Prophet or Predator: How He Tricked Her and Trafficked Her Mother

Summary

The Hidden Third
Host: Mariana van Zeller
Episode: Prophet or Predator: How He Tricked Her and Trafficked Her Mother
Date: May 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this gripping episode, Mariana van Zeller speaks with Lola Blanc, artist, filmmaker, and co-host of the podcast Trust Me. Together they delve into Lola's deeply personal story of how her mother was manipulated and trafficked by a man presenting himself as a religious prophet within the context of mainstream Mormonism. The conversation exposes the complex mechanisms of spiritual and emotional coercion, drawing connections between cultic tactics, scams, and the search for meaning. Lola reflects on the trauma, resilience, aftermath, and her and her mother's current roles in exposing manipulative leaders and supporting other survivors.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Life, Faith, and Family Dynamics

• Setting the Stage (01:33-05:10)

  • Lola speaks about a "kooky" upbringing in Michigan within a mainstream Mormon family, her mother’s interests in motivational speaking, ventriloquism, children’s programs, and auctioneering.
  • Strong bond with her mother, often collaborating on performances and projects: “My mom is my best friend.” (04:47)

• Religion as Comfort and Community (05:10-06:08, 14:50-17:02)

  • “I loved the church as a kid. I was a fervent believer in the LDS Church, and my parents were both very devout.” – Lola (05:10)
  • Describes tight-knit church community, rituals, and the sense of being “chosen,” while also acknowledging that Mormonism provided them food and support during hard times.

2. Vulnerability and the Search for Meaning

• Mom’s Crisis and Excommunication (06:17-09:05)

  • Mother’s painful divorce, excommunication over premarital sex, and subsequent shame and isolation: “It’s humiliating.” – Lola (07:46)
  • Reveals women were treated harsher than men for similar “sins.”

• Desperate for Direction (09:11-10:05)

  • Mother’s dream of a “handsome man…charged with meaning…really come from Heavenly Father,” meeting the man who resembled her vision at a Mormon singles dance. (09:11-09:41)
  • Emphasis on Mormon culture’s encouragement to seek signs from God.

3. The Manipulation Begins: Enter “Adam”

• Grooming and Love-Bombing (10:08-12:17)

  • The man (pseudonym “Adam”) befriends Lola and her mother, ingratiating himself through attention and (for Lola) gifts: “He did buy me snacks and then won me over.” – Lola (11:28)
  • Early unease, a sense that “something felt a little off about him.”

• Claiming Prophethood and Spiritual Blackmail (13:04-14:56, 22:58-23:21)

  • Adam presents himself as a prophet, claiming to translate lost scripture, exploiting mainstream Mormon beliefs about new revelation:
    • “He engaged in this process of, like, asking her a ton of questions about herself…for her, that was helping the poor…and wow, what a coincidence, he has this foundation to help the poor.” – Lola (12:42)
  • The “sealed portion of the Book of Mormon” provided theological cover for his manipulation.

4. Mechanics of Coercion

• Isolation and Sacrifice (26:07-30:33)

  • Adam demands the mother sells belongings “to help the poor”—the proceeds funneled to his false foundation.
  • Next, he commands that she separate from her children, claiming this is a requirement for their eternal salvation:
    • “The way that that was communicated to her was as a threat…we would be unable to be together for all eternity.” – Lola (46:27)
  • Lola, just 12 years old, is sent to live with a church family, maintaining secret contact with her mother.

• Escalation to Trafficking and Abuse (33:02-36:38)

  • Adam places Lola’s mother in a dangerous, unclean motel, ordering her not to leave, where she is exploited sexually by men sent by Adam:
    • “He was selling her, essentially. He was pimping her out.” – Mariana (33:02)
    • “She was also being physically abused by people in the building…there were men who were essentially told to go have sex with my mom in this place.” – Lola (33:02)
  • Mother’s devastation, suicidal ideation, and desperate pleas for explanation or honesty from Adam and his other “wife,” only to be told to remain faithful to the “test.”

5. Breaking the Spell: Rescue, Aftermath, and Recovery

• The “Savior” and the Unraveling (41:05-43:24)

  • A man sent by Adam realizes the scam and breaks down, revealing to Lola’s mom the entire deception:
    • “He just started crying…he just, like, breaks down and is like, basically, this is a lie, and I have to get you out of here.” – Lola (42:59)
  • Once the truth is revealed, both Lola and her mother immediately “snap out” of their roles, eager to reunite—no longer attached to the false prophet.
    • “I just wanted to live with my mom…my mom wanted her kids back…she was desperate for something to change.” – Lola (50:13)

• Systemic Failures and Lack of Justice (10:21, 57:04-58:26)

  • Despite clear evidence of coercion and abuse, neither the police nor Mormon church leaders support Lola or her mother.
    • “The authorities didn’t care. They were like, well, you chose to do what…you chose to follow him. Therefore, it’s your fault.” – Lola (10:21)
    • “There was no acknowledgment or understanding of religious coercion.” (57:19)
    • “Mom was not heard. It was a double whammy of abuse.” – Mariana (58:26)

6. Reflections: Cults, Scams, and Victim-Blaming

• Why Intelligent People Get Caught (53:01-56:34)

  • Discussion of the myth that only “gullible” or “unintelligent” people fall prey to cults.
    • “Such incredibly intelligent people can fall prey to manipulators…these are smart people who want to do good in the world.” – Lola (53:01)
    • “It’s victim shaming that I really have a problem with. By victim shaming, you’re removing the guilt from the perpetrator.” – Mariana (54:21)

• Shared Tactics between Cults and Scams (56:00-56:34)

  • Love-bombing, intermittent reinforcement, and the exploitation of deep human needs (community, purpose, identity) are powerful across all backgrounds.
    • “We are naturally inclined to respond to love bombing…those are not exclusive to people who join cults.” – Lola (56:34)

7. Lola and Her Mother Today

• Healing, Advocacy, and New Projects (61:27-62:32)
  • Lola’s mother now works in cult intervention; she exposed another self-proclaimed prophet in Southern Utah (the story behind the Netflix docuseries Trust Me: The False Prophet).
    • “She ended up moving to this FLDS fundamentalist Mormon town…and…started trying to go to the authorities…and spoiler, he is in prison.” – Lola (61:42)
  • Lola’s continued work as a musician, filmmaker, and host of Trust Me, using her story to shed light on manipulation and support survivors.
    • “I’m good. I’m making projects, I’m writing, I’m directing, I have my album out.” – Lola (62:13)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On discovering manipulation:

  "As soon as that dynamic is present, it leaves a lot of room for abuse and control." – Lola (22:58)

• On the wounds of betrayal:

  "To take away the thing that's the most important to you and to humiliate you to the maximum degree and exploit you… Exploit your belief system, your vulnerability." – Lola (46:49)

• On cult recruitment and victimhood:

  "There’s a statistic that most cult recruits typically believe they are joining a legitimate and healthy group … they’re highly intelligent, do not have a history of psychological illness…” – Mariana (54:21)

• On resilience and agency:

  “I just wanted to live with my mom, and my mom wanted her kids back... Thank God it was when she was ready because … the sunk cost fallacy … The more you do, the harder it is to get out.” – Lola (50:13, 51:06)

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Important Timestamps

• Childhood and Religious Context: 01:33–06:08
• Mother’s Excommunication and Vulnerability: 06:17–09:05
• Meeting Adam and the Dream: 09:11–10:05
• Manipulation, Claiming Prophethood, and Spiritual Abuse: 12:17–15:38
• Selling Belongings and Family Separation: 26:07–30:33
• Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking: 33:02–36:38
• Rescue and Breaking Free: 41:05–43:24
• Systemic Victim-Blaming: 57:04–58:26
• Discussion of Cult Dynamics and Scams: 53:01–56:34
• Healing, Current Advocacy, and Netflix Series: 61:27–62:32

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Final Thoughts

This episode exposes a chilling true story of religious manipulation and trafficking, but equally, it’s one of survival, recovery, and activism. Through Lola's deeply personal narrative and Mariana's incisive questions, listeners gain insight into how the search for meaning and belonging can be weaponized, and how the journey from victimhood to agency can transform not just individuals but entire communities. The episode stands as both a warning and a call to empathy, urging greater awareness of the tactics of manipulation—and more robust support for those who escape.

Transcript

[A]

Today's episode is presented by our friends at Huell. Use code Mariana for our exclusive [e-mail]

[B]

she had had a dream about a man who, like, kind of looked like Joseph Smith and kind of looked like Brendan Fraser, this very handsome man. But it felt really charged with meaning and like it had really come from Heavenly Father, as we called him. And then she goes to this Mormon singles dance, and she sees this guy there, and. And he looks like the guy from her dream.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And of course, you know, like, in this culture, you're looking for meaning, you're looking for signs from God everywhere. Like, how would you not take that as a sign? Unfortunately, he happened to be someone who would, you know, have a. A very negative impact on her life, ultimately.

[A]

A sociopath.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Your mother was trafficked by a man who said God sent him. You were only 12 years old. Right. You believed he was a prophet, too, but you found out the hard way that he wasn't who you thought he was. Now you make music, including a very famous Britney Spears song that we've all heard. You make films, and you host one of the most important podcasts out there about power and manipulation, which I've listened to, and it's really, really good. It's called Trust Me, Everybody should listen to it too. So, Lola Blanc, welcome to the Hidden Third.

[B]

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[A]

Of course. I'm so happy to have you here. Okay, so you raised in Michigan, right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Born and raised in Michigan. Correct.

[B]

Well, born in Germany, but that was a military thing.

[A]

Okay. And then moved to Michigan when you were very young.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And then tell me a little bit about that. How was growing up? You also had an amazing upbringing, Right.

[B]

There's a lot of kooky stuff going on. Yeah. So we were mainstream Mormons at that time, and my mom was doing. She was doing motivational speaking as well as some beauty pageants. And as a part of that journey, she decided she wanted to learn ventriloquism, which had been a passion of hers as a kid, to incorporate into the speeches and into the beauty pageant stuff and also auctioneering. And I also was there. And, you know, I'm a kid, and my mom is my best friend, and she's listening to these ventriloquist tapes in the car all the time. So I just sort of absorbed it and started doing ventriloquism myself.

[A]

So I have so many questions. Wait, can you still do it?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so it's a skill that you

[B]

learn how to do, but not that Hard.

[A]

I've tried it. So do you think most people know what it is? I mean, I think so, right? Yeah, I mean, it's.

[B]

I think so. Yeah.

[A]

It's the speaking without speaking without speaking

[B]

without moving your lips.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. And you can still do it. Can you do it a little for me? Is it weird to ask?

[B]

No. For some reason, I just default to the Pledge of Allegiance. There's no good reason for that other than that's what I did as a kid. So just saying that. Okay. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the public for which it stands. You get it?

[A]

It's so good.

[B]

You are so good.

[A]

You didn't move at all, your mouth.

[B]

Thank you so much.

[A]

I almost believed it was your hand talking.

[B]

So good.

[A]

So you learned this in the car, these tapes and with your mom?

[B]

Yeah. And we started performing. So we did. We would go to the, like, Las Vegas ventriloquist convention. We did that a few years and performed there and did, like, birthday parties and school assemblies.

[A]

So fun.

[B]

My brother, one of my brothers, did, like, magic with us. So on top of this, like, mainstream Mormon thing, we're just, like, doing basically, like, a circus act.

[A]

And you guys would have puppets that.

[B]

You would have puppets.

[A]

And was your mom really good at it?

[B]

She was really good, yeah. And also just, like. So she, like, had this innocent spirit that, you know, kids just, like, loved. She had a lot of, like, programs for children and stuff. So, yeah, people were really drawn to it.

[A]

And then auctioneers, you.

[B]

That was just another skill that we incorporated. So we went to auctioneer school, which is really, really just three days in Minnesota. It was my mom and I. I think I was nine and a bunch of cowboys all together this weekend learning auctioneering. So great to incorporate into our routines.

[A]

It's really hard.

[B]

It's really hard.

[A]

If you see the good ones out there, it's really hard.

[B]

Oh, my gosh. I know.

[A]

Yeah, you have to practice a lot to get good at it.

[B]

We learned a lot of really complicated tongue twisters and. Yeah. So I would start to do ventriloquism and auctioneering at the same time while brushing my teeth, you know?

[A]

So great. And you and your mom were always really, really tight, right? It seems like you guys were doing a lot of things, just the two of you guys together.

[B]

Yeah. So I had three brothers, and it was like mommy and me for sure.

[A]

And your dad. If you don't mind me asking about your dad.

[B]

So my dad was in the military and other things, traveling a lot for a while, and then they got divorced. So it was just. Yeah, I would see him, but it was mostly my mom and I and.

[A]

Tell me about being raised. Being raised in church. What was that like?

[B]

You know, I loved the church as a kid. I was a fervent believer in the LDS Church, and my parents were both very devout. Whether I was staying with my mom or staying with my dad, we were going to church. And it was something our family took really seriously. You know, we started doing baptisms for the dead, as you do at age, you know, 12 or whatever it is. And. And I. Yeah, I just. I really believed in it. And. Oh, and the lifestyle just seemed really normal to me. We would go to regular school. It wasn't. I don't consider mainstream Mormonism a cult. I know other people disagree with that, but.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, she. I remember I listened to an interview with your mom as well, where she talks about why, because she didn't grow up religious. Right. Or she. She didn't grow up in the lds.

[B]

Well, she grew up in, like, more Christian, just general Christian churches. And she discovered Mormonism herself.

[A]

Right. And became a real believer.

[B]

Yeah, a real believer. Yeah.

[A]

Is she still, by the way?

[B]

She's not.

[A]

Yeah, that's what I thought. We'll get there. And. Okay, so then. So then you'd go to church every Sunday, you're a real believer, and then something happens to your mom, and.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

May changed your whole family, Right?

