Cult Survivors Share Their Escape Stories - AskReddit

my mother and older sister do not speak to me and my father occasionally contacts me to remind me what a bad daughter I am cult survivors what is your story back when I was younger I got involved with a cult of sorts it wasn't a freaky suicide called like Jonestown or Heaven's Gate now there was your typical charismatic leader who claimed to have supernatural powers and promised us gifts in the afterlife but for the most part he never did anything sketchy mostly we just followed him as he gave sermons on the street I don't know what exactly got me into the cult times were different back then and the idea didn't seem so crazy part of it was that a lot of my friends got into the group and I just followed them a much larger part of it was that there were always a ton of hot girls around and at that point in my life I didn't have much to hold on to and he gave me something to believe in it might have been a load of BS but at that point in my life it gave me a sense of purpose I had always been looking for anyways as the cult grew larger we started to attract the attention of local law enforcement and politicians they were weary of the power he was amassing in town and they were looking for a way to bring him down the group had gone into town to watch our leader give a sermon in the main marketplace his sermons often got angry but today was different today he was violent and outraged he spewed venomous rants about the evils of consumerism and the perversion of faith and society the sermon reached a fevered pitch in the crowd erupted they began to riot they burned cars looted stores and just caused general destruction the police showed up and arrested everyone on the scene I got caught along with about a dozen or so other people but our leader escaped the scene before the cops arrived the police knew he was there and they wanted to bust him for it bad they tried to get the followers they captured to testify that he had started the riots but no one would admit he had been there well almost no one you see I had a weakness my mother she was up to her eyes in death she was constantly struggling to make her mortgage payments my dad had died recently and she barely had the strength to go out and go shopping for herself let alone get a job at her age they found my weakness they told me if I didn't testify I would be in jail for five to ten years that was five to ten years my mom would go without any help she would have to sell her house the house my grandfather built the house she was married in the house she raised her kids in I couldn't do that to my mother they told me if I helped them they would arrange for a reward if I gave up his whereabouts so I agreed to testify now they didn't know where he had been hiding and I didn't either but once they let me out I would be able to find him again and I could lead the police to him but if I was the only one released it would look suspicious so they released everybody soon we found his new hiding place and I relayed the address to the cops the next few hours while I waited for the police to show up were the most nerve-racking moments of my life they bust down the doors while we were all sitting down to dinner in the middle of our meal they kicked down the doors and SWAT gear and dragged our leader out the guilt must have shone on my face like a neon light because as they dragged him out he looked at me and he knew it was one of the worst moments of my life I was so burdened by the guilt I entered into a depression every single person I knew hated me I had never been so alone in my life I tried to make things right but it was too late the judge was so corrupt that he ended up getting the death penalty for some BS charges the cops made up watching his execution was brutal anyways he came back from the dead three days later and he was pissed my aunt never met her is part of a cult in Texas a couple of my cousin's her daughters got out and were basically shunned by the community my aunt told my cousin that she would go to her wedding and then before the wedding she sent a letter to my cousin that she wasn't going anymore because the marriage was damned to hell she also told her sister my other aunt that she got sick had cancer because she didn't believe enough my cousins are very successful now and work hard but hell they went through some crazy brainwashing as kids this may be an unpopular opinion but the Deaf culture is a cult that worships deafness they attack any deaf person who tries to learn speech and interacts with hearing people I was born deaf and raised in the deaf community thankfully my parents sent me to a speech therapist and I can speak pretty well when I was a teenager I started to realize so messed up and self-destructive the Deaf culture was and I left I went to a regular college not a deaf oriented college like Gallaudet and landed a great job I have only a few deaf friends but they have the same mindset as mine I left the cult of deafness ten plus years ago and I'm still paying the price I still have deaf people harassing me on Facebook calling me a traitor and hearing minded I could go on and on about how much of a messed up cult the Deaf culture is but I'll just paste what my deaf friend wrote in an email I feel that it accurately describes the deaf community and why it's so messed up the deaf community is so gung-ho on their deaf pride BS that they've held us back a few decades when you think about it blind people don't have blind pride amputees don't open amputee schools and people with other diseases or disabilities don't refuse any kind of treatment in order to preserve their disease or disability the way deaf people do a few years ago I met a woman who was born 100% blind she had surgery when she was a teenager in the 90s or early 2000s I believe and now she is near perfect eyesight and look at the technology we've come up with for amputees we come up with amazing stuff all the time yet we deaf people are stuck with technology from the 80s hearing