Women Cult Leaders: Part 2

In our wrap-up look at women cult leaders, we examine even more examples of women founding, leading and maintaining cults.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. A step fund ever
told your production of I Heart Radio? How often do
we do two partners? Is it an often thing? It
is less often as of recent m I think the

(00:26):
last big two partter was Women Who Loves You A
Village that it was that a two parter. I know
that one wasn't, but the Women's Serial Killers was for
sure something else we did not too long ago. Oh,
Women Who Organized? That was a two parter, I think.
And then Star Wars obviously obviously those are those two
are two partners. Yeah. I used to be really hesitant

(00:47):
about two partners that I would try really hard to condense.
But there's a certain point. I believe it was yesterday
where I contacted you and I was like, I think
this women is going to have to be a two partner, right.
I think we both like there's moments that we think
it's not going to be big, and then we're like, oh,
oh mind because the Women who Organized I did not

(01:08):
anticipate doing but it felt so sad to cut it off,
so we wanted to add as much as we could.
And sometimes, as it means two parters, yes, and here
is a second part of a two part series we
had on women leading cults, So highly recommend you go
listen to part one first because we do a lot
of baseline what are cults? Sort of all the arguments

(01:30):
about cults um, which is really key to this conversation.
There's so much we could unpack in all of this, right,
all of it. So if that's something that you listeners
would like to hear, please let us know. But just
we're kind of doing um I won't say superficial, but
we're not going into the depths we could on all

(01:51):
of these cults and all of these women and whether
or not their cults. We're talking more about examples rather
than the psyche and more trauma behind it, so that
muld be later though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah for sure.
I don't know why I got so weirdly excited, but
it's just that psych aspect. Its interesting when you always
look deeper about the why, it's always more fascinating to

(02:14):
know it is it is. So before we get into
these examples, quick trigger warning, there will be discussion of suicide,
sexual abuse, violence, death, murder, general abuse. We're not going
to go too deep into any of that. But when
you're talking about colts, it can get pretty grizzly and disturbing.
And yes, as we said in part one, there's a

(02:35):
lot of argument going on in debate around what constitutes
a cult, and there are lots of layers of sexism, racism,
and anti any religion that's not Christianity involved in these discussions.
But yeah, just to acknowledge that that's going on. And
but the women were talking about, and the organizations were
talking about, not everyone agree these women were coal leaders,

(02:55):
and I think those conversations are well worth having. Some
of these organizations might not be considered cults at all
points in history, but with the right person, they can
become cults or at the very least run by someone
who fits the cult leader stereotype. Who yeah, we talked
about that in part one as well, but like charismatic
is one of the very key things there, and controlling

(03:17):
and like just demanding all this adoration and complete submission.
That being said, these are some of the women that
frequently come up when you're digging around the internet for
women cult leaders. And another disclaimer, the histories of these
can be a bit murkier fantastical. As we said in
our Serial Killers episode, it just can get a real

(03:39):
difficult because even even reputable newspaper sources sometimes like to
really lean into that morbid, ghastly side of all of this,
So it's hard to say for sure, right right, definitely
level shock factor for sure. And speaking of let's start
this one with a Clementine Barnavett, sometimes is called the

(04:00):
first black female serial killer in the United States. In
nineteen eleven, a Louisiana police department got a frantic call
about a suspected incident. Sure enough, when police arrived on
the scene, they discovered the bodies of a man, woman
child with their skulls split open, a bloody dacs at
the head of the bed, a bucket of blood in
the corner, bloody footprints throughout the room, and they deduced

(04:20):
the killer must have come through the windows since the
doors were locked at the time. A local newspaper called
it quote the most brutal murder in the history of
the section. It was not the only acts murder to
take place in nearby areas of Louisiana and Texas. These
murders were believed to be the work of a cult
by the name of the Church of Sacrifice that required

