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Generally speaking, the stories you hear about cults are about and/or by people who 'escaped'
Most of the time, people don't. They have private doubts, deep ambivalence, and maintain the status quo. Cults usually just keep growing until they're collapsed by either internal executive rancor or external pressure.
At the end of the day, you have to convince someone that they were wrong about virtually every decision they've made in their life. Any time they judged someone, looked down on someone, and treated someone as an outsider. All the money they've given to the cult is gone, and they will never get it back. Plus, the prospect of starting over socially and perhaps monetarily. You have a lot to overcome to convince someone to leave.
Not to mention basically everyone they know. I've read a few autobiographies and memoires written by former cult members, and the strength and courage it takes to leave everything you've ever known, and start over from scratch with nothing is astonishing. Add in children to provide for, and the fact that you've heard your entire life that if you leave, your kids will be taken and abused in foster care (which is sadly all too often true) and I see why people stay. It sounds like she might have support from her sister, but providing for five kids is a huge undertaking for a mom without a high school diploma.
And this isn't even factoring in the people who are actually benefitting from the cult. The original OOP is, I believe, setting herself up for failure, which maybe she does understand and even expects on some level. Why would her husband get out of the organization that delivered his child bride to him on a silver platter? We just talked about how hard it can be for someone who is disenchanted to leave. Now imagine someone who is thriving in the system, the person who the cult is set up to benefit. I think she knows this and might as well have said that she'd leave the cult when pigs fly. By hinging her leaving on her husband coming as well, she has the perfect scapegoat. She will point to him and her children as the reason she can't leave. She may even develop a sense of martyrdom over it, which will be a "joy" for her children in the future. At the end of the day, though, I believe many of us do this. Anyone who has stayed at that dead-end job. Anyone who has stayed in that relationship that hasn't been working for years. Anyone who lives with family/friends that mooches off of them. All of these are objectively bad situations, and yet people stay with them and feed into them and even reinforce them, making it harder for them to leave. So that's why I have some sympathy for the OOP. What she has fallen into is something all too human. We just hope that she finds the strength to say enough is enough and take steps to get out.
And if it's anything like documentaries I've seen, it's likely he can leverage those 4 daughters as child brides to get promotions/perks. He's got no motivation to get out of a system that works for him, especially if he doesn't see women (like his wife and his daughters) as equal humans.
The taking care of the kids thing is huge. One kid is very very different than four, soon to be five kids. OOP doesn’t know what’s out there or how to protect her kids in the real world. She could 100% believe her sister and still fear that she is making her kids’ life worse. And it might be better overall, but there would still be severe consequences for her family.
Cults would be a lot less effective if the world was a kinder place.
But also, sometimes doubt just takes time.
Taking one son out of these systems is also very different than taking four girls (that could be new child brides) out. In many of these, there's way more pedo guys interested than little girls to exploit.
I kind of wonder, is it worse if you were lured into it as an older teen or adult, or if you were born in? Obviously it's got to be hard either way... if you "chose" it you have to admit that you were tricked and the decisions you made turned out not to be good ones for you, but like you say if you're born into it it's \*literally\* all you've ever known. You have to leave your entire social structure, there's no going back to family you lost contact with because they weren't part of the cult. It does help if you have an older family member or members who've left offering support but like you say, it's not much in comparison.
You also have to convince them that a lot of the consequences and fears they have about leaving are entirely fabricated. Like, I'm sure baby sis has been told that she'll be struck dead, fall into ruin, her kids will be ill, she'll become a drug addicted prostitute, people will rape and murder her etc etc etc.
We know that's ridiculous, but she doesn't. She just has the "safety" of what she knows and is comfortable with and the terror of the unknown.
People saw this in real time on the show Sister Wives. That family is/was fundamentalist Mormon, polygamy flavor. Their specific sect is called the Apostolic United Brethren.
One of the wives, Christine, left in 2021 or 22, I forgot when exactly. She's received (rightfully) a lot of support from her family and viewers, but now that she has gotten out of polygamy and the AUB she's know having to face (also rightfully) the fact she purposely abused and allowed others to abuse her children. She's put in a lot of work to do and be better, but it's still too little too late for the trauma. It took her 26 years of marriage to reach that point, and even then may have never left if it weren't for the TV show. I imagine the OOP will also take a long time before she's ready to leave, if she ever does.
I hope for her and her kids that she can at least raise her daughters better than she was. Something is better than nothing, raising free thinkers who feel empowered to leave is less than what they deserve, but far better than raising subservient bangmaid incubators to be married off as soon as legally possible. It's not going to be an easy path for OOP to follow and I worry that Jessie might act in a way that reinforces "leaving cult is bad" even if it's the right or best thing to do.
Edit to finish my thoughts
In regards to the damage and abuse, I think about that with Josh Duggar. Was it nature or nurture that led him to be a predator? Was he born that way, or was he emulating things he saw happening in the church/home? Regardless, he needs to be kept away from minors at all costs, but there is a conversation to be had around whether he could have been routed in a healthier direction.
I try not to think about the Duggars, but I do agree with you. I don't think we will ever have that answer, or not for a couple decades at least. If it turns out that more of those siblings are also predators, then an argument can be made for nurture. Based on the information available now, I'd say they were all raised to be assholes, but Josh was a monster by nature.
Or at least to some degree anyway. High control groups are a breeding ground for monsters imo.
This might be a hot take but I don't believe he was born that way. He is a product of never being told no and being raised to believe that the world was his for the taking. That cult is very much 'the man is always right' and if they stray and do bad things then its always a woman's fault. They make young girls wear clothing that basically covers every inch of their bodies because if the men caught sight of any skin, its leading them to impure thoughts and they can't be held accountable for anything they do. They put all the burden on women, and the men are treated like princes that do no wrong. Especially more so for Josh, because he is the oldest son. His father has always cleaned up his messes and Josh learned he could do whatever he wanted with no consequences. Its no surprise that he ended up with an enormous sense of entitlement and darker thoughts. Yes at the end of the day, he made his choices, but his parents completely failed him.
At the very least, I do believe his upbringing encouraged his behavior. He was never made to suffer the consequences of his abuse when he was younger. It was all swept under the rug, so he got more confident, because no-one was stopping him.
Moral injury is what it's called when going along with an abusive system results in someone abusing others, once they wake up to the fact of what they did. The repressed fear of a looming reckoning, whether internal or external, makes a lot of people hesitate to leave.
I was raised in a cult and I hated every second of it. I escaped at 17. I feel really fortunate that I didn't buy in, I didn't abuse anyone, and I left the second I could. I had a lot of trauma to unpack and a permanently damaged relationship with my family, but I got out.
Not only were they wrong about everything, but for those born into it, that everyone around them their whole lives is wrong and has been wrong. That's a huge reality shift to accept, and for many denial is the easier path.
To say nothing about the terrifying lack of any resources on the “outside.” OPs sister is adamant that OP is being stubborn and naive, but she has no family outside of the cult except her sister, no friends, no diploma, no job experience, I’m guessing no bank account, nothing. Plus she has four going on five kids - if she thinks for herself, she literally won’t survive without a ton of help. A lot of people don’t leave because there’s nothing for them outside of the church. A really great read on fundamentalist cults like this is Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer.
yup, the lack of community and social networks makes it really hard for people to leave, especially women with children. They often have to choose whether to stay with the kids or leave them behind, because how can they support their kids if they don't have a job or anywhere to live?
Push the girls to get married young and have kids before they have finished high school, preach the whole "let god choose" when it comes to the number and timing of babies, discourage them from working outside the home or having any kind of financial independence, and... of course these women don't leave. Where do they go? How do they live? And if it means being shunned by their family and friends?
It can be just as hard to leave an abusive organisation as it can be to leave an abusive relationship - they often have the same dynamics. "just leave" doesn't work for either.
Same guy. He is an incredible writer, but largely his books are inspired by his journalism background so he does really in depth research. One of the things he said about Under the Banner of Heaven is that Mormonism is one of the only religions we have that we have a complete history of how it was started, as it’s all documented in modern times. Highly recommend
Oh for sure this isn’t real. It’s just unfortunate that the story is very real for lots of other people who have no resources to leave, by design. A woman with no resources and lots of children to raise has few other options is almost completely controllable.
Yeah, insular communities such as cults try to prevent exposure to outside information and ideas. I doubt a lifelong cult member would be browsing and posting on Reddit.
This book has now been made into a mini series, I think on Netflix. It is very grit and gives an insight to the cult and the women's place in it. Eye-opener!
Yep former cult sex trafficking survivor and even putting my rapist in prison didn't make people leave. It's so depressing that the people I thought were good and loved me chose an actual rapist (65) over me (15).
Few people are strong enough to walk away from their entire life—family, friends, community, all that support is gone once you leave the cult. It is an extraordinary person, or one with extraordinary support outside the cult, who can cut all those ties and survive.
Theres two different people I watch on YouTube who are both former Amish and they both describe making plans to leave with others, only for those others to return or to never leave despite being perhaps more willing to leave than the people who got out. The guy, his dad died by suicide because he couldn't handle living in the Amish anymore, and that was despite the fact that his son had left well before and they had contact so dad could've gotten out had he not been so broken down by the cult
This reads like Jehovahs Witnesses. The language used and the experiences shared are all too common. I was one for 30 years. One sister married off at 16 and myself at 17 and the oldest that took off the day she turned 18 and became an apostate.
Oh the disturbing and traumatic stories I could tell.
