Speaker 1: Trust me? Do you trust me?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Ever?
Speaker 1: Lead you as trust? This is the truth, the only truth.
Speaker 2: If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't
Speaker 2: welcome to trust me. The podcast about cults, extreme belief
Speaker 2: and manipulation from two spiritual soldiers who've actually experienced it.
Speaker 4: I'm Lola Blanc.
Speaker 3: And I'm Megan Elizabeth, a spiritual soldier to My Core
Speaker 3: to Your Core. This week, writer Harrison Hill joins us
Speaker 3: to discuss his new book, The Oracle's Daughter, which follows
Speaker 3: the rise and fall of a small cult called the
Speaker 3: Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Court. WHOA, it's quite a mouthful.
Speaker 3: He explains what the religious.
Speaker 2: Landscape in America looked like at the time, with the
Speaker 2: unrest of the sixties transitioning into a new Christianity movement,
Speaker 2: and how this group's leader, Lila Carter, who later became Deborah,
Speaker 2: began her spiritual journey on a commune called the Bear Tribe.
Speaker 3: The Bear Tribe is something I would probably join. We'll
Speaker 3: discuss the beginning of Leila's own visions of giving birth
Speaker 3: to what she called spiritual soldiers, how her following grew,
Speaker 3: and the parallels between her and Shaker leader Anne Lee
Speaker 3: we'll talk about how the group became more controlling and
Speaker 3: cruel over time, changing people's names to words like despise,
Speaker 3: using physical punishment on its members, and even kidnapping a baby.
Speaker 3: And finally we'll touch on how Llila's daughter, Sarah, the
Speaker 3: subject of Harrison's book, found her way out. Very inspiring
Speaker 3: story lots to dive into before we do that diving.
Speaker 2: Since we're professional divers, are we No? I literally moved
Speaker 2: in with my dad to avoid the diving program in
Speaker 2: my school in middle school.
Speaker 4: You I am like, like diving in the water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in Utah, my middle school had like a diving
Speaker 2: like is.
Speaker 3: The Mormon thing, like you guys are gonna have to
Speaker 3: live in the ocean.
Speaker 2: No, it was just like the pe decided like all right,
Speaker 2: this quarter we're doing diving, and I was like, I'm
Speaker 2: not doing that, So I'm gonna live with dad instead
Speaker 2: because I that's how much I'm not a diver.
Speaker 3: I learned to dive in a swimming pool. Well yeah,
Speaker 3: this was a swimming pool as well.
Speaker 4: It wasn't the ocean.
Speaker 3: There wasn't the ocean and Utah, Yeah, okay, anyway, we're
Speaker 3: not divers.
Speaker 2: But on this podcast, sometimes we.
Speaker 4: Dive into stories.
Speaker 3: I get what you're caays, and you're probably wondering what
Speaker 3: my cultiest thing is.
Speaker 4: You're probably wanting to dive. Please let me dive.
Speaker 3: Okay, diving straight in This week, according to The New
Speaker 3: York Times and every other publication in the world, the
Speaker 3: founder of One Taste.
Speaker 2: Oh that was mine. Shit, It's okay, We'll share it.
Speaker 2: We'll share it.
Speaker 4: Nicole. How do you say her last name?
Speaker 3: Day?
Speaker 4: Don't?
Speaker 2: I don't know Day don't. They don't.
Speaker 3: She's gone to nine years in prison. She deserves. She
Speaker 3: as a hefty.
Speaker 4: Million upon million dollar fine.
Speaker 3: We did do a rewind episode because we did speak
Speaker 3: to somebody who very much was a part of One Taste.
Speaker 4: Her name was Alana oak.
Speaker 2: Our back again, another last name. I don't know how
Speaker 2: to say. Why do last names need to be so hard?
Speaker 2: No one's ever said mine correctly? So like, I get it,
Speaker 2: but I'm sorry. If we're butchering, they will call me.
Speaker 4: A Lola blank.
Speaker 2: And by the way, if I mispronounce your name, you
Speaker 2: can call me Lola blank anytime you want.
Speaker 3: We care about mispronouncing names except for Nicoles.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she sucks, Nicole de Doo.
Speaker 3: She really sucks, and tell, since we're sharing a cultius thing,
Speaker 3: tell the people a little bit what Nicole got herself into.
Speaker 2: So for those who were not following this One Taste
Speaker 2: saga that's been going on for years, this was a
Speaker 2: self acclaimed like wellness and empowerment company. They had this
Speaker 2: technique called orgasmic meditation and they were trying to become
Speaker 2: as mainstream as yoga. All these celebrities participated in it.
Speaker 4: Then it must be normal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course Gwyneth Paltrow participated in it, so so
Speaker 2: how could she not? And like it involved stuff like
Speaker 2: group orgasm and was sort of like purporting to be
Speaker 2: this like female led, like feminist, like you know, women
Speaker 2: should have orgasms, they're good for you thing. But then
Speaker 2: of course they were forcing labor from their followers, unpaid labor.
Speaker 2: She was coercing people in all kinds of ways and
Speaker 2: controlling their lives, as cul leaders tend to do.
Speaker 4: So she has finally been sentenced.
Speaker 3: Yes, as well as her co oc comp was Cherwit's
Speaker 3: Rachel Cherwitz.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were also. I'm reading from the Times dot
Speaker 2: Com an article written by Joshua Thurston called the Fall
Speaker 2: of One Taste Orgasm meditation cult leader Nicole Dato or
Speaker 2: however you say it. It says they used abusive and
Speaker 2: manipulative tactics to gain control over some of the participants
Speaker 2: when they were unable to pay the fees for the courses,
Speaker 2: so they would force them to settle these debts by
Speaker 2: working without pay, including manual labor as well as sexual
Speaker 2: services exactly in some cases seven days, oh fucking week.
Speaker 2: It doesn't say fucking I added the fucking yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, the sexual abuse is just built into the
Speaker 3: system under the guise of like orgasms for women, and
Speaker 3: then suddenly you're the vagina model that's supposed to be
Speaker 3: uh getting orgasms.
Speaker 2: It's just like, what the hell, yeah, because the conceit
Speaker 2: of it is that someone else who has clothing on
Speaker 2: masturbates a woman, and so like you are expected to
Speaker 2: participate publicly in this like sexual ritual, which I'm sure, well,
Speaker 2: I've actually spoken to at least one person who participated
Speaker 2: and had a great time, but not everybody is going
Speaker 2: to have that.
Speaker 3: A year suggested that we go to it when we
Speaker 3: first started this podcast in the early early days.
Speaker 4: I was like, yeh, we were like, let's go look
Speaker 4: at it.
Speaker 3: Not for as investment to join it as investigative journalists,
Speaker 3: of which we turned out never to, thank God, because
Speaker 3: I would have joined it. You would have joined it,
Speaker 3: for I would have joined it for sure. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm glad we never went. I'm glad that they're being
Speaker 3: held accountable, and I'm just feel so sorry for all
Speaker 3: these women whose body was used and what should have
Speaker 3: been a very empowering group.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like the time wasted to Sometimes I think
Speaker 2: about that. I'm just like the years of your life
Speaker 2: that is taken from you when you are exploited by
Speaker 2: people like this. Yes, there's so many other wonderful things
Speaker 2: people could be doing with their lives besides being exploited
Speaker 2: by fucking Nicole Didaru. So I'm glad she's finally facing
Speaker 2: some consequences for her actions. Yeah, well, do you know
Speaker 2: who is giving nobody orgasms?
Speaker 4: Pray tell who?
Speaker 3: And Lee a shaker that we're going to get to
Speaker 3: in this podcast.
Speaker 2: That's right, because the leader of the Aggressive Christiani Emissions
Speaker 2: Training Corps modeled herself after Ann Lee, and you'll get
Speaker 2: to hear all about that.
Speaker 4: Shall we talk to Harrison. Let's do.
Speaker 2: Welcome Harrison Hill to trust me. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for joining us today.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so looking
Speaker 1: forward to this conversation me too.
