August 23, 2023 • 56 mins
In part two of their interview, Kyle and Kari, former members of the 2x2s (the group that Meagan grew up in), talk about the Facebook group they created for people leaving the group, which created a forum for people to share their stories for the first time. They discuss the overseer who was found dead in a hotel and the letter that exposed his sexual abuse, and how Kyle and Kari were then flooded with messages from survivors who'd been sexually abused within the religion, with hundreds of perpetrators named (many by multiple victims), and the earth-shattering implications for the future of the group.
Content warning: this episode will center around discussions of sexual abuse.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 3 (00:20):
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Speaker 4 (00:25):
I've never lived. To you, I've never had a live.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
If you think that one person has all the answers,
don't welcome to trust Me. The podcast about cults, extreme
belief and manipulation from two deconstructors who actually experienced it.
I am Lola Blanc.
Speaker 5 (00:41):
And I'm Megan Elizabeth.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Today is part two of our interview with Kyle and Cai,
former members of Megan's childhood.
Speaker 5 (00:47):
Group, the two by Twos.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
In this episode, we're going to discuss the Facebook group
they started from members who had left or we're thinking
about leaving the group, the overseer who was found dead
in a hotel and the letter that exposed his sexual abuse,
and how now that people had a place to actually
talk to each other more people began to share their stories.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
They'll tell us about how they began to get NonStop
messages from survivors who'd been sexually abused by workers or
other members of the group, how hundreds of perpetrators have
been named, many by multiple victims, and how people are
now leaving or thinking about leaving, and how much of
this is shaking up the group. Also, a lot of
members Critical Thinking is coming back online, which is very
(01:24):
interesting to see.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I can imagine. So we're gonna skip cuiltiest thing this
week and just talk about this little bit. Megan, what
are your thoughts going into this episode? This is obviously
your childhood group.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, I mean we get into it in the episode.
How shocking this all has been to me, and how
I've referred to this group as a cult on this
show for two years, almost jokingly or.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
A little bit lightly.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I had no idea how deep this all really went,
and the last five months have been so hard to
wrap my mind around.
Speaker 5 (01:57):
So I can't even.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Imagine what it's like for those who are still However,
these experiences pale in comparison to what's happened to survivors
of sexual abuse in this fellowship, and it's been happening
for decades, survivors have been ignored, called bitter or offended.
And let's be clear, this isn't a question of faith.
It is illegal, and they deserve all of our respect,
(02:18):
our compassion, and help getting these perpetrators held accountable. It's
our duty to help make sure this never happens again.
And if victims isn't a good enough reason to open
your eyes, perhaps your reputation will be. I've been contacted
by all of the big networks who want to make
documentaries about this. I've been contacted by the FBI. If
you think it's going away, it's simply not. You're going
(02:40):
to be held accountable one way or another. And I
can't even imagine if you're actually in it. So, although
the conversations have been very awkward, I have been sharing
with my family and people I still know in the
information coming to light, especially if I know they're not
getting it any other way.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, it's you know, we see this in so many groups,
like with p people who are like genuinely authentically like
believe that child abuse is wrong, sexual abuse is wrong,
wholeheartedly are against it. But there's you know, like in
the FLDS and groups like that, they become so convinced
that it's a conspiracy or it was just a few
bad people. It wasn't you know, it's like not a
systemic problem, and like they're able to like that's how
(03:18):
they reconcile their cognitive dissonance. And in a case like this,
it's like, as we'll get into in the episode, like
the structure of the group fundamentally is dangerous, especially given
how the overseers were responding and probably still are responding.
I just yeah, I just can't imagine how earth shattering
(03:39):
this must be for everyone who was a part of
this group, especially people who are currently in it. And
more stuff is coming to light that we aren't even
going to get into in this episode because more information
is like still coming out, and we'll do a follow
up episode later on. But it's insane.
Speaker 5 (03:52):
It's insane.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
It's one of the craziest stories I've ever heard. And
I can't believe that I grew up in it. You know,
who's not surprised by those though, victims who've been living
with it their entire life, some of them trying to
report it. People who are ostracized and spoken about and
treated so unfairly, And there's no words.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
My heart is broken for them.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
If anyone doesn't want to like necessarily hear the whole thing,
but they want to get some information about where they
can get some help.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
What are some resources?
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Go email Kri and Kyle who ps are the most
amazing humans on the planet at x e X two
by two Just the Numbers two times two podcast at
gmail dot com. They have so many resources that can
send to you. There's a hotline that you can call
if you have abuse you want to disclose, it's completely anonymous.
(04:41):
If you want to join the group and just talk
to other people, there's a million different ways to get
support around this, or even if you're still in and
you just want more information. So I would highly recommend
emailing them to get the resources sent to you.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Amen, And let's dive in with Kyle and Cary's do
people kind of know we're talking about?
Speaker 5 (05:00):
If they don't know, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
The topic we're about to go into opens up a
whole new doorway where suddenly you're forced to be like,
we got to talk about some stuff, yeah, because this
is bad.
Speaker 6 (05:24):
So I think in the as a whole, in the
I don't want to speak for the entire ex community.
But a theme that we saw come up again and again,
and I certainly felt this way, was that even even
if you, even though I know I had legitimate reasons
for leaving and other people have legitimate reasons for leaving,
there's always still this kind of general feeling that the
(05:45):
two by two still have the moral high ground over you.
So you don't want to upset them. You don't want
to step on any toes. You want to be the
peacemaker and just keep quiet and go on your own
way and let them live their life. That's definitely like
a general thing that we saw in our group prior
to four months ago.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
What happened four months yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6 (06:06):
Yeah, let's get into current events. So four months ago,
somebody posted in our group and said, we heard that
there's an emergency meeting between workers and elders across certain
(06:26):
states and provinces in Canada, and like specifically, I think
it was Washington, Montana, and like across the western provinces
of Canada.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
And it's worth saying before this point, the two by
two information highway was like you only got the information
that was meant for your specific province. There was no
shared information you had no idea what was happening in
the state next door.
Speaker 6 (06:54):
So the fact that there were like workers and elders
getting together for some emergency meeting of we had idea
why at this point was really unusual, Like we'd never
heard of that happening. So we're like, what is going on,
Like what on earth could could like demand this really
important emergency meeting. There must be something big happening. So
(07:14):
of course we were like curious, and we were kind
of reaching out to different people in those areas and
trying to figure out what's going on ex members in
our group, And finally I got a private message from
somebody else who was like I got a letter from
somebody inside the church that they were not supposed to
get pictures of, but they got pictures of. And they're like,
(07:36):
I have this letter. I mean to send it to you.
And I was like okay, and they're like, this is
what all the emergency meetings are about. So they send
me this letter and we have to backtrack to June
twenty twenty two. There was a really well known overseer
in of like organ in southern Idaho. He was the
overseer of very well known, very well liked, very highly respected,
(08:01):
had been in the work for almost fifty years and
then had become overseer. I don't know how long he
was overseer for, but this letter was about him, and
it was written by the current overseer of Oregon. So
this man, the previous overseer, had died. He'd been found
dead in a hotel last June in twenty twenty two.
(08:22):
Workers are not, which in and of itself was weird
because workers don't go to hotels. They stay with the friends. Like, yeah,
it was very weird. So everyone was kind of like, well,
maybe he had COVID and like was you know, wasn't
feeling good, thought he might infect people, so he stopped
at a hotel. Like nobody was really sure why he
did that, hm, but they kind of assumed, Oh, he
was feeling sick, and because COVID was sort of going
(08:44):
around at that point, he was like, oh, just stop
at a hotel. So he's found dead whatever. He had
a huge funeral, like between six to eight hundred people.
It was at a convention grounds. Life moved on. They
chose a new overseer for that area, and then back
to the end of March twenty twenty three this year,
(09:08):
this letter comes to me that was written by the
current overseer of who replaced him, basically his replacement, and
it was about him and it said like he this
letter stated that Dean, the guy, the overseer who died,
was a sexual predator and that he had abused children
(09:29):
and women. And the letter you know, went into detail
a little bit more than that, but that was like
the main point of it.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
This was written by the new overseer.
Speaker 6 (09:39):
The overseer who had taken Dean's place when he died. Yes,
And he wrote that they had when Dean died, they
had got his laptop to kind of like get his
schedules and stuff off. You know, he's an overseer who
was an important guy. He had schedules on his laptop,
and so in looking for those things they had found
how did they word it?
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Like he used the term in criminating, which I think, well,
might it might depend an overstatement. It might not be
a criminal, but things.
Speaker 6 (10:07):
Immoral things oftentimes laptop.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Yeah, oftentimes two by two pornography, Yeah, probably that it's
oftentimes two by twos use things like you know, criminal
use criminal language when they're talking about things that they
just morally.
Speaker 6 (10:19):
Don't want and vice versa.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
So it sounded even worse than it ended up being.
But he said there was incriminating things on his laptop.
Speaker 6 (10:27):
Well it was. Yeah, to be clear, what he did
was very bad, but what was on his laptop wasn't
legal as far as we're aware. But he had other
things on their like receipts. Apparently he had stayed in
hotels a lot, and sometimes his receipts would let would
list two guests or you know, things like that. So
clearly he had done things that were both immoral and
(10:49):
illegal real quick.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
So just to why it's important to know that he
had two guests. He was an overseer and he's also
traveling alone. He didn't have a field some of the time.
Speaker 6 (11:00):
He was just which he would have set that up himself.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
He would have set that up himself. He assigned himself
no companion, so when he was staying in a hotel
with two people, there was no companion.
Speaker 6 (11:08):
So yeah, it wasn't his campaign.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Possible it could have been another worker traveling. We don't
really know, but it's it's definitely.
Speaker 6 (11:15):
The implication was that it was somebody who should he
shouldn't have been with in the hotel. So this letter
just laid it out very clearly that he had abused
miners well into adulthood and adults.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And this was and he got this information from the
laptop or it was just something.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
No.
Speaker 6 (11:35):
Some after Dean died, some survivors came forward to the
workers from within the church shut it and told him
their stories.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
They had come some of them had come forward by
this time, Is that right?
Speaker 6 (11:47):
Yeah? So so like seven to nine months before this
letter came out is when they had found out all
of this stuff. So they hadn't told people for that
entire time.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
And they didn't plan on telling everyone. They planned on
telling a few select group of people.
Speaker 6 (12:02):
Right. So the letter was not according to the person
who sent us this letter within the church, the letter
was not ever intended to be distributed widely. They were
not supposed to copy it. They were supposed to read
it and hand it back to the overseers, and then
they were supposed to the elders were supposed to tell
their meetings. And I quote this person, be vague and
(12:25):
tell your meetings that Dean was an abuser. And this
person said, I have no intention of being vague, And
I think this is new information that needs to get
out there. So this currently professing two by two is
a damn hero. Yeah in our opinion. Yeah, because they
risked a lot to like get pictures of that thing
and get that sent to They sent it to our community.
(12:48):
So after freaking out for a while, because like we
all had this guy stay in our homes when we
were kids.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
Yeah, we'd known him since we were little. I'd known
my list and did didn't speak at convention since we
were literally had a very distinct speaking pattern. He was
well loved. You know, no one would have guessed something
like this.
Speaker 6 (13:06):
Yeah, we we four admins of our support group, Mike
and Abbey and Kyle and I talked about it and
decided this needs to be something that the church is
widely aware of because there might be other victims out
there too who you know, aren't going to get the
information and don't realize that there are others.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Or Yeah, because there's something about to the fields in Washington.
Are the elders in Washington? But he's backtly in different states,
He's traveled to conventions in different countries, he's been country
freeware all over. Then we don't share information that way,
it's so structured by fields, so none of these other
(13:46):
people are being warned, right.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Or but okay, sorry, just to get clear on the details.
So basically, like a few people knew that he had
abused people, and he died. The person who replaced him
was letting a few people know, and they weren't supposed
to talk about it in detail. Letting a few people
(14:10):
know that they were aware that he had abused some
children and some women.
Speaker 6 (14:15):
Yes, but as far as I'm aware, nobody knew about
the abuse until after he had died, right, Okay.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
And once they once the information got out, they said, well,
we had intended to tell anybody everybody eventually. We don't
know if they were going to or not.
