Before we jump in, we must warn you this episode contains explicit content, such as sexual abuse that may be disturbing to some people. Listener discretion is advised. Elisa Flores inherited Lalus del Mundo from her parents, as from many others. The church was her backbone, her compass, her everything. When she finally left, she had no idea how to live in a world without the cult. For Elisa, even the simplest things like choosing an outfit in the morning turned into a struggle.
In the colts, you wore long skirts every day and my whole life that's basically all I wore. And I went to the grocery store for the first time wearing pants, and I was like so uncomfort I felt like everybody's watching me.
The everyday experiences people like Elisa go through can be totally incomprehensible to those who have never been inside a high control group or cult, because the shackles these organizations impose on their members are invisible to the rest of the world, turning the most mundane actions like what to wear,
into life altering experiences charged with terrifying meanings. My interest in Le luzel Mundo is not only professional I was raised in Mexico in a high control Catholic group that required the surrender of all free thought and will at the service of a guy that liked to be called Mustro Pardi. Our father, and what a father. He was a clean cut and strictly frocked priests that preached purity, devotion, and sacrifice. He raped over seventy seminarians under his care
were twelve or thirteen year olds. He was a painkiller addict, liked his cars to be Mercedes and his jets to be private, and kept at least two women who fathered his own children, whom he also raped. His name was marcell Moziel, and there are many people I used to be close with who still consider him a holy man.
In places where Morsiel established his order, if you spoke of him or his organization in unflattering terms, or if you deviated from his approved norms and behaviors, you could get fired, ostracized, even end up going broke or losing your business. Defying Mosiel and his organization, as it is with any other call to leader with an army of
zealots at its finger tips, was no joke. He had the backing of the country's politicians, media company owners, and millionaires whose wives adored him and entrusted him with their children to teach them true Christian values. He married after daughters and baptized their grandchildren. His photos adorned all their mantlepieces. In their eyes, he could do no wrong. He was treasured.
He had to be protected at all costs. So familiar, I understand what Elisa felt after confronting the sick truth about someone you and your whole universe looked up to as a saint throughout your life. When Alisa saw the video evidence from Nason's trial, she couldn't ignore the truth anymore.
All of the things that I had seen and been through, they all started coming back to me. It's like I had blocked all of it and I excused it because he was my God and he didn't know wrong. I couldn't believe that he was, as an apostle of God still doing those things.
The problem is, even though your own blinders may be falling, almost everyone around you, everyone you care for still sees this person as holy instead of the perverted, cheets and frauds that they are.
I had like a little mini breakdown. My church was my life and my life was a lie. My whole life, my whole being, everything was a lie.
But finding out everything you believed and strived for is a con is barely the first step in the arduous process of untangling yourself from it. You can't stop to mourn or lead your wounds because maybe there's rent to pay, children to feed, or a job to keep. So you pick up the pieces and re engage with the free world, where you have to think and decide on your own, with no manuals, no priests, no gurus or elders round to tell you what's true and what's false.
It's like going through a divorce. You go through the disbelief, you go through, the anger, you go through oh my god, it can't be true. And it's every single emotion that you go through when you're having a breakup.
From major life decisions to the most irrelevant choices like what to do, eat or how to dress. After you leave a cult, your values and beliefs are stripped from you. You've become a blank slate and you have to rewrite it all alone, unsupported because most of your family and close friends have probably chosen to stay. They have chosen the cult over you.
Oh I heard that somebody is talking bad about the apostle. Don't even eat with him, all with her, because he's like ebola, you know, are like a virus. Suddenly you don't have cousins, you not have brothers, you have uncles. You're alone because you dare to talk bad about the apostle.
