Ex cult members reveal how they escaped r/AskReddit | Reddit Jar

X cult members of Reddit how were you introduced to the cult and how did you manage to escape from birth literally walked away without a penny at 21 when you leave a cult you not only lose your home family financial stability but you lose your lifelong identity you're only known community and you lose the ability to be sure of anything anymore according to my dad who joined a cult when he was 17 in Cali and left about a year later he joined because free drugs and free place to live he left because of the cult started to tell people not to contact their families and only the higher-level members got drugs anymore he says after he left the main leader went to jail for six crimes of some sorts and the whole cult folded my mother is a follower of supreme master Ching hai since 2004 Google her really weird when it first started tried to force my dad and the whole family to eat vegan and wasted tons of money on useless merchandise like an $800 portrait of the master aside from that and the condescension towards non-believers no real cult II threats like who typically hear it dollar sign dollar dollar bill y'all found them online when I was only 14 wasn't introduced to it I stumbled on it they seemed normal at first but then things started getting weird if you didn't agree with everything they said you were shunned as an outcast which I found strange considering so many of them had joined as outcasts members of society I wanted to leave they said you could anytime but it was an addiction and they knew you weren't going to leave finally I just gave in and I've been on reddit ever since I grew up in the family radio cult what they are mostly remembered for is their 2011 prediction of the end of the world and rapture spoiler the world didn't end I was a young adult and able to leave in the chaotic aftermath without too much of a fight from my parents I'm doing doubt ok many people are not some are still making more predictions do want to take a second and say that 90% of the people in the group were kind of people who really did and want the world to end but were just so brainwashed that they really believe it some of the nicest most giving people just got sucked in chewed up and swallowed in the abyss --is that was I ran away from home at sixteen and joined thus weird spiritualistic cult they didn't have any gods but they believed a lot in spirits and ancestors and stuff we all lived in this big house owned by the leader guy whose name was Jonathan Jonathan had a special kind of connection to the spirit world or whatever they were all super good people they took me in gave me food and clothes and stuff one of the guys gave me a job in his company they had a lot of rituals and stuff we all did with a huge emphasis on community and common good and hollering the dead it wasn't a bad thing so does that make it not a cult I dunno they did require a lot of dedication to the group and stuff I believe 5% of income had to go to the cult to help Jonathan with rent and so they could all buy food and it I lived with them for a few years they got me through high school and without them I never would have gone to college which is the reason I left and where I am not edit I meant where I am now well I was born into a family that were Jehovah's Witnesses now whether they are a cult or not is debatable but I for one do believe that it is one the moment where I realized that I had to leave was when I brought my friend over one day my mom scolded me for bringing them over and told me that everyone was out to ruin my life if they weren't in the same religion as us they would talk about how they are horrible and corrupt people and we needed to cleanse them I took a look at my friend and I couldn't see that all I saw was love and kindness I knew that these views were corrupt themselves and then I started to talk to my brother who also shared the same thoughts we both brought it up with our parents and the elders of our church and none of them could give us any answers about anything this is when we both decided that we cannot follow the lead of people that cannot explain what they are leading us into in the end we just didn't really believe in the religion itself I realized my family was in a cult when I was 10 and we had a burn party for the television as it exploded people chanted by Satan die this is my friends story he joined because he was homeless and they promised to get him clean and sober he left because he got clean and sober he took what he needed and faked the rest there were others there out of desperation he connected with a few of them their philosophy would eat the meat and spit out the bones I'm still clean and sober I had three years in January my sister was involved with a count for little while she never joined she was too smart for that but she was friends with a few of them but of course that's how they get you eventually like a year or so after she started hanging out with them they basically forced her to make a choice join the church or get lost they worded it differently of course about how they just wanted her to be saved and all that nonsense obviously they're just trying to prey on people with few friends and low self-esteem making them scared to lose the only friends they have in tricking them into joining my sister got the duck out of there and never contacted those people again smart gal I was raised at Jehovah Witness so I was brainwashed from infancy that this was the true religion if you want an idea of what the cult was like think of 1984 no seriously that's not an exaggeration the cult had no crimes doublespeak and a worshipful attitude of the governing body head honchos of the cult and anything they said was automatically right unless it was though to be wrong later on by the same governing body any disagreement meant ray education and the Ministry of love for shunning which meant complete avoidance by everyone still in the cult from you including family members who