Speaker 1: It's twenty fourteen, back before Victor's arrest. The manhunt is
Speaker 1: still underway. Lindsay's desperate to get Victor found, and she's
Speaker 1: agreed to a TV appearance. A camera zooms in as
Speaker 1: a glass like wall moves apart to reveal Doctor Phil,
Speaker 1: the psychologist turned TV host. Doctor Phil walks on stage,
Speaker 1: waving at a studio audience, and he points to a
Speaker 1: massive screen. It shows a video collage of Lindsay as
Speaker 1: a kid.
Speaker 2: Take a look at Lindsay in this video. She's laughing, playing,
Speaker 2: having a good time with her family. But just a
Speaker 2: few years later, at the young age of thirteen, she
Speaker 2: says her life would take a tragic turn and she
Speaker 2: would become a maiden.
Speaker 1: A photo flashes of her and Victor and the other maidens.
Speaker 1: Phil circles their faces with a digital pointer as he talks.
Speaker 2: And when I say maiden, you have no idea what
Speaker 2: that is going to lead to, because this man right
Speaker 2: here was a leader of a religious organization.
Speaker 1: A pre recorded summary of Lindsay's story plays out for
Speaker 1: dramatic effect. At the end, Lindsay is suddenly on stage,
Speaker 1: sitting in a chair. She knows what's coming. She was
Speaker 1: invited here to confront her father on stage in front
Speaker 1: of all of America.
Speaker 3: From her Cocoa.
Speaker 1: Punch and iHeart podcasts, This is the Turning River Road,
Speaker 1: I Am Erica Lance.
Speaker 3: And I'm a Lance Lesser, Part eight, The One Thing.
Speaker 1: There was a time when Lindsay thought she might be
Speaker 1: able to repair things with her dad. Her mom was
Speaker 1: a lost cause, she'd given up on that relationship when
Speaker 1: Peggy refused to accept what Victor had done to her. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: her dad was supportive. He said he would talk to police.
Speaker 1: We listened to a recording of him talking to the
Speaker 1: Sheriff's office. He corroborated stories Lindsay had told, stories about
Speaker 1: times she tried to leave the Maidens, about how Victor
Speaker 1: sat Lindsay's parents down to tell them he might have
Speaker 1: sex with her someday. But once the FBI got involved,
Speaker 1: Lindsay says her dad backed off and wouldn't help anymore.
Speaker 1: The two of them stopped talking. She says he would
Speaker 1: write her letters and leave her voicemails trying to connect.
Speaker 1: I can't live without you, he'd say.
Speaker 4: I need you to forgive me. I can't live without
Speaker 4: you forgiving me. And it seemed to be all about him.
Speaker 4: It was this constant need for me to love him
Speaker 4: and forgive him when I just needed to continue to
Speaker 4: process and try to heal.
Speaker 1: When Doctor Phil's production reached out to Lindsay, she thought
Speaker 1: maybe this might help her forgive her dad or heal
Speaker 1: in some way. Not to mention it might help catch Victor,
Speaker 1: who was still on the run at that point, so
Speaker 1: now her dad. Carmen sat across from her on Doctor
Speaker 1: Phil's stage in a suit and tie. In the video,
Speaker 1: he doesn't seem to speak directly to Lindsay at first.
Speaker 1: It feels like he's focused on defending himself. Sometimes he
Speaker 1: closes his eyes for a moment while he talks.
Speaker 5: I feel overwhelmed. It's been a year since we've seen
Speaker 5: each other, and during that time, there's not a day
Speaker 5: goes by that I don't count the cost of realizing that.
Speaker 5: I take my full accountability and responsibility for what had
Speaker 5: taken place.
Speaker 2: But you really don't, because you tell her that you
Speaker 2: didn't know what was going on at the time.
Speaker 1: Right correct Throughout the segment, Doctor Phil is quick to
Speaker 1: intervene and Pinkarmen to the wall. It's less a conversation
Speaker 1: than an interrogation. The mission is clear to hold Karmen accountable.
Speaker 1: Lindsay's extremely upset. It's painful to watch.
Speaker 6: I don't understand why you keep saying you didn't know
Speaker 6: what happened, and the way your family has treated me
Speaker 6: has been so awful. People telling me I need to
Speaker 6: stop playing the victim and become a survivor. And I
Speaker 6: know I still have a lot to grow, but I
Speaker 6: am a survivor.
Speaker 5: I had asked two years ago for forgiveness, and you
Speaker 5: told me that you don't know if you could forgive me.
Speaker 2: But you still don't own this till today, though, do you.
Speaker 1: The tension comes down to this. Carmen says he's accountable,
Speaker 1: he's responsible, but he also says he didn't know back
Speaker 1: then that Victor was abusing Lindsay, and that's the trouble
Speaker 1: or part of it.
Speaker 3: Did he know or not?
Speaker 1: Doctor Phil plasters excerpts of police reports on a large screen.
