We'd like to acknowledge that traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast was produced the Gadigl people of the orination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present. This episode contains discussions of physical and emotional abuse and coercive control. If this raises any issues for youth support is available through the links and phone numbers in the show notes.
It's nineteen ninety six and we're at a wellness festival in Sydney.
We're here with Carl McConkey. After she made the last minute decision to head along and see what it's all about.
She strolls past the stand and is handed a brochure. It's for a course that promises to help her reach her full potential in all aspects of life. Carly's been feeling lost and thinks this encounter could be it the sign she's been searching for. With hope in her heart, she excitedly signs up for the course. What Carly doesn't realize is that this will become the first step into the descent of a cult. This cult is where she's spent the next thirteen years.
Of her life.
I'm at Middleton and this is head Game Today a story of mind control and resilience on the road to recovery. Carlie McConkey, Welcome to head Game. Your mindset has been manipulated. You've taken control of it. It's been taken charge of It's fascinating because you were a brainwash, let's say, into a cult.
But take me back to the very beginning.
So I'm twenty one years old. I graduated, you know even I think it was March that I got my graduation certificate. And then in the May, it was one Sunday afternoon. I'd been having a sleep and I just saw in the newspaper that the first of all was on you know, it was on a story newspaper. Yeah, click exactly. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. I thought, okay, I'm going to go and have a psyche reading. So I went straight there, got the psyche reading, sat down
with this lady. She was lovely told, gave me the reading, and then she said, you know what you need to do. You need to do this personal development course. It's called the next Evolutionary Step. You only have to do this one course. It will give you all the tools to enable you to reach your potential, find your direction, you know, destress, have health and well bank, build better relationships. So she said, okay, she gave me the brochure and the little package and directed me to the stand.
So this is sounds like a bit of a behind the scenes work here. So definitely this was all pre emptied from that spiritual.
Reading exactly and pretty like in hindsight, obviously she was recruiting me. That was the recruitment method, and she was part of the cult.
Wow, so they've gone deep into you, answered a few questions probably this is amazing, you know, this is where I need to be there.
This is where I thought it was a sign is yeah.
Yeah, so that step into when they took you were just.
Like sold straight away. And then so I went up to the stand. So all the smiling people, you know, looking healthy and vibrant and that type of thing. You know, there's kind of that love bombing that you hear about. And then what happened was they said there was a free stage one seminar at the Hilton Hotel. Okay, so I took my mom, yeah, and my sister to the Hilton Hotel. You know who is now we realize the cult leader, the head of the company. She stood at
the front. She's like less than five foot tall. She was, you know, slim and trim and fit, very charismatic and was just walking across the stage talking about, you know, what the program would do. She had people who had completed the program stand at the front do testimonials. They were all smiling and you know, all that type of thing, and then you know, I was already sold, but then I signed up straight away. My mom and my sister actually did do the first program with me. That was
at McRory University. Okay, so you know, these locations are all very above board. You think everything's fine. It's just a personal development company. You're doing this course to better yourself. So that was on a Thursday night, Friday night, all weekend and Monday night.
So intense it was.
It was it was a case of not giving you much time to think from the reading into the hills and then bang, bang bang it.
That was early July for you know, you engulfed in it.
Exactly exactly clever, Yes it is. And that particular course, we were vegan and we would get up early. We were given sort of exercises to do meditation, listen to her on a meditation tape. Every night, we had homework, we had to write down our dreams, we had to juice fresh juice every morning, that type of thing. So you'd literally get up at seven and you wouldn't even finish the course to like ten, and then it had to go home do all this stuff. So sleep deprivation
already started, food deprivation already started. And the ultimate thing. Her premise was that we were cleansing our cellular memory from this lifetime, lifetimes and our ancestors, and we had to do a lot of emotional release. So there was eighty people on that course and in this one room, really people, eighty people, and we were yelling and screaming and getting our anger out and rage, and you know, they said, okay, here's a pillow.
He's a big black.