Speaker 2: Your writing is so literary and gripping for something that
Speaker 2: is journalism, like I feel like normally when I read
Speaker 2: a book about something from a journalistic point of view,
Speaker 2: it can be quite dry. Shouldn't say normally, Sometimes it
Speaker 2: can be quite dry. But it was so like gripping
Speaker 2: the way. You're really beautiful writer, So.
Speaker 4: I just want to say that, thank you.
Speaker 2: So the book I'm referring to is The Oracle's Daughter,
Speaker 2: The Rise and Fall of an American Cult, And so
Speaker 2: of course we must first ask you what drew you
Speaker 2: to this topic.
Speaker 1: The story began for me back in twenty eighteen actually,
Speaker 1: when my younger brother and his wife moved to an
Speaker 1: apartment in Brooklyn, New York, which is where I myself live,
Speaker 1: and their apartment flooded one day, and this woman across
Speaker 1: the hallway from them came by and was like, let
Speaker 1: me help clean up, and she did. And so in
Speaker 1: the weeks following that, they of course became friendly and
Speaker 1: you know, just got to know each other. And then
Speaker 1: eventually this woman revealed that she'd grown up in a
Speaker 1: cult and that it was a cult run by her mother,
Speaker 1: and they, of course, my brother and his wife were like, whoa,
Speaker 1: that's wild. We know somebody who's a writer who's always
Speaker 1: looking for interesting stories. We should introduce you to him.
Speaker 1: And that, of course was me and the woman, of course,
Speaker 1: was Sarah Green. So we had our first interview back
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen. But yeah, it all began with a
Speaker 1: flood in an apartment.
Speaker 4: Whow kind of biblical?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, very serendipitous way
Speaker 2: to get a story. All right, Well, talk to us
Speaker 2: about Lylah Green, who later became Deborah, but let's start
Speaker 2: with calling her Lilah because that was her birth name. Sure,
Speaker 2: what was her early life like? She was kind of
Speaker 2: an overachiever initially, right, and we're talking about the leader here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the group in question is a group called
Speaker 1: the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corp. I mean, it's quite
Speaker 1: a mouthful. Whenever I say it, people's eyes kind of
Speaker 1: expand as it gets to the end of the phrase.
Speaker 2: The word aggressive, including that in the title is a
Speaker 2: bold move, right.
Speaker 1: It's not ambiguous what their vibe is.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, anyways, the leaders of the group were these people
Speaker 1: Jim and Lylah Green and Lilah was really the kind
Speaker 1: of spiritual head of the group. She was the real
Speaker 1: person at the top. But before she was a cult leader,
Speaker 1: before she was you know, being tried for all these
Speaker 1: various horrific crimes. She just a young woman in West Sacramento,
Speaker 1: growing up in a very poor family. Her parents divorced
Speaker 1: when she was young. Her father was an alcoholic, her
Speaker 1: mom worked as an a as a she worked at
Speaker 1: an almond processing facility. You know, just a lot of
Speaker 1: poverty and difficulty in her early life. Her younger brother
Speaker 1: died when she was in her early twenties, and this
Speaker 1: for her was just this like incredibly cataclysmic event for her.
Speaker 1: She just was just completely thrown and up to that
Speaker 1: point she'd been something of a hippie and was like,
Speaker 1: I've got to start over, I've got to do something new,
Speaker 1: and so with them, and in practice for her was
Speaker 1: that she joined a back to the land commune called
Speaker 1: the Bear Tribe, which was located about an hour outside
Speaker 1: of Sacramento. This is in the early nineteen seventies. Sorry
Speaker 1: if I didn't mention that earlier. And yeah, she just
Speaker 1: fell in with these group of people doing all this
Speaker 1: wild stuff out in the woods.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna pause you for a sec.
Speaker 4: Much time, a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean well, first of all, I just want
Speaker 3: to say, like she sounds like when she was in
Speaker 3: high school and before she joined the Bear tribe, which
Speaker 3: we need to do an episode on the Bear tribe.
Speaker 4: That was fascinating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like she was a very I would
Speaker 3: imagine her going into woman's studies like the top of
Speaker 3: her class, like, yeah, the treasurer, like a type a personality.
Speaker 1: I mean she literally was the treasurer of her of
Speaker 1: maybe her junior high school class. That's very apt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she was this girl's vice president of her high school.
Speaker 1: She was a real achiever. I mean, she was a
Speaker 1: very very smart young woman who would read ed Girl
Speaker 1: and Poe to for her younger siblings. She's a beautiful
Speaker 1: writer in this kind of wild way. The mailings that
Speaker 1: she made in this in this cult were very well written,
Speaker 1: even though they were kind of insane.
Speaker 4: I didn't notice that. I was like, that's crazy, but
Speaker 4: it's well written. It's written. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, she as a young woman, she you know,
Speaker 1: her mom is off working at this almond processing facility.
Speaker 1: Her dad is off somewhere else, and so she's responsible
Speaker 1: for taking care of the kids, and she was very diligent,
Speaker 1: very you know, type a as you were saying earlier, Megan.
Speaker 1: But she gets to college and then it's the late sixties,
Speaker 1: it's the early seven is she's sort of letting free,
Speaker 1: and so she had this real change in perspective, as
Speaker 1: a lot of young people at the time did. But
Speaker 1: for her, you know, she was just a woman who'd
Speaker 1: always felt things incredibly deeply. Whatever she was doing, she
Speaker 1: was doing to like the nth degree. And so when
Speaker 1: she was a kid, that meant she was being very
Speaker 1: accomplished in school. When she was a hippie, that meant
Speaker 1: she was being a full bore hippie. And when she
Speaker 1: was a cult leader, she was a.
Speaker 2: Full cult leader, committing to everything. Can you just talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about I mean, we obviously all know
Speaker 2: that a bunch of people joined Colts in the sixties
Speaker 2: and seventies, but do you talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: that era and how it connects to Christianity, because that's
Speaker 2: something we've talked about quite a bit on here, and
Speaker 2: how it seems so contradictory that they were so linked
Speaker 2: at that time, but yet they were right.
Speaker 1: Well, so, I mean the most I would story from
Speaker 1: a very big picture lens to say that, you know,
Speaker 1: as I'm sure many of your listeners know, like cults
Speaker 1: emerge often emerge out of periods of great transition or
Speaker 1: social instability. People are looking for security, They're looking for
Speaker 1: some kind of spiritual comfort. And if someone knocks on
Speaker 1: your door and they're like waving little flyers and your
Speaker 1: life is sort of unstable, you're much more likely to
Speaker 1: follow them, as did the connection with Christianity. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the counterculture, it affected all parts of American society. It
Speaker 1: just seeped into every little nook and cranny, and American
Speaker 1: Christianity was not immune to that. There were parts of
Speaker 1: the Church that really took on a kind of hippyish sensibility,
Speaker 1: and in many ways sometimes it was kind of funny,
Speaker 1: Like I thought, there was one person who talked about
Speaker 1: how hippies would sort of coyly refer to this one
Speaker 1: versus it would quote Genesis and say, you know, Genesis
Speaker 1: says let the earth bring forth grass, and they would
Speaker 1: use that as a kind of justification for smoking marijuana.
Speaker 1: Or there was a bumper secure. I found where it
Speaker 1: turned the anti war slogan hell no we won't go.
Speaker 1: They turned it into a kind of proselytizing phrase. It
Speaker 1: would be hell question mark no we won't go. So
Speaker 1: some of it was really funny and some of it
Speaker 1: I think was really sincere and frankly kind of beautiful,
Speaker 1: because you know, American Christianity at the time had been
Speaker 1: i mean just a painted extremely broad strokes. There'd been
Speaker 1: you know, coming out of World War Two. People wanted stability,
Speaker 1: and American Christianity reflected that, and so the children of
Speaker 1: the people who had been in World War Two were
Speaker 1: really wanting something different, and in terms of Christianity, what
Speaker 1: they wanted was a more embodied, more emotionally connected kind
Speaker 1: of faith. What that meant was that in terms of
Speaker 1: doctrine things could get a little hazy. They weren't so
Speaker 1: focused on like exactly what is the theology. It was
Speaker 1: more about feeling. It was more about emotion.
