Escaping Utopia

by Lalich, Janja; McLaren, Karla;

  Lily (COL): One day just before I left, I found a former members’ website on the Internet. Nothing happened on that website for a good year, and then one day, this girl from one of the COL groups came on and wrote, “This place is a cult and I don’t like it anymore and I’m leaving,” and we all went crazy and we all joined and wrote about our experiences. And that board has been going strong since. I also talked to a psychiatrist who worked with trauma victims whom I had met through the Graduate School of Psychology. The problem was that I needed an evaluation, and they were all charging me $2,000. This guy did it for $500—a very kind person. He suggested that I get therapy, but I didn’t want a strictly professional relationship—I need to know that that person cares about me. Once in a while, he still checks in with me: “How are you doing? Are you doing the steps that I told you to?” It’s up to me to do it, but I want a person who cares about me, and the psychiatrist I had before then wasn’t caring. And I’m not up for it. I have to spend my money on it, so I want to make sure that the person cares. And that last one, he really did care and he helped me feel better.

  Jessica (FAM): My goal was to get an education because for me that was like giving a finger to them, because they absolutely said that education was the Devil. This was like my big revenge—to get an education. It was my goal. I was doing really well at work, and I was doing decently at home, but school was really my focus. I just really, really wanted to get an education. So I went to college and I did really well. And I studied really, really hard because, for me, if I did it any other way, then I was a failure. I had to absolutely do well because they tried to scare me: “You want to leave so bad, but when you leave, you’re going to be a crack whore. That’s all you’re good for.” And my response was, “No, I don’t think so.” So I got involved in a lot of stuff at school. I was made president of the International Students Club because I had been a lot of places, and I worked with all the international students quite a lot. And then I got asked to join Phi Beta Kappa. I became the chapter vice president. My daughter and I would do all the school activities together. I would take her all the time.

  Iris (TM): I called a counselor who knew about cult stuff. I called her to get into therapy but she was preparing to go away over the holidays. It was December by the time I called her and she asked, “Are you in crisis?” And I said, “Well no. I left the group fifteen years ago and I’m holding down a job. I’m not going to fall apart. I just wanted to talk to someone, to you, when you come back” (laughing). So I went to her for a while. And the next year I deducted $3,000 from my taxes for books I had purchased on Amazon. I really studied cults and mind control and psychology. I was going into real depth to figure it out and really understand why I kept making bad decisions. I wanted to get things right. And it took a long time to get there and a lot of what helped me was reading, yes. Seeing the therapist helped. But the biggest help for me was the fact that I had developed friendships.

  I made a real effort to form a friendship community for raising my children with other parents. They became my friends. And when I told them about TM, they were very accepting and made some jokes that were not offensive. They were respectful, warm jokes. And feeling that acceptance removed my own inner stigma from myself. They allowed me to feel that it was safe to start talking—whereas in the cult we learned not to talk and to keep secrets. When you leave, you still can carry that attitude of keeping secrets and being afraid of speaking. But now I found that it was okay to talk. Some people are awkward with it and don’t want to be friends, but there were enough people who were totally fine with it, who just said, “You’re still a good person. That’s okay. You know, we all have skeletons in our closet.”

  Matthew (12T): There are many, many ex-members of the Tribes—people who have gotten thrown out of the cult and are on the ex-member website. There are many kids as well. We discuss and research for other people, other loved ones, and we share our stories and support each other. There are a lot of great experiences in that group and we discuss different perspectives and different beliefs that we struggle with. It’s very, very interesting. I’ve been involved with that since I left the community eight years ago. It’s really helping me.

  Joseph (EB): Joining a mainstream church helped. It was a good transition from the fundamentalism and perfectionism of the Brethren. And the online group for ex-Brethren was invaluable.

  Rachel (12T): We did have one former cult friend, whom my sister and I stayed very close to. He lived in a city south of us and we would ride the train down on weekends. He had left the group a year before us. We would go down on weekends and just try to catch up on all the movies, all the TV shows we had missed. We would listen to CDs to catch up with music. He really helped us so that we wouldn’t be so ostracized at school. And then we would all work on our speech patterns together. For example, “Don’t say that word, that’s one of those words”—so don’t say “repent,” you know, instead you should say “I’m sorry.” In the group it was, “I need to repent.” So if we would catch each other, we would say, “No, no, no. You need to say you’re sorry.” We all really worked with each other and we made sure that we stayed in contact with him.

  I think for me, the thing that has been the most helpful was going to college and studying, and being able to look at it in a really logical way, because nobody had ever presented what had happened to me in a logical way. It was always this really emotional thing. So to be able to go to school and study psychology and sociology, especially sociology, and really to be able to … you know, these academic authors write about cults and it’s just this really matter-of-fact thing. It’s not something that is shunned or hidden. It’s just something that people are interested in and want to know more about. They don’t want to know more about it because they want to make a judgment and say it’s good or bad; they are just genuinely interested.