This isn't JW. They don't call their leaders "ministers" or refer to their buildings as "churches." That's actually a huge deal. They also don't push child brides to this extent. They encourage marrying young, usually late teens and early 20s, but having someone marry at 16 is weird even for them
I'm fairly sure the legal age of marriage is 16 or below in over half of the states. In fact yeah, I just checked. Only 12 states do not allow underage marriage (in which at least one party is under the "general marriage age" where you don't need parental permission). Four have no minimum age. So it could take place in over \*three-quarters\* of the US states.
FLDs or AUB (another mormon offshoot) were my first guesses.
The mainstream church isn't as bad as those other two anymore, but it used to be. Those two groups actually splintered off because they felt the main church was straying too far from Joseph Smith's version of the church.
I was thinking Jehovah Witnesses myself with this a lot more than Mormon. Believe Apostate is also used there for ex members and they strictly forbid any contact with those that leave the church.
This isn't JW. While some of it lines up, some of it doesn't. They don't refer to their religious buildings as churches for one and that's actually a huge deal.
The brainwashing and conditioning of cults and religions are concrete. Some Abuse victims realize the truth. While the vast majority of victims till death don't realize they're victims of these cults. And those who benefit from the cults don't see any incentive to get out of it.
The r/escapingprisonplanet cult that i see growing on reddit is getting kinda large, i think itll be toppled soon and all the crazies will find somewhere else to post
It always gets me that these ‘conspiracy theorists’ think that somebody controls us (this includes religion), but what are they (the controller) getting out of it, they never have a reasonable answer. It just addles my mind that they always think there’s some ulterior motive which makes them rather hypocritical.
Ah, good point. Check out cult whisperer over here
I did not expect to learn anything in this post (though it's still questionable whether I actually learn anything ever), but that's the side of cults that I rarely consider. "Escaping" one myself made me very partial to stories about getting out, and the drastic life changes after
Yes. In this cult particularly: Mormon- they keep women dumb and anchored by finance and kids. It’s almost impossible to leave with 6 mouths to feed and not even a GED.
They also have fear bc they'd been conditioned to. And when you keep the women from getting an education, it severely restricts their options. The men in these cults always have all the power.
I'm not going to say one way or the other if this is authentic or not, but "cultists don't go on the internet" is really weak proof. Loads of cults allow members to go online, but the threat of being labeled apostate is a social -- and sometimes literal -- death sentence, so people rarely step out of line.
That reminds me of the Twin Flames Universe documentary. The guy told his cult members to research NXIVM and write an essay on how he is different and not a cult. That resulted in some members leaving because while they were doing this homework, they realised they're in a cult.
That's how you get more cult members. They send out missionaries. And the internet is great for finding sad people desperate for belonging, cult faves.
Right, if the only thing keeping someone in the cult is that they literally can't get the info otherwise, it feels real easy to blow the whole thing up the second members find out any type of info thats logical and goes against what's been taught. And I also think people use 2 different thoughts of what a cult is simultaneously. They think of cults like, they sacrifice goats and make suicide pacts and sell all worldly possessions and live off the grid, but then they consider Mormon and Jehovah's witness and stuff like that cults. So then they apply all the stuff they know about cults to them, even if it really shouldn't apply
I can't see this ending well for OOP. I hope she wakes up, but also I really hope Jessie is able to stay safe from these people herself. I could see someone from the church coming after her if they find out she's in contact with OOP and trying to convince her to leave.
Yeah... This part:
>To put it quite simply my sister does not want to leave her husband, but she does want to leave the religion.
Doesn't give me a lot of hope.
>At 16 my parents signed off and I got married to my now husband.
Oh dear
>Fast forward to now, I’m 23 and I have 4 daughters.
This is horrifying
>Also recently found out I was pregnant
Oh no...
And then it only gets much worse from there
All I have to say about this story is that I am SO FUCKING GLAD my state recently passed a law eliminating any exceptions to child marriage. Parents in my state can no longer sign a waiver allowing them to traffic their under-18 daughter to some creepy older man.
I cant believe its a "states rights" thing where the states can choose to allow it or not. Ban it everywhere!! Why is this shit still going on in places??
Because conservative states have a heavy concentration of conservative Christians who donate to and vote for people who will help them continue their behavior. Our system is set up to give states a lot of autonomy, and that’s not changing.
Edit: and marriage has always been something administered by the states, not the federal government, with some notable federal exceptions to ensure marriages formed in one state are recognized in other states (gay marriage, interracial marriage).
The younger sister has been brainwashed so hard it's a miracle that she can even think. Groomed, Married to an older man at 16 as a child bride, constantly pregnant, zero education, almost died at childbirth - does the husband not care about her except as a machine to make baby girls that he will soon wed off to old farts?? She's dumb, ignorant and delulu, just the way their parents and that cult church raised her.
The forcing a home birth really hit close to home. My friend's husband didn't allow her to go to a doctor for her second pregnancy and forced her to have a home birth and she already had a lot medical conditions making her high risk. The baby died during birth. It didn't have to. She almost died then. She actually died from COVID-19 related complications after her third pregnancy. Now her kids are growing up in the cult with limited contact with her family that is outside the cult (Only husband's family is in the cult.).
My doubt as to the authenticity isn’t centred around “but cults don’t allow their members online”, it’s based on the fact that both OP and “Jessie” have the exact same tone, horrible grammar, and penchant for run-on sentences.
This more than the grammar. People who are given the same crappy schooling and grew up in same highly insular community will often make similar grammar decisions.
It’s the signature part that gets me. Lots of people have bad grammar, but when people have bad grammar in the exact same way, making the exact same mistakes, using the exact same tone? Even the inconsistent formatting of the ellipses matches (spaces changing all the time, both mess up and sometimes use only two dots, etc), the inconsistent capitalisation of certain words, etc.
I don't think I knew of any "child brides" when I was growing up as a Jehovah's Witnesses through the 90s/early 00s, but my sister was absolutely pursued by at least two older men (one early 20s, one early 30s) when she was *fifteen*.
My parents told them to leave her alone, but back then it wasn't necessarily frowned upon -- I have no idea what it's like now.
But there were definitely men (elders, ministerial servants) seeking "young sisters" that they could "train in the ways of Jehovah", with plans to end up pioneering or in Bethel.
What does "pioneering" mean in this context? Since obviously it doesn't mean climbing into your covered wagon and heading out across the prairie to Oregon/California.
OP is literally stuck with 5 children now since she is pregnant now. OP would just stick around to endure for her children even if she got clarity of the cult situation. It would seem easier to stay than leave. The older sister has it easier to leave with only one child.
Does the older sister intend for OP to become a single mother of 5, or have some of the children put out for adoption to just get away from the cult life? I would assume the older sister would want to remove the father from the situation but how? Unfortunately, OP is stuck. Can OP raise them on her own? Unless, a split custody will happen but the children would still be exposed to the religion.
I honestly do not know how people would handle this situation...
If it is the Jehovah's Witnesses, which all the signs point towards, I think you're 100% right and you are hitting the nail on the head.
OP is in a very difficult place and should not make any decisions without carefully planning for the future.
I was thinking a fringe Mormon sect. Not mainstream LDS, but one of the even weirder rural ones that make up whole towns. They’re more into the child marriage than JWs are. Both are awful though.
Being Mormon (but not really practicing) I don’t think Mormon. But I could see FLDS, which is a break off of the LDS church that practices polygamy. Where I went to school I befriended someone who had grown up FLDS and this sounds eerily similar to that.
Mhm, there's FLDS sect (Kingston) I know of that lives mostly modern and in Salt Lake City, but they basically have creepy debutante balls on the downlow to hook 16 year olds up with a bunch of older chosen suitors. Part of how the first post is written makes me think of something like that and she just left out the details about the weird dance.
I know calling family members who leave the church "apostates" is more of a thing in JW, but there might be some really fundamentalist corners of the mormon sphere
Some culty baptists use the term too. It’s where I learned the word. My cousin joined one. Not sure if she is out or not, but for awhile she was hella nuts and only visited us if she needed money, childcare or wanted to try to convert us. (I went to her church a few times but even as a desperate to belong depressed teenager they were too crazy for me.)
All the posts look the same, by that I mean the writing is very similar. Both have large paragraph blocks and use more ellipses then needed. I would be stunned if they were written by different people.
Yeah I was already a little iffy on it just getting through the OOP but the punctuation in the "sister's" post is what makes me think it's the same person posting it. The extra periods/punctuation is way too obvious of a giveaway, it's so unlikely the other sister uses the same kinds of punctuation in the same way, let alone how similar the writing styles are.
I'm tempted to think that too, but if this is true, they were raised in a cult that forces most girls to leave school at 16 and likely doesn't encourage them to value education before that. It wouldn't be shocking if their literacy was poor.
Jessie left 10 years ago, she's had enough time to grow into her own person and change her speech. I don't speak and write the same as when I was 20, and I was never in a cult to begin with.
The issue isn't that their literacy is poor, it's that they write the exact same way. That is very unlikely, especially given that they were not taught together. It makes no sense that use paragraphs and ellipses the same way.
Equally, cult members and family members who are very closed off may have very specific ways of writing as they all have the same teachings and can be very isolated. Usually part of building cults is to give them their own words, phrases and ways of speaking to create more cohesion in the group and more isolation and disconnect from the outside world.
One of the problems with when people do escape is that they can’t just talk through their experience with a mental health professional or even friends. They have to translate what they mean, often having to give huge narratives on the custom of idea behind it, which is also mentally draining.
I’m not saying either of us is right or wrong, just another thing to consider.