(04:41):
human sacrifices for their religious rights, rumored to be led
up by a voodoo priestess. Even so, all of the
initial suspects were men. One source described the murders as
reigned with acts, and after other similar murders took place,
usually a families, the authorities began to suspect that they
were quote the work of the same terrible monster. Sources

(05:03):
indicate most, if not all, of these families were black families,
so the police eventually turned their sights on a sharecropper
on the wrong side of town uh named Raymond Barnabette.
Both his children, Zephyrn and Clementine, testified against them, claiming
they were scared for their lives. He was abusive to
his whole family. According to records. However, more murders took

(05:23):
place while Raymond was in jail. Both of the children
were arrested, in part because their neighbors described them as
the generous and in part because Clementine had blood from
one of the murders on her shirt. A local newspaper
reported in nineteen eleven that when the police searched the
Barnabot household, they found a complete set of women's clothes
in her room saturated with blood. And covered with human

(05:45):
brains with no albi. Clementine went to jail. The murders
did not let up. Three families were murdered in January
of nineteen twelve. The dead's hands were splayed apart with wood,
and messages like this one were left on the walls.
When he make a the inquisition for blood, he forgetteth
not the cry of the Humble A bit of a

(06:05):
twist on a Bible verse. By the way, these messages
were written by hand and signed Human five. And the
press began attributing these murders to the Human five gang,
and they really went all in on this voodoo aspect,
just as more and more people were talking about Clementized
possible connection to the mysterious Church of Sacrifice. Reverend King
Harris was sought to be the leader of this church,

(06:28):
but upon questioning police dismissed them as a suspect. Lementine
confessed to killing seventeen people in April of nineteen twelve.
She further explained that she wore a voodoo charm for
protection while she killed. In her words, it was gifted
to her by a vodoo priest, a man who did
not claim himself as a foodoo priest in question, so
it was somebody that they followed up with and he
was like, whoa what And straws were drawn, according to her,

(06:50):
between her and her accomplices to see who would commit
the murders. She went on to say she dressed as
a man to be left relatively alone and unnoticed. On
night she was planning on killing someone, and a local
paper reported that she said she killed the kids so
as not to leave them an orphan in this world.
She said that she would quote Chariss the Corpses, and
one district attorney called her a moral pervert because of

(07:13):
what she said in her testimony against her father. People
were still confused about the veracity of her claims. When
she gave the names of her accomplices, all that was
turned up. They were all dead ends. She said she
believed that sacrifices were the way to achieve immortality. A
nineteen twelve article headline read the x men as a woman,

(07:33):
what's the exclamation point? So later examination found there was
no church of sacrifice, and that perhaps it was confused
with Harris's sanctified church, especially with the swirling rumors of voodoo,
and none of those was helped by the fact that
during her time and Jill, Clementine constantly modified her story
and ended up confessing to thirty five murders who her

(07:57):
attorneys argued that she was insane, but this did not
prevent a judge from dancing her to life at nineteen
years old. She tried and fell to escape early on,
but other than that didn't really cause much trouble. In fact,
one report about her imprisonment claimed that a procedure returned
to her normal condition and she was released on good
behavior after a decade had passed. So that's all pretty murky.

(08:19):
People who have delved into this belief that Clementine did
commit some of the murders, but maybe not all of them. However,
they think someone in that household was the primary murderer.
Over at True Crime Daily, James Horror wrote, she scandalized
the press, stirring up a gumbo of moral panic and
a state where civil war and slavery remained a living memory.
Everything about Clementine Barnabett represented a collision, even a perversion,

(08:43):
of cultures in the eyes of white Louisiana. From her
mangled Creole French to her mangled beliefs a tabloid baiting
blend of voodoo itself, a blend of Catholicism and West
African tribal rights and Evangelical Christianity. So I wanted to
include that because for this one, like her name came
up a lot. But there's just clearly to me, like
even in the language of the newspapers, like degenerates, the

