Before we start the show.

This week's episode feature 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 is part two of my interview with Sarah Davis.

Where we last left Sarah, she wanted to break free from the cults she had found herself a part of since she was born.

Let's die back in as Sarah tells us about the next twenty years and what it actually takes for her to accomplish that feat.

So, I think I must have been dissociating a lot.

Yeah, I'm sure that august.

I get called into John's office with him, just him, and he says to me, I think that what the reason that what happened between us happened is because I'm supposed to marry you and not this other girl.

I had a feeling that was coming in that moment.

I said, absolutely not good.

For you.

No.

Yeah, that night was a night from the bowels of hell, and that had nothing to do with it.

I also very much felt like I was putting that girl like on a silver plattern, saying take her, not me.

Yeah, and that felt bad.

I can see how you would feel that, but that's odd, Like you're not wrong here.

You should hold no guilt for that.

I mean, like, yeah, saying no to him, And it was one of those moments where I realized all you had to do was say no and he'd stop.

He never mentioned that again, he is.

The only thing was don't tell the other elder.

I said this, yeah, and I was like, okay, but you know, it's like in the meantime, we're sneaking the other girl into the house after his wife goes to bed at seven, and she's going into the office with him, and I can only imagine what they're doing in there.

You know, they this guy needs to like rot in prison in the hell that doesn't exist.

That's what he used to do.

I'm okay with hell for that.

Yeah, there's some times where it would be I don't think I'm I'm confident there's no hell, but there'd be tians ray be convenient.

It'd be nice, wouldn't Yeah.

At the same time that this is happening, I was doing homeschool teaching.

So when I was like twenty two, I started tutoring a girl from the church when I was still living in the other town with my mom and dad.

I'd travel at hour at six am to do algebra one with her, which is wild, that's crazy, and yeah it was wild, but I loved it.

I loved teaching good and so while all of that stuff was happening, I had students.

There were only like two or three of them at the and I think, what I have done some therapy, And one of the things I realized is that I took that feeling of being alone and I try to flip it on its head and make sure these kids would never be alone.

Nice.

So they they I would go to their house initially, and then John was like, no, they have to come here, So they came to my house.

And I remember like working hard with some of these kids to build a refresh just a relationship, because I mean, I'm twenty three, twenty four years old and I'm teaching fourteen year olds.

Well, that means you go to the same church, at some point, we're just going to be friends, right, Like if I don't approach this as at some point we're going to be friends, and I just say with a student teacher relationship, then what are we doing?

Like why are we here?

And I remember really having to work against the ways I've been taught to communicate with people, so like growing up, you know, if you say something that's wrong and wrong being like, God, I'm just feeling really depressed.

I feel like nobody loves me, you know, your normal teenage angsty thing.

My mom would come back with what's the truth?

No, you tell me some truth?

What's real?

That's not real?

What's you tell me what's real?

I couldn't do that to these kids because I wanted them to talk to me, And if I come back with shut down, then they're not going to talk to me them, right, And I remember it felt like at the time, like God is sitting there going, don't you dare say that to them?

You ask them how that made them feel, and then you sit there and say, I can understand why you would feel that way.

And then you know if if they're having a hard time explaining it, you know, like like what made you feel that way, I could, and I would.

I would also follow it up with I can imagine why I would feel that way.

I'm curious why you did, you know, instead of trying to put words in their mouth, but also giving them a space to just say things.

And I remember having to learn.

I had a group of kids from one family who I found out later well later, like their siblings, ended up talking about it deeply abusive, physically, emotionally, just just horribly abusive.

And I remember quickly learning that if I can't just say, well, go talk to your dad about that, Yeah, your dad cares, I had I like, you don't say that.

Can you talk to your dad about that?

No?

Okay?

Fair, like I'm not going to tell you to.

You know, these things that had been the correct responses weren't the correct responses.

And over the course of twenty years of homeschool teaching, I taught twenty kids and they were my world.

That's awesome.

I poured everything into them.

I had schedule, had I created my own history and English curriculum because there was no way at hell I was going to use the Christian curriculum because y'all.

But also you're and I want to get this straight.

You are creating your own curriculum.

You didn't go to college, You're creating your own curriculum, your homeschooling kids.

You don't want to use the Christian curriculum because it's so bad.

But you're still in this dude's house.

Yes, and I just didn't talk to him about.

Them, that's crazy, man.

Yeah, I didn't, Like, I didn't go to him with any questions.

I didn't go to him with any concerns because I knew that if he got involved, it wouldn't be bad.

Yeah, you know, I knew if he touched it that it would hurt them, and they did and he did.

So there was like three or four years in there where he wasn't in ministry, Like he wasn't reaching on Sundays the other elders were and there was nothing said about why.

But it was because of what had happened.

Yeah, Like, there was never anything publicly said about it.

It was church discipline.

It's classic behind closed doors.

The church disciplines them in a spiritual way so they don't get any actual repercussions.

And this is normal in almost every denomination and it's so terrible.

Yeah, well it got weirder because it's us.

Why wouldn't we be weirder.

So in nineteen ninety seven ninety eight, the church actually bought a piece of property twenty miles outside of town, and it's three hundred acres and we start building buildings and we're going to have us a little retreat out there.

We're going to We went camping there for ourself.

It's the sister cult is what you hear you're gonna call you.

Have you read Bethany joy Lynd's book.

Oh God?

I sat there and I was like, did you live in Vermont?

There's so many beats to this story that are like, it's crazy, it's wild.

Sorry.

I literally was like, Anthony, you and I went to the same church.

The guy was just as weird.

But it's like, that's when we jumped from high control religion to cult.

Is these beats are are that it's just full cult that's just disguised as religion.

Yeah.

Right, So they bought three hundre acres.

I'm sorry, I mean that's okay.

They bought three camp out there the whole dew.

Yeah, built buildings, built structures.

Y two k happened and it was a terrifying time.

Mass We were prepping, we had blankets, we had all you.

Believe the thousand years about to start.

Well, this is it.

And I don't even know that we ever talked about the thousand years.

We were just all going to die.

I had someone that I knew very well who believed that the year two thousand represented six thousand years since the creation of the world.

Sure, and so God created in six days, He created the world and on the seventh day he rests did and so every day is like a thousand years in the Bible.

