Before we start the show.

This week's episode features some heavy conversations regarding sexual assault.

Please keep this in mind before listening as a reminder, while this podcast is hopefully a great place to hear honest, encouraging stories to let you know you're not alone, it's not men as a replacement for therapy or for telling someone if you need help.

Thanks for listening and understanding.

Okay, here's the show.

Welcome to Breakfast in Hell.

This week, I'm joined by Sarah Davis.

I should point out that this is a different Sarah Davis has Weirdly enough, it's not the first person by that name to be on our show.

This Sarah's journey is a unique one, and her story is intense.

It should also be noted that this is the first time she's ever shared this story personally.

In fact, it's the first time anyone from her story has shared it publicly.

Why is that important background information because Sarah was born into, and raised in a Christian cult, one that she remained in until this decade.

While this cult in Vermont did follow some teachings of charismatic Christianity, you will see as her story unfolds that the teachings of the Bible were secondary to the teachings of the cult leader, one John Maniotti, a man that committed sexual assault but still lives comfortably at his home in Vermont.

Sarah's journey is devastating, gut wrenching, but ultimately so so redemptive.

It's an inspiring encouragement that it's never too late to live, but also a sobering reminder that there are many folks out there who are still stuck in high control religious settings without agency or power to break free.

I have no doubt you're going to be moved by this story.

Here's Sarah.

Now, Sarah, I've known you for a few years now, but I I one hundred percent don't know your story.

But I've known you for a couple of years, so I feel like I've got a pretty good bearing on who you are.

But let's start at the beginning and let's see where we go from there.

Does that sound fair?

That sounds perfect great?

Where were you from?

Where are you from?

Where were you born?

And tell me about life growing up.

I was born in Vermont, born and raised.

I've been here my whole life.

My dad came over from Greece when he was twenty three.

So he ended up working at a restaurant in Essex Junction where he met my mother, and I think they met two or three months after he moved here.

He didn't speak English, she didn't speak Greek.

I like to say they spoke a language of love.

And that was fantastic.

I was, so, do are they still together?

Well, my dad died.

Okay, I'm sorry, but yes.

Up until he up until he died, they were together.

They dated for three years and you know, had a regular old what anybody it would have considered a normal relationship.

So who learned more of the other language?

Did your mom learn?

My dad learned English?

My mom wanted to learn Greek.

Yeah, but my father liked to say that he was not a language person.

He didn't like doing Greek.

So he learned enough English to get by, of course, in this country, until he died at seventy four, seventy three something like that, huh, and still spoke with such a thick accent that people had a difficult time understanding him, and he did not care.

Yeah.

I love that, Yeah, I love it.

That's so great and that for you and I don't want to jump ahead, but that creates what I've said on this podcast before, and I'm I am married to now, which is a third culture kid, A kid that has one culture when they go to school in Vermont and another culture at home with a very very Greek father.

What was that dynamic?

Like I didn't know my father had an accent until I was ten.

Oh wow.

I just loved his voice.

Yeah, he had this fantastic voice that had this wonderful way of talking that nobody else had.

And when I was about I remember the moment where I went, oh, he's got an accent.

It did not occur to me until then.

But we grew up going back to Greece because he had family there.

Oh wow, So I did.

I ended up with a different, like a little bit of an outsider perspective on the United States because my dad he became a citizen when I was four, So like there were some key moments that were like really important to me.

He spent a strong figure in my life.

But when I was a kid, he wasn't around much.

So he owned his own restaurant and he worked eighteen hours a day, seven days a week.

It was wild.

I mean it was it was wild.

My mother had I'm the oldest.

She had two more kids after me, three kids in three years.

Oh my god.

And when I was five, my grandfather and Greece had a stroke and my dad went to Greece for two weeks and I didn't notice he was gone.

Wow.

So like he just wasn't home.

And it wasn't because he didn't love us.

It wasn't because he just thought, this is what you do, yeh yeah.

And did he have a problem like Kyoto's own restaurant.

Did he have a problem trusting anybody else to do It was like, if I'm not there, he'd get well, yeah, right that.

And it was it was huge.

The banquet haul upstairs seated four hundred and thirty people, that there was a dining room, a full bar.

I mean, it was just enormous.

It was the eighties.

He was out straight and he just that was what he knew to do.

Yeah, and Greek Greek food's amazing, so oh yeah's.

And it was like an American restaurant, family style.

I mean, the average age of our clientele when I went to work was like seventy.

There was great available on everything.

I mean, I loved it.

That's fantastic.

So you your dad loved you, but the ethic was He's at work all day, every day, seven days of eighteen a day.

I still can't even my brain broke doing one hundred and twenty six hours of work in a week.

That's crazy.

You grew up with your mom being really the parent at home when you weren't at school.

What was that like and how did faith play a part in that?

Yeah, my mom got saved a month after she got married.

What so charismatic Christianity that was her flavor Pentecosta.

She had a brother who had had an experience with God and gotten saved, which I think I'm still shady on exactly what that means, but something about asking Jesus into your heart and saving you forever.

So yeah, that is that is typically what getting said born again, born again, and.