Speaker 1: He's trying to demonstrate how Carmen keeps contradicting himself that
Speaker 1: sometimes he told police he did know what was going
Speaker 1: on back then while it was happening, but he felt
Speaker 1: too much pressure.
Speaker 3: To do anything.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to become an outcast and lose everything.
Speaker 1: And at other times Carmen said he didn't know back then,
Speaker 1: Doctor Phil tells Carmen that he's talking out of both
Speaker 1: sides of his mouth.
Speaker 2: All Right, I give you my daughter, but not my blessings.
Speaker 2: You can have her, but I don't bless it. What
Speaker 2: the hell does that mean?
Speaker 5: My perspective was that she was serving in the church.
Speaker 5: I didn't know all those other things were happening.
Speaker 4: If somebody came to you and said I was fourteen
Speaker 4: at the time at that time, you really thought if
Speaker 4: he was bringing it up then that he would wait
Speaker 4: till I was legal.
Speaker 1: This whole scene has clearly built her entertainment and not
Speaker 1: for Lindsay's well being. But still, and I can't believe
Speaker 1: I'm going to say this. Watching it, I felt like,
Speaker 1: go doctor Phil. No one seems to be sticking up
Speaker 1: for Lindsay except doctor Phil, of all people.
Speaker 5: My biggest mistake was to trust the wrong man. I
Speaker 5: still didn't give a blessing. But all of her indications,
Speaker 5: all of her notes and things that were telling me
Speaker 5: that she was enjoying where she was.
Speaker 2: She was with the child.
Speaker 1: In the end, Carmen keeps saying the same thing. He's sorry,
Speaker 1: but he also didn't know. Lindsay looks at her dad
Speaker 1: and says, at this point in my life, I don't
Speaker 1: want you in it. Aylan and I watched in silence
Speaker 1: until the end of the video.
Speaker 7: Well, I think it's just really sad. I mean, I
Speaker 7: bet it's so frustrating for Lindsay. Her dad is half
Speaker 7: saying sorry, but isn't actually owning up to what he did.
Speaker 1: I think it shows how different apologies have such different impacts.
Speaker 1: I mean, she feels completely unheard, completely unseen, completely invalidated,
Speaker 1: completely uncared for. He has apologized, but he needs to
Speaker 1: be all over himself apologizing and validating her. I mean,
Speaker 1: used to be a therapist when you were treating survivors
Speaker 1: of sexual assault. Is this the kind of thing you'd
Speaker 1: see a lot?
Speaker 7: I mean, I feel like this type of dynamic is
Speaker 7: really common where people who are close to the situation
Speaker 7: don't want to admit that they were a part of it.
Speaker 7: What can be so damaging about childhood sexual abuse is
Speaker 7: not just the act itself, it's the rippling effects of
Speaker 7: that abuse, whether it's feeling like all their relationships in
Speaker 7: their family are ruined, feeling abandoned by those closest to them,
Speaker 7: feeling like I have no one to talk about this
Speaker 7: with because also society doesn't like to hear about it.
Speaker 1: And what Lindsay feels. I think maybe her greatest heartbreak
Speaker 1: these days is how many people did not stand with her.
Speaker 1: And it is telling that Lindsay is completely disconnected from
Speaker 1: her family. Now they can probably say, oh, that's Lindsay's choice,
Speaker 1: but she's had to do that because of their reactions,
Speaker 1: because so many of her family members literally wrote letters
Speaker 1: supporting Victor Bernard.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and it's cloaked in this concept of forgiveness. It's true,
Speaker 7: I get it. For some forgiveness can be very healing,
Speaker 7: but it's also so kind of like what happens when
Speaker 7: you're pushing your choice to value forgiveness above everything else
Speaker 7: on somebody else. Again, I think every situation is different,
Speaker 7: but there might be cases where forgiveness actually isn't the
Speaker 7: most psychologically healthy thing. And I just remember as a
Speaker 7: kid going to church, always hearing that forgiveness will allow
Speaker 7: you to move on. Forgiveness is the only thing that
Speaker 7: will allow you to get past something that's painful or torturous,
Speaker 7: you know, and it's like not necessarily. Yeah, just because
Speaker 7: you don't forgive somebody doesn't mean you can't move on.
Speaker 7: And I remember I even got trained by probably one
Speaker 7: of the most famous psychologists in evidence based trauma treatment,
Speaker 7: and all the time she actually would encourage patience to
Speaker 7: have an attitude of that person is evil, even encourage
Speaker 7: that kind of language, you know, like this person is
Speaker 7: just evil, they don't deserve my time, screw them, screw them.
Speaker 7: And this is like one of the leaders of trauma
Speaker 7: treatment in the world. I'm not saying she was saying
Speaker 7: you should do that for everybody. Different people will process
Speaker 7: their traumas differently. For someone else, maybe forgiveness is reparative,
Speaker 7: but I'm just saying, like, it's not for everybody. I
Speaker 7: never really put that together, the forgiveness thing along with
Speaker 7: that training before.