You with me, you see what's coming now, So six thousand years is six days.

So in the seven thousandth year seven days, there will be no God.

That's the thousand years.

And they prepped like nobody's business.

And they were wrong.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, So y two k happened.

We had you know, New Year's Day.

We're fine, Yeah, everything's good.

Come back to your house's gang, We're good to go.

But in two thousand and one, John bought a set of forums.

They were preparedness survivalist forums.

Okay, on right, So.

He it comes with a little store and he starts selling the stuff out of the house survival manuals, all kinds of stuff, British brickfield water filters, yep, canning like all American canners, living grain mills.

Those were the first few products.

I bought, a water filter and a toilet, right.

I forgot about the toilets because we were out camping in the middle of nowhere, so you had to bring your own toilet.

Oh my god, this is wild.

And in two thousand and four he got a gun shop.

He was best friends with some multi millionaire who was a gun enthusiast who gave him basically was going to give him his stock of guns and he could open a gun store, which he did in the living room of our house.

So they I came through and put in the doors and put in all the things in the security system, and we had a gun shop at our house from two thousand and five to twenty ten.

Like, there's so much in this story that we're glossing over.

That's just nuts.

Well, because you see all those people, they're unchurched.

Yeah, one community or not really needs a mission, So I was not.

I can't emphasize enough how much he didn't pay people to work in the shop.

There was one employee and this poor man came to work every day faithfully and just got yelled at every day.

The culture John, the way John was with people, the way we were encouraged to talk to one another and be in each other's lives, It just appealed to the worst parts of yourself.

If you didn't like somebody, you could speak the truth and love in just the harshest terms, say the meanest things that you know, if somebody annoyed you.

It the amount of times that it was the Jezebel spirit.

You mean this the man that was working there, It was like his family just became the whipping boy for no good reason that I could tell.

They Maybe they just didn't have personalities.

I think it was just that they just drove John Nutts his the wife.

This man's wife had undiagnosed ADHD.

She didn't get diagnosed until she was in her sixties, and like going grocery shopping was un like, it was just unbearable for her.

It was there was so much going on, she couldn't keep it great, and so the women would try to help her, and it was ultimately she just had some sort of spiritual issue, some open door to the you know, satan.

It was just it was awful and it was hard, and it was also like I value deeply the friends I have that came from that because we learned to not talk to one another that way.

But you also, if you got out, if you all got out of it, you got out of it together, you know.

And so there's well we didn't we didn't get out so much as the church died.

Oh wow, so you'd still be in it, you think if the church didn't.

Die, I don't know how much longer I was going to be able to make it.

Yeah, I mean it's clear you're near your end right, like as far as just being able to healthily without literally you're I'm not a big huge believer in this like some of this holistic stuff, but the next thing to go for you is your actual physical healths.

Oh it does.

So I have withis.

Okay, there you go.

I know it was coming like.

It had to.

I have colitis.

I have colitis for seven years.

I was in absolute pain and then got on medication, adjusted my diet.

I lived on a pure diet for six weeks when we were trying to figure things out, like I went through that.

I yeah, I mean this stress was intense, and at some point, I can't remember what year, I was invited in quotation marks to join the leadership team, okay, And there wasn't a way of saying no to that, so I and that was a weekly meeting.

So we had a weekly meeting for the leadership team on Wednesdays, Wednesday afternoons.

That happened at the property which was twenty miles away, which was on three miles of a bad dirt road.

So this property had a about forty I think sheep, maybe fifteen or twenty goats, this is ridiculous, three horses, a whole pile of chickens, ducks, and geese.

And John lived there permanently with the girl he had told some people he was going to marry.

I lived in town with his wife, daughter, and my roommate.

They were divorced though.

No, okay, And what everybody basically thought was that this young woman was kind of the caregiver for John, that it was too much for him to be living in town.

And I wasn't going to argue with that, like I did not he was living with him, were fine, I would By that point, I think his wife was kind of feeling the same way but it was it was they they physically, neither one of them could deal with the animals up there.

So they had people coming in and out to do chores.

And the people coming in and out are driving or walking in depending on the time of year.

So three months, like I'd say two months a year at least, their mud season is so bad you cannot drive on that road, so you're walking in three miles chores.

That's insane, and nobody's getting compensated for anything like at all, like the wear and tear on vehicles.

We were Saturdays were spent up there working.

There was no and and no guy like, no man is saying noted that.

So there is no one that's getting a day off.

If you have a day off, well there's some there's some stumps that need to get removed up in the land.

And you know, why didn't you tell John you had the day off.

He had some things that needed to be done around It was wild.

It was wild, and people were tithing.

People were giving.

You know, a parent would die, you know, and they're old, they leave an inheritance to their kid, and that the kids.

Like the amount of folks my mom's age who gave their inheritance to the church and literally just saw it.

Yeah, it was that was that was, It was wild.

So that is happening constantly.

You know, they're doing lambing and kidding season where young women are spending twenty four hours a day, seven days a week taking care of lambs and kids, goats and all this stuff.

And they women, like young women aren't really encouraged or allowed in that sense to have full time jobs.

Part time jobs are kind of frowned upon.

We need you to serve in the church.

We need you to come up and do all this stuff.

We're not paying you for your gas money, we're not paying for any food.

So literally, these girls are asking their siblings for donations for food to take up to so they can do this thing.

You know, it was, it was.

And literally this there's no permanent repercussions for this, aside from the church is no longer here.

Like nobody got arrested, nobody, there was no big news story like this.

Just died out the first time.

I'm talking about a public like anybody's talked about it publicly and.

Anyone that was a part of it.

Yeah, holy shit, what.

I'm really sorry, Dan, love you.

No, No, this is.

I mean, I'm happy that you felt comfortable enough to tell the story, but the front, the fury of I can't even like I'm I'm I'm pissed.

Yeah, And it's just I mean, all these people are just still alive and just roman free.

It just we started finally, so we were meeting on Sundays up there at this property up there.

At some point between two thousand and about four, two thousand and five and two thousand and eleven, some point in there, John comes back, okay, and it's a sort of ministerial role, and he comes back with a vengeance.

He is and every the elders who were kind of running things while he was not there.

It's like he cut him off at the kneecaps.

They he completely demoralized them.

He you know, chewed him out.