They were absolutely that.

So she had siblings.

She'd been born and raised in a Catholic family, you know, French Canadian, so they were all coming out of that tradition and going into charismatic Christianity.

And we were living in the town where I was born and then we had to move.

My dad had gotten a restaurant across the state in a tiny town, which is the biggest town around for forty miles with this giant restaurant.

My mom moves and we know no one there, There's nobody.

It was tough.

It was tough.

She remembered, like you know, she where we first lived.

The house was across the street from the restaurant, and so she just saw all the buses, the tour buses come through with people and I just stand at the window, going, mommy bus and my dad.

My mom was just losing her mind.

It was the only person she knew was gone eighteen hours a day.

But it was there that we got involved with the church that I grew up in.

What church was that?

So it was a tiny little church and it was run by an a man, a man named John Maniattika and John put out.

My mom remembered getting a flyer in the Queen Shield and it was going to be a tent meeting and she and a friend of hers took their little kids and went, and my mom remembered feeling like God's spoke to her, Okay, this man was going to speak the truth, and so she kept going.

And that was the church I grew up in.

Yeah, what age did you start going?

I was three okay, okay, so your whole child, I got you.

Yeah.

Yeah, so it was like my literally my entire life up until three years ago.

Oh wow, okay.

Yeah, I'm like my whole life.

So part of this, like the framework of my life, was this fantastic little book called The Christian Family, written by Larry Christensen.

And I can't emphasize enough how he lifted whole parts of this book from a German book on child rearing from eighteen fifty four.

Okay, well all right, so listener, First of all, you need to know she did hold that up to the screen that I can see, and it looks like the book's got some serious miles on it.

And now I'm hearing that we're getting some good manick state child rearing as a part of this Christian Family.

I didn't grow I didn't grow up with the umbrella thing from like the umbrellas of authority that so many people do.

But it was it was a lovely diagram that did the same thing.

Yeah, it's pretty much an umbrella.

And that looks like chapter one, page one there.

Oh yes, God's Order for Family.

So this book my mother was given when I was six months old, which is when I first got my first spanking.

When you were six months old.

Because I wouldn't stop crying because I needed to take a nap and my mother like didn't want to, but the older lady in the church said, you know what you need to do, you need to spank her.

So that was my childhood.

Oh my god.

So and the Christian family was my mother used this book like a Bible, like it was her.

It was the Bible and the Christian family, and the Christian family was all about out submission and obedience that the child was supposed to obey first, that they'll and I've reread it just for this just to kind of be like, how bad?

Was it?

So bad?

So that was the form.

That was how we were raised.

So I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, but so you know, I was raised in the James Dobson Households, which is focused on the family, and their spankings were definitely involved, not at six months old, but definitely involved.

This is something that clearly she repeated with the next two children that she had.

Oh yeah, how old were you, Like, do you remember one of your younger siblings getting spanked as an infant?

I remember that the slaps on the butt because he won't stop rolling over when she's changing him.

Like that absolutely.

Happened, and your mom believed this to be not just the way she should do it, but the way it had to be done.

It was the guy, it was the gospel truth.

If you don't do this, your child's going to Hell.

And the amount of fear that was really like to this day, like my mother absolutely disagrees with all of this teaching now, like she has apologized to all of us, like would never do this now, but like at the time, this book it was so that they group the kind of Christians we were.

There's a man named David Wilkerson.

He's died now, but he had the Times Square Church and he did the cross in the Switchblade.

And this man came out in favor of this book.

Missus Billy Graham is on the back saying, this is a superb guidebook for the Christian home.

It was published in the nineteen seventies.

This was a book that was being lauded as everything you want because it detailed what a husband was supposed to do, what a wife is supposed to do, how the children are supposed to be.

Yeah, David will Christian's David Wilkerson's that's all you needed to.

Say, exactly.

But that was like this was coming constantly.

So when we went to this church, this was the book that John used.

So my mom is like, this is perfect for us, like everything, like, yes, this is exactly the way we want to raise our kids.

And because my dad was at work all the time, it was going to be her responsibility to raise us, you know.

That was that was the agreement they had had at the beginning.

Basically, Yeah, so he didn't really step in much.

There were a few times where he'd look at her and be like, what are you doing?

But this was not the way he had been raised.

Well yeah, but also if we have and I'm not telling your story, but he's gone eighteen hours a day.

She believes in submission and authority that works its way up from you to her to him.

Yeah, and then this all makes sense, you.

Know, it makes sense for her.

What was funny to me was that he never read the book.

No, that does a surprise you.

He didn't, but you know, like so he didn't always understand the way she was taking things.

So you know, he'd say something and she's like, my husband told me, and I'm sitting there as an adult, I'd be like, no, he just was saying something.

He didn't just say what you think he said.

He doesn't know how you're taking what he said.

Yeah, you have somebody who's doing it like a literalist of like this is the person I'm supposed to submit to the of somebody who English is their second language and they don't do language, and so you can have a lot of breakdown in between in that chain of command.

That's a problem.

Yeah, So but this was normal.

This was normal.

