June 18, 2025 • 73 mins
Trust Me has joined Exactly Right Media. Hosts Lola Blanc & Meagan Elizabeth will be back with new episodes on Wednesday, July 30th.
In their first ever episode, Lola and Meagan interviewed Christine Marie, Lola's mom, about her and Lola's experiences believing in a self-proclaimed Mormon prophet. They discuss how they came to believe in him, their separation from each other, Christine's harrowing trafficking experience, and Lola's childhood memories of Keith Raniere from NXIVM. Original Airdate: 10/06/2020.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're about to listen to one of our favorite episodes
of trust Me from October sixth, twenty twenty, where we
interview my mom about our experience is believing in a
self proclaimed mormonnprophet. If you're new here, follow the show
so you don't miss the July thirtieth return of Trust
Me on the Exactly Right Network.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
If you have your own story of being in a
cult or a high control group.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Or if you've had experience with manipulation or abusive power
that you'd like to share.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Leave us a message on our hotline number at three
four seven eight six trust.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
That's three four seven eight six eight seven eight seven eight, or.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Shoot us an email at trustmepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Trust Me, trust.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Me, trust Me.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm like a swat person.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I've never lived.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
To you, I've never had a live.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Do you think that one person has all the answers?
Don't Welcome to trust Me. No, Welcome to trust Me.
The podcast about cults, extreme belief and abusive power from
two gals who've actually experienced it. I am Lola Blanc
and I'm megana and we both grew up believing in
cult leaders of some kind. Today we're going to talk
(01:06):
to my mother. We were going to talk about our
moment more men offshoot cult leader we both believed in,
who claimed that he was the one true prophet of course,
translating the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon, and
how we were chosen by God to help him in
the last days. We will also talk about how he
separated us from each other and how my mother was
sex trafficked. Trigger warning, there will be some descriptions of
(01:29):
sex trafficking, So that's not something you want to hear about,
skip this one.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
And if it is something you want to hear about,
seek help.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Just kidding, Megan, why don't you tell us about your
cult so people know who they're dealing with here? Oh?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
You know, well, A my cult super intense. Couldn't cut
my hair. Oh, couldn't wear pants. I got to go
to school and really long jean skirts. We couldn't watch
TV or movies. If I wanted to go to a movie,
my parents would say, is that where you want to
be when.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
Jesus comes back to the earth?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Wow? And I'd be like, ugh No, So I'd like
sit at.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Home and my friends would be at the movie and
I'd be like God, I hope Jesus comes back to
the earth and they'll go to have whoy that is
so bad and jealous. That's kind of mean, right, but whatever,
It's just I was seven. That was kind of my cult.
What's your cult?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Like?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
My cult is interesting because my cult is basically well,
it was a three person cult, but it has grown since.
And we will talk more about that later because our
guest today is my mother, who was the reason that
I believed in this cult leader. She was not the reason,
but together we believed in this cult leader. And it
(02:42):
was an offshoot of Mormonism. How big is it now?
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Dozens?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
I have heard their buying up property in an apartment
complex in Utah, and I think it's dozens. That's how
it starts.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
That's how scientology like just started by buying like a
storage unit. I'm making that up, but the properties, right,
you know, like you just start small and then all
of a sudden you own like a city.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah. You make people give you their money, right, and
then you can buy as much as you want because
you have so much of other people's money. So what
is normal Mormonism? Like, great question, Normal Mormonism, Well, it's Christianity,
but there's an extra book called the Book of Mormon,
and basically, you know, they believe in this guy who
(03:29):
translated scriptures from an angel in the eighteen hundreds and
then the true Church was finally brought back to earth.
And it's just like you have to get married in
the Temple, and in order to go to the temple,
you have to be temple worthy. So you tell your
bishop everything, kind of like Catholic confession a little bit. Oh,
like they do baptism for the dead, Oh, in the Temple.
(03:50):
You start doing that from age twelve, I think, Yeah,
you go and get baptized and they have the names
of a bunch of people who are dead, and you're
basically like baptizings. Oh so they can choose to accept
it or not. That's insane. I mean, you know, sex
is really a really bad sin. There's a lot of
guilt in the religion because of that. But otherwise it's like,
(04:14):
you know a lot of really nice people who just
believe in this thing. Okay, okay, So we are going
to be doing a weekly segment on this podcast where
we talk about the cultiest thing that happened to us
each week and we'll talk about what we experienced or
participated in that just felt a little bit extreme or
a little culty. But this week in particular, there just
(04:37):
happens to be some really culty stuff happening in the
news cult news.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
This week we have some pretty interesting cult news because
we have Small Belt, Small Bell.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Small Bill.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I love that show, Small Bell actress Alison Mac Alison Mack.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, she's in some serious trouble. She's pleading guilty to
what are the charger.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Like, racketeering, sex trafficking, sex trafficking, child pornography.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
I still haven't wrapped my head around right that was
That was Keith though, the leader, her leader.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Okay, if anyone doesn't know this is a sex If
you don't know, I don't know what you're doing and
why you're listening to this podcast. There's a whole HBO
docuseriies about it called The Vow. It is not out
at the time of recording, so we're just going off
news articles right now. But basically, it was a sex
cult and Allbany, New York in which they were branding
women's bodies. And we'll probably do an entire episode on
(05:34):
it later on, but it was headed by a man
named Keith Ranieri, who incidentally I knew growing up, and
so did my mother, And we can talk more about
that later. What is he alluring in some way? Is
he charismatic?
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Because I've been looking at pictures of him all day
wondering how he has all these women being his sex
slaves and they're all like like heiresses and they're super
rich and ye're beautiful.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Why he's such a weirdo? I was probably nine, so
I don't know, or ten or eleven, but I really
liked him up time. He taught me the word word thing.
That was one. One smart fellow he felt smart. Two
smart fellaws, they both felt smart, and it would checked
(06:20):
me into saying smelled smelled part oh wow. This is
my memory of Keith Ranieri, the sex cult leader.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
If we like, if we like a guy, should we
just determine that he's probably a cult leader if we
think he's nice.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
If anyone thinks he's charming or charismatic in any way,
he's definitely leader, minimum sociopath, probably a cult leader.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
If you're talking to a man who you find charming,
scream cult leader Mace Hammon and run.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Only like uncharismatic nerds for me who don't know how
to talk to people. She pleaded guilty, pled pleaded guiltyling
in court, sobbing in court, and some people think that
she was faking it.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
I mean, she's an actress on Small.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Bill, my favorite show. I personally, I have differing beliefs
on this because she was under the spell of this
very charming, charismatic man.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah, I'm gonna take the opposite side of you. I
think I'm totally anti her. I think she's so sick
in the head, just as sick as him.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Like, well, I don't know, man, I was watching some
of those videos of her, and I just like everything
that she was saying like she believed it. It seemed
like she believed it so fucking hard. And there are
I mean, we will get into this, but I just
think people the whole thing about cult is that people
end up doing things that they would never ever do
(07:38):
in their normal life, and they totally like, they compromise
their own morals, They like become someone that they would
never have imagined that they've become. And it happened slowly
over time because this person has such strong influence over them.
So I buy that somebody would do horrible things or
things that they would never do otherwise, and then like
snap out of it and be like, oh my god,
what the fuck have I done with my life? I've
(07:59):
been branding women's slaves and having slaves. That part is
a little very crazy. She had slaves, you know, Like
I understand.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
One of the main things we want to talk about
is just the bias against people who are in cults,
are who whatever, like as being dumb.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
My guess is the like dumb, naive, gullible, Yeah, which
is not true because literally anyone can join a cult
at any time, and the bless you think you're susceptible,
the more susceptible you are because you don't have your
defenses up. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, So I don't really know where I was going
with that, but you guys, it was brilliant, so.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
I believe you. But yeah, I think it's really really.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Crazy that she had slaves and that she was basically
tricking women into sleeping with him.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Then it's true, it's true. But I just always think
about the chain of power and the chain of influence
and who was at the top of that, and in
this case, it was him. Although you think about Wildbead Country.
Did you watch Wildblold Country? Of course, and Sheila, Sheila
in that scenario seems totally like the.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Past, seems like a Sheila to me. She seems like
a Sheila to me. So maybe, but she is. I
mean the fact that she's saying she's sobbing and saying
that it's wrong.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Sheila never did that. Sheila's still saying.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Oh my god, Sheila. Yeah, she love Sheila. She a badass.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, so I guess we'll see how it goes. But
she's she might be like indicted for twenty years.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
I mean that makes sense, that's fair. Yeah, so you know,
she'll probably not serve all of it. I'm so curious
to just hear the like inner workings of that story,
especially knowing the connections that my family has to him.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
I can't wait to hear all about this.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
I mean, this isn't this is not the cult that
we were talking about today, But we just happened to
know the guy from this cult. So you're so lucky.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
You know so many multiple cult Peters.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
It's my thing, it's really my mom's thing. We'll talk
to her about that, Okay, should we introduce her absolutely.
(10:16):
All right, everybody, This is Christine my mother. Hey, my
mom is an amazing person. She has been through a
lot and now she's getting her PhD in media psychology.
She also runs a she formed what do you call it?
She formed founded a charity? Is that the word?
Speaker 3 (10:40):
That's it?
Speaker 1 (10:40):
A charity to help survivors of trafficking and those sort
of things. She can describe it better, I hope.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
So, Hi, Mom, him, happy to be here. Thank you
for letting me come on and talk about this crazy stuff.
We're happy to have you.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Let's talk about you, all right. The thing that is
that I always want to tell people about your story
is to give them context of the religion that you
were in when you were preyed upon him by this
cult leader guy, because I think for a lot of
people who don't know about how cults work, or don't
(11:22):
understand religion or Mormonism or those fundamental beliefs, they think
that you just met a guy and you were like,
I'm gonna believe in this guy. He seems like someone
I should believe in, and then just went with it
because you were in love with him or whatever. These
like stupid myths that are not true. So for me,
the important place to start here is that you were
(11:42):
a Mormon. You were a very devout, regular Mormon, no cultiness, well,
depending on who you ask about Mormonism as religion, and
you have these belief systems ingrained in your psyche. So
do you want to tell me about that? Right?
Speaker 3 (11:58):
I converted to Mormonism when I was a teenager. I
would read the Book of Mormon in my bed under
the covers with a flashlight. There were strict rules against
me investigating.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
The church, which happened because of missionaries, right right.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Because missionaries came over and they were having a big
influence on me. My parents thought they were losing me
to a cult. So they didn't want that and said, no,
what was drawing you towards that interesting question? I was
bullied when I was a child. I was rejected by
my peers. I mean, my grandfather was a Methodist minister,
(12:37):
and I always wondered, why don't we ever go to church?
So it was sort of like a job to him.
And I craved more. I craved a sense of meaning
because I wasn't getting it from being in some popular
click or something. And I started looking for religion in
(12:57):
high school and I found one. I was baptized on
my eighteenth birthday because my parents would not allow me
to join the church. So the day that I turned eighteen,
I drove to a lake where I met the missionaries
and a few members of the church, and I got
baptized in the freezing cold month of April in Michigan.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
I totally forgot that. I just assumed it was an
indoor baptismal font You must have been very dedicated. Thank you.
That's a wild eighteenth birthday.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
And that was so rebellious eighteenth No, that is rebellious.
That was so rebellious, you know. For at any rate,
it made me very happy. It was the happiest I
had ever been. I ended up going to Brigham Young University.
I went and became a missionary. I broke records on
(13:49):
my mission. I came off my mission to a man
who had been waiting for me, which is the father
of Lola, and we were married three and a half
weeks later. As soon as I got off my mission,
we were married and we lived the good, devout LDS life.
(14:10):
And you believe it. I believed right. I believed it
so much. I would say for me, it's not even
a matter of faith anymore. I have a true knowledge
that this is the truth. I knew it beyond the
shadow of a doubt, as they all do well, right,
all of them.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
But so the interesting thing for me, and what I
remember from my childhood is seeing meaning, in seeing religious
meaning or like divine meaning, in coincidences and dreams. You
and Dad were married kind of because of a dream,
weren't That's true.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I had to dream when I was on my mission,
and I thought it indicated who I was to marry.
And we were walking over some rocks on a pier,
and this man reached his hand out and helped me
cross this scary part. And when I got off my mission,
(15:07):
I didn't think that my husband, the man I ended
up marrying. I didn't think he was the one. But
when we went on this walk on the pier and
he reached his hand, you know, it reminded me of that.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Dream, and it was a sign.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
It was a sign, and there were many signs to me.