Speaker 1: That's mind blowing to me because it shows how pushing forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive,
Speaker 1: love your perpetrator, love your perpetrator, how incredibly damaging that
Speaker 1: can be.
Speaker 7: This is also why I think it's so important to
Speaker 7: tell and retell these types of stories, because if we don't,
Speaker 7: then we don't learn from them. Maybe even more importantly,
Speaker 7: I think we need to take the time to listen
Speaker 7: to and respect, maybe even forget the learn from, just
Speaker 7: even listen to and acknowledge, and give the time and
Speaker 7: space for processing things that have happened.
Speaker 1: We reached out to Lindsay's dad, Carmen Tornambi, but he
Speaker 1: didn't want to talk to us for the show.
Speaker 3: He did text us.
Speaker 1: He told us he didn't know why we want to
Speaker 1: open old wounds that are trying to heal. He said,
Speaker 1: I was not diligent enough to perceive what was going on,
Speaker 1: and I am sorry for that. Because of that, I
Speaker 1: take all the blame on myself and lay it on
Speaker 1: no one else. I have to live with that the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. But I thank God for his forgiveness.
Speaker 7: Around the same time Lindsay was on Doctor Phil, Kristip
Speaker 7: was in Washington State grappling with her own relationship with
Speaker 7: her parents entered connection to River Road. While Lindsay pulled
Speaker 7: further and further away, Kristip was getting sucked in deeper.
Speaker 8: As a child and as a young teenager, young adult,
Speaker 8: I did believe he was the man of God. I mean,
Speaker 8: he taught us the Bible. He would walk into a
Speaker 8: room and his presence commanded respect, and I respected him.
Speaker 8: He was special to me. Absolutely, I loved him. Victor
Speaker 8: was always very kind to me, like very very kind
Speaker 8: to me, which I know is not everybody's experience.
Speaker 7: Do you have a memory of him being kind to
Speaker 7: you specifically?
Speaker 9: So many, so many.
Speaker 8: He taught me how to drive when I was seventeen
Speaker 8: years old, and he was very kind about it, like
Speaker 8: he was not mean or intimidating. He taught me how
Speaker 8: to take the twists and turns in the road and
Speaker 8: to not like take them too abruptly and kind of
Speaker 8: start leaning into them beforehand, and when to start slowing
Speaker 8: down for a stop sign, and when to put your
Speaker 8: turn signal on when you're getting off the freeway, and
Speaker 8: just different stuff like that, stuff that I still have
Speaker 8: to utilize to this tape.
Speaker 7: And so there are like echoes of him even now
Speaker 7: in your life.
Speaker 8: There always will be, there, always will be.
Speaker 7: Victor had been kind to Christa, but he was also
Speaker 7: the man who once spat in her mother's face and rage,
Speaker 7: the man who led her mom to burn her books
Speaker 7: in a wood stove to rid the family of darkness,
Speaker 7: while Christa begged her to stop. And now she believed
Speaker 7: he was the man who had raped young girls in
Speaker 7: their small church community, women Krista knew and had grown
Speaker 7: up with. Women she now watched on the news in
Speaker 7: secret on the tablet she kept in her room against
Speaker 7: the rules. And even though Victor was like family to her,
Speaker 7: she also believed in another truth.
Speaker 8: Bad people do good things, good people do bad things,
Speaker 8: Like it's he did a good thing for me.
Speaker 7: And unlike what she'd believed since she was born, she
Speaker 7: started to think that Victor was not a good person
Speaker 7: who sometimes did bad things. Maybe he was a bad
Speaker 7: person who had done some good things for her. Now
Speaker 7: she had to decide what was meant for her life
Speaker 7: because the person her whole existence and belief system revolved around,
Speaker 7: the person her whole family followed, was not the man
Speaker 7: she thought he was. Krista was now in her early
Speaker 7: twenties living in a house in Spokane, Washington, a house
Speaker 7: full of River Road members and higher ups like Jan
Speaker 7: and her husband.
Speaker 8: Nobody knew that I had this tablet. Nobody knew that
Speaker 8: I could get my information on my own. So when
Speaker 8: the media was reporting a lot about River Road Fellowship
Speaker 8: and Victor, I read everything everything I could find There
Speaker 8: was so much that came out in the news. During
Speaker 8: that time. A news crew came to our house. Everybody
Speaker 8: shut the blinds and locked the doors. I was there
Speaker 8: for that, like peering out the window.
Speaker 7: A white van showed up down the street from the
Speaker 7: house in Spokane. Krista watched it through the blinds. She
Speaker 7: was pretty sure it was law enforcement watching them. Someone
Speaker 7: seemed to think Victor was a bad person, and now
Speaker 7: Christi says she did too, but that was not the
Speaker 7: norm around her, at least not as far as she
Speaker 7: could tell.
Speaker 8: I was around Lindsay's family, mom's sisters when Lindsay came
Speaker 8: out to the public. Everybody in the church, everybody in
Speaker 8: that area very much had their heads in the sand.