They treated him like they were incompetent.

And these are like professionals who who they're not professional ministers because we don't have enough money for that, but they're they're professionals in their own right.

They run businesses, they've you know, they've been successful humans.

Yes, he's acting as though they're completely incompetent, don't know, you know anything.

He's the only one who can hear God.

So things took a darker turn after that.

I'm sure somehow meetings.

Right, right, somehow it got worse, so that all of a sudden, all these midweek meetings that we were having at other people's houses, they can only start happening at his house where he's in charge.

And then when he feels that this other, these other elders are ready, he'll let one go to their kind of a situation.

So these midweek meetings become just torture sessions.

Where do you go?

And you, I mean, there was a probably a one in four chance that it might be an okay meeting where nobody gets yelled at, But otherwise you you're gonna get You're gonna sit in a meeting and get yelled at for two hours, go home and just be like, well, I'm a piece of shit.

And and the reasons for that could be were a multi.

Variate, like so many.

Whatever he decided he's a cult leader, whatever he decided to keep you in control, was what he would say.

Right, And and the dehumanization couples who were asked about sex lives and interrogated on it in the younger group, where they had teenagers.

I mean he went through I remember hearing about it.

He went through each each kid and asked directly do you masturbate?

And it just do you?

Do you watch porn?

And I mean, I cannot imagine.

I cannot imagine the torture that these kids went through.

And these are my students that I like, I've tried to take care of and watching them just get eaten alive by him was horrifying.

That got worse then we started to actually meet in our town.

Okay, we had started renting a building on Sundays.

Obviously, we have the Word of God, so we need to have a YouTube channel.

Yeah, of course that sounds about.

We have a YouTube channel.

We have a sound we buy the machine, the stuff to do the sound so that we can stream it.

We can, you know, do all this stuff.

John isn't always coming in on Sundays, but he's always watching the feed.

And so then we start doing this thing called an after action report and a R and those started happening at some point, I don't even remember I'm on the leadership team.

I'm automatically I have to do these after every Sunday meeting.

You have to go back through rewatch the service on the stream and evaluate it.

How well did we perform?

And so these this went through every song, every the introduction.

How did that person do?

Were they in the Holy Spirit or were they not?

Were they anointed or were they not?

And then you had to turn into John you and it was.

A text thread.

Okay, so everybody starts, you know, putting it out there.

I have to tell you.

I went back and I looked.

I still have a bunch of them.

We we've all kind of kept them because dear Lord in Heaven, some of them are just wildots.

Before this episode, I didn't know what the hell was.

No.

Absolutely, those are about milkshakes.

That's completely different.

So this particular aar John says, you know that this particular late woman that he's been, he's got his little side piece.

She opened the meeting in the manner I believe meetings should be opened.

Good, there we go, We've got the standard.

He comments that somebody does a great job leading, and then he says, at around the thirty seven forty mark, when this person was singing the phrase glory to God, I was being drawn up into the heaven leaves and was singing with the voice of heaven on the backside each time she sang glory to God.

I've never experienced anything like the voice that rang through me before.

It was like I was rising heavenward in a spiral and then everything stopped.

Was anyone up front able to hear me?

And then people are like, oh, yes, I heard you.

I heard you.

And then someone says I wasn't able to hear you.

That's weird, but it sounds great, and then fantastic, you can barely hear me, he comments finally that you can barely hear me at the beginning, and then silence and then the deadness of worship when it stopped.

It seems pretty clear from the video.

And finally a friend of mine says to chime in and say, well, that was me.

You know, I turned your sound down.

Well, the reason this person had turned the sound down was because he sounded like.

Rap, yeah, yeah, I didn't want to good.

That was that kind of situation that we were under, was like I'm singing with the voice of God.

How dare you not turn me up?

To which we're all going, well, I'm so sorry.

Apparently you were singing with the voice.

Of God and you did this every week every week and how long did that last?

For years?

Oh my god, those Sundays were AARs.

Monday nights he had a meeting of all of the young people he was training for leadership.

Again, I was part of that that happened up there.

But he wanted to eat dinner while he did that, so we had to provide food.

So we're bringing up dinner that has to stay hot, and it has to be something he likes.

But he's super picky and if it doesn't taste good, you're going to hear about it.

So Sunday's absolute torture.

Monday nights absolute torture because we're probably going to talk about Sunday and how all the things we screwed up.

Tuesdays were a prayer meeting that happened where everybody's praying.

Wednesdays we're a leadership team meeting with John again, where I was absolutely wracked with anxiety.

Yeah, Thursdays I had a day off.

I didn't have any.

Man big day.

But then it was again all weekend, you know, prepping for the meeting on Sunday, having to figure that out.

How many people are coming on Sunday at this point.

We never I that at our most we had like one hundred people.

And then at your least as an adult, and we.

Always had a lot of kids.

There was always a lot of kids, but it was it was never that big.

Yeah can be.

There's no way to control it if you get.

If you can't.

So when twenty twenty hit, like I know, pandemic bad, Yeah, twenty twenty was so good.

Yeah, you were in this at twenty twenty.

Yes, And it was the first time we stopped having contact with John because we were shut down.

We met as much as we could until the State of Vermont said no more meeting in person.

Literally, the State of Vermont is responsible for you escaping a cult.

Yeah, and listen to our podcast.

And now I'm just curious.

Yes, so this March twenty twenty, we have the shutdown.

Okay.

I started listening to Deck the Hallmark in October.

Of twenty twenty of twenty two.

Okay, okay, great, back to your not about me.

I just was curious as to well.

It plays a part in it actually?

Oh okay, Yeah, y'all, y'all were amazing.

I'll take it.

Mark.

We shut we start shutting down by May.

We're doing really limited services like we're doing a little worship thing that's happening in our living room, that's being streamed, that's being recorded two days early.

John's giving a message up in his place that's being recorded a day early.

It's streaming on Sundays, and people for the first time are either not going to a Sunday service or spending time with their family, like literally, for the first time, they're not.

Having to do.

Yeah, And and it suddenly became like it became the first time we started doing things like you know, you had your little pod of people.

And by this point, so to get back, my parents have not died yet.

They're still around.

They're still kicking.

They in two thousand and two they had gone through a bankruptcy and they moved to the town where the church was.

