Most of us can not fathom what it would be like growing up inside a religious cult. Hell, most cult members do not realize they are in one to begin with. That’s the thing about cults; to those on the inside, it is just normal life.
For those of us who have had the experience of speaking with people who escaped the clutches of their former captors, lifers who were born inside and have since escaped, these stories can seem unreal. To the former members, it’s just normal. Without a barometer telling them what normalcy looks like, the coercive tactics and systemic abuse seems like just another Saturday.
My experience in speaking with former cult members is centered around the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, a reclusive, politically connected, and abusive organization where members are told they are God’s chosen people, while outsiders are tools of Satan. It sounds like typical cult characteristics, but what separates the PBCC from most religious cults is how they balance spiritualism with unfettered capitalism.
Their leader is Australian, Bruce Hales. He’s a billionaire, which makes sense when you discover that all of his 54, 000 followers pay tributes to him several times a year, from all localities across the world. This includes the hundreds of Brethren-owned companies worldwide, companies who often receive lucrative contracts from local and federal governments in the countries they operate.
Mostly, however, Hales has fostered a culture of silence and cover-up regarding the endless examples of physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse of PBCC members. I have interviewed dozens of such ex members, their stories infiltrating the part of me that remembers what it is like to be abused as a child, and how disbelief can thrust you into crisis.
For many of these ex members, living in crisis is a daily reality. If they report their abuse to trusted elders, those elders will tear their lives apart, beginning with the idea that looking inwards to find spiritual flaws is the right answer. They receive what’s known as priestly visits, where elders are sent to the homes of victims of abuse, and instead of discussing how to hold their abusers accountable, they manipulate the victim into submission, prioritizing the church over the crimes of one of its members.
Whenever I speak to one of these victims on Blackballed, I marvel at how courageous they are. Not only are they individuals who have had to deal with being victims of heinous abuse, but they are also dealing with the trauma associated with detaching from the only way of life they’ve ever known. Women go from living an oppressed existence, where they are only expected to marry, breed, cook and clean, to having actual options in life. This daunting transformation can sometimes lead to ‘outside world’ problems, from selecting an abusive partner, to dealing with the underlying brainwashing revealed as they decompress.
Despite the struggles ex members experience upon leaving the PBCC, most of them are now living fruitful lives. This, despite having to deal with what the PBCC calls the Doctrine of Separation, which forbids members from ever seeing or communicating with loved ones if they decide to leave, or are ex-communicated. It’s a horribly abusive tactic, ripping parents from their children, friends from friends, husbands from wives, and has the added bonus of being assisted by remaining loved ones who truly believe that shunning their family member is godly, the conditioning doing the job it was meant to do.
I’ve now interviewed dozens of ex PBCC members, but the most powerful interview was with Cheryl Hope, whose terrifying childhood was retold 3 years ago, a podcast I still think about often. Neither of us knew it that day, but what she Cheryl was really doing was opening the door for other ex members to tell their own stories. What followed was an onslaught of harrowing tales and experiences, many of which topped off with aspirational stories of how they overcame the clutches of the cult they once belonged to. The pain of their familial estrangements is balanced by a peculiar forgiveness, and even pragmatism, noting that if they tried to stay in contact, their remaining family members would be punished, but at the same time they understood why their families never wanted to see them again.
And here they all are, traversing the real world. Some of them have been out for decades, some of them just weeks, but all of them can still feel their starting point of a theocratic authority, propped up by groupthink and sociopathic leaders. But I commend them. They show so much bravery, so much resiliency.
I’ll be writing more about individual ex members in the coming weeks. This was just to let the ex PBCC community know that I am back, and will always have a space for them to tell their stories.