Speaker 8: As far as Victor being a criminal and being a rapist,
Speaker 8: that couldn't have possibly happened. I know, for me, and
Speaker 8: I'm sure for Lindsay's mom and her sisters. We were
Speaker 8: basically told what to say, how to respond if we
Speaker 8: were approached by the police or the media.
Speaker 3: How are you told to respond?
Speaker 8: Well, I was told to respond no comment. If the
Speaker 8: media approached me, to walk away. I was told not
Speaker 8: to talk to the police. But at that point I
Speaker 8: knew that if I was approached that I was going
Speaker 8: to comment because I needed help getting out and I
Speaker 8: didn't know how to get out. And I was like,
Speaker 8: if somebody from the media or the police are to
Speaker 8: approach me, I'm going to ask for help. This is
Speaker 8: a cult and I need help get me out of this.
Speaker 7: Before any of this happened, before Victor was arrested, it
Speaker 7: seemed like Krista might finally get to taste the outside world.
Speaker 7: It was back when River Road first moved to their
Speaker 7: headquarters from Minnesota to Washington State, back before Lindsay went public.
Speaker 7: Christa estimates there were still more than a hundred people
Speaker 7: following Victor. Her family settled in Bellingham, Washington, one of
Speaker 7: the cities that had a cluster of followers. Christa didn't
Speaker 7: live on a farm commune anymore. She didn't have to
Speaker 7: wear a prairie dress. She and the other cult members
Speaker 7: lived in regular houses in regular neighborhoods, with neighbors who
Speaker 7: had no idea what was really going on inside. She
Speaker 7: even tried to go to college. In River Road, boys
Speaker 7: sometimes went to college, never the girls, but Krista enrolled
Speaker 7: in a community college in Bellingham and decided to major
Speaker 7: in English, read all the books she loved without any
Speaker 7: threat of someone ripping them out of her hands and
Speaker 7: throwing them into a wood stove.
Speaker 3: She thought she could be a.
Speaker 7: Professor or maybe go to law school, and that excited her.
Speaker 7: Krista was friendly and personable. She made friends fast, the
Speaker 7: first friends she'd ever made who hadn't also grown up
Speaker 7: in a cult. Meeting new people felt like a novelty
Speaker 7: to Krista, since she never really had the opportunity before.
Speaker 7: But River Road leaders didn't like what Krista was up to.
Speaker 7: They suggested she drop out, a suggestion that Kristin knew
Speaker 7: was a requirement. I knew it wasn't completely up to me.
Speaker 7: I knew if I said no, that it would be
Speaker 7: a problem. They told her she would move from Bellingham, Washington,
Speaker 7: to Spokane, a city six hours inland, another pocket of
Speaker 7: River Road Fellowship believers life to there.
Speaker 8: That was the place that they brought the younger people
Speaker 8: to be essentially fixed. Anybody who was being seduced by
Speaker 8: the worlds or being corrupted by the worlds, they shipped
Speaker 8: him off to Spokane to be basically re educated and
Speaker 8: re manipulated, rebrainwashed, so that was what happened to me.
Speaker 7: In Spokane, Krista moved in with Jan and her husband.
Speaker 7: It was Jan who'd put Krista on extreme diets when
Speaker 7: she was eleven that left her hungry every night, what
Speaker 7: Christa called the worst year of her life. They grilled
Speaker 7: her on her personal life when she arrived. Do your
Speaker 7: friends from Bellingham still reach out to you? They asked, Oh, well,
Speaker 7: then you'll probably have to change your phone number. An
Speaker 7: elder told her from now on, her time with her
Speaker 7: parents would be limited to even though they were still
Speaker 7: faithful River Road followers. Christa got a couple of jobs
Speaker 7: to make money, one at Macy's and one at Baskin Robbins.
Speaker 7: After work, she came home for evening fellowships with the
Speaker 7: other church members. But then one day Victor Bernard was
Speaker 7: on the news and Lindsey and Jess were talking about
Speaker 7: what he'd done to them. What were you guys told
Speaker 7: about what was happening?
Speaker 8: So I think, you know, in order to answer this adequately,
Speaker 8: I need to back up a little bit. So throughout
Speaker 8: the time at the Shepherd's Camp, you know, Victor had
Speaker 8: we called it, revealed himself as an apostle, which apostle
Speaker 8: is somebody who is like a step under Jesus Christ.
Speaker 8: He called himself an apostle. He started to kind of
Speaker 8: emulate the Apostle Paul in the way that he spoke
Speaker 8: and the way that he wrote.
Speaker 7: Paul was the apostle who traveled around after Jesus' death
Speaker 7: spreading his teachings. Victor tried to emulate Paul in his clothing,
Speaker 7: his travel habits, his writing style.