Speaker 6 (14:30):
But I can think that that wasn't our understanding.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Yeah, but they did. Once it got out, they decided
to start telling people, So.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Okay, and what like, why did they even I'm like,
what was the plan with telling a few people the guys, diad,
what what is it like?
Speaker 6 (14:47):
What is your wanting?
Speaker 5 (14:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (14:49):
Yeah, I think, I mean, I can't speak for them,
but I think they wanted, particularly that just the places
that he had labored in recently to be aware in
case there might be other victims, right right. I think
that was kind of what they had in mind, But
I don't know for sure why they decided to tell
only certain meetings in certain areas what was happening. Yeah,
(15:13):
I'm not entirely sure about that, but that's just my guess.
Speaker 5 (15:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Well, and the other reason we wanted to talk about
it too is because you know, obviously more victims is
a concern, but also in cases like this, where you're
being being very picky with how information gets out, wild
rumors get started really quickly. And I even tried to
give a few people heads up, like, hey, I have
the authentic copy if you hear crazy rumors, which we
(15:38):
did hear some real crazy rumors that we still hear
them that we know aren't true. You know, I was
trying to look out for the people inside still, like hey,
a really, really a thing that's going to make you
very sad is coming out. But you don't have to
believe the craziest room where you can believe that the
most on point, you know, worker released letter and that
(16:01):
even that wasn't very well received.
Speaker 6 (16:03):
Yeah, so abby. And I posted the letter publicly on
our Facebook and in our support group at the same
on our personal pages publicly and in our support group
and maybe Instagram too, I think, although that wouldn't have
been public in my case, but yeah, and it went
(16:25):
within the sense of like people amongst the church. It
went viral amongst those people, and there were definitely people
who thought it had been made up or you know,
that's still there were even people who were saying that, like,
somebody must be controlling the overseer who wrote this letter.
You know, there were all kinds of weird rumors and
(16:48):
some conspiracies about that. But but yeah, ultimately the letter
got passed around quite a bit, and then a couple
of days later, I got a private message from a
survivor with allegations against another really well known overseer current one,
(17:09):
a current over that we also grew up having in
our homes, and like this one was. Yeah, this was
a tough one for me to hear, but I of
course like believed this person and at this about that
same time, fortunately for this survivor, a couple of other
survivors of this same person with allegations came to some
(17:33):
people in the church, so I didn't have to share
that news like that came out from the church itself,
and that overseer voluntarily stepped down from his position as overseer.
But it took us again releasing the email from the
workers about this guy publicly to really get pressure put
(17:56):
on them to remove him from the work and from
meetings entirely.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
I'm sorry, I was just going to say, which brings
up an important point about people who are accused or
even found guilty, still being allowed to attend meetings with children.
And sometimes yes, people in the meetings aren't aware that
that person is a perpetrator.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
And mind you, meetings are not in a church, they're
in homes, and these people live with us.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
Yeah, yeah, right, the ministers stay in the homes too,
som hm. So there was a mediate concern. Yeah, might imagine.
Speaker 6 (18:28):
Yeah there, Yeah, it was a big concern. I mean,
like growing up as a little girl in a meeting home,
having brother workers stay.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
In my home, these brother workers potentially.
Speaker 6 (18:37):
And these brother workers too, but just any brother workers
in general. I was often told like now you remember, like,
don't wear your nighty downstairs, because we don't want to
attempt the brother workers. You know, I'm five, and I'm like.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
Oh hey, oh my god.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
You know, so it was very much like and I
was lucky in the sense that I grew up I
think with a mother who was very aware and very protective.
And even in our own home we had workers before
we left meeting Stan our home and we would always
have the children sleep, our kids sleep in our room
like it just was something we did without really thinking
(19:12):
about it.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Which sounds back then, but it's just what we did.
You know. Yeah, strangers in your house and your kids
sleep where they can't get to them. Yeah, right, it's
wild to say out loud, but that's that's how we were.
I mean, that's normal, you know.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
For that's so interesting.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
She talks about etiquette, get your bangers out of your mouth.
She talks about where to find a deal.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
You know, if you sell me something on Instagram, I
buy it.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Whoever markets to me does a fabulous job. She talks
about the economy. We used to joke that'll be the
thing to send them to therapy. Okay, we're creating jobs.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
Can we look at it that way?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
She talks about parenting.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
These kids want to come home, they don't want to leave,
they don't want to drive, they want to stay.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
In the womb. Let's talk with Heather Debre every Thursday
on podcast one or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 6 (20:02):
Yeah, so it started within that same week, us four
admins of the support group started getting private messages just
pouring in from survivors, just crazy, NonStop. It literally became
a full time job for me and Kyle would go
to work and come home and just work on it NonStop,
and we'd be up all like all hours of the night.
(20:22):
Kyle gets up super early for work, so I'd go
to bed really late and he get up super early,
and we were just answering messages from person after person after.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
I don't think I've ever messaged Youkriy without you getting
immediately back to me. You have become from the hotline,
and I think in my experience, you guys have like
taken the place of a lot of our parents, like
and my Psyche.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
They got it, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
So I mean, y'all, it was your job. It's a
full time job and you Yeah, and.
Speaker 6 (20:51):
On top of that, we were running the support group still,
which is you know, to work too. But yeah, so
we had a lot of survivors from the community, but
then we also had a lot of people from within
the church because we had shared information publicly, they started
following us on social media, like because they were not
receiving news from within their church, so it was coming
(21:14):
from the ex community. And we were very careful with
what we posted, like mostly what we shared were emails
that were being circulated by workers, but not being circulated.
They were like being circulated just to a couple of meetings,
and we were like, well, this is about somebody with allegations.
It needs to be known, like widely known. So we
(21:36):
would share it on our Facebook or every once in
a while there was a survivor that would share a
story on their Facebook, like they wanted to go public,
and we would just kind of provide a platform and
reshare it to amplify that.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Yeah, we kind of What happened is that people realized
pretty quickly that we turned into sort of a clearinghouse
for this stuff. We weren't releasing any new information. We
weren't like releasing allegations or anything. We were just saying like,
here's what's going around. Yeah, we're very careful with it,
but it was here's here's what's going around. And as such,
(22:15):
people started realizing that we would listen also, and so
people who've been sitting on stories for their whole lives.
Some of them maybe a few years, some of them
years and years and years, twenty thirty years. Hey, this
happened to me a long time ago. I've never dealt
with it. Can I tell you about it? And Carie
would get I mean, how many at the peak? How
many stories per day? Just you? And mind you there's
(22:35):
four admins.
Speaker 6 (22:36):
Twelve to fifteen a day at least. I had people
messaging me like, Hey, do you have a copy of
this email that was sent around to like the Minnesota
feel because I really need to see it because I
think I had this guy stay in my home and
I'd be like, sure, here's the email, and inevitably they'd
be like, oh yeah, and also so and so.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Abused me right, and so it got so busy. I
want to give a shout out to the other two.
We brought on two more admins, Jenny Jennifer, and carry
shout out to them for helping us just run the
group for a while and they're kind of emeritis status
now they're with us. We had six people just like
running a phone bank, kind of people just just contacting
(23:12):
us saying, hey, I hear there's a you know, my
elder got which is the one who runs the meetings,
got a message, but I don't know what it says.
Who's this about? Like I was abused a long time ago.
Do you have you guys heard this name? Yeah, you
started hearing names over and over and yeah, twelve to
some of the stories.
Speaker 6 (23:31):
Like people just wanted someone to listen to them, and
here we are, like we're not professionals. We were sending
them to sources like rain is a really good one.
Sometimes we were handing out suicide hotlines because people were
in immediate mental health crises, or sending them recommending sometimes
that they go to the hospital. And also listening to
(23:52):
incredibly difficult, traumatic stories about people that we knew growing
up personally, Like we knew the people with allegations, and
we knew the survivors, and it was just so incredibly
just traumatic for us too in that way, like nothing
compared to what the what victims and survivors have gone through.
But being somewhat prominent in the ex community, there are
(24:17):
often rumors about us that like, oh, they want this
makes them happy to see the church go down in flames,
and they want to tear it down and they they're
reveling in this. That was not the case at all,
Like this, this is the community we grew up in.
These were our family members, some of them who told
us stories that we had never heard before. Our friends,
(24:39):
like people we grew up meeting with, people we grew
up seeing every year at convention. This was our community
going through an extremely traumatic experience, and it was just
so like we were grieving right along with them.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Yeah, the stories were just wild too. And then there's
also the cognitive being experienced by everybody. You know, our
our deconstruction lasted a year and a half and it
was terrible. And now we're seeing people, we're having victims
come out that are feeling glad to be heard. But
then we're also dealing with people who who can't square
all of it in their heads and they're just losing
(25:17):
their minds. There was one period, yeah, and which is
of course we feel terrible about that. There was one
period where I was talking to someone on the phone
and they were pretty incredulous about it, and they're like, well,
I hope you have the right reason to do what
you're doing. I hope you're being honest. And I was like,
let me be really clear. Cary's in the other room
right now, setting up a welfare check for someone who's suicidal.
(25:39):
So yes, it's real, and no, I'm not enjoying this.
And Cary, that's what she was doing. She was calling
friends of somebody we had some connections to say, Hey,
can you go to this person's house. They're having a
very tough time. That was a day for us. That
was a Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
It seems like that happens quite a bit. I've seen
it a bit with my mom and other communities that
I'm aware of or connected to. Whenever there's someone who
is the messenger of some very emotionally difficult information, it
brings out all kinds of moods and reactions and accusations.
(26:13):
And it's not an easy position to be in. And
I think you guys are very brave and very strong
for managing it as well as you have.
Speaker 6 (26:21):
Yeah, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5 (26:24):
I was just going to add that. What was I
going to add? I don't know. I was going to
add that.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Somebody close to me and my family said to me,
it's hard to know who's trying to burn it down
and who's trying to clean it out.
Speaker 5 (26:41):
And I was like I heard that.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
I don't think a lot of people have an issue
with really sweet people gathering in homes and talking about Jesus.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
That sounds cool to me. But totally there is going
to have to.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Be a big reckoning because right now we have I
don't know the official one, there's maybe, but there's another
group that's saying there's like six hundred plus perpetrators at
this point.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Perpetrators not victims with allegations. With allegations, yes, people.
Speaker 6 (27:13):
With allegations from within the church. Over the last number
I heard was like over five point fifty.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
Yeah, that is bonkers because the church.
Speaker 6 (27:22):
And a lot of them have more than one victim. Oh,
more than one allegation, I should say, right.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, Like, how many workers are there total? Approximately?
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Do we know?
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Well, it hasn't just been workers either, It's been it's
been other people. People are coming forward with stories about
just you know, family members and things like that too,
you know, because it's these stories that have been held
down for so long. Are people are feeling more bold
about coming forward now realizing that hey, there's a community
out there. And by the way, these are true, believing people.
(27:55):
These are not people trying to burn it all down.
These are primarily I would say, at least first I
would say the majority maybe are people who are on
the inside who just want to go back to, you know,
having the Bible studies and the homes. They're not trying
to burn it down. They're just they're being heard for
the first time and they need that for them.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
It does need to heal. It does seem like a
large percentage, maybe even the majority of people with allegations
at least from the stories that we heard, were workers
and elders, though, like people in places of authority, where
it's very very difficult for your average church member to
(28:35):
come out and say this person did something to me
because there's a power imbalance.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
And there's also one of the difficulties too, is that
it's hard to even address it without sort of having
a mini faith crisis as part of it, because you're
raised to believe. Hey, these people give up everything they
have and they're called by God to go in and
deliver the gospel. Yeah, and so these people are living
out their faith in a way that very few people
(29:04):
on earth do right there. And so, you know, if
you're a true believing and you're on the inside it's
like these people mean it. It's God is helping them,
and so to then hear, oh, actually they had a
double life and they were doing something terrible. It doesn't
even to a believing mind, it doesn't make sense. It's
very hard. It's a mini faith crisis, like hitting a
wall at one hundred miles an hour.