were still in I got out when I said enough is enough I still haven't talked to my mother in 10 years I've covered this when I first got on reddit but my parents joined a cult in West Texas when I was about 8 - 9 after searching for the truth their whole adult lives long story short it wasn't that crazy at first I like to use the frog in boiling water analogy if it was that bat it insane when they first started going they wouldn't have stayed it became a doomsday cult multiple marriage all the girls were married up by old elders leaving nothing for us young dudes so naturally we rebelled my escape wasn't as harrowing as some others but my leaving did set up me saving my 15 year old sister under cover of darkness abducting her from my dad's house and transporting her to my mom in LA from marrying an elder who already had four wives and about 10 kids who was later arrested for molesting his stepdaughter it's been a wild ride guys on mobile so I'm sure I'm Way late to the game but here's my story I literally walked into the Church of Scientology I moved to Clearwater as a miner made some friends and walked into without anyone present with me into what I thought was a museum being brought up without any religion although both my parents were raised conservative Muslims I grabbed on to the ideology of you on what you make of yourself long story short five years later while working for Scientology owned company while still exploring whether I wanted to join or not I got held hostage literally for three hours because I wouldn't accept their philosophy on a small incident and left the workforce only to have a beer bottle broken over my head by my LTO lifelong Scientologist boyfriend and have the corpse who were Scientologists arrived at the house to determine there was nothing to escalate to a domestic violence report and then later on two days later flee the house with my dogs and I what little I could with the time I had for my own safety so yeah that's my life in the cult some people are cool most people are brainwashed TL DR Duck Scientology not my story but my parents story is pretty decent I've posted this somewhere else before too my parents grew up in a religious cult and as teenagers they fell in love but when they asked permission from the church elders to court each other and get married they were denied my mum was excommunicated suddenly in her early 20s she didn't know why until finding out by chance a long time later so they didn't see each other again for 20 years while one remained on the inside and the other in the real world mum tried writing to him a couple times but dad was brainwashed and told her that she was evil and should repent for her sins things that he had been told about her by the kel-tec both remained unmarried when dad was excommunicated himself 20 years later my mum heard about it through his brother who had left some years earlier it took them another year to get in contact they were in different continents didn't know where each other were and dad was trying desperately to get used to life in the outside world having never lived in normal society before and now in his mid-forties dad told us later that he wanted to find mum but was afraid because he believed she was going to hell edit clarified this with dad this morning apparently he didn't believe this when he left actually but he spent at least a year wondering if he should ask to go back because he believed that his soul was damned by leaving one day he finally had a letter from mum he wrote back immediately and basically assumed that they were getting married packed his bags and moved across the world to find her mum answered the daughter dad in the early 80s having not seen him in 20 years they were engaged that night and married within six weeks they are still happily together and edit this got a lot more attention than I expected really sorry to those who were frustrated but I didn't address this properly and asked you to fish in the comments my inbox went a bit nuts and I didn't know how to handle it just to answer a few questions that people are asking regarding mums excommunication she was permitted to study briefly in a College on the outside and while she was there she took a clipping from a magazine that had some kind of stitching pattern on it for a baby's clothing and sent it to a friend of hers in the cult as a friend was expecting what my mum didn't realize at the time was that on the back of the clipping was an advertisements for birth control her friend told the elders that my mum had sent her blasphemous material they didn't believe in birth control and she was excommunicated right after that regarding dad I spoke to him this morning and this is the reason was excommunicated it's quite an interesting story that I didn't know myself he wrote a letter whilst he was still there to the elder expressing his view on the unjust doctrines and the cult that he didn't agree with and felt were wrong he wrote it and read it through but then screwed it up and threw it in his bin while he was away from his room one of the members found it in his bin yeh privacy is not a thing someone else's work detail is to clean rooms and can also use this as an opportunity search for contraband and took it to the elder and he was called for interrogation he was expelled that night they gave him fifty dollars one of their old cars and a blanket and sent him packing he was in his mid forties and had never lived in normal society happy to tell anyone who wants to know who the cult is in a private message some people are confused by the timeline here especially as to how my parents could have had children basically once they had found each other and got married they tried for children naturally but had trouble conceiving due to their ages they eventually gave up and adopted as kids instead happy days and yo guys thanks so much for all your kind words and interest it means a lot to me that people really care about this kind of it it's usually so well hidden in society it's 4:00 