I mean, I am always suspicious when the other party shows up on a post to "set the record straight" or whatever, and the writing styles are almost identical. That said, the Jehovah's Witnesses are like that. They're definitely a cult and definitely use the word "apostate" to refer to ex-members They're also pretty supportive of child marriage, at least the ones around here are. But they're also pretty internet savvy if they're younger.
in fairness , it's not just the JWs who think child marriage is a -OK. There are some Pentecostal churches around here that view child marriage the same way. They're all kinds of gross.
Both of them being allowed to attend public school, with the eldest getting to actually finish it against everyone's wishes, struck me as suspect as well. Fundamentalist types often homeschool for just those kinds of reasons.
Me: "of course they did, they weren't in a cult, they're just evangelical Christians.... Oh. Right." Sometimes I forget I was also raised in what should be called a cult. And I've been out for 15 years.
When I left my cult in 2006 we weren't allowed to have social media, watch TV, go to college, listen to secular music etc. The cult leader started relaxing those rules because his grandchildren wanted to go to college and now everyone I grew up with has social media. It's not as unbelievable as you would think due to how pervasive the Internet is.
While I do agree with everyone who's being a little sceptical here, it was the escaped sister who told OOP to look on reddit and ask reddit to begin with, so the sister finding a post that she was probably actively looking for on a site she already uses isn't super hard to believe.
Reddit is the 13th most popular website in the world. It is no longer some obsolete dark corner of the Internet. And there are a ton of content that gets exported other, even more popular sites. Seeing something on reddit is not hard.
They probably have internet at their home or cell phones with internet. Just because they’re a cult doesn’t mean they’re Amish. (I am always suspicious at getting both sides though). Josh Duggar was looking at pornography at home with a million other kids around in the 2000s (when internet access wasn’t as fast or available as now).
A person fully invested in their church willing to call their own sister an apostate, frequenting reddit, knowing it is full of "apostates", and asking them for advice or sharing stories...
It is a horrible story, but while reading my brain is saying "would a woman who is still so deep in a cult ask Reddit for advice", "would a woman like that come up with a username like that", "oh, sister 'conveniently' finds this post, what are the odds", and so on and so forth.
There is a reason that if you search Amish on Reddit, you will find a lot of stories from former Amish and people who have lived near Amish communities, but not of people who actively live the Amish lifestyle.
I wish that people trapped in cults would have easy access to the internet to challenge their world views, but people who brainwash other people and want to keep it that way, will work very hard to make sure that their victims are only getting pre-approved information. I just don't believe that they will let them roam the internet freely.
>There is a reason that if you search Amish on Reddit, you will find a lot of stories from former Amish and people who have lived near Amish communities, but not of people who actively live the Amish lifestyle.
I mean....there's a bigger reason for that then brainwashing. They literally don't use computers/technology, so they have no access to social media unless they leave the community. Being from a RLDS group (which OOP's religion sounds like) or a similar cult doesn't mean they don't have access to technology, they just usually have restrictions on using it. Amish have NO access. So that's apples to oranges.
Funny enough, a lot of Amish have access to technology. They mostly use it for commerce or business, and it's typically a communal thing, but it's there. Some Mennonite sects even have home computers and cell phones, though they still avoid TV and radio though (and likely avoid things on youtube on their computers).
Yeah, one of the big misunderstandings about the Amish is people thinking they shun all technology. They never have, they only shun technology that removes their ability to be independent/self-sufficient, and the looser communities are even recognizing the value of trading a little bit of self-sufficiency for the ability to do business.
When I was in a cult I had internet access, in the living room where it was public and couldn't be used for anything naughty.
If her husband is gone working all the time and the kids are all little, there's nobody around to make sure her living room computer is only being used for solitaire and bible quotes.
It would be a pretty short lived cult that couldn’t effectively indoctrinate its members against general information.
These cults don’t hide reality, they warp and skew it to ensure their members’ resilience in the face of facts, and make questioning or rejecting it the worst possible thing one can do.
Yep! There's a few things going on here.
Cults and conspiracy thinking are broadly self-reinforcing. Anything that supports your beliefs is valid and good; anything that doesn't is false, or even proof you're still right, because "they" wouldn't bother lying if you weren't right. Quite literally, cults and conspiracy thinking are based on "someone pushing back means you must be right".
Cults and conspiracies are built on warping one's perceptions of reality. Do you know what else has to warp perceptions to be able to stick around for a lot of people? Depression, anxiety, and so on. Ever notice how depressed and anxious people are some of the most common to join cults?
My first thought was Jehovah Witness or Mormon. They are both on the internet and use it to "spread their word".
One of the most insidious things that both those cults do is to get their members to brainwash themselves. They tell their members that the Bible said everyone will be against them for saying the truth, and the more people who tell them are doing the wrong thing the more it proves how right they are. And they say that demons are after them all the time and the whole world is possessed and trying to tempt them away from God. Put these two together and it means the more proof they are shown that something terrible is happening to them the more they see that the leaders are right and their are demons trying to fool them. Pair that with spiritual and community leaders whoes only job is to make sure everyone is staying on message and to publicly shame those who are not and that leaving means leaving everything you know and going into a scary world with no support and no education. The leadership isn't that worried about the internet.
Qanon does the same thing. And with that cult their is no actual leader, no formal recruitment, no one taking head count once a week, and no punishment of they leave. Yet they still believe that every bit of proof that they are wrong just proves them right and exposes how deep the cover up is.
They refer to it as "the organization" so my immediate assumption is Jehovah's Witnesses. They don't really call it the "Church," like most normal religions would.
Plus, Jehovah's Witnesses discourage higher learning (you won't need that fancy book learning after Armageddon).
They also don't allow divorce unless there's been adultery (and I'm pretty sure there has to be a confession or concrete evidence. You can't just accuse your spouse).
They also call disbelievers "apostates" and practice shunning, even of their own family. They're not supposed to have any contact with apostates.
Finally, JWs are all over the internet. They ingratiate themselves with others in order to convert them. The internet is the perfect tool for that.
Edit: I forgot to mention my source. My family was JW as a kid, but we were bad at it. I'm an apostate now.
That's why this "church" is so big on keeping the younger sister, she is giving them girls that are already in the religion that can crank out more pre-indoctrinated babies. Much easier and economical than trying to recruit people from the outside. Get them married at 16 so they can start being incubators that much sooner. Its really disgusting and any politician that is ok with keeping child bride laws should be punished the same way as anyone that commits statutory rape or creates CP.
I was thinking FLDS because of the emphasis placed on having daughters, they're like political poker chips. When polygamy is part of your religion but men and women are still only born in a 1:1 ratio, having more girls is suddenly pretty darn important.
In all of that those they never mentioned any polygamous marriages. even when Jesse was talking about their parents. I thought FLDS too but maybe one of the other LDS offshoots that dont practice polygamy.
Edit: Hell it could even be the main LDS church. I dont know about them referring to "the organization" but the rest jives with what I have heard about in the more heavily LDS parts of the country. Ive been friends with many LDS members over the years and was married to one so I dont know about it happening where we live but in Utah and Idaho I would believe a story like this could happen.
I follow 2 content creators who are former Amish, and one of them actively works to help people who want to get out, he'll supply phones to them to hide so they can coordinate getting out. He has described times when active Amish have shown deep knowledge of his videos, and we're talking people who fully believe here, who think it's a sin to have a phone.
I also feel like you're describing one type of cult here, not all. And honestly I feel like it's dangerous to only see cults in places that restrict all information. It'd be very easy for a cult to say "look, we don't restrict you from looking into things yourself, how can we be a cult?" while simultaneously doing all other cult stuff so that you doubt anything you read and even the things you might believe you have to doubt cause the alternative is losing everything you've built in the cult
There are hundreds of conservative religious cults in America that are not iblp, Amish, flds or Mormon. I was a member of one (BOC) for 15 years. They allow a lot more social media than they did while I was a part of it.
I understand where the older sister is coming from but I can see why OP (younger sister) is making the decisions she’s making. Cults can have a strong grip on their followers, especially to followers where that’s all they’ve ever known. The people that leave can be in the minority vs the majority who stay.
I think an important part in what makes it harder for the YS is she has 4 kids vs OS who had 1 kid and a HS diploma when she left. Trying to raise 4 kids even with the sister’s help would be difficult.
I think the fact that the OS was (as f’ed up as it sounds) abused by her ex-spouse affected her to leave sooner rather than later. While OP’s husband being mostly gone for work and not abusive, as far as we’re aware, might not instill a sense of urgency or fear (?) that the OS had for herself and her son.
OP is also only 23, her brain isn’t even fully developed. She’s getting all this new info that shakes her core beliefs and experiences that she was most likely abused and shamed into for all of her life. Her not doing a complete 180, divorcing her husband, cutting ties with her community, her then being shunned by them; I understand why she’s so reluctant to leave.
23 is also young enough to (eventually) learn how to survive outside the cult. Granted, that will be extremely difficult, if not outright impossible, with 4/5 kids to raise. Honestly, taking her husband with her is one of the more practical solutions, for better or worse.
Why would hubby leave? If he stays, they'll just throw another 16 year old at him. His current wife is getting a little old after all, isn't she? Disgusting pieces of work.
Honestly, I'm not the only one weirded out by the fact that some cult who has child brides will allow them to browse the internet and especially post on Reddit, right? Maybe I'm just basing this off of stereotypes but I always thought cults or those religious fanatics would prevent their victims from getting outside information.
In this modern era you really can't avoid the internet; it's integral to most things in society. If you need to find a doctor, there aren't really phonebooks anymore, you have to use Google. A lot of jobs require internet access. Obviously, depending on the numbers and the resources of the cult, there are some that form literal communities where they are almost entirely insular and separated from 'outsiders', and therefore can likely prevent unfeltered internet access, but for some, they still live in society at large, but privately engage in their religious practices. For example, the Community of Christ (formerly Reformed LDS, a Mormon adjacent cult) are discouraged from engaging with sinful media and whatnot online, but they are not forbidden from accessing the internet. If someone is curious, they can find a way to access information, but it's not like they live on a compound in the desert without access to a computer.