Speaker 6 (29:22):
Well, yeah, when I was professing, I believed like God
gives the worker special powers to stay celibate and to like, oh,
stay faithful. And scattered into all of these allegations were
people coming forward to us like I know this worker
who had an affair, and I know this worker who
slept around a lot. And there were actually workers sending
(29:42):
out their own emails like I've had affairs and I've
hidden it for years and I'm going to step down
because of it. Yeah, everybody married because they were expected
to stay celibate. But like there was that going on too,
So all of a sudden, people are realizing like, oh,
the workers are actually very, very human and have sexual
human needs.
Speaker 5 (30:02):
Yeah, they're not these you know.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
And we really haven't hit the living witness doctrine yet,
but essentially there's like a doctrine that we're taught that is,
unless you're told the gospel from a worker, you have
not heard it.
Speaker 6 (30:17):
So these are preaching gospel.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
You wrote down some things, our connection to God, the
only connection to God on this planet, and kind of
pointing to a different topic. But also, you know, a
lot of the people who have gotten to the top
of the power structures are predatory, in my opinion, covering up,
(30:40):
sending people to different fields, sending.
Speaker 6 (30:42):
People toations of people who are complicit.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
Sending people developing countries.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
So these people going to have thousands of victims, god
knows where, just thousands upon thousands of victims.
Speaker 6 (30:55):
It became really obvious the more stories we heard that
people who had experienced abuse often did try to tell
somebody like their workers, and the consequence was basically they
were told, usually more often than not, to keep quiet
about it, and that in that worker, if it was
(31:16):
allegations against a worker would be moved to a different country,
at used a different state.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
They'd be moved around, and some of them were moved
around five or six times.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
How's the Catholic Church? But the priests are living in
our houses right, Yeah?
Speaker 6 (31:28):
Because the workers don't. The workers don't choose, usually for themselves,
where to preach, Like, they're sent to different states in
different countries, so they would just shuffle around and move on.
Every once in a while, someone would disappear from the
work and nobody would ask questions and that would be
the end of it.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
So what do you know right now in terms of
how the higher ups are sort of dealing with this
like huge paradigm shift and crisis of faith that everyone
is having, and like the knowledge that there's been so
much abuse that's happened and been covered up.
Speaker 6 (32:04):
So what we've noticed from our perspective is that there's
a really big disconnect right now between some of the
friends and almost all of the workers, especially professing people
kind of in our age range with children. They're very
concerned and there's a lot of now that everything has
(32:25):
been shared. This took quite a couple of months to
get to this point, but there is a lot of
internal pressure now, an advocacy for change within the church,
and from what I have seen, the vast majority of
the workers are trying to fall back on historical ways
of dealing with it, which is, let's try to keep
(32:47):
this problem localized, pretend it's a local problem, thoughts, cover
it up worse, you know, very versus maybe move this
person to a different province or a different state and
just kind of pretended not happening. And that is still continuing,
like it's convention season right now, and some of the
(33:08):
things the workers are preaching show very much that they're
extremely disconnected from what a problem this is. Well, a
lot of them, sorry, as victims.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
I mean, I think a lot of them think that
this is the cleansing before Jesus comes back to the earth.
Speaker 5 (33:24):
Yea, starting down?
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah, well, in what way?
Speaker 5 (33:28):
This is just like the last and final test?
Speaker 6 (33:31):
Are falling away?
Speaker 5 (33:33):
Falling away from the Bible?
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Are you going to stay and keep your face or
are you going to run away and take the easy
way out and go to hell?
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Like they think, it's almost like persecution, all of these accusations.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
It's a test, yes, No, it's being processed internally, especially
with the senior workers. It's being processed as.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
Persecution against the ministry specific.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
A lot of the we've listened into a lot of
the talks, there's a lot of them online and stuff
now on the phone or whatever, and it's almost unanimous,
well that we're going through a storm right now. It's
it's very much we this is happening to us. It
doesn't it's not a thing that we need to deal with.
It's a thing that's happening to us. Wow. We listened
to an overseer just the other night say that a
lot of people are asking me what I'm gonna do,
(34:15):
and I told them, I'm not going to do anything.
I'm gonna let God work. We're gonna let God work
on this one's going the people, anybody who has kids
or you know, younger, are going, that's what you already
were doing though, right where we are. And so we've
seen in a way that we've never seen in our
entire lifetimes. There's a lot of conversation going on. Like
we were saying, we didn't growing up. We just went
(34:37):
to our meetings and we lived our lives and we
didn't talk about it much. And you know, from our
Facebook group, there's there's been a lot of you know,
spinoffs to other groups forming and even the people in
the meetings have formed their own online group and have
have just started talking about stuff, just just started saying.
Speaker 6 (34:54):
Jin of itself is very very niw, which.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
Is crazy because they're saying things. I mean, we we
grew up. I was to the overseers when I was younger.
I'll be honest. They were big, old, powerful men who
were grumpy and I didn't want to cross them. And
now people are speaking very directly to the problems, like hey,
you need to fix this, or we need to do
something else, and I think that's been It's scary from
(35:17):
their standpoint. It's chaotic looking, but I think it's the
first time they've maybe had some real healthy conversations about
the beliefs and what to do with how they're set up.
And I don't know where it's going to end up.
It's sad to watch. Somebody in our group mentioned something
I keep using this phrase. They said, it's like watching
our childhood home burn. And that's how it feels. It
(35:39):
doesn't feel good at all. It feels like it's burning down.
Speaker 6 (35:42):
But while the workers are saying, just focus on Jesus.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
Yeah, we'll get through this storm. We just have to
write out the storm, and then there's people like, no,
this needs to burn for a bit, we need to
work this out.
Speaker 6 (35:52):
Yeah, I wrote down a quote that we heard just
yesterday when we called into a meeting. And after this,
they're probably gonna like kick us out. So we can't
do that anymore because they probably don't ordering nothing. But
this one worker said this. One worker said it. He's
referencing a Bible story about like a troubling report. And
(36:14):
I don't remember what the Bible story is, but he says,
it wasn't the evil in the land that was troubling
the people, but the report because people believed it. If
the report is troubling, then it is evil. We have
to be careful about the reports that we are listening to.
If we believe an evil report, we will be angry
and upset and we won't enter God's kingdom.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Wow, the fact that the report is troubling makes it evil.
Speaker 6 (36:41):
Report is the evil troubling thing, No, the actual event.
And another worker said he put out an email that
said there is no crisis. Some think there's a crisis
in the church right now, but there is no crisis.
Everything is under God's control.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
I just feel like I'm just picturing them all with
their fingers and ears going la la la, la, la
la la, you know, like it's it's right, It's right there,
you guys.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Well, it was very strange to witness the first emails
that came out because you were like, oh my, okay, wow,
this is we haven't really talked about this either, So
I'm just going to spark note to cover this.
Speaker 5 (37:17):
You know, we're taught this came from Jesus.
Speaker 6 (37:19):
It didn't.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
It was started by a guy named William Irving and
eighteen ninety five and so yeah about that, yeah, about
that time. So this whole thing is kind of built
upon a lie. Right again, fine, meet and homes, have
a great time, whatever you want to do. But there's
just all this crumbling and I forgot my point, but
(37:41):
it was really important and you guys would have loved
us well.
Speaker 6 (37:43):
So like you said, Megan earlier, you said, like our
impression and I agree completely, was that even when you've
left your impression, it is like, but it's pretty harmless,
Like it's a sweet little group and they're quiet and
they stick to themselves and they just want to meet
in homes and do their things, no harm, no foul.
And now it's like, okay, there is a lot of harm.
(38:05):
And it's structural. Yes, it's down to the foundations of
the exclusivity and the patriarchy.
Speaker 5 (38:13):
Hiding, the founder hiding.
Speaker 6 (38:15):
Talking against the fear of talking against workers. Yeah. Absolutely,
all of that is very structural.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
So on the one hand, you have dismissive talk from
some of the you know, the senior brother workers, the
older guys, and on the other hand, in the past
how many months has it been this is late March,
four months are almost five feels from nine to about
three thousand people.
Speaker 6 (38:40):
Yeah, we're almost at three thousand now. So on top
of all of the stories that we were fielding, our
group was just growing like crazy, and a lot of
those people were ex members who were just finding out
about our group because we were you know, sharing church
news publicly, and then people were like, oh yeah, Kyle
and carry they have this core group, but a very
(39:02):
large percentage are people who are currently leaving the church
over the current abuse crises and how it's being handled
or not being handled, or considering leaving. So there is
like and normally our group is only for ex members,
but we've kind of relaxed that in the last few
months and let people who are like needing support to
(39:24):
decide whether or not they can imagine leaving the church.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
We've always invited people who were you know, questioning or
just wanted to talk about it or whatever. But there's
just so many of those.
Speaker 6 (39:34):
Yeah, there were like only a few before.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
Yeah, and so we vet every single person, but for
about two months we were adding one person per hour
on a We're vetting them and talking to them and everything. Wow,
because there's just so much. And that's just people who
are out. There's also all the people who are in
who are meeting up separately, who are having meetings without
the workers. There's many people who who still believe, still
(39:56):
want a worship together, have just stopped supporting the workers.
They don't go to the GOSS meetings and the missions anymore.
Speaker 6 (40:01):
Yeah, they're like, we're not going to give them money anymore.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
And there's a lot of those people and.
Speaker 6 (40:04):
Listen to them preach anymore. Or we're going to have
our own unsanctioned meetings, which means like a meeting that
isn't you know, put together by the workers.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Yeah, I'm chaotic.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
If if the workers are like the workers are like
the whole structure. So if the workers are no longer work.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
The workers are who we were taught to worship, right
because they we can't talk about God because we don't
understand it because they explain it, but they don't they
just explain that everything else is wrong if.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
The if the trust is gone in the workers, then
what do you even have?
Speaker 6 (40:37):
Like that's you guess.
Speaker 5 (40:38):
People are rediscovering. Yeah, and yeah, I mean that there.
Speaker 6 (40:44):
Are still a lot of church members who believe like, well,
this is God's true ministry that he set up and
he's just cleaning house right now, and yeah, you know,
we'll just kind of stick our heads in the sand
and it'll.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
Blow over, and they're probably right. I mean, I think
that some people have said, like, oh, do you think
this will oh wait, now, like the two by twos
will just completely disappear, and it's like, no, that's not
going to happen. They'll they'll always be people who just
want to do that part, who just want to meet
in some homes and have Bible studies and be cool. Yeah,
but there's definitely some changes going on.
Speaker 6 (41:14):
Yeah, I mean, it's been definitely the biggest shakeup that
I think has ever happened in church history. And tell
them about the book about the Church's history.
Speaker 4 (41:24):
Because yeah, so I should.
Speaker 6 (41:26):
That's an amazing book.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
Yeah, Megan, you've mentioned the living Winness doctrine. I want
to recommend a book for people who are interested.
Speaker 6 (41:33):
In It just came out last year.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
I hope I say your name right, noo, tell me.
It's a book called Preserving the Truth. It's somebody who's
been researching the group for years. Her name is Sherry
Sherry crop Eric. It's on Amazon. I've never met her,
but I recommend this book to everybody. I bought it
for people. It's it's she's documented the group from the
very very beginning, has done like thirty years of research
(41:57):
or something, just an incredible amount of research. Very well.
Speaker 5 (42:00):
I mean it's incredible.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
You get you get newspaper articles from Ireland in eighteen
ninety seven being.
Speaker 5 (42:07):
Like William Irvine's annoying us, like he's pure.
Speaker 6 (42:13):
It's so bizarre, and you know what, And the other
really interesting thing is we I knew about William Irvine
maybe from my teens. I just kind of heard the
name going around and I asked my parents, like, who's
this William Irvine guy? And they were like, well, and
not just my parents, but a lot of people taught
that William Irvine was like one of the workers who
(42:34):
kind of you know, the truth had to go underground
for a while because it wasn't safe during you know,
like the era in England where they were persecuting people
who weren't Catholic and this and that for whatever reason,
like when when it wasn't safe for religions they went underground.
And then these workers in Ireland helped kind of revive
(42:55):
it and bring it back into sort of like I
don't know, it's like popularity, it's not the right word.
