![]() ![]() You can’t replace what your birth parents were, but you can create a support system of people who will treat you right. Knowing that there were people on the outside like her who cared, who would help you, was such a help. I was so sick at first when I left it took me months before I got clarity. My adoptive mum, Kristyn, literally rescued me by getting me taken off the missing persons list and fighting for me, even when I didn’t know it. It took me two years until my paperwork was all done and I was finally free of them. They were searching the roads for me in Salt Lake City. I went to a domestic violence shelter in Salt Lake City, and they told my parents where I was. My family kept fighting to bring me back. How could they not come after somebody when they were in that state of mind?Įven after I escaped, it was so hard. I think that’s when I realised the lengths people would go to to please the church. I believed in God – I still do – and I didn’t want to disappoint God by killing myself, so I got out of the reservoir and ran all the way back to the house. I was in there for about an hour, but they never came. I actually got into it up to my neck, and I kind of sat there. Then I thought, maybe they’ll say they didn’t come after me because they knew I was okay, so I got into the reservoir. ![]() So I ran to the reservoir, and I sat there and waited by it for a really long time and I realised they weren’t coming after me. They took the family out of the house and left me to it. I asked, “should I actually go and get in that reservoir?”, and they said, “yeah”” – Brielle ![]() I didn’t know if they meant it, so I tried to test them. “There was this reservoir nearby, and they told me that I should just drown myself, and that if I didn’t they would kill me and tell everyone else I’d committed suicide. I still had hope that something, somehow would change, but they kept telling me there was no way out. The people in the safe house were telling me there was no way out of there, I wasn’t going to survive. It’s like, you get out of bed and you’re being watched all the time. The caretaker of this safe house would follow me everywhere. They sent us to this to this safe house in Wyoming.Īt this point Jeffs had been arrested, and he’d sent people after me to harass me and follow me everywhere. There was this raid in Texas and I was living in South Dakota at the time. The FLDS had this network of safe houses and they used to send us to them when they were scared of the police raiding them. There’s one experience for me that really stands out in terms of how traumatic it was. There were a few screws loose in the window and I unscrewed them, broke the glass and ran away to this family I knew on the outside. When I finally managed to escape they’d actually been keeping me locked up in this room. They had these guard towers and big gates and I didn’t have a phone or a car. I tried escaping several times but they always managed to get me back. I’d wanted to leave for about five years before I managed to get out. I’m thirty now, and I left the cult when I was 26. We’d normally communicate by letter, and I’d write to him and he’d get mad at me for something I’d said, and eventually I lost my faith. These are their stories.īRIELLE DECKER, FUNDAMENTALIST CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS To find out more about what it’s like to escape a cult – and how you adapt to life on the outside, Dazed spoke to three young cult survivors. Survivors have been known to suffer from PTSD, and finding employment outside a cult, when you might have no formal qualifications or experience makes you extremely vulnerable. Adjustment to the outside world can be incredibly hard. Cult survivors are often ostracised by friends and relatives remaining within the organisation, threatened with legal action, harassed and in some extreme cases, may be the victims of physical or sexual violence. It takes enormous amounts of strength – an almost imaginable degree of resolve – to leave a cult, particularly when you may have been born into one and have no friends or connections on the outside world. Psychological experts point to high incidences of exploitation and emotional manipulation, even abuse, which prevents members from leaving and often lead them to surrender their entire lives to the organisation. ![]() For all that cults are a part of our popular culture, they remain steeped in myth: sticky plastic cups filled with Kool-Aid charismatic Svengali leaders Sharon Tate lying eight-months pregnant in a pool of her own blood.Ĭults are defined as ideological organisations, typically held together by a strong leader or leaders that demand high levels of commitment. ![]()
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