When I was a missionary, I prayed about where to
go to find people that were looking for the message
that I was going to share, and I would get
like I called it spiritual radar and just kind of
find the house based on intuition, and a remarkable number
(15:47):
of times when we would knock on that door, there
would be somebody who said, hey, I was just praying that,
you know, that God would show me the truth, and
you showed up. I mean things like that happened over
and over and over and over when I was in
that mindset, and I took all that to mean that,
you know, there really is a man in this guy
(16:12):
who's kind of pulling the puppet strings and helping me
know where to go and what to do. And if
I'm really in tune, I you know, I can make
miracles happen, almost like if I pray it, it's going
to happen, unless it's not God's will.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Right, So fast forward to you and that are divorced.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Right, we get divorced. And I got excommunicated because when
I was single, a divorced, single mother, I was intimate
with a man that I was in love with who
was also single.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Which is very unusual.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
I have heard it, and so I was, you know,
cast away forever.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
How did they find out?
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Well, I was honest, and I felt so guilty about it. Oh,
I confessed. And then when I you know, saw him again.
I sinned again, and then it you know, I mean,
(17:24):
he was my boyfriend, and so I became what they
called it, habitual offender.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Guilty.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Then I got excommunicated and that was it. No more
of that stuff. I was going to turn my life
back around. I ended up during the time that I
was excommunicated by the way I met Keith Rainiery side.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Note, founder of Next the Side cult.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Side note. And yes he tried to recruit me into
his cult. You know, we can get to that later.
But I was, you know, stuck, because I really loved Mormonism.
To be fair, it made me happy. It gave me meaning,
(18:16):
There was purpose in my life, there was community. I
understood why I was on the earth, where I would
be going after this life. I had a plan. Everything
made sense. I just needed a husband, a new husband,
and so okay, now here's here's the here's the catch.
(18:37):
So the founder of Mormonism had a vision Ja Smith,
Joseph Smith. Some people call it a dream, depending on
which document you're reading. Dreams are believed to be a
potential source of God speaking to you, that he can
share messages through dreams, visions and visions. Right, I prayed
(19:06):
about who mister Wright was since I divorced mister Wrong,
who would this man be that I would be with
for time and all eternity. And an answer to that
dream That very night I had a profound dream vision thing,
(19:27):
and I saw this man and I remember his face
perfectly because he looked like a cross between my ex
boyfriend David and Brendan Fraser. Oh.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I loved back in the day, and I still love.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I was like, thank you having my father, not my man.
No disagreement here, Thanks God.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
So some of my goal friend single women, we would
go to Mormon singles dances and I told them what
my mister Right looked like, so they would be on
the lookout. And my girlfriend had a dream that her
mister Right she would meet him and he would be
wearing a baseball cap. So we were both looking, you know,
(20:19):
using these signs to try to find, you know, information
about the other one's possible mate. So I go. So
I moved to Utah. I had a lot going on.
I was succeeding. I had a project that got funded
when I lived in California, and I was so excited
about it, and it required me to move to Utah.
(20:41):
And my very first Mormon singles dance that I went
to after moving to Utah was at Wheeler Farm. And
as I'm looking out onto the dance floor, who do
I see Brendan Fraser?
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Man?
Speaker 3 (21:01):
That look like a cross between my ex boyfriend David
and Brendan Fraser.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
So here's the important question. What kind of dancing are
you looking at? While you're like, are they what are
they doing?
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Oh? Well it would be uh the dougie?
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Are they grind dancing? Are they?
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Oh? No, very very wholesome dancing, even wholesome music. But
it was pop music or dancing Mormon dances.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
You have to keep Is this true of adults too?
You have to keep a Bible in a book of
Mormon space between you.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Oh okay, that's my specific all right, so you're not
too saucy.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
So you see this guy dancing with the Mormon book
space and.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
He was dancing with elderly ladies. Oh yeah, you know,
he wasn't dancing with all the hot girls. He was
dancing with, you know, the eighty three year old women.
And I and I went, look there he is, and
he's doing something that I approve of. In it, he's
so awesome. What kind of a man would go for
(22:02):
the elderly women to make sure they feel good, especially
when he's you know, handsome. And I just thought, oh,
my goodness. And I thought it was a proof that
there really was a God because he gave me the
dream and it manifest in the flesh. Yeah. So because
(22:23):
of that, he had a lot more power and influence
over me than if I had just met somebody. I
totally got that, you know, I thought there was meaning
to this and it was eternal and.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
How do you think God literally gave you a sign
about this person, like, of course there's meaning there, it
would be right.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
And then I happened to be a Book of Mormon fanatic.
I even wrote a book about the Book of Mormon.
I read the Book of Mormon NonStop, you know, dozens
of times, from cover to cover. So the Book of
Mormon has another part to it. This is what all
(23:06):
Mormons believe that there's a part when Joseph Smith originally
translated the Gold Plates, which is where the Book of
Mormon came from, you know, the Mormons belief.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
And I'm going to just translate it as in quotation
marks here because he translated them from an angel who
nobody ever saw in a hat.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
That the angel wasn't in that hat.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
No, the angel wasn't in the hat, but the angel
provided him the hat or something. Anyway, it came from
of a fucking angel, and he did it in a hat.
And this is the translation that's going on here. This
is not coming from like a physical text that exists.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Yes, Lila and her mother are using quotation marks which
you guys can't see, right.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
Okay, So supposedly, supposedly there were gold plates because gold
does not rust, and if you look in you know,
archaeological museums or whatever where you can find that they
did actually used to keep records.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
By engraving them on metal plates. All right, So these
were the gold plates. They weren't dinner dishes, which would
be pretty awesome, but it was like leafs, you know,
like book leafs. So I believed that Joseph Smith translated
these ancient words, and that's what became the Book of Mormon,
which I loved and it inspired me, and it inspired
(24:26):
you know, millions of people. Well, there is a belief
right from the Book of Mormon that when Joseph Smith
translated these plates, he did not translate them all. There
was a part that was left sealed until the last days,
right before the second coming of Christ, that in the
last days, one mighty and strong would would appear.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
And that's not setting up anything for trouble to who and.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Those gold plates would come back on the scene. Enter
the man from my dream. Not the man of my dreams,
but the man from my dream. Yeah, okay, keep in mind,
this man is not somebody that I would have ever
been interested in. Not my type, sort of a loser
in life, you know, I mean.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
That's true. I remember when Mom was single and I
was a kid, she was dating Hella Millionaires.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Interesting, and so when I started when I met him though,
because of this, you know, this magical thing around meeting him,
you know, he wanted to he wanted to sleep with me,
but I wouldn't because I'd already went down that road.
I was excommunicated. I made my way back. I paid
the price. It was like psychologically abusive to go through
(25:47):
the repentance process and make it back where you can
be rebaptized. And I made it, and I was like overjoyed,
and I thought, wow, I'm one of the few people
that made it back. Mostly when people are excommunicated, they
just you know, move on with life. But I loved
my church. I loved my Book of Mormon, and here
(26:09):
was this man. He was an atheist. He presented me
as an atheist at first, and I wasn't interested in him.
He was trying hardcore to get me to sleep with him,
or to get me to be interested in him, but
I wasn't interested. So he changed his plan and one
(26:31):
night he says, you know, I'm actually not an atheist.
I mean we would go back and forth. I was
trying to get him to stop being an atheist because
he once was a Mormon. So now we have an
ex Mormon and time Mormon, in my opinion, sociopath.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Yeah okay, but.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
I didn't know it at the time. Time, and I'm
trying to restore his faith. I thought Heavenly Father gave
me this challenge. This is my future husband, and I
need to bring him back to the fold. In the meantime,
he's trying to pull me out of the church, so
I'll sleep with him.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Okay, so we have a battle going on and he
couldn't do it. He later told me that I was
the first woman in his life whose faith he could
not break. So he changes his story and suddenly he
says I, he says, Christine, I have to tell you
(27:39):
the truth. I'm really non an atheist. It was a test.
It was just a test to see if I could
break your faith like every other woman. And because I
could not break your faith, I am allowed to tell
you the truth. I have translated this sealed portion of
the Book of Mormon in preparation for the second coming
of Christ.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
And by the way, tests are a huge thing in Mormonism. Yeah,
that's from God, like is proving your your worthiness, proving
your righteousness.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
Yeah right. And I didn't believe in him overnight. And
there were other believers, more than three. By the way,
she only interacted with three, but.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
I guess my experience of it was three.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Yeah right, but there were more. But nonetheless, it was
a small It was small, a small group. But so
I get sucked in and I'm thinking, oh my goodness,
this is the new Joseph Smith. That must make me
the new Emma his wife, you know, I mean, because
(28:40):
this man wanted to take me as his wife. So
here we've got the new prophet. He even sent me
eight chapters of the translation of these new Sealed Portion scriptures,
and it felt no different to me than when I
believed in the Book of Mormon the first time. It
(29:01):
was a big leap of faith to go from only
believing the Bible to believing the Book of Mormon as
a teenager. So it just didn't seem that weird that
the Sealed Portion would be coming forward. It was all
a leap of faith, which is ironic because after all
this was done. One of the criticisms that I had
from people who are devout Mormons was, how could you
(29:24):
ever have fallen for that?
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Oh my gosh, while I fell on the people who
baptized ghosts.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
You can believe in the Book of Mormon. But in
the Book of Mormon it says in the last days
the Sealed Portion will come forward.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Right It's right there.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
But you know, you know, I should have known better somehow.
So at any rate, what happened is he tells me
that we need to meet in Las Vegas. I am
to tell no one that we are to meet. He
is a prophet. He tells me that I had that
dream because I was sent to him to be his
(30:01):
help meet. In translating this a portion and that I
pass all these tests, and I was going to be
the prophet of the wife. I mean, the wife of
the prophet.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
That's a much cooler title.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Oh wow, and that's what I secretly wish, I thought
the other titles. So I thought, Wow, that's what happens
when you stick it out. You get rebaptized, you know,
you get you know, I felt like being rebaptized. All
my sins had been washed away, and now all these
manifestations and miracles are happening in my head. And okay,
(30:41):
one step at a time, I start really believing in him,
and then I find myself in Las Vegas about to
get married to this man, not legally married. He said
it would be like the prophets of old, like Melachi
(31:03):
took Anna. I mean, once you knew a person, which
means had sex with them, you know in the Bible,
it would say, and he knew her, right, Okay, So
that was when.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I started using that term. We totally knew each other
last night.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
And so I sat there thinking it out, thinking I
saw him in a dream.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
That would fuck I mean, I don't know if you
can say the word, but that would screw me up hardcore.
If I saw him in a dream.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Yeah, okay, I saw him in a dream. I got rebaptized.
The sealed portion chapters seemed the same of the same
spirit as the Book of Mormon. And I look him
in the eyes and I say, promise me, you're not
deceiving me, just so you can sleep with me. And
(32:00):
he said, I wish I was deceiving you, that my
calling has been so difficult and so lonely. Oh my
dear Christine, how I wish that this, that I didn't
have this yoke upon me. And he went on and
on about okay, and then I knew him. Oh here,
(32:28):
I'm thinking I'm his wife now, and I said that's it.
You know, there's no like ceremony, and he was like,
that was the ceremony. Okay. So he lets me think
I am his eternal wife, and the prophets helped me
and that I would be helping to restore polygamy to
(32:48):
the world even.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
And early Mormons believed in polygamy, and then they abolished
it when the government said that they couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Right now, guess what. Now I'm in a pickle because
if he's not a prophet, I just slept with somebody
that I wasn't married to, and I would get excommunicated
again and I would never be able to get back
(33:18):
into the church. Yeah, so now my critical thinking switched
a million little switches switched off so that I could
see everything that supported the fact that he really was
a prophet, because this was the double bind that I
(33:40):
was in. If he was a prophet, then I was
on the right path and I would be going to
the celestial Kingdom, in the Highest Kingdom where I could
be with my children forever. If he was not a
prophet and I just slept with him, I would certainly
lose my soul. So I was invested in him being
(34:05):
a prophet. Now, and fundamental Mormon beliefs, a prophet is
not allowed to lead you astray, that the Lord will
kill them, take their lives before they let you lead
them astray, before he will allow them to lead you astray.
So this is a fail safe for profits because they
(34:30):
can lead you astray, but you think they can't.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
So they're like, I'm not dead, so I'm not lying.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Right, Yeah, I'm telling you the truth here, So I
follow my prophet's words. Now, keep in mind, I'm not
in love with this guy. But I'm honored because you know,
I am the wife of the prophet. I am the
secret wife of the prophet. Well, then I have to
(34:59):
start sacrificing, because the prophet's wife has to prove that
she's more worthy than anybody else, so she has to
make bigger sacrifices. So first comes the money. Then comes
the dispossession of all the things that I cherished, And
(35:20):
of course the money from that also went to him.