Speaker 4: It was more vibes.
Speaker 1: It was more vibes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeahseduff was vibes and Christianity was vibes.
Speaker 3: But definitely like hippie bearer tribe pipe blind to Christianity
Speaker 3: is something That is so fascinating to me because it
Speaker 3: is sometimes a leap, but so many people were willing
Speaker 3: to take it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So so many people went from free love to
Speaker 2: highly controlled Christian groups, which is really fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, to me, it's all kind of a different
Speaker 1: expression of the same impulse. Like, so I think that
Speaker 1: the basic kind of aquifer of all this is the
Speaker 1: same body of water. How it comes out is quite
Speaker 1: different and sometimes like dramatically different. But for people who
Speaker 1: feel things in an extreme way, they're looking for extreme expression.
Speaker 3: When they're at the Bear Tribe, A man named Jim
Speaker 3: comes along, and at the Bear Tribe they're kind of
Speaker 3: just out in the wilderness, like beaten drums pretending to
Speaker 3: be Native American, pretending to be Native American.
Speaker 4: And her I want to call her Lilah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're calling her Lila for now. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Jim and Lilah at first, are like they're not getting along.
Speaker 1: Well, Jim seemed.
Speaker 2: Crazy at first, right, Yeah, Jim seemed like he was
Speaker 2: going to be the one who was sending people off
Speaker 2: the loopy deep end.
Speaker 4: Yes, what changed?
Speaker 1: Yeah? What changed? Well, they would say that God intervened.
Speaker 1: I think what's also true is that Jim got very ill,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, for someone living in a back
Speaker 1: to land commune, is not exactly shocking. There's not a
Speaker 1: lot of sanitation that happens in a place like that.
Speaker 1: And so he came down with something perhaps hepatitis, and Lilah,
Speaker 1: who had previously been just like totally at odds with
Speaker 1: him because they were both very intense people and there
Speaker 1: was a kind of competition in their intensity. Anyways, he
Speaker 1: got sick and she felt called to sort of take
Speaker 1: care of him. She had previously stolen something from his
Speaker 1: tent and Jim had forgiven her and that had like
Speaker 1: warm some of the ice between them. But as a
Speaker 1: result of her taking care of him, she one night
Speaker 1: was called by God to go to his tepee and
Speaker 1: strip naked and give herself to him. And so as
Speaker 1: a result of that they were pretty permanently a couple
Speaker 1: since then.
Speaker 2: God definitely told her to do that, and then still
Speaker 2: are together to this day.
Speaker 3: Two things to that, I mean, one thing, when she
Speaker 3: stole food from Gem's tent, he didn't know it was her,
Speaker 3: and he beat the shit out of a one armed
Speaker 3: man that he thought did it. So we have a
Speaker 3: little bit of a look in god Gem's personality. And
Speaker 3: then number two she was topless a lot like this
Speaker 3: was a woman who was just like, I'll be topless.
Speaker 2: But again, and the setting is they are pretending to
Speaker 2: be tribal people.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I found the period where they leave that particular group
Speaker 2: and before they start the cult interesting because it seems
Speaker 2: like their lives just get really small. And she starts
Speaker 2: kind of feeling crazy and stir crazy, trapped, and her
Speaker 2: response to feeling trapped was then to start having these
Speaker 2: sort of visions.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the way began is that she started to
Speaker 1: feel called by God that he wanted her to start
Speaker 1: raising up an army, that the world was going to
Speaker 1: end soon, and that she needed to produce spiritual soldiers
Speaker 1: who would help hasten the end of the world. And
Speaker 1: so what that literally meant was she would become sort
Speaker 1: of she would feel the presence of God. She would
Speaker 1: get down on the floor, she would start moaning and
Speaker 1: grunting and screaming as if she were a woman in labor,
Speaker 1: and she would quote unquote give birth to spiritual soldiers,
Speaker 1: which you know, there was nothing there physically, but she
Speaker 1: said there were thousands of spirits that you know, over
Speaker 1: the years came out of her, and those spirits kind
Speaker 1: of went over the world and brought forth God's will,
Speaker 1: And so that was one of the first kind of
Speaker 1: rituals that she was engaged with. A very interesting thing
Speaker 1: about her is that sometimes people ask me, like, you know,
Speaker 1: how could she trick people into following her and all
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and then but to her, I mean,
Speaker 1: my reading of it at least is that she wasn't
Speaker 1: tricking anybody. She sincerely believed what she was saying. This
Speaker 1: was a very heartfelt belief in her singular connection to God.
Speaker 1: And there's something about that makes it even more tragic
Speaker 1: to me that she it wasn't sort of nefarious in
Speaker 1: her own mind, In her ow mind, she was doing
Speaker 1: tremendous good.
Speaker 2: Right right as I was first reading the first scene
Speaker 2: sort of where you set up that she's having these
Speaker 2: spiritual births or whatever. Of course, the first image that
Speaker 2: came to my mind was the movie The Testament of Annlee.
Speaker 2: And like three pages later you start talking about ann
Speaker 2: Lee fascinating women, both of them and the connections between
Speaker 2: them are so fascinating. Can you, briefly, can you just
Speaker 2: tell us who Annlee is? Because a lot of people
Speaker 2: might not know absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'd love to sort of go a little
Speaker 1: bit broader as well, if that's okay with you all, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just to sort of give a general sense of this book.
Speaker 1: This book is about this woman, Sarah, who escaped her
Speaker 1: mother Lyla's cult. It's also about the rise and fall
Speaker 1: of this cult, but it's also about much more than that.
Speaker 1: It's about American history and American religious history and how
Speaker 1: this one group kind of manifest and actors the kind
Speaker 1: of Petri dish. It showed the broader sweep of American
Speaker 1: religious history was kind of manifest in this group. And
Speaker 1: so for me, what was important in this telling the
Speaker 1: story was to make it clear that this isn't just
Speaker 1: a story of one group. It's about the US more broadly.
Speaker 1: And so you mentioned the Anlee and the Shakers. So
Speaker 1: this was this group of religious dissidents that came over
Speaker 1: from England in the late eighteenth century, and they they're
Speaker 1: one of the groups that's profiled in this book. I
Speaker 1: bring in sort of case studies of some kind of
Speaker 1: religious movements throughout the book to just sort of demonstrate
Speaker 1: how the cult in my book is in fact on
Speaker 1: this continuum that contains other cults or religious groups throughout
Speaker 1: American history, but the Shakers are an especially interesting example.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure many of your listeners and viewers saw
Speaker 1: the Testament of Anlely. I myself saw it. It's a
Speaker 1: very generally accurate rendering of this woman, Ann Lee's life.
Speaker 1: So Annlee was born in the eighteenth century. She had
Speaker 1: several children, who all of them died. She had a
Speaker 1: lot of really horrible experience with childbirth. As a young woman,
Speaker 1: she'd been able to see and perhaps even hear her
Speaker 1: parents as they were having sex in this sort of
Speaker 1: squalid shack where they lived. So the result of all
Speaker 1: of this, which was that she had a very she
Speaker 1: was very against sex, really, I mean sex was for her.
Speaker 1: There was just so much wrong with the world was
Speaker 1: manifest in sex. And so just to make it all
Speaker 1: summarize it much more cleanly, like, she founded this group,
Speaker 1: this group of people called the Shakers that would shake
Speaker 1: to manifest God's presence in their lives. And they were celibate,
Speaker 1: and they built a number of villages in America. And
Speaker 1: those villages have really dwindled since the nineteenth century for
Speaker 1: reasons I probably don't even have to explain, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a celebrate, you're not having a lot of children, and.
Speaker 3: You might have been having a lot of spiritual children.