And for you and Vermont growing up as a as a single, you know, single digit.

Aged child, absolutely from the very young age, you know, church, Church was absolutely mandatory, no questions, and I was a very submissive child, like I am obedient, I am I I don't want a spanking.

Spanking's hurt.

I don't want them.

And those were your only options.

There was no grounding.

We were just seeped in this culture of extremism, I guess might be the way to say it, like if it's it's all or nothing, you're either in or you're out.

It was all there.

It's fear based.

And because it's fear based, even if you like, even if there's a love component, which I think your mom did love you absolutely, a fear based discipline requires an absolute like it requires these empirical because you can't I just know as a parent, like like I know one of my kids is impulsive, and it's like I can hold fast to the consequence, which is I took your thing away or I put you into whatever, whatever the consequence is, and that's going to be harder on me, or I can show him grace and it's going to be easier on me.

And I know that I need to do a mix of both.

When it comes to spanking, there is no there is none of that debate it.

You know, my parents spanked me.

They loved me dearly, and they explained why they were spanking me, and they did it out of like because that's what and it was not often, but they did it and they explained why.

And even in that household, there's still a it's still very much these are the lines because at some point you're going to obey because of fear.

That's what you're gonna do.

And so that makes sense for you, did you either of your other siblings, like try to test that more than you did.

Probably yeah, but ultimately there was no there was no real pushback.

I would say, we weren't.

We weren't a family that rebelled.

Yeah, we just weren't.

And that was wantted, you know.

I mean we would go to the bank.

My mother would say go sit over there, and we all sat.

There positive reinforcement.

Yeah, we like we we're good children.

And it became personal.

So like I remember hearing that when I was four years old, asked Jesus into my heart, and that became really important to me, like being a Christian being, you know, following Jesus all that was part was part and parcel of it.

I remember my mom getting us up if we wanted to at five point thirty in the morning for prayer, and sometimes falling asleep on my little hands and knees with my face and a pillow.

You know, like this was part of our lives and it was normal.

Uh how do I say this?

Yes, it was your normal, it was my normal.

But I also understood that nobody else was Christians.

Yeah, well nobody else was as Christian as you or because they weren't doing this, they weren't Christian at all.

They're not.

It's like, oh, I'm glad you think you're a Christian.

Yeah, but let's be real why.

I think that's an important and it clearly like there's a lot of story to tell that's important.

Like if you're listening and you are not raised in any evangelical culture, which what Sarah was raised in was a very extreme version of it.

But there are different versions of this, and every pocket kind of believes, I would say, secondary to Jesus himself, but barely, that they have the corner on the right way, the right interpretation.

And so the more extreme you go up that ladder, the more militant the belief is that everyone below you on the that that Christian ladder is just wrong.

Yeah, you know.

And so you can have like a bottom rung, which is like, we love Jesus and he saved us from our sins.

But if you want to pray here, or you want to drink alcohol, or if you want to dance, or you want to wear a short skirt, it's fine, and then you keep going up that ladder.

Two.

I'm five years old.

I mean, I think I was raised in a pretty high control religion.

Sarah, five years old, five point thirty in the morning, falling asleep praying.

That is that is extreme to me.

That is I he helps my bad eight eight years old, that's extreme.

That's in for me.

That's extreme.

So that is a you're in.

You're in a decimal of a percentile.

As far as Christians raised in America at this point.

I mean right, there was no Sunday school.

Sunday school was not looked on as positive at all, so kids were in the meetings the whole time.

I remember being six and coming home from a church service where John had preached all about how you need to love your neighbor, love your brother and I sat there thinking I don't really love my brothers because sometimes I get annoyed with them and crying and being like Jesus, I'm so sorry.

I don't love my brothers.

You know, the these types of like guilt was very part of it.

It has to be.

It has to be.

There's no way around it.

Even if you're perfect, if you do everything right, you're going to feel as though you didn't right.

And my dad didn't come to church, so my dad was unsaved.

So you had to go to sleep every night thinking he's going to.

Hell, yes, and like terrified of it.

Terrified of it, because you know, eternal conscious torment is what I remember being a little kid and being like, I don't understand how I get to go to heaven and be happy.

No way, how am I going to be happy?

My dad's burning in hell forever, like none.

Of them, You'll just forget all about him because you'll just be in the glory of God, right like.

And my grandparents, who are wonderful and kind, like they're going to hell, Like I was terrified.

And then we were part of the when you look at end time stuff like I envied y'all who thought you were going to get raptured, Like I envied you guy.

You guys got to escape.

You guys were post millennial.

Yeah you were post millennial.

Yeah, we were gonna we were gonna have to be tortured.

Like I knew from the time I was little, I was gonna probably be skinned alive and like like bamboo shoots stuck up on my fingernails.

Became like an absolute terror.

So Sarah, I just I want to go back in time and and and and give you a big hug.

And I can't do it.

I do need to just sidebar real quick.

For those listening.

Because this happens regularly.

People go, I had to look up all these terms I was listening.

I'm an atheist.

I had to look up all these terms.

When you're in the evangelical church, you believe one of three things about the end of days.

