The Four Yorkshiremen of the Apocalypse
There's a Monty Python
skit called "The Four Yorkshiremen" that is reminiscent of a common feeling among
cult survivors.
Four rich sophisticated
men sit around and discuss the hardships they faced growing up in poor
working-class families. Each one trying to outdo the other three with
increasingly elaborate stories as to which of them had the worst childhood.
That sketch feels oddly
familiar to people who were in cults.
The media's penchant for salacious sadistic stories makes living as a cult survivor much more awkward than it ever needed to be. [Which, let's face it, is pretty damn awkward even without animal sacrifices and elaborate robes]
Me: I was raised in a cult.
Them: How horrible was it??
Me: What do you mean by horrible?
Them: Did you have to like, kill babies with a
special kind of spoon, or something?
Me: Did I WHAT?!???
Them: Were there orgies every day?
Me: Why would you even...
Where was your secret
compound?
How many times did you
have sex with the cult leader?
Me: Eeewww! NO! He was like 85 and lived 3000 miles away ...
Did you have to wear
animal skins instead of clothes?
What kind of god did you
worship?
Me: The same one you do. It wasn't ...
What were the drugs
like?
How often did you
perform sacred rituals?
Did they really give you
poison KoolAid*?
Me: I'm leaving now. Please don't follow me.
[*KoolAid never killed anyone. Cyanide laced
Flavor-Ade was used to kill 918 people at the Jonestown compound in Guyana. 276
of them were children. It was the largest
number of American civilians killed in a non-natural event up until 09/11/2001.
Please don't ever forget that.]
In the end though, all they REALLY want to know is...
"How bad was it for you?"
[As if I'm an anthropomorphized
episode of Tiger King, created to entertain them with 22 minutes of bizarre events and
juicy details.]
Have you ever seen someone take those kinds of liberties with other childhood traumas?
Let's say you've got a friend at work who never seems to be at any of the office social events. You mention that a group is getting together to drink margaritas and sing karaoke after work and ask them to join you.
Your friend pauses for a brief moment and then says, "Thanks, but my dad was a violent alcoholic. Going out for drinks really isn't very fun for me .”
Do you respond with, "Did he ever kill anyone?
Like, what kinds of things did he hit you with?
Was there lots of blood and broken Jack Daniels bottles all over the place?
How many of your friends got raped when the came to sleepovers at your house?"
But I get it, human nature draws us to do dark stuff like slow down and look at car wrecks. Bob Saget's family had to file a lawsuit just to try to keep pictures of his dead body from going viral on the internet. Shock sells - and dozens of cults have done
some amazingly shocking things.
When someone uses the
word "cult" what comes to mind?
TFI/Children of God,
People's Temple, Heaven’s Gate, Aum Shinrikyo, Manson Family, Branch Davidians, NXIVM, Church
of the Lamb of God, Solar Temple...
Cults famous for raping children, murdering disbelievers, engaging in bizarre sex rituals,
committing mass suicide, releasing sarin gas in a subway station, or committing some other infamous atrocious act.
It's estimated that
there are around TEN THOUSAND active cults in the world today.
Of those, less than 0.1%
are comprised of drug fueled megalomaniacal sadistic pedophiles with a messiah complex and
delusions of grandeur. The most notorious cults are on the fringe of the
fringe - at the radical outer edges of humanity. And even in the most damaging
cults, many members are spared from such horrific experiences.
Of the more than 2.5 million
estimated active cult members, most don’t experience such extreme levels of depravity; but it’s the depravity that makes for sensational stories that
sell tons of books, magazines, movies, and TV shows, or generate hundreds of
millions of internet hits.
The stranger and more sadistic the cult, the more books, movies, and podcasts there are about it.
For your average cult
survivor, myself included, there's an initial tendency to wonder if you were in
a "real cult" because nobody ever asked you to poison meals at
a local family restaurant, made you watch a goat being butchered alive, or
forced you to marry a 45-year-old man when you were 11.
It seems like your
experience almost isn't "culty" enough to qualify, or that people are
going to think you're just a super sensitive whiny little bitch that can't
handle a perfectly "normal church" with some unusually strict rules.