Speaker 3: Sure exactly, thank you, yes, very but yeah, but no, Lila,
Speaker 3: Lila in this group, she was she was sort of
Speaker 3: obsessed with Ann Lee. She became convinced that she herself
Speaker 3: was a kind of second coming of Anlee. I think
Speaker 3: that there was maybe an element of I mean, she
Speaker 3: was sort of like a fan, you know, she was
Speaker 3: like she was like an Ann Lee stand. She was
Speaker 3: like I love her, I love her, I love her.
Speaker 3: Vibe you and so yeah exactly. And so the group
Speaker 3: AGGRESSI Christianity Missions Training Corps. They would do these Shaker dances.
Speaker 1: And the Shaker rituals, and they even had a shake
Speaker 1: They had a restaurant for a little while they called
Speaker 1: Shaker Square. They made Shaker boxes and Shaker furniture and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. They kind of left it
Speaker 1: behind somewhat after a kind of brief foray into it.
Speaker 1: But for me it was all part of this broader context,
Speaker 1: this idea that like this isn't just one group. This
Speaker 1: is a group that I always think of them as
Speaker 1: a kind of Forest Gump of American religious history. Like
Speaker 1: they there's an element of them that's always popping up,
Speaker 1: you know, we always see them in all these different ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Interesting you bringing up and Lee losing all those babies.
Speaker 2: Did Lilah's behavior begin to change after she lost her brother?
Speaker 2: Do we think that's a contributor to the shift?
Speaker 1: I mean, I obviously, obviously I can't speak for her,
Speaker 1: but as an outside of the observer observing her life,
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely I would say that I think that
Speaker 1: the loss of her brother was the I don't know,
Speaker 1: the kind of black hole of her life. Everything circled
Speaker 1: around that point of gravity.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating because so much of the time that type
Speaker 2: of loss can be anything that sends people into colds.
Speaker 2: But then the rare personality type is that's the thing
Speaker 2: that I guess leads them to start one. You gotta
Speaker 2: find meanings somehow.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So how did she trans She starts having these
Speaker 2: spiritual births and making these like big sounds and these
Speaker 2: big movements, and.
Speaker 3: You know, she's literally giving she's giving birth. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: how I pictured it.
Speaker 1: Oh you should have seen me. You should see me
Speaker 1: when I was recording the audiobook. I was like, I
Speaker 1: feel like this's school. I'm like, I mean it was
Speaker 1: like wacky, that's great. So yes, by the audiobook and
Speaker 1: you can hear.
Speaker 2: Me which, by the way, she was very anti Christianity
Speaker 2: until she had this awakening. And yes, also fascinating and
Speaker 2: just another example of how like the beliefs actually don't
Speaker 2: really matter. It's more about what people are looking for
Speaker 2: in that moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of the question of being anti Christianity, to me
Speaker 1: is part of what's most fascinating about this group because
Speaker 1: they viewed themselves as one hundred percent Christians and regular
Speaker 1: Christians is what they call ten percent Christians. And their
Speaker 1: chief enemy was not just like the secular world. It
Speaker 1: was quote unquote mainstream Christians. Those were enemy number one
Speaker 1: because they were practicing faith, but they were doing it
Speaker 1: a kind of diluted right, fake way.
Speaker 3: I will bring that back to my growing up experience
Speaker 3: with the two by twos. The Christians who were not
Speaker 3: taking it as seriously as us were way more scary
Speaker 3: and harmful, very understandable that world.
Speaker 2: To me, the smaller the difference is, the more of
Speaker 2: that we hate them.
Speaker 1: Right, so true, so true?
Speaker 2: So how does this start to transition into her being like, no,
Speaker 2: I'm literally a prophet and people should follow me. Jim
Speaker 2: is just cool with it. Jim's like, yes you are.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Jim is a very interesting part of this
Speaker 1: because he was, you know, wild when he was in
Speaker 1: the bear tribe. He was you know, cutting his arms
Speaker 1: and raising his blood to the moon, you know, doing
Speaker 1: all these wild things. He converts with Liola Christianity and
Speaker 1: he really believes that she's a prophet too, and that
Speaker 1: belief is held so sincerely that he really kind of
Speaker 1: subjugates himself to her, you know, in a funny way.
Speaker 1: It's like very feminist marriage, a real really like a
Speaker 1: real expression of this kind of equality. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: part of what's so interesting about this group that there
Speaker 1: are elements of it that are like radical to the
Speaker 1: left and radical to the right, and it's all mashed
Speaker 1: up here. Anyways, he was just sort of following her
Speaker 1: and really believed her. And how did she become who
Speaker 1: she became from there? I mean, I think it's all
Speaker 1: just the sort of slow dialing up. If the death
Speaker 1: of her brother was the like I don't know, turning
Speaker 1: the record player on now, we're just like slowly turning
Speaker 1: the volume up. I think you know, she just kept
Speaker 1: on having visions, she kept having. She just got farther
Speaker 1: and farther away from the outside world, farther and farther
Speaker 1: from external perspectives you could push back against her, and
Speaker 1: so she was just sort of free to kind of
Speaker 1: riff on her own what I would call mania.
Speaker 3: And as you were saying earlier, the outside world is
Speaker 3: just serving her so many experiences that reflect back to
Speaker 3: her that she's on the right track. I feel like
Speaker 3: you are corrected as the forest gump of like everything
Speaker 3: kind of aligning and happening, and this interesting time frame,
Speaker 3: like right as she's amping all of this up, a
Speaker 3: volcano goes off and covers.
Speaker 4: The whole sky. It's raining ass, it's raining ash, it's dark.
Speaker 4: It's like a prophecy in the Bible is coming true.
Speaker 4: So like she is like I told you so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is Mount Saint Helens, which interrupted and
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting nineteen eighty eighty one, early nineteen eighties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so this is just as the ministry is sort
Speaker 1: of getting going and yeah, what is a what is
Speaker 1: a volcano if not evidence that you know Satan is
Speaker 1: on the move. And the demons are spewing outward. And
Speaker 1: that also has a really interesting parallel to the Shakers,
Speaker 1: where there was a wildfires in Canada caused the sky
Speaker 1: to go really dark at one point when the group
Speaker 1: was in its early years, and that, to an Lee,
Speaker 1: was the signal that they needed to take their message
Speaker 1: farther out into the world. So I love this idea
Speaker 1: that like the outside world, you can what do they say,
Speaker 1: you find what you're looking for. They're looking for signs
Speaker 1: and so they find them.
Speaker 3: It's so apt for today too, because I just saw
Speaker 3: something in social media a week ago where it was
Speaker 3: like the sky is black in a war zone when
Speaker 3: it should be sunny.
Speaker 4: This is a sign of the prophecy.
Speaker 2: And it's like, yeah, you just blew a sign of
Speaker 2: a war.
Speaker 4: You just blew it up. Yeah, there's dust everywhere.
Speaker 2: I mean, such is the nature of humanity.
Speaker 4: I hated so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we will truly see whatever we were looking for.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, really shitty time for the volcano honestly, which
Speaker 3: it hadn't happened, because it seemed to really amp her
Speaker 3: family up to where they were like, she's real.
Speaker 1: I would say it was sort of a it was
Speaker 1: more a quarter of sort of whipping. They say correlation
Speaker 1: rather than causation. I think it was just sort of confirmation.
Speaker 1: It just was going on in the background. She wasn't
Speaker 1: like this volcano went off and like wow, next level,
Speaker 1: let's go. It was all just part of this intensification
Speaker 1: that was going on.
Speaker 2: How did they start actually gaining followers? That's always the
Speaker 2: part that's so interesting to me. I'm like, how are
Speaker 2: you marketing this to people?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it just was like one by one. So
Speaker 1: the very first members were a man and a woman
Speaker 1: named Maura and Steve. Mora had been close friends with
Speaker 1: Lyla back around the time when Lila's brother died, and
Speaker 1: so they'd been they'd kind of bonded over the death
Speaker 1: of the brother. Mara had gone off and gotten married
Speaker 1: to this man, Steve, and after Jim and Lyla had
Speaker 1: got had converted, they'd gotten back in touch with more
Speaker 1: and that had led to the resuscitation of their friendship.