a.m. here and I've got a crash but we'll pick up all your PM's and comments with the answers you seek tomorrow keep sending them and I'll get to them all when I can thank you all hey or have returned to read it this morning to find that my inbox has basically been completely obliterated are I ducking I think I've basically answered them all now I hope thanks again for your interest creed bratton always as the answers I inherited a Subaru and it broke down five years later I've been involved in a number of calfs both as a leader and a follower you have more fun as a follower but you make more money as a leader parents joined the Institute of divine metaphysical research when I was 4 raised the minister and preached into my early 30s became a critical thinker no coping skills passive-aggressive life back to the bank bottle thanks for asking for those interested there are quite a few good documentaries on Netflix at the moment dealing with ex cult members cults motivational speakers channelers psychics et Cie and enlighten us deprogrammed holy hell an honest liar children of God Jesus camp I had a friend who was born a Moony his mother and sister was still Muniz but he father wasn't much of a believer anymore both he and his father just pretend to be Muniz for the sake of their mother wife and sibling daughter wish he was a redditor so he could come in here and share his story I bought my first Apple products back in 1998 and since have constantly replaced each product with a newer upgrade I feel I have lost all privacy freedom and sense of identity and yet I continue to pay my hard-earned towards this organization I am yet to escape and currently have four different iPhones and two MacBook Pros Mormonism I can't leave no matter what I do I cannot attend church or talk to anyone in it but they'll find a way to contact me they don't give up it's especially hard when all your relatives are also Mormon and you live in one of the highest Mormon populated cities in the world sigh idiot sorry that I wasn't clear I am a high school student still at home and my parents won't let me get rid of my records since it seems to be important to them I have told leaders and anyone who contacts me about church related things to stop it as I am not comfortable and they won't stop despite my efforts of telling them no if I was not younger I would be out of Utah and out of the LDS Church in seconds edit number two thanks for all the love and support my mom was in this cultish organization in her 20s not really sure why she joined and used to talk a lot about her glory days when my siblings and I were old enough to participate naturally we joined they require you to pay to be there and participate in the mission trips teaching which are basically required to maintain membership and then require total submission from women to men the group leadership and complete submission from the guys to the group leadership lots of hierarchy and if you don't hear the voice of God you're ducked as a woman if I disagreed with anything my superior said they would ostracize me and do pretty much everything in their power which was a lot to make my life hell they preyed on people who have low self-esteem and few friends than they teach you that you only matter if you hear and obey God and then effectively make it so only friends you have our members even though I had friends and good enough self-esteem when I joined I started feeling pretty 'ti about myself and lost almost all of my friends outside because obviously and inside because I asked questions the most cultish part of my experience was that despite all of this they still enticed me to come back a few times and rejoin activities committing to greater and greater responsibility each time which meant worse treatment each time because for me having greater responsibility meant asking questions sometimes even logistical clarification questions ie when are we supposed to be at X event what's the address of Y location infuriated my leader when I tried to talk to his leaders about this they tried to Gaslight me then ostracize me in third time back I promised myself I would never return my brother is still involved in it makes family gatherings extra tough my sister would be involved if a husband's job would allow him to relocate I went back one time to see my brother get married to another member I ran into my old crew and leader who discouraged me from starting medical school noting that it would delay my marriage and childbearing and that the workforce isn't the woman's place it's a message I've been hearing from my mom for years and continue to hear every time we talk it's very hard continuing to be a part of a family that's so deep in this ideology TLDR cultish group tried to leave three times out now family is still in it edit a lot of comments below are asking if my bad experience could be explained as it having been the site I was at it's possible I was at the main base headquarters in Kona high which where most of the bigwigs live or frequently visit I have met spend time with my head leader a few times and several other members of our leadership over the years during my tenure with iam they visited several other bases and found elements of what I experienced in Kona but definitely had a more diluted version of the above when I was away the peripheral bases are possibly more benign than the epicenter but the periphery also may mask the problem more easily because the volume of the collective voice is quarter when the base size is so much smaller we're talking sometimes twelve people versus thousands in the epicenter I experienced highly Concentra Ted six ism racism homophobia et Cie and I think it's not hard to imagine the power of groupthink to influence radicalism and make people more vocal about pre-existing and developing beliefs especially when the group is larger some people have good experiences with a womb I have my own thoughts and theories about that what I can say for sure was that my experience was not one of