CultNEWS101 Articles: 4/7/2026
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Patrick Ryan
Apr 7, 2026, 3:00:47 AMApr 7
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Conversion Therapy, Reproductive Coercion, FLDS, Samuel Bateman
"In 1969, I was 20 years old, lost, and desperate for approval when I fell prey to a New York City cult that promised to redeem me from my sins. “You’ll go down in history as our first female conversion,” they said, offering to make me their poster child. I resisted. Hard. But they convinced me that to be my best self, I could not be gay.
I succumbed. With gratitude to the cult and its leader, I announced myself changed. An official heterosexual. In doing so, I set in motion years of confusion and suffering and later helped promote the same fake conversion treatment to others.
My experience was not an aberration. In the late 20th century, conversion efforts expanded across the U.S.—especially in conservative Christian evangelical communities—driven by the belief that being gay was abnormal and could be changed. Since then, major medical groups have opposed the practice, and evidence has shown it to be ineffective and linked to increased depression and suicide risk. That is why more than 20 states have banned it in professional mental health treatment."
"...For two decades, gay conversion was central to the cult I was a part of, which had been founded by a poet and self-styled philosopher. In 1971, its technique—an absurd series of grilling sessions—was featured on national television. This publicity brought a flood of calls from hundreds of terrified men around the country—many living in states where being gay was a crime that could land you in a psychiatric hospital or jail. Homosexuality was still categorized as a mental disorder.
As I pushed the cult’s gay conversion efforts, I convinced myself we were helping gay men and women achieve their goals. What we were really doing was exploiting them to promote our own leader and ideology.
How many people pushing efforts like this today are doing the same thing? Do they really care about the well-being of young people, or is it all about furthering their ideology?
Conversion therapy doesn’t work. Most of the cult’s “successes” eventually quit, but only after lying to themselves and their heterosexual spouses, engaging in secret same-sex affairs, or living for decades with fear and shame. We were deprived of what every human longs for—a chance to love honestly with mind, body and soul.
I will never fully recover from the years I lived under coercive control. What haunts me most is how I harmed others as I promoted the cult’s mass conversion campaign. Eventually, I escaped and reclaimed my identity. But I have spent years trying to forgive myself for my mistakes."
Journal of Family Violence: A Theoretical Model of Reproductive Coercion and Abuse and Legal Entrapment: Barriers to Health, Safety, and Well-being for Mothers and Children
"This purpose of this article is to encourage the adoption of a theoretical model that centers the ways in which experiences of reproductive coercion and abuse (RCA) intersect with legal entrapment, gendered immobility, and adverse health consequences. This framework integrates disparate bodies of scholarship that have been neglected in prior examinations of RCA in order to provide a heuristic tool for research, practice, and policy.
Methods: The authors discuss the existing literature on RCA and propose a theoretical model informed by feminist and reproductive justice theories, embedded in a socio-ecological model highlighting structural and social determinants of health.
Results: Reproductive coercion and abuse (RCA) is a form of violence against women that interferes with a woman’s reproductive autonomy and freedom, contributing to adverse health and economic consequences. In the context of RCA, barriers to health exist at the societal level, community level, and interpersonal level resulting in legal entrapment and gendered immobility.
Conclusion: This multi-level theoretical model integrates disparate scholarly lines of inquiry around RCA, gendered immobility, legal entrapment, and can serve to move the science forward on RCA to promote the health and well-being of mothers and children."
"When cult expert and researcher Christine Marie and her videographer husband, Tolga Katas, decided to secretly document the aftermath of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) following the imprisonment of former leader Warren Jeffs, they didn’t expect to uncover the horrific child sex abuse hidden beneath the surface.
That discovery is the basis of the upcoming Netflix four-part documentary, "Trust Me: The False Prophet," streaming on the platform beginning April 8.
Per Netflix, the documentary, which includes the secret footage recorded by Marie and Katas, “chronicles the rise of Samuel Bateman's rise—the self-proclaimed heir to Jeffs—as seen through the eyes of the couple who infiltrated his inner circle. As they gain Bateman’s trust and uncover evidence, the film reveals the depths of his control and the women brave enough to speak up.”
The documentary's director, Emmy-award winner Rachel Dretzin, also helmed another Mormon-based docuseries for the streamer: 2025’s Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey.
Dretzin told Netflix’s Tudum that her involvement in the project began after meeting with Marie and Katas, and seeing their disturbing footage documenting the ongoing child sexual abuse of young girls.
“Trust Me offers intimate access to a normally closed world — and in doing so, I hope it exposes both the violence that enforced secrecy enables and what it takes to tell the truth when everything is at stake,” she said.
“What these women did matters far beyond their community. It is a blueprint for how to dismantle even the most entrenched systems of abuse,” Dretzin added."
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Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.
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