Speaker 8: The Apostle Paul ended up in pro spent the rest
Speaker 8: of his life in prison in Italy, in this house
Speaker 8: with a soldier that kept him. So Victor he would
Speaker 8: start talking about, like if he went to prison and
Speaker 8: they could put him in prison for preaching the gospel.
Speaker 8: And in my mind, I'm like, we live in America,
Speaker 8: that's never going to happen. As a child, I'm like,
Speaker 8: we have freedom of religion. We can practice however we choose, Like,
Speaker 8: why would you go to prison? So it was very
Speaker 8: much on the forefront of our minds that Victor could
Speaker 8: go to prison, and that it was for his status
Speaker 8: in this world, and that it was for preaching the gospel.
Speaker 8: So when it happened, when it actually happened, the whole
Speaker 8: church was like, oh my god, it's happening. We're being persecuted.
Speaker 8: This is what we've been preparing for.
Speaker 7: Looking back, what do you make of that now that
Speaker 7: Victor was almost preparing everyone for him to go to prison,
Speaker 7: do you think that was strategic?
Speaker 9: Oh my god, yes, oh absolutely.
Speaker 8: He knew he was doing something illegal, and he probably
Speaker 8: knew that if he was caught he would go to prison,
Speaker 8: so in order to cover his behind and make it
Speaker 8: sound more righteous and holy than actually what was happening. Yeah,
Speaker 8: of course, it was a strategic, very strategic manipulation.
Speaker 7: So for some of them, Victor getting arrested may not
Speaker 7: have deterred their belief in him.
Speaker 3: It strengthened it.
Speaker 7: What he'd predicted was coming true.
Speaker 8: I don't know how many people actually believed that. I
Speaker 8: certainly didn't, but I tried to play the part, because
Speaker 8: what else.
Speaker 9: Are you going to do.
Speaker 1: Christa waited for the police or a journalist to approach her,
Speaker 1: for her chance to say, I'm in a cult, help
Speaker 1: me get out, but no one did, and over the
Speaker 1: year that followed that first news report, the church leader's
Speaker 1: control squeezed down even tighter. Christa was moved again, as
Speaker 1: always River Road kept its members on the move, not
Speaker 1: able to fully settle in This new place housed more
Speaker 1: of the church leaders in addition to Jan and her husband.
Speaker 1: Now they lived with Victor's wife and Lindsay's mom, Peggy,
Speaker 1: the mother of the woman who was now betraying them all,
Speaker 1: it seemed to some of them on national television. In
Speaker 1: the new house, Christa didn't have a private room anymore,
Speaker 1: so she had even less time alone. She shared a
Speaker 1: small room with another woman about her age.
Speaker 8: It was a tiny little room and they got us
Speaker 8: tiny little girl bunk beds, and the whole room was
Speaker 8: decorated like it was for five year olds. Like this
Speaker 8: room was insulting to the fact that we were both
Speaker 8: in our twenties.
Speaker 1: In Victor's absence, the directions and rules were the discretion
Speaker 1: of Jan and her husband, Ricky, for complicated reasons we
Speaker 1: won't get into here. Those are not their real names.
Speaker 1: For a long time, Jan played a central role in
Speaker 1: coaxing the young girls of the group to bend to
Speaker 1: Victor and his desires. Now, she and Ricky and the
Speaker 1: other leaders began to control Christa's finances. At first, it
Speaker 1: was pitched as help, which didn't seem like such a
Speaker 1: bad thing, but help would imply that she had a choice,
Speaker 1: and she really didn't.
Speaker 8: They made me log into my online banking to see
Speaker 8: where I was spending my money. That's when it came
Speaker 8: out that I'd had the tablet because there were some
Speaker 8: charges on there for like small charges for like Google
Speaker 8: and stuff like that. At first, I was like, oh
Speaker 8: my god, I have no idea what these are. And
Speaker 8: then they were like, come on, Kristin. So I had
Speaker 8: to tell them about the tablet. So that was a
Speaker 8: whole thing. Obviously, I gotten a ton of trouble.
Speaker 1: And that was when jan and Ricky said from now
Speaker 1: on every month she'd had to turn in her bank statements.
Speaker 8: So that he could look over them and see how
Speaker 8: I was spending my money.
Speaker 1: They put Christa on extreme diets again like when she
Speaker 1: was little.
Speaker 8: I did not want to be in more dietary bondage.
Speaker 1: But they had her do back to back so called
Speaker 1: liver glenses. And while the group had dropped the prairie
Speaker 1: dress attire, they still had opinions about what Krista wore
Speaker 1: and started to enact new rules. They went through her
Speaker 1: clothes and got rid of most of them.
Speaker 8: They told me what I couldn't couldn't wear, and then
Speaker 8: they took me to Value village and they bought me
Speaker 8: basically a whole new wardrobe.
Speaker 1: No leggings, more high necked shirts and skirts. One day,
Speaker 1: on her lunch break, she went to Goodwill and bought
Speaker 1: herself a sweater. She got in trouble for it when
Speaker 1: she got home.