those good ones when my mother met and married my first stepfather I was four or five years old he began to introduce me to the Kelty belonged to almost immediately I don't think that my mother realized he was in one although he was trying to get her into it slowly during evenings when my mother went out all weekends whenever he could get me alone or school holidays or times when he'd come get me to take me out of school he would work on teaching me to be a member of the Kelty believed in whenever my mom wasn't around there were training sessions and practice sessions for his cult eventually there were times when he'd get me in the middle of the week from school and take me to a group camp sort of place that other members of his group set up for extended activities sometimes they would trade children for the getaway period like swap us back and forth across training once in a very great while a kid they would die but usually those were the kids that were just picked up and not legally parts of their family so they didn't have to make excuses for the missing I was very lucky because my stepdad didn't like to share me so I was never cross trained my mother helped my stepfather in a lot of what he did not because she knew what he was doing and involved in but because she was naturally a hateful sort of person who helped him in isolating and keeping me from making any long-term friends she refused to let me watch television listen to radio or music go to parties or special events it was a lot like being a Jehovah's Witness family but she wasn't one he just didn't want me around and did not want me to inconvenience her in any way so the house was closed to me I was restricted to my room for most of my life as a child by her and that helped him because it gave him a lot more access and control over me my stepdads cult was a sexual slavery group they believed that women were naturally inferior and meant to be slaves my training was to teach me how to be a slave how to endure pain long terms of time imposes holding things or being furniture and what he called preparations for my womanhood by the time I was around 8 or 9 he was trying to get my mom into softer versions of what he was doing with me with his buddies in his group he started by trying to get her to do swinging and wife swapping and stuff that my mom was naturally a prude who actually had had six in the first place which kinda made things worse on me and made him more impatient by the time I was 8 and 9 I told a childhood friend some of the stuff he did but not about the camps and the poses and training and the kids that were expendable she told her mother who told my mother that I was being molested and there was a lot of screaming and shouting in the house and the embarrassing interviews with her interrogating me and being really angry at me and I was so scared because of the threats he'd made but also because she was so furious with me that I minimalized what he was doing and kept it to just the preparing me for womanhood bits she separated from him for three months but it was too hard for her to make it on just her own income and she was too proud to ask for help and refused to go on any kind of assistance because she didn't want to be a welfare mom like all the wetbacks she hated so she took me back to him and basically just gave me to him I tried to tell her that he was starting stuff again and I was told that she was just too tired to hear it right now so I never tried to get help from her again by the time I was between 10 and eleven years old I'd begun to read books about child abuse molestation and cults I couldn't find anything about the sexual slavery parts of it but there was enough there already for me to understand that what was being done was wrong and to fight it I began to refuse him every day was a battle of screaming shouting throwing things hitting each other while my mother would then punish me for being disrespectful to my stepfather in the end he was trying to abuse me in the afternoons and I was stalking the house at night while he slept with a knife in my hands trying to get the nerve to kill them both in her sleep just as I was ready and prepared to do it I had stuff packed and everything he just disappeared after a week of him being gone my mother told me that he had been having an affair with another lady who was only 17 years old but had a two-year-old daughter already and that she kicked him out for cheating on her that's how I got out of the cult however later on as an adult I stupidly ended up with another guy who was into the same things he started out trying to pass it off as just an interest in normal bondage fetishes but in the end I found out he was with the same group of people who are now apparently internationally spread out with private compounds and vacation places all over the map it tore me up when I realized it I called the police and changed the locks when I found the boxes and boxes of his private photo collection at the camp's he went to with the other men posing with women tied up cut-up unconscious and beaten so that was the second time I escaped from that kind of cult it has now been 13 years since I earned that freedom I haven't yet but I will as soon as I am 18 I am a Moony the unification Church was a church founded by Reverend Sun Myung Moon in the 50s or 60s I can't remember exactly when the church's members are often referred to as Muniz and named members are divided on some like it some equated tulips pseudo curse word the unification Church and its teachings center around the founder Sun Myung Moon we were taught at moon when he was a young boy in North Korea then Korea was accosted by Jesus himself who descended from the sky to inform the young Rev moon that it was his destiny to bring the people of Earth back to God in order to achieve this end moon collected his thoughts into a book called the Divine Principle used as a supplementary text by members in order to accelerate the growth of the church he arranged marriages my parents