aids and cochlear implants because the deaf community is so adamant on preserving their deafness in the community that they refuse any kind of treatment or cure that will help them here this pisses me off so much if it weren't for those idiots rallying around deaf pride they'd probably have already come up with a cure and I'd be able to hear without hearing aids it's funny how the deaf community is all about equality and ending discrimination but they constantly segregate themselves from the general population with deaf schools deaf sports teams deaf clubs sign language without even learning to speak their anti hearing devices attitude and they're awful exclusive attitude if you don't know sign you don't exist to me I wish I knew his whole story but I met a patient who is one of the few survivors of the Jonestown Massacre he had gotten out a few days before the mass suicide but sadly he was unable to get his wife and child out you could tell and I am sure it would be the same for anyone that he had carried some serious guilt the rest of his life unfortunately he passed recently I've never been in a cult but my mom was abandoned at a cult when she was 11 with her 16 year old and 7 year old sisters my grandmother was mentally ill and somehow got connected with these people in Iowa they were from the deep south anyway my grandmother didn't stay no one knows where she went during that time my mom and her two sisters were left there for around six months until my mom got to a phone and called her stepfather he somehow arranged to pick them up with a local law enforcement he wasn't allowed to just walk right up and get his kids so he showed up in the middle of the night and mom and her sisters had to hide and sneak away with him law enforcement hung around and gave them an escort out of the state I think that the worst part for my mom and her sisters was not only were they abandoned by their mother but they were never allowed to confront her with it for her psychiatrist she was a pretty shitty mother and an absent grandmother to us grandchildren I grew up in the redacted because it comes up in Google searches cult I wasn't born into it my family converted when I was nine ish I remember everything about my life changed we went from a seemingly normal family with no religion to suddenly everything was a sin everything was wrong the Prophet wmb was born in 1909 and died in 1965 to this day there are people who still believe he is going to magically come back to life and preach tent meetings around the world list of various culturals I left the cult and my family the night before I turned 18 with the help of my now ex-husband another story for another day my family finally realized about two years ago that they were brainwashed and left the cult they're still trying to find what normal is for them many things have gone back to the way they were before they converted like music selection etc in that environment women are a doormat we have to be submissive to our husbands in every way women are supposed to stay home and basically be child dispensers I knew from a young age that I was child free so this never appealed to me while I enjoy doing all of the wifely things cooking cleaning etc I knew that there was more for me I am now 27 and a successful businesswoman sometimes I do still struggle with the cult mentality some of those things relieve you it wasn't until recently that I thought of myself and my partners as equals two people on the same team working towards the same goals funny thing is that my previous pastor Daniel Gibson Donner was actually arrested for driving under the influence last year it's hilarious and awesome but also sad to hear about all of the corruption in the church and cult I can't understand how so many otherwise intelligent people can be so brainwashed my father was born into a cult in Turkey this cult essentially believed that this certain guy was a descendant of Muhammad and that they had to obey His Word as law or something the man owned an engineering company and my father has always wanted to be an engineer his entire life it was expected that he was going to work in the company my dad was also close friends with the leaders son which made my grandparents really happy I'd like to point out that nothing illegal like fraud or child molestation happened in this cult it was just a community of people who believed that this man was a descendant of Muhammad and that his word was law my dad said that many of the people in the cult weren't bad or evil they just really needed someone to make their choices for them however leaving this cult was horrible for my dad even though it wasn't a violent cult my dad realized that he didn't want to work in the guys factory and didn't want to marry someone from the cult so he actually went abroad to study in Austria for his master's in engineering so that he could escape the cult when he finished his master's he went back to Austria to finish his doctorate because he couldn't take living within the cult eventually he went so far to escape that after he was done with education he went to San Francisco to learn English just so that he could avoid being in the cult my mom found out that my dad was in a cult after they were married she found out while she was cleaning the house and she found some papers in my dad's office that had written on them I'm not a sinner I'm not going to heal because I left the cult I don't believe in the cult etc leaving the cult left my dad in a state of depression and it shows how strong he was to be able to leave some good came out of it because my dad ended up getting a PhD in engineering and also my brother and I weren't raised religiously and my dad always wanted us to make our own choices and what we believed in I just want to leave people with a message that a cult doesn't have to be violent to be dangerous and that many normal people can become victims of a cult my dad said that the people in the cult were very nice normal people they just needed someone to make their decisions