Escaping Utopia

by Lalich, Janja; McLaren, Karla;

  One time, my mother had been in meetings for, like, three days. I don’t remember exactly why, but I had this major need to see her. And I kept trying to go up—there was this big grand set of stairs up to the second floor. And so I would go up, and I’d try to get in to see her. But she had people guarding her so that nobody could get in because she didn’t want to be disturbed. And so I would say, “I need to see my mom,” and they would say, “Go! Get out of here. She’s busy.” And for three days this went on. I kept trying to get to her. Finally, I went outside and I climbed up the fire escape out back. I got onto the catwalk. I walked all the way along the catwalk to the last room, where a window was open. So I snuck in and got into the hall, just feet from where she was. And I knew as soon as they saw me that they would grab me and take me, so I started screaming at the top of my lungs, “I need to see my mom! I need to see my mom!” So they’re starting to drag me away, and one of the elders came out of my mom’s study and said, “Put her down. Put her down. What’s going on?” And I was just hysterical. Just screaming and crying. “I need to see my mom, I need to see my mom.” And he says, “Okay, calm down, calm down. We’ll take care of this.” Then my mom hears all the commotion, so then of course she magnanimously walks out and exclaims, “Everybody move aside, move aside. My baby needs me.” And it’s like, you know, where were you for three days? Did you even know where your daughter was for three days? No. Or for the last month and months, who knows?

  But my mom just said, “Do you want me to give up this whole thing and move into a house and raise you myself? You know I can’t do that. God has asked me to do this. Would you really want me to not save them? Would you want to be responsible for them all going back and being drug addicts? Would you take me away from loving these people who’ve never been loved before? Of course not.”

  Shortly afterward, her mother sent her away to live with her older sister:

  That had a major impact on my emotional development. But I would say that probably the most harmful thing was actually my development as an individual. That was not allowed. And that started from the time I was very small. Basically, my mother started assigning rules for who I was supposed to be—from a very, very young age. I remember when I was really little she called me her Mary Sunshine. And it was my job to brighten up her day, to make her happy, and to make her feel good. That continued for a period of time, and then I was supposed to be an example. From a very, very young age, I was supposed to be an example to all these drugged-out teenagers. And I was supposed to help save them. I was supposed to be there, and I was supposed to show them how to be and how to act and I was always supposed to be a good example. I was supposed to grow up and take over and be the next generation, and this was my job, and this is who I was supposed to be. And every time any little piece of me, who I maybe was actually supposed to be, would come out, she’d squash it.

  Even for the children of cult leaders, there is no safe place to be, because the only acceptable behavior is to worship and adore the cult leader. This unhealthy idolization is not something that children should ever be expected to do in their own families. These harmful expectations interfere with children’s psychological development, their ability to form bonds, and their ability to individuate and become their own people. Their personhood is erased, because in a cult, the only types of people allowed are the leader, special disciples, devotees, and members or allies with money or connections who can help legitimize the cult. Freethinking and autonomous individuals are not allowed; the cult leader is truly the only person who matters.

  The Narcissism Inherent in Cultic Charisma

  In our narrators’ stories—even though they grew up in very different groups— we encounter strikingly similar tales of dramatic and self-absorbed behavior in their leaders. Constant crises and tests of loyalty are common in these groups because in many cases, cult leaders are unstable, egocentric, and deeply needy people. However, these crises actually serve the leader in that they destabilize followers, who then become even more susceptible to the leader’s needs and demands.

  A young man who grew up in the Greater Bethel Temple described the atmosphere created by the leader, Bishop Nelson Turner:

  Authoritarian, yes. He was very controlling. There were people in the church who held different positions of leadership, but they had no power. They couldn’t do anything without his approval. He very much ran the church. He would openly rebuke people constantly. That was his way of manipulating and controlling people. It was open rebuke. Constant. Just constant. By name sometimes. Sometimes not by name, but we would often know whom he was talking about. He would discipline people openly. It was definitely a situation in which everybody was very afraid of moving. Afraid to do anything. No one would start a new program or initiative. Even the other ministers or preachers in the church, if they did get a chance to preach, which wasn’t very often, they had to watch what they said. And if they said anything contrary to what Turner said, they would hear about it. They would get blasted over the pulpit, as we would say. They’d get chewed out. Strange thing was, even if Turner wasn’t there to hear it, other members of the church who were loyal to Turner would go and chew out the preacher who said something he wasn’t supposed to.

  Our narrators tell hauntingly similar stories of meltdowns, tantrums, and illnesses that their leaders blamed on group members who were supposedly not devoted enough. They also share stories of bizarre double and triple standards that allowed these leaders (and their inner circle) to get away with almost anything— theft, lying, child abuse, medical neglect, molestation, rape, enforced prostitution, imprisonment, and the intentional alienation of family members. And these stories are not unique; they are a main theme in many research studies, scholarly books, and memoirs about cult life.23

  In cults like the tragic Heaven’s Gate24 or the deadly Jonestown created by Jim Jones,25 cult members actually lined up to “willingly” commit suicide (or be murdered in the case of Jonestown) in order to support their leader’s devastating delusions.