Juel Silva explains the experience to a tea. Life after a cult is incredibly lonely because you're basically living in exile, no matter how close you physically remain. So now, leaving a high control group isn't as simple as walking out to the front door and flipping everyone the finger, because a cult is not circumscribed to a physical occasion. It's
an entire lifestyle, belief system, community instead of mind. The conditioning of a high control group can take years to shake off, always leaving the newly minted Aposta with three precious parting gifts, fear, shame, and guilt. But the good news is there is life after a cult, and it can be wonderful. I'm Roberta Garza and this is our last episode of Sacred Scandal SEASM two, Episode twelve, Finding
the Force Within? Is it really possible to know if the preacher, the fitness class teacher, the yoga guru, the beloved politician, or the self help maiben you or a loved one are so taken with, is really a narcissistic psychopath cult leader in disguise. Maybe there are certainly a number of signs or giveaways that can effectively act as
red flags. The very first thing to SEUs out is how much the group is actually about what they claim to be, let's say, about fitness or spirituality or professional success, instead of about the founder or leader. Diane ben Scotch, the cult expert we've met in previous episodes, explains it better.
There's usually like a mystique around a leader that they seem like they are of God, and if other people start repeating that and looking to them for sacred truth, then there becomes an environment where you feel like if you're not experiencing that there's something wrong with you, you're not looking hard enough within yourself. Their followers think of them as having the answers, as having the truth, as being connected to God, and so I think oftentimes they
begin to believe that about themselves. They start thinking of themselves as godlike, and they don't want to be questioned by anyone, because they really like to think of themselves as being the answer to all of life's questions.
This is called the cult of personality. Most groups will lack knowledge or educate their followers on their founders or whomever devise their techniques and methods, and that is perfectly normal.
But if every class gathering or session you attend, you're reminded of the greatness of the fearless leader, of how special, how much better than the normal human he or she is, if there are more tributes and rights around that figure than actual skill set development, or if your mates claim here or she has supernatural abilities, then you might be
swerving in the cultish territory. Be really concerned if whenever he or she shows up, people so soon giggle or show otherwise heightened states of nervousness, anxiety, or euphoria, because that is designed to be contagious, like teenagers fainting in unison at a rock concert. The main intention is to convince you that the group and its leader are greater, more important than anything or anyone else.
What happens when you join a high control group later in life, you're recruited. That means that you have a loss of your family of origin. This becomes your new family, and there's a grieving that goes on, but you feel like you've met your true family. Now.
Remember how Suchil Martin's aunt used to make her kiss the Apostles photo every night, how church members display the Apostles portraits prominently in their living spaces. In my school, Masiel's mystical gaze adorned every room, right over the blackboard, bigger than the Christ on the cross next to him. And that's how easy it is for a swindler to become a saint. High control groups, at least for a time, are very good at hiding their toxicity. They present themselves
as the opposite of harmful. They are loving, purposeful, and embrace new members with warmth and joy, making them feel special and wanted. This is exactly what happened when Elissa's family found the support they needed to break away from her father's alcoholism. It was in l DM that the floor is found sobriety through a loving community and a clear road to heaven, or so they thought.
You feel like this was the only place that was going to take you to heaven, only through believing the Apostle of God, Can you go to Heaven?
Elisa's experience is not exceptional. No sane person just wakes up one morning and says, Hey, I think I'm going to join a cult. That's why it's so difficult for the average change and Joe's to understand how or why anyone would fall for this life. Are cult members too ignorant to know better? No, it has nothing to do with knowledge or intelligence. People get into these groups because of emotional vulnerabilities, you know, the ones we all have.
Joiners are just longing to be better, more spiritual, happier, to be part of something meaningful and relevant, because that's what cults usually offer. Yes, it's all lies, but at the very start it's not exactly obvious. Instead, it sounds comforting, self assured, and convincing. Sochel Martin knows this pattern.
Well, that's where the dangers are. Any organization that says they have all the answers and they tell you how to live your life, those are red flags.
Diane ben Scotter further explains how cults manipulate people's fragilities to prey on them.
They're usually people that really care about the world, that care about wanting to make a difference in the world, that want to be the best person that they can be. So there are some cults that are personal growth cults, like Scientology or nxiom or there's a variety of those kind of cults that attract people who are looking for personal growth. And then there's people that feel like they want to be closer to God, they want to be
more holy, they want a more sacred lifestyle. There's people who are idealistic and just really want peace on earth and really want to find people who are trying to create peace on earth. All you have to do is believe in the leader, and that's such a relief.