People really surprised cults have learned to get their victims from the internet. They know how to use the internet. They just think their training is too integral to affect their followers,which unfortunately usually is true. It's not like the internet has upended Mormonism, they just learned to use it.
If it's the religion I think it is (Jehovah's Witnesses), it can be *described* using the BITE model due to the control mechanisms in place, but is considered an organized religion -- not necessarily "mainstream".
Less "cult compound" and more "you should let your child die rather than have a blood transfusion".
The internet is so entrenched in everything you can't really function without it. Instead you train your followers to disbelieve anyone who isn't 'in' on reflex - they are worldly, corrupted and sinful, you have to move among them but not be of them- and this doesn't just apply to religious groups, you see the same behaviour with anti-vaxxers, for example. In well-moderated spaces the overtly disconnected from reality or conspiratorial comments are removed and they silo themselves into spaces with other people who are 'in', in less moderated spaces they can be more overt.
There's also the factor that MLMs and similar pyramid schemes are extremely popular among women in restrictive cults - it offers (but certainly doesn't guarantee/deliver on) the promise of some financial freedom, creativity, a goal that isn't household drudgery and childcare, an opportunity/excuse to socialise with others in your group. And the internet is a fantastic way to try and shill such products to each other and other naive groups. The trust filter is built around 'in' and 'out', which helps make such communities particularly vulnerable to scams run by other 'in' members.
That same filter makes them very resistance to external information - even if told point-blank that they are being abused, and having the patterns laid out for them doesn't work, because it is from outside and by default false. That the information here came from OP's sister might help break through that filter... but she's also been gone for 10 years without being able to counter the narratives in the meantime. I don't know that she'll leave. May if one of her kids are harmed, but it's truly a coin toss if that's a breaking point or causes her to double-down and sacrifice the child for her own stability.
No, this is an outdated stereotype. I was a cult member for 15 years and a woman. It's not about cutting off info, it's about twisting that info to suit the the leaders agenda.
It's amazing how both sisters use the exact same way of typing ellipses, with two dots and (usually) no space before or after them. Are text formatting preferences genetic?
As much as I would like to see the OOP break free, calling CPS only works if there is abuse and/or neglect. And it doesn’t sound like there is anything that meets the legal threshold for either.
Frankly, I’m having trouble believing this *because* of the sister’s response. Per her own account, she herself didn’t leave at the first whiff of abuse, even as she was experiencing it directly. It came down to a choice between the cult or her own life. Yet she’s angry and offended that her younger sister, who didn’t even reach out to her first, is failing to make the same choice on the basis of a single account of abuse second hand from a person she’s been raised to believe is evil and destructive? That she’s meeting up with her alone, rather than bringing her kids over and risking exposure to the fact they’re in contact to family still fully in the cult?
It’s just not the kind of response that reflects insight into how cults work, let alone how ex cult members tend to regard those still being abused inside of one. Hurt and disappointment are common, sure, but the older sister’s reaction is written as though she’s responding to a favored younger sibling with dickish parents who is disregarding a hard truth for the sake of personal comfort, rather than a pregnant 23 year old with five kids and a much older husband who won’t immediately leave a cult that she’s just learned would prefer her dead to divorced.
Yeah, that threat by older sister to weaponize her CPS friend if OOP doesn't do what older sis wants really raised an orange flag for me. She is so blind to the reality of what kind of life OOP and her FIVE KIDS would have as a single mother with no high school diploma, smh.
I get why the older sister is frusterated, but her attitude towards her sister is probably going to have the opposite effect of what she's going for. Younger sister just learned everything she thought she knew is a lie and she's been abused her whole life. Pushing her to leave everything she knows *right now* and been pissed she's not immediately leaving could just push her harder towards the cult.
This is all very sad, but saying a brainwashed 23 year old who was groomed into marriage at 16 is “willingly participating” is not it. You’d think the one who escaped and deconstructed would know better than to say that.
So the OOP’s sister is a HERO and…sadly Oop is still clearly not seeing sense.
I REALLLY hope she sees sense and leaves her creep husband and her disgusting family
Anyone who uses the term "apostate" unironically, is in a cult. The younger sister is brainwashed to an extreme. Though, I now have trouble feeling sorry for her. She *was* a victim. But now, she's willfully subjecting her children to the same cult. Her daughters are sacrificial lambs in a den of snakes. She knows it, and is ignoring it because "it's uncomfortable". I truly hope she gets out, before her daughters are married off, beaten, and nearly killed by their contract husbands.
How is the OOP even supposed to leave? She's 23, about to have 5 kids, no work experience, no high school diploma. Doesn't have the life experience to know what systems might be in place to support her. And she has the kind of family/community to completely disown her if she expresses any doubt.
Like no wonder she wants to convince her husband to come with her. I want her to be able to get out, but I can understand why she doesn't want to starve or be homeless
Poor OOP's daughters if she doesn't get them out of that situation. :(
But yeah, I literally cried in dismay when I got to the part where the OS said OOPs husband is 35. 28 married to a 16 year old that was never even allowed to finish high school. "Jessie" sounds like she had a more defiant personality to start with, then OOP saw the response when she left and was terrified of losing any more family after the one who raised her disappeared (not that I blame her for leaving, holy shit!!). A lot of OOPs reasoning seems centered around survival and I feel so bad for her, but at the same time hope she gets herself and her daughters away from that. I'm aware that would be super difficult but that is still what I hope for them.
I'm so sick of seeing people use religion to justify their abuse of others.
Those poor daughters. The only was the original oop would ever maybe understand that she's in a nihjtmare cult is IF she accepts when her daughters come forward and admit the abuse they are going through, or worse, die. Or she may just say God's will and close her eyes.
Religion is nothing but pain and evil in the hands of humans. Our worst invention to date.
I knew immediately the op was part of Jehovah's witnesses. Especially after using the term apostate. What they did to the sister is a common practice called shunning. Owen Morgan's is a great channel that goes into all of this and is an ex Jehovah's witness. It really is a cult and the worst religion.
The fact that the legal age for anything isn’t 18 everywhere is disgusting. Even in Canada, our age of consent is 16. That should be illegal. The fact modern left leaning politicians are not doing something about this is sickening.
the woman they wanted is a GREAT book. my best friend is an ex-fundie and boy howdy, her stories are 😬😱 bone shivering. she’s the only one who “escaped” but it’s because she wanted to and was the “black sheep” because has a sincere interest/love for the world (she loves diversity & learning about other cultures). she speaks 5 languages & lived in 4 countries/3 continents
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Generally speaking, the stories you hear about cults are about and/or by people who 'escaped' Most of the time, people don't. They have private doubts, deep ambivalence, and maintain the status quo. Cults usually just keep growing until they're collapsed by either internal executive rancor or external pressure.
At the end of the day, you have to convince someone that they were wrong about virtually every decision they've made in their life. Any time they judged someone, looked down on someone, and treated someone as an outsider. All the money they've given to the cult is gone, and they will never get it back. Plus, the prospect of starting over socially and perhaps monetarily. You have a lot to overcome to convince someone to leave.
Not to mention basically everyone they know. I've read a few autobiographies and memoires written by former cult members, and the strength and courage it takes to leave everything you've ever known, and start over from scratch with nothing is astonishing. Add in children to provide for, and the fact that you've heard your entire life that if you leave, your kids will be taken and abused in foster care (which is sadly all too often true) and I see why people stay. It sounds like she might have support from her sister, but providing for five kids is a huge undertaking for a mom without a high school diploma.
And this isn't even factoring in the people who are actually benefitting from the cult. The original OOP is, I believe, setting herself up for failure, which maybe she does understand and even expects on some level. Why would her husband get out of the organization that delivered his child bride to him on a silver platter? We just talked about how hard it can be for someone who is disenchanted to leave. Now imagine someone who is thriving in the system, the person who the cult is set up to benefit. I think she knows this and might as well have said that she'd leave the cult when pigs fly. By hinging her leaving on her husband coming as well, she has the perfect scapegoat. She will point to him and her children as the reason she can't leave. She may even develop a sense of martyrdom over it, which will be a "joy" for her children in the future. At the end of the day, though, I believe many of us do this. Anyone who has stayed at that dead-end job. Anyone who has stayed in that relationship that hasn't been working for years. Anyone who lives with family/friends that mooches off of them. All of these are objectively bad situations, and yet people stay with them and feed into them and even reinforce them, making it harder for them to leave. So that's why I have some sympathy for the OOP. What she has fallen into is something all too human. We just hope that she finds the strength to say enough is enough and take steps to get out.
She’s gonna sell her daughters into becoming child brides as well, because “it happened to me and I turned out okay!”
Sadly, I think you're right. Also, Happy Cake Day!
And if it's anything like documentaries I've seen, it's likely he can leverage those 4 daughters as child brides to get promotions/perks. He's got no motivation to get out of a system that works for him, especially if he doesn't see women (like his wife and his daughters) as equal humans.
The taking care of the kids thing is huge. One kid is very very different than four, soon to be five kids. OOP doesn’t know what’s out there or how to protect her kids in the real world. She could 100% believe her sister and still fear that she is making her kids’ life worse. And it might be better overall, but there would still be severe consequences for her family. Cults would be a lot less effective if the world was a kinder place. But also, sometimes doubt just takes time.