You believe that the rapture is a real thing, where Jesus comes and he takes all of his people, his chosen people that have believed in him, back to Heaven with him.

And then there's a millennium, a thousand year basically, a thousand years of terrible stuff that happens before Jesus comes back to make things right.

And I know I glossed over a lot there, but that's basically.

You are either pre millennial, which means you believe Jesus raptures you up before all the really bad shit happens, or your post millennial means you have to live through all that bad shit or die trying and then Jesus comes, or you're a millennial, which you believe that is all a symbol and not real, it's metaphorical.

The most normal and I'm gonna make a lot of people mad here, the most normal Christians are a millennial.

They believe to be a metaphor that is not a literal thing that's going to happen.

And those people are much easier to talk to, and usually they love others better too.

And I know that I'm making generalizations and people are gonna get angry.

That's just a fact.

And you need to know that.

For Sarah's story, because post millennial is your not only is her dad going to hell in this particular version of life, but she is going to have to live through torture before she gets to experience heaven without her father.

All of this is nonsense back to you.

Sarah, Yeah, all true.

Yeah.

So in our church, John had a vision of that he would tell us about periodically of the end times and that he had seen Christ's return.

I also need to emphasize that prophecy is a huge deal in.

The charismatic church.

Yes, absolutely, Yeah, So for those that are unaware that we belie believed wholeheartedly that there were people who heard directly from God and they would say those things to other people as and that boy, that that was God.

Talking to spiritual gifts, to the spiritual gift of prophecy.

Yes, it's very much so.

And it was John's would always say, I don't have I'm not really a prophet, and then he'd go off and tell us about all these prophecies he had and that had come true, and you know so, but you know he's not okay whatever, So they part of the goal, like from when I was about nine or ten, probably was that we were someday the church was going to buy a piece of property and start building some sort of retreat or something on it.

We were going to own it, we were.

Going to have it.

So growing up like there was I the church moved from the town I was living in to another town like forty five minutes an hour away, okay, so we that separation of just an hour made a huge difference.

My dad didn't go to church, but he knew everybody that did.

He knew the people, he was friends with John, he liked him, he liked all the people, but he just didn't go.

Did everybody go over to the restaurant for Sunday dinner afterwards?

Is that because it's an hour away, that's not a thing going to happen.

But we would come, like I remember when we would have like what we called feasts.

Oh God, I forgot about these they were like for like probably ten years.

We would actually associate with other churches that John knew through his ministry, where he would be called in to go to a church that was suffering and then he'd be like shutting him all down with prophecy and all this stuff and you know, helping rehabilitate them whatever.

So there were churches and other states that would come to our little town where my dad owned a restaurant.

We would have like a three day weekend of you know, preaching and like youth group stuff, and I'd get to see friends and it was really cool.

It was super fun, and we got to stay in hotels and so that happened at my dad's restaurant.

But I had to say the separation was really helpful because it gave me like a childhood that was kind of free from a lot of crap that I ended up.

How old were you at that point?

So we're talking like anywhere between five all the way up till when I turned about eighteen.

So what when it moved?

So it moved out there when I was five?

So what was what was school?

Were you going to a Christian school or home school or what?

No, I would went to public school, and you know, my mom would tell me about how because I was a Christian, eventually there was going to be a separation between me and my friends.

When I was in fifth grade, I was nine, and I remember like getting into a big argument with what my best friend who was Catholic, because I told her she wasn't a Christian.

God Almighty, if I could go back to myself back.

Then, it was girl, Sarah, you are just getting in line.

I think routinely about some of the things I said and did when I was a kid, and I if I stay on it too long, I just get so mad at me.

So, no, you've been considering what you were dealing with at home in church.

I'm sure you were lovely.

Well.

I lost all my friends in fifth grade.

I was I was like literally I remember telling I could not keep anything from my mother.

I was a little confessor.

I would get home from school and be like I gossiped today, And you know, I'm crying.

So do you just bought all this hook line and sinker like there.

Was no questioning for me?

Okay?

There was ze Like I hear other people on this show talk about how oh I never to you know, and I'm like, oh no, I like I was.

Sow, yeah, well, I mean I had I typically think there's three buckets.

There's this like I never doubted it for a second, and then I got it on my own and now I realized it's crazy.

Then there was I never bought it.

I just played the game.

And then there's this third group, which was where I was in, which was like this doesn't quite add up, but I'm gonna I'm going to put in the back recesses of my mind and cover it with these very specific arguments I know helped me feel better.

So you were in that first bucket, which is, oh yeah, this was the only thing I ever knew.

Why would I question it?

It came straight from my mom, which comes straight from this book, which came straight from this guy who everything.

He said like, if those are the absolutes, you know, if you start with one plus one equals three, you'll do all of math wrong the rest of your life.

That is just how that works.

And you started with one plus one equals three.

Yeah, And I was.

But I was also like a reader, so I read The Christian Family.

You did tell yeah that had to be And that's.

What I found out oh, this book.

This book talks about how one of the worst things for marriages is when you're attracted to another.

What what a what a move by the eighteen fifties Germans.