But basically, he they believed he was. He was an
early worker, but still just another worker who went rogue
and was kicked out, which is true. He was kicked
out of the religion that he found nice, yeah, of course,
(43:16):
and so that's what I believe, like, oh, William Rmyn,
He's just just he was just another worker, and yeah
he was important. He converted a lot of people, but
then he was kicked out and went crazy, and so
we don't really talk about him. What I didn't know
was that there was so much information, so very well sourced,
tracking his exact movements from leaving this faith that still exists,
(43:39):
and he took so much terminology from them. He just
copied the hard this oh yeah, completely starting this religion.
And and then there was like this concerted, purposeful effort
in the church around maybe our grandparents' generation, to kind
of erase his history from the church. And I always
(44:01):
thought like, oh, over time people just stopped talking about him. No,
there are photographs that originally had William Ermine in them,
and he was cut out of the photographs. It was
very and people preaching about him would be like listing
early workers and they'd be like, oh, we are so
thankful for the faith of this guy and that lady
(44:21):
and this guy and that Scottish worker, but they wouldn't
name him, like there was a concerted I think he
was Scottish.
Speaker 5 (44:29):
It was Scottish, but then was in the Ireland he went,
I remember.
Speaker 6 (44:35):
So it was a very purposeful effort to like cut
him out of church history after they kicked him out.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
To make it look more like it had gone back
forever Jesus right.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
He copied it from something called the Faith Mission. And
you know, his as his mental health deteriorated at the
turn of the century, it kind of took the church
with him on this wild egotistical narcissist, the living witness
doctor and blah blah blah blah blah, and it became
more and more exclusive, more and more and crazy until
he was like, I'm actually the prophet.
Speaker 5 (45:02):
And then then they were like you must go, and
then he just died by himself.
Speaker 6 (45:06):
Right now, he started to believe that he was like Israel,
he started to believe that he was like one of
the two prophets in Revelations. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (45:16):
Yeah, he started believing he was in the Bible as
like one of the characters and.
Speaker 5 (45:20):
Stuff, as one of the characters again.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
Yeah, like one of the two witnesses mentioned. And I
thinks the other.
Speaker 6 (45:26):
Workers were like, what about us.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
I was just gonna say, it's always so impressive when
cult leaders and religion starters get kicked out of the
thing that they started. It's like, you do have to
be sort of at another level of it.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
But he was.
Speaker 5 (45:40):
He was brilliant.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
I mean we're now in twenty twenty three still dealing
with him.
Speaker 5 (45:46):
So, you know, as far as cult leaders go, Joseph
Smith too genius, you know.
Speaker 6 (45:52):
And I would say the current abuse crisis has brought
the church, the actual real church history to the forefront.
Also as well as this book being published last year,
Like we've actually seen two by twos talking about this
book and recommending it. To people.
Speaker 4 (46:06):
Oh, which is really which is really crazy because this
has actually happened before. Someone wrote a book called The
Secret Sect back in I want to see the eighties
or something.
Speaker 5 (46:15):
I remember the Secret Sect.
Speaker 4 (46:17):
Yeah, and I remember when that scandal kind of hit
my own community and the workers went around having special
special meetings like, hey, don't read this book. I know
multiple families that burned copies of the Secrets.
Speaker 6 (46:28):
They were buying extra copies and burning them.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
I mean, I've never read it. It's impossible to find
a copy of it.
Speaker 6 (46:34):
Yeah, we were. We were able to get a hold
of a copy and read it. And it's fine.
Speaker 4 (46:39):
It's not as exciting as everybody thinks.
Speaker 5 (46:41):
This new yeah, but as much.
Speaker 6 (46:44):
This sounds so much better.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, I mean it just seems like we know this already.
But like the most powerful tool that we have is
information and communication and the yes, the most effective way
to oppress people and to control people is to keep
them from talking to each other. So what an amazing
thing that people are talking to each other now and
(47:07):
learning about this and not being alone in their experiences
that they've had that are so fucking heartbreaking.
Speaker 6 (47:14):
Yes, yeah, yeah, it'll be interesting to see where that
goes because I feel like there is a potential for
different factions to break off, almost like there are a
lot of people like, we want to be honest and
upfront about the church history and the information, and like
we need to be really clear that there is a
crisis of abuse. And then there's people other people who
(47:35):
are very uncomfortable with all of it and just want
to go back to normal quote unquote, you know. And
of course then there's this massive chasm between regular church
members and the workers and overseers. Like for all of them,
just people we've seen flooding out of the church in
recent months, almost zero of them have been workers. And
(47:57):
the workers, to be fair, are more cut off from
outside information, Like most of them don't have social media.
Most of them completely rely on what their you know,
elder companions or overseers are telling them, like that is
their source of information. So it is harder for them
to be informed.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
And so many of them are it's so difficult to work,
leave the work. We should give a resource for people
who want to leave the work. A lot of people
with OCD.
Speaker 5 (48:26):
You know, are.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
We read a lot of a lot of stories on
the site of people who are like I was. I
was groomed to be in the work from when I
was a kid. Workers would be like, I can tell
you're a worker, and parents would be like, you know.
Speaker 6 (48:39):
So there's a lot of the definition of giving your
best it's doing in the work.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Yes, and so it's not just people with OCDA. There's
a lot of very good people who find themselves in
the work realize it's not what they thought it was,
but are abused and have no they they didn't get
any skills, they didn't get an education, they don't have
a home to go to, they don't have any resources,
are stuck.
Speaker 5 (49:01):
So there's the.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Cycle that we all just need to be there for
each other. And there is you know, this group of
people at the top who are kind of taking advantage
of a lot of good intentions.
Speaker 6 (49:17):
Yeah, and there are resource and there is help for
those people who want to leave the ministry and who
want to leave the work. We're not going to name
any group names, but Kyle can give some contact information
for us, and we can absolutely put people in touch
with resources. Whether you're a worker and you need someone
to talk to, or you want to leave, whether you're
a member and you need someone to talk to or
(49:38):
whether you're a survivor of abuse and you need someone
to talk to. There are groups set up now who
are helping with each of these individual things, both in
the US and internationally that we can definitely put people
in contact.
Speaker 4 (49:50):
And both ex members and current members are working in
these different.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
Groups too, so amazing together. So where can people find
and you guys and the groups, So we just.
Speaker 4 (50:04):
All we have is Facebook right now, we're called the
X two by two Support Group e x DASH two
x two Support Group, and that's the best place to
find us. You can just find us on Facebook and message.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
Us and it's and it's not it's not public if
you join it, like only the people in the group
who can see who's in the right group can see
who the group members are, right, and.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
We vet everybody that we let in. We don't just
let everybody in to come look around. It's we we vet.
We have ways of checking and seeing if if you're
a good fit for the group. And but you can
still talk to us even if you're not. Many people
have contacted us and said that the group's not for me,
but you know, can you help me with something else?
So we do that too.
Speaker 6 (50:40):
So that's awesome.
Speaker 4 (50:41):
So a message, no matter, and then you.
Speaker 6 (50:43):
Set up an email in case people to reach out.
Speaker 4 (50:45):
So we and we also set up a little bit
of social media, a little more public facing. We're on
Instagram at X two by two Podcasts e X two
x two podcast. We don't actually have a podcast yet,
but we think we should have one.
Speaker 6 (50:59):
Good absolute Yeah, we're considering doing like a mini series.
Speaker 4 (51:04):
You can contact on Instagram or X two by two
Podcasts at gmail dot com. E X two x two
podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Thank you so much for talking to us.
Speaker 6 (51:14):
Thank you for having us. We're huge fans of your podcast,
so this is real treat for us.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Okay, that's where we're leaving that. Megan, So do you
think that this is a few bad apples committing this
abuse or do you think that this is a systemic problem.
Speaker 5 (51:31):
Absolutely, it's not a few bad apples.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
I think that this is a religion that is based
on a lie that grew into a men dominated, absolutely
out of control, secret nightmare, and it is completely systemic
and until it's changed, almost completely, there's not going to
be any answers.
Speaker 5 (51:53):
That's my opinion.
Speaker 6 (51:54):
That's fair.
Speaker 5 (51:55):
That sounds about right.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
Yeah, this is the authority placing all of your life's
authority and power in the hands of random people traveling
into your homes who are supposedly in touch with God. Like,
it's just a very dangerous.
Speaker 5 (52:11):
It's a recipe for disaster.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
At least when there's one cult leader, like people can
be like he abused me. Eventually, you know, once it
comes out and it's like, oh this guy's bad, let's
get rid of this guy. But when it's like so
many people doing it and there's no hierarchy or system
in place to you know, like stop it.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
It's like a narcissist dream. So I feel like something
that people sometimes wo't understand is that some overseers, and
my opinion, don't even believe in God.
Speaker 5 (52:42):
Not that that's important in normal life, but I.
Speaker 1 (52:45):
Think there's just sociopaths who see the easiest con of
all time.
Speaker 5 (52:50):
I'm perhaps they're attracted to children.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
What's a way I can just go have as many children,
access to as many children as.
Speaker 5 (52:58):
I want here overseers or work both.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
I mean they're both traveling to I mean, Dean was
an overseer who just gave himself a position where he
didn't have a companion and could go do whatever he wanted.
Speaker 2 (53:09):
Yeah, Like, I'm sure there are people who are who
were just believed in it and whatever, but it's like
so rife, it's so like prime territory for someone who
does want to abuse to like enter that position.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Yeah, it's worth thinking about for people still in like, oh,
this is a loophole that some people are jumping through.
It's time that these people stop. Yeah, go to jail.
Speaker 5 (53:33):
And leave, you know, we like it's time for healing
to start.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
And totally Yeah, this group has a lot of nice
qualities about it that we discussed in the first episode.
Speaker 5 (53:47):
And you can't close.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
Your eyes to reality just because there's some nice parts.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. But as as we know,
and as Kyle and Curry discussed, that as a very
challenging thing to swallow. So I hope that people, yes,
you know, make use of the support system in the
community in that process.
Speaker 5 (54:07):
Sam Sam speaking of community.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
On a completely different note, a.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
Complete like we're going to a completely different plane of
existence right now.
Speaker 5 (54:18):
We're making a jump.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
Yes, we're going back into we have a podcast and
we're talking about things we have to talk about as
podcast host mode. We are hosting a screening with American
Cinema Tech in Los Angeles on Wednesday, August thirtieth, that's
one week from today's release at.
Speaker 5 (54:38):
The lows Peelis three.
Speaker 2 (54:38):
It's a screening of the horror movie The Invitation, which
is a cult themed horror movie. And as you'll know,
I'm a horror filmmaker, so it's more marrying.
Speaker 5 (54:48):
The world's here.
Speaker 2 (54:50):
Go get your tickets, come say hi. We're going to
introduce the film. We'll be hanging out.
Speaker 5 (54:54):
Tickets are cheap.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
I keep trying to tell Lolo we should dress like
and she keeps avoiding the questions. So you'll either see
us dressed alike or know that we're in a horrible fight.
Speaker 2 (55:04):
I want to truss alike. I want to dress it,
but it's got to be the right outfit. Are we
gonna agree on an outfit?
Speaker 1 (55:10):
Yeah, I guess we're gonna have to go to Melrose
Avenue and find the.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
Right outfit Filthros Avenue. Yes, please come out, please come
say hi.
Speaker 5 (55:19):
This is definitely we will be dressed alike.
Speaker 2 (55:21):
This is the more fun side of trust me, and
we would love to see you.
Speaker 1 (55:25):
We hope to see you there and We hope to
see you again here next week. Indeed, as always, remember
to follow your gut, watch out for red flags.
Speaker 2 (55:34):
And an ever ever trust Me Bye Bye. Trust Me
is produced by Kirsten Woodward, Gabby Rapp and Steve Delemator.
Speaker 5 (55:45):
With special thanks to Stacy Para.
Speaker 2 (55:47):
And our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.
Speaker 1 (55:50):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me Podcast,
Twitter at trust Me Cult Pod, or on TikTok at
trust Me Cult Podcast.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
I'm Ula Lola on instatag and Ola Lola on Twitter.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
And I am Megan Elizabeth eleven on Instagram and Abraham
Hicks on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Remember to rate and review and spread the word.
