:23:53.400 and obedient.

01:23:55.380 And so to stay in your job, you need to adopt the corporate identity, keep your thoughts to

01:24:02.860 yourself and follow the rules or be ostracized and criticized.

01:24:09.300 And that's the opposite of healthy corporations and healthy groups where they want to send.

01:24:14.600 They want to hear other points of view that the leaders, if they screw up, they say sorry

01:24:19.780 and they really make policy changes.

01:24:23.540 But if you're an authoritarian, you want total power and control.

01:24:27.480 Well, the NBC might be a cult, too, because they didn't want opposite points of view from

01:24:32.040 what they're, you know, that's a news problem.

01:24:33.840 That's a media.

01:24:34.760 The important thing about my work is I'm against authoritarianism on the left and the right.

01:24:40.920 I'm against I want human rights for all.

01:24:44.600 I want I want to support human rights, women's rights, gay rights.

01:24:49.440 I want people to be free to think and not just conform and follow in lemming like fashion,

01:24:57.920 whatever they're being told.

01:25:00.560 You know, I would say my own experience, and this may be one of the reasons why I'm so interested

01:25:04.120 in this subject is it took years after leaving Fox for really the that second skin to come

01:25:10.800 off.

01:25:11.760 You know what I mean?

01:25:12.360 Like, yeah, it took a long time.

01:25:15.380 Even to be honest with you, I was a knee jerk defender of Fox News for a long time.

01:25:20.560 Like, no, they didn't know that you're wrong.

01:25:22.280 Well, don't criticize them like that.

01:25:23.400 Well, that's not true.

01:25:24.020 And to this day, I have some fear in criticizing them because I was there for some 14 years.

01:25:32.880 Like, I have a bit of a emotional hangover from these problems.

01:25:40.700 So this is a really important point that you make.

01:25:44.180 And when I talk about the bite model and the E is emotional control, emotional control

01:25:50.300 includes feeling awe and reverence and feeling special and chosen, but mostly it's about

01:25:56.720 fear and guilt.

01:25:58.600 And the universal mind control technique is what I call phobia indoctrination, which is the inculcation

01:26:06.400 of irrational fears that if you ever leave the group or criticize the leader, terrible things

01:26:13.600 are going to happen to you.

01:26:15.660 And the way to get out of phobia programming is to think back who you were before you got

01:26:22.680 involved and to use your critical frontal cortex to evaluate what's an actual danger where you

01:26:30.780 should have fear and what's an irrational fear.

01:26:36.080 And I deal with traffickers, sex traffickers, pimps, as well as labor traffickers.

01:26:41.820 And unfortunately, with some of these criminal enterprises, people should be afraid of speaking

01:26:49.060 out against them because they can be harassed or harmed physically.

01:26:53.900 But most religious cults, most cults, I would say, in the United States, it's a psychological

01:27:00.960 imprisonment.

01:27:02.980 And why it took time for you is time brings perspective through experiences outside of the

01:27:11.240 totalist environment, the more contact you have with normal people and other frames of

01:27:17.320 reference.

01:27:17.940 And also, I would suspect your interest in Scientology and NXIVM and other things that gave you some

01:27:25.180 tools to start thinking and getting perspective on Fox would be my.

01:27:29.980 No, I remember I was at NBC.

01:27:31.820 We were covering NXIVM.

01:27:32.900 I was neck deep on that story.

01:27:35.060 And I was doing an interview on what a cult is and what are the defining characteristics.

01:27:40.820 And I said on camera, oh, my God, I was in a cult.

01:27:44.660 It was the aha moment.

01:27:46.300 I think I watched that interview, actually.

01:27:48.720 Yeah, it was.

01:27:50.200 And truly, I don't mean to be completely this isn't my cult hangover, but I don't mean to be

01:27:54.260 completely disparaging of this place that gave me all these opportunities.

01:27:57.160 And I made a lot of money there, but it's more than just a normal news organization.

01:28:01.500 There's just no question about it.

01:28:03.420 And it's not that and the more is not healthy.

01:28:07.160 So, all right, enough about me.

01:28:08.760 How how do we extract somebody who we know?

01:28:13.980 I mean, like this actually happened to my friend Catherine Oxenberg.

01:28:16.640 She had to extract India and India did not want to hear anything negative about NXIVM

01:28:23.960 or Keith Raniere from Catherine.

01:28:26.000 Catherine had been otherized.

01:28:27.940 Catherine had been made the outsider and a threat.

01:28:30.760 So it's a very ginger, delicate process for someone like Catherine or a loved one like

01:28:38.020 your family trying to extract the loved one.

01:28:41.720 Right.