Hey, my dad was going to church by then.

He'd gotten saved.

When I was nineteen years old, he's in not going to help.

Hey, yay.

But over the years, like I just hadn't had a relationship really with him when I was a kid, obviously he wasn't around.

It was it was good, it was like a positive.

I got older.

He ended up working and running a banquet center and needed some help and I was like, hey, I know waitressing, and I went to work with him.

And though that started this like beautiful relationship for me of just getting to know my dad and just like in that wonderful way that you can just fall in love with your parents.

And that happened for sure where I would walk in and he'd just be like, oh, honey, oh you're here, and that wonderful delight you get me that, you know, it just was fantastic.

So twenty twenty, he had he'd been diagnosed with congestive heart failure fifteen years twenty years before, so he's very careful during COVID.

And it was me, my unmarried brother, my mom, and my dad and we would go on drives and Sunday afternoons, we're just driving around, having a good time, enjoying each other's company.

And about that time I start having aphib.

Yeah, I wonder why crazy My heart would go.

My heart rate would go up to like one ninety one seventy in aphib.

I couldn't breathe a difficulty, went to the doctor a lot, and I think it was right about that time I remember distinctly praying God.

It was after a really bad meeting where we had gotten reamed out and I finally went, God, I I cannot go to another bad meeting.

I need you to do something.

And from that point on, every time I would go into aphib and have to go to the hospital, it was I missed a really bad meeting.

And until COVID stopped them from happening all together.

Well, no COVID, they still happened very much, but it happened less, and so over the course of twenty twenty, we finally figured out that I'm having for no and no idea why I'm having electoral issues, and I ended up having an ablation in September.

So I had started subbing at the public high school about six years prior, and which I loved.

I loved it.

I loved being able to work with the kids.

I loved.

I'd gone to a private high school.

So I'm walking into this public high school and going, wait, what people just have just for colored hair?

What?

What are these kids doing with facial what are we doing?

But I really liked I liked being with them, I liked getting to know them, I liked getting to love them.

And you know, see kind words do wonders on heartsah, and but I hadn't been working long enough to be able to collect a lot of unemployment, so I had when everything shut down, I started collecting unemployment.

I got the oblation in September.

But then I was running out of money.

Yeah, and my roommate worked at a company, a factory, and she said, we need help.

Would you like to come work for us?

Because she was the favored child basically, and she and I need to say this, and like the she knew she had that power, and she used it as best she could to help her friends, and so like I mean that, like, so she knew she could do stuff that the others would be looked frowned on.

So she knew.

Coming to me and saying, hey, would you like to work for my company?

It gave the blessing that I could do that without coming under fire.

So I did.

I went to work for her company for part time, twenty hours a week.

I was still to tutoring.

And it was in October of that year that I stumbled upon your podcast with the wonderful jingle bell Bride.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, that was a premiere episode I think from one year that's right with Alonso yep.

Well no, it was with Chris.

With Chris, yeah.

It was great.

But anyway, so I ended up becoming a member of the Facebook group and that was the first time I'd been a member of any community that was diverse.

Wow, like outside of the Christian sphere, because we were isolated within the Christians.

Yeah, you weren't even a part of a diverse Christian community, much less a diverse the first community.

And you know, I'm I'm reading all these comments and getting to know all these people and going, well, they're different than me.

I also really we all have the same sense of humor, Like this is really great, Like this is a safe place for me to just sit back and watch and not feel like I have to have an opinion about anything.

I've always had to have an opinion about something, and we didn't.

We didn't yell at you a single time until movie drafts last.

Month, and by then I was yelling back.

So so that kind of starts happening.

But it's also the election, right, So this election, we we had started coming out of our isolation a bit.

Are you familiar with Morning Star?

Are you familiar with Joiner?

Yes?

The Joiner was really integral of our church stuff.

I've always thought he was horrible writer, so I couldn't stand his books.

Yeah, but we read like The Final Quest.

We Final Question the trilogy, wasn't there, Yeah.

Oh yeah, yeah, but we read The Final Quest multiple times.

The closest that John got to admiring anybody was Rick Joyner.

So he Rick went full on like right wing conspiracy theory with David Barton, and he went right and we followed him right into it.

Yeah that's out in North Carolina, that's really close to us.

Yeah, so we went right into it.

We were watching all of the David Barton videos.

We were dude, yes, and all of the prophets are saying Donald Trump is going to win this election.

That this is I mean, and I'm in it.

That summer of twenty twenty, we had a BLM parade come by our house and I was pissed, like, I can't believe we're doing this.

Yeah, And that was the first time I think I went, wait, I don't like the person I'm turning into.

Because it had been a couple of years like that, The unveiling of it for me had started over the course of several years with like books like Pete s.

Gazerro wrote the emotionally mature Christian or something spiritually whatever, emotionally mature spirituality or something where I read the book and I went, Johnson infant.

Yeah, it has no emotional maturity.

I take the test.

I'm a teenager.

If he took, I'm answering from his perspective, and he's an infant.

Sheila Gregwah had written The Bear Marriage and I was listening to The Bear Marriage podcast some and I'm going, wait, I grew up this way, this is you know.

So it was just this kind of rethinking of basics.

Yeah, chance to get out and hear other voices, right, yeah.

And then recognizing I'm listening to Canvas owns Ben Shapiro like all of the worst.

Of the worst, I'm sorry.

And realizing that all you're doing is giving me permission to be a horrible human, Like if I read the Bible, and trust me, I've read the Bible, Jesus is super clear on don't be a bad person.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah, the twenty twenty it just so happened.

It catches you at quite a point in your life.

But never was the quiet part set out loud more than in twenty twenty.

Right, and that's where I started seeing it myself and go and recognizing, to a certain extent it had been primed in me from the church culture, because the church culture had been to appeal to your worst nature.

So of course I was going to end up in this area where everybody's saying, well, yes, this horrible human is God's answer, because we have a horrible human who's God's answer.

Don't they looks similar?

Yeah?

Self fulfilling prophecy.

Yeah.

So but anyway, you know twenty twenty hits, I voted for Trump, I praying for him to be elected.

I he's not.

That's weird.

You started listening to us the month beforehand too, so man, good for you.

Yeah.

Well, and he's not elected and the profits are wrong.