You know what I mean?

I mean, I can't.

I can't say it enough.

Like it was.

It was very much like attraction.

Are we really into that falling in love?

What is the what was the justine?

Now?

I know we're just now we're on a full tangent and I got nowhere to be all day to get there.

But also what it was the justification for you shouldn't be attracted to your spouse?

What's the biblical justification?

Divorce?

Divorce?

Divorce?

Because here it is the idea that people because when people picked their own spouse a lot of times they got divorced.

So so attraction is attraction is fleeting, and marriage is supposed to be eternal.

That's the basic.

That's so when.

People say that silly thing about we just don't love each other anymore, it's because they're not trying.

They weren't actually loving like a through submissive wife and a true love your wife has loved the church husband.

Where they were they weren't doing those things so you read that book when you're twelve, and then you go your your mom's doing all the all the raising, your dad's going.

You're like, yeah, that all checks.

Where did it go?

And it was also devastating because I love romance.

I loved romantic movies.

I love Hallmark, I.

Love all these Everyone loves a version of romance.

Everyone has a reconciliation and a redemption and a romance that they love everyone you know.

And but like to find out that I was never going to have that, Like I was crushed.

Yeah, and like it took me years to reconcile with the idea that I was probably going to marry a guy that God would have to tell him to marry me and then give him instructions on when he was supposed to be God.

Like, I can't say it enough, Like I believed that was going to happen to me.

I think.

And then my heart hurts for you know, childhood you, but it actually hurts more for you having to process this from eighteen to whatever age you are now, because you've got to undo all of that along the way.

And I know now you are happily married and you're you're you're crushing it and thriving.

But I know that there's a journey in between there, and that's what really hurts, because I know what that means.

It was wild and then oh I had to Okay, So I was the oldest.

I had two younger brothers, okay, and the youngest was like three years younger than me, So we were very close.

Enough, of course.

Yeah, but I was the one babysitting, so like, you do what I tell you, Like I'm the one in charge.

I'm possy.

Yeah.

And so this one, this book goes into how women.

No boy, I left so hard because it was about how women just in general are weaker, Like I have to see if I can find it.

I sent it to a friend.

How they're just not designed for stress and pressure.

Hilarious.

You know what it's crazy is that that line of thinking from this this Christian book from the mid nineteen hundreds, taking from German theory in the eighteen hundreds, that hasn't gone anywhere.

Like, oh I every time I hear like, literally biologically the female body is designed to stand the stress and pressure of childbirth that men can't do.

And then you hear this nonsense like that women aren't design like that is still a push in unfortunately evangelical tied to conservative political ideology.

Currently, it's it's a weird defense that goes all the way down through trans rites like it is crazy that unfortunately isn't as laugh because it's still being propagated.

Spank your kids when you're they're six months old.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find that in twenty twenty five.

But this, this nonsense, this bullshit, you can still find it, and you're reading that when you're twelve and babysitting you're eleven and ten year old brother.

I was.

I was nine when my first my mom started leaving me.

I mean I grew up in the eighties.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I was.

Yeah, I'm with you.

Running ads for like parents, you know where your kids are, So like my mom knew where we were because they were with me.

That right, that's right.

Yeah, at least I figure she was doing keep doing pretty good.

But yeah, I was like ten, and she would go to a meeting's we had these house meetings midweek that she would go to in the town forty five minutes away, and I would be home with my brothers.

But my dad was like a quarter of a mile away at the restaurant if I needed him situation.

So it was like I was alone with them.

But also I mean in the eighties that was super.

That was like, oh that was yeah.

My dad's church was right around the corner from us growing up, so it was that was how we kind of you know, probably not an eight or nine, but definitely ten eleven, twelve we were home.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this idea that somehow I was going to have to become smaller forever in a relationship really devastated me.

And I remember telling my mom point blank like I'm never getting married, like you can't, Like this is good for you, ridiculous And my mom was like, oh, you'll probably change your mind, and I was like, I don't.

I can't be a doorback, Like I don't know what to do, but okay.

So as I grew through adolescence, there was this constant eroding of trust toward my dad.

And it wasn't because of my dad.

It was from the outside.

It was primarily i'd say, through John and that effect because my dad wasn't saved and I was approaching legal adulthood, so suddenly I was going to have to start being responsible for my own actions, and activities that were normal in our family were under attack from John in a like manipulative way.

So like, what what kind of activities for just sake?

Vacations like my dad would write, like seriously, I can't like vacations were very much frowned on.

Yeah that's crazy.

Yeah, no, like to the point where we stopped.

Everybody stopped doing them for years.

But did you first of all, I needed you keep saying tent, meeting house, meeting Did you guys have a brick and mortar church?

So when I was little, there was a they the John had bought or the church or whatever had bought a ski lodge thing.

It was had a series of apartments and there was a meeting hall in it.

And when when you moved an hour away when it's five.

And then we moved.

Yeah, so there was it was a little bit more like a commune, a little more some so some families lived up there.

Yeah, good story.

Those are interesting.

Good god, this is just full full fledged cult is all this?

Yeah?