(09:05):
wrong side of town, and this whole like voodoo thing
that the press was really pushing that there's just like
a layer of racism over the whole thing. And it
doesn't feel because this was kind of debunked, right that
they found no proof of this church, but it's still
she comes up as a woman needing a cult. Yeah

(09:28):
so yeah. So in nine in an Amazonian town in Brazil,
there were several reports of missing children. The authorities looked
into it but couldn't find in the elites, and the
cases jumped to nineteen missing children between the ages of
eight and thirteen. Five other children had been found dead,
castrated with signs of torture. Officials believed that the murders
and disappearance were related to a medical guild due to

(09:49):
precise nature of castrations. These bodies were identified as homeless boys,
but the boys who had been reported missing have been
done so by their families and depending on the source,
her two boys managed to escape after castration and found
some officials. Whatever the case, only one ended up testifying,
and the story he told was horrific torture, rape, mutilation,

(10:11):
like eyes gouged out and castration. He testified that other
children were stabbed and killed, their organs sold on the
black market or they ate them, but again this has
not been confirmed, and in his testimony he named a
handful of people doctor it's a police officer, while the
businessman and Valentina de Andrade, the leader of the religious cult.

(10:32):
The cult in question was called Superior Universal Alignment, a
UFO cult led by Valentina whose members believed the world
was ending and the only way to be saved was
by following the commands of their leader. She claimed she'd
been contacted by extra extraterrestrial beings and that they claimed
the apocalypse was not but that if she passed along
the message, they would send a ship to collect her

(10:54):
and other believers to spare them. She believed that God
wasn't real and that Jesus was an alien. Perhaps the
most shocking thing she said, though, was that boys born
after which is when she claimed to have received her message,
were evil and needed to be killed, both because they
were evil but also to serve as payment to their
extraterrestrial saviors. Five children were never found of the nineteen

(11:19):
reported missing, and four of the perpetrators were captured. However,
Valentina managed to escape the country and evaded capture for
several years. Even when authorities did locate her, she provided
an albi for the murders and was released. Apparently she
fainted at this verdict. Yeah, so we have some more
examples for you, but first we have a quick break

(11:41):
for words from our sponsor, every Back, Thank you. Sponsored.
Along with Marshall Apple White Blue Nettles co founded the

(12:01):
UFO cult Heaven's Gate in the nineteen seventies, and she
believed herself to have a divine purpose. She was known
as t She also went by Peep while he went
by Bow, and the two of them went by the
two went together. She was a registered nurse and raised
in Texas. She got married, had four children, but then
reportedly started doing seances in the early nineteen seventies. According

(12:23):
to some sources, she thought among named a brother Frances
from the nineteenth century was communicating with her and giving
her instructions. She was big into astrology and the occult
u and she visited several fortune tellers, at least one
of whom told her she would soon meet someone matching
apple Wise description um and the stories of how they
met very from inside hospital to a theater after an accident,

(12:47):
something like that. Allegedly, Nettles was asked to perform a
reading on apple White and agreed. She determined they were
spiritual matches. Apple White was gay, though he did marry
and have two children. His family was very religious in
conservative and despite his best efforts, he did engage in
a few homosexual relationships. Nettles and apple White had a
non sexual relationship, he later wrote of it, but the

(13:09):
only relationship they shared, certainly having no physical attraction towards
each other, was the compulsion to discover what had brought
them together. James Lewis, author on a book of Uflo
occults and a professor at the Institute for the Study
of American Religion, said quote, apple White was so alienated
from his homosexuality that he was teaching people not to
have sex. He would put people of opposite sexes together

(13:31):
and forced them to learn to become neutral, non sexual. Apparently,
apple White had himself castrated and that perhaps others in
the group were castrated as well, And in nineteen seventy three,
Nettles told her daughter and son she was leaving and
that was the last they ever saw of her with
apple White. She said that God was leading them in

(13:52):
a certain big direction. She said a cryptic religious message
to her daughter several months later, claiming that she and
apple White were witness members were required to dress alike
and cut their hair, which I think people know about.
Together they formed Heaven's Gates. Nettles said she'd communicated with
aliens about the next level, and apple White declared she
was higher rank than him in nineteen seventies six. Her