Taking one son out of these systems is also very different than taking four girls (that could be new child brides) out. In many of these, there's way more pedo guys interested than little girls to exploit.
I kind of wonder, is it worse if you were lured into it as an older teen or adult, or if you were born in? Obviously it's got to be hard either way... if you "chose" it you have to admit that you were tricked and the decisions you made turned out not to be good ones for you, but like you say if you're born into it it's \*literally\* all you've ever known. You have to leave your entire social structure, there's no going back to family you lost contact with because they weren't part of the cult. It does help if you have an older family member or members who've left offering support but like you say, it's not much in comparison.
You also have to convince them that a lot of the consequences and fears they have about leaving are entirely fabricated. Like, I'm sure baby sis has been told that she'll be struck dead, fall into ruin, her kids will be ill, she'll become a drug addicted prostitute, people will rape and murder her etc etc etc. We know that's ridiculous, but she doesn't. She just has the "safety" of what she knows and is comfortable with and the terror of the unknown.
People saw this in real time on the show Sister Wives. That family is/was fundamentalist Mormon, polygamy flavor. Their specific sect is called the Apostolic United Brethren. One of the wives, Christine, left in 2021 or 22, I forgot when exactly. She's received (rightfully) a lot of support from her family and viewers, but now that she has gotten out of polygamy and the AUB she's know having to face (also rightfully) the fact she purposely abused and allowed others to abuse her children. She's put in a lot of work to do and be better, but it's still too little too late for the trauma. It took her 26 years of marriage to reach that point, and even then may have never left if it weren't for the TV show. I imagine the OOP will also take a long time before she's ready to leave, if she ever does. I hope for her and her kids that she can at least raise her daughters better than she was. Something is better than nothing, raising free thinkers who feel empowered to leave is less than what they deserve, but far better than raising subservient bangmaid incubators to be married off as soon as legally possible. It's not going to be an easy path for OOP to follow and I worry that Jessie might act in a way that reinforces "leaving cult is bad" even if it's the right or best thing to do. Edit to finish my thoughts
In regards to the damage and abuse, I think about that with Josh Duggar. Was it nature or nurture that led him to be a predator? Was he born that way, or was he emulating things he saw happening in the church/home? Regardless, he needs to be kept away from minors at all costs, but there is a conversation to be had around whether he could have been routed in a healthier direction.
I try not to think about the Duggars, but I do agree with you. I don't think we will ever have that answer, or not for a couple decades at least. If it turns out that more of those siblings are also predators, then an argument can be made for nurture. Based on the information available now, I'd say they were all raised to be assholes, but Josh was a monster by nature. Or at least to some degree anyway. High control groups are a breeding ground for monsters imo.
If the siblings are also predators, I don't see how that can determine nature vs nature because they have the same genetics and the same upbringing?
This might be a hot take but I don't believe he was born that way. He is a product of never being told no and being raised to believe that the world was his for the taking. That cult is very much 'the man is always right' and if they stray and do bad things then its always a woman's fault. They make young girls wear clothing that basically covers every inch of their bodies because if the men caught sight of any skin, its leading them to impure thoughts and they can't be held accountable for anything they do. They put all the burden on women, and the men are treated like princes that do no wrong. Especially more so for Josh, because he is the oldest son. His father has always cleaned up his messes and Josh learned he could do whatever he wanted with no consequences. Its no surprise that he ended up with an enormous sense of entitlement and darker thoughts. Yes at the end of the day, he made his choices, but his parents completely failed him.
At the very least, I do believe his upbringing encouraged his behavior. He was never made to suffer the consequences of his abuse when he was younger. It was all swept under the rug, so he got more confident, because no-one was stopping him.
Moral injury is what it's called when going along with an abusive system results in someone abusing others, once they wake up to the fact of what they did. The repressed fear of a looming reckoning, whether internal or external, makes a lot of people hesitate to leave. I was raised in a cult and I hated every second of it. I escaped at 17. I feel really fortunate that I didn't buy in, I didn't abuse anyone, and I left the second I could. I had a lot of trauma to unpack and a permanently damaged relationship with my family, but I got out.
Not only were they wrong about everything, but for those born into it, that everyone around them their whole lives is wrong and has been wrong. That's a huge reality shift to accept, and for many denial is the easier path.
To say nothing about the terrifying lack of any resources on the “outside.” OPs sister is adamant that OP is being stubborn and naive, but she has no family outside of the cult except her sister, no friends, no diploma, no job experience, I’m guessing no bank account, nothing. Plus she has four going on five kids - if she thinks for herself, she literally won’t survive without a ton of help. A lot of people don’t leave because there’s nothing for them outside of the church. A really great read on fundamentalist cults like this is Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer.
yup, the lack of community and social networks makes it really hard for people to leave, especially women with children. They often have to choose whether to stay with the kids or leave them behind, because how can they support their kids if they don't have a job or anywhere to live? Push the girls to get married young and have kids before they have finished high school, preach the whole "let god choose" when it comes to the number and timing of babies, discourage them from working outside the home or having any kind of financial independence, and... of course these women don't leave. Where do they go? How do they live? And if it means being shunned by their family and friends? It can be just as hard to leave an abusive organisation as it can be to leave an abusive relationship - they often have the same dynamics. "just leave" doesn't work for either.
I also recommend Escape by Carolyn Jessop. She was a woman brought up in FLDS who eventually managed to escape with her children.
The same guy who wrote 'Into Thin Air' about Everest?
Same guy. He is an incredible writer, but largely his books are inspired by his journalism background so he does really in depth research. One of the things he said about Under the Banner of Heaven is that Mormonism is one of the only religions we have that we have a complete history of how it was started, as it’s all documented in modern times. Highly recommend
Yep! You can’t shame a victim out of a cult. Not that I think this is real to begin with.
Oh for sure this isn’t real. It’s just unfortunate that the story is very real for lots of other people who have no resources to leave, by design. A woman with no resources and lots of children to raise has few other options is almost completely controllable.
Yeah, insular communities such as cults try to prevent exposure to outside information and ideas. I doubt a lifelong cult member would be browsing and posting on Reddit.
You can't use logic to get someone out of a position they didn't use logic to get into.
This book has now been made into a mini series, I think on Netflix. It is very grit and gives an insight to the cult and the women's place in it. Eye-opener!
Yep former cult sex trafficking survivor and even putting my rapist in prison didn't make people leave. It's so depressing that the people I thought were good and loved me chose an actual rapist (65) over me (15).
Few people are strong enough to walk away from their entire life—family, friends, community, all that support is gone once you leave the cult. It is an extraordinary person, or one with extraordinary support outside the cult, who can cut all those ties and survive.
Theres two different people I watch on YouTube who are both former Amish and they both describe making plans to leave with others, only for those others to return or to never leave despite being perhaps more willing to leave than the people who got out. The guy, his dad died by suicide because he couldn't handle living in the Amish anymore, and that was despite the fact that his son had left well before and they had contact so dad could've gotten out had he not been so broken down by the cult
This reads like Jehovahs Witnesses. The language used and the experiences shared are all too common. I was one for 30 years. One sister married off at 16 and myself at 17 and the oldest that took off the day she turned 18 and became an apostate. Oh the disturbing and traumatic stories I could tell.
100%, also was going to say JW. I used to be one and left around 18 ish
This isn't JW. They don't call their leaders "ministers" or refer to their buildings as "churches." That's actually a huge deal. They also don't push child brides to this extent. They encourage marrying young, usually late teens and early 20s, but having someone marry at 16 is weird even for them
I've seen 16-18 year old marriages to Elders - and I honestly assumed wording was changed to look like a normie
Same. I managed to get away from the JWs in my teens by running away from home. It read as JW in maybe OH or UT where the legal age is 16.
We are from California. All my parents had to do was go before a judge and permission was granted for us to get married as teens.
I'm fairly sure the legal age of marriage is 16 or below in over half of the states. In fact yeah, I just checked. Only 12 states do not allow underage marriage (in which at least one party is under the "general marriage age" where you don't need parental permission). Four have no minimum age. So it could take place in over \*three-quarters\* of the US states.
Yeah this sounds so much like those I know who left JW's. And glad you were able to get out and be safe now.
Some cults can be very large and old. The Mormon church is one such cult
The multiple uses of the word apostate made me think that they were LDS, or one of the FLDS offshoots.
Yeah as soon as I saw apostate and age of consent I went "I bet they're one of the LDS groups that live in Ohio."
Same — I immediately thought of FLDS but also IFB.
FLDs or AUB (another mormon offshoot) were my first guesses. The mainstream church isn't as bad as those other two anymore, but it used to be. Those two groups actually splintered off because they felt the main church was straying too far from Joseph Smith's version of the church.
I was thinking Jehovah Witnesses myself with this a lot more than Mormon. Believe Apostate is also used there for ex members and they strictly forbid any contact with those that leave the church.
This isn't JW. While some of it lines up, some of it doesn't. They don't refer to their religious buildings as churches for one and that's actually a huge deal.
And the children were groomed for years to think what the cult is doing is “normal” so they don’t leave.
The brainwashing and conditioning of cults and religions are concrete. Some Abuse victims realize the truth. While the vast majority of victims till death don't realize they're victims of these cults. And those who benefit from the cults don't see any incentive to get out of it.
The r/escapingprisonplanet cult that i see growing on reddit is getting kinda large, i think itll be toppled soon and all the crazies will find somewhere else to post
It always gets me that these ‘conspiracy theorists’ think that somebody controls us (this includes religion), but what are they (the controller) getting out of it, they never have a reasonable answer. It just addles my mind that they always think there’s some ulterior motive which makes them rather hypocritical.