Speaker 1: Steve kind of had probably had a bit of a
Speaker 1: crush on Lila. I mean, Lilah. Both Lylah and Jim
Speaker 1: extraordinarily beautiful, physically beautiful. They just were very striking, and
Speaker 1: so I think that's actually part of their appeal. Well,
Speaker 1: so yeah, Steve has a bit of a crush on
Speaker 1: Leila maybe and more as a real secret type. And
Speaker 1: they sort of start going to these these ministry meetings
Speaker 1: that the Greens start having and it's just very very slow,
Speaker 1: just peop, you know, words, spreading a little bit by
Speaker 1: little bit. They got a radio show, they got a
Speaker 1: show on Christian radio, so some people came through that.
Speaker 1: They would put flyers around town, they would give people
Speaker 1: free meals. I mean, you're hungry and someone's saying, here,
Speaker 1: have some soup, and you know you can listen to
Speaker 1: the sermon. It's like, okay, well I won't listen to sermon.
Speaker 1: I'll have the soup. But then you know it's in
Speaker 1: the background. Okay, whatever, I'll come for dinner tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Why not.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. And it can really kind of build
Speaker 1: from there. I mean, I think it's sort of it's
Speaker 1: like the prototypical story of how people join this classes
Speaker 1: is just one by one, one by one, And a
Speaker 1: lot of people didn't say a lot of people were like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to beat my children. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's great. But others did. I mean she would the
Speaker 1: force of her charisma was so strong that she was
Speaker 1: able to really draw people in. I mean she was
Speaker 1: never the group was never more than like thirty f
Speaker 1: treaty fifty people max. It wasn't like hugely successful, right,
Speaker 1: but it was successful enough.
Speaker 2: But so many groups start out at that size and
Speaker 2: do balloon up like so, like, those early days are
Speaker 2: always super interesting to me. Some of the abuse stuff
Speaker 2: with the kids and with the adults that was surely
Speaker 2: not present in the beginning, right, correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't say too much because the I hope
Speaker 1: people will check out the book, but a lot of
Speaker 1: unfolds from the stuff that we're talking about, which is
Speaker 1: really the beginnings. But yeah, the group, as you know,
Speaker 1: like shockingly, there were a lot of abuses that ended
Speaker 1: up happening in the later years of this story, and
Speaker 1: at the very beginning. No, there was no there are
Speaker 1: no whippings that kind of thing. But what there was
Speaker 1: was this general ethos of any relationship that is not
Speaker 1: oriented towards the group or towards Lyla and Jim, that
Speaker 1: relationship is evil, and that even extended to relationships between
Speaker 1: spouses and relationships between parents and children. So if you were,
Speaker 1: say a guy married to a woman in the group
Speaker 1: and you're you know, showing affection for your wife, you're saying, oh,
Speaker 1: let me get you another you know, baked potato at dinner. Whatever.
Speaker 1: That was evidence that you were guilty of what they
Speaker 1: called spiritual adultery in the group. You were cheating on
Speaker 1: God with your earthly husband. Same thing. If you were
Speaker 1: nice to your children, if you were saying, you know, here,
Speaker 1: let me let me comb your hair, no, no, you
Speaker 1: were guilty of spiritual adultery. You were cheating on God
Speaker 1: with your child.
Speaker 4: Horrible.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just speaks to how there's this weird
Speaker 1: sexual energy is really at the core of the group,
Speaker 1: largely because you know, it was just sort of like
Speaker 1: by crying sexuality, they were really focusing on it. It
Speaker 1: was part of what was so strange about it. But anyways,
Speaker 1: that's sort of where the abuse began. Yeah, start small
Speaker 1: and balloons from there.
Speaker 3: So the spiritual affair is like you're supposed to be
Speaker 3: partnered with God and that's your outlet for everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 2: Like when people are married to Jesus. That kind of vime.
Speaker 1: I think it's sort of yeah, sort of, it's hard
Speaker 1: to kind of pin down, because I think it was
Speaker 1: hard for them to pin down.
Speaker 4: You know, some of these groups.
Speaker 1: You're kind of like, I think I know what you're saying,
Speaker 1: but like what she was saying was always kind of
Speaker 1: more thing, and it was always sort of what this was.
Speaker 1: The convenient thing about being a prophet is that you
Speaker 1: can always get new information correct, you can pivot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and when did she pivot into being Deborah?
Speaker 1: So yeah, So this is a big event in the book,
Speaker 1: which is sort of a kind of culmination of those
Speaker 1: early years and before things really explode. She decreed that
Speaker 1: some of her followers should take new names, as people
Speaker 1: in the Bible did, as people in just culture have
Speaker 1: often done, sometimes to indicate a huge change or growth
Speaker 1: in someone's lives. Lilah says, you know, we need biblical names,
Speaker 1: we need new names that indicate we are reborn. And
Speaker 1: some of the people took new names. Some of the
Speaker 1: people didn't. But Lilah took the name Deborah, who's a
Speaker 1: female prophet from the Old Testament, and from then on
Speaker 1: she was known as Deborah.
Speaker 2: Which is so funny to me because Deborah just seems
Speaker 2: like the lady at the pot luck next door, whereas
Speaker 2: Lilah feels very like beautiful and biblical.
Speaker 4: I'm like, who chooses Debbie?
Speaker 1: It's funny, you say Debbie. She never she never went
Speaker 1: by Debbie. It's funny. I never thought of that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just I assume all Deborah's are Debbie is.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, it's funny. I like the name Deborah.
Speaker 4: I like Debbie, but Lilah is like such a dope.
Speaker 2: Name Lyla feels more mythical to me somehow, it is
Speaker 2: a little mythical, yeah, versus like grounded in like Suburbia.
Speaker 2: But interesting that for her it was like she was like,
Speaker 2: and now I am Deborah the Lord.
Speaker 1: Yes, wild stuff.
Speaker 2: And at that point they also changed the name of
Speaker 2: the group.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: At this point originally had it had been called Free
Speaker 1: Love Ministries, and then they were like, nope, now we
Speaker 1: are the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps.
Speaker 2: So there, from Free Love to Aggressive Training Corps is
Speaker 2: wild C MTC. You got it, that's it a CMDC
Speaker 2: of course. Yeah, I love ACMTC.
Speaker 4: Gotta go join it.
Speaker 2: So basically, over time, things just start getting weirder and
Speaker 2: more controlling, and she gets fixated on getting children. Can
Speaker 2: you explain this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she Lilah slash Deborah, now we're going to
Speaker 1: refer to her as Debra. She really predicted that there
Speaker 1: was going to be this thing called the Children of Nations,
Speaker 1: and it was going to be this huge group of
Speaker 1: children who are going to be soldiers on behalf of
Speaker 1: the group, and they were going to kind of be
Speaker 1: this children's army. And the problem was that they needed
Speaker 1: to get children. And so there were people in the group,
Speaker 1: women who had children, but they weren't having them at
Speaker 1: the rate that Deborah wanted them to have, and so she,
Speaker 1: according to one of the members in the group, she
Speaker 1: directed this woman to effectively try and kidnap a baby
Speaker 1: from the Mexico border. By this point, the group had
Speaker 1: fled to New Mexico because they'd run into all these
Speaker 1: legal troubles that you can read a out of the book.
Speaker 1: But this alleged kidnapping did not come to pass. But
Speaker 1: what it did lead to was a just truly truly
Speaker 1: shocking act of child trafficking that I'll sort of speak
Speaker 1: about in kind of vague terms. But what happened was
Speaker 1: that Deborah was so insistent on not only having children,
Speaker 1: but having children from all over the world that she
Speaker 1: and the group conducted all these mission trips abroad, and
Speaker 1: some of that was about children, but some of that
Speaker 1: was just about spreading God's word. But when the group
Speaker 1: was in Uganda at one point, because they took mission
Speaker 1: trips all over the world, they got in touch with
Speaker 1: a woman who was pregnant and you know, long story short,
Speaker 1: the baby that the woman was going to have, I'll
Speaker 1: just say that the baby ended up having a kind
Speaker 1: of lifelong association with the group in a way that
Speaker 1: unfolded in a way that was kind of to me,
Speaker 1: just mind.