for them this phenomenon is explained by psychology however even though the cult disbanded and it's been over 20 years since my dad left it's still something that can never leave him I was raised in the family radio fellowship it has ties to the quiver full movement and carries an apocalyptic message for those of you lucky enough to not know family radio is an evangelical Christian sect that has predicted the end of the world a couple of times family radio didn't gain a lot of traction until about a month before its last prediction of May 21st 2011 however I was born and raised in the movement and was completely absorbed everything and I mean everything in my life was to lead up to that day it was considered a sin to consider living after the rapture so we weren't allowed to make long-term plans as a young person this usually meant dropping out of high school or not going to college yep kept us dumb enough to keep following them I gave family radio and their sister organization Bible Fellowship which is still going strong all of my money I gave them my life when the world didn't end I got two jobs put myself through Community College and am now almost done with university I am pretty rare most young people never got to earn an education many of the families sold their houses as they plan to go on road trips to spread the word plenty of families ended up with nothing homeless and jobless some people were separated from their families one woman joined the movement and her husband realized how crazy it all was he took their kid and vanished I don't know if she ever found them after the prophecy failed there is a lot of crazy stuff and a lot of sad stories sometimes I still have nightmares about it it was abuse plain and simple although I've worked hard to move past it and built a life I just ask that you empathize with cult followers I know I know how the hell can I ask you to do that I feel like I have a unique viewpoint because I know what it's like to be sucked into a cult and now I know what it's like to watch cult followers from the other side there were buttholes in our movement but we also had individuals who were genuinely lost and looking for a community people who really thought they were doing good worthy hell no but they were brainwashed it's just sad I had major major problems with drugs ecstasy and heroin and alcohol I was literally a slave to them my entire life revolved around it from the age of 16 to 23 then I joined a cult for many many years it's called a a yes it is a cult I traded in a life revolving around drugs and alcohol to a life or revolving around staying away and being fearful of drugs and alcohol for the next seven years eventually I came to the feeling and realization that I had just traded one enslavement for another and while yes I wasn't hurting myself with chemicals and whatnot and it was a healthier lifestyle in ways but I was still in yet another situation in my life where I was enslaved to a lifestyle my entire life was dedicated to staying away from drugs and alcohol this didn't sit well with me so I left hey a five years ago and every now and then I smoke pot and have a drink I don't let pot and alcohol take over my life and I don't let staying away from them take over my life either I just try to live my life righteously and not direct energy towards things like that in my experience I have come to learn that addiction is a choice we make I will never ever buy into the disease concept of addiction after my experience I am NOT special I am just a human like anyone else by dropping the victim mentality and becoming empowered I was able to work past those things I know a lot of people won't agree with my philosophy and what AAA is it works for me though and that's what matters to me I'm done being a slave to anything I worked for a New York City political party which doubled as a sex cult behind the scenes the short version is that they're a political party whose foundation is built on a controversial form of amateur therapy which insisted that depressed or lost people use political activism as their means of finding fulfillment it's a perpetual motion device essentially processing sad people into activists for the cause via school and political party both headed by the same figure lots of sketchy additional stuff about patient patient and patient doctor sex being a part of therapy and the highly questionable practice of party members and patients giving financial donations to support the party leaders lifestyle I worked for the party for a while and definitely felt like they were trying to convert me in a number of instances my best friend is part of the Jesus army in Britain I don't know a lot about other Jesus army groups throughout the UK but this particular one forced her to drop out of college she is extremely clever and wanted to be a nurse and come and work for their church an office job of some sort so she dropped out moved into their large community home and I visited a lot she didn't get her wages they were pulled into a communal pot sort of thing and she had to ask for her money from the head of the household to go buy things but only things that Jesus army permitted like modest clothing or ingredients for the cooking it was automatically assumed if you were a female and lived with these people you cook meals for twenty plus people every night but you can't sit at the same table as the men and you are and allowed seconds but the men were but say if she wanted to go buy a chocolate bar this wouldn't be allowed anyway it was just a really extreme sexist outdated sort of living like she wouldn't be allowed to pursue a partner unless she told the head of the Jesus army and then they would set them on a date and if they got on they would have to spend a year apart to pray about each other and if they still liked each other after a year of no contact they can marry anyway the whole ordeal stressed her out and now she's in hospital because she has developed anorexia her food being the only thing she feels she can