If you have your own story of being in a
cult or a high control group.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Or if you've had experience with manipulation or abusive power
that you'd like to share.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Leave us a message on our hotline number at three
four seven eight six trust.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
That's three four seven eight six eight seven eight seven eight.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Or shoot us an email at trust Me pod at
gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Trust me. Trust Me. I'm like a swat person.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
I've never lived. To you, I've never had a live.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
If you think that one person has all the answers,
don't welcome to trust Me. The podcast about cults, extreme
belief and manipulation from two deconstructors who actually experienced it.
I am Lola Blanc.
Speaker 5 (00:41):
And I'm Megan Elizabeth.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Today is part two of our interview with Kyle and Cai,
former members of Megan's childhood.
Speaker 5 (00:47):
Group, the two by Twos.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
In this episode, we're going to discuss the Facebook group
they started from members who had left or we're thinking
about leaving the group, the overseer who was found dead
in a hotel and the letter that exposed his sexual abuse,
and how now that people had a place to actually
talk to each other more people began to share their stories.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
They'll tell us about how they began to get NonStop
messages from survivors who'd been sexually abused by workers or
other members of the group, how hundreds of perpetrators have
been named, many by multiple victims, and how people are
now leaving or thinking about leaving, and how much of
this is shaking up the group. Also, a lot of
members Critical Thinking is coming back online, which is very
(01:24):
interesting to see.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I can imagine. So we're gonna skip cuiltiest thing this
week and just talk about this little bit. Megan, what
are your thoughts going into this episode? This is obviously
your childhood group.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, I mean we get into it in the episode.
How shocking this all has been to me, and how
I've referred to this group as a cult on this
show for two years, almost jokingly or.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
A little bit lightly.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I had no idea how deep this all really went,
and the last five months have been so hard to
wrap my mind around.
Speaker 5 (01:57):
So I can't even.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Imagine what it's like for those who are still However,
these experiences pale in comparison to what's happened to survivors
of sexual abuse in this fellowship, and it's been happening
for decades, survivors have been ignored, called bitter or offended.
And let's be clear, this isn't a question of faith.
It is illegal, and they deserve all of our respect,
(02:18):
our compassion, and help getting these perpetrators held accountable. It's
our duty to help make sure this never happens again.
And if victims isn't a good enough reason to open
your eyes, perhaps your reputation will be. I've been contacted
by all of the big networks who want to make
documentaries about this. I've been contacted by the FBI. If
you think it's going away, it's simply not. You're going
(02:40):
to be held accountable one way or another. And I
can't even imagine if you're actually in it. So, although
the conversations have been very awkward, I have been sharing
with my family and people I still know in the
information coming to light, especially if I know they're not
getting it any other way.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, it's you know, we see this in so many groups,
like with p people who are like genuinely authentically like
believe that child abuse is wrong, sexual abuse is wrong,
wholeheartedly are against it. But there's you know, like in
the FLDS and groups like that, they become so convinced
that it's a conspiracy or it was just a few
bad people. It wasn't you know, it's like not a
systemic problem, and like they're able to like that's how
(03:18):
they reconcile their cognitive dissonance. And in a case like this,
it's like, as we'll get into in the episode, like
the structure of the group fundamentally is dangerous, especially given
how the overseers were responding and probably still are responding.
I just yeah, I just can't imagine how earth shattering
(03:39):
this must be for everyone who was a part of
this group, especially people who are currently in it. And
more stuff is coming to light that we aren't even
going to get into in this episode because more information
is like still coming out, and we'll do a follow
up episode later on. But it's insane.
Speaker 5 (03:52):
It's insane.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
It's one of the craziest stories I've ever heard. And
I can't believe that I grew up in it. You know,
who's not surprised by those though, victims who've been living
with it their entire life, some of them trying to
report it. People who are ostracized and spoken about and
treated so unfairly, And there's no words.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
My heart is broken for them.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
If anyone doesn't want to like necessarily hear the whole thing,
but they want to get some information about where they
can get some help.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
What are some resources?
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Go email Kri and Kyle who ps are the most
amazing humans on the planet at x e X two
by two Just the Numbers two times two podcast at
gmail dot com. They have so many resources that can
send to you. There's a hotline that you can call
if you have abuse you want to disclose, it's completely anonymous.
(04:41):
If you want to join the group and just talk
to other people, there's a million different ways to get
support around this, or even if you're still in and
you just want more information. So I would highly recommend
emailing them to get the resources sent to you.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Amen, And let's dive in with Kyle and Cary's do
people kind of know we're talking about?
Speaker 5 (05:00):
If they don't know, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
The topic we're about to go into opens up a
whole new doorway where suddenly you're forced to be like,
we got to talk about some stuff, yeah, because this
is bad.
Speaker 6 (05:24):
So I think in the as a whole, in the
I don't want to speak for the entire ex community.
But a theme that we saw come up again and again,
and I certainly felt this way, was that even even
if you, even though I know I had legitimate reasons
for leaving and other people have legitimate reasons for leaving,
there's always still this kind of general feeling that the
(05:45):
two by two still have the moral high ground over you.
So you don't want to upset them. You don't want
to step on any toes. You want to be the
peacemaker and just keep quiet and go on your own
way and let them live their life. That's definitely like
a general thing that we saw in our group prior
to four months ago.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
What happened four months yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6 (06:06):
Yeah, let's get into current events. So four months ago,
somebody posted in our group and said, we heard that
there's an emergency meeting between workers and elders across certain
(06:26):
states and provinces in Canada, and like specifically, I think
it was Washington, Montana, and like across the western provinces
of Canada.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
And it's worth saying before this point, the two by
two information highway was like you only got the information
that was meant for your specific province. There was no
shared information you had no idea what was happening in
the state next door.
Speaker 6 (06:54):
So the fact that there were like workers and elders
getting together for some emergency meeting of we had idea
why at this point was really unusual, Like we'd never
heard of that happening. So we're like, what is going on,
Like what on earth could could like demand this really
important emergency meeting. There must be something big happening. So
(07:14):
of course we were like curious, and we were kind
of reaching out to different people in those areas and
trying to figure out what's going on ex members in
our group, And finally I got a private message from
somebody else who was like I got a letter from
somebody inside the church that they were not supposed to
get pictures of, but they got pictures of. And they're like,
(07:36):
I have this letter. I mean to send it to you.
And I was like okay, and they're like, this is
what all the emergency meetings are about. So they send
me this letter and we have to backtrack to June
twenty twenty two. There was a really well known overseer
in of like organ in southern Idaho. He was the
overseer of very well known, very well liked, very highly respected,
(08:01):
had been in the work for almost fifty years and
then had become overseer. I don't know how long he
was overseer for, but this letter was about him, and
it was written by the current overseer of Oregon. So
this man, the previous overseer, had died. He'd been found
dead in a hotel last June in twenty twenty two.
(08:22):
Workers are not, which in and of itself was weird
because workers don't go to hotels. They stay with the friends. Like, yeah,
it was very weird. So everyone was kind of like, well,
maybe he had COVID and like was you know, wasn't
feeling good, thought he might infect people, so he stopped
at a hotel. Like nobody was really sure why he
did that, hm, but they kind of assumed, Oh, he
was feeling sick, and because COVID was sort of going
(08:44):
around at that point, he was like, oh, just stop
at a hotel. So he's found dead whatever. He had
a huge funeral, like between six to eight hundred people.
It was at a convention grounds. Life moved on. They
chose a new overseer for that area, and then back
to the end of March twenty twenty three this year,
(09:08):
this letter comes to me that was written by the
current overseer of who replaced him, basically his replacement, and
it was about him and it said like he this
letter stated that Dean, the guy, the overseer who died,
was a sexual predator and that he had abused children
(09:29):
and women. And the letter you know, went into detail
a little bit more than that, but that was like
the main point of it.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
This was written by the new overseer.
Speaker 6 (09:39):
The overseer who had taken Dean's place when he died. Yes,
And he wrote that they had when Dean died, they
had got his laptop to kind of like get his
schedules and stuff off. You know, he's an overseer who
was an important guy. He had schedules on his laptop,
and so in looking for those things they had found
how did they word it?
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Like he used the term in criminating, which I think, well,
might it might depend an overstatement. It might not be
a criminal, but things.
Speaker 6 (10:07):
Immoral things oftentimes laptop.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Yeah, oftentimes two by two pornography, Yeah, probably that it's
oftentimes two by twos use things like you know, criminal
use criminal language when they're talking about things that they
just morally.
Speaker 6 (10:19):
Don't want and vice versa.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
So it sounded even worse than it ended up being.
But he said there was incriminating things on his laptop.
Speaker 6 (10:27):
Well it was. Yeah, to be clear, what he did
was very bad, but what was on his laptop wasn't
legal as far as we're aware. But he had other
things on their like receipts. Apparently he had stayed in
hotels a lot, and sometimes his receipts would let would
list two guests or you know, things like that. So
clearly he had done things that were both immoral and
(10:49):
illegal real quick.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
So just to why it's important to know that he
had two guests. He was an overseer and he's also
traveling alone. He didn't have a field some of the time.
Speaker 6 (11:00):
He was just which he would have set that up himself.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
He would have set that up himself. He assigned himself
no companion, so when he was staying in a hotel
with two people, there was no companion.
Speaker 6 (11:08):
So yeah, it wasn't his campaign.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Possible it could have been another worker traveling. We don't
really know, but it's it's definitely.
Speaker 6 (11:15):
The implication was that it was somebody who should he
shouldn't have been with in the hotel. So this letter
just laid it out very clearly that he had abused
miners well into adulthood and adults.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And this was and he got this information from the
laptop or it was just something.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
No.
Speaker 6 (11:35):
Some after Dean died, some survivors came forward to the
workers from within the church shut it and told him
their stories.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
They had come some of them had come forward by
this time, Is that right?
Speaker 6 (11:47):
Yeah? So so like seven to nine months before this
letter came out is when they had found out all
of this stuff. So they hadn't told people for that
entire time.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
And they didn't plan on telling everyone. They planned on
telling a few select group of people.
Speaker 6 (12:02):
Right. So the letter was not according to the person
who sent us this letter within the church, the letter
was not ever intended to be distributed widely. They were
not supposed to copy it. They were supposed to read
it and hand it back to the overseers, and then
they were supposed to the elders were supposed to tell
their meetings. And I quote this person, be vague and
(12:25):
tell your meetings that Dean was an abuser. And this
person said, I have no intention of being vague, And
I think this is new information that needs to get
out there. So this currently professing two by two is
a damn hero. Yeah in our opinion. Yeah, because they
risked a lot to like get pictures of that thing
and get that sent to They sent it to our community.
(12:48):
So after freaking out for a while, because like we
all had this guy stay in our homes when we
were kids.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
Yeah, we'd known him since we were little. I'd known
my list and did didn't speak at convention since we
were literally had a very distinct speaking pattern. He was
well loved. You know, no one would have guessed something
like this.
Speaker 6 (13:06):
Yeah, we we four admins of our support group, Mike
and Abbey and Kyle and I talked about it and
decided this needs to be something that the church is
widely aware of because there might be other victims out
there too who you know, aren't going to get the
information and don't realize that there are others.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Or Yeah, because there's something about to the fields in Washington.
Are the elders in Washington? But he's backtly in different states,
He's traveled to conventions in different countries, he's been country
freeware all over. Then we don't share information that way,
it's so structured by fields, so none of these other
(13:46):
people are being warned, right.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Or but okay, sorry, just to get clear on the details.
So basically, like a few people knew that he had
abused people, and he died. The person who replaced him
was letting a few people know, and they weren't supposed
to talk about it in detail. Letting a few people
(14:10):
know that they were aware that he had abused some
children and some women.
Speaker 6 (14:15):
Yes, but as far as I'm aware, nobody knew about
the abuse until after he had died, right, Okay.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
And once they once the information got out, they said, well,
we had intended to tell anybody everybody eventually. We don't
know if they were going to or not.