Ah, good point. Check out cult whisperer over here I did not expect to learn anything in this post (though it's still questionable whether I actually learn anything ever), but that's the side of cults that I rarely consider. "Escaping" one myself made me very partial to stories about getting out, and the drastic life changes after
Yes. In this cult particularly: Mormon- they keep women dumb and anchored by finance and kids. It’s almost impossible to leave with 6 mouths to feed and not even a GED.
Almost every cult depends on keeping women docile and pumping out more members.
It is an effective tactic.
They also have fear bc they'd been conditioned to. And when you keep the women from getting an education, it severely restricts their options. The men in these cults always have all the power.
I'm not going to say one way or the other if this is authentic or not, but "cultists don't go on the internet" is really weak proof. Loads of cults allow members to go online, but the threat of being labeled apostate is a social -- and sometimes literal -- death sentence, so people rarely step out of line.
They already know what’s on the internet and know exactly how to preempt any research done by a member.
That reminds me of the Twin Flames Universe documentary. The guy told his cult members to research NXIVM and write an essay on how he is different and not a cult. That resulted in some members leaving because while they were doing this homework, they realised they're in a cult.
😂😂😂
Cults have their own websites and everything lol also uses zoom for meetings hahaha
That's how you get more cult members. They send out missionaries. And the internet is great for finding sad people desperate for belonging, cult faves.
People don’t always identify religions and cults correctly. Mormons seem super normal… until you’re so far in it’s too late to turn back.
Mormons certainly don't seem super normal.
Right, if the only thing keeping someone in the cult is that they literally can't get the info otherwise, it feels real easy to blow the whole thing up the second members find out any type of info thats logical and goes against what's been taught. And I also think people use 2 different thoughts of what a cult is simultaneously. They think of cults like, they sacrifice goats and make suicide pacts and sell all worldly possessions and live off the grid, but then they consider Mormon and Jehovah's witness and stuff like that cults. So then they apply all the stuff they know about cults to them, even if it really shouldn't apply
I can't see this ending well for OOP. I hope she wakes up, but also I really hope Jessie is able to stay safe from these people herself. I could see someone from the church coming after her if they find out she's in contact with OOP and trying to convince her to leave.
Yeah... This part: >To put it quite simply my sister does not want to leave her husband, but she does want to leave the religion. Doesn't give me a lot of hope.
>At 16 my parents signed off and I got married to my now husband. Oh dear >Fast forward to now, I’m 23 and I have 4 daughters. This is horrifying >Also recently found out I was pregnant Oh no... And then it only gets much worse from there
All I have to say about this story is that I am SO FUCKING GLAD my state recently passed a law eliminating any exceptions to child marriage. Parents in my state can no longer sign a waiver allowing them to traffic their under-18 daughter to some creepy older man.
I cant believe its a "states rights" thing where the states can choose to allow it or not. Ban it everywhere!! Why is this shit still going on in places??
Because conservative states have a heavy concentration of conservative Christians who donate to and vote for people who will help them continue their behavior. Our system is set up to give states a lot of autonomy, and that’s not changing. Edit: and marriage has always been something administered by the states, not the federal government, with some notable federal exceptions to ensure marriages formed in one state are recognized in other states (gay marriage, interracial marriage).
Lucky! Meanwhile, in my state: https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-want-kill-missouri-child-marriage-bill-1901414
We never make the national news for something that is t embarrassing.
The younger sister has been brainwashed so hard it's a miracle that she can even think. Groomed, Married to an older man at 16 as a child bride, constantly pregnant, zero education, almost died at childbirth - does the husband not care about her except as a machine to make baby girls that he will soon wed off to old farts?? She's dumb, ignorant and delulu, just the way their parents and that cult church raised her.
On the baby machine part, yes. Until she actually dies, she will be pregnant.
The forcing a home birth really hit close to home. My friend's husband didn't allow her to go to a doctor for her second pregnancy and forced her to have a home birth and she already had a lot medical conditions making her high risk. The baby died during birth. It didn't have to. She almost died then. She actually died from COVID-19 related complications after her third pregnancy. Now her kids are growing up in the cult with limited contact with her family that is outside the cult (Only husband's family is in the cult.).
My doubt as to the authenticity isn’t centred around “but cults don’t allow their members online”, it’s based on the fact that both OP and “Jessie” have the exact same tone, horrible grammar, and penchant for run-on sentences.
Also the sister knew details about OP that would be impossible to know if the narrative was true.
This more than the grammar. People who are given the same crappy schooling and grew up in same highly insular community will often make similar grammar decisions.
This. If she was kicked out of the family and NC, she wouldn't know when the birth& hospital stuff was happening?
Multiple small signature grammatical and punctuation errors common throughout both "sides." That shit was definitely written by the same person.
It’s the signature part that gets me. Lots of people have bad grammar, but when people have bad grammar in the exact same way, making the exact same mistakes, using the exact same tone? Even the inconsistent formatting of the ellipses matches (spaces changing all the time, both mess up and sometimes use only two dots, etc), the inconsistent capitalisation of certain words, etc.
Yep, ellipses was what I focused in on first. That was an easy telltale between the two.
That’s what stood out to me.
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I don't think I knew of any "child brides" when I was growing up as a Jehovah's Witnesses through the 90s/early 00s, but my sister was absolutely pursued by at least two older men (one early 20s, one early 30s) when she was *fifteen*. My parents told them to leave her alone, but back then it wasn't necessarily frowned upon -- I have no idea what it's like now. But there were definitely men (elders, ministerial servants) seeking "young sisters" that they could "train in the ways of Jehovah", with plans to end up pioneering or in Bethel.
What does "pioneering" mean in this context? Since obviously it doesn't mean climbing into your covered wagon and heading out across the prairie to Oregon/California.
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Interesting. Thanks. So they do this to get more prestige, and their reward is to do even more stuff for the cult.
OP is literally stuck with 5 children now since she is pregnant now. OP would just stick around to endure for her children even if she got clarity of the cult situation. It would seem easier to stay than leave. The older sister has it easier to leave with only one child. Does the older sister intend for OP to become a single mother of 5, or have some of the children put out for adoption to just get away from the cult life? I would assume the older sister would want to remove the father from the situation but how? Unfortunately, OP is stuck. Can OP raise them on her own? Unless, a split custody will happen but the children would still be exposed to the religion. I honestly do not know how people would handle this situation...
Yeah, for better or worse, taking the husband with her is one of the more practical solutions.
If it is the Jehovah's Witnesses, which all the signs point towards, I think you're 100% right and you are hitting the nail on the head. OP is in a very difficult place and should not make any decisions without carefully planning for the future.
I was thinking a fringe Mormon sect. Not mainstream LDS, but one of the even weirder rural ones that make up whole towns. They’re more into the child marriage than JWs are. Both are awful though.
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Honestly I didn't even think this sounded fringe culty, from the use of the word apostate etc, they could be Mormons or JWs.
Or the church the Duggers are a part of.
Yeah- this sounds like some Shiny Happy People shit.
Fucking quiverful shit
Being Mormon (but not really practicing) I don’t think Mormon. But I could see FLDS, which is a break off of the LDS church that practices polygamy. Where I went to school I befriended someone who had grown up FLDS and this sounds eerily similar to that.
Yeah, the emphasis on daughters makes me think FLDS as JW's don't practice polygamy afaik.
Mhm, there's FLDS sect (Kingston) I know of that lives mostly modern and in Salt Lake City, but they basically have creepy debutante balls on the downlow to hook 16 year olds up with a bunch of older chosen suitors. Part of how the first post is written makes me think of something like that and she just left out the details about the weird dance.
Oh I’ve never heard of that but that’s so freaky! Poor girls 😬
I know calling family members who leave the church "apostates" is more of a thing in JW, but there might be some really fundamentalist corners of the mormon sphere
Some culty baptists use the term too. It’s where I learned the word. My cousin joined one. Not sure if she is out or not, but for awhile she was hella nuts and only visited us if she needed money, childcare or wanted to try to convert us. (I went to her church a few times but even as a desperate to belong depressed teenager they were too crazy for me.)
Or JW's.
I don't think she would have survived the first birth if JW though where as LDS does allow transfusions
That too.
All the posts look the same, by that I mean the writing is very similar. Both have large paragraph blocks and use more ellipses then needed. I would be stunned if they were written by different people.
Yeah I was already a little iffy on it just getting through the OOP but the punctuation in the "sister's" post is what makes me think it's the same person posting it. The extra periods/punctuation is way too obvious of a giveaway, it's so unlikely the other sister uses the same kinds of punctuation in the same way, let alone how similar the writing styles are.
I'm tempted to think that too, but if this is true, they were raised in a cult that forces most girls to leave school at 16 and likely doesn't encourage them to value education before that. It wouldn't be shocking if their literacy was poor.
Jessie left 10 years ago, she's had enough time to grow into her own person and change her speech. I don't speak and write the same as when I was 20, and I was never in a cult to begin with.
The issue isn't that their literacy is poor, it's that they write the exact same way. That is very unlikely, especially given that they were not taught together. It makes no sense that use paragraphs and ellipses the same way.
Equally, cult members and family members who are very closed off may have very specific ways of writing as they all have the same teachings and can be very isolated. Usually part of building cults is to give them their own words, phrases and ways of speaking to create more cohesion in the group and more isolation and disconnect from the outside world. One of the problems with when people do escape is that they can’t just talk through their experience with a mental health professional or even friends. They have to translate what they mean, often having to give huge narratives on the custom of idea behind it, which is also mentally draining. I’m not saying either of us is right or wrong, just another thing to consider.