Speaker 8: Basically, we're not allowed to buy anything unless you have
Speaker 8: approval because it needs to be They called it proving.
Speaker 8: There's a first in the Bible that says, prove all
Speaker 8: things hold fast that which is good, and so it
Speaker 8: had to be proved by somebody that was above me.
Speaker 8: So what I started doing was I started taking the
Speaker 8: money that I was funneling into that checking account and
Speaker 8: buying my own wardrobe, and I was keeping it in
Speaker 8: the trunk of my car. And what I would do
Speaker 8: was I would wear the clothes that they bought me
Speaker 8: out of the house, and before I got to work,
Speaker 8: i'd stop on like a remote area, and I'd quick
Speaker 8: change into something that I felt more comfortable in, and
Speaker 8: then on the way home, I'd stop and change.
Speaker 3: Back in.
Speaker 1: Christa was in physical therapy for a bad knee, but
Speaker 1: now Jane and Ricky said she couldn't go to appointments
Speaker 1: without someone to go with her, and no one was free,
Speaker 1: so she had to stop going to physical therapy.
Speaker 8: I was expected to go to work and come straight home.
Speaker 8: Don't stop at the store, anywhere you go, you need
Speaker 8: to have somebody with you. I didn't have a life
Speaker 8: of my own at all.
Speaker 3: Why do you think they were doing all this?
Speaker 8: Well, what they said was that it was to strengthen
Speaker 8: my walk with God. What it really was about was control.
Speaker 8: It was to cover their own lives. It was to
Speaker 8: protect themselves and their own darkness. To turn that phrase
Speaker 8: right back around on them. During this year, I was
Speaker 8: kind of slowly petering out. I was getting so tired.
Speaker 8: I was over it. I was so over it. I actually,
Speaker 8: at one point when I was at work, let it
Speaker 8: slip out that I didn't want to go home. I
Speaker 8: kind of like just side that under my breath. I
Speaker 8: was like, I don't want to go home. Somebody came
Speaker 8: up to me and was like, are you okay? Are
Speaker 8: you safe? I was like, yeah, I'm fine.
Speaker 5: I just.
Speaker 8: Having some problems with my roommates. And she's like, oh okay.
Speaker 8: I came to a point where I was driving down
Speaker 8: the road. You know, I had all this fear of
Speaker 8: if I left, that I would lose everything and I'd
Speaker 8: have eternal life, but I would maybe not get to
Speaker 8: be with my family, or I maybe wouldn't get to
Speaker 8: be with my loved ones. I'd maybe I'd be stuck
Speaker 8: on earth for the rest of my life, or you know,
Speaker 8: in some gen pop of heaven.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 8: So I had a lot of fear, and I remember
Speaker 8: driving down the road, and I remember exactly where I
Speaker 8: was in Spokane, and I had the conscious thought, it
Speaker 8: was almost thought that was like imposed upon me. Then
Speaker 8: I was like, I don't care what happened. When Jesus
Speaker 8: Christ comes back, whatever happens to me, it cannot possibly
Speaker 8: be worse than this. That thought scared me because we
Speaker 8: were so manipulated into believing that even though this life
Speaker 8: was hard and there was a lot of suffering and
Speaker 8: the leadership was imposing a lot of control on us,
Speaker 8: that that was freedom. We were told that that was
Speaker 8: freedom and that the outside world was bondage. They could
Speaker 8: not reconcile that I could not because I was like,
Speaker 8: this is bondage. I am in prison. I'm almost being
Speaker 8: held against my will. I know that I could walk
Speaker 8: out that door anytime, but I will lose everything, my friends,
Speaker 8: I would lose my home, I'd lose my parents, I'd
Speaker 8: lose my sister. I would lose any sense of familiarity
Speaker 8: that I had whatsoever. If I out that door and
Speaker 8: chose to never come back.
Speaker 7: Christa wrote a goodbye note and hid it away.
Speaker 8: I was intending on leaving in the middle of the
Speaker 8: night and just leaving the note, and I was like,
Speaker 8: I'll live in my car, but I wasn't quite there yet.
Speaker 8: It was really still really scared. Christa worked at a
Speaker 8: call center. Now it was the only time she was
Speaker 8: out of view of the other followers. She'd tell them
Speaker 8: she had to go in earlier, stay late at work
Speaker 8: just to be out of the house. I was saying
Speaker 8: that I was working like these fifteen hour days, which
Speaker 8: is ridiculous.
Speaker 7: Come on, and soon enough they'd know she was lying
Speaker 7: when they looked at her bank statements. But you know,
Speaker 7: I didn't know what else to say. Around this time,
Speaker 7: she started casually seeing a guy. Christie's co worker set
Speaker 7: her up with her son, and so sometimes she'd claimed
Speaker 7: to work late to spend time with him. One evening
Speaker 7: she went over to his house.
Speaker 8: Hadn't been checking my phone, and I checked my phone.
Speaker 8: It was late, and I had like fifteen missed calls
Speaker 8: the people I lived with, voicemails, texts, where are you?