  In the extreme behavior of charismatic authority figures, we find a crucial feature that separates cults from normal groups, and that is that cult leaders often exhibit traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).26 NPD is a condition where people require a great deal of external validation, may display grandiosity and selfishness, and may have little to no empathy for others. Though people with NPD often appear powerful, they have fragile egos and can be deeply unstable and self-absorbed—and they may inflict a great deal of damage on their mates, family, and friends.

  When a charismatic person with NPD develops an alluring transcendent belief system and finds a way to build systems of influence and systems of control, then dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people can become entrapped in his or her web of domination. If you add political and military power to this potent mix, millions of people—or entire countries, such as North Korea, Stalinist Russia, or Nazi Germany—can be controlled by the exhilarating vision, electrifying charisma, and total domination of their toxic and narcissistic leader.

  New York-based psychotherapist Daniel Shaw, who has worked with dozens of cult-involved clients, describes many cult leaders as “traumatizing narcissists”:

  The guru is infinitely entitled and grateful to no one; he rewrites history to create a biography that leaves out any trace of his significant misdeeds and failures; he never hesitates to lie for the purpose of self-aggrandizement, and to blame others for his own errors and failures; he is erratic, thin-skinned, belligerent, and constantly involved in attacking and belittling perceived enemies; he persuades followers to see their lives before joining his group as wretched, and he claims exclusive possession of the power to transform followers’ lives in miraculous ways.27

  [Erich] Fromm28 called such people “malignant narcissists,” people out of touch with reality, who exhibit more and more extreme behaviors as the pressures of living up to their delusion of perfection mount, and as they inevitably become exposed to scruti
ny and criticism. All too often, enraged by challenges to their fantasy of omnipotence, they lead their followers to acts of violence, against others or even against themselves. In cults, we have the examples of this horrific violence in the Manson Family, Heaven’s Gate, Jonestown, and many, many others.

  Shaw highlights the most common dynamics that occur between leader and followers as:

  1.

  Purification of ego

  2.

  Only perfection is good enough

  3.

  Incessant urgency

  4.

  Violation of boundaries as a norm

  5.

  Inner deviance must be eradicated (that is, only the leader’s moral code is to be obeyed)

  6.

  Defend the leader no matter what.29

  These dynamics are readily seen in the experiences shared by the adult children of cults interviewed for this book, and by others with similar experiences.30

  The young woman who grew up in the Brotherhood of the Spirit cult (whose leader claimed that he was the reincarnation of Robert E. Lee, among others) shared what it was like growing up with a traumatizing narcissist:

  So it was all the mental games, all the physical and sexual abuse, all the exhaustion, the sleep deprivation, food deprivation … all of it was really tied together. It varied for the members; but in our case, it never came with any privileges and definitely came with some drawbacks. By that time, the leader had drug and alcohol problems so he was very unpredictable and just a scary person. So, for example, when my sister was born, when she was a baby, the leader was the kind of person you could always hear before he appeared—loud, commanding. I remember clearly being in the house we called The Lodge, holding my sister. She was an infant, and we hear him coming and she starts shaking, just trembling. She was just terrified of him. He came in, probably drunk or high or something, and he’s trying to get her from me and I’m physically fighting with him over the baby. Now, a lot of people were around, we’re talking at least thirty people—it’s dinnertime. People are around and no one’s doing anything; they’re all just pretending it’s not going on. I’m twelve years old or maybe thirteen and I’m fighting with him, literally fighting over the baby. So he finally gets her away from me and he’s throwing her around and she’s screaming and crying, and so I finally get her back and run off with her—and the upshot of all of that is that he went to my mother and said basically, “You better get your daughter in line or you’re going to be kicked out of here.”

  In the narcissistic and malignant environment of cults, obeying the leader is essential if you want to stay in good graces or be allowed to stay at all. Individuality or dissimilarity from the leader, then, is unsafe and unwise. Accordingly, it’s common for cult members to emulate the leader—talk like him, act like him, or use the same gestures. The young man who was raised in the Greater Bethel Temple worked hard to become like Bishop Turner, even though the young man’s family was the only white family in that all-black fundamentalist church:

  He knew that I was trying to emulate him. He tore down my father in my eyes constantly, so I hated my father. I didn’t think of him as much of an example of anything. And I didn’t want to be like him. So I tried to be like this man, this black man who has an 8th grade education, who is forty years older than me, who has a totally different life experience than I do, and I’m trying to be like him. And everyone knew I was emulating him. Everybody knew. Turner stood me up in the congregation multiple times and complimented me for being such a good follower of his. He made the comment once about—I mean, he had a huge inferiority complex, and he would always say to the congregation, and he often used the “N” word in referring to his congregation. “Y’all are a bunch of Ns.” He would say, “You all don’t want to listen to me because I’m black. Y’all would rather listen to the white man.” Then he’d stand me up and he’d say, “Well, here’s a white man who listens to me.” I mean, I tried to dress like him, I tried to talk like him, walk like him, think like him, handle my finances like him. I just tried to do everything to be like him. And that created a huge struggle for me because I wasn’t him.