I like, And those were the rumors everybody would talk about, and we would we were armed with we're not a cult.

Yeah, so very much that so when we Then we moved from there when I was like eight to the movie theater in the town.

Yeah, you guys, we met there for several years, so you're.

You're reaching it.

I didn't mean to go down that path.

I just was like, this sounds so cultures.

But then you're reaching adulthood and you can't go on vacation and you start to hate your dad because the John's manipulating.

Well, you just not trust him.

So like when he's saying something, I can't trust that he's hearing God.

Because while this book says I have to listen to my father, the issue is that he's not godly because he's not hearing God and John's hearing God.

So I I went So I went through public school.

In our town.

There's a private high school.

The town pays the tuition for all the students to go to that high school.

Okay, private, flash.

Public, Okay, it's school.

Yeah, it's one school.

But like because they're private, if you need to be expelled, you can be expelled.

And they have a serious dress code.

This is an academic rigor, like try every student's tracked from the beginning.

My brothers went to the Baptist school because there had been some issues with their schooling that my mom was like, wait, you're not taking care of my child, and like academically not in a religious way, like you all need to do better.

So they sent they were sent to the Baptist school.

I went to the high school and I was a very good student.

I excelled.

And the question on everybody's lips was are you going to go to college?

And so my dad, you would think, coming from Greece, might be like the patriarchal no, my daughter is never no.

My father was like, go to college, get a profession, get an education.

Let's go make sure that you.

I mean, he was always an advocate for that, get you know, make sure you can provide for yourself.

And I'm the one on the side going, no, Dad, I'm going to just get married.

That's yeah.

As a Christian woman, it's not my job to use my intellect.

I don't need that.

My husband's going to provide for me.

And my father would look at me and be like, but what if he dies, what if he doesn't?

What if?

Yeah, So, in a strange turn of events, my father, coming from the patriarchal country of Greece, was more of a feminist than I was.

Yeah, he was the feminist in your family.

He was the one, yes, which is great.

I mean cause I know a lot of the Greek restaurants here that are exactly what you're describing, Like American we used to the deck, the homework studio used to rent from a Greek restaurant that that twelve eleven Lawrence Road.

And he was Orthodox though, so like he was there at least fifteen hours a day every day, but on Sunday everything shut down and it was closed and it was church, and he was very patriarchal.

So that what you're describing though, is awesome, Like at least you had that in your life there when everything else seemed to be just batshit crazy.

Right, you know, John was John kept his opinion muted, but not quiet.

He was manipulated, Yeah, passive, aggressive.

Absolutely, and so there was always that pressure that like just that pressure.

I grew up with him.

He was the father of some of some of my friends.

Going to his house was destabilizing.

I hated it.

I hated being around him.

John was a terrifying human to be I'm sure he was the kind of person that just liked keeping it off balance.

And pushing, like physical boundaries, pushing what was acceptable to say to children or young women.

Did and like, did this guy ever get arrested for anything?

Oh?

God, no, we'd have to testify against him.

Nobody wanted to, but there was so he had he had.

I would go over to his house and spend the night or have dinner, and you know, it was like the flicking of the toothpicks after the meal right at your face or you know, throwing well, it was just like I grew up in a stable house all intent.

You know, there were yes, we had fun sometimes, but like it it made sense going to his house.

It never made sense.

I never understood what where's house?

Where's the flat ground?

But they always that family always had someone living with them.

There was always somebody, some young woman who needed a place to stay, who was living with them.

And I remember there were two things I prayed to God regularly for was that I would never have to move into his house and that I wouldn't be the last one to get married.

And I remember when I was about seventeen, and both of those things ended up coming true.

You lived in his house.

Oh this is a tail, sir.

Oh he had come to my dad's restaurant.

I was working, and he said to me, you're going to live in my house someday.

And I went home and cried because I was like, this is a thing that's probably inevitable, but I don't want it to be.

I turned eighteen.

I'd gone to Greece when I was seventeen with my family, and then I didn't go back for probably fifteen years.

Oh wow, because that probably wasn't God.

Yeah, did you you?

I assume didn't go to college right out of high school.

I did not go to college.

I went to work full time for my dad.

And what what I wanted to do was, like I would say, I wanted to teach, but I didn't want to have to go to school to do it, and I didn't want to have to teach at public schools.

So the other part I have to say is, so do you are you familiar with the book This Present Darkness?

Oh?

Yeah, Frank PERETTI are you kidding me right now?

Absolutely?

When I was twelve, that's not helpful.

I had a fifth grade teacher talk about that book in a fifth grade Christian school, and I went to try to find it to read it, and my parents were like no.

And then I read it when I was older, at least the first part of it, and I read a Hangman's Curse or one of his kids books, yeah, and I was like like, that was kind of one of my beginning moments where I was like, this spiritual warfare stuff.

I think they're making it up.

I don't think it's real.

Yeah.

Wait, at twelve, i'd been like, oh shit, there's demons everywhere.

If I read it at twelve, like you did, I mean that book is thick, Sarah.

Oh yeah.

Blew through it in three days.