Speaker 6 (14:30):
But I can think that that wasn't our understanding.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Yeah, but they did. Once it got out, they decided
to start telling people, So.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Okay, and what like, why did they even I'm like,
what was the plan with telling a few people the guys, diad,
what what is it like?
Speaker 6 (14:47):
What is your wanting?
Speaker 5 (14:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (14:49):
Yeah, I think, I mean, I can't speak for them,
but I think they wanted, particularly that just the places
that he had labored in recently to be aware in
case there might be other victims, right right. I think
that was kind of what they had in mind, But
I don't know for sure why they decided to tell
only certain meetings in certain areas what was happening. Yeah,
(15:13):
I'm not entirely sure about that, but that's just my guess.
Speaker 5 (15:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Well, and the other reason we wanted to talk about
it too is because you know, obviously more victims is
a concern, but also in cases like this, where you're
being being very picky with how information gets out, wild
rumors get started really quickly. And I even tried to
give a few people heads up, like, hey, I have
the authentic copy if you hear crazy rumors, which we
(15:38):
did hear some real crazy rumors that we still hear
them that we know aren't true. You know, I was
trying to look out for the people inside still, like hey,
a really, really a thing that's going to make you
very sad is coming out. But you don't have to
believe the craziest room where you can believe that the
most on point, you know, worker released letter and that
(16:01):
even that wasn't very well received.
Speaker 6 (16:03):
Yeah, so abby. And I posted the letter publicly on
our Facebook and in our support group at the same
on our personal pages publicly and in our support group
and maybe Instagram too, I think, although that wouldn't have
been public in my case, but yeah, and it went
(16:25):
within the sense of like people amongst the church. It
went viral amongst those people, and there were definitely people
who thought it had been made up or you know,
that's still there were even people who were saying that, like,
somebody must be controlling the overseer who wrote this letter.
You know, there were all kinds of weird rumors and
(16:48):
some conspiracies about that. But but yeah, ultimately the letter
got passed around quite a bit, and then a couple
of days later, I got a private message from a
survivor with allegations against another really well known overseer current one,
(17:09):
a current over that we also grew up having in
our homes, and like this one was. Yeah, this was
a tough one for me to hear, but I of
course like believed this person and at this about that
same time, fortunately for this survivor, a couple of other
survivors of this same person with allegations came to some
(17:33):
people in the church, so I didn't have to share
that news like that came out from the church itself,
and that overseer voluntarily stepped down from his position as overseer.
But it took us again releasing the email from the
workers about this guy publicly to really get pressure put
(17:56):
on them to remove him from the work and from
meetings entirely.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
I'm sorry, I was just going to say, which brings
up an important point about people who are accused or
even found guilty, still being allowed to attend meetings with children.
And sometimes yes, people in the meetings aren't aware that
that person is a perpetrator.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
And mind you, meetings are not in a church, they're
in homes, and these people live with us.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
Yeah, yeah, right, the ministers stay in the homes too,
som hm. So there was a mediate concern. Yeah, might imagine.
Speaker 6 (18:28):
Yeah there, Yeah, it was a big concern. I mean,
like growing up as a little girl in a meeting home,
having brother workers stay.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
In my home, these brother workers potentially.
Speaker 6 (18:37):
And these brother workers too, but just any brother workers
in general. I was often told like now you remember, like,
don't wear your nighty downstairs, because we don't want to
attempt the brother workers. You know, I'm five, and I'm like.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
Oh hey, oh my god.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
You know, so it was very much like and I
was lucky in the sense that I grew up I
think with a mother who was very aware and very protective.
And even in our own home we had workers before
we left meeting Stan our home and we would always
have the children sleep, our kids sleep in our room
like it just was something we did without really thinking
(19:12):
about it.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Which sounds back then, but it's just what we did.
You know. Yeah, strangers in your house and your kids
sleep where they can't get to them. Yeah, right, it's
wild to say out loud, but that's that's how we were.
I mean, that's normal, you know.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
For that's so interesting.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
She talks about etiquette, get your bangers out of your mouth.
She talks about where to find a deal.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
You know, if you sell me something on Instagram, I
buy it.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Whoever markets to me does a fabulous job. She talks
about the economy. We used to joke that'll be the
thing to send them to therapy. Okay, we're creating jobs.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
Can we look at it that way?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
She talks about parenting.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
These kids want to come home, they don't want to leave,
they don't want to drive, they want to stay.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
In the womb. Let's talk with Heather Debre every Thursday
on podcast one or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 6 (20:02):
Yeah, so it started within that same week, us four
admins of the support group started getting private messages just
pouring in from survivors, just crazy, NonStop. It literally became
a full time job for me and Kyle would go
to work and come home and just work on it NonStop,
and we'd be up all like all hours of the night.
(20:22):
Kyle gets up super early for work, so I'd go
to bed really late and he get up super early,
and we were just answering messages from person after person after.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
I don't think I've ever messaged Youkriy without you getting
immediately back to me. You have become from the hotline,
and I think in my experience, you guys have like
taken the place of a lot of our parents, like
and my Psyche.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
They got it, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
So I mean, y'all, it was your job. It's a
full time job and you Yeah, and.
Speaker 6 (20:51):
On top of that, we were running the support group still,
which is you know, to work too. But yeah, so
we had a lot of survivors from the community, but
then we also had a lot of people from within
the church because we had shared information publicly, they started
following us on social media, like because they were not
receiving news from within their church, so it was coming
(21:14):
from the ex community. And we were very careful with
what we posted, like mostly what we shared were emails
that were being circulated by workers, but not being circulated.
They were like being circulated just to a couple of meetings,
and we were like, well, this is about somebody with allegations.
It needs to be known, like widely known. So we
(21:36):
would share it on our Facebook or every once in
a while there was a survivor that would share a
story on their Facebook, like they wanted to go public,
and we would just kind of provide a platform and
reshare it to amplify that.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Yeah, we kind of What happened is that people realized
pretty quickly that we turned into sort of a clearinghouse
for this stuff. We weren't releasing any new information. We
weren't like releasing allegations or anything. We were just saying like,
here's what's going around. Yeah, we're very careful with it,
but it was here's here's what's going around. And as such,
(22:15):
people started realizing that we would listen also, and so
people who've been sitting on stories for their whole lives.
Some of them maybe a few years, some of them
years and years and years, twenty thirty years. Hey, this
happened to me a long time ago. I've never dealt
with it. Can I tell you about it? And Carie
would get I mean, how many at the peak? How
many stories per day? Just you? And mind you there's
(22:35):
four admins.
Speaker 6 (22:36):
Twelve to fifteen a day at least. I had people
messaging me like, Hey, do you have a copy of
this email that was sent around to like the Minnesota
feel because I really need to see it because I
think I had this guy stay in my home and
I'd be like, sure, here's the email, and inevitably they'd
be like, oh yeah, and also so and so.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Abused me right, and so it got so busy. I
want to give a shout out to the other two.
We brought on two more admins, Jenny Jennifer, and carry
shout out to them for helping us just run the
group for a while and they're kind of emeritis status
now they're with us. We had six people just like
running a phone bank, kind of people just just contacting
(23:12):
us saying, hey, I hear there's a you know, my
elder got which is the one who runs the meetings,
got a message, but I don't know what it says.
Who's this about? Like I was abused a long time ago.
Do you have you guys heard this name? Yeah, you
started hearing names over and over and yeah, twelve to
some of the stories.
Speaker 6 (23:31):
Like people just wanted someone to listen to them, and
here we are, like we're not professionals. We were sending
them to sources like rain is a really good one.
Sometimes we were handing out suicide hotlines because people were
in immediate mental health crises, or sending them recommending sometimes
that they go to the hospital. And also listening to
(23:52):
incredibly difficult, traumatic stories about people that we knew growing
up personally, Like we knew the people with allegations, and
we knew the survivors, and it was just so incredibly
just traumatic for us too in that way, like nothing
compared to what the what victims and survivors have gone through.
But being somewhat prominent in the ex community, there are
(24:17):
often rumors about us that like, oh, they want this
makes them happy to see the church go down in flames,
and they want to tear it down and they they're
reveling in this. That was not the case at all,
Like this, this is the community we grew up in.
These were our family members, some of them who told
us stories that we had never heard before. Our friends,
(24:39):
like people we grew up meeting with, people we grew
up seeing every year at convention. This was our community
going through an extremely traumatic experience, and it was just
so like we were grieving right along with them.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Yeah, the stories were just wild too. And then there's
also the cognitive being experienced by everybody. You know, our
our deconstruction lasted a year and a half and it
was terrible. And now we're seeing people, we're having victims
come out that are feeling glad to be heard. But
then we're also dealing with people who who can't square
all of it in their heads and they're just losing
(25:17):
their minds. There was one period, yeah, and which is
of course we feel terrible about that. There was one
period where I was talking to someone on the phone
and they were pretty incredulous about it, and they're like, well,
I hope you have the right reason to do what
you're doing. I hope you're being honest. And I was like,
let me be really clear. Cary's in the other room
right now, setting up a welfare check for someone who's suicidal.
(25:39):
So yes, it's real, and no, I'm not enjoying this.
And Cary, that's what she was doing. She was calling
friends of somebody we had some connections to say, Hey,
can you go to this person's house. They're having a
very tough time. That was a day for us. That
was a Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
It seems like that happens quite a bit. I've seen
it a bit with my mom and other communities that
I'm aware of or connected to. Whenever there's someone who
is the messenger of some very emotionally difficult information, it
brings out all kinds of moods and reactions and accusations.
(26:13):
And it's not an easy position to be in. And
I think you guys are very brave and very strong
for managing it as well as you have.
Speaker 6 (26:21):
Yeah, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5 (26:24):
I was just going to add that. What was I
going to add? I don't know. I was going to
add that.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Somebody close to me and my family said to me,
it's hard to know who's trying to burn it down
and who's trying to clean it out.
Speaker 5 (26:41):
And I was like I heard that.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
I don't think a lot of people have an issue
with really sweet people gathering in homes and talking about Jesus.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
That sounds cool to me. But totally there is going
to have to.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Be a big reckoning because right now we have I
don't know the official one, there's maybe, but there's another
group that's saying there's like six hundred plus perpetrators at
this point.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Perpetrators not victims with allegations. With allegations, yes, people.
Speaker 6 (27:13):
With allegations from within the church. Over the last number
I heard was like over five point fifty.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
Yeah, that is bonkers because the church.
Speaker 6 (27:22):
And a lot of them have more than one victim. Oh,
more than one allegation, I should say, right.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, Like, how many workers are there total? Approximately?
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Do we know?
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Well, it hasn't just been workers either, It's been it's
been other people. People are coming forward with stories about
just you know, family members and things like that too,
you know, because it's these stories that have been held
down for so long. Are people are feeling more bold
about coming forward now realizing that hey, there's a community
out there. And by the way, these are true, believing people.
(27:55):
These are not people trying to burn it all down.
These are primarily I would say, at least first I
would say the majority maybe are people who are on
the inside who just want to go back to, you know,
having the Bible studies and the homes. They're not trying
to burn it down. They're just they're being heard for
the first time and they need that for them.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
It does need to heal. It does seem like a
large percentage, maybe even the majority of people with allegations
at least from the stories that we heard, were workers
and elders, though, like people in places of authority, where
it's very very difficult for your average church member to
(28:35):
come out and say this person did something to me
because there's a power imbalance.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
And there's also one of the difficulties too, is that
it's hard to even address it without sort of having
a mini faith crisis as part of it, because you're
raised to believe. Hey, these people give up everything they
have and they're called by God to go in and
deliver the gospel. Yeah, and so these people are living
out their faith in a way that very few people
(29:04):
on earth do right there. And so, you know, if
you're a true believing and you're on the inside it's
like these people mean it. It's God is helping them,
and so to then hear, oh, actually they had a
double life and they were doing something terrible. It doesn't
even to a believing mind, it doesn't make sense. It's
very hard. It's a mini faith crisis, like hitting a
wall at one hundred miles an hour.