[B]

Yes. So my parents were already divorced by this point, and we were living in Utah. And my mom was a single divorced woman who had just gone through this very painful process of excommunication because of a sexual sin that she committed with her boyfriend. And so she had worked really, really hard to get back good in the church, and it was so important to her. And she went. She had a dream one night about a man. She had basically asked God because, you know, this is very common in LDS culture. You pray for a sign, you interpret signs, you ask God for answers. She had asked God for a sign about who the person for her would be, because now she's this, you know, single mom, and you're really supposed to be married. And she wanted to be married and married in the temple and do things the right way.

[A]

Can I just backtrack a little bit? Yeah. So your mom. Your parents got divorced, Your mom then fell in love with a man. Correct. The sexual sin that you talk about is just that she had a boyfriend and they had sex.

[B]

Right. Which is not allowed in premarital sex, is not Allowed? Yes.

[A]

Right. And she felt bad about it, and she. Then that's how they found out, because she came clean to the church.

[B]

She confessed to the bishop. Yeah.

[A]

And then he excommunicated her. Which is one of the worst things that can happen to you in the LDS Church, right?

[B]

Absolutely. It's humiliating.

[A]

Ye. You're excluded from the rest, from all your friends, from your community. You're not allowed to have contact with them. Is that true?

[B]

You're not allowed to speak in church and you're not allowed to take the sacrament. So people kind of know that you've done something. It's not like you can't have a relationship, but there's this period of repentance that's very humiliating, and it was very, very distressing for her.

[A]

Do you remember that period? How did that impact you?

[B]

Very vaguely. I didn't really understand what was happening. I don't think. I just knew. My mom was like, not the sacrament for some reason, and the vibes were weird, but I didn't really know why. And for the record, from my understanding, full excommunication for premarital sex is actually quite uncommon. Especially, like, we knew men, plenty of men who'd committed the same sin and not been excommunicated, you know, so this was like a. This. This was a big deal.

[A]

Why do you think it happened to her?

[B]

I think that. Bishop, honestly, it was like a different time. I think there was a lot more shaming of women who were sexual being. That would be my theory, but I wasn't there. I don't know the specifics, but it's really up to each individual bishop to make that call and that for whatever reason, he made that call.

[A]

And she was devastated. She was devastated.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. So then she started having these dreams.

[B]

She had a dream, a dream that she told me about because it had felt so significant. She had had a dream about a man who, like, kind of looked like Joseph Smith and kind of looked like Brendan Fraser. This very handsome man. But it felt really charged with meaning and like it had really come from Heavenly Father, as we called him. And then she goes to this Mormon singles dance, and she sees this guy there, and he looks like the guy from her dream.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And of course, you know, like, in this culture, you're looking for meaning, you're looking for signs from God everywhere. Like, how would you not take that as a sign? Unfortunately, he happened to be someone who would, you know, have a very negative impact on her life, ultimately.

[A]

A sociopath.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would diagnose him as such.

[A]

Yeah. Have you guys publicly said his name before?

[B]

We haven't. We have plans, but we haven't. He's very litigious and also very narcissistic and desperately wants his name out there.

[A]

But he's never gotten in trouble for what he did to you, to your family?

[B]

No. There was a news article that came out about it, but at the time, the authorities didn't care. They were like, well, you chose to do what you know, you chose to follow him. Therefore, it's your fault. There was no real understanding of coercion at that time. And obviously now it's been a long time, but, you know, there will be more. There will be more to come because

[A]

he's gotten in trouble for doing similar things to other people, right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I can't wait for that day to come for you guys. So tell me what happened. Yeah, she met him. Is there a code name you use for him?

[B]

I think we've called him Adam in the past.

[A]

Okay, let's call him Adam then.

[B]

Whatever. If we didn't, that's what we're calling him today.

[A]

Okay, great. So she met Adam. And do you remember the first time you met Adam?

[B]

I can't remember which time was the first time, but I remember there was just, like, an. Something was a little. Felt a little off about him in the beginning, and I didn't know what. I do remember that as we talked about in the podcast, he did buy me snacks and then won me over.

[A]

This is your podcast, by the way.

[B]

Yeah, my podcast, yeah.

[A]

And you were 12 at the time, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So loved snacks then. Still love snacks.

[B]

Still love snacks. Lifelong snack fan.

[A]

What snacks did you buy?

[B]

Gushers.

[A]

Gushers. I don't even know what that is.

[B]

Oh, you don't?

[A]

I don't. So I didn't grow up in the US So there's a lot that I don't know.

[B]

It's a very American snack. It's like fruit snacks, but inside there's like, juice, but it's like just pure sugar.

[A]

So that's candy. That's about you. Candy. And you were, okay, I like this guy.

[B]

I was like, okay, I like this guy. And my mom. There was obviously something unique about their relationship, but I just didn't understand what it was. Um, so, you know, I accepted him. Adam was the guy that came over and seemed to have a really special relationship with my mom.

[A]

And they were friends at the time, right?

[B]

Yes. Yes.

[A]

And then what happened? Because he was trying. He kind of wanted to be more than Friends with your mom?

[B]

He did want to be more than friends with my mom, but my mom had gone through this whole repentance process. She, you know, there was no way she was going to sleep with someone again who wasn't her husband, so.

[A]

So even after being excommunicated, she still truly believed the church.

[B]

She did, yeah. She really took the blame upon herself, not upon the institution. Yeah. But I don't know at what point he started introducing the narrative of his being a prophet, but it did happen. I don't think it was that long before he actually started saying that. But initially she's like, well, you're just saying you're a prophet. You know, like, I didn't necessarily believe it immediately, but he engaged in this process of, like, asking her a ton of questions about herself, learning, like, what the things were that she valued and for her, that was helping the poor. And, wow, what a coincidence. He has this foundation to help the poor, you know, and she takes the scriptures very seriously. And, well, what do you know? He's translating this missing portion of the Book of Mormon that was supposed to come back in the, you know, near the end times or whatever.

[A]

And this is something every Mormon believes, right, that there's this missing scripture that's supposed to come, and it's going to be a very special day when it finally comes.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I'd be curious to talk to some current Mormons to. To know what the thinking is now, because maybe that's evolved. But at. And at that time, our understanding was that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, had hidden away this sealed portion of the Book of Mormon, which was on these golden plates that he had translated to write the. To translate, allegedly, the original Book of Mormon. So there's this missing piece, you know, which leaves this opening for other men to come in and say, oh, I have found it. I'm translating it. And like Joseph Smith, you don't get to see it, but I have been visited by an angel, I've had a vision, and now I'm the one translating these, like, missing scriptures.

[A]

So, like, the new prophet, the new Joseph Smith, basically, who's come to reveal the new. Got it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so it was very likely, as somebody who's a believer, that you would possibly believe this story if you'd heard it. Heard it.

[B]

I mean, that's the thing. I think it's a similar thing with the FLDS and all of these Mormon offshoot groups. It's like, if you accept the premise that the founder of the church had this vision and was visited by God and no one else saw it, but it was real. That it just leaves room for other people to come in. And it has many times over the course of history since the founding of the Mormon Church. It leaves room for people to be like, I'm the new guy. I've had the vision. You can believe me.

[A]

You know you're not a Mormon anymore, right?