And then I read the sequel, which was Piercing the Darkness.

Now Piercing the Darkness opens with a coven where they're drinking goats blood, and that one dealt with the public school.

That one dealt with a woman who had written a curriculum that had infected children with demons.

And in the first book, the psychology department was demonic.

So I just to really set the stage.

Here, education formal education wrong.

And the other thing that that came out of, especially the first book.

I don't know if you ever really My husband and I we listened to it in the last like four months because I was like, you.

Can revisit this stuff and laugh about it.

That's really healthy.

It was, it was and because he I mean he was like unchurched, like grew up with like a vague idea of God.

And we're good.

And I'm like, you have to know.

This is where I came from.

And the thing I came away from was there are three different women in that book that are that accused men of sexual assault, and all three of them are either possessed by demons or influenced by demons.

So obviously, and and and the defense for the men is we know they're good men.

That's right.

They're good guys.

They're good guys.

They never does locker room, right.

So then the other thing that came out of it was that there's a character in the first book, Bobby Corsey, who beats the ship out of a female character.

No, he's but but he's possessed by demons.

So when the demons are exercised, he's now saved the end, there's no consequence for him.

Bernie is still bearing the bruises at the end of the book, but Bobby's saved, so we're good.

And so those two things were part of my psyche, which meant that whenever we would hear like a passing thing, a passing comment, somebody left the church.

It was usually a woman, a young woman, and there would be something said about John and something about sexual what.

Yeah, it was very much a case of well, she's probably deceived.

Good God, right, there was.

It was some sort of attack.

It wasn't real.

So you get out.

John says, you're going to live with me someday.

You cry, but you stay and you work for your dad.

I worked for my dad until I'm twenty two, twenty three and then okay, so that all happened.

Meanwhile, in nineteen ninety eight, ninety seven, somewhere around there, I'm about twenty nineteen, twenty years old.

Okay.

John tells his wife that she is going to.

Die, Oh my God, that she's.

Going to die, and that God has told him that he is going to marry this young woman who is two years older than I am.

Dude, I just want to punch this guy in the face.

He's the worst human.

Turns out, and I need to like fast forward.

This woman's it's their divorce now.

This woman is still alive.

Okay, he did not die.

John's dead John's dead.

John's not dead.

Oh boy, so she's still alive.

It turned out menopause does a lot to a woman's health.

A heart condition that was totally fixable really solved that.

Yeah, but that happened in nineteen ninety seven ninety eight.

So as an outside all we knew was that she was dying and that she needed care.

So there started to be this like full time care for her.

She was on a medication to help her sleep that was horrible, like it genuinely like.

It comes with known side effects include sleep driving.

It's banned in most countries now, but she was.

That was the sleep medication she was on.

So she would get up in the middle of the night roo, I'm around the house and have no memory of it the next day.

So several of us young women would take a night and spend it at their house to make sure she was safe.

Okay, So I started doing that in like nineteen ninety eight.

This is just a service of the church that you're.

Preving, Like, this is our minister, this is his wife.

She's dying, got it.

So I started spending Monday nights there and the next morning I stay and help.

They've hired another girl to come in and clean, and her and I clean the house on Tuesdays.

And we did this for like two years.

Wow.

And then this, this young this girl is my best friend.

She's marrying my brother.

It's gonna be great.

They get married in two thousand and one.

We're gonna have a great time.

It's a double wedding with one of John's daughters.

And I'm in the car on the way to sleep at his house again, going, God, what's gonna happen when this his daughter leaves the house to get married.

And I felt very closely like I heard a voice inside of myself, almost audible, saying you're gonna move in?

Oh no?

And I was crushed.

I didn't say a word to anybody for three months and then finally said something and I moved in a month after they all got married.

And you didn't feel like you had a choice here, Like John said it, You did it.

John said it seventeen when I was seventeen.

It was a voice that I felt like was God.

It crushed me.

It destroyed my dad.

I had.

One of my brothers had left the church by then, and because poor guy, he wanted to be a paramedic and he was told that he just had a hero complex.

Oh god, so he became.

He eventually became a very good paramedic, good for like ten years.

Well done him.

But like it just brought brought so much, it was so much pain.

So anyway, I moved in when I was twenty three in the summer, and I remember just being terrified all the time.

I was scared.

I just was scared.

I was scared of John.

I didn't want to be alone in a room with him.

There was so much anger in the house.

I didn't understand what had happened between him and his wife.

I just knew that he was seemed always to be angry with her and she always seemed to be depressed.

And it was just so much tension.

And one of the things I've realized about myself, you know, you have your fight flight fawn.

And fear yeah or freeze freez yeah, freeze yeah.

I'm a fauner.

Like inattense situation like that, I will work really hard to make myself agreeable.

And you know, like I am the golden retriever of the group.

Let's keep everybody calm, let's like take it down.

And did I screw up?

I will apologize so hard.

Did I not screw up?

I will apologize so hard.

Yeah, I got one of my kids.

Is such a classic fawn.

It's yeah, it's and and that just kind of went into high gear.

So the following March, John asked me if I wanted to smoke pot with him.