Speaker 6 (29:22):
Well, yeah, when I was professing, I believed like God
gives the worker special powers to stay celibate and to like, oh,
stay faithful. And scattered into all of these allegations were
people coming forward to us like I know this worker
who had an affair, and I know this worker who
slept around a lot. And there were actually workers sending
(29:42):
out their own emails like I've had affairs and I've
hidden it for years and I'm going to step down
because of it. Yeah, everybody married because they were expected
to stay celibate. But like there was that going on too,
So all of a sudden, people are realizing like, oh,
the workers are actually very, very human and have sexual
human needs.
Speaker 5 (30:02):
Yeah, they're not these you know.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
And we really haven't hit the living witness doctrine yet,
but essentially there's like a doctrine that we're taught that is,
unless you're told the gospel from a worker, you have
not heard it.
Speaker 6 (30:17):
So these are preaching gospel.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
You wrote down some things, our connection to God, the
only connection to God on this planet, and kind of
pointing to a different topic. But also, you know, a
lot of the people who have gotten to the top
of the power structures are predatory, in my opinion, covering up,
(30:40):
sending people to different fields, sending.
Speaker 6 (30:42):
People toations of people who are complicit.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
Sending people developing countries.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
So these people going to have thousands of victims, god
knows where, just thousands upon thousands of victims.
Speaker 6 (30:55):
It became really obvious the more stories we heard that
people who had experienced abuse often did try to tell
somebody like their workers, and the consequence was basically they
were told, usually more often than not, to keep quiet
about it, and that in that worker, if it was
(31:16):
allegations against a worker would be moved to a different country,
at used a different state.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
They'd be moved around, and some of them were moved
around five or six times.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
How's the Catholic Church? But the priests are living in
our houses right, Yeah?
Speaker 6 (31:28):
Because the workers don't. The workers don't choose, usually for themselves,
where to preach, Like, they're sent to different states in
different countries, so they would just shuffle around and move on.
Every once in a while, someone would disappear from the
work and nobody would ask questions and that would be
the end of it.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
So what do you know right now in terms of
how the higher ups are sort of dealing with this
like huge paradigm shift and crisis of faith that everyone
is having, and like the knowledge that there's been so
much abuse that's happened and been covered up.
Speaker 6 (32:04):
So what we've noticed from our perspective is that there's
a really big disconnect right now between some of the
friends and almost all of the workers, especially professing people
kind of in our age range with children. They're very
concerned and there's a lot of now that everything has
(32:25):
been shared. This took quite a couple of months to
get to this point, but there is a lot of
internal pressure now, an advocacy for change within the church,
and from what I have seen, the vast majority of
the workers are trying to fall back on historical ways
of dealing with it, which is, let's try to keep
(32:47):
this problem localized, pretend it's a local problem, thoughts, cover
it up worse, you know, very versus maybe move this
person to a different province or a different state and
just kind of pretended not happening. And that is still continuing,
like it's convention season right now, and some of the
(33:08):
things the workers are preaching show very much that they're
extremely disconnected from what a problem this is. Well, a
lot of them, sorry, as victims.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
I mean, I think a lot of them think that
this is the cleansing before Jesus comes back to the earth.
Speaker 5 (33:24):
Yea, starting down?
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah, well, in what way?
Speaker 5 (33:28):
This is just like the last and final test?
Speaker 6 (33:31):
Are falling away?
Speaker 5 (33:33):
Falling away from the Bible?
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Are you going to stay and keep your face or
are you going to run away and take the easy
way out and go to hell?
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Like they think, it's almost like persecution, all of these accusations.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
It's a test, yes, No, it's being processed internally, especially
with the senior workers. It's being processed as.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
Persecution against the ministry specific.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
A lot of the we've listened into a lot of
the talks, there's a lot of them online and stuff
now on the phone or whatever, and it's almost unanimous,
well that we're going through a storm right now. It's
it's very much we this is happening to us. It
doesn't it's not a thing that we need to deal with.
It's a thing that's happening to us. Wow. We listened
to an overseer just the other night say that a
lot of people are asking me what I'm gonna do,
(34:15):
and I told them, I'm not going to do anything.
I'm gonna let God work. We're gonna let God work
on this one's going the people, anybody who has kids
or you know, younger, are going, that's what you already
were doing though, right where we are. And so we've
seen in a way that we've never seen in our
entire lifetimes. There's a lot of conversation going on. Like
we were saying, we didn't growing up. We just went
(34:37):
to our meetings and we lived our lives and we
didn't talk about it much. And you know, from our
Facebook group, there's there's been a lot of you know,
spinoffs to other groups forming and even the people in
the meetings have formed their own online group and have
have just started talking about stuff, just just started saying.
Speaker 6 (34:54):
Jin of itself is very very niw, which.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
Is crazy because they're saying things. I mean, we we
grew up. I was to the overseers when I was younger.
I'll be honest. They were big, old, powerful men who
were grumpy and I didn't want to cross them. And
now people are speaking very directly to the problems, like hey,
you need to fix this, or we need to do
something else, and I think that's been It's scary from
(35:17):
their standpoint. It's chaotic looking, but I think it's the
first time they've maybe had some real healthy conversations about
the beliefs and what to do with how they're set up.
And I don't know where it's going to end up.
It's sad to watch. Somebody in our group mentioned something
I keep using this phrase. They said, it's like watching
our childhood home burn. And that's how it feels. It
(35:39):
doesn't feel good at all. It feels like it's burning down.
Speaker 6 (35:42):
But while the workers are saying, just focus on Jesus.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
Yeah, we'll get through this storm. We just have to
write out the storm, and then there's people like, no,
this needs to burn for a bit, we need to
work this out.
Speaker 6 (35:52):
Yeah, I wrote down a quote that we heard just
yesterday when we called into a meeting. And after this,
they're probably gonna like kick us out. So we can't
do that anymore because they probably don't ordering nothing. But
this one worker said this. One worker said it. He's
referencing a Bible story about like a troubling report. And
(36:14):
I don't remember what the Bible story is, but he says,
it wasn't the evil in the land that was troubling
the people, but the report because people believed it. If
the report is troubling, then it is evil. We have
to be careful about the reports that we are listening to.
If we believe an evil report, we will be angry
and upset and we won't enter God's kingdom.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Wow, the fact that the report is troubling makes it evil.
Speaker 6 (36:41):
Report is the evil troubling thing, No, the actual event.
And another worker said he put out an email that
said there is no crisis. Some think there's a crisis
in the church right now, but there is no crisis.
Everything is under God's control.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
I just feel like I'm just picturing them all with
their fingers and ears going la la la, la, la
la la, you know, like it's it's right, It's right there,
you guys.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Well, it was very strange to witness the first emails
that came out because you were like, oh my, okay, wow,
this is we haven't really talked about this either, So
I'm just going to spark note to cover this.
Speaker 5 (37:17):
You know, we're taught this came from Jesus.
Speaker 6 (37:19):
It didn't.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
It was started by a guy named William Irving and
eighteen ninety five and so yeah about that, yeah, about
that time. So this whole thing is kind of built
upon a lie. Right again, fine, meet and homes, have
a great time, whatever you want to do. But there's
just all this crumbling and I forgot my point, but
(37:41):
it was really important and you guys would have loved
us well.
Speaker 6 (37:43):
So like you said, Megan earlier, you said, like our
impression and I agree completely, was that even when you've
left your impression, it is like, but it's pretty harmless,
Like it's a sweet little group and they're quiet and
they stick to themselves and they just want to meet
in homes and do their things, no harm, no foul.
And now it's like, okay, there is a lot of harm.
(38:05):
And it's structural. Yes, it's down to the foundations of
the exclusivity and the patriarchy.
Speaker 5 (38:13):
Hiding, the founder hiding.
Speaker 6 (38:15):
Talking against the fear of talking against workers. Yeah. Absolutely,
all of that is very structural.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
So on the one hand, you have dismissive talk from
some of the you know, the senior brother workers, the
older guys, and on the other hand, in the past
how many months has it been this is late March,
four months are almost five feels from nine to about
three thousand people.
Speaker 6 (38:40):
Yeah, we're almost at three thousand now. So on top
of all of the stories that we were fielding, our
group was just growing like crazy, and a lot of
those people were ex members who were just finding out
about our group because we were you know, sharing church
news publicly, and then people were like, oh yeah, Kyle
and carry they have this core group, but a very
(39:02):
large percentage are people who are currently leaving the church
over the current abuse crises and how it's being handled
or not being handled, or considering leaving. So there is
like and normally our group is only for ex members,
but we've kind of relaxed that in the last few
months and let people who are like needing support to
(39:24):
decide whether or not they can imagine leaving the church.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
We've always invited people who were you know, questioning or
just wanted to talk about it or whatever. But there's
just so many of those.
Speaker 6 (39:34):
Yeah, there were like only a few before.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
Yeah, and so we vet every single person, but for
about two months we were adding one person per hour
on a We're vetting them and talking to them and everything. Wow,
because there's just so much. And that's just people who
are out. There's also all the people who are in
who are meeting up separately, who are having meetings without
the workers. There's many people who who still believe, still
(39:56):
want a worship together, have just stopped supporting the workers.
They don't go to the GOSS meetings and the missions anymore.
Speaker 6 (40:01):
Yeah, they're like, we're not going to give them money anymore.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
And there's a lot of those people and.
Speaker 6 (40:04):
Listen to them preach anymore. Or we're going to have
our own unsanctioned meetings, which means like a meeting that
isn't you know, put together by the workers.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Yeah, I'm chaotic.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
If if the workers are like the workers are like
the whole structure. So if the workers are no longer work.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
The workers are who we were taught to worship, right
because they we can't talk about God because we don't
understand it because they explain it, but they don't they
just explain that everything else is wrong if.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
The if the trust is gone in the workers, then
what do you even have?
Speaker 6 (40:37):
Like that's you guess.
Speaker 5 (40:38):
People are rediscovering. Yeah, and yeah, I mean that there.
Speaker 6 (40:44):
Are still a lot of church members who believe like, well,
this is God's true ministry that he set up and
he's just cleaning house right now, and yeah, you know,
we'll just kind of stick our heads in the sand
and it'll.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
Blow over, and they're probably right. I mean, I think
that some people have said, like, oh, do you think
this will oh wait, now, like the two by twos
will just completely disappear, and it's like, no, that's not
going to happen. They'll they'll always be people who just
want to do that part, who just want to meet
in some homes and have Bible studies and be cool. Yeah,
but there's definitely some changes going on.
Speaker 6 (41:14):
Yeah, I mean, it's been definitely the biggest shakeup that
I think has ever happened in church history. And tell
them about the book about the Church's history.
Speaker 4 (41:24):
Because yeah, so I should.
Speaker 6 (41:26):
That's an amazing book.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
Yeah, Megan, you've mentioned the living Winness doctrine. I want
to recommend a book for people who are interested.
Speaker 6 (41:33):
In It just came out last year.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
I hope I say your name right, noo, tell me.
It's a book called Preserving the Truth. It's somebody who's
been researching the group for years. Her name is Sherry
Sherry crop Eric. It's on Amazon. I've never met her,
but I recommend this book to everybody. I bought it
for people. It's it's she's documented the group from the
very very beginning, has done like thirty years of research
(41:57):
or something, just an incredible amount of research. Very well.
Speaker 5 (42:00):
I mean it's incredible.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
You get you get newspaper articles from Ireland in eighteen
ninety seven being.
Speaker 5 (42:07):
Like William Irvine's annoying us, like he's pure.
Speaker 6 (42:13):
It's so bizarre, and you know what, And the other
really interesting thing is we I knew about William Irvine
maybe from my teens. I just kind of heard the
name going around and I asked my parents, like, who's
this William Irvine guy? And they were like, well, and
not just my parents, but a lot of people taught
that William Irvine was like one of the workers who
(42:34):
kind of you know, the truth had to go underground
for a while because it wasn't safe during you know,
like the era in England where they were persecuting people
who weren't Catholic and this and that for whatever reason,
like when when it wasn't safe for religions they went underground.
And then these workers in Ireland helped kind of revive
(42:55):
it and bring it back into sort of like I
don't know, it's like popularity, it's not the right word.