Speaker 2: Blowing, truly horrendous, Like what was described in the book
Speaker 2: what happened.
Speaker 4: To that child is truly like it's tragic.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's totally tragic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the group escalates in other ways as well, like
Speaker 3: it seems like people weren't really seeking medical treatment for
Speaker 3: a lot of things.
Speaker 4: And this ends and disaster and a part of your book.
Speaker 3: And again we won't give too much away, but what
Speaker 3: other ways were they just kind of accelerating.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean it was accelerating is the right word.
Speaker 1: It just built and built and built. So yes, medical treatment,
Speaker 1: they were really against medicine. A lot of people were
Speaker 1: denied were allegedly denied medication, and you know, after surgeries,
Speaker 1: they didn't get pain medication, horrible things like that. They
Speaker 1: were also they didn't get enough food. They were just
Speaker 1: always hungry. They're reading a largely vegan diet by the time,
Speaker 1: by you know, the two thousands or so, just like
Speaker 1: alfal fatigue and okra and you know, peanut butter and
Speaker 1: so on, and then just the I mean, there's all
Speaker 1: sorts of like sort of physical things, like they're working harder,
Speaker 1: they're sleeping less. There the punishments are more and more intense.
Speaker 2: The punishments were so bad.
Speaker 1: They're rough, They're pretty rough, like medieval medieval, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: should remember that word. That's the right word. But I
Speaker 1: think the biggest kind of acceleration is there was a
Speaker 1: tolerance for this, is that people were so embedded in
Speaker 1: it that it became just so difficult for them to
Speaker 1: see that it was bad. And to me, that's sort
Speaker 1: of chilling because a lot of these people were pretty
Speaker 1: normal people and in a lot of ways, and these
Speaker 1: are people who I got to know in the course
Speaker 1: of my reporting, and they struck me as totally normal
Speaker 1: in many ways. I mean, none of us are like
Speaker 1: quote unquote normal, but like, these are people who now
Speaker 1: live regular lives and such. But when they were in
Speaker 1: this group, they were party to or witnessed things that
Speaker 1: just kind of blow your mind. So I think that
Speaker 1: is the biggest acceleration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that process is slow and happens step by step,
Speaker 2: and one thing is normalized and then the next thing
Speaker 2: is normalized and it doesn't look that crazy compared to
Speaker 2: the previous thing, you know what I mean, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it never happens overnight, which I think, right, it's important
Speaker 2: to note about groups like this, Yeah, for sure, but yeah,
Speaker 2: some of the abuses were truly terrible.
Speaker 4: Were they wearing a uniform towards the end of.
Speaker 1: This Yeah they were. They were wearing military uniforms. A
Speaker 1: lot of the time. They had a couple of different uniforms.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll just say, there's like a big arrest
Speaker 1: at the end of the book. And at the time
Speaker 1: of the arrest, I mean I looked at the police footage,
Speaker 1: Deborah is wearing this wild outfit. It's this kind of
Speaker 1: in a weird way, kind of stunning white military get
Speaker 1: up where she has a long, a long skirt, kind
Speaker 1: of buttoned down white white jacket and a beret. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll actually tell your listeners. So this book began as
Speaker 1: an article I wrote for The cut Back in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. And if your readers want to look up
Speaker 1: that article, they can see.
Speaker 4: Oh see the photo.
Speaker 3: I want to see it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, oh my god, Okay, why does she look
Speaker 2: like Vader Ginsburg.
Speaker 1: And she hates Ruth Badergans work with different politics, very different.
Speaker 1: I mean they would show up at the Undershriff's office
Speaker 1: near their near their compound in just like complete head
Speaker 1: to toe, perfectly ironed, spotless military uniforms. They instructed the
Speaker 1: under sheriffs. They were like, you know, you will, you
Speaker 1: will address us as generals and we will blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. Wow. And so there was this real
Speaker 1: I mean again, it's like there's a confidence. It's like
Speaker 1: you can't make up, you can't fake that kind of confidence.
Speaker 1: I don't think. I think it's a confidence born out
Speaker 1: of a deeply deep conviction of certainty.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, And so Sarah throughout the book, So Sarah
Speaker 2: is Deborah's daughter. Yeah, I find her pathory interesting because
Speaker 2: these are her parents, This is her whole life.
Speaker 4: This is her community.
Speaker 2: It's always interesting to me how people who are that
Speaker 2: deeply in the thick of the cult are able to
Speaker 2: get out.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I mean, that's sort of the central miracle of
Speaker 1: the book in my opinion. So the book is called
Speaker 1: The Oracle's Daughter, and the daughter in question is this woman,
Speaker 1: Sarah So. Sarah's parents were Jim and Lila Slash Deborah.
Speaker 1: She was a young kid when her mom started having visions,
Speaker 1: which is to say that she knew something of the
Speaker 1: real world before everything started to kind of fall apart,
Speaker 1: and I think that that was essential in her being
Speaker 1: able to imagine a life outside of the group. I
Speaker 1: think if she'd been born in it, it would have
Speaker 1: been another story, because then it's like, you have you've
Speaker 1: never gone to the park, you've never gone to the movies,
Speaker 1: you've never had like Lomain. You know, you've never you've
Speaker 1: never done the things. Yeah right, she likes Lomaine. That's
Speaker 1: why it came to mind, she yeah. So, I think
Speaker 1: that was a big part of how she was able
Speaker 1: to able to escape, because the book does open with
Speaker 1: her escaping in the middle of the night when she's
Speaker 1: twenty six years old, running away in the middle of
Speaker 1: the New Mexico desert. It's a wild moment. She does
Speaker 1: manage to get out, but she knew something of what
Speaker 1: she was missing. I also think it was just a
Speaker 1: question of character. It's like some of us are one
Speaker 1: way and some of us are another way.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Some of us are good at basketball, some of us
Speaker 1: are good at knitting. You know, Like she just happened
Speaker 1: to be really good at holding onto a part of
Speaker 1: herself that a lot of people gave away. And because
Speaker 1: she never because she never chose to join the group,
Speaker 1: she was always a little There was always a little
Speaker 1: bit of resistance.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: If she had been like, oh, yes, I want to
Speaker 1: go in, I think that there would have been maybe
Speaker 1: less resistance. But because she never chose, she just just
Speaker 1: roped in. She was able to hold onto a little
Speaker 1: something else. I mean, there's more to it, but that's
Speaker 1: some of the stuff i'd mentioned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true we rebel against our parents, and that
Speaker 2: makes sense. And also I forgot that she actually was
Speaker 2: not born into it, that she witnessed the beginning of
Speaker 2: her mother having these spiritual bursts and being like, why
Speaker 2: is my mom making these crazy sounds in the basement
Speaker 2: that I used to play, and like I can imagine
Speaker 2: that would be a very jarring transition.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, and an upsetting one because
Speaker 1: she had friends. I mean, this is a woman who's
Speaker 1: just as an extraordinary zest for life. And I think
Speaker 1: that's part of why I wanted to write about her,
Speaker 1: is that she's just an incredible person. And so she Yeah,
Speaker 1: she wanted to go to school, she wanted to take
Speaker 1: history class, she wanted to go play with her friends.
Speaker 1: I mean she actually ran away from home for one
Speaker 1: night when she was a teenager and tried to enroll
Speaker 1: herself in high school. She missed that world so badly.
Speaker 2: There's a moment in the book where you write about
Speaker 2: how there's someone who kind of becomes a whistleblower, but
Speaker 2: then it's like that person is kind of discredited, but
Speaker 2: they are ordered to produce like twelve children.
Speaker 4: Yes, and they just don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But what's fascinating to us we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 2: is like the justice system just was like oh whatever,
Speaker 2: Like they was like a wake up. There was a
Speaker 2: post wag thing going on again.
