When the most vulnerable within a community go unprotected, how can they find the strength to push their way out?
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Episode Transcript
I knew I wanted to obey and submit because I
didn't want to get in trouble, But I didn't fully
grasp for the rest of my life what that meant.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
For my heart. Podcasts and Rococo Punch. This is the
Turning River Road.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
And then he put the rings on our hands to
be worn on our ring fingers. Doesn't fit anymore. This
is all goes on now.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It doesn't even pass your second knuckle now.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Nope, so tiny. Yeah, I was just a kid.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
In the early two thousands in rural Minnesota, Lindsay became
one of the maidens of River Road Fellowship. She was
thirteen years old. A ritualistic ceremony married her and nine
other girls to their adult leader, and for years they
all endured a secret life of physical and mental abuse.
It all happened in their community of a hunh hundred
(01:00):
and fifty people, believers on a commune who saw their
leader as an apostle, like God in the flesh. They
followed his command for decades.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Why did I think that way? Why did I allow
myself to get so sucked in by this man and
thinking to the point that if I died for him,
that would be the greatest honor.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I don't care what happens when Jesus Christ comes back,
whatever happens to me, it cannot possibly be worse than this.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
But in twenty fourteen, Lindsay and a friend, the youngest Maidens,
made the daring decision to escape. They sparked an international
man hunt for the cult leader who had controlled their
world for.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
All those years. You know, he was the predator and
I was the prey, and then he became the prey.
Listened to The Turning River Road starting on July eighth
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