[B]

No.

[A]

Can you tell me, do you remember what you liked about being a Mormon back then? What was it that appealed to you? What do you think? Was it that appealed to your mom and to millions of people around the world?

[B]

Yeah, I think. I mean, obviously part of it is what any religion provides, which is a system and understanding of the world. And there's a very clear track to get to heaven and to get to the top tier of heaven. So there's a framework that's easy to understand and helps make meaning of the chaos. I think that's obviously part of it. The community is very tight knit and lovely. And I will say, like, I still have family that are in the church. I don't hate the church. There were periods where we were very poor and the church, you know, fed us and helped my mom give us Christmas presents because she couldn't afford it. And so there was this really strong communal aspect of it. And then of course, you know, like many churches, there's this narrative that you are the chosen ones or the special ones, and you are part of this special church that you know other people aren't. And it is your task to bring people into this specialness. So it's just like, I think it provides a lot of meaning and purpose and it certainly did for me as a kid.

[A]

Right. Yeah, yeah. Everybody wants to have meaning. Right? So I think it's a message that appeals so many people. And it's not just Mormonism. So many other religions is the same thing. We just interviewed Jan Broberg recently. No, you've had. On your podcast as well. I think I might have stolen the idea from your podcast. But she also has a. There's a very well known series, Abducted in Plain Sight on Netflix about her. But one of the things she says was she. When she was kidnapped by this man, her story is so fascinating. But one of the things. So then she was taken, as you know, the story, but she was taken to Mexico. And one of the things that she really appreciated was when her family finally found out that she was in Mexico within like a couple of hours. There were people from her church, Mormons as well, who were there to sort of help her and rescue her and, and how you can be anywhere in the world and there's the sense of community, that there's people who believe and what you believe just, you know, very close by.

[B]

That's true.

[A]

Yeah, we'll, we'll help you.

[B]

Yeah, but, and look there, I, I have issues with the church. There are flaws certainly, but I, that always, you know, if you met a Mormon out, you were, you were automatically

[A]

friends, you know, like it, you mentioned like how people believe it's a cult, but you don't. Why do you think people believe in it's a cult and why don't you?

[B]

I think that for me, I, I, I would say it's totally possible that someone has had a cultic experience in the Mormon Church. I don't necessarily think everybody is having that experience. I think it's really dependent on your particular ward or congregation, your particular bishop. But for me, the signs that I look for are levels of control over people's lives where they just don't have autonomy and they don't have the ability to leave. I, my family members and friends have not experienced that necessarily. So I think there's, you know, it's a spectrum, of course, and I think many, it's in a similar place on the spectrum as many other religions versus the cults that like tell you who to marry and what you're allowed to do. You know, at least in Mormonism you're allowed to like have a career and go to school and leave if you

[A]

want to leave and live amongst your peers and society.

[B]

You don't have to be isolated. Right.

[A]

It's about basically to be in a cult. If you're are considered a cult. It's, I'm sure you know a lot more about this than I do, but it's controlling. You're controlling physically, emotionally or financially. Right?

[B]

Yeah, the list, yeah. And of course every religion, because they're providing a framework of a belief system and you know, you're paying your tithing and there's norms like there's going to be some degree of control, but I, I don't think it is as controlling as a fun, the fundamentalist version of the church, for example.

[A]

So back to your mom. So she comes back home, she introduces this man to you as a friend. Was it clear to you, I know you were only 12, but was it clear to you that he was interested in more than just friendship with your mom?

[B]

Yeah, a lot of men were interested in my mom. So I, yeah, I could tell, I guess when there was a Suitor afoot.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

She's beautiful. She's beautiful. Very special, right? Yeah. Yeah. And did you. What happened after that? Were you.

[B]

I mean, I don't really remember the period between meeting him and learning that they'd have this exchanges about him being a prophet. I just vaguely remember he would be at the house. He had a foundation. You know, there's, like, something going on with their relationship, but I'm not sure what. It wasn't until I was snooping around on her computer and found these, like, letters that they had written to each other that addressed. That mentioned him being a prophet that I was like, oh, so that's what the dream was about. You know, before I even had a conversation with my mom. I think I put those pieces together and was like, oh, my gosh, the dream meant something. You know, she wasn't wrong. Like, there's something, you know, this. This. Maybe this man's really a prophet.

[A]

And what would that mean to you? Because I've heard you talk about what, this moment, believing that he was a prophet. What would that mean to you? Like, what place? What was your life like at that moment? And the idea of having something special so close to you, what would that mean to you at the time?

[B]

I mean, I was a kid. I didn't have a ton of friends because we'd moved a lot, and I. I think I was just overwhelmed with this. This sense of, like, oh, I'm a part of something special. There's this mysterious plan that God has, and because I'm one of the only people clearly who's privy to it, that means that, like, wow, I'm, like, I'm Harry Potter, you know, Like, I'm special. I'm chosen.

[A]

So you believed immediately that this was. That he was a prophet?

[B]

I don't remember if it was. I think I immediately was like, oh, he's probably a prophet. I think probably I talked to my mom and then, you know, was solidified. But I don't think there was a lot of, like, questioning necessarily, because it just fit into the framework of everything I'd believed up until that point.

[A]

And then you asked your mom?

[B]

Yeah, I wish I remembered that conversation. I don't.

[A]

I mean, you were so young, too.

[B]

Yeah, I wish we. God, I wish someone had filmed it. Like, what had. What could that have looked like? But, yeah, we. We. We had a conversation at some point, and then it was this secret. We weren't supposed to tell anyone. I wasn't even supposed to know, you know, but then I did, and so he Accepted that. And so my mom and I have this secret. My brothers don't even know about it. My dad doesn't know about it. And there was something really exciting about that. You know, like there's this. So mysterious. What's the plan? What does God want us to do? You know?

[A]

And your relationship with him changed a little bit, right? At that point, too?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Because then I was a follower, then I believed in him, and. And then it became, well, whatever Adam says we have to do, because he's the one directly in communication with God. And, you know, as soon as that dynamic is present, it leaves a lot of room for abuse and control. Abuse and control, exactly.

[A]

Yeah. And he had some special plans for you, right? There was something that he told you you were special because.

[B]

Are you referencing something we talked about on the podcast? Because I don't remember it.

[A]

I was. Something about how. And I heard your mom talk about this, too, when she went on your podcast. Was her special place in the world had also to do with you, with what bringing you to the earth and what you were going to do in the future.

[B]

Right. I think there were vague allusions to my role, but I didn't know what that meant yet. Neither of us really knew what that meant. But it was like me and my mom and the prophet, and we knew there were other people, or at least believed there were other people who believed in him. But in terms of, like, direct communication, day to day, it's me and my mom and the prophet.

[A]

So do you think. Did he just, like, immediately started telling her what to do? How soon did that change?

[B]

No, I think it took a couple of months. I think it took a couple of months before she, like, truly accepted what he had been selling her on. And there. There were just a lot of things that made sense, a lot of things he said that fit exactly into her belief system. And. And she did what you're really supposed to do in the LDS Church, which is she prayed about it, and she looked to the scriptures for answers, and the answers she was getting were, yeah, this.