Gymnastic mat, you know, the six x four foot gymnastic mats. We had to think of either our teacher, our parents, our siblings, whoever, and yell into the mat, punch and you know, yell and scream. So we had eighty people doing that, so complete sensory overload. And there was one point where I was hovering in the corner with my
mom sort of hugging her like obviously distressed. And you know, the woman came, the cult leader as such, came up and said, you know, I think you need to take responsibility and move away from your mother and you know, take responsibility for yourself.
It's happening.
So it's already she's yeah, pushing me away from my mum and my family.
Wow.
So they're controlling your food, ye, your sleep, yes, your mind. Yes, they're not giving you even time to think for yourself. They're thinking for you.
That that's right, the actioning stuff for you.
Would you say that you were hugely before you went to that reading, were you and were you vulnerable? Do you think that you were still looking for yourself and they came in and you thought there'd be that that piece to the puzzle, right exactly, we complete you.
Yeah.
And I think because I was a very idealistic person, I had everything to give. I wanted to do something good in the world. I wanted to contribute, be of service in the world and do something big that would help in some way. And I think I was vulnerable and unfortunately what happens with cults, you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. I mean that was obviously what happened.
In place at the right time, which she thought you were at the right place at the right time.
That's exactly right.
Yeah, Ultimately you weren't exactly that, you're at the wrong place at the wrong yeah.
And I think something else important is that the woman who the founder, who was up the front, the charismatic we'll call a cult leader. Now, she it felt like she was psychic and she was reading you and knew everything about you. But the fact is is that we'd had to complete a background questionnaire all about our health, medical history. She and her there was a support team of about six people who were her You know, it's like a gang.
Really, they're breaking all that information down. They know when they know when to you. They're running the course, they're running you, they're running your life. So they know we're going to use that on day four.
For exactly exactly this type of exercise. And then you're like, wow, you.
Know, how do they know that about me?
Really working?
There the blank gaps that I never knew were there, and now they're identifying new things. But ultimately they are they're doing the full takeover of your heart.
Body, and mind. Spiritually as well. Yeah, so how long was this? Did this course go on for? How long?
So I went to the site reading in the May. I believe that the free stage one seminar was in the June, and I did the next evolutionary step in the early July. And as soon as that finished. At the end of that program, you learn that there's seventeen other courses that you can do, and you know their week long weekends, a year long course, this type of thing. And because you've been in I'm to overload. You know,
you've been vegan for most of that course. You're on a high, but you've still you've just opened up all of this trauma and everything, and so you're feeling so unsettled, and you know, she says to keep sort of integrating and evolving or enlightning, you know, you have to keep going. And so then it's like, okay, well I have to keep going. So I signed on to the September cost which was a weekend course which was all about funnily enough,
talking to you, you know, climbing a mountain. Mountain warning a lot lower than Everest, but you know you had groups, the top group, the second group, and third group, et cetera. I went in the second group because I thought, you know, oh, I really want to be in the top group, but I'm not really sure. And then I ended up making it to the top group anyway. But then when I got back, she humiliated me and this other girl in
front of everyone. I think there was eighty people in that one just calling me, you know, a black cloud on the mountain and all this because I was trying to make it up the top. It's a long story, but so you know, she humulated me in front of everyone. So I'm like, oh, I'm a bad person. I need to keep going, you know, that type of thing. That was September. I saw on to the next course, which was October, which was an eight day, seven night course.
And I think this is probably the most important to reflect how in one small space of time you can utilize all those what we call thought reform and mind control techniques.
So yeah, mind control techniques because they're very very clever at what they do, right, definitely very clever as well just making you feel bring you up and knocking you back down, making you feel worse. It's going to have to keep you in that system.
Absolutely.
So this this seven go back to this sounday, course, this.
Sounds yeah, it is very interesting.