The truth of the matter
is that even the most extremely sadistic and psychotic cults have plenty
of regular wholesome activities like potlucks and softball games. They have
hayrides in the fall and picnics in the spring. Cult members sing beautiful
songs, have fairy tale weddings, celebrate new babies, and mourn their members
who pass away, just like every other church, synagogue, temple, and mosque in
your community.
It's part of the reason why people stay in cults for so many years. They really can seem pretty normal sometimes.
However, when you do finally find a way out and you're ready to start talking about what happened to you, there's this nagging feeling that's pushing you to keep the focus on the physical abuse, isolation, brainwashing,
and extreme poverty while avoiding any mention of cookouts, board game tournaments, or talent shows.
That shit really messes with your head after a while.
You think, “I'm already not good enough to even be considered a regular person, but now the bad things I
went through are actually way better than what other people have to endure and I'm just too weak and lame to handle ordinary problems. I should just stay
silent and ignore my feelings because my thoughts and feelings are obviously very wrong.”
If you live with that
thought gnawing away at you all day every day for several years, it's damn near
impossible to resist the temptation to either abuse whatever drugs you can get
your hands on and/or entertain daily thoughts of suicide.
That's why survivor
books, podcasts, and blogs like the one you're reading now, as well as many
others across the internet, are so valuable to cult survivors. It's an
indescribable feeling of relief to finally have confirmation that these things really
happened the way you remember them. You aren't crazy or possessed by mind-altering
demons. Other people, just like you, are desperately trying to fit these same
damaging experiences into the somewhat normal life they're trying to build for
themselves - and failing just as miserably as you are.
If you read The Davidito
Book* it all sounds like everyone involved in the Children of God is
having a wonderful time and there aren't any discipline issues or trouble with anyone meeting the outrageously high expectations placed on them. Everyone
seems happy doing what they are commanded to do, and nobody feels the need to even question it, let alone be rescued from it.
[NOTE: Do not
read The Davidito Book unless you want to spend the next six hours of
your life vomiting and crying uncontrollably until you pass out. It is a 762 page graphic and detailed firsthand account of regularly occurring acts of pedophilia and incest that
begin when a boy is 10 months old and continue through his adolescence. The book also
contains instructions on how parents and nannies should commit similar acts on
their own children in the name of God]
So, when Ricky Rodriguez committed murder/suicide in 2005, I'm convinced that members of the Children of God were absolutely shocked to their socks.
"How could he have
done such a thing?
It's not like anything really bad ever happened to him."
Even in the most
horrific of cults, there are movie nights, birthday parties, and family dinners
with fresh vegetables, whole grain bread, and homemade apple pie with crinkled
edge lattice crust.
Before and after dinner
however, that’s when the things that put so many of us in therapy happen –
but are never spoken of ...or even acknowledged in any way.
Gaslighting is a common and relentless standard practice in cults.
"It wasn't that
bad"
"That never
happened"
"You had a
great time"
"It was no
big deal"
"You're just
remembering it wrong"
"Our pastor would
have never done anything like that"
"How dare you tell
such terrible lies"
"Why do you
make up such awful stories"
"Mr. Armstrong/God would never allow something like that to happen in his church."
"You don't know what you're saying"
"That's just what Satan wants you to think"
"I love you too much to ever let something like that happen to you."
"We aren't talking about that"
"You probably had a dream about it that seemed very real but wasn't"
"That's not something we should even be discussing"
- First, they abuse you.
- Next they make you doubt yourself.
- Finally they make it a point to destroy your credibility with anyone else who might believe you.
And when they do get caught, and the evidence against them is undeniable, they give you,
"Well it's not anything like what they did in Children of God or Jonestown."
Or
“That’s nothing compared to what you’re going to have to endure when the Beast rules the Earth, and you aren’t under God’s protection with us.”
If it's not the worst thing that could have happened, then it might as well never have happened at all.
Palin: You were lucky. We lived for three
months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six
o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work
down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got
home, our dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
Chapman: Luxury. We used to have to get out of
the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot
gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and
Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle - if we were
LUCKY!
Jones: Well, we had it tough. We used to have
to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and LICK the road clean
with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked
twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we
got home, our dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
Palin: But you try and tell the young people
today that... and they won't believe ya'.
ALL: Nope, nope...
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