But basically, he they believed he was. He was an
early worker, but still just another worker who went rogue
and was kicked out, which is true. He was kicked
out of the religion that he found nice, yeah, of course,
(43:16):
and so that's what I believe, like, oh, William Rmyn,
He's just just he was just another worker, and yeah
he was important. He converted a lot of people, but
then he was kicked out and went crazy, and so
we don't really talk about him. What I didn't know
was that there was so much information, so very well sourced,
tracking his exact movements from leaving this faith that still exists,
(43:39):
and he took so much terminology from them. He just
copied the hard this oh yeah, completely starting this religion.
And and then there was like this concerted, purposeful effort
in the church around maybe our grandparents' generation, to kind
of erase his history from the church. And I always
(44:01):
thought like, oh, over time people just stopped talking about him. No,
there are photographs that originally had William Ermine in them,
and he was cut out of the photographs. It was
very and people preaching about him would be like listing
early workers and they'd be like, oh, we are so
thankful for the faith of this guy and that lady
(44:21):
and this guy and that Scottish worker, but they wouldn't
name him, like there was a concerted I think he
was Scottish.
Speaker 5 (44:29):
It was Scottish, but then was in the Ireland he went,
I remember.
Speaker 6 (44:35):
So it was a very purposeful effort to like cut
him out of church history after they kicked him out.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
To make it look more like it had gone back
forever Jesus right.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
He copied it from something called the Faith Mission. And
you know, his as his mental health deteriorated at the
turn of the century, it kind of took the church
with him on this wild egotistical narcissist, the living witness
doctor and blah blah blah blah blah, and it became
more and more exclusive, more and more and crazy until
he was like, I'm actually the prophet.
Speaker 5 (45:02):
And then then they were like you must go, and
then he just died by himself.
Speaker 6 (45:06):
Right now, he started to believe that he was like Israel,
he started to believe that he was like one of
the two prophets in Revelations. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (45:16):
Yeah, he started believing he was in the Bible as
like one of the characters and.
Speaker 5 (45:20):
Stuff, as one of the characters again.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
Yeah, like one of the two witnesses mentioned. And I
thinks the other.
Speaker 6 (45:26):
Workers were like, what about us.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
I was just gonna say, it's always so impressive when
cult leaders and religion starters get kicked out of the
thing that they started. It's like, you do have to
be sort of at another level of it.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
But he was.
Speaker 5 (45:40):
He was brilliant.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
I mean we're now in twenty twenty three still dealing
with him.
Speaker 5 (45:46):
So, you know, as far as cult leaders go, Joseph
Smith too genius, you know.
Speaker 6 (45:52):
And I would say the current abuse crisis has brought
the church, the actual real church history to the forefront.
Also as well as this book being published last year,
Like we've actually seen two by twos talking about this
book and recommending it. To people.
Speaker 4 (46:06):
Oh, which is really which is really crazy because this
has actually happened before. Someone wrote a book called The
Secret Sect back in I want to see the eighties
or something.
Speaker 5 (46:15):
I remember the Secret Sect.
Speaker 4 (46:17):
Yeah, and I remember when that scandal kind of hit
my own community and the workers went around having special
special meetings like, hey, don't read this book. I know
multiple families that burned copies of the Secrets.
Speaker 6 (46:28):
They were buying extra copies and burning them.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
I mean, I've never read it. It's impossible to find
a copy of it.
Speaker 6 (46:34):
Yeah, we were. We were able to get a hold
of a copy and read it. And it's fine.
Speaker 4 (46:39):
It's not as exciting as everybody thinks.
Speaker 5 (46:41):
This new yeah, but as much.
Speaker 6 (46:44):
This sounds so much better.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, I mean it just seems like we know this already.
But like the most powerful tool that we have is
information and communication and the yes, the most effective way
to oppress people and to control people is to keep
them from talking to each other. So what an amazing
thing that people are talking to each other now and
(47:07):
learning about this and not being alone in their experiences
that they've had that are so fucking heartbreaking.
Speaker 6 (47:14):
Yes, yeah, yeah, it'll be interesting to see where that
goes because I feel like there is a potential for
different factions to break off, almost like there are a
lot of people like, we want to be honest and
upfront about the church history and the information, and like
we need to be really clear that there is a
crisis of abuse. And then there's people other people who
(47:35):
are very uncomfortable with all of it and just want
to go back to normal quote unquote, you know. And
of course then there's this massive chasm between regular church
members and the workers and overseers. Like for all of them,
just people we've seen flooding out of the church in
recent months, almost zero of them have been workers. And
(47:57):
the workers, to be fair, are more cut off from
outside information, Like most of them don't have social media.
Most of them completely rely on what their you know,
elder companions or overseers are telling them, like that is
their source of information. So it is harder for them
to be informed.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
And so many of them are it's so difficult to work,
leave the work. We should give a resource for people
who want to leave the work. A lot of people
with OCD.
Speaker 5 (48:26):
You know, are.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
We read a lot of a lot of stories on
the site of people who are like I was. I
was groomed to be in the work from when I
was a kid. Workers would be like, I can tell
you're a worker, and parents would be like, you know.
Speaker 6 (48:39):
So there's a lot of the definition of giving your
best it's doing in the work.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Yes, and so it's not just people with OCDA. There's
a lot of very good people who find themselves in
the work realize it's not what they thought it was,
but are abused and have no they they didn't get
any skills, they didn't get an education, they don't have
a home to go to, they don't have any resources,
are stuck.
Speaker 5 (49:01):
So there's the.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Cycle that we all just need to be there for
each other. And there is you know, this group of
people at the top who are kind of taking advantage
of a lot of good intentions.
Speaker 6 (49:17):
Yeah, and there are resource and there is help for
those people who want to leave the ministry and who
want to leave the work. We're not going to name
any group names, but Kyle can give some contact information
for us, and we can absolutely put people in touch
with resources. Whether you're a worker and you need someone
to talk to, or you want to leave, whether you're
a member and you need someone to talk to or
(49:38):
whether you're a survivor of abuse and you need someone
to talk to. There are groups set up now who
are helping with each of these individual things, both in
the US and internationally that we can definitely put people
in contact.
Speaker 4 (49:50):
And both ex members and current members are working in
these different.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
Groups too, so amazing together. So where can people find
and you guys and the groups, So we just.
Speaker 4 (50:04):
All we have is Facebook right now, we're called the
X two by two Support Group e x DASH two
x two Support Group, and that's the best place to
find us. You can just find us on Facebook and message.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
Us and it's and it's not it's not public if
you join it, like only the people in the group
who can see who's in the right group can see
who the group members are, right, and.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
We vet everybody that we let in. We don't just
let everybody in to come look around. It's we we vet.
We have ways of checking and seeing if if you're
a good fit for the group. And but you can
still talk to us even if you're not. Many people
have contacted us and said that the group's not for me,
but you know, can you help me with something else?
So we do that too.
Speaker 6 (50:40):
So that's awesome.
Speaker 4 (50:41):
So a message, no matter, and then you.
Speaker 6 (50:43):
Set up an email in case people to reach out.
Speaker 4 (50:45):
So we and we also set up a little bit
of social media, a little more public facing. We're on
Instagram at X two by two Podcasts e X two
x two podcast. We don't actually have a podcast yet,
but we think we should have one.
Speaker 6 (50:59):
Good absolute Yeah, we're considering doing like a mini series.
Speaker 4 (51:04):
You can contact on Instagram or X two by two
Podcasts at gmail dot com. E X two x two
podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Thank you so much for talking to us.
Speaker 6 (51:14):
Thank you for having us. We're huge fans of your podcast,
so this is real treat for us.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Okay, that's where we're leaving that. Megan, So do you
think that this is a few bad apples committing this
abuse or do you think that this is a systemic problem.
Speaker 5 (51:31):
Absolutely, it's not a few bad apples.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
I think that this is a religion that is based
on a lie that grew into a men dominated, absolutely
out of control, secret nightmare, and it is completely systemic
and until it's changed, almost completely, there's not going to
be any answers.
Speaker 5 (51:53):
That's my opinion.
Speaker 6 (51:54):
That's fair.
Speaker 5 (51:55):
That sounds about right.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
Yeah, this is the authority placing all of your life's
authority and power in the hands of random people traveling
into your homes who are supposedly in touch with God. Like,
it's just a very dangerous.
Speaker 5 (52:11):
It's a recipe for disaster.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
At least when there's one cult leader, like people can
be like he abused me. Eventually, you know, once it
comes out and it's like, oh this guy's bad, let's
get rid of this guy. But when it's like so
many people doing it and there's no hierarchy or system
in place to you know, like stop it.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
It's like a narcissist dream. So I feel like something
that people sometimes wo't understand is that some overseers, and
my opinion, don't even believe in God.
Speaker 5 (52:42):
Not that that's important in normal life, but I.
Speaker 1 (52:45):
Think there's just sociopaths who see the easiest con of
all time.
Speaker 5 (52:50):
I'm perhaps they're attracted to children.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
What's a way I can just go have as many children,
access to as many children as.
Speaker 5 (52:58):
I want here overseers or work both.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
I mean they're both traveling to I mean, Dean was
an overseer who just gave himself a position where he
didn't have a companion and could go do whatever he wanted.
Speaker 2 (53:09):
Yeah, Like, I'm sure there are people who are who
were just believed in it and whatever, but it's like
so rife, it's so like prime territory for someone who
does want to abuse to like enter that position.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Yeah, it's worth thinking about for people still in like, oh,
this is a loophole that some people are jumping through.
It's time that these people stop. Yeah, go to jail.
Speaker 5 (53:33):
And leave, you know, we like it's time for healing
to start.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
And totally Yeah, this group has a lot of nice
qualities about it that we discussed in the first episode.
Speaker 5 (53:47):
And you can't close.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
Your eyes to reality just because there's some nice parts.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. But as as we know,
and as Kyle and Curry discussed, that as a very
challenging thing to swallow. So I hope that people, yes,
you know, make use of the support system in the
community in that process.
Speaker 5 (54:07):
Sam Sam speaking of community.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
On a completely different note, a.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
Complete like we're going to a completely different plane of
existence right now.
Speaker 5 (54:18):
We're making a jump.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
Yes, we're going back into we have a podcast and
we're talking about things we have to talk about as
podcast host mode. We are hosting a screening with American
Cinema Tech in Los Angeles on Wednesday, August thirtieth, that's
one week from today's release at.
Speaker 5 (54:38):
The lows Peelis three.
Speaker 2 (54:38):
It's a screening of the horror movie The Invitation, which
is a cult themed horror movie. And as you'll know,
I'm a horror filmmaker, so it's more marrying.
Speaker 5 (54:48):
The world's here.
Speaker 2 (54:50):
Go get your tickets, come say hi. We're going to
introduce the film. We'll be hanging out.
Speaker 5 (54:54):
Tickets are cheap.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
I keep trying to tell Lolo we should dress like
and she keeps avoiding the questions. So you'll either see
us dressed alike or know that we're in a horrible fight.
Speaker 2 (55:04):
I want to truss alike. I want to dress it,
but it's got to be the right outfit. Are we
gonna agree on an outfit?
Speaker 1 (55:10):
Yeah, I guess we're gonna have to go to Melrose
Avenue and find the.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
Right outfit Filthros Avenue. Yes, please come out, please come
say hi.
Speaker 5 (55:19):
This is definitely we will be dressed alike.
Speaker 2 (55:21):
This is the more fun side of trust me, and
we would love to see you.
Speaker 1 (55:25):
We hope to see you there and We hope to
see you again here next week. Indeed, as always, remember
to follow your gut, watch out for red flags.
Speaker 2 (55:34):
And an ever ever trust Me Bye Bye. Trust Me
is produced by Kirsten Woodward, Gabby Rapp and Steve Delemator.
Speaker 5 (55:45):
With special thanks to Stacy Para.
Speaker 2 (55:47):
And our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.
Speaker 1 (55:50):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me Podcast,
Twitter at trust Me Cult Pod, or on TikTok at
trust Me Cult Podcast.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
I'm Ula Lola on instatag and Ola Lola on Twitter.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
And I am Megan Elizabeth eleven on Instagram and Abraham
Hicks on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Remember to rate and review and spread the word.
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