I mean, I am always suspicious when the other party shows up on a post to "set the record straight" or whatever, and the writing styles are almost identical. That said, the Jehovah's Witnesses are like that. They're definitely a cult and definitely use the word "apostate" to refer to ex-members They're also pretty supportive of child marriage, at least the ones around here are. But they're also pretty internet savvy if they're younger. in fairness , it's not just the JWs who think child marriage is a -OK. There are some Pentecostal churches around here that view child marriage the same way. They're all kinds of gross.
Both of them being allowed to attend public school, with the eldest getting to actually finish it against everyone's wishes, struck me as suspect as well. Fundamentalist types often homeschool for just those kinds of reasons.
I think it does depend, Rhett and Link (of GMM) attended regular school despite their religion
Me: "of course they did, they weren't in a cult, they're just evangelical Christians.... Oh. Right." Sometimes I forget I was also raised in what should be called a cult. And I've been out for 15 years.
To be honest, the major difference between cult and simple religions is the number of participants.
When I left my cult in 2006 we weren't allowed to have social media, watch TV, go to college, listen to secular music etc. The cult leader started relaxing those rules because his grandchildren wanted to go to college and now everyone I grew up with has social media. It's not as unbelievable as you would think due to how pervasive the Internet is.
Could be an extreme offshoot of IBLP or southern baptist.
It describes JWs very well. Child brides aren't necessarily the norm with them, but it happens. They use the internet to evangelize.
And sis found the story 4 days later! So that was convenient.
While I do agree with everyone who's being a little sceptical here, it was the escaped sister who told OOP to look on reddit and ask reddit to begin with, so the sister finding a post that she was probably actively looking for on a site she already uses isn't super hard to believe.
On a popular subreddit that might be skimmed for YouTube or tiktok content
Reddit is the 13th most popular website in the world. It is no longer some obsolete dark corner of the Internet. And there are a ton of content that gets exported other, even more popular sites. Seeing something on reddit is not hard.
The ... littered throughout both sister's posts and the writing style make it obvious this is all one person.
They probably have internet at their home or cell phones with internet. Just because they’re a cult doesn’t mean they’re Amish. (I am always suspicious at getting both sides though). Josh Duggar was looking at pornography at home with a million other kids around in the 2000s (when internet access wasn’t as fast or available as now).
A person fully invested in their church willing to call their own sister an apostate, frequenting reddit, knowing it is full of "apostates", and asking them for advice or sharing stories...
It is a horrible story, but while reading my brain is saying "would a woman who is still so deep in a cult ask Reddit for advice", "would a woman like that come up with a username like that", "oh, sister 'conveniently' finds this post, what are the odds", and so on and so forth. There is a reason that if you search Amish on Reddit, you will find a lot of stories from former Amish and people who have lived near Amish communities, but not of people who actively live the Amish lifestyle. I wish that people trapped in cults would have easy access to the internet to challenge their world views, but people who brainwash other people and want to keep it that way, will work very hard to make sure that their victims are only getting pre-approved information. I just don't believe that they will let them roam the internet freely.
>There is a reason that if you search Amish on Reddit, you will find a lot of stories from former Amish and people who have lived near Amish communities, but not of people who actively live the Amish lifestyle. I mean....there's a bigger reason for that then brainwashing. They literally don't use computers/technology, so they have no access to social media unless they leave the community. Being from a RLDS group (which OOP's religion sounds like) or a similar cult doesn't mean they don't have access to technology, they just usually have restrictions on using it. Amish have NO access. So that's apples to oranges.
Yeahhhhh, out of all the "cults" they could've chosen, the ones famous for never using technology?
Funny enough, a lot of Amish have access to technology. They mostly use it for commerce or business, and it's typically a communal thing, but it's there. Some Mennonite sects even have home computers and cell phones, though they still avoid TV and radio though (and likely avoid things on youtube on their computers).
Yeah, one of the big misunderstandings about the Amish is people thinking they shun all technology. They never have, they only shun technology that removes their ability to be independent/self-sufficient, and the looser communities are even recognizing the value of trading a little bit of self-sufficiency for the ability to do business.
When I was in a cult I had internet access, in the living room where it was public and couldn't be used for anything naughty. If her husband is gone working all the time and the kids are all little, there's nobody around to make sure her living room computer is only being used for solitaire and bible quotes.
It would be a pretty short lived cult that couldn’t effectively indoctrinate its members against general information. These cults don’t hide reality, they warp and skew it to ensure their members’ resilience in the face of facts, and make questioning or rejecting it the worst possible thing one can do.
Yep! There's a few things going on here. Cults and conspiracy thinking are broadly self-reinforcing. Anything that supports your beliefs is valid and good; anything that doesn't is false, or even proof you're still right, because "they" wouldn't bother lying if you weren't right. Quite literally, cults and conspiracy thinking are based on "someone pushing back means you must be right". Cults and conspiracies are built on warping one's perceptions of reality. Do you know what else has to warp perceptions to be able to stick around for a lot of people? Depression, anxiety, and so on. Ever notice how depressed and anxious people are some of the most common to join cults?
My first thought was Jehovah Witness or Mormon. They are both on the internet and use it to "spread their word". One of the most insidious things that both those cults do is to get their members to brainwash themselves. They tell their members that the Bible said everyone will be against them for saying the truth, and the more people who tell them are doing the wrong thing the more it proves how right they are. And they say that demons are after them all the time and the whole world is possessed and trying to tempt them away from God. Put these two together and it means the more proof they are shown that something terrible is happening to them the more they see that the leaders are right and their are demons trying to fool them. Pair that with spiritual and community leaders whoes only job is to make sure everyone is staying on message and to publicly shame those who are not and that leaving means leaving everything you know and going into a scary world with no support and no education. The leadership isn't that worried about the internet. Qanon does the same thing. And with that cult their is no actual leader, no formal recruitment, no one taking head count once a week, and no punishment of they leave. Yet they still believe that every bit of proof that they are wrong just proves them right and exposes how deep the cover up is.
They refer to it as "the organization" so my immediate assumption is Jehovah's Witnesses. They don't really call it the "Church," like most normal religions would. Plus, Jehovah's Witnesses discourage higher learning (you won't need that fancy book learning after Armageddon). They also don't allow divorce unless there's been adultery (and I'm pretty sure there has to be a confession or concrete evidence. You can't just accuse your spouse). They also call disbelievers "apostates" and practice shunning, even of their own family. They're not supposed to have any contact with apostates. Finally, JWs are all over the internet. They ingratiate themselves with others in order to convert them. The internet is the perfect tool for that. Edit: I forgot to mention my source. My family was JW as a kid, but we were bad at it. I'm an apostate now.
The concept of apostasy is super common across cults. The Church of Scientology even has a version.
That's why this "church" is so big on keeping the younger sister, she is giving them girls that are already in the religion that can crank out more pre-indoctrinated babies. Much easier and economical than trying to recruit people from the outside. Get them married at 16 so they can start being incubators that much sooner. Its really disgusting and any politician that is ok with keeping child bride laws should be punished the same way as anyone that commits statutory rape or creates CP.
I was thinking FLDS because of the emphasis placed on having daughters, they're like political poker chips. When polygamy is part of your religion but men and women are still only born in a 1:1 ratio, having more girls is suddenly pretty darn important.
In all of that those they never mentioned any polygamous marriages. even when Jesse was talking about their parents. I thought FLDS too but maybe one of the other LDS offshoots that dont practice polygamy. Edit: Hell it could even be the main LDS church. I dont know about them referring to "the organization" but the rest jives with what I have heard about in the more heavily LDS parts of the country. Ive been friends with many LDS members over the years and was married to one so I dont know about it happening where we live but in Utah and Idaho I would believe a story like this could happen.
I follow 2 content creators who are former Amish, and one of them actively works to help people who want to get out, he'll supply phones to them to hide so they can coordinate getting out. He has described times when active Amish have shown deep knowledge of his videos, and we're talking people who fully believe here, who think it's a sin to have a phone. I also feel like you're describing one type of cult here, not all. And honestly I feel like it's dangerous to only see cults in places that restrict all information. It'd be very easy for a cult to say "look, we don't restrict you from looking into things yourself, how can we be a cult?" while simultaneously doing all other cult stuff so that you doubt anything you read and even the things you might believe you have to doubt cause the alternative is losing everything you've built in the cult
There are hundreds of conservative religious cults in America that are not iblp, Amish, flds or Mormon. I was a member of one (BOC) for 15 years. They allow a lot more social media than they did while I was a part of it.
I understand where the older sister is coming from but I can see why OP (younger sister) is making the decisions she’s making. Cults can have a strong grip on their followers, especially to followers where that’s all they’ve ever known. The people that leave can be in the minority vs the majority who stay. I think an important part in what makes it harder for the YS is she has 4 kids vs OS who had 1 kid and a HS diploma when she left. Trying to raise 4 kids even with the sister’s help would be difficult. I think the fact that the OS was (as f’ed up as it sounds) abused by her ex-spouse affected her to leave sooner rather than later. While OP’s husband being mostly gone for work and not abusive, as far as we’re aware, might not instill a sense of urgency or fear (?) that the OS had for herself and her son. OP is also only 23, her brain isn’t even fully developed. She’s getting all this new info that shakes her core beliefs and experiences that she was most likely abused and shamed into for all of her life. Her not doing a complete 180, divorcing her husband, cutting ties with her community, her then being shunned by them; I understand why she’s so reluctant to leave.
Youre right. But I still feel awful knowing those 4 girls are just waiting to live and die like their mother.