Speaker 8: I had an anxiety attack and I told him what
Speaker 8: was going on. I was like, I'm in a cult
Speaker 8: and I need to get out. I don't know how,
Speaker 8: and I'm not quite ready yet, but I need I
Speaker 8: have to figure it out. And he was very kind,
Speaker 8: very understanding, and I went home and I kind of
Speaker 8: tried to explain it away that I worked late, which
Speaker 8: nobody believed.
Speaker 7: A week later, Krista was at this guy's house again
Speaker 7: when she got a phone call from a River Road
Speaker 7: Fellowship Bishop Eric, a young guy in his twenties who
Speaker 7: the church had decided was leadership material. Bishop Eric was
Speaker 7: a few years older than Krista, and she knowed him
Speaker 7: since childhood. He'd always been kind to her. Bishop Eric
Speaker 7: said he wanted to meet with her.
Speaker 8: Ricky and Jan and I hung up the phone and
Speaker 8: I looked at this young man and I said, I
Speaker 8: need to get out of there, and he was like, well,
Speaker 8: what do you need? I said, I need place to
Speaker 8: stay and he goes, well, you can stay with me.
Speaker 8: He said, if you leave today, you can come here
Speaker 8: and you can stay with me for as long as
Speaker 8: you need. I was like, you know what, I'm going
Speaker 8: to go to this meeting and they're going to call
Speaker 8: me out on my quote unquote darkness and I'm just
Speaker 8: gonna lay it out. And I suddenly had this like
Speaker 8: burst of bravery.
Speaker 7: I was.
Speaker 9: So done, like so done.
Speaker 7: Christy went back to the house and down to the
Speaker 7: basement for their meeting. Jan said, next to her on
Speaker 7: the couch, Ricky was there. Bishop Eric sat across the
Speaker 7: coffee table.
Speaker 8: From her, and he's kind of laying back and he
Speaker 8: has legs crossed. I remember he said, first off, Krista,
Speaker 8: we love you. That's how he started. He said, but
Speaker 8: there's some darkness here that I think we need to address.
Speaker 8: He said, So let's start with these long hours that
Speaker 8: you've said you've been working. And I said, let me
Speaker 8: stop you right there.
Speaker 7: Christa told them she was seeing someone.
Speaker 8: And I said, in frankly, I'm not in a place
Speaker 8: where I can live here anymore, either, so I think
Speaker 8: it would be best for me to pack a bag
Speaker 8: and leave today.
Speaker 3: Wow, how did you feel, in that moment.
Speaker 8: Kind of in shock that the words actually came out
Speaker 8: of my mouth because I said it with such conviction,
Speaker 8: and I wasn't scared at all. I just was very
Speaker 8: matter of fact. And the room got very quiet.
Speaker 7: Jane asked Christa about this guy she'd been seeing. Then
Speaker 7: Bishop Eric started talking, but she tuned it out. The
Speaker 7: whole scene floated away from her. She was hardly even there.
Speaker 8: It took all of the strength I possibly had that
Speaker 8: I built up my entire life to bring me to
Speaker 8: that moment right there.
Speaker 9: Honestly, I was exhausted.
Speaker 8: I think they made sure that I actually meant what
Speaker 8: I said, and I was like, yeah. Eric is like, well,
Speaker 8: you have to go up and tell the rest of
Speaker 8: the household, and he said, would you like me to
Speaker 8: stay while you do that or do you want me
Speaker 8: to leave? And I said I'd like you to stay.
Speaker 8: I went upstairs and told them, and they helped me
Speaker 8: pack a bag, you know. I packed a suitcase and
Speaker 8: a bag of toilet trees and said my goodbyes.
Speaker 7: As she was leaving, Ricky said, do you want us
Speaker 7: to call your parents? Christa said no, she'd call them.
Speaker 8: He said, well, you better call them. Right away, because
Speaker 8: otherwise they're going to hear from somebody else. I got
Speaker 8: in my car and I started driving, and I decided
Speaker 8: to take the back roads, and I called my dad
Speaker 8: and my mom and I told them what happened. They
Speaker 8: were surprised. My dad said, I don't understand christ. He said,
Speaker 8: everybody told me you were so happy and that you
Speaker 8: were doing so well. And I said, yeah, Dad, everybody
Speaker 8: told you that, But did you ever hear that from me.
Speaker 8: He didn't really say anything, you know, And he's like, well,
Speaker 8: he said, I have your back, honey, I have your back.
Speaker 8: You know, I will always have your back. And I
Speaker 8: knew he didn't understand. Even though he was going to
Speaker 8: try and make sense of it, I knew that it
Speaker 8: was not going to be easy, especially for him. My
Speaker 8: mom just wanted me to be happy. That's all my
Speaker 8: mom has ever wanted was for me to be happy.
Speaker 8: My dad is a little bit of a tougher nut
Speaker 8: to crack. So I lived with this young man for
Speaker 8: a little while, and then I found my own place.