He said it went into a fund to help the
poor and needy. I thought I was, and you did too,
I mean we were.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah, so I feel like we I will now talk
about how I came to Yes.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
I want to call it Adam. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
I want to call him something to year. I like Chad, Yeah, yeah, Chad.
I am twelve twelve, right, and I meet this guy,
and I actually I'm like, I'm so hazy now on
how I true on how I felt about him. But
I feel like I didn't like at first, and then
he bought me snacks, and then I liked him, which
(36:03):
is how you win me. It's a classic theme in
my life. You were impressed with the fruits, so I
was impressed with well, gusher's specifically right, right, That's what
it was. And but I didn't know much about him.
I just knew my mom spending more time with him,
and she had, you know, she was dating guys. She
was very well liked among the fellas, So I don't
think I thought anything particularly unusual was happening. And one
(36:27):
day I was snooping around hacking her computer, hacking, I
was hacking computer, was I was being a snoop. I
wanted to see what was what was going on in
mom's life. And I found these letters that he had
written to her, and I wish I could remember specifically
what they said, but basically saying like what God wants
(36:50):
her to do and basically implying that he is her prophet.
And I'm twelve and I'm Mormon, and I don't know
what any of this means. I just think, oh, wow,
Chad's a profit.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
So then I believed in him, and he found out
that I believed in him, and so then I was
in on it too, and he had me make I
was starting to make a website. I believe it was
an angel Fire website for his non existent charity that
he had made up where all the money from the
(37:26):
things my mom sold was going to and this was
this is gonna be called angel Fire?
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Is that?
Speaker 1 (37:32):
No? No? Do you know an angel Where are you?
Speaker 3 (37:38):
She was very savvy, very tech savvy for a little.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Angel Fire was like like the early Internet version of like, uh,
what's a web? Yeah? Like word press? Okay, okay, okay.
It was real dorky. They were like lots of like
cyber doll websites and lots of fan sites on angel Fire.
You were not cool in the early two houses.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
No, I was not.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
It was a really dorky way to make a website.
And I started making a website for his stupid non
existent charity.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Well, I wasn't allowed to have computers art, Oh that's right, right,
you know.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
So you're like and two, I'm in yeah, and she's volunteering.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Shit, yeah, And I think that I'm chosen too, because
that's I'm twelve. And how cool did I feel thinking that?
Like I was helping usher in the last days the
Second Coming of Jesus Christ, Like, oh my goodness, I'm
such a special girl. There's nobody else that knows about
this except for me and my mom.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
And he told me the reason I was so special
was because I had her. She was the real Jews
here and she sang to him and he was like,
she's going to be a star and everything else, So.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Okay, you know. Yeah. And then well so the yard sale.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Right, we sold stuff for the to help the poor
and needy to go into this fund. And then he
told me I needed to be separated from my children
because being the prophet's wife helping with the translation would
put me in a very dangerous situation, and for their
own safety, my children needed for a time being to
(39:27):
be away from me, and I needed to go and
live among the poor and needy. So I ended up
in a resident hotel. The children ended up in different places,
you know, like the boys went to their fathers and
she went to a friend.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Of stayed at in the house of a family from nearby. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
And I was quite a sheltered person growing up, even
though we weren't religious. I had a very strict father
as well and came from a small town. Then I
got married and lived the Mormon life. Never I was
not sophisticated. So now I'm living in a resident hotel
(40:08):
in downtown Salt Lake, which is a place where people
go when they first get out of prison. Okay, So
there were eighty occupants, and seventy eight of them were
men or seventy seven. Then there was a woman who
(40:29):
was in a wheelchair and a woman who was like
eighty seven, and then there was me. So I was
at that time. I had been doing pageants and staying
in shape and running my business, but I was like
a lamb in a slaughter. So once my money ran out,
(40:55):
the profit decides that I need to pass some new tests.
I need to descend below all things because I was
too proud and how dare I think positive things about myself?
I needed to be humbled. And the word that he
used in writing was that I needed to be a
(41:18):
based before men. Do you know the word a baste? Okay?
So one step at a time and I'll spare you
the gory details. But I'm in this scary place. I'm
being raped. I was robbed a couple of times. I
(41:43):
was beaten. I was physically harmed to the point where
I needed to get medical attention. And I was told
that there were three men who were watching me at
all times and if I ever left did not come back,
(42:04):
then I would run the risk of losing my life,
never being with my children again. He threatened their eternity.
And so I'm in this situation. I'm not allowed to
tell anybody. I'm not allowed to get therapy because I
can't tell anybody that these are that I need to
(42:27):
be purged in such a violent manner. And I'm saying,
surely he can't, you know, he can't know what's going on.
I need to tell him what's going on. He wouldn't
allow me to be here. In fact, he wrote me letters.
He wrote me a letter after I describe some of
the heartache and suffering that I was going through, and
(42:50):
he said, oh, my dear sister, Oh my heart cries
for you. I wish the mountains would fall down upon
and bury the men that are hurting you. And you know,
being very colorful, and how upset he is that I'm
being harmed? And who are my children? Anyway? You know what?
(43:15):
Because he wanted all things that brought me joy to
be out of my life, and my children were my life.
I was even young Mother of the Year at one point,
and the business that I had that took me to
Utah revolved all around family enrichment. My life was about
my children. So he wanted my children away from me
(43:37):
so that I could dedicate everything to him. And you know,
I think he was jealous of my children. But this
is a man who couldn't stick to one thought for
a long time. And what happened is I started becoming
sexually exploited, and he was He was the beneficiary. Now
(44:03):
keep in mind, I never had I never took money
for sex. I never was paid. I never handled any transactions.
They call it human trafficking, okay, And he had he
ended up in prison, in jail for something else, so
he had other people handling me. And then I get
(44:26):
a revelation from jail, one of the believers. I'll call
her his sister Jackie. Sister no, yeah, sister Debbie, Okay.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Okay, Jackie someone okay anyway Debbie.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Yeah, okay. Yeah. So sister Debbie I thought was an
elderly lady. I had always heard about sister Debbie's gonna
help with this and help with that. And he I
get this revelation sent to me me that says that
Chad would be marrying legally marrying sister Debbie, and that
(45:10):
I needed to be I needed to continue serving in
the manner that was required to provide financial support because
of the many men that desired me. That my job
was to provide this financial support and service to Chad
and his new wife, Debbie, and that if I obeyed
(45:34):
all of his commandments, then I would be a mother
in heaven. So now I was demoted from first wife
to slave wife. And in the same revelation, sister Debbie
was promised that they would have children together, that they
(45:54):
would be known throughout the world for their love for
one another. But I had to remain a secret. So
at this point, you know, I'm so damaged. I have
layers and layers of trauma. I'm so confused, but my
brain does not want to believe that my prophet had
(46:16):
anything to do with the harm that was befalling me.
I write letters to him and to Sister Debbie just
to make sure that they know that my life was
hanging by a thread. I thought about killing myself every
single hour. I thought there was no other way out,
(46:38):
and then he blew out the last candle flicker of
hope that I had. With his influence and power over me.
He was my ecclesiastical power. He was like the Pope
to me, even beyond the Pope because I believed he
a prophet. All Mormons, their prophets speak directly to God.
(47:02):
He is the one that put me in that situation.
He's the one that should have known and is not
getting me out of that situation. He said, you are
exactly where you need to be. And he said, if
you are not happy serving in the way that you
have been asked to serve, then all your sacrifices have
been in vain. And that was it. So now I'm
(47:26):
going to hell anyway I went. I passed all these tests.
I'm going to hell anyway. My money's gone, my dreams
are gone. I had a big project that God funded, gone,
my children are gone. Certain precious things I parted with
(47:49):
because of him. And I had a wedding dress for
when I did find mister Wright that I would never marry,
that I would never wear. I had to sell that.
I had a dress I designed myself that I wore
in pageants that was just amazing, and I had to
sell that. I had to sell things that I was
(48:10):
attached to. And I was left there with nothing. He
took every last thing that a woman holds near and
dear to her heart. There was nothing left for me.
To do but die.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
So meanwhile, I am living with this family from church
who has no idea what's going on. I don't do
you remember what we told them about why I was there.
I don't remember what we told them, but they just
knew I wasn't living with my mom, and I am
talking to my mom on the phone periodically, but I
(48:44):
don't know exactly what's going on, but I just hear
that it's like not good over there. Something is going on.
She's not having a good time. But I think, like, Okay,
it's just a test. God is just testing her. God
tests people. That's what he does. When you're chosen, you,
you know, He's gonna test you and make your life really,
really hard so that you can experience all the glories
(49:07):
of heaven. And I was like lonely and sad without
my mom. But I just would come for myself by saying,
while I'm chosen by God. So the Second Coming is
coming soon, Jesus gonna It's gonna come soon, and then
everything's gonna be amazing. Like I have chosen. I am
so special. These kids at school might not, you know,
(49:28):
like me that much, or I might not have any friends,
but they'll see one day when they see that I
was the kid who ushered him the second Coming of Christ.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
I love that weird al song where he's like and
I'll be laughing my head off when you're burning and
house Paradise.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Weird. How was one of my favorite artists at this
time side note Yeah, And I visited her once and
it was so depressing and scary. The bathroom we had
to go to the bathroom in the hallway there were
these like all these like scary men there. There were
like stalkers throwing, like trying to barge in. He has
to call the cops one night because this man was
(50:06):
trying to force his way in anyway. It was just
a really scary situation. And my mom is this. Even
at that age, I was aware that, like my mom
exuded this this youthfulness and this like innocence, and I like,
it was just so scary to see her in this place.
But I thought that that was God's will and that
was God testing her, and that was what needed to
happen so that we could help Jesus come back. In retrospect,
(50:28):
not sure how they were supposed to be related made
sense at.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
The time, So what the prophet would send men from
prison to come and be served by me when they
got out of prison. Oh okay, I had a job
to do. And one man who came ended up crying.
(50:56):
I showed him pictures of my children, and I showed him,
you know what my prior dreams were before I got
involved in the work, and he just started crying. I mean,
this is an ex con, right, he's crying. He's bawling, sobbing,
convulsing tears. And I didn't understand why. I mean, he
(51:20):
laid his head on my lap and was bawling like
a baby. And he left. And I was terrified because
I was so on the verge of killing myself that
I was relieved when someone was there, because I knew
I would at least make it through the next hour
(51:42):
if somebody was with me. And I did make a
couple of attempts towards suicide, and I wrote to miss Debbie,
sister Debbie, and I said, please, if you and and
Chad are sometimes I wonder if you're deceiving me just
for entertainment or money, you know, please tell me the truth.
My life is hanging by a thread. And you know,
(52:05):
woman to woman, women expect other women to symbiotically care
for one another or to you know, step in if
they see another woman being harmed. And that's what I expected.
And she wrote back and said, oh, we would never
deceive you, not for money, not for entertainment or any
other purpose. I can't even imagine the horrible experiences that
(52:30):
you must have had with people to even assume such
a thing.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
She's the Sheila. You haven't seen a wild country, so
you don't know what that means.
Speaker 3 (52:38):
I have seen it. We would never do that to you.
There were other believers. I reached out to them, you know,
by email. I was crying out. I even reached out
during this time to Keith Vanieri from Nexium.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
You know, and this quoted in an article talking about
her cult leader.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
Right for a while, it was the battle of the
cult eaters, you know. Was I gonna go with Keith
or was I gonna go with Chad? And they both
knew about each other, and anyway, so my Nexium story
is amazing too, but that's the story for another day.
So this guy starts crying and he leaves, and then
I was afraid. And then I was alone again, and
(53:22):
I remember I would lay on my little cot in
this room that was like a cell and it was
so hot, like being in an attic because there was
no air conditioning and there were cockroaches. I went, don't
picture this like a hotel room. I'm laying there and
I can't even feel my body. It just felt like wood.
(53:45):
I mean, my trauma was really seriously deep. And in
the afternoon he comes back and he brings sister Debbie
with him, who happens to be an old lady by
the way. He brings sister Debbie with him, and they
come in and they confess Chad is not a prophet.
(54:13):
Were not believers. They pretended they were believers. Okay, Chad
is an atheist. We're atheists. We're sorry we helped him
deceive you and exploit you. But he told us that
if we told you the truth, that you would die.
(54:35):
And this person, who, this young man, his name was Jeff,
was a hero. I mean I would have died within
the week had he not come clean.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
What is that like when? I mean, can your brain
process it immediately or how long?
Speaker 3 (54:58):
Thank you for asking that question. I remember collapsing to
the floor on my knees, you know, leaning forward, rocking
back and forth, and watching my life pass before my eyes,
thinking that everything that I had gone through, everything that
I had lost, everything that I had almost lost, including
(55:20):
my life, was in vain. It was for someone's sadistic
entertainment and to get money for his fiancee to go shopping.