But we don't stop praying, we don't stop fasting, We're listening to Dutch sheets, we're supporting, supporting Sean Foyte, We're doing all this stuff like we were in it.

Yeah, And when January sixth happened, I cried because I sat there and went, what the hell have I believe?

Because this is wrong?

What?

Like, what guys?

What just happened?

And I couldn't I couldn't anymore.

You couldn't none see it.

I couldn't, and it was like I didn't know how to move forward.

But like genuinely felt like everything in my life had fallen apart.

So it was like my politics had always been tied to my Christianity.

I was pro life because I was a Christian.

Correct, I was against all homosexuality.

It's a sin.

You're going to help because I'm a Christian and there's no separation.

So when all of a sudden this falls apart, I don't know what this is anymore.

And for the first time in your life, maybe one plus one doesn't equal three.

It doesn't make sense.

I counted it, and I don't see it.

In our church, the atmosphere was just building tension, and I remember talking to my friends, my parents, We're all on the edge.

It was like, we're all at the point where we're going.

I don't think I can take this much longer.

I remember my parents saying, if we go to another meeting or he yells at us, we're signing off, because they were on zoom, like I can't do this anymore.

Remember sitting there and going, God, I need you to stop aaars and Monday night meetings, and literally the next day, John goes, We're going to stop AARs and Monday night meetings.

And I was like, I don't know what prayer means anymore.

Apparently that word.

I'm not arguing with that.

And then in March of twenty twenty one, John's wife and my roommate came to me and said, what happened twenty years ago?

Why did you leave?

And I was completely cornered, and I.

Told them awesome, and.

I was shaking.

I mean, it took me time to get through the whole story.

I left there and I went to my parents and I told my parents, and I the way it crushed my father it was I I told him what had happened, and he just it was like he had personally been lied to.

For his entire time.

He had been best friends with, he'd considered him his best friend, and to find out John had done this to his daughter and not and just covered it up.

And my mom told me stuff that had been said to her when she was pregnant for my brother, where John was like, you you know you're lusting after me.

John is five foot two and looks like a frog.

My father was a six foot tall, gorgeous Greek man.

My mother's looking at John.

Going okay, all right, come on, have you seen my husband?

That is not a thing.

All I can say is it felt like I'd finally pulled the pin on the grenade.

But I watched the devastation happen, and I tried, and so I did what I could do, which was throw myself on top of it, which led to so much there.

It was an absolute nightmare for the next month, and all I could think was every time was like everybody's trying to figure out which ways up.

Because I told a few people, some of them went and told other people there was a massive like it was like an explosion that happened underground.

So some people on up, you know, on the on the top, knew that there had been an explosion.

For other people didn't know why this is there an earthquake?

They didn't know what was happening.

And I ended up meeting with the other elder and his wife and they're going, why did you tell anybody?

I can understand you telling your parents, but why did you tell his wife that wasn't yours?

To tell you that happened years ago?

It's over?

Why I thought this was done.

I don't know why this is coming up again, and I'm sitting there like are you are?

We?

Are we still here?

Like you still don't get it?

So I was sent to go talk to John and apologized to him.

And you murdered him in cold blood.

I wish I could say that, No, I did.

If I'm reading a novel, that's the ending that I'm looking for, right.

I went and I apologized and I said, I'm so sorry.

God, damn it, I'm really sorry about this.

No, no, no, stop apologizing.

This is your story.

Well, so I did.

I went and apologized, and the entire time I'm thinking, why am I here doing this?

But okay, I want to not.

I wanted to just go away.

Yes, like this is awful and awful, and I did this.

I did this, I did this right, and so we got he He texted the whole household.

By that point we had there were one two I think there were four or five young younger women like me and others living there, plus his wife.

His wife is just struggling over what to do, and he's demanding that she move up with him and his side piece at the land because that's obviously what the problem is is that, And she's going, I can't do that, and I'm trying to figure out what the right answer is.

Because I can't figure that out.

The other elder isn't getting involved at all.

One thing leads to another, and we end up it was me and three other roommates stayed at the house.

Well, it turns out, fun fact, it never was his house.

He was renting it and he wasn't actually the one paying the rent.

The church was.

So we went, oh, hell no, you know, price of being what it is in this this town, we'll take the rent over.

So I went to the rent the landlord and signed the least in my name.

We paid for it from there on out, because it was like, wait, you've been holding this over our heads and.

You didn't.

You don't even you don't even pay for it.

The church does, like you don't even have that authority.

This is so you're just taken back.

You're taking back your power and your story.

We started doing that, and what ended up happening.

You know, his wife, God bless her, got out and ended up filing a separation, ended up you know, her story is her story, but she got out and his daughter that was still living there, you know, had fallen in love with a wonderful man and got married like two months later because she was done and she got out, so well done her.

And so I'm there with at that point it was four other roommates and and we all are looking at each other, going, how do we do this?

Because the way we've been doing it has sucked?

Right there's you know, the way we've been talking to each other has been awful.

And I will say, I mean, so many people left.

My parents left.

My dad never came back to church, He never saw John again, he never saw anybody.

And that was probably the hardest part for me.

Was not that they left, God totally, no, not that they left, but that nobody knew why they left.

So people stopped talking to them and treated them like they were the pariah.

And they didn't know.

They didn't know why they'd left, and I didn't feel like I could tell them, So the only thing I could do was say, you know, they had very good reasons for leaving.

They trust me, No, they knew why, you know, why they left.

And for myself, it felt like I stayed.

I did not stay because of John, but I did stay because I felt like watching these kids, these younger folks that I had taught, watching my nieces and nephews deal with all of this pain, I just didn't feel like I could leave them because it would cause more pain, and I didn't want to do that.

So I stayed, and I stayed in contact with my parents.

But it wasn't the same, you know, wasn't the same as it had been.

And we both tried, like we you know, we put the effort in my roommate that she and my brother that had been single, had been in love with each other for years, and because of the culture of the church, it was so John was so horrible to couples who wanted to get married, like he demoralized the man.

He just destroyed the relationship until the only way they could get married was with his permission.

It was just horror.

And so they had never pursued, really seriously pursued each other, but they were They've been in love for years, and they did.

They got married, and they're happy and wonderful and thank God.

But they were gone and they had left.