01:28:42.560 So I want to say that I was extracted after a near fatal van crash in 1976, and I got involved

01:28:51.240 for a year with extracting other people from the Moonies called deprogramming.

01:28:58.240 And I realized this is not healthy.

01:29:01.460 This is traumatizing.

01:29:03.420 And then it became illegal when judges stopped giving conservatorships to parents.

01:29:09.280 So I just turned my back on that approach.

01:29:12.740 But I still wanted to help people involved with cults.

01:29:15.960 So I embarked and now it's 47 years later, but I embarked on a process of wanting to understand

01:29:23.440 the programming elements and what are the patterns that have helped people to get out

01:29:29.520 and to reality test.

01:29:31.400 And that's why I've written four books on the subject and have a course that I've just

01:29:36.040 put up for mental health professionals, especially to help their clients.

01:29:40.740 And what works the best is empowering people to reflect and reality test for themselves versus

01:29:48.620 trying to persuade them that the group is wrong or bad or the leader is wrong or bad.

01:29:55.600 And it's about warmth, respect, asking questions and understanding the methodology involved with

01:30:04.760 creating this dual identity or dissociative disorder to get the person back in time before they joined

01:30:12.280 to start remembering what did they think their life was going to be when they went to that first session.

01:30:19.820 And if you knew then what you know now, if you could go back in time and you were being arrested

01:30:26.580 as India was under threat of arrest, you can start to activate the person's core identity.

01:30:37.580 And as you educate them about Chinese communist brainwashing or pimps or traffickers and explain

01:30:43.960 the influence continuum and the bite model, you're asking them questions and pointing out these

01:30:50.500 other areas or other cults that they would say are brainwashing people and people exit themselves

01:30:59.380 is what I'm trying to say, Megan. But if you can create a team of family members, friends, former members.

01:31:07.780 And that's why I loved Michelle is doing this book, Forager.

01:31:12.560 There are so many other former members who were born in cults or recruited in cults writing books.

01:31:18.140 What I love about this is it's people sharing their stories will help to destigmatize

01:31:24.600 the idea that only weak, stupid people are in these groups, right? And that many people have life

01:31:32.720 after cults or life after group. So they can have a future in their mind where that's happier.

01:31:40.480 Yeah. So the what what percentage of attempted extractions work, would you say? Like, what's

01:31:49.560 the success rate? So, again, I don't think of extractions. I have what I call the strategic

01:31:56.320 interactive approach. And it unfortunately, it's labor intensive and time intensive. So families who

01:32:05.180 want to just write me a check and tell me to go get their loved one, I don't take those clients. I work

01:32:11.280 with people who love their son or daughter or their husband or wife or their mother or father. And I coach

01:32:18.120 them on how to interact. So it happens over time. And I would say the earlier you can start in this

01:32:26.500 project to the person's recruitment, the faster they're going to exit. If you start this process 10 years

01:32:34.160 later or 20 years later, there's is it in a way, it's easier to get them to think critically because

01:32:41.020 they've had a long body of negative experiences that have been suppressed, but it's harder to

01:32:47.140 resocialize. And again, you want a face saving exit for people to say, we love you. We want you in our

01:32:56.540 life. And and again, the idea isn't to try to to control them or to tell them what to think or to

01:33:04.140 tell them what they're doing is wrong, but to ask them to think over what it is they're doing and

01:33:10.000 persuade you perhaps to, you know, why it's so good that you would might consider to get involved

01:33:17.360 yourself. It's a very powerful frame. Oh, I hope you enjoy the show as much as I did.

01:33:24.800 Cults are fascinating. They're so fascinating. Are they fascinating to you? They probably are. If you're

01:33:29.800 sitting here listening to this tomorrow, we conclude our hot crime summer with a deep dive

01:33:35.580 on the missing plane, MH three 70 and the show that's been haunting us all since we taped it

01:33:44.580 people. We found the guy who knows what happens to MH three 70. And we found the guy who can tell you

01:33:51.780 exactly how it likely happened, how the passengers were likely killed. Oh, God, it's chilling. It's

01:33:59.780 compelling. You might not fly the same again, but some of the things he said actually calmed my my

01:34:07.120 nervous flying nerves. So join me tomorrow for this crazy story and the deep dive. We've got the expert

01:34:14.280 to tell you on what went down. Talk to you then.

01:34:20.260 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

01:34:25.100 Beat, beat, beat boxing actually has hidden health benefits. It can help strengthen and protect

01:34:45.620 your voice from injury. See healthy living differently with Manulife. Visit manulife.ca

01:34:51.840 slash health. Yeah.

The Megyn Kelly Show - June 15, 2023

What Happens in Cults, and Escaping From Them： A Megyn Kelly Show True Crime Special ｜ Ep. 573

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