Oh, did I miss the part or he was smoking pop like crazy?

Yeah, the guy who's very strict charismatic Christian is cool with that.

Yeah, and he smoked it a lot, like I can't smell much, but I can smell that, And it was like, you know, so I said, yes, you had to well because it was like this is he picked me of him, but maybe this is this is okay.

And that was the night he sexually assaulted me.

Oh my god.

So initially I was pissed.

I'd ended up without clothes, demanded him.

He gave me his clothes and walked out of the house at I don't know what time.

It's dark, it's it's March.

I'm barefoot, and I walked from the house to the corner gas station, where I asked the clerk and I use your phone.

I was stoned out of my skull and I called my brother who had left the church and lived an hour away to come get me, and he it's the middle of the night.

He came immediately, gets me in his car and is like, what happened?

And just as I was about to tell him, another car comes into the parking lot and it's the other elder and his wife.

John had called them, or had called the girl he was seeing his little side piece, and she came and cleaned up after all the horrifying crap, and then called the other elder and his wife.

So they came and got me and my brother that I was with, and took me to my other brother and his wife's house.

They'd only been newlyweds, they hadn't even been married a year, and tried to figure out what happened is what they said, and that was tough.

I was ripping.

Both of my brothers wanted to call the cops immediately, and the other elder, yeah, and the other elders like, well, we don't know what We don't really know what happened.

And so I stayed with my brother and his wife overnight.

The next day had a meeting with the leadership of the church.

John is present and I'm present, and I tell what I remember from events, and I'm still angry because finally this fucker is going to have to.

Deal with it.

Because he's going, well, you basically wanted it, he said.

She said demonic possession, sin wanted it, to submission, all that other nonsense.

And it finally distilled down to you both sinned.

And I stayed with my brother and his wife for two weeks and I at least thought, at the very least, I don't have to go back there.

And then I had another meeting.

They weren't there with just the other elder and the other leaders, and they said you need to go back.

What needed back to live with him his house?

And I went, what are you are?

You are you would not do this to anyone else if this was your daughter.

And I got no response from that, But the issue was, well, his wife's sick and you're there to take care of her, and you both have repented.

Oh my god, I just in that moment, I don't think I've ever in my life felt so alone.

I can imagine.

So I have to submit.

This is the only way I'll be safe because the and for anyone asking like why didn't you just go home?

Going home would mean leaving everything going home.

It would I was not certain I'd be believed.

I wasn't.

I was.

I was going to lose.

I was going to lose everything.

It wasn't an option in my mind at that moment.

Yeah, how old are you this time?

I was twenty four?

Okay, So I went back.

I had a roommate who was and that was the other thing.

So my roommate was not to be told.

He had a daughter that still lived at the house.

She was not to be told.

His wife was not to be told.

We had gone back and forth on whether my parents were going to be told.

They were not going to be told.

So I so, like, what's tough for me is is that I know the Bible pretty well.

Yeah, yeah, I do.

I know the bib I've had a little bit of training on that a little bit.

And I also know that these folks claim to have the corner that you're dealing with on the Bible, and I am in my head getting into pretty easily numerous passages of the Bible that say that what they're doing is something that a godless person would do, not what a follower of Christ would do.

So was there any biblical justification or was this just pure prophecy, like pure God is telling me, this is what we should do.

You shouldn't tell your parents.

I think it was a case of, yeah, a lot of like, this is what God's telling us to do.

The Bible's not clear on how to deal with messes.

They said that a lot.

The Bible's not clear on how to deal with messes.

It's very clear not to make them.

Oh my god, this is fucking crazy.

It's yeah.

So at that point I was very aware that what I had was a grenade.

That's how I felt.

I was.

I was holding a grenade that if I pulled the pin on, it would destroy the church.

So I had to I had to not do that.

So you went back, I did, and I had to.

I met with both of my roommates and I told them I'm so sorry for leaving in the middle of the night like that and not telling you.

I I very much.

The story I went with was I had freaked out in the middle of the night.

I'd gone to stay with my brother and his wife, and you know, I'm okay now.

Yeah, So the only lie there was you're okay now, you technically were not that I.

Had just freaked out.

It was like, oh, it's just me.

I freaked out.

It wasn't that something happened.

That's you did.

You did it in a way that you could feel justified saying it it was all wrong, but like it's all wrong.

Yes, yes, but I took the blame for all of this, and I felt it.

I felt that I was taking the blame like it burdened my heart.

So you're twenty four.

It four, You're back in this house.

Yep?

What is the day to do?

What?

What is that?

Like?

How long does that last?

I'm ready for you to break free?

Sarah.

Oh, I love you.

You're so wonderful.

It takes twenty years?

Oh god, damn it.

That's where we're going to cut it off this week.

Sarah's story is just really beginning.

Twenty more years to come.

Things are going to get tougher, they're going to get darker, but they are ultimately going to get more redemptive.

You got to come back next week.

Sarah Davis tells the rest of her story right here on Breakfast in Hell.

Thanks for listening.

Hell is produced by Will Cown.

It's written and hosted by Daniel Thompson.

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