So what happened was so this we all met at Queensland University campus. We went into a big hole there and we'd had a list of things that we had to bring and you're not supposed to tell anyone about the courses that you've done, absolutely anything about them. The lady said, you know, keep an open mind and all of this, and you know, if you find out what's in the course then that's going to block you with
being open, et cetera. So we had this list of things we need to bring and basically we got in there. She's standing up the front with her six support teams, you know, black cat, white and black clothes and just blank faces. They started sort of basically verbally abusing us, telling us we're not allowed to go to the toilet unless we have permission. They took off our id wallets, watches, all that type of thing, all of a sudden, wearing complete fear. The premise of that program was to move
through your fear. Right, we were completely terrified and we'd already had to wait hours to go in, so that was anxiety building. We were in there for hours and yeah, just basically being verbally abused, etc. We were walked out eventually late in the night and onto a big coach bus and all the windows were blackened out. Then we were taken for hours. We didn't have a watch, so we didn't know what time it was we got down.
I know she's tried to say now that it's just like survival courses and you know, and whatever, but you know, we didn't choose to do all of this, so that's the difference. So then we got out on this completely isolated property in the morning and we had to line up in lines, and yeah, there was all these verbal assaults and things, and we had to keep bringing up issues with each other. As I said, we weren't allowed
to go to the toilet. There was three portaloos and we only had like five minutes and there were seventy people on that one. And this was nineteen ninety six, and we all had to go to the toilet within five minutes, and if you didn't, you know, you had to wait.
You never knew when you could go to the toilet.
We were in a marquis for hours and hours. She was lecturing us about all these things. We only had like around two hours sleep a night. We went with that food for over twenty four hours. We were in tents with two people, and you know, sometime they'd take the tents away and just do.
All these weird and really messing with.
You, all, totally messing with our head.
We complete just smashing you back down.
And yeah, and we didn't you know, we couldn't trust anyone obviously, because you'd have people bring up issues with you all the time and all that type of thing. And then like in the morning, we'd have to go for a run every morning, and then we'd have to jump into this pond, murky pond naked. I know, it sounds terrible, and it was weird. It is, I know it is. So we had to stay in the pond and we couldn't get out until she said so. And if someone took a while to get into the pond,
that just prolonged the time. And we were in the pond for we don't know how long. And then in the Marquee late at night. You know, I don't really like talking about it, but she was showing us pornography and on the TV, like it's totally weird. And there was one stage where We had to stand up on a stage naked in front of like seventy people from the age of you know, seventeen eighteen to you know, eighty, and we had to say what we liked about our body,
what we didn't. This is the type of complete she's a status obviously complete humiliation. Yeah, and you know you've got this support team in her who's been verbally abusing you the whole time. You're going through your sleep deprived, food deprived. You're in survival mode. So as you would know, you know, you're using your you're operating on your reptilian brain. Your emotions and intellect have been like pushed down to a pilot light almost gone. You're on an isolated property.
You can't even go anywhere, you can't run away, you have no idea where you are. So it was very sophisticated, calculated manipulation and mind control techniques. And at the end of it, you have this big party where you dress up and you know, in your beautiful dress and high heels, and the guys and we have a really big party where we all dance with each other and.
A horror movie.
It is a horror movie.
Take me back to.
That hardy, did you feel a sense of relief, like we've been there, we've done it, we've passed it.
Yeah, been nice to us again and then again, That's.
That's what it was all for.
That's what happened, you know, that's why we went through that, because and we're only supposed to be able to do that. Course once flipped forward many years and I actually had to do the horrible thing again. But I guess yeah, like you know, at the party, you're so in shock at what happened and your brain can't process what the hell has happened. But you know, okay, you're having of course, you enjoy that as much as you can. But I think you just go home to your normal life and
your shell shocked. People can't relate to you anymore because you can't relate to them. You can't tell anyone what you've been through.
Of course you can't.
Yeah, no one can relate to you because you tell them what you've been through, that you've lost.
Your mind exactly, which you actually have.
Which yeah, but no you haven't. They've got charge's they've taken over.
And they've got your mind. So when you go back to what was your normal life, if you have on.
So I guess at that stage I was leaving with my parents, just doing tent work, et cetera. And I think I was in a pr job for about a year. I went out to Italy just to be a nanny. I was offered a position and I went there only for a few months, and I ended up leaving and going to Siertle and learn Italian. And then I went to London and I'd got a job within the first week.
I was so happy.