My parents had left, and I stayed, and I've got roommates who we are trying to navigate this new normal, and we I gotta say we kind of crushed it.

We did pretty good because we are sitting there going, wait, we've all been way too involved in each other's lives.

Yeah, there's been a did you get counsel for that?

Are you sure that's what you should do?

Yeah, And now we're backing off each other going good for you.

Yeah, good that.

Happy for you, learning how to talk to one another in a way that was kind and not judgmental, having you know, conversations about the past twenty years, and letting each other have space to like, if you're not in the same space, I am with that, totally fine.

You're not able to talk about that right now.

Give you space to do that and not force you to listen to a conversation you're having PTSD over.

Yeah.

Unpacked your trauma in a healthy way.

Yeah, and that was I'm really grateful that I stayed for that because it did help enormously.

But I was deconstructing while I was still going to church to a large degree.

Yeah, I think that anytime that you've got the trauma that you've experienced, as soon as that wool gets or that wool gets pulled off of your eyes.

You can still go through the motions, but you're already processing.

Yeah, and so when do you leave entirely?

So like my dad.

So, my dad got sick, he was he'd already had congestive heart failure.

I'm pretty sure that that was the final straw for him in a lot of ways.

He started to feel poorly in October of twenty twenty one.

Okay, and I looked at my mom and I said, look, I know my brother and his new wife, my former roommate, we haven't had contact.

I need you to know that there's like on my side, I genuinely believe we were all doing our best.

Like nothing they did, they did like, but I don't know if I can contact them.

I don't know if they want to hear from me.

Yeah, that I would really like not the first time I see them to be in a hospital, Like, can we have a connection where you know, something bad happens.

So my brother, you know, contacted me and we talked and a little bit, not about everything, but a little bit, and then just kept the connection going.

And my dad finally was told I think in December of that year of twenty twenty one, that he needed a heart transplant.

He went down to Boston Medical or a bunch of tests, stayed there for two weeks, which was awful because my mom didn't go with him, so she wanted she needed a ride.

I was supposed to take her, but everybody in my house ended up with COVID and it was like, oh so, But in the process of that, he he just wasn't.

He was like, I can't, I can't go through this anymore.

So he came home and he died March eighth, twenty twenty two.

Okay, I'm sorry, and.

You know I was able to see him and we talked.

You know, it was good and reconcile.

Yeah, you had reconciled your relationship with him and you were your friends.

It was still you know, that's still pain I carry, of course last year, you know.

But so he died in twenty twenty two, and I think it might have been that summer that I realized I'd been sexually assaulted.

Yeah, like, it took that long for me.

And it was something Diane Langberg had said because I listened, so I'm you know, I started listening to the Roys Report.

I started listening to all of these podcasts that I'm like, y'all, this is a problem.

Across the board, it is.

Yeah, and then as far as the deck, the Hallmark crew, like Justin Kirkland wrote this beautiful peace for Esquire about his own testimony.

One of my favorite.

Yeah, it is phenomenal.

I cried.

Yeah, I read that and I cried, And without question, that was what was the final straw.

And the homosexuality is the sin crab.

Yeah, because I sat there looking at this beautiful human who if I if you're telling me, I like, I just was like, nope, you've changed.

You've not just changed my mind, like my heart is completely different on and like it was just this beautiful I just nothing but respect.

You're going to try to remember to put that in that link in the show notes.

If you're listening, would like to check out that article.

It's Justin Kirklan, the first guest on this podcast.

You can listen to this episode.

But that article is absolutely beautifully written and well done.

Yeah, and I just I wept, and you know, all of a sudden, it's like all of these things I've been raised one way, you know, just was bullshit and in so many ways, and so like we had we had been we had had the Bible drilled into us.

We I've read the Bible cover to cover, you know, three times, and you know, read the Book of John fifteen times in one week.

And I'm going looking at it, going, nowhere is Jesus espousing all this stuff you say, thanking John would sit there and say, look at the fruit of my life and say it as though it was all the accomplishments.

And I'm going, Jesus was really clear on fruit, like Paul says, fruit, and it's gentleness and humility and love and kindness.

And these patients, that's all the good stuff.

You're not showing any of them.

But also, like I think the like you know, we tried.

All we can do is human beings is fine beauty in the ashes, And yeah, I want to fix all of this for you, and I can't, and I shouldn't because it's your story and your journey.

But you've, you know, in the last I thought you had been out of this longer, and literally in the last three years i've known you, You've gone back to school, you've gotten gotten married, You're you're really grabbing life by the horns, like you're really finding a way to acknowledge, speak in existence your trauma, and and understand that that doesn't control you anymore.

And that's I wish that would have been you from the beginning.

But I'm so thrilled that it's you now, you know.

Yeah, I mean I had been subbing one day.

That's what had happened is I subbed one day in an English class and it was like this little voice inside me went, you can do this.

You could go back to school and do this.

You can't.

I brought that to the leadership and they said, no, you've you're anointed by God.

You know what's funny, as schools don't hire people who are anointed by God.

That's not as certificate you can get.

I was told I was already.

I was always told I was humanistic, and I think that was just code for nice, of course, but trying to see the best in people, which I think any good teacher should be.

Yes, a good.

Teacher should try to see the best in people.

Yeah, yeah, it's a teacher.

That's the point.

A good teacher isn't there to leave you with rudimentary knowledge, nor is it there are they there to fix problems.

It's to see where someone is and meet them there and hopefully move them.

That's it.

That's it.

If I could go back and speak to teachers, which is something I want to do, but no one would hire me to do it because I literally left education.

But that would be what I would say, is like, sometimes that happens through the books and the numbers and the history.

Sometimes it happens through relational rigor and accountability, and sometimes it happens with just presence just being there.

But I can't imagine anyone being able to have a better, more understanding, compassionate teacher than Sarah because of your experience, Like if anybody needs to be a teacher.

At you, yes, well, and that's so I wanted to go back.

I was told it was you know too much, I shouldn't do it.

In twenty twenty one, my parents, my dad's still alive, I told them I want to go do this, and my dad was like, absolutely, that's right, you should do that for sure.

And I went and talked to the other elder and he said no or no.

He didn't say no.

What he said was you'd really have to hear from God, which is kind of a veiled no.

And I just I was pretty shook.