  A young woman who was raised in a small New Age group led by a woman named Anne Haas spoke of her mother’s extreme devotion to Anne:

  My mom constantly had a fake English accent—because Anne Haas is from England, so she has this very English accent—and so my mom constantly sounded like that. She dressed like Anne, her hair was like hers, everything. And anything that I did wrong or that she didn’t like, it was like this preaching hour. An hour lecture of how wrong I am and basically trying to lecture me about how un-perfect I am. Just like Anne would do.

  People trapped in the sphere of a narcissistic leader learn to minimize their own needs so that they can meet the needs of the leader and try to become like him or her. When this leader gathers a whole group of devotees, the group itself can mutate into a toxic community.

  The Toxic Narcissism of Cultic Groups

  Once the leader’s charismatic authority is accepted and members work hard to emulate him or her, an inner circle will form. The most devoted or high-ranking members of that inner circle will act in the leader’s stead. Many leaders don’t like to be around their followers all the time or even at all—they tend to live in better quarters, go on expensive trips, or simply isolate themselves with their favorite devotees, as The Family’s Berg and TM’s Maharishi did. In those cases, the middle management, as the top lieutenants are sometimes called, will take over the discipline and control of the rest of the members. This is an illustration of “charisma by proxy,” where anything inner circle members say or do is allowed because they have the blessing of the leader.

  A young woman in a philosophical cult called Aesthetic Realism talked about the inner circle that formed around their leader, Eli Siegel:

  Around the leader, this other kind of subculture grew, especially as he grew older. There were people who felt that they were ethically chosen and he treated them that way—as though they were ethically superior. So they came to be the really controlling ones, and everyone was vying for their approval. One of them was a woman who was an unusually mean person and who claimed to be ethically superior; but her actions were so power-hungry and so mean to people. And one word from her and a person would be cast from grace and thrown out.

  In Karla’s cult, a group of devoted adult women formed an inner circle and managed the day-to-day details of the group for the leader. They were known as the senior women and they ran the group in the leader’s absence. During a period when the leader was in Europe gathering money to fund cult businesses, the senior women banded together in a communal meeting and expelled Karla (from the group, from communal housing, and from speaking to group members) for wearing unapproved jeans instead of skirts, talking to unapproved outsiders while grocery shopping, and talking back in meetings. Such was the power of the senior women that Karla didn’t attempt to make her case with the leader himself, who had been like a father to her for seven years (or seven lifetimes, according to his tales of reincarnation). Karla was seventeen at the time.

  Yet even in the midst of all this loss, domination, and abuse, we discover hope in the stories of our narrators. Even as young children, many of our narrators report that they were repeatedly shocked and offended by the extreme displays of superiority, endless double standards, and habitually abusive behaviors of their leaders and the leaders’ inner circles. In fact, the everyday injustices they witnessed awakened many of them to how wrong their situations were. Before they escaped from their cults (or were expelled), many of our narrators questioned, challenged, and protested against what was being done to them, to their friends, and to their families.

  Something inside each of us rebels against abuse and injustice. Even children who were raised from birth to worship their perfect leader somehow knew that things were wrong. This inner knowledge is a facet of resilience that helped our narrators get out, stay out, and persevere through often-g
rueling circumstances. Against all odds, they knew that a better world—and kinder people—existed.

  Coping Mechanisms for Surviving Toxic Charismatic Authority

  Our narrators found ways to guard themselves against their leader’s unstable, domineering, and abusive behaviors. These young people were able to maintain a sense of themselves, even in the destabilizing presence of the toxic narcissists who controlled their lives.

  Many children who are under the control of a toxic narcissist learn how to cleverly play along and appear devoted so that they can avoid notice or punishment. Lily learned to appease Grandmaster Kim and act like a perfect follower, even though Kim constantly angered and hurt Lily by keeping her away from her own mother. Samantha feared her abusive father and did what she could to avoid his notice; part of this avoidance involved caring for her mentally ill mother and taking on some of her mother’s childcare duties for the thirty children in the home so that the house would appear to be well managed.

  One of the most important defense mechanisms was defiance, either open or secret. Open defiance, however, exposed the children to more punishment, isolation, and abuse, as Matthew experienced in the Twelve Tribes, and as Jessica experienced in The Family. Joseph’s defiance against the controlling Exclusive Brethren was more secretive: he read forbidden novels at school and lived a life of freedom in his imagination. Iris and her young friends in TM had hours of defiance time (unintentionally) built into their days; when all of the adults in the compound were meditating, the children were left alone to speak openly and do whatever they liked. Samantha’s defiance was very subtle; at FLDS gatherings, she would intentionally avoid eye contact with adult males so that she wouldn’t be forced to marry any of them. Though our narrators did what they could to survive in their sealed-off worlds, it is sad to note that each of them had to develop their own thoughts, opinions, self-protective instincts, and desires—their individuality—in secret so that they wouldn’t be exposed or punished for the crime of being different from what their leaders expected of them.