I'd met some travelers and I had an apartment a job within one week. And unfortunately, my dad almost had a heart attack and had sort of five bypasses, so I flew home the next day and then that was cut off, and then it was like trying to find myself again. And then at the end of that year, I ended up doing what was called Personal Mastery and Metaphysical Counseling certificate. So you know, we were offered you can be a counselor, you can be a healer, you can be a psychic.
Reader through the cult.
Yes, so through all of these courses.
So now they're not only taking charge of your mind, they're taking charge of your life. Yes, they want you to work for them and yeah wow. So talk about Wolf.
Yeah that he keeps going.
So what did you think you'd get out the first bit? Because you say you went off and traveled to London and Nanny and Italy. It sounds like you were your mind was still here there and you were still broken and still searching for something. Yes that this course is ultimately didn't do. It sounded like that your life was completely theirs. It was outside of outside.
Of the even though I was on the other side of the world, Like I was still with this Italian family and they were obviously having all this beautiful Italian food, but because I thought that I had to be vegan vegetarian, I was just eating bread and butter pretty much because they were making meat and everything else. So and then I'd still go for these runs and she told us to have like a face cloth scream on our runs.
So you can imagine me in the you know, the vineyards of Italy and this country town just sort of screaming and people probably heard me and thought I was honestly crazy.
These thousands of miles away.
Exactly still completely mind controlled.
Yeah wow.
So then this particular year long course that was when it just hit another level, and you know, I think that was about twenty nine people.
How they get you back into the how are they going? What come on? You need to come over now and do this course and.
Again quickly financially, Oh yeah, throughout these years you paying for these courses? Are you paying for are you given a monthly donation or how's that working?
So you know, for instance, the first course, I can't remember if it was sort of three ninety five or five hundred thick Keeping a Mind was the nineteen nineties. It ended up going up to nine ninety and all of that later. But so and then you know, the final step was three thousand at that time, and then it became five thousand, and then this particular we called it PMC Personal Mastery, that was about five thousand and then but then went up to ten thousand and all that type of thing.
So it's constant, yeah. Money.
How we kept getting pulled in was she'd write newsletters and send them out to Oliver. She had a big database, so at the end of every program you'd get like a four or five page little booklet of everyone's address
and phone number. And yeah, she just keeps sending all of her stuff and in her newsletter she'd put in articles and things and comics and things, and I've looked at them now and I'm just like, you know, that was completing doctrination what she was putting in the newsletter, talking about different things, you know, and the aspect came in that she I can't remember exactly when it was, but there was a few things that she was teaching us. Definitely in PMC, and I'm pretty sure it happened on
the final step as well. But the further you go into your development and integration, she started to innuendo that she was Jesus Christ reincarnated. So she said that we have all these shafts and that she could I guess it's like other past lives, these shafts into all these other lives, and she could tap into hers, and one of her shafts was Jesus Christ reincarnated. She talked a lot about Atlantis, and from what she said, you know, I and others believe she was the Queen of Atlantis back then.
God goddess complex.
Definitely, definitely she thought she was a yeah, yeah, Jesus bactically.
Goddess, I know, and you were her children. Alto me, well that's the thing that disciples.
Yeah, she was separating us from our friends and family, and she was putting herself forward as the mother figure.
There was a spiritual and religious connection and religious because you're both right, you're you're huge spiritual and you're hugely.
Religious.
Yeah, so go so you are you were her prime target?
Definitely, definitely yes, yeah, yeah.
So you go on and so now you're at this stage. You've got your life, you've got your finances. The indoctrination is it, but now it's.
I want your career. I want you fully involved in this.
Yeah. So you can become an instructor, you can become a counselor a healer.
What did you do.
Yeah, So that particular year when I was doing the counseling certificate, you know I did that. I also did at the same time the Heeler's caused to become a healer and I did the psyche Reader's course a couple of years later. So, and you know, it was all about you can make money on the side being a counselor, being a healer, et cetera. And you can make money with me being an instructor. Eventually, after you evolve and integrate up to you know, good enough. Basically, yeah, exactly, exactly.