(14:15):
eye had to be removed in nineteen three due to
cancer spreading throughout her body, and according to her daughter,
the letters changed in the eighties and that she got
and since her mother wanted out, but there wasn't a
graceful way to leave, as she said. Yes, So Nettles
died of cancer twelve years before apple White and thirty
others killed themselves in a mass suicide event, believing that
it would allow them to access a UFO following in

(14:38):
the wake of the Haileybot comment, believing that it would
grant them passage to the quote yes next Kingdom um or.
Right before this event was carried out, the website was
updated with a message that they were happy to leave
this world and join quote tease Crew. Experts believe her
death was a significant touchstone in terms of beliefs around
the body being quote just a vehicle, which is what
apple White said about Nettles making base for the tragic

(15:01):
event that was about to occur. Nettle's daughter tried to
contact her to get her out, but was told her
messages wouldn't be passed along unless she told them what
she planned to say. When the daughter said it's personal,
they hung up. Mm hmmm, said so next, we want
to talk about Amy Simple McPherson, who was a faith healer, evangelist,

(15:21):
and the founder of Four Square Gospel Church and builder
of the Angelist Temple. She was born into a religious
family in eighteen ninety, but she soon had questions about
their faith. At the same time, she was a vocal
opponent of evolution. At a teen, she married and got
pregnant and on their honeymoon. Her husband died when she

(15:41):
returned to the US. She remarried and had another child,
but soon grew restless and absconded with both the children,
leaving her husband for a religious calling. She traveled the
country in a touring car, the gospel car that had
the message Jesus is coming soon and get ready, stopping
to speak at churches along the way, and she really
knew her way around a crowd um. She would speak

(16:03):
in tongues. She would perform faith healing demonstrations and which
she appeared to have cured people. She was breaking at
tendance records compared to other evangelical leaders. As a woman,
she was a rarity in that space. At a San
Diego event, over thirty thou people showed up to see
her and the Marines had to be called. It was
described as the best show in town. And just for example,

(16:25):
she would ride motorcycles into these events. Sometimes they had
like lights and special effects. She was one of the
first women in the US to travel across the country
in a car without a male chaperone, and she frequently argued,
who says a woman can't preach gospel? Charlie Chaplin was
a secret friend of hers and helped her with her sermons. Wow,

(16:47):
I can't believe I've never heard of her before this,
because yeah, it's so rare to see uh traveling teachers
and Hayley that aren't that aren't men? I know, tap
I hadn't heard of her either, because it sounds like
she had a big pool during her thirty thousand that's
a huge number for sure. So eventually she decided to
retire from the crowds and travel, settling in La where

(17:09):
she raised funds for the angelist church one point five
million Wow, where she gave sermons seven days a week.
In nine she launched her own radio station called kf
q G four Square Gospel, and she also hosted successful
radio broadcast, making her one of the first women to
receive a broadcast license in the US. Around this time,

(17:29):
she formed her own church for Square UH and the
name comes from four facets of Jesus, Transformative Salvation, divine healing, Baptism,
and the Return of Christ. Mini male leaders in the
space were vocal opponents, which not surprised Nope, not at all.
In she disappeared on a swim, an event that captured

(17:50):
national headlines attention and rampant speculation about what happened to
sister Amy, as she was called a believer, literally drowned themselves.
It was, it was said in sorrow, but I believe
they were just trying to swim out and help with
the effort. Members through dynamite in the water, hoping to surface.
Her rumors spread like wildfire, that she disappeared to have

(18:12):
an abortion, that she had had an affair, that she'd
gotten plastic surgery, that maybe there'd be a ransom or
foul play was involved. The police received a ransom note
demanding five thousand dollars for her release, and it was
signed by the avengers I know, getting up to no good.
Amy showed up in Mexico a month later. Her identity