I remember wailing on that floor when they're in there, wailing,
(55:40):
just wailing, and I said to her, I screamed, you know,
I begged you for the truth.
Speaker 1 (55:49):
You know.
Speaker 3 (55:51):
Her response was, I thought you would die if I
told you the truth. And it's kind of a hard
thing for me to buy because I was about to
die from suicide, if not from one of the men.
Speaker 1 (56:04):
She knew that. I mean, you were writing them and
saying like, why is this happening to me? Why would
God want these horrible things? Like she fucking knew.
Speaker 3 (56:15):
She did know. She was an accomplice, full blown accomplice.
She was a Sheila. And then Jeff was a hero
and he couldn't He would have come back sooner, but
he had to drag her there. She even came to
the hotel and picked up money. You know, so I'm
(56:36):
a trafficking victim at the hands of an atheist using
my religious beliefs, to open the door, to get me
to trust, to get me into a situation where I
am then out of control.
Speaker 4 (56:53):
I mean, he did it seamlessly.
Speaker 3 (56:55):
He did Afterwards I needed Probably I should have been
in a hospital, you know, like a rehab or something.
I was in so much distress. I made a police
(57:17):
report and the police did not even offer me a
victim's advocate because they said, well, it was a fraud,
but you believed him so awful, and you know now
they understand things better, they wouldn't respond like that now.
But I ended up getting therapy, getting diagnosed with post
(57:41):
traumatic stress disorder and dealing it with dealing with it
for years and years. And then I went on a mission,
a different kind of mission, a mission of my own,
to discover what happened to my brain? How did I
go from being an entrepreneur, a published author, young mother
of the year, a respected and smart, I thought person
(58:06):
in my community to being the lowliest of the low,
with nothing left. Even my hopes and dreams were gone.
But when I recovered my children, that was the redeeming factor.
When all this happened, and I realized that all this
was in vain and it was I mean the level
of cruelty was just world record to me.
Speaker 4 (58:30):
Yeah, did you confront him? Were you able to get
at least that.
Speaker 3 (58:33):
I did it in writing? I did it in writing
incentive to him in jail. So and I put all
this evidence in and at any rate. But what I
learned it took me about a decade. What I learned
is that I needed to stop blaming myself. I blamed
myself for years because everybody else did too. And I
(59:00):
thought I had something seriously wrong with my brain. I
really thought that I had mental illness, that I could
have fallen for that, and I tried to get tested
to see what is my brain damage? What is wrong
with me? That I fell for that. And it wasn't
(59:21):
until I got therapy from a cult expert named Steve
Hassen and I read his book that I realized that
people fall into these groups, they get attracted into these groups.
I mean, thousands and thousands of people were in situations
(59:42):
like me. It wasn't just me. I thought nobody else
would ever fall for this, nobody would have something like
this happened to them. But now that I'm in the
world of helping cult survivors, dozens hundreds thousands of women
have been sexually exploited by their occult leader, and nobody
(01:00:02):
joins a cult. People get involved in movements that they
sincerely believe are true are going to make a difference
in the world, and the same with Alison Mac. I
err on the side of compassion for Alison Mac because
there is a process by which people get influence. It's
(01:00:28):
called undue influence, because you know, the person that has
so much power, access to God, who can argue with that,
who can argue with the smartest man in the world.
It's never the woman that's right, you know, or the follower,
It's always the leader. It's he always has some sort
(01:00:49):
of way to get information that nobody can question. So
the unquestionable Guru takes advantage of that power and step
by step creates one sacrifice after another after another, until
you're so invested you don't want to believe that this
(01:01:10):
person is evil. This is in vain. Yeah, you know.
So when I learned it was all false, although it
was traumatic, suddenly things made sense. I suddenly I knew
I could round up my children, and I knew it
(01:01:30):
wasn't God telling me I wasn't worthy to raise my beautiful,
incredible children. It was it was, you know, dare I
say it? I mean, I've often wondered if he's a psychopath.
Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
I mean, he's obviously a psychopath, Like why is there?
I mean, sure, I am not his medical professional. I
cannot legally technically diagnose him with sociopathy. It is my
strong opinion that he's a psychopath. I do not believe
if he's a person who has exhibited empathetic qualities personally.
(01:02:04):
This seems like a good time to add in a
disclaimer about Chad's perspective here. Okay, it's been a roller coaster.
In an interview with the Utah newspaper in two thousand
and seven, Chad told a reporter that my mom projected
divine status onto him, and she convinced herself that he
was a prophet, and he just ran with it. He
said that she volunteered the money for him. In the
(01:02:26):
same article, he did admit, though, to deceiving her religiously
and playing on her religious beliefs, and he said he
was sorry about doing that, And then later he said
that he actually had to tell the reporter that he
made the sealed portion up for legal reasons, but he
really did translate it from an angel and he really
was a prophet, but still claimed that my mom was
making up her part and presumably was saying that all
(01:02:48):
the emails she had from him were forged. I guess.
And then in a twenty seventeen podcast, he flip flopped
again and said, JK, he really did make the sealed
portion up. It was all a lie to get people
to stop believing in the Book of Mormon. And now
his platform has moved on to more political oriented beliefs,
but at every stage he's maintained that my mom is
(01:03:09):
just a vengeful ex lover. Though of course a handful
of other ex followers have spoken out about him, including men,
and I imagine there will be more to come. But
so if Chad has anything to add to this conversation,
we invite him to submit a statement in response to
this episode. We will verbally state it on the episode.
(01:03:31):
That will be interesting is still is he still work
in the work in his program.
Speaker 3 (01:03:36):
Oh. As a matter of fact, he just last week,
speaking of cult News, was found guilty of fraud and racketeering. No,
for the very same stuff, Chad.
Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
No shocking, No, I mean like it's when you hear
your story, it sounds like there's it's just this isolated
incident that he just decided to pray on this poor woman,
But he prayed on so many people, including.
Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
Men, still including man, and he goes after people with money.
And that's one of the myths about cults. They think that,
you know, the public tends to think that only like
these last teenagers or young adults that have a big
hole in their life are looking for something to get
attracted to cults. And while they might have a special vulnerability,
(01:04:29):
everybody is vulnerable because everybody has something they love. If
you love something, that's your vulnerability. If you have a
dream for something, that's your vulnerability. Everybody has vulnerabilities. And
if you have a master manipulator, he will hone in
on those. So all of those people listening that say
(01:04:51):
I'm too smart for this, nobody can get me. You're
a sitting deck.
Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
Yeah, watch your back, dude.
Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
It might be a chick too.
Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
I mean, you know, yeah, I mean, I know it's
incredibly successful screenwriters who've joined cults. There are you know
business I mean, look at the look at an exium.
Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Absolutely, I mean, just sitting here thinking about it a
bad relationship.
Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Is almost like joining in. You can have the same thought.
Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
You can have a cult of too, you can.
Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
So, you know, the smartest people in the world, the
most beautiful, they're.
Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
In crazy abusive relationships.
Speaker 4 (01:05:28):
All the time.
Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
That having just having that power over somebody, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
Exactly, it can happen to everybody. There are dynamics. Now
I understand it, you know. Now I'm finishing my PhD
in psychology, and I understand the pressures of you know,
social pressure and the power of social proof and influence
in small groups, and and and critical thinking and loss
of version, all these crazy things. But that's what happens.
(01:05:56):
It can happen in a relationship of two, It can
happen if family, It could happen in a workplace.
Speaker 4 (01:06:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
There are political cults, there are self help cults. And
if you suspect that you're in a cult, you'll you'll
have some signs. You know, they'll try to control your behavior,
they'll try to control the information that you're getting, or
tell you not to go on the internet and read that.
Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
Relationship. Yeah, if you're in a group that tells you
not to read about the group or not to talk
to anyone else about the group.
Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
You're probably in a If you're dating a guy who says,
don't talk to any of my ex girlfriends, you're in
a cult.
Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
That's good. That's good, right, These are good signs and
cults attract the best people in the world. And if
you were in one, consider it a considerate about If
you were in one, consider it a badge of honor.
You've survived it, you came out, and you have a
(01:06:59):
story to tell.
Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
What do you believe in?
Speaker 4 (01:07:00):
Now?
Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
Well, I'm not an atheist, mom, I am not. I
did not throw out the baby with the bathwater. There
was a time when I thought none of this is
true nothing, It's all just fiction. Now I see a
purpose in religion. I mean, I study positive psychology and
(01:07:23):
one of the factors of happiness is having a spiritual life,
having a religious community. And I think religion gives a
purpose and a meaning to lives. And I recommend people
have a religion, just don't let it control you.
Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
I would want to ask you, in a nutshell, what
do you think? What would you say that you learn
from this experience?
Speaker 3 (01:07:47):
Okay, I learned that I had faulty thinking. I learned
that looking for signs and coincidences and trying to give
them godly meaning is very dangerous. I learned to believe
what I see, Yeah, to see things, to know for
(01:08:09):
a fact, to not believe in good feelings, that good
feelings are not proof of truth.
Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
Right.
Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
I learned that somebody can have This is the biggest thing.
I learned that somebody can put on in an incredible
show of goodness. Help the poor and needy. Let's save
the world, Let's save the trees, Let's save the government.
It's always a great mission or cause to save the world.
(01:08:38):
But the people behind it, with their great mission and cause,
could be really just donning a costume, and it's really
all about them.
Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
Yeah, the bigger that parade is the bigger that show
of all of how great of a heart they have
or whatever. The less I trust and.
Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
Narcissists are a hell of a drying Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
Well, they all have to have this mission to attract people.
And quite frankly, a lot of colts do a lot
of good too. They're not one hundred percent bad. So
just watch it and don't believe for one minute that
because your teacher is teaching great things that he's not
also in the back room molesting.
Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Somebody exactly exactly. It's that that's the great area that
I feel like people don't grasp as I did good
and bad right in these groups and in these people,
Like just because there is good there does not mean
that there isn't bad there exactly.
Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
Like even Alison Mac, I think she had a big
wake up. I read her pleading and she was like, wow,
I thought we were helping people. I thought I was
helping Keith help people. I didn't realize all these other
things he was doing.
Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
And we'll never know if that's if that's true or not.
We'll never know, But like, but I think it is
important to to start changing how we think about people
who have been brainwashed because you, like I said, like you,
you you create, they create a new identity for you
that you would never have created for yourself. And you
(01:10:15):
people do things that they would have never believe they're
capable of, as you did, mom.
Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
Right, and it's traumatic brain manipulation.
Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
Right exactly. I'd like to take this opportunity to make
fun of Chad and where he is now great.
Speaker 3 (01:10:29):
Would you like to bear your testimony.
Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
I'd like to bear my testimony, but I know that
Chad is not a prophet. He has a website that
we will not give to you guys because we don't
want to. Let's just say one of his messages is
UH to end human trafficking. Oh within one week. Wow.
(01:10:53):
The government just needs to listen to his plan and
human trafficking will be over. He is an advocate for
victims of human traffick.
Speaker 3 (01:11:03):
Why didn't you know it?
Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
This website's wild.
Speaker 3 (01:11:07):
Well, if you're okay, if you come out of a culture,
if you know somebody come out that has come out
of a cult, I do recommend you get involved in
a support group, and there are some on Facebook, and
I run a couple, and I think it's important to
take what happened to you and turn it into something positive.
Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
Yeah, I mean that's what you've done. I remember, before
you started really talking about it, it was such a
source of fear for you, and it was something that
you didn't even want to touch. We couldn't talk about
it at all. It was just too big for you.
It was too hard, and understandably, what you went through
was so traumatic, you know, I think that would be
true for anyone. And then once you started reshaping your
(01:11:49):
own narrative and reclaiming your story and like accepting that
it had happened and finding ways to interpret it. That
that helped your life. You got so much better. I
have observed you grow so much, so much, So don't
be afraid of telling your story. Guys.
Speaker 2 (01:12:09):
Amen, Well, thank you for coming Wami. Where can they
find you on social media?
Speaker 3 (01:12:15):
Yeah? I have. My charity is called Voices for Dignity.
I love that Voices for Dignity dot com and I'm
Christine Marie Katis k A t as on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
So one of the things Megan and I talked about
before we started this podcast was that she is kind
of susceptible to every cult and so, Megan, would you
follow this leader? Would you join this group?
Speaker 2 (01:12:43):
I'm gonna have to go no on this one, just
because I think that he would.
Speaker 1 (01:12:50):
Yeah, he's just he's not for me. No specific enough.
Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Glitz, not enough glamour, not enough you know one and
running around in the woods.
Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
Good glad, I got that covered all right. You can
find me Lola on Instagram at Ula Lola.
Speaker 4 (01:13:09):
Oh oh h l A l O l A.
Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
You can just find me at Megan Granger m E
A J A j R A.
Speaker 4 (01:13:16):
I N g e R.
Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
All Right, guys, thanks for listening. We just want you
to remember one thing, and that
Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
Is follow your gut, watch out for red flats, and
never ever trust me Y
You're about to listen to one of our favorite episodes
of trust Me from October sixth, twenty twenty, where we
interview my mom about our experience is believing in a
self proclaimed mormonnprophet. If you're new here, follow the show
so you don't miss the July thirtieth return of Trust
Me on the Exactly Right Network.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
If you have your own story of being in a
cult or a high control group.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Or if you've had experience with manipulation or abusive power
that you'd like to share.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Leave us a message on our hotline number at three
four seven eight six trust.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
That's three four seven eight six eight seven eight seven eight, or.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Shoot us an email at trustmepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Trust Me, trust.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Me, trust Me.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm like a swat person.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I've never lived.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
To you, I've never had a live.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Do you think that one person has all the answers?
Don't Welcome to trust Me. No, Welcome to trust Me.
The podcast about cults, extreme belief and abusive power from
two gals who've actually experienced it. I am Lola Blanc
and I'm megana and we both grew up believing in
cult leaders of some kind. Today we're going to talk
(01:06):
to my mother. We were going to talk about our
moment more men offshoot cult leader we both believed in,
who claimed that he was the one true prophet of course,
translating the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon, and
how we were chosen by God to help him in
the last days. We will also talk about how he
separated us from each other and how my mother was
sex trafficked. Trigger warning, there will be some descriptions of
(01:29):
sex trafficking, So that's not something you want to hear about,
skip this one.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
And if it is something you want to hear about,
seek help.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Just kidding, Megan, why don't you tell us about your
cult so people know who they're dealing with here? Oh?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
You know, well, A my cult super intense. Couldn't cut
my hair. Oh, couldn't wear pants. I got to go
to school and really long jean skirts. We couldn't watch
TV or movies. If I wanted to go to a movie,
my parents would say, is that where you want to
be when.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
Jesus comes back to the earth?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Wow? And I'd be like, ugh No, So I'd like
sit at.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Home and my friends would be at the movie and
I'd be like God, I hope Jesus comes back to
the earth and they'll go to have whoy that is
so bad and jealous. That's kind of mean, right, but whatever,
It's just I was seven. That was kind of my cult.
What's your cult?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Like?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
My cult is interesting because my cult is basically well,
it was a three person cult, but it has grown since.
And we will talk more about that later because our
guest today is my mother, who was the reason that
I believed in this cult leader. She was not the reason,
but together we believed in this cult leader. And it
(02:42):
was an offshoot of Mormonism. How big is it now?
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Dozens?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
I have heard their buying up property in an apartment
complex in Utah, and I think it's dozens. That's how
it starts.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
That's how scientology like just started by buying like a
storage unit. I'm making that up, but the properties, right,
you know, like you just start small and then all
of a sudden you own like a city.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah. You make people give you their money, right, and
then you can buy as much as you want because
you have so much of other people's money. So what
is normal Mormonism? Like, great question, Normal Mormonism, Well, it's Christianity,
but there's an extra book called the Book of Mormon,
and basically, you know, they believe in this guy who
(03:29):
translated scriptures from an angel in the eighteen hundreds and
then the true Church was finally brought back to earth.
And it's just like you have to get married in
the Temple, and in order to go to the temple,
you have to be temple worthy. So you tell your
bishop everything, kind of like Catholic confession a little bit. Oh,
like they do baptism for the dead, Oh, in the Temple.
(03:50):
You start doing that from age twelve, I think, Yeah,
you go and get baptized and they have the names
of a bunch of people who are dead, and you're
basically like baptizings. Oh so they can choose to accept
it or not. That's insane. I mean, you know, sex
is really a really bad sin. There's a lot of
guilt in the religion because of that. But otherwise it's like,
(04:14):
you know a lot of really nice people who just
believe in this thing. Okay, okay, So we are going
to be doing a weekly segment on this podcast where
we talk about the cultiest thing that happened to us
each week and we'll talk about what we experienced or
participated in that just felt a little bit extreme or
a little culty. But this week in particular, there just
(04:37):
happens to be some really culty stuff happening in the
news cult news.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
This week we have some pretty interesting cult news because
we have Small Belt, Small Bell.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Small Bill.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I love that show, Small Bell actress Alison Mac Alison Mack.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, she's in some serious trouble. She's pleading guilty to
what are the charger.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Like, racketeering, sex trafficking, sex trafficking, child pornography.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
I still haven't wrapped my head around right that was
That was Keith though, the leader, her leader.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Okay, if anyone doesn't know this is a sex If
you don't know, I don't know what you're doing and
why you're listening to this podcast. There's a whole HBO
docuseriies about it called The Vow. It is not out
at the time of recording, so we're just going off
news articles right now. But basically, it was a sex
cult and Allbany, New York in which they were branding
women's bodies. And we'll probably do an entire episode on
(05:34):
it later on, but it was headed by a man
named Keith Ranieri, who incidentally I knew growing up, and
so did my mother, And we can talk more about
that later. What is he alluring in some way? Is
he charismatic?
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Because I've been looking at pictures of him all day
wondering how he has all these women being his sex
slaves and they're all like like heiresses and they're super
rich and ye're beautiful.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Why he's such a weirdo? I was probably nine, so
I don't know, or ten or eleven, but I really
liked him up time. He taught me the word word thing.
That was one. One smart fellow he felt smart. Two
smart fellaws, they both felt smart, and it would checked
(06:20):
me into saying smelled smelled part oh wow. This is
my memory of Keith Ranieri, the sex cult leader.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
If we like, if we like a guy, should we
just determine that he's probably a cult leader if we
think he's nice.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
If anyone thinks he's charming or charismatic in any way,
he's definitely leader, minimum sociopath, probably a cult leader.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
If you're talking to a man who you find charming,
scream cult leader Mace Hammon and run.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Only like uncharismatic nerds for me who don't know how
to talk to people. She pleaded guilty, pled pleaded guiltyling
in court, sobbing in court, and some people think that
she was faking it.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
I mean, she's an actress on Small.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Bill, my favorite show. I personally, I have differing beliefs
on this because she was under the spell of this
very charming, charismatic man.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah, I'm gonna take the opposite side of you. I
think I'm totally anti her. I think she's so sick
in the head, just as sick as him.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Like, well, I don't know, man, I was watching some
of those videos of her, and I just like everything
that she was saying like she believed it. It seemed
like she believed it so fucking hard. And there are
I mean, we will get into this, but I just
think people the whole thing about cult is that people
end up doing things that they would never ever do
(07:38):
in their normal life, and they totally like, they compromise
their own morals, They like become someone that they would
never have imagined that they've become. And it happened slowly
over time because this person has such strong influence over them.
So I buy that somebody would do horrible things or
things that they would never do otherwise, and then like
snap out of it and be like, oh my god,
what the fuck have I done with my life? I've
(07:59):
been branding women's slaves and having slaves. That part is
a little very crazy. She had slaves, you know, Like
I understand.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
One of the main things we want to talk about
is just the bias against people who are in cults,
are who whatever, like as being dumb.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
My guess is the like dumb, naive, gullible, Yeah, which
is not true because literally anyone can join a cult
at any time, and the bless you think you're susceptible,
the more susceptible you are because you don't have your
defenses up. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, So I don't really know where I was going
with that, but you guys, it was brilliant, so.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
I believe you. But yeah, I think it's really really.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Crazy that she had slaves and that she was basically
tricking women into sleeping with him.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Then it's true, it's true. But I just always think
about the chain of power and the chain of influence
and who was at the top of that, and in
this case, it was him. Although you think about Wildbead Country.
Did you watch Wildblold Country? Of course, and Sheila, Sheila
in that scenario seems totally like the.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Past, seems like a Sheila to me. She seems like
a Sheila to me. So maybe, but she is. I
mean the fact that she's saying she's sobbing and saying
that it's wrong.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Sheila never did that. Sheila's still saying.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Oh my god, Sheila. Yeah, she love Sheila. She a badass.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, so I guess we'll see how it goes. But
she's she might be like indicted for twenty years.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
I mean that makes sense, that's fair. Yeah, so you know,
she'll probably not serve all of it. I'm so curious
to just hear the like inner workings of that story,
especially knowing the connections that my family has to him.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
I can't wait to hear all about this.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
I mean, this isn't this is not the cult that
we were talking about today, But we just happened to
know the guy from this cult. So you're so lucky.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
You know so many multiple cult Peters.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
It's my thing, it's really my mom's thing. We'll talk
to her about that, Okay, should we introduce her absolutely.
(10:16):
All right, everybody, This is Christine my mother. Hey, my
mom is an amazing person. She has been through a
lot and now she's getting her PhD in media psychology.
She also runs a she formed what do you call it?
She formed founded a charity? Is that the word?
Speaker 3 (10:40):
That's it?
Speaker 1 (10:40):
A charity to help survivors of trafficking and those sort
of things. She can describe it better, I hope.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
So, Hi, Mom, him, happy to be here. Thank you
for letting me come on and talk about this crazy stuff.
We're happy to have you.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Let's talk about you, all right. The thing that is
that I always want to tell people about your story
is to give them context of the religion that you
were in when you were preyed upon him by this
cult leader guy, because I think for a lot of
people who don't know about how cults work, or don't
(11:22):
understand religion or Mormonism or those fundamental beliefs, they think
that you just met a guy and you were like,
I'm gonna believe in this guy. He seems like someone
I should believe in, and then just went with it
because you were in love with him or whatever. These
like stupid myths that are not true. So for me,
the important place to start here is that you were
(11:42):
a Mormon. You were a very devout, regular Mormon, no cultiness, well,
depending on who you ask about Mormonism as religion, and
you have these belief systems ingrained in your psyche. So
do you want to tell me about that? Right?
Speaker 3 (11:58):
I converted to Mormonism when I was a teenager. I
would read the Book of Mormon in my bed under
the covers with a flashlight. There were strict rules against
me investigating.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
The church, which happened because of missionaries, right right.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Because missionaries came over and they were having a big
influence on me. My parents thought they were losing me
to a cult. So they didn't want that and said, no,
what was drawing you towards that interesting question? I was
bullied when I was a child. I was rejected by
my peers. I mean, my grandfather was a Methodist minister,
(12:37):
and I always wondered, why don't we ever go to church?
So it was sort of like a job to him.
And I craved more. I craved a sense of meaning
because I wasn't getting it from being in some popular
click or something. And I started looking for religion in
(12:57):
high school and I found one. I was baptized on
my eighteenth birthday because my parents would not allow me
to join the church. So the day that I turned eighteen,
I drove to a lake where I met the missionaries
and a few members of the church, and I got
baptized in the freezing cold month of April in Michigan.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
I totally forgot that. I just assumed it was an
indoor baptismal font You must have been very dedicated. Thank you.
That's a wild eighteenth birthday.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
And that was so rebellious eighteenth No, that is rebellious.
That was so rebellious, you know. For at any rate,
it made me very happy. It was the happiest I
had ever been. I ended up going to Brigham Young University.
I went and became a missionary. I broke records on
(13:49):
my mission. I came off my mission to a man
who had been waiting for me, which is the father
of Lola, and we were married three and a half
weeks later. As soon as I got off my mission,
we were married and we lived the good, devout LDS life.
(14:10):
And you believe it. I believed right. I believed it
so much. I would say for me, it's not even
a matter of faith anymore. I have a true knowledge
that this is the truth. I knew it beyond the
shadow of a doubt, as they all do well, right,
all of them.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
But so the interesting thing for me, and what I
remember from my childhood is seeing meaning, in seeing religious
meaning or like divine meaning, in coincidences and dreams. You
and Dad were married kind of because of a dream,
weren't That's true.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I had to dream when I was on my mission,
and I thought it indicated who I was to marry.
And we were walking over some rocks on a pier,
and this man reached his hand out and helped me
cross this scary part. And when I got off my mission,
(15:07):
I didn't think that my husband, the man I ended
up marrying. I didn't think he was the one. But
when we went on this walk on the pier and
he reached his hand, you know, it reminded me of that.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Dream, and it was a sign.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
It was a sign, and there were many signs to me.