As you can see, joiners cannot simply be labeled as dumb or gullible. Oftentimes they're good, loving people who are hurting or missing something in their lives that they can't quite find elsewhere. That's why all the encompassing sense of warmth and community calls often showcase in the recruiting acts works so well.
I would say that when you grow up in a broken family, if you find a place or you land in a place somehow through destiny of life where they say they give you all the answers and they say you're they're your only family, or imagine even being born into that society, that community.
Soon that belief system becomes foundational to your sense of self.
What happens is that it becomes more than just a belief system. It becomes your identity. You start to think that you have found the most meaningful thing in the world, and that your life has a normal value.
Now that that's not just talking theory. In the eighties, she escaped a high control group as a young woman and has dedicated herself to helping people break free from them ever since.
I was seventeen years old when I met the Moonies, and I was idealistic. I was really against the war, and I had kind of quit school and was worrying
my family sick. And then suddenly I met this group, and I thought that the Messiah was on the earth, and that God had been preparing me to be a follower of Christ, and that all of that feeling of disconnectedness and loss and confusion about who I was was traded in for absolute right, self righteousness, for feeling like I was chosen by God to follow the Messiah.
The group that enjoined was called the Unification Church, but nicknamed the Moonies because of their founder's name, Sun Young Moon. They gained widespread popularity in the US in the nineteen seventies, partially because of their anti war stunts.
You don't want to give that up. Plus, you have this community like minded people that are constantly reinforcing the belief system, and no one wants to give that up because it feels so good. And so when there's things that are contradictory to that, it's easy to rationalize because they're telling you, well, no one else understands. They don't understand God's will, they don't understand God's way.
So it should be clear by now that a commentarating people who get tangled and sticky Culty spider webs is that they are vulnerable. They are in crisis, sometimes in desperate need of.
Help, whether they're seeking comfort in a way that they feel confused about the world around them, or they feel a loss of community or a loss of purpose in their life, or they're depressed for whatever reason, or just looking to use their life in a more valuable way.
Those are just human characteristics. But for a predator who is looking to control people, they can take advantage of those characteristics by offering them easy answers to life's hard questions, a community to offer them a way to feel better about themselves.
Once the kool aid has been fully swallowed, the process of isolation begins, and that's when the honeymoon ends, because the demands of occult and it's narcissistic overpowering leaders are intense. Little by little, the unconditional love and acceptance from before may now require you to follow certain rules, change some behaviors, or make some sacrifices without questioning any of it, or you might lose it all. Is your faith not strong enough? Are you not ready? Is your love for the teacher
or pastor fake? That's what they will start saying to you because high control groups only accepts full surrender, and that requires you to be completely torn from your previous life, to cut all other attachments so that your only allegiance remains to the group and especially to its leader. There are no rather flags than that. One more on that after the break. At this stage, the game of OS
versus them starts slowly and stealthily. It is not unusual that loved ones begin asking why you're spending so much time with your new friends, why you have stopped coming around or quit your good job, why you have changed the way you dress, or any of the other small things the cult will gradually ask you to give up on their behalf to someone who's starting to grow into occult mentality, these concerned questions will often feel like direct
attacks or accusations, because that's what you would have been fed that those people, the others, what do you call your friends and family, don't understand your talents, your missions, your gifts, that they are dragging you, that you must get rid of them in order to reach your full potential.
Over and over, they would stress that the only people who truly understand you are your leaders and brothers in the cult, and that's when the abuse starts in earnest, because by then you have nowhere left to run.
Isolation is oftentimes a part of a high control group, and when that happens, you can have absolute control over people. You control what they eat, control how much they sleep, how they pray, and they begin to control their own thoughts and emotions. In this environment, there's us and there's them, and so you begin to feel like if you go
outside of the group, you don't fit in anymore. There's like a cognitive dissonance that happens outside of the group because it becomes so much your entire world, so much so that it feels when you go home to family members that aren't part of the group, you feel like you don't fit in. You have to get back to the group where your comfort zone is as soon as possible.
