Discovering Myself: Cult to Freedom

Content Advisory:
Religious / Spiritual Abuse
Child Sexual Abuse
Suicidal Ideation

“Peace and freedom are worth the loneliness.”

Religion runs incredibly deep in my family of origin. Christianity goes back at least 5 generations on both sides, and if you aren’t a Christian, then you don’t exist to anyone. In the 1990’s, I was born into this family, followed by my siblings a few years later. When I was about 2, we moved to another state. While there, my parents hired a babysitter for us when they both worked.

This babysitter also dubbed as a homeschool teacher, and her teaching methods were torture. She beat me relentlessly just because she could, and she once almost electrocuted me when I was 4 or 5. I frequently came home injured and socially regressed and when my parents questioned her when, she claimed that I was just being extremely clumsy. They bought her lies.

I eventually learned that silence wouldn’t get me punished as much, so I stayed quiet for them, especially since nobody would believe me. This all ended when my father decided to pick us up early one day; he caught her red-handed force feeding my little brother baby food in a high chair with everyone in the house surrounding him and laughing at him, even though he was well past that developmental stage. We were quickly removed from her, but the damage had already been done. When I began public school the next year, I had regressed so much that I was put in a special needs program and moved down a grade. I was, endlessly bullied at school for it.

When I was 5 or 6, my mom discovered that my father had been watching gay porn, which meant that he was wither gay or bisexual. Mom discovered that she was bisexual around that time as well, and my father was NOT ok with it. In my family, you are either straight or you are possessed by Satan himself. My father decided it would be a good idea to kidnap my siblings and I as a way to control Mom. It worked. He got her arrested when she came looking for us, and she lost all of her parental rights to us because of that. So, she stayed with him and pretended to love him just so that she could still have her kids with her. Through all of that we were going to a Baptist church, and we got kicked out for my parent’s relationship issues.

After I started school, Mom let a teenage boy move in with us. This boy is 10 years older than me, and he was my worst abuser. He snuck into my room at night to rape and molest me. He threatened to kill me if he ever found out I told on him. This went on for 3 years before Mom kicked him out. During this time another neighbor and her kids were living with us. This woman was a worse version of my babysitter.

She expected absolute perfection out of me, otherwise I would get beat to the point I couldn’t stand, kicked, dragged, and nearly starved to death. I remember often begging god to kill me so I wouldn’t have to be hurt by these people anymore. This physical abuse lasted until I was 11 when she moved out.

That same year my father's uncle wanted me to come to his house for a week to help him and my great aunt take care of their horses. I agreed to go, but unknown to me, my uncle would always try to be alone with me to molest me, especially in his truck. I went again for 2 weeks the following year when I was 12. Nobody found out what he did to me until it became known that he molested 3 of my cousins before he got me. When I spoke up about my uncle several years later, nobody believed me and I was once again silenced for everyone’s comfort and his reputation.

In 7th grade we once again moved and I had to start at a new school. I was still bullied at my new school, but not nearly as bad as my previous school. They stopped picking on me when they saw that they weren’t going to get a reaction out of me, and I began to make some friends too. In 8th grade, life was actually decently good for once, at least as well as it could be for being severely abused and bullied for your whole life prior to that.

I began to make plans for a suicide attempt and my science teacher found out about it, and sent me to a mental health professional. Around that same time my father had started making my siblings and I go to a Baptist church in our area. My father began to fondle me and I didn’t even realize it after we got involved with that church. As the years went on we got more deeply involved with this church. The brainwashing began and only got worse and worse.

One day when I was 19 my mom dropped dead in front of our home from a pulmonary embolism when we got back from church. I saw the whole thing; I was in the room when they called her code blue’s; I was in the room when they called her time of death. Those things I can never forget. One moment she was here, and the next she was gone and there was nothing the universe could’ve prepared me for that moment. Part of me died that day.

She was cremated 3 days later, and her memorial service was 3 days after that. She wasn’t honored. The pastor kept saying that it was god’s judgment on her lifestyle and that we needed to not live how she lived in order to not receive the same fate. Two days after that, my father, my former pastor and his wife talked to me about how I’m the only girl in the family and that I need to take Mom’s spot in the household.

They essentially forced me to become my father’s surrogate wife, because there was a boy in my youth group whose father had been deported several years before and his situation with his family was worse than what I was going through, having just watched my mom drop dead 8 days prior. I was too hurt to care what happened to me, so I just went with it. I let them brainwash me even more, I let them encourage my father to fondle me and neglect us; as long as we had food, we would be ok. This continued until I was sent to the Mid-West for conversion therapy under the guise of Bible College.

My father kicked me out just before I was supposed to come back for the summer. While there, the brainwashing got even more intense than what it already was. I was taught that it was my fault the abuse happened, that everything my father put me through was just a test from god to see how loyal I was to him but it was somehow not enough because I was harboring bitterness towards all of those people. It was like that every day until I managed to escape about 7 months ago now.

Right before I made the decision to walk away from Christianity about a year ago, I discovered that I am asexual. I decided to embrace it instead of rejecting it like my parents did. It is a part of me that I was born with, I didn’t choose to be this way, but at the same time, god made me like this, and I was always taught that god hates queer people, despite making them that way. I learned that god only loves people when they fit in the box the pastor determines is acceptable. So, I bought a train ticket to the other side of the country, packed up my clothes and a few books and left the college. I used graduation as my escape plan so that no one would know I was escaping a cult.

The next morning my friend drove me to the train station and I made my escape. I had to leave everything and everyone I have ever known and loved behind me. I had to no longer exist to them if it meant surviving outside the cult. It hurts like crazy, but it hurts me more to still be involved with them. I’m still trying to get back on my feet and acclimate to society, but at the end of the day, I’m a better person because I escaped this cult.

~Anonymous