Speaker 8: I got a cat. I lived in my little one
Speaker 8: bedroom apartment for about nine months, and during that time,
Speaker 8: my whole I mean, my whole world was falling apart.
Speaker 8: I birled into a very deep depression. I almost drank
Speaker 8: myself to death. I ended up in the psych word months.
Speaker 8: It was not pretty. It was not a pretty time
Speaker 8: in my life.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 8: I was free, but I didn't know what to do
Speaker 8: with that freedom because I'd never had it before. I
Speaker 8: didn't know how to exist as a human adult in
Speaker 8: this world. Like I had no frame of reference whatsoever.
Speaker 8: So I really fell apart. I chose to move home
Speaker 8: because my dad got diagnosed with cancer New Year's Eve
Speaker 8: of twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, to moved home, and it
Speaker 8: was really when the healing process began for me.
Speaker 7: Her parents were still River Road Followers when she moved in.
Speaker 7: Christ has spent a lot of time with her.
Speaker 8: Dad during the first several months I lived there, and
Speaker 8: I was there to support him and I worked with him.
Speaker 8: But he really didn't get it. He really didn't. He
Speaker 8: would try to understand, but he just didn't get it.
Speaker 8: He just could not put the fact that these things
Speaker 8: that happened to me.
Speaker 9: Were so bad.
Speaker 8: He's like, well, getting help with your finances is a
Speaker 8: good thing, getting help with your diet is a good thing.
Speaker 8: These are good things, and you know, in the right circumstances,
Speaker 8: they can be good things.
Speaker 9: It was how they were executed with me that was wrong.
Speaker 7: In the spring of twenty sixteen, Christ's parents visited Spokane.
Speaker 7: Her dad talked to Victor's wife, who'd been living with
Speaker 7: Krista before she left. Christa says she was honest with him.
Speaker 7: She laid out what Christa had been through in that house.
Speaker 7: They came home from this trip.
Speaker 8: And my dad sat down with me in our living
Speaker 8: room and he's like, can I talk to you for
Speaker 8: a few minutes, And I said, you know, I was like, yeah.
Speaker 8: He goes, I want you to know that I believe you.
Speaker 8: Everything that you said happened to you and Spokane. I
Speaker 8: believe you, and I am so sorry that you went
Speaker 8: through that.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 8: You know, I took me a minute to absorb what
Speaker 8: he had just said, and I said, that's all I've
Speaker 8: ever wanted to hear from you. That sit down with
Speaker 8: him and me, where he said I believe you and
Speaker 8: I'm so sorry that you went through all of that.
Speaker 8: It fixed something in me because I knew that I
Speaker 8: had his support, and that's something that a lot of
Speaker 8: cult survivors don't get the support of their family. When
Speaker 8: they're coming out of it, their family gets left in
Speaker 8: the situation and they never understand and some of them
Speaker 8: never even speak to each other again. But I got
Speaker 8: incredibly lucky because I had a mom and a dad
Speaker 8: who cared about me more than they cared about the
Speaker 8: principle of the church. And it was absolutely the one thing,
Speaker 8: the one thing, if I can pick one thing, it
Speaker 8: is the one thing that allowed me to begin to heal.
Speaker 8: And I did, and I still am. I got sober
Speaker 8: because I knew that I needed to crawl out of
Speaker 8: the bottle if I was actually going to be able
Speaker 8: to address these things. I took about a year to
Speaker 8: do that, and then I started to go to therapy
Speaker 8: and I did that for several years. And now I'm
Speaker 8: married to a wonderful man. I have an incredible little
Speaker 8: boy who's never going to be told that he's less
Speaker 8: than who he is, and he's going to get to
Speaker 8: be anything he wants to be, and I'm going to
Speaker 8: support him in that. And he is never going to
Speaker 8: experience the things that I experienced as a child, not
Speaker 8: if I can help it, because he is a beautiful
Speaker 8: human exactly who he is, and I'll be damned if
Speaker 8: anybody tries to take that away from him next time.
Speaker 4: On The Turning, her brother posted something on Facebook asking
Speaker 4: like to pray for her, and I immediately messaged him
Speaker 4: what is going on?
Speaker 3: What is going on with jess?
Speaker 7: The Turning is a production of Rococo Punch and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 7: It's written and produced by Erica Lance and Me. Our
Speaker 7: story editor is Emily Foreman. Mixing and sound designed by
Speaker 7: James Trout. Grace Doe is our production assistant. Fact checking
Speaker 7: by Andrea Lopez Cruzado. Our executive producers are John Parratti
Speaker 7: and Jessica Alpert at Rococo Punch, and Katrina Norvella and
Speaker 7: Nikki Etur at iHeart Podcasts. You can follow us on
Speaker 7: Instagram at Rococo Punch, and you can reach out via
Speaker 7: email The Turning at Rococo punch dot com.
Speaker 3: I'm Alan Lance Lesser. Thanks for listening.