Up by that, but I decided, with my dad's health at any rate, I could probably wait.

Yeah, And so I did.

I waited.

My dad died in March of twenty twenty two, and that summer I started the process to go to our community college in Vermont, and I took the Assessment of prior Learning, which is a course that goes through your entire life.

You pull credit, you pull out learning, you form them into like courses.

You ask experts in their field if they could write a letter saying, yes, you have accomplished credit college level credit.

Yes, So I did that.

How many questions about the Book of John World There?

No, none, not It's weird.

It's so weird, it's so crazy.

I got eleven courses of history through that.

I got forty eight credits total.

And I started the journey.

So I am now in my senior year of college.

I'm doing my student teaching right now with my practicums part two with stuff.

Then I'll do my student my full student teaching in the spring.

That's awesome.

And over the course of twenty twenty two, like I can't, the disillusionment happening in the church was amazing.

It was amazing, like all of the meetings were literally like there was an older group that was my parents' age, and they would have meetings where they just basically sat around and put this this is shitty and I hate it.

And I was like it was amazing.

There were young girls and you know, and then over the so everybody's trying to figure out what's happened to John's wife, like she literally dropped off the map.

Nobody knows why John divorced her in twenty twenty two.

Okay, but he doesn't tell anybody.

That NAHN, that'd be a big deal.

So but he decides he's going to marry this girl that is now she's forty something years old.

She's the longer age girl, but she's been under his influence for well over twenty years.

Yeah, he's going to marry her.

And the other elder finally looks at him and says, and you fucking tell people, Yeah, I'm not doing it for you.

You go around and you tell everybody you're doing this right like they've been.

They they started standing up to him.

So he starts with the older group and I can't tell you the joy in my heart when they let him have it with both barrels of like you have treated us like crap forty years and you've been doing what you know, they just it was a three hour meeting.

I mean he should be in jail.

I don't want to be clear.

And if you're up there and have pieced any of this together and like to call the cops anybody listening, I'd love for you too.

I don't really care what the statute of limitations are, but this is nice too.

This is nice too.

That yes, so people stopped paying tithes.

Yeah, people stopped pay and like the leadership at the time because so John was no longer as much involved, and they were looking at people and going, if you don't want to pay, don't pay.

Yeah, you don't want to be like literally use your pocketbook.

And so they stopped.

And it finally got to the point where the church couldn't function because of course they didn't have the money to pay for the farm on that property because the church had been paying for it.

And they finally got the new leadership that had would kind of started moving in, got ahold of the books and went, wait a second, John's literally been the one calling all the shots.

Financially, that's illegal.

It turns out this has all been bad.

Yeah and yeah, it turns out and turns.

Out, and that I think the end of January we probably had our first like meeting where every the chairs were all in a circle, there was one or two microphones and they were passed around and people finally, for the first time in forty some odd years, said things and what they were feeling, what they were angry about, what they had questions about.

John was not there, but it was.

We had three of those.

They lasted hours and people just finally said things, and the final conclusion was everybody resigned and the church folded good.

And it was hard on the younger kids, the younger folks, because they had invested so much time and energy up to the farm that they had they were the ones that they had been told their whole lives this is for you day, and so for some of them it really was heartbreaking.

I'm sure myself I was deeply relieved because I was like this, of course.

Yeah, well it is.

But you know, when the emperor has no clothes, you know, the the more invested you are in the younger you are, you're probably going to try to be like, no, there's clothes we promise you know what I mean, Like, you don't have the experience to know, well, you.

Know what I mean, right, And they didn't, like they were terrified of John.

They couldn't stand John, but they were they were hopeful because he's old, he's in his seventy truly, he'll die.

But they were hopeful that somehow something you know.

Yeah, So the church disbanded.

Just stopped in February of twenty two.

And that was the same month that my husband now husband, got hired at the company where I worked.

Oh wow, in this tiny little department of three people, and he walks in and I was like, oh, you're very handsome.

That's nice, which is it's allowed for you to be attracted to your husband.

I don't know if you know this.

I know it's crazy.

Well is crass?

Spoiler Larry Christensen missed the vote on.

That one, didn't He.

Yeah, he just put up a shirt and was like, look at me.

So a dragged.

So yeah.

I remember coming home from work and telling my roommates, so, there's this guy.

I really like him.

Yeah, And you know it was like I'd been thinking about my sexual ethic and how I don't see I'm Sorry, I read the Bible a lot.

I don't see where God's like, don't have sex before marriage where he says, you know, maybe don't sleep around.

Yeah you could, you could get there, but you could not get to don't have sex before marriage, because because I'm.

Trying to figure out where when Adam and Eve's wedding day was.

But also, yeah, there's that.

There's also all of them, all of the men in the Bible who were God's chosen men that all didn't do that.

And then there's also people groups that don't have marriage Sarah, Like you know, I used to ask this to kids in history class, Like, you know, white people didn't let slaves in our country get married.

They didn't let him get they let him do it.

So were they all just sinning?

Like is that like how dumb an American and just modern?

Is it to think that?

Anyway?

Sorry, go back to you, But I remember, I mean, and I was wrestling through it and what is my sexual ethic that's right I believe and and and I'm not even talking about what I believe that should be imposted on anyone else?

Yeah, for you, and you know, it became a case of like commitment matters.

Commitment for me is important and I'm not even going to impose that on my nieces and nephews, but for me, this is important.

And I mean Roger and I we talked and talked, and I tell him now, he was like, if you go into a shelter and animal shelter.

He was like, I was like a little shelter pup.

He just was quiet and calm, and I could just approach him quietly, and he just it was He was so wonderful.

And we you know, we fell in love and got together and it was amazing and wonderful.

And I moved in with him in December, and.

And you got married.

All that happened in a whirlwind.

It did, I mean it did.

And at the same time, it was like, oh my god, you're the one.

Like I used to imagine what you would be like I couldn't like.

But you know, it's it's.

For the first time in my life, I felt safe.

I felt safe to be me.

I can be loud, I can laugh, I can be goofy, I can feel sad, I can feel whatever I'm feeling.

He'll tell me all the time, like, feel what you're feeling.

Just know that I still love you, that's right, And it's like, oh, thank God.

You know, he's the one that pushes me to go like, do you actually like that person?

Though?