When I was a missionary, I prayed about where to
go to find people that were looking for the message
that I was going to share, and I would get
like I called it spiritual radar and just kind of
find the house based on intuition, and a remarkable number
(15:47):
of times when we would knock on that door, there
would be somebody who said, hey, I was just praying that,
you know, that God would show me the truth, and
you showed up. I mean things like that happened over
and over and over and over when I was in
that mindset, and I took all that to mean that,
you know, there really is a man in this guy
(16:12):
who's kind of pulling the puppet strings and helping me
know where to go and what to do. And if
I'm really in tune, I you know, I can make
miracles happen, almost like if I pray it, it's going
to happen, unless it's not God's will.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Right, So fast forward to you and that are divorced.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Right, we get divorced. And I got excommunicated because when
I was single, a divorced, single mother, I was intimate
with a man that I was in love with who
was also single.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Which is very unusual.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
I have heard it, and so I was, you know,
cast away forever.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
How did they find out?
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Well, I was honest, and I felt so guilty about it. Oh,
I confessed. And then when I you know, saw him again.
I sinned again, and then it you know, I mean,
(17:24):
he was my boyfriend, and so I became what they
called it, habitual offender.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Guilty.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Then I got excommunicated and that was it. No more
of that stuff. I was going to turn my life
back around. I ended up during the time that I
was excommunicated by the way I met Keith Rainiery side.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Note, founder of Next the Side cult.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Side note. And yes he tried to recruit me into
his cult. You know, we can get to that later.
But I was, you know, stuck, because I really loved Mormonism.
To be fair, it made me happy. It gave me meaning,
(18:16):
There was purpose in my life, there was community. I
understood why I was on the earth, where I would
be going after this life. I had a plan. Everything
made sense. I just needed a husband, a new husband,
and so okay, now here's here's the here's the catch.
(18:37):
So the founder of Mormonism had a vision Ja Smith,
Joseph Smith. Some people call it a dream, depending on
which document you're reading. Dreams are believed to be a
potential source of God speaking to you, that he can
share messages through dreams, visions and visions. Right, I prayed
(19:06):
about who mister Wright was since I divorced mister Wrong,
who would this man be that I would be with
for time and all eternity. And an answer to that
dream That very night I had a profound dream vision thing,
(19:27):
and I saw this man and I remember his face
perfectly because he looked like a cross between my ex
boyfriend David and Brendan Fraser. Oh.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I loved back in the day, and I still love.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I was like, thank you having my father, not my man.
No disagreement here, Thanks God.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
So some of my goal friend single women, we would
go to Mormon singles dances and I told them what
my mister Right looked like, so they would be on
the lookout. And my girlfriend had a dream that her
mister Right she would meet him and he would be
wearing a baseball cap. So we were both looking, you know,
(20:19):
using these signs to try to find, you know, information
about the other one's possible mate. So I go. So
I moved to Utah. I had a lot going on.
I was succeeding. I had a project that got funded
when I lived in California, and I was so excited
about it, and it required me to move to Utah.
(20:41):
And my very first Mormon singles dance that I went
to after moving to Utah was at Wheeler Farm. And
as I'm looking out onto the dance floor, who do
I see Brendan Fraser?
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Man?
Speaker 3 (21:01):
That look like a cross between my ex boyfriend David
and Brendan Fraser.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
So here's the important question. What kind of dancing are
you looking at? While you're like, are they what are
they doing?
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Oh? Well it would be uh the dougie?
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Are they grind dancing? Are they?
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Oh? No, very very wholesome dancing, even wholesome music. But
it was pop music or dancing Mormon dances.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
You have to keep Is this true of adults too?
You have to keep a Bible in a book of
Mormon space between you.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Oh okay, that's my specific all right, so you're not
too saucy.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
So you see this guy dancing with the Mormon book
space and.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
He was dancing with elderly ladies. Oh yeah, you know,
he wasn't dancing with all the hot girls. He was
dancing with, you know, the eighty three year old women.
And I and I went, look there he is, and
he's doing something that I approve of. In it, he's
so awesome. What kind of a man would go for
(22:02):
the elderly women to make sure they feel good, especially
when he's you know, handsome. And I just thought, oh,
my goodness. And I thought it was a proof that
there really was a God because he gave me the
dream and it manifest in the flesh. Yeah. So because
(22:23):
of that, he had a lot more power and influence
over me than if I had just met somebody. I
totally got that, you know, I thought there was meaning
to this and it was eternal and.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
How do you think God literally gave you a sign
about this person, like, of course there's meaning there, it
would be right.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
And then I happened to be a Book of Mormon fanatic.
I even wrote a book about the Book of Mormon.
I read the Book of Mormon NonStop, you know, dozens
of times, from cover to cover. So the Book of
Mormon has another part to it. This is what all
(23:06):
Mormons believe that there's a part when Joseph Smith originally
translated the Gold Plates, which is where the Book of
Mormon came from, you know, the Mormons belief.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
And I'm going to just translate it as in quotation
marks here because he translated them from an angel who
nobody ever saw in a hat.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
That the angel wasn't in that hat.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
No, the angel wasn't in the hat, but the angel
provided him the hat or something. Anyway, it came from
of a fucking angel, and he did it in a hat.
And this is the translation that's going on here. This
is not coming from like a physical text that exists.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Yes, Lila and her mother are using quotation marks which
you guys can't see, right.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
Okay, So supposedly, supposedly there were gold plates because gold
does not rust, and if you look in you know,
archaeological museums or whatever where you can find that they
did actually used to keep records.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
By engraving them on metal plates. All right, So these
were the gold plates. They weren't dinner dishes, which would
be pretty awesome, but it was like leafs, you know,
like book leafs. So I believed that Joseph Smith translated
these ancient words, and that's what became the Book of Mormon,
which I loved and it inspired me, and it inspired
(24:26):
you know, millions of people. Well, there is a belief
right from the Book of Mormon that when Joseph Smith
translated these plates, he did not translate them all. There
was a part that was left sealed until the last days,
right before the second coming of Christ, that in the
last days, one mighty and strong would would appear.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
And that's not setting up anything for trouble to who and.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Those gold plates would come back on the scene. Enter
the man from my dream. Not the man of my dreams,
but the man from my dream. Yeah, okay, keep in mind,
this man is not somebody that I would have ever
been interested in. Not my type, sort of a loser
in life, you know, I mean.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
That's true. I remember when Mom was single and I
was a kid, she was dating Hella Millionaires.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Interesting, and so when I started when I met him though,
because of this, you know, this magical thing around meeting him,
you know, he wanted to he wanted to sleep with me,
but I wouldn't because I'd already went down that road.
I was excommunicated. I made my way back. I paid
the price. It was like psychologically abusive to go through
(25:47):
the repentance process and make it back where you can
be rebaptized. And I made it, and I was like overjoyed,
and I thought, wow, I'm one of the few people
that made it back. Mostly when people are excommunicated, they
just you know, move on with life. But I loved
my church. I loved my Book of Mormon, and here
(26:09):
was this man. He was an atheist. He presented me
as an atheist at first, and I wasn't interested in him.
He was trying hardcore to get me to sleep with him,
or to get me to be interested in him, but
I wasn't interested. So he changed his plan and one
(26:31):
night he says, you know, I'm actually not an atheist.
I mean we would go back and forth. I was
trying to get him to stop being an atheist because
he once was a Mormon. So now we have an
ex Mormon and time Mormon, in my opinion, sociopath.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Yeah okay, but.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
I didn't know it at the time. Time, and I'm
trying to restore his faith. I thought Heavenly Father gave
me this challenge. This is my future husband, and I
need to bring him back to the fold. In the meantime,
he's trying to pull me out of the church, so
I'll sleep with him.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Okay, so we have a battle going on and he
couldn't do it. He later told me that I was
the first woman in his life whose faith he could
not break. So he changes his story and suddenly he
says I, he says, Christine, I have to tell you
(27:39):
the truth. I'm really non an atheist. It was a test.
It was just a test to see if I could
break your faith like every other woman. And because I
could not break your faith, I am allowed to tell
you the truth. I have translated this sealed portion of
the Book of Mormon in preparation for the second coming
of Christ.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
And by the way, tests are a huge thing in Mormonism. Yeah,
that's from God, like is proving your your worthiness, proving
your righteousness.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
Yeah right. And I didn't believe in him overnight. And
there were other believers, more than three. By the way,
she only interacted with three, but.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
I guess my experience of it was three.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Yeah right, but there were more. But nonetheless, it was
a small It was small, a small group. But so
I get sucked in and I'm thinking, oh my goodness,
this is the new Joseph Smith. That must make me
the new Emma his wife, you know, I mean, because
(28:40):
this man wanted to take me as his wife. So
here we've got the new prophet. He even sent me
eight chapters of the translation of these new Sealed Portion scriptures,
and it felt no different to me than when I
believed in the Book of Mormon the first time. It
(29:01):
was a big leap of faith to go from only
believing the Bible to believing the Book of Mormon as
a teenager. So it just didn't seem that weird that
the Sealed Portion would be coming forward. It was all
a leap of faith, which is ironic because after all
this was done. One of the criticisms that I had
from people who are devout Mormons was, how could you
(29:24):
ever have fallen for that?
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Oh my gosh, while I fell on the people who
baptized ghosts.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
You can believe in the Book of Mormon. But in
the Book of Mormon it says in the last days
the Sealed Portion will come forward.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Right It's right there.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
But you know, you know, I should have known better somehow.
So at any rate, what happened is he tells me
that we need to meet in Las Vegas. I am
to tell no one that we are to meet. He
is a prophet. He tells me that I had that
dream because I was sent to him to be his
(30:01):
help meet. In translating this a portion and that I
pass all these tests, and I was going to be
the prophet of the wife. I mean, the wife of
the prophet.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
That's a much cooler title.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Oh wow, and that's what I secretly wish, I thought
the other titles. So I thought, Wow, that's what happens
when you stick it out. You get rebaptized, you know,
you get you know, I felt like being rebaptized. All
my sins had been washed away, and now all these
manifestations and miracles are happening in my head. And okay,
(30:41):
one step at a time, I start really believing in him,
and then I find myself in Las Vegas about to
get married to this man, not legally married. He said
it would be like the prophets of old, like Melachi
(31:03):
took Anna. I mean, once you knew a person, which
means had sex with them, you know in the Bible,
it would say, and he knew her, right, Okay, So
that was when.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I started using that term. We totally knew each other
last night.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
And so I sat there thinking it out, thinking I
saw him in a dream.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
That would fuck I mean, I don't know if you
can say the word, but that would screw me up hardcore.
If I saw him in a dream.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Yeah, okay, I saw him in a dream. I got rebaptized.
The sealed portion chapters seemed the same of the same
spirit as the Book of Mormon. And I look him
in the eyes and I say, promise me, you're not
deceiving me, just so you can sleep with me. And
(32:00):
he said, I wish I was deceiving you, that my
calling has been so difficult and so lonely. Oh my
dear Christine, how I wish that this, that I didn't
have this yoke upon me. And he went on and
on about okay, and then I knew him. Oh here,
(32:28):
I'm thinking I'm his wife now, and I said that's it.
You know, there's no like ceremony, and he was like,
that was the ceremony. Okay. So he lets me think
I am his eternal wife, and the prophets helped me
and that I would be helping to restore polygamy to
(32:48):
the world even.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
And early Mormons believed in polygamy, and then they abolished
it when the government said that they couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Right now, guess what. Now I'm in a pickle because
if he's not a prophet, I just slept with somebody
that I wasn't married to, and I would get excommunicated
again and I would never be able to get back
(33:18):
into the church. Yeah, so now my critical thinking switched
a million little switches switched off so that I could
see everything that supported the fact that he really was
a prophet, because this was the double bind that I
(33:40):
was in. If he was a prophet, then I was
on the right path and I would be going to
the celestial Kingdom, in the Highest Kingdom where I could
be with my children forever. If he was not a
prophet and I just slept with him, I would certainly
lose my soul. So I was invested in him being
(34:05):
a prophet. Now, and fundamental Mormon beliefs, a prophet is
not allowed to lead you astray, that the Lord will
kill them, take their lives before they let you lead
them astray, before he will allow them to lead you astray.
So this is a fail safe for profits because they
(34:30):
can lead you astray, but you think they can't.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
So they're like, I'm not dead, so I'm not lying.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Right, Yeah, I'm telling you the truth here, So I
follow my prophet's words. Now, keep in mind, I'm not
in love with this guy. But I'm honored because you know,
I am the wife of the prophet. I am the
secret wife of the prophet. Well, then I have to
(34:59):
start sacrificing, because the prophet's wife has to prove that
she's more worthy than anybody else, so she has to
make bigger sacrifices. So first comes the money. Then comes
the dispossession of all the things that I cherished, And
(35:20):
of course the money from that also went to him.
He said it went into a fund to help the
poor and needy. I thought I was, and you did too,
I mean we were.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah, so I feel like we I will now talk
about how I came to Yes.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
I want to call it Adam. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
I want to call him something to year. I like Chad, Yeah, yeah, Chad.