[A]

It's.

[B]

Something's special here. Something's right here. It's not. Not. Not the best metric for assessing whether someone's a prophet, but this is the culture that we were very much a part of, you know?

[A]

Was he Mormon, too?

[B]

He had been when he met her. He claimed he was an atheist, and there was this whole weird dynamic going on between them where they would argue, and then he revealed, actually, I'm. I'm not an atheist. I'm a prophet. But I think when he was young, he was raised Mormon, I believe.

[A]

What did he look like? Can you give me a description? Was he. Was he actually. Did he actually look like Brandon Frazier?

[B]

Yeah, kind of like long hair. Long, like light ish hair that you pull back into a ponytail. I remember him being muscular. I don't know if that's just because I was a kid in my head. He was muscular. Yeah. Like very much a. Not Fabio, but like very much a. An archetype of like a handsome, like, late 90s kind of guy, you know what I mean?

[A]

And same age as your mom or less.

[B]

Maybe a bit younger, but similar. Yeah.

[A]

And turns out he was a crazy master manipulator.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

When did you start think seeing things change and when did it actually start having an impact on your lives?

[B]

The first thing I remember is the yard sale that we had to sell our things. I had been helping him make a website for his foundation that didn't exist. It turned out that was to help the poor. And then we were like, okay, so we got to keep helping the poor. The foundation, it all came back to this foundation.

[A]

Did the website go live?

[B]

I think. I think so, but I think it was just like an angel fire. Do you remember angel fire? It was. It was like the equivalent of like a WIX or a Tumblr. Like, I don't think it was like

[A]

an easy thing that you put together.

[B]

Yeah, it's published. Yeah. Well, I was. I was doing HTML.

[A]

Great job. Amazing. But certainly more than I was doing it at that age. What else? What is. What was the name of the foundation? Do you remember, or you can't say.

[B]

I probably shouldn't because I think you look it up.

[A]

But I was trying to get you there. It will be revealed.

[B]

Although I wonder. I wonder if you can Google it. But anyway, so a lot of it came back to this central, like, project, which was the project he specifically designed for my mom. Because I don't think other people got the same project who believed in him, but he knew that helping people was, like, her purpose. So then it's like, okay, well, we need to give more money to the poor. How do we give more money to the poor? Start by selling our possession. Start by having a yard sale. Sell your, you know, mom's, like, wedding dress, I want to say, or like, there were some prized possessions that were sold there. And I. My perspective on it at the time was like, basically, hell, yeah. Like, we're. This is what God wants us to do. Sacrifice is so important to be. Be righteous. You know, that's very much a mentality we grew up with or that I grew up with as well in the church.

[A]

What did your brothers think about all this, by the way, at this point? Were they believers as well?

[B]

They never knew. They didn't know until it was all over.

[A]

So they weren't living with you guys?

[B]

I think a couple of them were, but they. But I think they just thought we were having a yard sale. I don't think they understood.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it wasn't until the end, until it all was revealed, that they found out what happened.

[B]

Yeah, I think it was years later, actually. We just didn't talk about it for a while.

[A]

Yeah. So you didn't even tell your brothers because this was like a secret that you were keeping? Yeah. Was there anything in the yard sale that you were remember being sad about selling?

[B]

I think it was more my mom's possession. I was a kid and didn't have that many that much cool stuff, but. But to me, it, like, it felt more infused with purpose. It felt like almost like activism, you know, I was like, yes, I'm doing something good for the world, and this is what God wants. And this is all a part of the. So I don't even think I thought twice about it, honestly. And then the next thing. The next big thing, I guess, was that we were asked, or she was told, really, that we were not supposed to live together. She was not supposed to live with her children. And she. I was not a part of these conversations, but she was told to give us up. And my mom, I mean, her children were her life. Her children were her whole. Everything in life. Like, if you had, you know, a movie of her life up until this point. Like, she has this program for children. She has. She taught us all to read from a very, very young age. Just like the most loving, involved, active, just wonderful mother imaginable. And her kids are everything to her. It's all she's ever wanted was to be a mom. And now this prophet is telling her that she can't, that she can't be. And she did not take that well. But obviously she was not going to give us up for adoption. A couple of us, I think, went to live with my dad and. But I didn't want to be far. I wanted to be close to my mom. I'm still a part of this thing. I'm like, well, there's. But the. We have this mission. So I went to live with another family that we knew from church, and my mom was instructed to live in this sort of halfway house type hotel in quotation marks. It was later shut down because it was.

[A]

I can't think of the word unsafe and. Yeah, dirty, Right.

[B]

Yeah. Terrible. Right, yeah.

[A]

Didn't have, like, drug addicts and.

[B]

Yeah, there were drug addicts. There were people coming out of prison there. And. And listen, like, now I say these words and I'm like, well, that doesn't mean anything, you know, but it just wasn't safe for her as a single, young, beautiful woman. And. And I. I would actually love to ask my brothers what they thought of all of this at the time, because, again, they didn't know why any of this was happening, but I knew why it was happening. And I'm living at this family's house. The Vest. Vests. And that's the name of the family? Yeah. In Orem, I believe.

[A]

What were they told?

[B]

I don't know. I don't know. Probably just my mom was doing something for a while and, you know, and I didn't want to live with my dad. So.

[A]

Do you know. Do you. Did they know that she was just down the street, but in a shady motel somewhere or.

[B]

No, I don't think so. I mean, she was like an hour. Probably an hour away.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But that. I'm having these secret phone calls at this family's house with my mom about, like, the mission, you know, and. But I can tell that there's just, like, something seems off. Something seems off. And I. I went and visited her with my little brother.

[A]

I believe this is. After how much time?

[B]

I wish I knew the answer, but

[A]

more than a few days, at least a few weeks.

[B]

Okay. We went to visit her and it was really distressing to see the conditions that she was living in. And at the same time, I still am under the belief that, like, you know, it's always the story of Abraham and Isaac, God, asking you to make the ultimate sacrifice, and it's a test to see if you really will. So I. I think for both of us, our thinking was. Our framework was, well, this is a test. This is a test to see how much we'll sacrifice for God, and we have to pass the test, you know, and so my mom is in these horrible conditions. And what I don't know at the time is that she's also being physically abused by people in the building. And there were people who were told to go there by Adam and take advantage of my mother.

[A]

He was selling her, essentially. He was pimping her out.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, she never took any money, so presumably money was Taken. But we don't know how or where that happened. But there were men who were essentially told to go have sex with my mom in this place. Place. And she was also told not to leave. She had to stay there. That was her test. And, you know, she has the. She has a lot of the emails and letters from the time. Thank God she has saved them because they're going to come in handy. But it's her just pleading, begging, please, why are you. Why would God want this? Why would God want this?

[A]

To Adam.

[B]

To Adam, yeah. And also to Adam's girlfriend that he revealed that he had at the time. And their responses are just like, you know, as I recall, it's basically like it's a test. It's just what God wants, you know, and she's like, pleading and devastated and becomes suicidal and, you know, just an ultimate low. Yeah.