were matched by picture moon literally picked up a picture of my mom and of my dad and matched them like that in order to marry all the couples he matched the church arranged mass wedding ceremonies BuzzFeed article detailing the last mass wedding ceremony I am a second-generation member though I know some third generation members I intend to leave the church officially when I am 18 if I were to choose to stay my parents would seek a girl in the church for me to marry and with the consent of the girl's parents I would be married off to that girl in a math ceremony along with 4,000 other couples my parents do not know that I am leaving the church and I don't know how they will react when they find out to be honest though I'm more worried about how they'll react to the fact that I have had a secret girlfriend for the past 3 years I've been dreading the moment when they inevitably find out if this gets any sort of attention I'll add a paragraph about beliefs and missionary work and that kind of stuff AMA beliefs the main text of the religion is that the Divine Principle the Divine Principle basically states that the core of humanity the basic structure around which everything should focus is the family another idea that is central to the unificationists philosophy is the idea of pure love pure love entails no dating of any kind for marriage nossek's before marriage and nossek's forty days after marriage pulav also entailed that the founder of the church would be the one who matched couples to ensure that the marriage was a pure one in the first few matching ceremonies he literally pointed pairs of people in a room and told them that they were to be married to each other as the church grew moon began matching people by their pictures he eventually loosened up on this policy in the church set up matching workshops for parents so that parents could do the matching and lieu of moons matching it should be noted that moon himself was married twice teachings we are taught the same things as Christians are taught in addition to teaching specific to the you see we learn about moons struggles in North Korea the moment when Jesus came to moon and the struggles of moon in trying to get the church going in the 70s and 80s one story that I was taught that always stuck with me was the story of how moon when in a North Korean prison only ate half his allotted rice and gave the rest away I don't know how true this story is but it shows how moon built a myth around himself he escaped the NK prison when the u.s. bombed the prison he was in during the Korean War he escaped to Japan was persecuted there and eventually emigrated to the US the church now largely comprises of Japanese people Koreans and the people who converted to you see capital I myself am half Japanese half Korean a fact that can be only explained by moons indiscriminate matching methods sides note moon himself advocated for the blending of people's I knew many half White's half Japanese people a couple half black half Japanese people and some white white people this was one of the few liberal ideas that the church maintained and I thought it was kinda interesting on the flip side the church hates gay people but they are not especially fanatical about that I was taught to just pretend to be their friends and don't treat them differently missionary work my mom was born into the church she's Korean but my dad converted when he was a uni in America a white man with a Bible showed up at his door preached the Church's teachings and my dad decided to check out what they were about he later had a moment with God and well here I am the church is heavily invested in attracting new members the people okay I know you want to hear stories about how extreme the members were about how fanatical they were and how I was closed off from my friends and forced to wear a chastity belt and was chastised before looking in the general direction of a female and that I was taught that God cried when his children masturbated but that would not be my experience the people had some extreme views don't get me wrong I've sat through three increasingly awkward lectures about the sins of masturbation but in all honesty the people who I've met who are a part of the church are actually some of the nicest people I've ever met there's a wholesome attitude that pervades the church and its members we were taught that we are all a part of the same family that we were all brothers and sisters it was actually kind of cool to be able to call each other brothers and sisters it was fun to feel comfortable enough with fellow members to say with earnestness that they were your brother or sister even if they looked vastly different than you and were of a different race than you at least in public there was a general vibe of cooperation and of kinship at least in the general member population there was no malice against those that were not a part of the church it was more over they just don't know that they're wrong attitude I've always maintained that I liked the people just not the beliefs extra notes Korean culture pervades the church Korean food is served oftentimes Korean culture is taught and a lot of the words were used to describe church proceedings are in Korean most members are Japanese at least in the u.s. they are I'm not sure why the moment when moon pass was an event to say the least I cried I used to be extremely devout the Washington Times is owned by the UC Open bracket I used to like the idea of arranged marriage because it took the burden of dating and finding someone off my shoulders we had a huge scandal when the church's head pastor who herself was a daughter of mu had a baby with a bandleader who played worshipped songs before she gave her sermon every Sunday boy was that a confusing time if you made it to the end I commend you I hope this was informative [Music]

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Id: DgeaRvWeYpU

Length: 31min 3sec (1863 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 09 2020