(18:33):
was proven by her knowledge of her childhood pet pigeons
name which I love, and at the location of one
of her scars. Amy claimed she had been kidnapped by
three Americans who demanded a ransom, but she was able
to escape, by her account, sawing out of the rope
restraining her and walking twenty miles. After a reporter questioned
if this was possible, Amy said, many have said that

(18:55):
a woman could not have built Angelus temple and do
these others seemingly impossible things, but I did. She sure
did so. When she returned home, over fifty thousand cheering
spectators met her at the train station with a parade. However,
her return was not without suspicion, and officials looked into
her kidnapping. She voluntarily showed up at a grain jury,

(19:16):
and the rumors swirling, particularly around an engineer of a
radio station owned by McPherson's church, who disappeared at the
same time she did. However, there wasn't enough evidence to
back this claim, so the judge dropped the case against her.
McPherson wrote a book about it in ninety seven called
In the Service of the King, The Story of My Life.

(19:36):
She died in nineteen forty four of what was deemed
as probably accidental overdose or Over forty five thousand people
came to see her lying in state, and when she died,
the Fourth Square Church was worth nine million dollars, and
these days there are over nine million members. They're over
seventeen hundred four Square churches in the US and over

(19:58):
sixties six thou also meeting places worldwide. She's been credited
with bringing modern air conservatism into the era of modern media.
It's a lot of money. Yeah, so she's been coming
up a lot when we were talking about the kind
of these personality based shows that do you know the
opinion shows, especially when it comes to conservatism, and how

(20:22):
religion often plays into that. And this one too is one.
I've never heard of this church, but I know that
you could foreshure argue whether or not it qualifies as
a cult. There's nothing out right that screams to meet
cult about it, right, It does come up on several lists,

(20:43):
But I'm wondering if that's more about her more of
a cult of personality, like she was just so charismatic
and people have really really adored her and would do
anything for her. Um and again, like we could go,
we could do deep dives on all of these and
maybe there's just something I don't know about it about
this church. But right, that was just kind of my

(21:05):
take on it where I'm sort of surprised has kept
popping up on other lists about cult leaders. I mean,
and again, yeah, there's a conversation of how she's getting
this money, where she's getting this money, which also is
kind of that political turning and conversation of that as well.
But it's also unprecedented that a woman started a church
and it still exists today to the popularity that it

(21:27):
is saying. I will say I've not heard of this
church either before this episode, but it is interesting to
see how it continues to pop up. And again, yeah,
you're right, cult it seems a little more dark than
what this is presenting. But we do also know, like
when it comes to followings and especially of the hell

(21:48):
Fibrimstone era that she grew up in with a traveling preachers,
which has now formed into different religions itself. It also
can be seemingly cultish because of the supernatural element to it.
And and that's another which we keep saying. But I
just know that this is such a like fine line
of some people will call this a cult and other

(22:09):
people wouldn't. And sometimes that line for some people can
be oh, that looks so different and weird and heavy
quads compared to what I am used to, So it
must be a cult. It makes me nervous. It makes
me nervous and a good This is also based on
old religion, And when I say old religion, you don't
see the practicing of tongues the healing in general. Don't

(22:31):
get me wrong, I've seen it. I've seen that it
still exists, but you just don't see it as much,
and especially in popularity. Yeah, I guess maybe that's maybe
that's one of the reasons it is classified as a
cult to some people. Is that kind of whole faith
healing speaking in tongues aspects, which you know can be

(22:54):
a lot of religions can have people like that who
are just like really bombastic and entertaining. Way, not to
dismiss at all like people's beliefs, but I'm just saying like,
as part of a somebody who can gather that sort
of passion and excitement and that can be almost like
an entertainment or a role that you're getting people excited
about this thing. Right. And again, though, if we look

(23:14):
at what she did compared to some religions today, there's
not that much difference. So you do have to question that. Yes, now,
probably after this I'll look it up and something super
dark involved. I think that would be on the top
of like right information, And you're right, like, we don't
see that. It's just more of her accomplishments that we
see more so than what the religion or the practice did. Yeah,