So this year course was just crazy. We hardly slept and we had these books we had to read, and we had to like just a lot of sleep deprivation and crazy. We had to bring up issues with each other and it ended up getting a little bit physical. So it was all right for there to be a bit of physical altercations and things, which, now, in hindsight, having educated myself, is radicalization and violent extremism, because you're
radicalizing to believe that violence is okay and warranted. And I think, you know, she talk about Jesus Christ and you know, oh, why do you think he went into the desert for forty days and forty nights basically a new end doing that, they were bringing up issues and beating the heck out of each.
Other, do you know what I mean?
So she was normalizing it normalizing, And I think that's an important point because, as I said, with the final step, they test you, like they don't start out knowing, Okay, I'm going to do this and I'm going to get this reaction. They will test the boundaries and boundaries boundaries with you know, one of the ex cult members, says that he reckons the final step was definitely her indicator of Okay, who's who's weak, who's strong, who aren't going
to be able to you know, get through? And I think you know a lot of people, yeah, think that cult members are crazy, they're idiots, and they're weak. But I mean to go through what we did, you have to be incredibly strong, have the head, head games.
It's you know, committed, totally, you know, driven all those positive traits that you need.
That's exactly right, Ye, hugely.
So they're making the what's not normal normal now, so when you're stepping outside of the cult, everything is unnormal.
That's correct.
Yeah, And it's in us versus them. So it's like we are the chosen ones.
You know this.
You know there's extreme ASoft shoots of all the institutional religions, which you know you would deem cults. There's New Age cults, there's these personal development cults. You know, we've heard of yoga instructors and founders being cult leaders, and you know that the yogis in India, et cetera. So it doesn't So mine was a new age spiritual because that's what I had been interested in but you know, anyone out there, whatever your interest, they are going to hone on that.
So every cult has a different recruitment method that they pull you in and then those mind control and thought reform techniques retain you and then they exploit you. So I ended up doing almost all the courses. There was about twenty six courses.
Right, so you're fully committed career, social family, do you meet anyone in their life?
So yeah, So when at the end of that PMC was ninety eight and then in the May of ninety nine, I still hadn't had a relationship. I've been too scared and fearful to be in a relationship.
So that's what they don't want, right, because then you start to see what is actually normal, what is actually real, the reality of life, and they don't want that.
Yeah.
So well, I think it really depends on So she was maneuvering relationships the whole time. So I did actually meet my now three children's father, and he I think had done one course by that stage, and I met him through one of the girls on my year long course.
So I did meet him.
I was scared to obviously go on a second date, but I after everything, I pushed myself and I went out with him. So we ended up moving in together, and we were in Prisone at that time. I'd moved up to be closer to the cult, and then we moved down to Byron Bay because that's where his father was living. He comes from that area. I had applied for a job with the woman at her property and with the organization, and you know, in September, I wrote my second later and she said, no, there's no jobs.
By November she said, yes, come and work for me.
There was always a job for you. Yeah, right, that was always a job for you. She pushed, all not good enough again and going yeah. Then her offering the olive branch again, right.
Rather than you you go and can yeah.
And the unfortunate thing is that she said, okay, you'll learn the ropes. I won't give you money right now, but once you know, learn the ropes, then you'll get paid. I ended up working for the next ten years for her as her personal assistant and on the property, one hundred acre property, and I never got paid. I got one five thousand dollar check.
You're on our property, She's I'm.
Renting one of her properties right adjoining her so she had.
This big property, almost thinks that she's doing you a favor. I've got definitely, but not paying Yeah, but you know you don't need you're not paying you, but it's almost payment for her in her mind.
Yeah, you're staying there.
Well I wanted to be me. Yeah no, no, I was paying rent. So I had to get a second, like another job to pay the rent. And meanwhile she's not paying me wages. Okay, I know, it's crazy. That happened to quite a few of us, and I was. She had an office and the course center on her property where her house was, and it was up like a one kilomity hill, so no one could see what
was happening up there. And anyway, an important thing is that at the end of ninety ninety eight she was actually featured on Channel nine's a Current Fair Australia Wide as being a cult leader, a con artist and saying that she was basically Jesus Christ. After that time, throughout ninety ninety nine, all of the courses diminished to like, you know, two, three or four or five people because she had such a bad reputation. And then and that's when I came on board. At the end of ninety nine.