[A]

Adam, when. I think we didn't mention this, but when he started seeing your mother or befriending your mother, and he definitely wanted more than just being friends. But she didn't want to have sex with an unmarried again. She didn't want to commit the same. What she believed was a sin. But he eventually, when he came out as a prophet and he convinced her that he was a prophet, he also convinced her that it was part of her duty. Right. To be his wife, or spiritual wife.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And that she had to have sex with him.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So they ended up having sex.

[B]

They did.

[A]

And then she believed was doing this for the prophet. And.

[B]

And she believed it was acceptable because she's spiritually married. Right. Right.

[A]

And then when she goes. When he puts her in this motel, he eventually says, I now have another spiritual wife or I now have a real wife. What was the. The girlfriend of it all.

[B]

Yeah. He revealed he had another wife. Don't quote me on this, but I believe it, that she was now the first wife. And my mom was demoted, I believe, and my mom's like, what? I just, you know, I've gone through all of this. We've been spiritually married. Like, you just, like, have another wife, you know, because like, in fundamentalist. In the fundamentalist version of Mormonism, polygamy is a part of the church, but in mainstream Mormonism, that is very much not the case. And it hasn't been for many, many years. So this is all very surprising. Like, wait, so we are doing polygamy now? And you're. You didn't tell me until I was already your wife. That. And now there's another wife? You know, like, it was all Very confusing, I'm sure. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But then meanwhile, that woman has sort of begun communicating with my mom about what she's going through and, like, talking her down and telling her basically, sorry, it just needs to. You just gotta keep doing it.

[A]

She pretended she was a believer as well. Right. She pretended that she also believed this guy was the prophet.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And that your mom had to keep having sex with strangers and had to stay in the hotel and wasn't allowed to see her kids and couldn't get out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is, I mean, pure definition of a cult slash sex trafficking.

[B]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[A]

It's insane.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And your mom starts getting really, really depressed.

[B]

Yes, my mom, as she tells it to me because I was not there, but as she tells it to me and. Or told me later she wanted to die and was, you know, walking around the streets hoping that somebody would hit her. And, you know, everything she cares about in life has been stripped away from her. She doesn't get to be a mom. She doesn't get. Or, I mean, she gets. We're still communicating, but she doesn't get to have us in her life. And she's being told to have sex with people when she never would want that would. Her chastity was so important to her, you know, and doing the right thing was so important to her. And being pure and not that having sex makes you impure, but that was the, you know, belief system. And. And yeah, she just, like, hit a rock bottom and fortunately nobody hit her. And fortunately, as she tells it, you know, she remembered her children and that kept her alive and it kept her from attempting again, at least immediately. And then she was told what was really going on. And that is. And, you know, we can talk about that, but unfortunately it interrupted the process.

[A]

Did you. What was your visit? Do you remember visiting her and seeing the conditions?

[B]

I do remember. I visited a couple of times. I was really. I remember feeling just, like, grossed out by, like, the bugs and the vibes in the bathroom, like, doesn't work with theirs. So you used this one in the hall or something. I. Everything was really dirty. I was, like, afraid. It just was really scary. And there was. There was. I believe there was a man there who was, like, beating down the door and trying to get in. And my mom had to call the police. It was just, like, really a really scary place. And she's there by herself, you know, and, like, at that point, I'm only 12 years old, but, like, I had witnessed a handful of men, you know, attack my mom or take advantage of my Mom. And so I was really protective of her. I felt really protective of her despite being a child. And it. I was just really worried for her being there on her own. Yeah.

[A]

Do you remember what it felt like when you had to leave her?

[B]

I know that I was. I was worried about her. I knew she had to be there, but I didn't like it. Yeah.

[A]

But at this point, did you also still believe in the cause? Right. You. You still believe that this. There was a reason why this was happening?

[B]

I did. And I tell this story a lot on my podcast, but there was a moment when I was praying at this family's house that I was staying at, where I was gonna bear my testimony in the prayer. Which means, you know, when you bear your testimony in the Mormon Church, you just say, I know this church is true. I know. Blah, blah, blah, is a real prophet. And I started to bear my testimony about Adam, and I, like, stopped mid sentence when I was about to say, I know Adam's a real prophet. And I remember this, like, just little. Just littlest nagging thought that, like, huh, why don't I want to say that? Why don't I want to finish that thought? And I, like, filed it away for later just in case, but I was like, oh, it's probably nothing. That's the only moment I remember of, like, questioning the belief itself, because, again, sacrifice just was what I thought you had to do to be righteous. But then when we discovered that it was fake, I also just wasn't surprised.

[A]

Yeah, it's amazing how we have some, like, instincts sometimes about stuff. Right. I've had that. I remember being very young also and having an instinct that I'm not going to share now what it was, but it was something like. I felt like something isn't right right here and sort of putting it to the side and then finding out later that I was right. And I was. Yeah, I was like 13 or 14

[B]

years old, something like that. Yeah, we just. Some part of us knows sometimes. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

And. And then she was seeing all these. I mean, all these men that she was forced to have sex with. And then there was this one guy. Right. The one guy that sort of saved her. What. Can you tell us that story?

[B]

So there was a man that had met Adam, I believe, in jail because Adam had gone to jail for some. For something.

[A]

Did your mom know he was in jail at this point?

[B]

I think so. And the. The context for that is that Joseph Smith had also gone to jail, and it was a part of the persecution of the true church. So, again, there's just this, like, narrative. Everything has an explanation, and it actually feeds into the idea of being a true prophet.

[A]

That's crazy.

[B]

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[A]

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[B]

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[A]

He probably boasted about it in prison, like, you can't believe what I'm doing to this woman and how.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Made her believe all this stuff.

[B]

Can you imagine? Just, like, who.

[A]

You have to be insane.

[B]

Yeah. So he knows. He knows it's all a lie, and he starts crying and he's. And he just, like, breaks down and is like, basically, this is a lie, and I have to get you out of here. And I always wish that the impetus for us leaving was not a man coming in and saving the day. But that is, unfortunately, precisely what happened.

[A]

Yeah. Because it certainly wasn't the woman that he was. Was married to either, who knew all of this as well.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

And at this point, your mom. This is the part of the story that just made me so angry, was your mom had actually written so many letters to Adam and to his wife explaining what she was going through and even saying that she was thinking of committing suicide. Like, that she was at the worst of the worst. And. And please tell me that you're not lying to me. Please tell me that there's a purpose for doing this, because this doesn't feel right, and I hate every second of it, and I miss my kids. And he told her, like, I remember her explaining, one of them said, what kind of people have been hanging out with like, who would lie? Who would do this to another human being? And just lying and lying. And allowing her to live in those conditions and knowing that she could die at any moment, it's. It just takes another level of cruelty.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That. It's hard to believe that that even exists in the world, you know?

[B]

Yeah. Sometimes I forget because I'm so familiar with the story, obviously, and we talk about it all the time, but, like, hearing you say, I'm like, oh, my God, it's crazy. Yeah. It's so crazy. Like, I just can't imagine. Obviously can't imagine being him. He has no empathy. And in my mind, I know he's a sociopath. Yeah. But her, too. I mean, anyone who knew this was going on, because there were a few people. Yeah, yeah. The woman. Yeah, yeah. There were a few people who knew what was going on. And the fact that they didn't intervene and, in fact, enabled it is so shocking to think about.