I remember when I was a younger of fourteen, I was convinced by Matielle to leave home and join full time what the Order called their consecrated women. Think of those as nuns, but their vows were not made to the Vatican, or to the Pope or to Masielle's Order alone. I felt ecstatic to be chosen directly by this most Holy Man, but there was a problem. I had to wait until I was an adult, so my parents couldn't
object to losing another child to his group. So he asked me not to tell my family any of it because they wouldn't understand God's will as he married a virgin, and I did. He ended by instructing me that while I waited to turn eighteen, I should dress more modestly, stop going out to parties, and to avoid all TV magazines. And movies. But it was nineteen eighty and The Empire Strikes Back had just been released, So I did the math.
The next episode of the saga, the Return of the Jedi, wouldn't see the light of day until three or four years later. And what if it was too late? What if by then I had already surrendered myself, as one of my sisters had done before me, to one of the communal houses. Masille's women entered, never again to leave unattended or unshackled. Elisa recalls a similar moment as a child in Sand.
Then, when I was young, probably about ten years old, I was in school and all of the girls had their earspears and I didn't. And I went to my dad and I said, I want to get my earspeers. And he's like, no, mehow we don't do those things. It's against God. And I'm like, what why? And so he took me to the minister.
The minister was not on Alisa's side.
The minister looks down at me and it's like, are you a slave? He doesn't come down to my level. He looks down at me, So I'm already feeling threatened. Then he goes because in the old days. That's how they identified their slaves. So are you a slave, I'm like no. Are you an animal? I'm like no? And he goes because they pierced the animal's ears and put a number on them, so they know who owns that particular animal. So if you're not a slave, and you're
not an animal, then you don't get your earspeers. You see all of these people that have their earspeers, their slaves to the devil.
The minister's words rang deep and stayed with Elisa for years to come.
It scared me so much, and so din I was going to school looking at my friends, thinking, oh, she's the slave of the devil. She's a slave of the devil.
Elisa headed to school every day, where she was surrounded by those satanized by her pastors and parents. Ell DM made sure the cute ear rings on her favorite teachers and on her little friends. Reminded Elisa how everyone outside her community was so sinful and corrupt, and how lucky
she was to be among the apostle's flock. This inflexible barrier between us and them, between the so called chosen ones and the leftovers out there being presented as a blessing or a privilege, and not as a mental lockdown is a telltale sign of a cult's manipulation. It was very much a part of Mosille's stick when he asked me to join his group of women, but in my case it involved something much more powerful than a plain
pair of hearings. I did not obey when the teachers at Mozille's school informed me and my classmates that the Star Wars movies were new age and thus satanic, and that we should not watch them. But I knew that if I became one of Nostropaldi's consecrated women, if I entered one of those very restricted communities, I would never ever be able to catch up on Hans's solo and Princess Leiah's next adventure, and that was too much for
my teenage soul to bear. Earrings. Movies, pants, make up, and music may sound like frivolous, unimportant affairs, yet high control groups see them as threats to their very survival, as they do anything that sparks imagination, self expression, individuality, joy, or creativity. Months later, I bailed out of Mosile's plans for my salvation. He wasn't happy and accused me of being rebellious and selfish. I guess he found my lack
of faith disturbing. Thirty five years or so later, Star Wars creator George Lucas happened to be staying at the same small hotel I checked into, in a lovely corner of Iceland. I regret not having the courage to tell him this story, or to thank him for ultimately saving my life. I hope it's clear by now that people don't simply enter high control groups because they lack smart
or cunning. Drinking the kool aid is not a rational decision, but an emotional one, rounded in vulnerability, urgency, and crisis. And once the cult works their dark magic and people are separated from those they love, alienated from their past lives, first through seduction and then through fear, guilt, and abuse, they have nowhere else to go. Yet, against all odds,
some people do muster the courage to leave. Once they do, one of the first things survivors have to work on is recalibrating their minds, fogged by years of neglect, suppression, and denial. They might be the ones telling the truth, but they will be called liars by the members who stay behind. They might want to stop the cult leader's perversion, but they are the ones who will be called slots and whores by their community for the first time in years.
They might see clearly, but people will accuse them of being crazy, of exaggerating or distorting the facts. That was the case for Elisa when she tried to help her family see the truth behind el a DM's version of naissance crimes.