(23:38):
and definitely, like you said, kind of a big impact
of like having this first radio station as a woman
like license and being in this space and then providing
a jumping off platform for conservatism and modern media today.
And it could be also the language back then competing
I guess church or belief system, you learn to call
it something insidious, and so that for cult maybe the

(24:00):
automatic name given just because you don't like it, and
it is again done by someone who's not given according
to them authority, which is a woman, right, which is
a whole different conversation. But once again, yeah, no that
I had that top thought too. I don't feel I
have enough knowledge of this particular event, but I do
wonder if there was a layer, if there's a woman
doing this thing that seen as a man's space cult.

(24:22):
It's weird. Yes, these are just Yes, these are like
you and I just hypo analyzing what this is happening. Yes,
I mean I think certainly there's at least a layer
of that, and most of these there's a layer sexism, racism,
and this isn't Christianity like I see it in the
United States specifically, and some of these are heinous too
though just yes, I don't want to Yes, both of

(24:45):
those things exist in this these two episodes. Yes, absolutely
absolutely good point to make. Um. But we do have
one more woman cult leader we want to share with you.
But first we have one more quick break for from
her sponsor and we're fact thank you sponsored. We thought

(25:15):
we would finish out this two part series about women
leading cults with Anne Hamilton's burn the charismatic leader of
the Australian Doomsday cult The Family. Hamilton Burne was a
woman of many talents. She could sing and play the harp.
She was put together, as they say, with style, blonde
hair and pearls and shouldnell perfume. One of her ex

(25:39):
followers set of her. In ancient times we hear about
enchantresses who could enslave people with one glance. She had
eyes that looked through your soul. After her mother set
her hair on fire, she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia
and ended up spending twenty seven years and a psychiatric
asylum before she died and spent some time in orphanages

(25:59):
and her hers husband died in a car accident when
she was twenty. She had given birth to one daughter,
and as rumors go, had suffered many miscarriages by then
right and in the nineteen sixties Hamilton Burn founded the
family and claimed that she was Jesus reborn as a woman.
She was reportedly inspired by Russian born medium by the
name of Helena Bilovotski, who founded the Theosophical Society in

(26:21):
New York in eighteen seventy five. Bolovotsky introduced many to
Hinduism and Buddhism. When Hamilton's Burn took up yoga in
the nineteen fifties as a bomb to her grief, she
pretty quickly fell in love with the ideas of Eastern mysticism.
She started teaching in the nineteen sixties and by all
accounts was a pretty good teacher. She was really good

(26:42):
at getting a read on people's vulnerabilities. She allowed gay
men in the face of the anti homosexuality laws in
place in Australia at the time. She also managed to
recruit a physicist and a master at Queen's College at
Melbourne University, Dr Rayner Johnson. He was approaching retirement and
curious to explore new quote weird areas and interest amongst

(27:05):
the scientific community about spiritualism was on the rise, and
he just became completely beguiled by Hamilton's Byrne, even naming
her the next Messiah. For what he declared to be
purely academic purposes, he experimented with LC and took notes
about it, including this quote, Her face became divinely beautiful,

(27:25):
with sublime authority, unquestionably the wisest, the serenest, and most
gracious and generous soul I've ever met. He and his
wife bought a home near Hamilton's Burne, and together they
birth the family. The family lived in obscurity and Melbourne,
and their motto was Unseen, Unknown, unheard. Hamilton Burne targeted

(27:45):
well at professionals, telling them that she had quote been
waiting for them and that they were special. Dr Johnson
lent a scientific and legitimate heir to her claims. Her
teachings were a combination of Christianity, Eastern mysticism, and a
sort of pacalypticism, and the initiation allegedly involved all members,
even children, to indulge in a potentially deadly amount of