[A]

It is absolutely.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's crazy. It's just insane.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

That was the part, to me, because, you know, people do mean shit all the time, but when you're fully aware that. That this is going on and you're receiving these letters, pleading for honesty and for help, essentially, and you just double down on your lie, it's crazy. And meanwhile, he was, by the way, making money from all of this. Right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

As.

[B]

As. As far as we know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

It is. It's so insane. And so your mom finally do. I remember also hearing her on your podcast talk about this. But the moment when she realizes that this was all based on a lie, all her sacrifices, all her time spent away from her kids, all the horrific time she had.

[B]

I don't remember what she said.

[A]

She just talked about. Yeah. That she just fell to the ground crying. She basically realizing that all that she'd been through, for one. For a thing, that was a lie from the beginning.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

It must have been just horrible.

[B]

Devastating. One detail that I forgot to mention that I think is important to mention is that in terms of the separation from us, the way that that was communicated to her was as a threat to. Of her not seeing us in the afterlife and us being unable to be together in heaven for all eternity.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And the only way that we would all be able to be together for all eternity was to not be together here in this life. So she's still operating from this place of I have to do whatever is going to be best for my kids and for being with my kids. But to her, according to her belief system, that includes all of eternity. Wow. Yeah.

[A]

It's a small sacrifice on earth, but it's the rest of eternity with my. With people that I love the most. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. And also she wants to make sure we get to heaven. She gets to heaven. So we, like. Yeah. So that threat was, like, a huge motivation for so much of. Of this coercion. And then. Yeah. Just to find out that, like, someone was just. Just made it all up. They just made it all up. And to take away the thing that's the. That you love the most and that's the most important to you and to humiliate you to the maximum degree and exploit you. Exploit.

[A]

You exploit your belief system, your vulnerability. Did you ever meet. Did you ever see him after this?

[B]

No.

[A]

What was. Do you remember when you found out it was a lie and how did you. How did that make you feel?

[B]

Yeah, I remember she came to the house and there was a big hill outside of the house, and we sat on the hill outside the house and she told me. And I think that I just, like, went right into survival mode. Because what I remember feeling is, oh, great, another guy turned out to be a. A bad person or, like a liar or whatever. Like, okay, moving on. You know, moving on. Next. Like, I don't. We didn't have the language at that time to really talk about the trauma of that. The trauma of the separation, the trauma of the belief system, what she had gone through. I didn't know the extent of what she had gone through yet, so I just very much went into, well, okay, we. We gotta get out of here.

[A]

We gotta.

[B]

We gotta start over, live together again, you know?

[A]

Yeah, Yeah. I think you can tell how she was just, like, living. Surviving by a string. Is that the expression? Surviving? Hanging on by a string. Thank you. Just by the fact that she snapped straight out of it as soon as somebody told her that it wasn't true. Because I think one of the things. I've covered scams extensively, and there's a lot of similarities, actually, between victims of cults and victims of scams in the sense that there's, you know, manipulation there. There's a lot of lying, but there's a lot of control. And for a scam victim, once you tell them that, if you tell them, reveal to them that the person, particularly in romance scams, that their scammer is a lie and not the person he says he is. A lot of people don't believe it. The victims don't believe it. They want to, you know, because they've spent so much time, they've met a lot of times, spent so much money, and. And they built in their minds this love relationship. You know, they're being love bombed by every morning. Their life is so much better with this person in their life. It has so more meaning that it's difficult for them to even snap out of it. Even when I've been in this situation where I've had to tell victims that they are the man they've been talking to is not who they believe in is.

[B]

And yeah, a lot of them don't believe me.

[A]

So this all to say that you're for your. And I'm sure it's. I think it's the same thing sometimes when you tell. Try to tell people inside a cult that it's all based on a lie. And so for your mother, after all that she went through, to then just have one person tell her the truth and be able to snap out of it, it was like she was ready for it. Right.

[B]

In a way.

[A]

And. And I guess you were too, because you weren't. You weren't trying to feel special anymore. You were like, this is. Let's move on.

[B]

I just wanted to live with my mom, and my mom wanted her kids back. And, you know, that's such a good point because, yeah, we see that a lot on my podcast as well. With a lot of the people that we interview, they. It took them a long time, you know, to. To accept it. But for her, her conditions were absolute rock bottom. You know, she's not getting the love bombing. She's not getting anything out of it. All she's getting is that she doesn't have her kids. She was so desperate for something to give and something to change, and that's clear in her letters. So thank God. Thank God he came at that time and not earlier in the process. Thank God it was when she was ready because God forbid. The sunk cost fallacy. You know, when. Once you've invested so much into something, it's like we don't want to accept that it was all a waste, so we keep going and doubling down.

[A]

Like the sunk cost fallacy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Makes total sense. Yeah.

[B]

It's like when you've invested so much like money into something, for example, and

[A]

the more you do, the harder it is to get out of it. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. I'm so grateful that it went the way that it did because it very easily could not have your right.

[A]

What was it like to have your mom back?

[B]

I mean, my mom is my best friend, so I was very happy to be reunited with her. There was a definite period of instability because we didn't have anywhere to live and we didn't have any money. And that happens to people a lot coming out of cultic situations, which wasn't

[A]

the case before she met him. Right. She had, she was very successful. Right.

[B]

She had a show, a TV show and develop a children's TV show in development. There were a lot of projects that were sort of in the works. We, we hadn't, you know, we weren't rich. She hadn't hit it big yet necessarily, but there was a lot of potential and like projects with big people attached and stuff. And that was all gone obviously now. So there was no money, there was nothing. And we like would. We stayed with people and like tried to figure out where, where to live. And then somehow she cobbled together a living and found us an apartment. I don't know how she did it actually. I've never asked her or maybe I have, but not recently. So yeah, it was just a period that, that was a true survival mode period of like, who are we going to stay with? How are we going to get a home? How. How is she going to feed us? Like. But she figured it out, you know, was again most important thing. So. Yeah.

[A]

And what happened to you after that?

[B]

I just moved on. I was, I was just was. I went to school and was homeschooled on and off and just became a normal kid and didn't talk to anyone about it and kind of just pretended it had never happened.

[A]

And then eventually you moved to LA

[B]

and I moved to LA, yeah. At 17.

[A]

At 17. Was it because you wanted to be.

[B]

Because I wanted to do music, yeah.

[A]

You wanted to do music. Okay. And then at what point did you decide you wanted to start a podcast on cults?