I am twelve twelve, right, and I meet this guy,
and I actually I'm like, I'm so hazy now on
how I true on how I felt about him. But
I feel like I didn't like at first, and then
he bought me snacks, and then I liked him, which
(36:03):
is how you win me. It's a classic theme in
my life. You were impressed with the fruits, so I
was impressed with well, gusher's specifically right, right, That's what
it was. And but I didn't know much about him.
I just knew my mom spending more time with him,
and she had, you know, she was dating guys. She
was very well liked among the fellas, So I don't
think I thought anything particularly unusual was happening. And one
(36:27):
day I was snooping around hacking her computer, hacking, I
was hacking computer, was I was being a snoop. I
wanted to see what was what was going on in
mom's life. And I found these letters that he had
written to her, and I wish I could remember specifically
what they said, but basically saying like what God wants
(36:50):
her to do and basically implying that he is her prophet.
And I'm twelve and I'm Mormon, and I don't know
what any of this means. I just think, oh, wow,
Chad's a profit.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
So then I believed in him, and he found out
that I believed in him, and so then I was
in on it too, and he had me make I
was starting to make a website. I believe it was
an angel Fire website for his non existent charity that
he had made up where all the money from the
(37:26):
things my mom sold was going to and this was
this is gonna be called angel Fire?
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Is that?
Speaker 1 (37:32):
No? No? Do you know an angel Where are you?
Speaker 3 (37:38):
She was very savvy, very tech savvy for a little.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Angel Fire was like like the early Internet version of like, uh,
what's a web? Yeah? Like word press? Okay, okay, okay.
It was real dorky. They were like lots of like
cyber doll websites and lots of fan sites on angel Fire.
You were not cool in the early two houses.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
No, I was not.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
It was a really dorky way to make a website.
And I started making a website for his stupid non
existent charity.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Well, I wasn't allowed to have computers art, Oh that's right, right,
you know.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
So you're like and two, I'm in yeah, and she's volunteering.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Shit, yeah, And I think that I'm chosen too, because
that's I'm twelve. And how cool did I feel thinking that?
Like I was helping usher in the last days the
Second Coming of Jesus Christ, Like, oh my goodness, I'm
such a special girl. There's nobody else that knows about
this except for me and my mom.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
And he told me the reason I was so special
was because I had her. She was the real Jews
here and she sang to him and he was like,
she's going to be a star and everything else, So.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Okay, you know. Yeah. And then well so the yard sale.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Right, we sold stuff for the to help the poor
and needy to go into this fund. And then he
told me I needed to be separated from my children
because being the prophet's wife helping with the translation would
put me in a very dangerous situation, and for their
own safety, my children needed for a time being to
(39:27):
be away from me, and I needed to go and
live among the poor and needy. So I ended up
in a resident hotel. The children ended up in different places,
you know, like the boys went to their fathers and
she went to a friend.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Of stayed at in the house of a family from nearby. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
And I was quite a sheltered person growing up, even
though we weren't religious. I had a very strict father
as well and came from a small town. Then I
got married and lived the Mormon life. Never I was
not sophisticated. So now I'm living in a resident hotel
(40:08):
in downtown Salt Lake, which is a place where people
go when they first get out of prison. Okay, So
there were eighty occupants, and seventy eight of them were
men or seventy seven. Then there was a woman who
(40:29):
was in a wheelchair and a woman who was like
eighty seven, and then there was me. So I was
at that time. I had been doing pageants and staying
in shape and running my business, but I was like
a lamb in a slaughter. So once my money ran out,
(40:55):
the profit decides that I need to pass some new tests.
I need to descend below all things because I was
too proud and how dare I think positive things about myself?
I needed to be humbled. And the word that he
used in writing was that I needed to be a
(41:18):
based before men. Do you know the word a baste? Okay?
So one step at a time and I'll spare you
the gory details. But I'm in this scary place. I'm
being raped. I was robbed a couple of times. I
(41:43):
was beaten. I was physically harmed to the point where
I needed to get medical attention. And I was told
that there were three men who were watching me at
all times and if I ever left did not come back,
(42:04):
then I would run the risk of losing my life,
never being with my children again. He threatened their eternity.
And so I'm in this situation. I'm not allowed to
tell anybody. I'm not allowed to get therapy because I
can't tell anybody that these are that I need to
(42:27):
be purged in such a violent manner. And I'm saying,
surely he can't, you know, he can't know what's going on.
I need to tell him what's going on. He wouldn't
allow me to be here. In fact, he wrote me letters.
He wrote me a letter after I describe some of
the heartache and suffering that I was going through, and
(42:50):
he said, oh, my dear sister, Oh my heart cries
for you. I wish the mountains would fall down upon
and bury the men that are hurting you. And you know,
being very colorful, and how upset he is that I'm
being harmed? And who are my children? Anyway? You know what?
(43:15):
Because he wanted all things that brought me joy to
be out of my life, and my children were my life.
I was even young Mother of the Year at one point,
and the business that I had that took me to
Utah revolved all around family enrichment. My life was about
my children. So he wanted my children away from me
(43:37):
so that I could dedicate everything to him. And you know,
I think he was jealous of my children. But this
is a man who couldn't stick to one thought for
a long time. And what happened is I started becoming
sexually exploited, and he was He was the beneficiary. Now
(44:03):
keep in mind, I never had I never took money
for sex. I never was paid. I never handled any transactions.
They call it human trafficking, okay, And he had he
ended up in prison, in jail for something else, so
he had other people handling me. And then I get
(44:26):
a revelation from jail, one of the believers. I'll call
her his sister Jackie. Sister no, yeah, sister Debbie, Okay.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Okay, Jackie someone okay anyway Debbie.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Yeah, okay. Yeah. So sister Debbie I thought was an
elderly lady. I had always heard about sister Debbie's gonna
help with this and help with that. And he I
get this revelation sent to me me that says that
Chad would be marrying legally marrying sister Debbie, and that
(45:10):
I needed to be I needed to continue serving in
the manner that was required to provide financial support because
of the many men that desired me. That my job
was to provide this financial support and service to Chad
and his new wife, Debbie, and that if I obeyed
(45:34):
all of his commandments, then I would be a mother
in heaven. So now I was demoted from first wife
to slave wife. And in the same revelation, sister Debbie
was promised that they would have children together, that they
(45:54):
would be known throughout the world for their love for
one another. But I had to remain a secret. So
at this point, you know, I'm so damaged. I have
layers and layers of trauma. I'm so confused, but my
brain does not want to believe that my prophet had
(46:16):
anything to do with the harm that was befalling me.
I write letters to him and to Sister Debbie just
to make sure that they know that my life was
hanging by a thread. I thought about killing myself every
single hour. I thought there was no other way out,
(46:38):
and then he blew out the last candle flicker of
hope that I had. With his influence and power over me.
He was my ecclesiastical power. He was like the Pope
to me, even beyond the Pope because I believed he
a prophet. All Mormons, their prophets speak directly to God.
(47:02):
He is the one that put me in that situation.
He's the one that should have known and is not
getting me out of that situation. He said, you are
exactly where you need to be. And he said, if
you are not happy serving in the way that you
have been asked to serve, then all your sacrifices have
been in vain. And that was it. So now I'm
(47:26):
going to hell anyway I went. I passed all these tests.
I'm going to hell anyway. My money's gone, my dreams
are gone. I had a big project that God funded, gone,
my children are gone. Certain precious things I parted with
(47:49):
because of him. And I had a wedding dress for
when I did find mister Wright that I would never marry,
that I would never wear. I had to sell that.
I had a dress I designed myself that I wore
in pageants that was just amazing, and I had to
sell that. I had to sell things that I was
(48:10):
attached to. And I was left there with nothing. He
took every last thing that a woman holds near and
dear to her heart. There was nothing left for me.
To do but die.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
So meanwhile, I am living with this family from church
who has no idea what's going on. I don't do
you remember what we told them about why I was there.
I don't remember what we told them, but they just
knew I wasn't living with my mom, and I am
talking to my mom on the phone periodically, but I
(48:44):
don't know exactly what's going on, but I just hear
that it's like not good over there. Something is going on.
She's not having a good time. But I think, like, Okay,
it's just a test. God is just testing her. God
tests people. That's what he does. When you're chosen, you,
you know, He's gonna test you and make your life really,
really hard so that you can experience all the glories
(49:07):
of heaven. And I was like lonely and sad without
my mom. But I just would come for myself by saying,
while I'm chosen by God. So the Second Coming is
coming soon, Jesus gonna It's gonna come soon, and then
everything's gonna be amazing. Like I have chosen. I am
so special. These kids at school might not, you know,
(49:28):
like me that much, or I might not have any friends,
but they'll see one day when they see that I
was the kid who ushered him the second Coming of Christ.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
I love that weird al song where he's like and
I'll be laughing my head off when you're burning and
house Paradise.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Weird. How was one of my favorite artists at this
time side note Yeah, And I visited her once and
it was so depressing and scary. The bathroom we had
to go to the bathroom in the hallway there were
these like all these like scary men there. There were
like stalkers throwing, like trying to barge in. He has
to call the cops one night because this man was
(50:06):
trying to force his way in anyway. It was just
a really scary situation. And my mom is this. Even
at that age, I was aware that, like my mom
exuded this this youthfulness and this like innocence, and I like,
it was just so scary to see her in this place.
But I thought that that was God's will and that
was God testing her, and that was what needed to
happen so that we could help Jesus come back. In retrospect,
(50:28):
not sure how they were supposed to be related made
sense at.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
The time, So what the prophet would send men from
prison to come and be served by me when they
got out of prison. Oh okay, I had a job
to do. And one man who came ended up crying.
(50:56):
I showed him pictures of my children, and I showed him,
you know what my prior dreams were before I got
involved in the work, and he just started crying. I mean,
this is an ex con, right, he's crying. He's bawling, sobbing,
convulsing tears. And I didn't understand why. I mean, he
(51:20):
laid his head on my lap and was bawling like
a baby. And he left. And I was terrified because
I was so on the verge of killing myself that
I was relieved when someone was there, because I knew
I would at least make it through the next hour
(51:42):
if somebody was with me. And I did make a
couple of attempts towards suicide, and I wrote to miss Debbie,
sister Debbie, and I said, please, if you and and
Chad are sometimes I wonder if you're deceiving me just
for entertainment or money, you know, please tell me the truth.
My life is hanging by a thread. And you know,
(52:05):
woman to woman, women expect other women to symbiotically care
for one another or to you know, step in if
they see another woman being harmed. And that's what I expected.
And she wrote back and said, oh, we would never
deceive you, not for money, not for entertainment or any
other purpose. I can't even imagine the horrible experiences that
(52:30):
you must have had with people to even assume such
a thing.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
She's the Sheila. You haven't seen a wild country, so
you don't know what that means.
Speaker 3 (52:38):
I have seen it. We would never do that to you.
There were other believers. I reached out to them, you know,
by email. I was crying out. I even reached out
during this time to Keith Vanieri from Nexium.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
You know, and this quoted in an article talking about
her cult leader.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
Right for a while, it was the battle of the
cult eaters, you know. Was I gonna go with Keith
or was I gonna go with Chad? And they both
knew about each other, and anyway, so my Nexium story
is amazing too, but that's the story for another day.
So this guy starts crying and he leaves, and then
I was afraid. And then I was alone again, and
(53:22):
I remember I would lay on my little cot in
this room that was like a cell and it was
so hot, like being in an attic because there was
no air conditioning and there were cockroaches. I went, don't
picture this like a hotel room. I'm laying there and
I can't even feel my body. It just felt like wood.
(53:45):
I mean, my trauma was really seriously deep. And in
the afternoon he comes back and he brings sister Debbie
with him, who happens to be an old lady by
the way. He brings sister Debbie with him, and they
come in and they confess Chad is not a prophet.
(54:13):
Were not believers. They pretended they were believers. Okay, Chad
is an atheist. We're atheists. We're sorry we helped him
deceive you and exploit you. But he told us that
if we told you the truth, that you would die.
(54:35):
And this person, who, this young man, his name was Jeff,
was a hero. I mean I would have died within
the week had he not come clean.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
What is that like when? I mean, can your brain
process it immediately or how long?
Speaker 3 (54:58):
Thank you for asking that question. I remember collapsing to
the floor on my knees, you know, leaning forward, rocking
back and forth, and watching my life pass before my eyes,
thinking that everything that I had gone through, everything that
I had lost, everything that I had almost lost, including
(55:20):
my life, was in vain. It was for someone's sadistic
entertainment and to get money for his fiancee to go shopping.
I remember wailing on that floor when they're in there, wailing,
(55:40):
just wailing, and I said to her, I screamed, you know,
I begged you for the truth.
Speaker 1 (55:49):
You know.