I didn't say anything to my other siblings for a while, and then I said, I don't believe in the Apostle of God. He is guilty of the things that he did. And I wrote down some of the things that I had seen and my siblings they didn't accept what I was telling them, and they made me feel like a liar.
Even though Elisa had left the cult, she couldn't shake off the trauma that followed her, and her family did not make it any easier.
They revictimized me, and it put me back into that vulnerable state like I was a child again and the words of the Apostle of God were coming true because nobody was gonna believe me over him.
I left Myseille's group, my family, and my city over twenty years ago, but I still remember when I began doubting him, the endless sleepless night praying my soul would not be done to hell, and the unshakeable anxiety and the panic attacks that dragged on for years. I don't believe in that hell anymore, but those panic attacks still visit me to this day. As Elisa shares, the healing might take a lifetime.
I still have different things that I'm working on deprogramming. It's not something that's going to happen overnight. It's a process. I'm still working on that, and I'm still working on myself. I'm still working on healing and realizing that that marriage that I had to the cult is no longer.
People who leave cults have to contend with the fact that the darknesster trying to leave behind is not gone after they depart. It stays alive and well, eating up their fellow members. A predatory leader like Nason quaquin Garcia can hold disturbing amounts of power cast out in white nets before it wins. Nevertheless, when Souchil Martin was told Nason had been arrested, she was elated.
We did have tacos that night. We want to go celebrate. We were all very excited. My husband was ecstatic.
But as consequential as it was, she knew the arrest was only a weakening blow to lledm's powerful organization.
But me particularly, I felt like, no, this is just one we need to focus on the rest now.
Nason is currently serving his sixteen year sentence. Temple attendance has definitely dropped, but LLEDM has adapted to the challenges. They have successfully remade the apostle into a martyr, and his designated substitutes firmly ruled the church.
In his name.
They're very much still powerful within the organization hierarchy, and that means that they have the ties to the government and political officials and government officials of Mexico.
We thought without Nasson, LERDM continues to hold sway over their communities with the same iron grip, as if nothing had happened. But things did happen, awful things. More on this. After the break, religious cults tend to marry each other.
Mastro Padre's order is not so different from LERDMS. Before he died, the Vatican sentenced Marcelle Macielle to a life of prayer and penance, conveniently proof about his crimes and transgressions only came out after he was buried, in the form of three children with two different women for anyone to in the math. That's three children too many for any forcefully celibate Catholic priest. And yet the organization he founded is still alive, diminished maybe, but ruled by the founders,
very same accomplices and enablers. Because even after these groups are revealed in their true ugly faces, many in their wake would rather forget those parts ever existed, minimizing the pain and dismissing the abuses. But that can't erase the fact that people were brutalized and lives were destroyed, and not everyone got their happy endings.
Jane Doe four, in her victim impact statement said something that was really kind of heartbreaking.
That's joy j Editson, lawyer for the Jane does speaking on behalf of Jane do.
Four, and it was that of all the things that she lost, the thing that she was most devastated by was that she lost her belief in God because that was what was the most important to her. And now that she is left with all of her broken pieces, and now that she's left shattered, she has nowhere to turn to.
And some victims lost way more than their joy, their youth, their families, for their faith, They lost their lives. Like Karim lyone what such a reminds us never found her way out from her ledm ordeals.
Got him was not lucky. She put herself out there, and she went to the authorities, and she did the right thing as a citizen. And in the end, she wasn't listened to. Her voice wasn't heard. She never got her justice. This piece of she died Samuel, and he did the most disgusting crimes and committed the most disgusting crimes upon children and women. And Gottim was one of these victims, and she was not heard.
Every day there are people out there trying to break free from high control groups and other types of destructive, abusive relationships. They weigh the odds, the struggles to come. They might feel tired to their bones, and they might remember those that didn't make it and maybe think there's no way out. But like Elisa shares, there is.