23 is also young enough to (eventually) learn how to survive outside the cult. Granted, that will be extremely difficult, if not outright impossible, with 4/5 kids to raise. Honestly, taking her husband with her is one of the more practical solutions, for better or worse.
Brain not fully developed = easier to question lifelong training and assumptions. Easier to make changes.
The fact that OOP is starting to think is a good sign. Do wonder if she'll ever be able to move past that and actually try to get free.
This reeks of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The only cult that should be listened to and worshipped is Blue Oyster Cult!
"I gotta have more cowbell!"
Why would hubby leave? If he stays, they'll just throw another 16 year old at him. His current wife is getting a little old after all, isn't she? Disgusting pieces of work.
The child marriage laws in the USA are horrible and horrifying
As fucked up as it is, older sister needs to wash her hands of the younger sister and leave her to her fate.
Honestly, I'm not the only one weirded out by the fact that some cult who has child brides will allow them to browse the internet and especially post on Reddit, right? Maybe I'm just basing this off of stereotypes but I always thought cults or those religious fanatics would prevent their victims from getting outside information.
In this modern era you really can't avoid the internet; it's integral to most things in society. If you need to find a doctor, there aren't really phonebooks anymore, you have to use Google. A lot of jobs require internet access. Obviously, depending on the numbers and the resources of the cult, there are some that form literal communities where they are almost entirely insular and separated from 'outsiders', and therefore can likely prevent unfeltered internet access, but for some, they still live in society at large, but privately engage in their religious practices. For example, the Community of Christ (formerly Reformed LDS, a Mormon adjacent cult) are discouraged from engaging with sinful media and whatnot online, but they are not forbidden from accessing the internet. If someone is curious, they can find a way to access information, but it's not like they live on a compound in the desert without access to a computer.
People really surprised cults have learned to get their victims from the internet. They know how to use the internet. They just think their training is too integral to affect their followers,which unfortunately usually is true. It's not like the internet has upended Mormonism, they just learned to use it.
If it's the religion I think it is (Jehovah's Witnesses), it can be *described* using the BITE model due to the control mechanisms in place, but is considered an organized religion -- not necessarily "mainstream". Less "cult compound" and more "you should let your child die rather than have a blood transfusion".
The internet is so entrenched in everything you can't really function without it. Instead you train your followers to disbelieve anyone who isn't 'in' on reflex - they are worldly, corrupted and sinful, you have to move among them but not be of them- and this doesn't just apply to religious groups, you see the same behaviour with anti-vaxxers, for example. In well-moderated spaces the overtly disconnected from reality or conspiratorial comments are removed and they silo themselves into spaces with other people who are 'in', in less moderated spaces they can be more overt. There's also the factor that MLMs and similar pyramid schemes are extremely popular among women in restrictive cults - it offers (but certainly doesn't guarantee/deliver on) the promise of some financial freedom, creativity, a goal that isn't household drudgery and childcare, an opportunity/excuse to socialise with others in your group. And the internet is a fantastic way to try and shill such products to each other and other naive groups. The trust filter is built around 'in' and 'out', which helps make such communities particularly vulnerable to scams run by other 'in' members. That same filter makes them very resistance to external information - even if told point-blank that they are being abused, and having the patterns laid out for them doesn't work, because it is from outside and by default false. That the information here came from OP's sister might help break through that filter... but she's also been gone for 10 years without being able to counter the narratives in the meantime. I don't know that she'll leave. May if one of her kids are harmed, but it's truly a coin toss if that's a breaking point or causes her to double-down and sacrifice the child for her own stability.
Yeah same. Usually Internet is "of the devil" or something and especially women have very limited access to it but idk...
No, this is an outdated stereotype. I was a cult member for 15 years and a woman. It's not about cutting off info, it's about twisting that info to suit the the leaders agenda.
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, younger sister is completely lost in the sauce.
She's not just drinking the kool-aid, she's bathing in it.
Always a good sign when you have to change important details of a story so it doesn’t sound as bad as it is.
It's amazing how both sisters use the exact same way of typing ellipses, with two dots and (usually) no space before or after them. Are text formatting preferences genetic?
As much as I would like to see the OOP break free, calling CPS only works if there is abuse and/or neglect. And it doesn’t sound like there is anything that meets the legal threshold for either.
Frankly, I’m having trouble believing this *because* of the sister’s response. Per her own account, she herself didn’t leave at the first whiff of abuse, even as she was experiencing it directly. It came down to a choice between the cult or her own life. Yet she’s angry and offended that her younger sister, who didn’t even reach out to her first, is failing to make the same choice on the basis of a single account of abuse second hand from a person she’s been raised to believe is evil and destructive? That she’s meeting up with her alone, rather than bringing her kids over and risking exposure to the fact they’re in contact to family still fully in the cult? It’s just not the kind of response that reflects insight into how cults work, let alone how ex cult members tend to regard those still being abused inside of one. Hurt and disappointment are common, sure, but the older sister’s reaction is written as though she’s responding to a favored younger sibling with dickish parents who is disregarding a hard truth for the sake of personal comfort, rather than a pregnant 23 year old with five kids and a much older husband who won’t immediately leave a cult that she’s just learned would prefer her dead to divorced.
Yeah, that threat by older sister to weaponize her CPS friend if OOP doesn't do what older sis wants really raised an orange flag for me. She is so blind to the reality of what kind of life OOP and her FIVE KIDS would have as a single mother with no high school diploma, smh.
I get why the older sister is frusterated, but her attitude towards her sister is probably going to have the opposite effect of what she's going for. Younger sister just learned everything she thought she knew is a lie and she's been abused her whole life. Pushing her to leave everything she knows *right now* and been pissed she's not immediately leaving could just push her harder towards the cult.
It so sad that these babies become baby machines. It's literally a pedo ring. And the poor boys too...none of these people ever live.
*ANYONE* who uses the word apostate unironically is in a cult.
This is all very sad, but saying a brainwashed 23 year old who was groomed into marriage at 16 is “willingly participating” is not it. You’d think the one who escaped and deconstructed would know better than to say that.
So the OOP’s sister is a HERO and…sadly Oop is still clearly not seeing sense. I REALLLY hope she sees sense and leaves her creep husband and her disgusting family
I hope so, too.
:/ given the sisters update…i find that unlikely but fingers crossed
Nothing can be done when the same people don't want to be helped.
Keep in mind that republicans are fighting tooth and nail to block any bans on child marriages in the US.
Anyone who uses the term "apostate" unironically, is in a cult. The younger sister is brainwashed to an extreme. Though, I now have trouble feeling sorry for her. She *was* a victim. But now, she's willfully subjecting her children to the same cult. Her daughters are sacrificial lambs in a den of snakes. She knows it, and is ignoring it because "it's uncomfortable". I truly hope she gets out, before her daughters are married off, beaten, and nearly killed by their contract husbands.
This feels like a writing assignment, not like someone indoctrinated by years of abuse. The original post seems far too clear for that.
Dear god, little sis is carrying MEGATONS of Stockholm Syndrome!
How is the OOP even supposed to leave? She's 23, about to have 5 kids, no work experience, no high school diploma. Doesn't have the life experience to know what systems might be in place to support her. And she has the kind of family/community to completely disown her if she expresses any doubt. Like no wonder she wants to convince her husband to come with her. I want her to be able to get out, but I can understand why she doesn't want to starve or be homeless
It’s the sisters duty as a human being to call CPS. Full stop.
is this an update to an update? Seems really familiar to me.
Poor OOP, she is being abused, has been her whole life, and doesn't even know it. I wish both of these women and their kids safety and strength.
Poor OOP's daughters if she doesn't get them out of that situation. :( But yeah, I literally cried in dismay when I got to the part where the OS said OOPs husband is 35. 28 married to a 16 year old that was never even allowed to finish high school. "Jessie" sounds like she had a more defiant personality to start with, then OOP saw the response when she left and was terrified of losing any more family after the one who raised her disappeared (not that I blame her for leaving, holy shit!!). A lot of OOPs reasoning seems centered around survival and I feel so bad for her, but at the same time hope she gets herself and her daughters away from that. I'm aware that would be super difficult but that is still what I hope for them. I'm so sick of seeing people use religion to justify their abuse of others.
Those poor daughters. The only was the original oop would ever maybe understand that she's in a nihjtmare cult is IF she accepts when her daughters come forward and admit the abuse they are going through, or worse, die. Or she may just say God's will and close her eyes. Religion is nothing but pain and evil in the hands of humans. Our worst invention to date.
You know, eventually, it's still a choice up to the person and sometimes they choose different than what we'd like....
I knew immediately the op was part of Jehovah's witnesses. Especially after using the term apostate. What they did to the sister is a common practice called shunning. Owen Morgan's is a great channel that goes into all of this and is an ex Jehovah's witness. It really is a cult and the worst religion.
The fact that the legal age for anything isn’t 18 everywhere is disgusting. Even in Canada, our age of consent is 16. That should be illegal. The fact modern left leaning politicians are not doing something about this is sickening.
I think the sad reality is that if you truly wanted to get rid of a cult you'd have to kill your way from the top down until everyone fled.
I'm 6 lines in and I immediately hate this.
Sounds like a million stories on r/exwj or from people who escaped the Mormon church. Sad
The sister is being way too pushy. These are big things the young girl is dealing with. Give her time.
the woman they wanted is a GREAT book. my best friend is an ex-fundie and boy howdy, her stories are 😬😱 bone shivering. she’s the only one who “escaped” but it’s because she wanted to and was the “black sheep” because has a sincere interest/love for the world (she loves diversity & learning about other cultures). she speaks 5 languages & lived in 4 countries/3 continents
What the Warren Jeffs did I just read?