Speaker 3 (55:51):
Her response was, I thought you would die if I
told you the truth. And it's kind of a hard
thing for me to buy because I was about to
die from suicide, if not from one of the men.
Speaker 1 (56:04):
She knew that. I mean, you were writing them and
saying like, why is this happening to me? Why would
God want these horrible things? Like she fucking knew.
Speaker 3 (56:15):
She did know. She was an accomplice, full blown accomplice.
She was a Sheila. And then Jeff was a hero
and he couldn't He would have come back sooner, but
he had to drag her there. She even came to
the hotel and picked up money. You know, so I'm
(56:36):
a trafficking victim at the hands of an atheist using
my religious beliefs, to open the door, to get me
to trust, to get me into a situation where I
am then out of control.
Speaker 4 (56:53):
I mean, he did it seamlessly.
Speaker 3 (56:55):
He did Afterwards I needed Probably I should have been
in a hospital, you know, like a rehab or something.
I was in so much distress. I made a police
(57:17):
report and the police did not even offer me a
victim's advocate because they said, well, it was a fraud,
but you believed him so awful, and you know now
they understand things better, they wouldn't respond like that now.
But I ended up getting therapy, getting diagnosed with post
(57:41):
traumatic stress disorder and dealing it with dealing with it
for years and years. And then I went on a mission,
a different kind of mission, a mission of my own,
to discover what happened to my brain? How did I
go from being an entrepreneur, a published author, young mother
of the year, a respected and smart, I thought person
(58:06):
in my community to being the lowliest of the low,
with nothing left. Even my hopes and dreams were gone.
But when I recovered my children, that was the redeeming factor.
When all this happened, and I realized that all this
was in vain and it was I mean the level
of cruelty was just world record to me.
Speaker 4 (58:30):
Yeah, did you confront him? Were you able to get
at least that.
Speaker 3 (58:33):
I did it in writing? I did it in writing
incentive to him in jail. So and I put all
this evidence in and at any rate. But what I
learned it took me about a decade. What I learned
is that I needed to stop blaming myself. I blamed
myself for years because everybody else did too. And I
(59:00):
thought I had something seriously wrong with my brain. I
really thought that I had mental illness, that I could
have fallen for that, and I tried to get tested
to see what is my brain damage? What is wrong
with me? That I fell for that. And it wasn't
(59:21):
until I got therapy from a cult expert named Steve
Hassen and I read his book that I realized that
people fall into these groups, they get attracted into these groups.
I mean, thousands and thousands of people were in situations
(59:42):
like me. It wasn't just me. I thought nobody else
would ever fall for this, nobody would have something like
this happened to them. But now that I'm in the
world of helping cult survivors, dozens hundreds thousands of women
have been sexually exploited by their occult leader, and nobody
(01:00:02):
joins a cult. People get involved in movements that they
sincerely believe are true are going to make a difference
in the world, and the same with Alison Mac. I
err on the side of compassion for Alison Mac because
there is a process by which people get influence. It's
(01:00:28):
called undue influence, because you know, the person that has
so much power, access to God, who can argue with that,
who can argue with the smartest man in the world.
It's never the woman that's right, you know, or the follower,
It's always the leader. It's he always has some sort
(01:00:49):
of way to get information that nobody can question. So
the unquestionable Guru takes advantage of that power and step
by step creates one sacrifice after another after another, until
you're so invested you don't want to believe that this
(01:01:10):
person is evil. This is in vain. Yeah, you know.
So when I learned it was all false, although it
was traumatic, suddenly things made sense. I suddenly I knew
I could round up my children, and I knew it
(01:01:30):
wasn't God telling me I wasn't worthy to raise my beautiful,
incredible children. It was it was, you know, dare I
say it? I mean, I've often wondered if he's a psychopath.
Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
I mean, he's obviously a psychopath, Like why is there?
I mean, sure, I am not his medical professional. I
cannot legally technically diagnose him with sociopathy. It is my
strong opinion that he's a psychopath. I do not believe
if he's a person who has exhibited empathetic qualities personally.
(01:02:04):
This seems like a good time to add in a
disclaimer about Chad's perspective here. Okay, it's been a roller coaster.
In an interview with the Utah newspaper in two thousand
and seven, Chad told a reporter that my mom projected
divine status onto him, and she convinced herself that he
was a prophet, and he just ran with it. He
said that she volunteered the money for him. In the
(01:02:26):
same article, he did admit, though, to deceiving her religiously
and playing on her religious beliefs, and he said he
was sorry about doing that, And then later he said
that he actually had to tell the reporter that he
made the sealed portion up for legal reasons, but he
really did translate it from an angel and he really
was a prophet, but still claimed that my mom was
making up her part and presumably was saying that all
(01:02:48):
the emails she had from him were forged. I guess.
And then in a twenty seventeen podcast, he flip flopped
again and said, JK, he really did make the sealed
portion up. It was all a lie to get people
to stop believing in the Book of Mormon. And now
his platform has moved on to more political oriented beliefs,
but at every stage he's maintained that my mom is
(01:03:09):
just a vengeful ex lover. Though of course a handful
of other ex followers have spoken out about him, including men,
and I imagine there will be more to come. But
so if Chad has anything to add to this conversation,
we invite him to submit a statement in response to
this episode. We will verbally state it on the episode.
(01:03:31):
That will be interesting is still is he still work
in the work in his program.
Speaker 3 (01:03:36):
Oh. As a matter of fact, he just last week,
speaking of cult News, was found guilty of fraud and racketeering. No,
for the very same stuff, Chad.
Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
No shocking, No, I mean like it's when you hear
your story, it sounds like there's it's just this isolated
incident that he just decided to pray on this poor woman,
But he prayed on so many people, including.
Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
Men, still including man, and he goes after people with money.
And that's one of the myths about cults. They think that,
you know, the public tends to think that only like
these last teenagers or young adults that have a big
hole in their life are looking for something to get
attracted to cults. And while they might have a special vulnerability,
(01:04:29):
everybody is vulnerable because everybody has something they love. If
you love something, that's your vulnerability. If you have a
dream for something, that's your vulnerability. Everybody has vulnerabilities. And
if you have a master manipulator, he will hone in
on those. So all of those people listening that say
(01:04:51):
I'm too smart for this, nobody can get me. You're
a sitting deck.
Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
Yeah, watch your back, dude.
Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
It might be a chick too.
Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
I mean, you know, yeah, I mean, I know it's
incredibly successful screenwriters who've joined cults. There are you know
business I mean, look at the look at an exium.
Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Absolutely, I mean, just sitting here thinking about it a
bad relationship.
Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Is almost like joining in. You can have the same thought.
Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
You can have a cult of too, you can.
Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
So, you know, the smartest people in the world, the
most beautiful, they're.
Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
In crazy abusive relationships.
Speaker 4 (01:05:28):
All the time.
Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
That having just having that power over somebody, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
Exactly, it can happen to everybody. There are dynamics. Now
I understand it, you know. Now I'm finishing my PhD
in psychology, and I understand the pressures of you know,
social pressure and the power of social proof and influence
in small groups, and and and critical thinking and loss
of version, all these crazy things. But that's what happens.
(01:05:56):
It can happen in a relationship of two, It can
happen if family, It could happen in a workplace.
Speaker 4 (01:06:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
There are political cults, there are self help cults. And
if you suspect that you're in a cult, you'll you'll
have some signs. You know, they'll try to control your behavior,
they'll try to control the information that you're getting, or
tell you not to go on the internet and read that.
Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
Relationship. Yeah, if you're in a group that tells you
not to read about the group or not to talk
to anyone else about the group.
Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
You're probably in a If you're dating a guy who says,
don't talk to any of my ex girlfriends, you're in
a cult.
Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
That's good. That's good, right, These are good signs and
cults attract the best people in the world. And if
you were in one, consider it a considerate about If
you were in one, consider it a badge of honor.
You've survived it, you came out, and you have a
(01:06:59):
story to tell.
Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
What do you believe in?
Speaker 4 (01:07:00):
Now?
Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
Well, I'm not an atheist, mom, I am not. I
did not throw out the baby with the bathwater. There
was a time when I thought none of this is
true nothing, It's all just fiction. Now I see a
purpose in religion. I mean, I study positive psychology and
(01:07:23):
one of the factors of happiness is having a spiritual life,
having a religious community. And I think religion gives a
purpose and a meaning to lives. And I recommend people
have a religion, just don't let it control you.
Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
I would want to ask you, in a nutshell, what
do you think? What would you say that you learn
from this experience?
Speaker 3 (01:07:47):
Okay, I learned that I had faulty thinking. I learned
that looking for signs and coincidences and trying to give
them godly meaning is very dangerous. I learned to believe
what I see, Yeah, to see things, to know for
(01:08:09):
a fact, to not believe in good feelings, that good
feelings are not proof of truth.
Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
Right.
Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
I learned that somebody can have This is the biggest thing.
I learned that somebody can put on in an incredible
show of goodness. Help the poor and needy. Let's save
the world, Let's save the trees, Let's save the government.
It's always a great mission or cause to save the world.
(01:08:38):
But the people behind it, with their great mission and cause,
could be really just donning a costume, and it's really
all about them.
Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
Yeah, the bigger that parade is the bigger that show
of all of how great of a heart they have
or whatever. The less I trust and.
Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
Narcissists are a hell of a drying Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
Well, they all have to have this mission to attract people.
And quite frankly, a lot of colts do a lot
of good too. They're not one hundred percent bad. So
just watch it and don't believe for one minute that
because your teacher is teaching great things that he's not
also in the back room molesting.
Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Somebody exactly exactly. It's that that's the great area that
I feel like people don't grasp as I did good
and bad right in these groups and in these people,
Like just because there is good there does not mean
that there isn't bad there exactly.
Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
Like even Alison Mac, I think she had a big
wake up. I read her pleading and she was like, wow,
I thought we were helping people. I thought I was
helping Keith help people. I didn't realize all these other
things he was doing.
Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
And we'll never know if that's if that's true or not.
We'll never know, But like, but I think it is
important to to start changing how we think about people
who have been brainwashed because you, like I said, like you,
you you create, they create a new identity for you
that you would never have created for yourself. And you
(01:10:15):
people do things that they would have never believe they're
capable of, as you did, mom.
Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
Right, and it's traumatic brain manipulation.
Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
Right exactly. I'd like to take this opportunity to make
fun of Chad and where he is now great.
Speaker 3 (01:10:29):
Would you like to bear your testimony.
Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
I'd like to bear my testimony, but I know that
Chad is not a prophet. He has a website that
we will not give to you guys because we don't
want to. Let's just say one of his messages is
UH to end human trafficking. Oh within one week. Wow.
(01:10:53):
The government just needs to listen to his plan and
human trafficking will be over. He is an advocate for
victims of human traffick.
Speaker 3 (01:11:03):
Why didn't you know it?
Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
This website's wild.
Speaker 3 (01:11:07):
Well, if you're okay, if you come out of a culture,
if you know somebody come out that has come out
of a cult, I do recommend you get involved in
a support group, and there are some on Facebook, and
I run a couple, and I think it's important to
take what happened to you and turn it into something positive.
Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
Yeah, I mean that's what you've done. I remember, before
you started really talking about it, it was such a
source of fear for you, and it was something that
you didn't even want to touch. We couldn't talk about
it at all. It was just too big for you.
It was too hard, and understandably, what you went through
was so traumatic, you know, I think that would be
true for anyone. And then once you started reshaping your
(01:11:49):
own narrative and reclaiming your story and like accepting that
it had happened and finding ways to interpret it. That
that helped your life. You got so much better. I
have observed you grow so much, so much, So don't
be afraid of telling your story. Guys.
Speaker 2 (01:12:09):
Amen, Well, thank you for coming Wami. Where can they
find you on social media?
Speaker 3 (01:12:15):
Yeah? I have. My charity is called Voices for Dignity.
I love that Voices for Dignity dot com and I'm
Christine Marie Katis k A t as on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
So one of the things Megan and I talked about
before we started this podcast was that she is kind
of susceptible to every cult and so, Megan, would you
follow this leader? Would you join this group?
Speaker 2 (01:12:43):
I'm gonna have to go no on this one, just
because I think that he would.
Speaker 1 (01:12:50):
Yeah, he's just he's not for me. No specific enough.
Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Glitz, not enough glamour, not enough you know one and
running around in the woods.
Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
Good glad, I got that covered all right. You can
find me Lola on Instagram at Ula Lola.
Speaker 4 (01:13:09):
Oh oh h l A l O l A.
Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
You can just find me at Megan Granger m E
A J A j R A.
Speaker 4 (01:13:16):
I N g e R.
Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
All Right, guys, thanks for listening. We just want you
to remember one thing, and that
Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
Is follow your gut, watch out for red flats, and
never ever trust me Y
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