Former Cult Members Share Chilling Wake-Up Calls — Secrecy, Control, and Abuse

A number of former members and observers have shared disturbing, firsthand accounts of life inside high-control religious groups. These anonymized contributions — collected from online commenters and ex-members — describe strict rules, secrecy around illness and death, forced isolation, identity changes, and the escalation to sexual exploitation in some cases.

Who Contributed

Contributors included dozens of online usernames who posted their memories and reactions: Fun-Engina, Seemose, Alaurableone, drunk-munchkin, salbwassfith, nfefx, Icy-Sprinkles-3033, Separate-Simple-5101, Inside-Cod1550, Readsumthing, xMadwood, BlueAlphaShark08, Sharp-Teaching435, JimK2, epernon, Psychic_Psycho, jessdb19, PopUnhappy3693, WeHaveTheMeeps, TropicalScout1, BobJeffriesIsDead, probly2drunk, Fast_Truth7481, Primary-Counter971, Sea-Machine2038, Dorkapotamus, and XiuCyx.

What They Said

Strict Prohibitions On Physical Contact: One commenter described rules that forbade any skin-to-skin contact between men and women. Sexual contact was reportedly banned even for married couples who joined the group with children. Couples were instructed to remain married but avoid touching each other. Women were said to carry gloves to wear when shaking hands with people outside the group, and this restriction was allegedly applied to children as well — for example, a mother purportedly was not allowed to touch her 5-year-old son.

Illnesses Framed As Divine Punishment, Medical Care Withheld: The same account recounted an aunt who developed a serious oral illness years after joining. Church leaders allegedly told the family the condition was divine punishment for gossiping. According to the commenter, medical treatment was not sought, access to the person was tightly controlled, and similar patterns were reported in other deaths that were kept private and explained as spiritual retribution.

Communal Living And Identity Changes: Another former member warned that more extreme groups often push recruits into communal housing and impose new names or depersonalizing identifiers. Changing a person’s name or assigning numbers can make psychological control easier, the commenter said.

Escalation To Coercive Sexual Abuse: Several contributors cautioned that once leaders control members’ living situations and identities, manipulative sexual practices and coercion frequently follow, and "things get really messy for everyone."

Wider Context

Readers also linked these accounts to related online threads about family conflict, unsettling photographs, true-crime cases, and scary voicemails — showing that stories of secrecy, control, and abuse resonate widely across internet communities. While individual accounts vary in verifiability and detail, recurring themes align with documented patterns reported by survivors of high-control groups: restrictions on everyday behavior, secrecy around sickness and death, pressure to accept doctrinal explanations over medical care, forced communal living, identity erasure, and the risk of sexual exploitation.

Note: These are personal testimonies and witness accounts shared online. They reflect the contributors' experiences and perceptions and may not represent every group described.