  I had some professors who were really amazing. I talked about the community with them and they challenged me to write papers about it and to look at it from a different perspective. For example, what was it like for the adults? I had a psychology instructor who waived all my course work and exams for the semester if I would just write him a paper on the psychological and sociological principles that cause adults to join. And what kind of attributes does a leader have to make him a leader? How does he manipulate people? What does he do to make people stay in these kinds of environments? It was a 22-page paper, and that paper changed my life. Just being able to look at it from the adults’ point of view and see it, not from their eyes emotionally, but through their eyes logically. That really, really helped me. The college community really embraced me and said, “What you went through was interesting. This gives you a great perspective on life that other people don’t have. You’ve been given this wonderful tool, an edge.” Especially because I’m going into social work, it’s really going to give me an ability to empathize that other people don’t have: that opportunity to have had those kinds of experiences and that real-life knowledge. So for the first time in my life I feel really accepted—all of me, not just Rachel, but the integrated person.

  Our narrators found some very useful resources online and through books, groups, and schooling; however, they still struggled a great deal. As such, they had very good ideas about the resources that they and other cult survivors need to heal, reclaim their lives, and integrate themselves into the outside world.

  What Would Have Helped?

  Toward the end of each interview, Janja asked the narrators what would have helped them. One overwhelming response was to be able to find a therapist or helping professional who had familiarity with or at least some knowledge of the aftermath of life in a cult (we will focus on what helping professionals need to know in Chapter 7).

  Joseph (EB): I can think of lots of things that would have been useful: counseling, or mentoring from someone who was skilled and qualified instead of from well-meaning but ignorant friends. That would seem to be the most valuable. I also think that educating the ge
neral public about what cults are like and what to expect when they meet a cult survivor would be very valuable. My experience is that most leavers do not think they need help, even when they do, and an educated layperson would be able to help them see where they need help and point them towards qualified people, which would prevent a lot of problems later on.

  Rachel (12T): Probably education—really helping people learn the ropes of the world, you know. What do you need? Oh, a GED. And how is society structured? How do people in the world interact with each other? What is that about? And then, I think the most important thing is having support. Knowing that there is someone you can talk to when you’re having those moments and you break down and all the pain is just too much. You know, you’re thinking about what happened to you or whatever. Having somebody who really understands, not just some therapist who says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now tell me how that makes you feel.” You want somebody who really gets it, specifically about controlling groups like that. Exactly what does that mean and how hard it is to break those injunctions—I don’t know what other word to use. They really need that place they can go to 24/7 whenever they need it.

  Jessica (FAM): I guess my biggest suggestion for the kids who are just leaving is a few things. They need a place to go, they need a place to stay, they need help with education, and they need psychological help. I mean, as much as we all tried to deny it, all of us got to a point where we needed psychological help—it was super necessary. That would be my advice to someone. It should be one of the first things you should do is talk to someone. At least someone who can tell you you’re not a complete weirdo, even if you completely feel like one (laughs).

  Lily (COL): We all need to learn to take care of ourselves. All this time I’ve been struggling to take care of myself. And I mean, people are in their twenties and they’re supporting themselves and making good livings—and I’m just renting a room and I need to take care of myself. If there were resources available to me … I’m not looking for a free ride. I just can’t afford anything right now, you know. I am trying to get myself out of debt and get my life back on track. But I am genuinely interested in somebody that specializes in this. I’m interested in getting objective counseling in how to get over this and open myself up to better relationships with people.

  Most of our narrators would have found it easier to get on with life if there were accessible resources to help them with practical matters: how to get a GED (most didn’t even know such an option existed), how to find health care, how to write a resume, how to apply to community college or university (and what’s the difference between the two?), how to learn computer programs or other skills for finding work, how to file taxes, and so on. The online guide Starting Out in Mainstream America9 by clinical social worker and therapist Livia Bardin was developed to provide such resources. These resources are necessary for people who have lived in a closed and highly controlled group. For instance, one of the young women Janja interviewed spent years of work and borrowed thousands of dollars for a certificate program, only to find out afterward that the institution was not accredited and that the piece of paper she received was worthless. She didn’t know how to check on the credibility of a school or program. These are the kinds of experiences we need to help survivors avoid.

  Finding Success in the New World

  Each of our narrators achieved something wonderful; they all struggled greatly, conquered the seemingly insurmountable, and learned how to build new lives for themselves, and in many cases, for their own children and other cult survivors as well. No one can describe the feeling of being free from cults better than the narrators themselves.