There is life outside of the cult. And everything that we were told that our cars would break, our kids would get sick, all of those things are not true. You can still be happy people are like, if you get out of the cult, you're going to be miserable, You're gonna be on drugs, you're gonna become an alcoholic. I'm none of those things. We were always taught good citizens make good Christians. Well, I'm going to tell you something.
Good hearts and good people are what make good citizens, not Christians, not religion.
The first danger for regular folks is to assume that, as they themselves are good, smart people, these horrors would never happen to them. But falling prey to a cult can happen to anyone. Sachel Martin knows this firsthand.
Destructive cults they're everywhere, and you don't know you're in a cult. And that's the danger of what these organizations do. And so when you destruct the mind, which is what this leadership of this organization did, the light of the world to all of us, to all of the people inside of it.
There's a reason it takes so long for cult survivors to break free, if they ever do so. Just imagine the kind of strength a victim has to muster when a district attorney or judge asks them to revisit their darkest days and give public testimony to expose themselves all over again to the hate and harassment they thought was behind them, that they might have even managed to avoid. Elisa asks us to have a little patience for those still in the path.
It takes a while for us to get out of that if we can get out, because there's a lot of people that can't get out. It takes a lot for a person to doubt their faith, to question their faith. But just be patient with the person that has been in a cult, because it takes a long time to heal what was done to them, the different traumas, the different coortions, the different manipulations that we have gone through. It's not going to be something that's held overnight. Because
your patience and your love is needed. You can't leave us alone because if we don't have that support, so many have lost their lives because they don't have that support. And a lot of us we didn't know any better. A lot of us thought that this is the way that life is, or the life was supposed to be, that we were born into this and this was our God.
Please be patient with us. Please understand that we're not doing things out of spy or at an evil or just to be mean that we're depprogramming, but we have to do it in our own way and our own time.
There is hope for those looking to get out from a controlling environment, be it l a DM or otherwise. There is help. If you're a victim of a cult, you are not alone, so Chill. Martin champions a group called survivors Org that helps people share resources and build critical momentum for activism against sexual predators. There's also a wonderful podcast in Spanish called Salidi on Asecta or two sisters joyfully recount their journey from LEDM to freedom one
day at a time. Outside l a DM, Sarah Edmondson, an XM survivor, has another podcast called A Little Bit Culty, where she and her expert guests explore how people get ensnared, how to get out, and how to survive the experience. Our resident expert, Diane ben's Cutter, found an Antidote, an organization that fights for education and awareness against high control groups in public policy, and the Lalage Center in California offers meetups and courses centered on coping with the trauma
left behind by high control groups. And those are just a few Life after LDM has been incredibly challenging for all the people whose stories you've heard throughout the season of Sacred Scandal, that is, all the people who are still with us, Some of them are lucky enough to be healing and slowly finding their footing. For her part, Eliza finally feels empowered enough to make decisions about her body without feeling ashamed. She pierced her ears and even God at attoo.
I decorated my temple with the tattoo of flower. I felt like I was a butterfly because I was just in this cocoon and had no color. I couldn't look to the side or anything like that. But when I started getting out, I started ripping that cocoon and started getting color and started being able to fly. And now I can fly and have color and be free and beautiful, and that's how I feel.
Second Scandala zel Mundo is a production of Exile Content Studio in partnership with Iheartsmichael Tura podcast Network, and it's hosted by me Robert ta Garza, produced by Sabinn Johnson with the help of Stella, Emmett, Reynolds Gutierrez and Anna Isabel Octavio written by myself with help from Marivel Q. Salasmith. Researched by ROBERTA Garza with help from Reynolds Gutierrez. Additionally reporting by Florence Second schilest Gaa Garcia. Engineering by Uamendos,
Hann Samine Jensen. Sound designed by patrickinionis original music by Patrick Hart, edited by writer also Rose Reed and marievel Kezada Smith. Executive producers are Rose Reed, Carmen graterol Isaac Lee, and Nando Villa. Daniel Bautista oversees Audio Exil Content Studio. Our executive producers are iHeart, ar Gisel Vancez and Arlein Santana. Sacred Scandal was created by Melanie Bartley and Paula Varos.
Special thanks to Mock Music Studio. For more podcasts, go to the Higheart Radio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.