Speaker 3: The like outside world events are kind of protecting them
Speaker 3: in real time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the fact that the abuse of children
Speaker 1: was allowed to go on as long as it did
Speaker 1: under the circumstances in which it progressed were to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing that makes your head explode.
Speaker 1: I hope reading it, and certainly made my head explode
Speaker 1: while I was reporting and writing it. As to the
Speaker 1: Waco stuff, Yeah, I mean, so, you know, the Waco
Speaker 1: disaster happens in the mid nineties, and law enforcement afterwards
Speaker 1: is kind of understandably spooked. They don't want to interfere
Speaker 1: with religious groups who were maybe a little bit different
Speaker 1: and have something bad happen and then be called in
Speaker 1: front of Congress to testify and get raked.
Speaker 2: Over the coals because all those people were killed in
Speaker 2: Waco by the authorities because this cult showdown for youngsters
Speaker 2: who don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you said something in your book I'd never
Speaker 3: read before that one of the agents when they were
Speaker 3: going to Waco to bust it up, one of the
Speaker 3: agents had like golf plans that afternoon.
Speaker 4: They were like, this will be easy, and it was not.
Speaker 4: So this man thought he was going to golf.
Speaker 3: Fifty one days later, they have basically burned down people
Speaker 3: inside of a house and everyone's mad at them and
Speaker 3: they don't want anything like that to happen again.
Speaker 2: So yeah, no, and they're like, I don't want to
Speaker 2: be the one in trouble for no, no killing the
Speaker 2: people Nicole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a there's a part of that impulse
Speaker 1: that I really respect, you know. I think that like
Speaker 1: freedom of religion is at the core of the idea
Speaker 1: of this country, and it is something that I think
Speaker 1: is like a very good thing. But the underbelly of
Speaker 1: it is that like the American justice system, to my
Speaker 1: eye at least, just feels really reluctant to interfere when
Speaker 1: religion is a is a factor. And so for ACMTC,
Speaker 1: that meant that they were really able to function even
Speaker 1: when all this evidence came up, they were able to
Speaker 1: kind of continue operating. And yes, the thing again, the
Speaker 1: thing that just blows my mind is that like they
Speaker 1: were they were ordered to bring the children into the
Speaker 1: authorities at least one moment throughout the story didn't and
Speaker 1: then law enforcement kind of moved on.
Speaker 4: They're like, well, they're probably fine, Like yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: There's there's like a there's a phrase at the end
Speaker 1: of one of the documents I found that says like,
Speaker 1: you know, the investigation was closed because they were unable
Speaker 1: to locate the children, and it's like, yeah, that's the problem.
Speaker 4: Right, No exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I mean, you know, it's like very limited resources.
Speaker 1: This is big, open, wide spaces. It's tough.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 1: But I also think you know that failure led to
Speaker 1: extraordinary suffering.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've never heard of this group and the same.
Speaker 4: It is so fascinating.
Speaker 3: I mean it covers every single thing we see in
Speaker 3: Culled to the ultimate degree. We've got death, destruction, abuse,
Speaker 3: some quirk cases, all of it, and a female leader. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and she really really turns into something quite monstrous. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's very interesting to watch somebody go from a hippie
Speaker 3: too a profit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an abusive, destructive, controlling profit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: How many people were you able to actually speak to
Speaker 2: from the group?
Speaker 1: All total, I spoke to about there were about two
Speaker 1: hundred interviews that I did over the personal researching this book.
Speaker 1: What was nice also is that, like, even aside from
Speaker 1: the interviews, is that I had access to a lot
Speaker 1: of huge troes of documents, and so this group, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, ran into a lot of legal trouble, and
Speaker 1: so there was a lot of stuff that former members
Speaker 1: or current members were required to say under oath, and
Speaker 1: so I got a bunch of people that way. The
Speaker 1: group documented its activities quite extensively, and so I was
Speaker 1: able to love it when they do people's perspective from that,
Speaker 1: I know, it's very helpful. I mean, it's very very
Speaker 1: helpful for a reporter to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: But there was like a group of five or so
Speaker 1: former members who were for me, the kind of core crew.
Speaker 1: There were others I spoke with, but it was a
Speaker 1: pretty contained group that were I like, you know, week
Speaker 1: by week sources.
Speaker 2: There is a woman in the book Maura, who underwent
Speaker 2: such intense punishment, isolation, separation from her children, humiliation, ritual,
Speaker 2: like just every freakin' thing.
Speaker 3: I you know, they started giving them names like the
Speaker 3: people who are being punished like forsaken, Barren de spies, You're.
Speaker 2: Now called despised. Imagine your new name is despised like.
Speaker 3: And they're being accused of things like spiritual adultery or
Speaker 3: whatever crime the only Deborah can see because she's the prophet.
Speaker 2: And spiritual adultery is literally like being nice to someone yeah. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's wild. It's just wild. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It seems to have a lot of really kind, wonderful
Speaker 3: people in it and to see them all get wrapped
Speaker 3: up and this is hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just the point of them being kind of wonderful, Like,
Speaker 1: I just couldn't agree with you more. And that was
Speaker 1: actually something Part of what I really enjoyed about this
Speaker 1: book is that, you know, getting to know people, getting
Speaker 1: you know, any repertorial job is interesting because you get
Speaker 1: to meet people that you would never otherwise get to meet.
Speaker 1: But these folks, you know, they've been through something really rough,
Speaker 1: and they were often, by definition, people who were looking
Speaker 1: for something beautiful and meaningful in their lives. And so
Speaker 1: if they managed to get out, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of them still hold on to that sense of trying
Speaker 1: to find and make something beautiful. And so when I'd
Speaker 1: speak to them, I'd just be really moved by by
Speaker 1: that impulse. And Yeah, a strange kind of and beautiful
Speaker 1: kind of intimacy grows out of that connection, for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Are they okay?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 4: Are people okay?
Speaker 1: I think I think they're sort of like provisional okays.
Speaker 1: I think they're okay. In the way that they're okay
Speaker 1: in like a real world kind of way. They you know,
Speaker 1: some parts of life are great and some parts of
Speaker 1: life are hard. I mean, I think that's true of
Speaker 1: anybody obviously, no matter they were in a culture not
Speaker 1: I'll speak specifically of Sarah because the book is mostly
Speaker 1: like her journey growing up in the group, escaping and
Speaker 1: starting over is like the narrative is the central narrative
Speaker 1: thread for the book, and so she has really managed
Speaker 1: to rebuild a life, a new life on the outside
Speaker 1: of ACMTC. She's still you know, she went through an
Speaker 1: extraordinary amount of trauma and so that's very much still
Speaker 1: with her, but she's really found very healthy ways to
Speaker 1: deal with it. Something I find really extraordinary is that
Speaker 1: she's just a huge runner. She's run like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: a couple dozen marathons or something. She's running one in
Speaker 1: London coming up, I think, and amazing, and so it's
Speaker 1: a really important way for her to just pound it out,
Speaker 1: you know. And she also was able to start a
Speaker 1: new family, and I think that you know, she got
Speaker 1: married and she had some kids and they're just sort
Speaker 1: of have allowed her to find meaning and beauty and
Speaker 1: all of that and then to other people. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: people find their way to various degrees, and I think
Speaker 1: most of them. I mean, all the people I spoke
Speaker 1: to were together enough that they were able to talk
Speaker 1: to me about their experiences. So there's a bit of
Speaker 1: a sort of self selection thing going on there. But
Speaker 1: like I do want to offer like a little bit
Speaker 1: of hope more than a little bit I hope. You know,
Speaker 1: the book is talks about some really wild things that happened,
Speaker 1: but there is this element of like, you know, you
Speaker 1: see people with extraordinary resilience pushing through, managing to start over,
Speaker 1: And to me, it's just like endlessly inspiring. When I
Speaker 1: get really stuck in my own way of thinking about
Speaker 1: things and thinking you can't break out of something, you know,
Speaker 1: I think like, well it would be much heart Like
Speaker 1: what I'm stuck in is a lot easier to get
Speaker 1: out of than like what Sarah or Mora was stuck in,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's very inspiring.