control she doesn't live at the community home anymore which I see is a good thing lots of other shady stuff went on but those were the things that made me the most angry she is still pretty deluded about all of this I was born and raised at Jehovah's Witness for the first 19 years of my life I struggled with many different phases of naivety belief pseudo belief and finally objective denial of the doctrine and everything the religion stands for I recently had a discussion with my friend also in ex-jehovah's about the long-term effects that the religion and the people may have had on our emotional and intellectual growth it is a scary way to be raised especially if the child has any doubt or critical thinking at all for example reading watching we're talking about opposing beliefs or in many cases scientific facts evolution are discouraged and condemned if a member were to state an opposing opinion or quest the written stances of the organization on something like support of homosexuals and refused to alter their opinions they would be labeled an apostate and shunned disfellowshipped which entails all other witnesses including family members completely cutting off of all contact disfellowshipping is done in order to prevent the disfellowshipped person from influencing other members and to effectively isolate the opposing opinions from their community this is one of the biggest cult red flag warnings how does a group treat their ex members is a good question in identifying a cult the Elders church leaders in each congregation publicly state that these are the consequences of any unrepentant sin this could be having sex before marriage associating with non witnesses in a social setting wearing immodest clothing listening to immortal music rap and heavy metal are frequently cited voting or as I said even just unrepentantly holding beliefs contrary to the doctrine women are considered morally and in many other ways inferior to men and are not allowed leadership positions within the church within marriage which can only be between a man and a woman who were both baptized and dedicated witnesses the man is seen as the decision-maker and final authority on all matters he is encouraged to get input from his wife but has all authority and should not be questioned or disobeyed growing up as a girl with two sisters this was especially infuriating to experience and to watch in addition I wanted to go to college and I was criticized and discouraged at every chance by everyone I had ever been allowed to even no witnesses do not associate with non witnesses so witness kids cannot spend time with school friends and are only ever exposed to other witness families and their kids men and women peers and adults all told me that college or anything more than minimal education was not a worthwhile use of my life and that I should get married and have kids rather than pursue a career of my own or any higher education in addition I was pressured by my parents and entire community from as far back as I can remember to get baptized in the religion and dedicate my life to full-time service of Jehovah rather than have an education or career because this would be greedy on my part and not at all the best use of my life through a very personal and scary process between about the ages of 15 and 18 I came to terms with my complete lack of faith in any of the doctrine and truly acknowledged all of them stuff things that the religion stood for did to me and would do to me if anyone knew that I didn't believe in it about a year and a half ago I was 19 my parents found out that I had a boyfriend obviously not a jehovah and had been living a very effective double life and lying to them when i told them of my lack of belief and my personal decision to no longer be a part of it and asked for their support they responded by trying to coerce me into a study with the elders to see where my thinking went wrong and implored me to reconsider and rethink my flawed thought process that must have led me to the conclusions i have reached when I refused I was forced to meet with the elders three middle-aged men in a private room where they then asked me about any since I had committed and my sexual activity with my boyfriend this was one of the most disturbing times during this whole ordeal in my entire life when I refused to talk about it I did not want to give them a reason to disfellowship me I would rather leave of my own accord and also refused to deny that I had opposing opinions against the doctrine they asked if I wanted to remain in the organization and I gladly said no I wrote I no longer want to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses on a piece of paper signed and dated it after which they promptly and angrily told me leave now while no longer looking me in the eyes I was told by my sister later that an announcement was made the next week at a meeting which typically goes something like I need to inform the congregation that person X is no longer one of Jehovah's Witnesses conveniently failing to disclose whether I sinned then was disfellowshipped or if I simply chose to leave thanks for listening to radio TTS hit the subscribe button to become part of the radio TTS cult let me know your own cult experiences are you part of a cult are you member of a cult-like group or have you left one share your stories in the comments below you

Channel: Radio TTS

Views: 304,439

Rating: 4.8787699 out of 5

Keywords: reddit, askreddit, story, reddit stories, r/askreddit, askreddit stories, reddit top posts, best of reddit, r\, reddit cringe, top posts of all time, best of askreddit, reddit best, top posts, r\/askreddit, cult, reddit cult, ex cult members of reddit, reddit escape cult, former cult members stories reddit, ex cult members share their creepiest experiences, Cult members, religious cults, cult survivor reddit, cult horror stories, scary cult stories, reddit creepy, askreddit cult

Id: fLAhnM04bKo

Length: 21min 50sec (1310 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 03 2019