Well I can get along, yeah, but do you like that person?

Roger sounds like a great dude.

Genuinely like he and he you know, it's like he's so like he's not a Christian in that sense, you know, he sits there and goes I wish I could know for sure God is real, And I'm like, so do Why.

Would you call yourself?

Would you?

What would you say right now?

Like as we actually have to wrap this up, although I could talk to you all day, like, what would you say right now?

Like you've been so scarred by a cult?

How has that affected you spiritually?

Like you're deciding things for you now?

I think that's healthy.

What does that look like for you?

Ex essentially?

So it's come to the point where I really still like Jesus.

I think I can't seem to get away from the idea of that there's a God, and but love seems to be the thing that that one, like God is love.

I can stick with that one that that and what that looks like.

And I can and I say that because I even looking around like nature that like the way you know, mother birds are with their heads chick all of that like love seems that I can get with that.

But yeah, I think I found that.

It turned out I'm not spiritually inquisitive, Like I'm just not a Christon who wants like I've got friends who are exploring all kinds of stuff, you know, I've got one that was like, let me try witchcraft.

How was that?

Oh that's scary, you know, Like I'm just not someone who is wants to go out and have a religious experience.

And that was where I realized that my mom chose charismatic Christianity.

Correct, I did not, you did not, And I don't like nothing about it attracts me.

I'm not attracted to that kind of an experience.

It turns out I'm pretty heady as far as like academic literature.

Like I like that part.

But I still listen to some of those podcasts like you know, Sheila Greguara or The Roy's Report.

I still listen to them sometimes and I get like amped up, Like I like, there's a William Brandham research podcast that is fantastic for tracing, like the New Apostolic Reformation all the way to William Brown.

Wow, and it's wild.

I love that podcast.

But again it's like, I'm not I'm never going to go to church again.

I can't imagine sitting under store.

I can't imagine I would tell you not to like I would legitimately be like, you know, it's almost like talking to an alcoholic.

It literally would be like Sarah, you don't go through those doors, don't do it.

And the thing, you know what, so I and part of the deconstruction was recognizing that what had appealed to me was the certainty.

Yeah, I liked the certainty of knowing right and wrong coming to I still think right and wrong.

You know, there's there's things that are right and wrong.

But I've had to resist that temptation to swing the other way, of course, and be just as extreme and fundamentalist on the other side.

I think we all have to do.

I think, guys, it's a battle every day when you know someone The hardest people to love are the people that you know are wrong right.

And also because I've had to learn to be comfortable with uncertainty.

Yeah, when my dad died, it was the first time I went wait, I don't even know if I believe.

I don't like, where is he?

Yeah, I mean, I'm forty something years old, going, I don't know where my dad is.

You've been telling me my whole life he's in heaven, and when I read the Bible, I don't know where that is.

I don't know what's there.

Jesus says it'll be great, sort of like he's no clarification.

And so I don't know where my dad is.

Like that that was a big thing you have.

To like, Yeah, I think not knowing is the first step, but living in that and finding peace and grace in that is a second step.

That takes time.

Yeah, And so that's kind of where I'm at right now, is just kind of feeling like, and I think that bothers my mom, you know, She's like, are you praying?

Do you pray?

You know?

And so because because again she chose charismatic christanity, he hasn't left that.

Yeah, she left the church, but she didn't leave the She left the cult, but not.

The exactly exactly.

And that's kind of ultimately been what I think a lot of folks that age in our group did, was they left the cult, but they didn't leave that, whereas people my age and younger, Hell yeah, most of us are like, yeah, we're done done, like literally, like we can't.

I can't go to church.

There's that's not an option.

And yeah, it's been a journey, but.

This is as good as based.

I don't know, but this sounds to me as though this is as good and as healthy as you've been as an adult.

Oh my god, yes, absolutely absolutely, And and like you know, I'm still in contact with so many of my friends there because we all we were all there at the whole time.

And I'm watching them, you know, they they're getting married, they're having babies, they're living their best lives without judgment, without you know, somebody grilling them and being told they have to spank their six month old.

And they're sitting there going, hey, you know child development means and they're learning and they're sitting there go I'm never touching my child like that.

I'm you know, learning new ways.

And I think that has been probably the most healing for me, is watching this and going, I think this is the best revenge, you know, yea, the always yeah, but this family, like that I had mentioned before that was the whipping boy like they had like three marriages in a year and their kids get married with babies, and you know, I'm just looking at it going thank God like this is the best yeah, justice to live your best life.

Sarah, what a journey.

You are just an inspiration.

And I thanks for feeling comfortable sharing your story here, and thanks for for just being with me and sitting with it for over two hours and some really tough stuff.

But man, if we can't go out and love others and you can, then we all have a problem.

So I appreciate you being here.

I appreciate you doing this well.

Thanks for letting me.

Oh absolutely, I can't thank Sarah enough for joining me this week.

The courage and fortitude to share this story is not just admirable, it's a herculean feet the likes of which I don't know if I could manage myself.

Sarah has every reason to be mad at the world.

She could just fly live an angry existence.

She was pretty much born into this situation.

Her agency was taken from her, and she was trapped in a world of high patriarchal control that demeaned the idea of learning new things and experiencing a life outside of the belief system that was established for her.

It led to gas lighting, verbal abuse, and sexual assault.

Sarah could lose to this anger, but she refuses to.

She's speaking her truth.

She's living her life to the fullest.

She's utilizing her new found freedom to do all the things she wanted to do but wasn't able to earlier in life.

Even more amazing, Sarah finds power in the unknown, beauty in a world around her that she can't control, even when it was controlled for her for so many years.

She's learning, growing, and loving along the way.

If Sarah can be this example, then most of the rest of us are just without excuse.

I found myself becoming so angry at those that hurt Sarah, and I think we should all work as hard as humanly possible to end hurt like that for others.

But I was also uplifted by Sarah's demeanor and her willingness to do the next right thing.

Thanks for listening.

Breakfast in Hell is produced by Will Cown and written and hosted by Daniel Thompson.

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You're about to hear some ads that helped keep the lights on here in the old studio.

Thanks for listening or don't listen.

It's really up to you at this point.

It is at the end of the show.

I mean, you're listening to me Hi.

But here they come.

I promised our coming.

Yep, here they are.

Happy Day.