I worked with her for two years. A couple of girls in the office. One lady just disappeared three weeks later after I started, another girl ended up disappearing as well. We'd call it running away. People would run away. She proselytized that the world was going to end. Okay, so doomsday cult around eleven eleven eleven, So the eleventh of November twenty eleven, the world was going to end. The Earth's axis would shift or some big event would happen,
and we had to survive. And she knew how to survive, and she was, you know, in touch with all of her shafts Jesus Christ. She literally said that people, there'll be about a two week period where it'll be dark and things will be happening, and we have to People want to kill us for food and water, so we will have to kill them.
It sounds like the zombie poet.
It's like, on a.
Super serious note, she's not not any your journey that you're going on through life. She's now got your destination, which you all have one destination in life, and we know where that is. So now she's got full full control of till your last last day exactly does it get quite dark and quite aggressive and quite right.
You know.
She talked about rifles being buried on the property. On there was a survivor's course and we literally went to a gun range and learned how to shoot.
And there's just so much in.
The package saying what kept you there doing this during this time?
Yeah, so I think I owe her. And when with the world ending, it's like you are cleansing your cellular memory and integrating to your highest involvement because you're going to save your children, yourselves, your family, the planet. So this is like a mission for God and Jesus that I wanted to move us to the fourth dimension, she called it. So I need to be like this army, you know, military disciplined person. I'm like a h at the end of the world, I'm going to be fighting
for the planet because we have to. You know, she said that most people will be dead, but we will help take the planet to the next, you know, fourth dimension.
Yeah, we're going to be the levee survivors.
Yeah, we're going to you know, we need We've got to step up because exactly it's the new awakening of Jesus Christ. Ultimately, she and she thought she was the powerful messiah exactly.
And I've since found in a newsletter she had that. Yeah, she talked about the thousand years of peace, right, So you know, it's it's just so many layers. As you can tell, flash forward ten years. It's the end of two thousand and nine.
So you're you're in it.
You're in this to you in the trenches for years.
This wasn't just a case of months and something.
You realize something, you know, you're You're just this is completely normal to you.
Your you still have you know, your doubts and things anything. I don't know if I can keep going with this or you know, then she froze.
She does.
It's always like and then they'll be I will have gone through all of this crap and then like we went to Samoa in two thousand and five after I got married, and then I separated from my husband about three times because she would like put us together, separators, put us together, separator.
So do you remember the moment or.
The awakening for yourself when the penny dropped, when you were like, this is insane. You know, did obviously the eleventh of the eleventh of the eleventh didn't come because it must have been like a like having a balloon then going pop, and.
It's just like the reality of everything.
So it was about the twenty third of December, before Christmas two thousand and nine, and I just couldn't handle it anymore. And I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to escape. Right.
It's just a case of I can't cope with this, This is too much out of this job exactly. Can't realized that this stage, that all of this was a was a master plan exactly.
Okay.
Yeah, So this twenty third of December, it was two am in the morning. I was working in the office. A phone call comes through with one of the other girls. She tells me, you have to take this iPod up to basically the cult leader for her son. Right, So at two am the morning, I have to drive up to Burly Heads at that point, and I thought, okay, I because she'd been to America and all this crap was going on, and she was screaming at me all the time and stuff again, and I knew that things
were going to happen. It was getting volatile. So I thought, okay, I'm going to leave with my children. So my children were sleeping downstairs on the property. You know my three children that I'd have to get ready every morning night and take them to daycare, and god knows what, I scooped them all up. I put them in my car two am in the morning, got there at three am, and the guy, her partner at the time, didn't answer,
and I thought, you know, you're so paranoid. I didn't want to leave this stupid iPod on the doorstep until if it got stolen, I'd be in big trouble. So I slept in the car for about three hours with the kids, and then the guy phoned me said why the hell didn't you just drop it and go? And then I was too tired to escape, okay, But then this other girl found out that I tried to escape, got back to the court leader. She ended up calling me, abused me for five minutes, calling me an abusive mother.