(28:08):
LSD and hallucinogens for a lengthy amount of time. After that,
she controlled practically all aspects of their lives and one
survivor's words quote there was only one rule to absolutely
everything she said that included what to think, what to wear,
what to eat, who to marry, who not to marry,
total obedience. She gave sermons or discourses as they were called,

(28:30):
from a purple throne in a lodge funded by members money.
Many members of the cult tried to take their own
lives either during their time there are after, and if
you did upsettingly. To keep members in line, she'd beat them,
sometimes with the stiletto shoe, but she often left this
task to the aunties, who were middle aged women afraid
of their own punishment. If they didn't enacted on others um,

(28:52):
she would starve members um, emotionally, abuse and manipulate them.
The children might also get a daily dose of valium
are mogodon to keep them from fighting back, which just
kind of keeps them calm. At age fourteen, this switched
over to huge, continuous doses of LSD, and for many
this was disastrous, resulting in depressia, trauma, nightmares, social withdraw

(29:14):
and personality changes. So after two children escaped in nineteen
eight seven, police raided the family. Over the past few decades,
Hamilton Burne had a massive twenty eight children, The first
had arrived in the nineteen seventies, and some of them
as gifts and some of them sham adoptions. At the time,
Australia's regulation around adoptions were lacking, and the stigma around

(29:35):
unmarried motherhood it was pretty quite powerful. According to a
detective that tried to bring charges against Hamilton Burne, quote,
you had babies born in a cult hospitals, delivered by
cult midwives, headed over to cult social workers. Uh hamilton
Burn bleached the hair of all of them and adorned
them in matching clothes, telling them she was their birth mother.
She also told them she was royalty and owned castles.

(29:58):
She kept the children separate from the may in compound
at a wooden lodge two hours away, where they were
home schooled. She desired to be the perfect mother, but
had no real interest in actually putting any effort into that,
and thanks to property donations from followers in Land, Hamilton
Burn collected a hundred fifty million Australian dollars and she

(30:19):
was arrested for minor fraud charges in nineteen She and
our ex husband, who one follower described as a handsome
rich compliant handback got off with only five thousand a
U and fines, absolutely no jail time, and one of
the rescue teenagers after the nine eight seven Ready explained,
it's hard to say how devoted we are to her,

(30:41):
how we hung off her every look and every thought
she had about us. We wanted so much for her
to love us, but I don't think she ever really did.
Julie Assange, founder of Wiki Leaks, admitted his mother's boyfriend
had been a member of this cult. Assange called him
a sinister presence and claimed that they ran from him.
Hamilton Burns spent over a decade in a nursing home,

(31:03):
where she eventually died. The Family. If you want to
know more, there is a documentary on it. Like we said,
there's podcast documentaries, Glower and almost all of these, so
the information is out there for you. Yes, there's a
documentary book called The Family by documentary filmmaker Rosie Jones
and journalist Chris Johnston. The creators were unable to interview

(31:25):
her due to her dementia and lack of ability to consent,
or they weren't able to film it or write it down,
but they did get to sit down with her and
they described the power of their experience. So yeah, I
just feel like there's so many themes we could unpack
here because we've really run the gamut of like, yes,
sexism and racism, at homophobia, and this idea of the

(31:47):
mother did come up a lot, just so much like
misogyny and toxic masculinity. Yeah, yeah, we could really come
back and dig into that some more. And I'm sure
each of the podcasts and the documentary talk about the
childhood and the background of the trauma that kind of
birth these people to be who they are. And I

(32:11):
say that loosely because you know, you don't you never know,
not to give any excuse, there's not an excuse, but
there's always a beginning, and I think that's that's an
interesting way to look at how these are created and
again with different personalities that can bring about these perfectly
placed disasters and or perfectly placed time frames. I guess

(32:33):
it's the best way to say, because we don't know
the depth of what has happened truly outside of those
who were inside of it. So there's there's a lot
of the things the question and to look at. But yeah,
just to see the background of what is happening, because again,
we see so much of a sensationalization of what has happened,
because we know, you know Jonestown, we know Waco, we

