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years, saying, “I thought they‟d be harassed by the FBI --the FBI had already visited other
members of my family.”
When Laurel agreed to give up her disabled child she said, “J. needed the best chance in life
...and so I could let her go.”
Janie told me, “I wanted my son to have a happier life. But this was The Truth. It must have
been something wrong with me if I wanted to leave. It was God‟s will for us to be there. It
should have been the best thing for him, but all there was around us was hopelessness.”
Or Helen, whose children suffered considerable physical abuse: “Brother said it was the Holy
Way. He took so many liberties with my children and told me to consider it an honor.”
Rosanne Henry, who gave up her child to her cult leader, shared her story in Captive
Hearts, Captive Minds (Tobias &Lalich, 1994): “After two months of hell I finally agreed to
the plan. I remember the very moment when I flipped the switch. “„There is nothing greater
that I could do for my child than give her to the divine mother,‟ I thought” (p. 235).
What comes across in these stories is how the mothers felt that they were doing the best
thing for their children. Perhaps in this way mothers strive to reconcile the internal conflict
that is at work. They do, clearly, still love their children deeply. In that sense the bond
between mother and child remains intact.
For some mothers, however, their children represented a barrier to their complete
dedication to the cult. Jill (who, before joining the cult, imagined that she would be a “fun
and empathetic” mother) was often resentful of her young children when they made noise
during endless meetings with no child care. She felt that they were preventing her from
“knowing God,” as well as casting a bad light on her as a poor mother and, therefore, a
sinner. For Jill, the conflict was the double bind of having to be a perfect mother (in the
cult‟s view), yet having to give the cult 100% and so not having time or resources to
properly parent her children. She now feels that this strain had a severe impact on her bond
with her oldest child.
Sometimes a mother‟s acceptance of the cult‟s influence may reflect her own ambivalent
feelings about certain issues. In these cases, perhaps the cult involvement helps “resolve” a
difficulty for the mother.
For Mary, joining the cult and not seeing her children for 5 years resolved the intense
conflicts she felt toward her children, who had chosen to live with their father because of
Mary‟s lesbianism. She had felt alienated from her children and unable to participate
positively in rearing them. In joining the cult, she both regained an inner sense of meaning
lost to her when her children moved away, and removed herself from her painful role as
noncustodial parent.
In Laurel‟s case, the “recommendation” to give up her disabled child spoke to two issues for
her. First, she didn‟t love the child‟s father: “I could have made a commitment to go with
them if I had loved him.” Second, “If I were to leave [with the baby and father], I thought I
would have to stay home with J. and make her therapy my full-time career, while „Dave‟
would be an accountant and earn our living. I saw that as self-sacrifice and I didn‟t see
myself as that type of person.”
It would be important to further pursue the question of how mothers respond to this
fundamental internal conflict: between their own sense of what is right and the cult‟s
control. My observations lead me to see three different ways this conflict plays out:
The mother may continue to consciously disagree with the cult practices, but will give in
externally to resolve the pressure being applied on her. She carries within her, however, a
continuing, nagging sense that what she is being asked to do is wrong, even while she may

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1997, page 34
rationalize her behavior to herself. As in my own case (and perhaps in Janie‟s), the mother
may live in a constant state of resentment and be characterized as a bad group member.
Some mothers may repress their sense of right, fully embracing the group’s ideology, yet
maintain an unconscious feeling about what is right. As these mothers begin to question the
group, this feeling is slowly articulated. These may often be the “good” cult members.
Some mothers may resolve the conflict by a total submission to the group and its
deceptions, perhaps in exchange for a degree of power (see Singer with Lalich, 1995, p.
278). And perhaps these are the mothers who get permanently trapped. Is it the case that
some may totally lose contact with their own sense of right, thus taking on the cult leader‟s
psychopathology? Perhaps this is how the mantle of inheritance is bestowed in long-lasting
cults?
Reaching Limits
For most of the mothers, leaving the cult was a complex process involving the following
factors:
Beginning to connect a “generalized feeling of being unhappy” with an often protracted
intellectual process of evaluating the group’s actions. Helen said, “I started seeing
inconsistencies --I wasn‟t judging, but I was aware. When the thought processes kicked in
they were acute, keen. I started journaling.” Mary stayed in an extra year to see if people
were ever allowed to ask questions. Instead she “saw people‟s questions rebuffed and
ridiculed, over and over,” and that finally helped her get out.
Reaching some kind of limit in how their children were being treated. Helen described the
following: “I wept over Jonah when he was born because ...I knew what was in store for
him. One of the brethren had held a gun to one of my twin‟s face, and pulled the trigger --
my child didn‟t know it was unloaded. But this is why I wept for Jonah.... The last straw was
when a woman kicked him when he was a year and a half old --because he was wiggling
around. It was over and I knew it. I had no fear of what anyone thought for the first time.
We were all in the church and I got all my kids. I said, “„Get your blankets,‟ and they got
their stuff and we left.”
Anne said, “One of the reasons I left was because I didn‟t want to get back to working every
day and night and weekends and leave Beth. I wasn‟t going to do that again.”
Many of the mothers echoed Helen‟s statement: “I thought, „You can hurt me, but...not my
kids, not anymore.‟”
The limits on what the mothers could tolerate vis-à-vis the group‟s treatment of their
children varied drastically. The incidents triggering the mothers‟ limits were also not
necessarily either the “worst” thing that had happened to the children or the first time such
a thing had been done. For instance, Helen‟s children had been subjected to a great deal of
physical abuse the kick that was the last straw was just one of many. When questioned
about why that particular incident triggered her to leave, Helen replied: “The members were
watching movies about the Holocaust, and I saw my kid‟s face in that movie. I could have
endured the greatest humiliation (and I did), but I couldn‟t keep on letting the children get
hurt.... It got so old --daily, for all those years. The children were what made the
intellectual stuff [thinking again] necessary.”
In a few cases, the limit the mother reached centered around her own treatment. Janie
finally walked out of a meeting after being told, yet again, that she was a bad person and a
bad wife. “I called my husband and he came and got me and I said, „I‟m never going back.‟
I realized I didn‟t need to be treated that way.”