I'm going to if you leave, Carli, I'm going to dab you into doc's Department of Child Safety. I'm going to sign office as psychologist and have your three children taken away from you because you're an abusive mother. Why did you take your three children out in the middle of the night in the car. That's abusive flank, you know, yeah, yeah, and she.
Just get at it.
She's still if you leave, you know, it's going to be detrimental to your children. Because the whole time she'd be calling me a really bad mother. I was sterilized and as a mother. So then fast forward, that was the twenty third of December. I was really in the shed with as we call it. Then the twenty seventh of December, I went into her house. She just punched
me straight in the face. And so, you know, first of all, I'm in this like hide and state of fear again, and I'm like, I just don't know if i can keep going with this. I have a black eye. And then the next day, so two days after the black eye, the co leader she came up into the office screaming. She was totally enraged. The other girl in the room. They tried to block the collage from coming into me because she could see something really bad was gonna happen. She tried to stop the door, but the
colle just pushed by the way. She threw me on the ground. It was in this accounts office and she started punching me, kicking me. She peemed me to the ground and she was screaming in my face, and for the first time, I just thought, oh my god, this woman doesn't love me.
She hates me. That was it was.
It was just terrible, and I'm just like, you know, after that, I was in a state of few thinks.
Everything that you've gone through.
And how much I've given you.
And you know that she's using you.
Yeah, I just thought I've given everything to this woman and I had nothing left. And then I just thought I can't do this anymore. I basically just thought to myself, you know what, I would rather die in two years' time and spend the next two years with my children because I'd hardly been spending any time with them. I'd rather do that and then just die. And then I just I was yeah. And then so I just played
a stupid game with myself. I said, if this girl, who you know, knows the truth that I've been doing everything right, doesn't tell her that I have been doing everything right, then I'm going to leave. And this girl just like walk past me and said, I'm not supposed to talk to you. I just thought, Okay, I've made that bet with myself, with the universe. This is my sign.
I ended up passing that girl's poor teenage boy who was there, and I just said, sorry, I have to go, went down the bottom of the hill, packed the car with just everything I could fit in there, and I left. I picked up my eight year old who was at vacation care. My other two were asleep at daycare. We just went to like the Ocean, bought some hot chips, and just sat there overlooking the ocean. I said, was trying to say to him, you know, do you like
it there? Do you think we should stay? But he obviously knew he couldn't say anything because it would come back on him. And then you know, went and picked up the boys, went to my ex husband's workplace, and I said, I just don't think I can do this anymore or whatever. He said, he can go to my mum's safe place, safe space, And within five minutes my brain just started filtering, Oh my god, that is a cult.
She is a cult leader. And that was it.
So with so you once you're you're out of it, and you know you've got this in your place, You've got this safe place that you can go to. Yeah, you're almost that relief of and then everything just yeah.
Yeah.
My brain just lit up and you know, just filtered, and it's like, oh, yeah, what the hell, Like, yeah, what everyone has been saying for all these years, it's true.
So and then So that is literally instantaneously, right within five minutes within Do you feel do you feel like you're there's a new you? Do you think do you feel like this is a new beginning for you as an individual?
Did you did you get back with your husband?
I did for one year and then I just knew that it wasn't going to work because we've made in the colt and you know, I'm so grateful because I've got three beautiful boys. Yeah, you know, we've just gone through so many bad things, you know, together.
Wow, Yeah, what a journey you've been on. What So, what's life right now?
Just getting back to life?
And you know, I've just turned fifty and the last fifty years have been pretty horrifying. So I just really want the next fifty years to be full of joy and great experiences, concentrating on my children and my family and just having fun.
There you go, listen and Carly, fascinating story. Thank you ever so much, No doubt, no doubt this will save many lives and help a lot of people.
So thank you for coming in.
Thank you, Anne, thank you very much.
Carl McConkey is the author of the book The Cult Effect. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. If you suspect you or someone you know could be involved in a cult, we'll put the contact details for the Cult Information and Family Support Network in our show notes.
I'm Att Middleton. Catch you again next time.
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