  Joseph (EB): One of the heartwarming events was that I received secret, independent communications from two or three elderly members of the Brethren indicating obliquely that they secretly agreed with me concerning the leadership and fundamentalism, and expressing their distress at the campaign to denounce me as evil. The existence of even one or two such sympathetic souls was enough to alleviate and dispel a whole mountain of vilification. I also began to relish and enjoy the good things of life that had previously been forbidden, such as literature, poetry, drama, music, and art. I found this sort of cultural enrichment a pure joy. And the friendship of the woman I later married was probably the best experience of all.

  Matthew (12T): I feel like I left the commune in peace. So I feel much different now, about my struggle, my guilt and everything, everything I held in and suppressed within myself, and the burdens I carried for all those years. A lot of different things that I had suppressed within myself—all the emotion and feelings and just the guilt and everything—I’ve let it all go. I just let it all go and I feel good about it now. I’m starting to go to school, I’m getting my GED, I’m getting a job and I’m just trying to do whatever I can to get this process going. So that’s where I am.

  Jessica (FAM): Being able to come home and just be able to have downtime—I really, really love that. Just being able to get away and not having somebody on me constantly, watching everything I did, supervising everything. Because they didn’t let us be on our own for one minute. I mean, they didn’t let us stop quoting or singing or doing or reading, because then we would have time to think, or talk. Just being able to have the time to think, or to be able to say whatever the hell it is I wanted and not get in trouble for “inane babbling,” which was talking about anything that was unnecessary. If you said anything at any time, like, “Hey, nice sweater” no, that was inane babbling. You never said anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. And I talk a lot now, but I’ve got a whole lot of catching up to do!

  Iris (TM): It’s nice now to be out of the closet, really, in terms of just being able to casually say, “Yeah, I was raised in a cult,” and kind of roll my eyes. And then people ask me questions. A lot of people find that very unnerving because they want to think that only unintelligent people would be involved in something like that. They don’t want to think that it could possibly be them. And so to meet somebody who is functioning relatively normally, not unusual looking, not speaking unusually, someone who’s not that off the wall—that’s a threat to some people. A lot of mainstream society thinks that they wouldn’t fall for Jonestown, they wouldn’t fall for Scientology, or anything along those lines—yet, they’re reading Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle and not realizing that it’s exactly the same thing. You know, it’s threatening. It’s awkward for people to be confronted with this reality.

  Samantha (FLDS): I’m part of the HOPE organization now—I’m the vice president. We’re a resource guide for people leaving FLDS towns like Colorado City or Centennial Park. We help with resources. If you need your car registered or if you need a car, we’ll try and help you find a car. Depending on what our funds are like, we’ll help you with a down pay-ment. We do registration, insurance; and we help with groceries, schooling, and other things for people leaving. We’re a resource guide for them: this is what you need, this is where you go. We are the signs.

  Lily (COL): The best part about leaving is knowing that life can’t really get worse. I’m sure drastic things can happen and life could in fact get worse. I could get a disease. But that could happen while I’m in there, too. The best thing is that I have my freedom and I can do whatever I want and I can make the choices I want.

  An important response from Janja’s interviews with the sixty-five women and men in this study is that no matter how bad things got—and no matter how much they struggled to build new lives for themselves, every person (except one) said they never thought of going back to the cult, even in their darkest moments. For them, even the most painful moments in the outside world were better than life inside their groups.

  In our final chapter, we’ll explore the resilience that helped all of our narrators escape from their cults and build new lives for themselves. How could professionals or support people have helped them more skillfully? And what advice do our narrators have for people who are thinking about leaving their own abusive groups o
r relationships?

  Notes

  1.

  Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, are neighboring towns that until recently were completely controlled by the FLDS. The twin communities were known as Short Creek. The U.S. Justice Department filed a civil rights lawsuit in 2012, and the breakup of control came after a Phoenix jury found that the two towns “intentionally sabotaged people considered threats and enemies to the imprisoned FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs and his brother and surrogate, Lyle Jeffs. The jury found that the police departments followed, harassed, and intimidated nonbelievers, and that the cities denied services to new residents from outside the faith.” www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ff-polygamy-towns-makeover-20160310-story.html, accessed December 26, 2016.

  2.

  A very helpful online guide developed by Livia Bardin, MSW, a clinical social worker and therapist who specializes in cult-related cases, entitled Starting Out in Mainstream America can be found at http://startingout.icsa.name/.

  3.

  See the following for two classic studies on leaving high-control groups: Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh, Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); and Janet Liebman Jacobs, Divine Disenchantment: Deconverting from New Religions (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).

  4.

  Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: BasicBooks, 1992), 33, citing N. C. Andreasen, “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” in H. I. Kaplan and B. J. Sadock, Eds., Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, 4th ed. (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1985), 918–24.

  5.

  www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/suicide-datasheet-a.pdf accessed December 27, 2016.