[B]

Must have been 2019 that I first had the idea. And it was because I. My mom had been finally. We'd been talking about it finally and we'd started having these conversations and she was in school and I believe she was in school then and learning about psychology. And it was kind of this big, just this big thing that we were having these conversations that we didn't have this whole time or we'd have them and she was, was still traumatized or she told her story in the media and they portrayed her as they kind of victim blamed, you know. So now we're having these like really meaningful conversations about what actually happened and analyzing it. So I'm starting to think about cold smart. I'm starting to think about manipulation more And I'm starting to think about how such incredibly intelligent people can fall prey to, you know, manipulators. And as I'm looking at like media and podcasts about podcasts about this at the time, there just weren't that many places you could go to hear from real survivors. Who you can hear are just normal people and you can hear are smart. And it was really important to me to try to create a space for those stories to be heard where to humanize the people that were in these groups.

[A]

Yeah. So they're not just considered gullible, silly, stupid people who, how could they have believed in something like this? But you're actually showing that there's actually, I was reading about this. There's a statistic that most people. I wrote it down just that cult recruits typically believe they are joining a legitimate and healthy group and that their journey usually begins with a well intentioned meaning or search for meaning, which was so much the case of your mom wanting social change, wanting to do some good in the world. Most cult members come from middle class backgrounds, highly intelligent, do not have a history of psychological illness prior to joining or anything like that. So I think, yeah, there's a complete misconception of how the people are who join cults or who are, you know, have the propensity to join cults. And it's. Yeah, it's not at all. It's like very educated, intelligent people who actually want to do good in the world and because of their wanting to have some sort of meaning in the world that they then are, you know, fall for these horrible people. It's, it's basically, it's victim shaming that I really have a problem with. Right. Which also happens with scams. You know, there's a complete. By victim shaming, you're removing the guilt from the person, the perpetrator. Right. Because you're putting the onus on the victim and not understanding that. Actually a lot of these guys, a lot of times in cults it's men, although women also exist. But a lot of the times these people are master manipulators. They're very, very good at what they do. Just like these scammers.

[B]

Totally.

[A]

And the owner should be on them and not on the victims.

[B]

Agreed. And the tactics, tactics. The thing is the tactics work and maybe they work a little better with someone who's in a vulnerable place, but over time, like they really just are effective tactics. And that just works on the human brain. Like it's not, it's not about a particular type of it's just like we are naturally inclined to respond to love bombing and to intermittent reinforcement and to community that's welcoming us. Like, yeah, identity, meaning 100%. Like that's. We all need those things. Those are not exclusive to people who join cults.

[A]

Yeah, exactly, yeah. And so you decided you wanted to do something about this and you wanted to start a podcast. Yes. And you started it with a, with a friend. And it's Megan who's we've also had. On the podcast. Yes, on our podcast.

[B]

Yes. And it was important to me to find a co host who had also had a similar experience in her background, so we can talk to people from a first hand perspective.

[A]

And your mom, when she left the atom sphere, she. Then you said she went to the authorities. Right.

[B]

At some point.

[A]

And what happened there?

[B]

And tell me more about that. They really just didn't care.

[A]

Did you go with her, by the way?

[B]

No, I don't think so. But you know, did they ever question

[A]

you since you were so much part of all of it?

[B]

Well, no, because they're, the thing is they, they were operating under the belief that coercion is the victim's fault because she technically chose, I'm using quotation marks, she chose to do what he said and she, you know, like there was no acknowledgment or understanding of religious coercion. And you know, there's like a bit more understanding of that now. But the legal system is still very, there's still huge gaps, gaps in that. Because if once you accept the premise that your religious leader is directly in contact with God and they're the ultimate authority, like the choices that you make based on what they tell you you have to do are not necessarily your choices.

[A]

No, of course not.

[B]

So, but they, the police didn't know or care about that, so.

[A]

And you're operating under false pretenses.

[B]

Right, Right. Yeah. Right. Great. But no one, no one, she, she was not heard. And I believe she also went to figures in the church, the mainstream church, and I think it was a similar thing. She was not heard. So it, you know, this was so hard.

[A]

It's like a double victimization. It's like a double whammy of abuse.

[B]

I know, I know. And now it's really heartening to see that these, a lot more of these stories have come out and there's a lot more understanding of how these dynamics happen. Been. But still in the legal system there's not a lot of accountability and, and I hope that changes.

[A]

And so that's the hope for Your case and your mother's case as well, that you guys can. You're hoping something happens to this guy?

[B]

Oh, yeah, of course. I mean, look, he's. He's gotten into trouble for some of his other endeavors with other victims and he's just continued on. I mean, he, he has, has had followers. He still has followers. It wasn't so small necessarily. Over time it grew and he's continuing to do his thing.

[A]

He's still out there.

[B]

He's still out there, but he keeps getting into trouble, so. And hopefully he'll get into more trouble soon.

[A]

Ooh, I can't wait for this day. We'll have to have you and your mom back in the podcast. So I wanted. Yeah, I want to have your mom in the podcast too at some point. She has some exciting news that happened recently. Right. She has a series on Netflix.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Can you tell me about that?

[B]

What a life. What a life my mom has lived. So after this experience and after, you know, she started talking about what had happened to her, she became involved in these sort of cult intervention space and, and became, you know, someone who helped people out of their transition, out of their group. And, and it's. It's quite a long story, but I'll put it in a nutshell version, which is that she ended up moving to this FLDS fundamentalist Mormon town and on the border of southern Utah and Arizona and over time earned the trust of this community because she was helping them genuinely. She really wanted to. People were losing their homes because of a particular religious belief and she was intervening. She ended up earning the trust of a new man who was the new self proclaimed prophet. After Warren Jeffs has been in prison for years and learned that he was taking underage girls as his wives and started trying to go to the authorities and they told her she needed more evidence. So she and my stepdad, they'd already been kind of filming in the community, trying to put together a documentary. They start filming and go officially undercover with the FBI and dropping off evidence to try to get this man arrested. And spoiler, he is in prison.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

But the Netflix series is actually the same name as my podcast. It's called Trust Me. Called Trust Me the False Prophet. But my podcast is called Trust Me Cult Extreme belief and Manipulation. But yeah, that just dropped. Dropped today, the day that we're recording. Yeah.

[A]

And it's a series, right?

[B]

It is a four part series.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I can't. Which our listeners will hear. It'll be a few weeks since.

[B]

Yeah, dropped.

[A]

But. But I can't wait to, to watch. And you haven't watched it yet either, right?

[B]

No, I'm watching tonight.

[A]

Yeah. That's great. That's so amazing. So how is your mom doing now? And how are you now?

[B]

Mom's good. I think mom is really happy this particular saga is over with this, this a new self proclaimed prophet. I think she'd like to be done with self proclaimed prophets for a while. But the girls, it's also really amazing

[A]

to sort of reclaim her power. Right? In a way. Like first, the first time around she was a victim and now she's. She's here. She's here to take you down, dude. Yeah, I know something really special about that.

[B]

So full circle. But I think she's just really happy he's in prison and that his victims are doing much better now. Yeah, me, I'm good. I'm good. I'm making projects, I'm writing, I'm directing, I have my album out. I'm just constantly making stuff. Basically.

[A]

Isn't your Instagram account also o la la? Which is awesome. Which people should go see some of your work. That's where I saw some of your work, which is really good. You're so talented.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

And I loved having you on the podcast. Lola, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me on the Hidden Third.

[B]

Sa.