(32:55):
know the big details, but we don't know the small details.
Of course, the after ask for the members what has happened.
I know there's been a lot more documentation, documentaries, conversations
from survivors because they do want to tell their stories
and important for them to tell these stories that we
have to pay attention to that. And yet these are
not just incidents and though we we are giving off,

(33:17):
you know, details of what may have happened of or
it's just a small picture of what may have happened. Rather,
these were people's lives that are affected. And we do
see the lingering effects for different people who have been
affected by what we would call it consider a cult
that still exists that's not being recognized because of people's

(33:37):
opinions and or maybe politics that we again is you
talked about the some of these cults had political figureheads
behind them. Yeah, and that's one of the things for me,
this whole this is all very complicated, right because there
is a lot of trauma and you don't want to
absolve every anybody of blame. But there is that there's trauma,

(33:59):
and there's brainwashing. So if that's complicated, but then you
would see like for example, when you're talking about Betty
Lou Nettles, and I just noticed like people were really
into Oh, she did the seances and she did she
was involved in the occult. There's nothing like apparently wrong
with any of that, right, um, And I know what
they were getting at. They were saying she was looking

(34:19):
for quote heavy quote alternative like enlightenment, enlightenment, and she
was interested in those things. But I do think that
things like that can be problematic when we're having these
conversations because that doesn't necessarily mean cult. I know, we
keep coming back to that, but I just think that
it's really really important. Right. So she use a prime

(34:41):
example of someone who looked at alternative what would be
classified as new waged to ideas during that time. And yeah,
because it's abnormal and because we we are in a
country that it is so inundated into Western Christianity and
I have to specify that as a Western Christian unity
and this very idea of notion that almost takes to

(35:03):
the point that you know, the idea that Jesus is white,
you know, that kind of level of what Christianity what
is right and wrong. So therefore that its cult and
that is super very super dangerous when we talk about that,
because we know again the New Age ideas and reading
palms or you do can through tarot cards does not

(35:25):
equate cult in the story. You know, just because you
look at astrology or you trust in astrology does not
again quite cult. But there's this whole underlying, dark, sinister
idea behind it when you've raised up in again Western
Christianity ideas and beliefs, which again is dangerous, absolutely for sure,

(35:45):
and the same idea because I think me for me
growing up, which is why it was so fascinated by
Eastern religion, is because it was told me that is
forbidden in itself, you know what I mean, and then
learning about it and like, you know, this makes sense
and I'm not a religious person, but the ideas behind
in some of the beautiful sentiment behind understanding Eastern religion,
which has existed longer than again Western Christianity right like

(36:11):
in itself, is a whole different conversation we could dig into,
because yeah, that also is fearmongering in itself and now
again the atrocities that we talked about, they are for real.
We need to talk about what has happened, how it
has traumatized others, and why we need to talk about it.
But yeah, there's definitely the balance of we have to
remember the biases that could be placed into these reports

(36:34):
as well, exactly. Yeah, because it's not that we're seeing
these aren't cults or that the terrible, terrible things happened
within them, because for a lot of them they did.
But I think it's just the language I picked up
on in it that I was kind of it kind
of made me a little anxious, like I get true
and I get it and this did end up being bad,

(36:55):
but that doesn't mean it always is, right, Yeah, very complex,
a lot of nuances, so many things. Glad we got
into it, and I hope we Yeah, we'll definitely look
at the overall ideas of women and cults in general,
just the help being a member, because we do see
a lot of times it's heavily women. Yeah, yeah, we're

(37:20):
definitely going to return to that. And uh, I'm both
excited and nervous anything. Yes, as most episodes on here
Um in the meantime listeners. If you would like to
contact as you can or email Stuff Media mom Stuff
at i heeart media dot com. You can find us
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Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. Thanks as always to our

(37:42):
super producer Christina, Thank you and thanks to you for
listening Stuff I've Never Told You his protection of I
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