Speaker 4: Yeah, true, And Mara had a big win.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are big wins for survivors in this book,
Speaker 2: which wins is really so great to read because that
Speaker 2: is not always the case.
Speaker 1: Sure, And you know, I I do honestly hope that
Speaker 1: my book can be a win for them. You know,
Speaker 1: I think that it's important to me that you know,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, this group has not been covered. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've basically written everything about this group that's been out there,
Speaker 1: and that was part of why I wanted to write
Speaker 1: the book, was because it was like, I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm like sort of breaking news. But I hope that
Speaker 1: the book can feel like a kind of you know,
Speaker 1: a two hundred and eighty page meaning making device, you know,
Speaker 1: taking things that happened that were really tough and making
Speaker 1: hopefully something beautiful out of them. And that can also
Speaker 1: be like just like literally useful to someone who's trying
Speaker 1: to deal with extremism in their own life.
Speaker 3: You can textualize it in a way that makes it
Speaker 3: both micro and macro at the same time, and you know,
Speaker 3: you can really see how we got here, how we
Speaker 3: can get out of here, and it's just it's a
Speaker 3: great book.
Speaker 1: Oh great.
Speaker 2: And my final question is, do you think we are
Speaker 2: entering a new age of cults?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, the question. I mean, I guess, like from
Speaker 1: a historical point of view, like it would be like
Speaker 1: a categorical yes, because I think that this is a
Speaker 1: period of tremendous instability with political, environmental, economic, sociop I mean,
Speaker 1: like every possible way.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What that means with the Internet, I think is a
Speaker 1: really interesting question because to me, like the idea of
Speaker 1: a cult is really defined by like physical isolation, but
Speaker 1: with the Internet you can have a kind of isolation
Speaker 1: that's physically diffuse. You know, people are not literally next
Speaker 1: to each other, but they are in a kind of
Speaker 1: cultish relationship with each other. I don't think that to
Speaker 1: me that would quite qualify as a cult, but I
Speaker 1: think that there's maybe a tremendous amount of Internet based
Speaker 1: cultishness going on, and I can't see it changing a lot.
Speaker 1: I certainly hope it does. Yeah, Yeah, I'm curious what
Speaker 1: would you all.
Speaker 2: Say, yes, billion, I mean, because many of those online
Speaker 2: cults do then become physical cults, and right, of course, yeah,
Speaker 2: even the online ones often impact people the exisact same
Speaker 2: way as the real life. Once it's not like there's
Speaker 2: a distinction in our brains. Once we have accepted that
Speaker 2: somebody is the ultimate authority over our lives and we
Speaker 2: have to listen to them, it's kind of it's kind
Speaker 2: of irrelevant whether we're physically next to them or not.
Speaker 2: I mean, a lot of our guests never met their
Speaker 2: leader of their groups, you know what I mean, but
Speaker 2: they still.
Speaker 4: You know, there's nothing to do with their devotion meeting
Speaker 4: the person, yes matter.
Speaker 2: I mean, it can like be a thing that really
Speaker 2: like pulls you in or whatever. But like there were
Speaker 2: so many children of got outposts where nobody ever met.
Speaker 3: That dude, so many people who just saw them on
Speaker 3: screens or like heard their boy yeah, yeah, yeah. It's
Speaker 3: it's crazy and every group, every group that I'm looking
Speaker 3: at right now, whether it's like a pilates class, is
Speaker 3: getting so much crazier where it's really yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: because everybody feels so insecure and everywhere all feels so
Speaker 3: out of We're so out of control that it's like,
Speaker 3: this is.
Speaker 4: My Monday night pilates class, and we all better be here.
Speaker 3: Because we have to be together because like it's just
Speaker 3: really yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, strange times, strange times we
Speaker 3: all want to feel in control.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't have to be a bad thing either.
Speaker 1: That's sort of the kind of most interesting part of
Speaker 1: this to me is that like Platti's cross could be
Speaker 1: like really lovely and maybe you have like a really
Speaker 1: wonderful community. It's only when it kind of tips into
Speaker 1: something differently that it becomes destructive.
Speaker 4: No, no, so far, so good.
Speaker 2: But you know, like, although we've heard about a lot
Speaker 2: of yoga classes that did not go well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah great. I can't wait to see which
Speaker 4: cults come up next. Oh boy, yeah, where can people
Speaker 4: find you?
Speaker 1: They can find me on Instagram at one Harrison Hill.
Speaker 1: So that's at the number one. H A R R
Speaker 1: I S O N H I L L TikTok is
Speaker 1: the same and the book title. The book title is
Speaker 1: The Oracle's Daughter. The Rise and Fall of an American
Speaker 1: Cult comes out April seventh from Scribner, and hopefully it's
Speaker 1: got a little something for everybody in there.
Speaker 3: I think it sure does. It's a fascinating book. Thank
Speaker 3: you for writing, Thank you for being a guest. All right,
Speaker 3: and there we have it with Harrison. Go check out
Speaker 3: his book, Megan. We have two cults to ask about
Speaker 3: right now. The first one is, of course, the Aggressive
Speaker 3: Christianity Missions Training Corps. Thoughts couldn't last an hour, I
Speaker 3: guess I could last two hours if I got to
Speaker 3: watch her do a spiritual birth.
Speaker 2: I think the spiritual birth would be very compelling for
Speaker 2: a day for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: However, you did mention the original group that Leilah aka
Speaker 2: Debora was a part of in the beginning, which is
Speaker 2: the bear tribe, and how you would maybe like that
Speaker 2: one get me.
Speaker 4: To the bear tribe.
Speaker 3: Yesterday a lot of hot people cause playing as nature people.
Speaker 3: It almost sounds like a reality show like Love Island
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 4: Doesn't.
Speaker 3: It's a little because it was just hot young people
Speaker 3: like pretending to be native a bear.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that part not so much. But I will say
Speaker 4: you guys.
Speaker 3: To live like that, never waste any part of an animal,
Speaker 3: be close to nature. Although I don't like camping, So
Speaker 3: who the fuck am I to say any of this?
Speaker 3: I don't know shit about shit. I wouldn't join the
Speaker 3: bear tribe, I know. I'm like, could I actually picture
Speaker 3: you living off the land?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. No. I think I could picture
Speaker 2: you on like a beautiful Joshua tree home where you step.
Speaker 4: Outside once in a whole. Yeah, like once a day.
Speaker 3: I'd go outside and and be like I am one
Speaker 3: with you, and then I'd go back into the air conditioner.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's so Yeah. I feel that I'm.
Speaker 3: Having delusions of me being in the Bear tribe. It's
Speaker 3: absolutely false. I'm so sorry we wasted all of your
Speaker 3: time and me figuring out in real time.
Speaker 4: That I wouldn't join either of these groups. But you'd
Speaker 4: visit for a day.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Same, I'd visited any cult for a day. I would
Speaker 3: visit any cult for day. We need to go do
Speaker 3: we need to go do that? We need to go
Speaker 3: do an investigative undercover thing. Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 4: You can wear a mustache, okay, and I'll wear a hat. Okay.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening to another episode of
Speaker 3: Trust Me. We appreciate and love you so much. Rate
Speaker 3: us five stars if you feel the same way, and
Speaker 3: as always, remember to follow your gut, watch out for
Speaker 3: red flags, and never ever trust me.
Speaker 4: Bye bye.
Speaker 2: This has been an exactly right production hosted by me Lola.
Speaker 4: Blanc and me Megan Elizabeth. Our senior producer is Gee Holley.
Speaker 2: This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Speaker 3: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker
Speaker 3: is Patrick Kottner.
Speaker 2: Our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.
Speaker 3: Trust Me as executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hartstark,
Speaker 3: and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 2: You can find us on Instagram at trust Me podcast
Speaker 2: or on TikTok at trust Me coult Podcast.
Speaker 3: Got your own story about cults, extreme belief our manipulation,
Speaker 3: Shoot us an email at trustmepodat gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: Listen to trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you get your podcasts.