People who were raised in cults, what was it like and how did you escape?

The Aftermath and Building a Chosen Family

Then miraculously, Justin became lucid enough to understand what was going on and make his own decisions. He kicked his family out again. From there began a slow but steady path to recovery.

In all the relief and excitement to see Justin on the mend, we’d almost forgotten about Ray’s campaign of desperation. Then, a couple of weeks later, the screaming voicemails started pouring into both of them.

First, the business was being investigated by the IRS. Then it was being investigated for illegal firearms dealing. Then the daycare was getting investigated.

At first, Ry felt a little guilty. But then she was like, “You know what, no regrets”. They would have unalived Justin.

From what they’ve been able to piece together in the year and a half since this happened, the business has gone under and the daycare is shuttered. The uncle is six months into a new five-year prison sentence for firearm possession.

CPS investigated, which scared the crap out of the family, but nothing really came of it. That said, the parents are now too scared to keep the kids home from school.

With the unlicensed daycare shut down, the mom’s not exploiting her daughters’ labor anyway, so she has no incentive to keep them home. Justin’s little siblings are at least getting their education.

Justin and Ray are both happy and thriving. Justin unfortunately will never fully recover from the accident. He has some permanent neurological damage that results in tremors, but he’s pumped to be alive.

He can work a full-time job and can still be pretty physically active. As far as I’m concerned, he wins.

Since I last posted, a lot has happened in the meantime. Ry and her girlfriend got engaged at the end of 2019 and were planning their wedding for early fall 2020. When the ‘vid happened, they ended up doing a small outdoor elopement that summer instead.

It included about 10 witnesses, including me and a few others from our core friend group. Justin and Ray refer to us as their chosen family. Justin got ordained online through the Universal Life Church and performed the ceremony. It was an awesome day.

Ry’s family upped their harassment considerably between her engagement and the wedding. Members of their religious order who live in our city were showing up at her house to try to talk to her.

When she wouldn’t answer the door, they would leave creepy notes taped to her door with short messages like “repent”. After the wedding, though, the contact dropped off considerably, which she was very happy about.

Justin is doing well. He’s been in a serious relationship for the last two years with a woman we all love. She has meshed into our little chosen family really well.

He’s also made amazing progress on his neurological issues from the accident. The doctors say the effects will never go away, but he’s adapted really well. He’s working full-time with no problem and is cycling every day again.

He’s still getting a lot of harassment, unfortunately, but it never escalates to anything scarier than a lot of phone calls. He gets the occasional doorbell ring, which he never answers.

Justin and Ry still don’t know how their families of origin are tracking them. They’ve been living in our city for over a decade now.

They’ve each moved residences several times during that time frame and changed their numbers a few times. Each time, the family seems to know that new information almost immediately.

They continue calling them and leaving voicemails at the new numbers. Members of their religious group are showing up at the new house almost immediately, et cetera.

Justin was subletting for a couple of years in a gated condo complex, which was awesome while it lasted, since his family’s emissaries couldn’t get in. After my last post, I bullied them into getting a forensic sweep of all their devices and digital accounts.

It turned up nothing. There was no spyware on their devices. There were no logins to any of their accounts coming from their birth state, et cetera.

Their social media is heavily locked down privacy wise. Even then, they’re both very careful about what they post. I’ve Googled both their names and I’m not finding anything on those private database sites involving their info.

So that part remains a mystery. I still welcome ideas on how their families are tracking them.

The biggest update though is that Justin and Ray have become an informal lifeline out of their creepy hometown. This has been really cool to see.

The oldest of Justin’s little sisters was the first one. She turned 18 early last year and reached out to Justin on Instagram.

She had been accepted to college, and her parents forbade her from going. They had upped their strictness, including grounding her, because they were so ticked off she applied at all.

Justin sent her a plane ticket and she followed in his footsteps. She packed up her essential belongings when her parents were both out of the house and got the F out of Dodge.

She stayed with him in our city and then in the fall moved to college and is living in the dorms there. Justin has assured her that she always has a home with him on her school breaks.

If there’s another ‘vid wave that closes her dorms and pushes her classes to being online only, she can come stay with him again and do her classes online from his house.

The next lifeline recipient was a 19-year-old boy Justin and Ray didn’t really know. He had been a friend of Justin’s sister from school. He stayed in touch with her after she got out.

Justin ended up buying a plane ticket for him too. He actually came and stayed with me since I had a spare room. Justin’s sister was still at his place at the time, and he was a really cool little dude.

I helped him get a job, and after a few months, he moved into a house share with roommates his own age. We all still see him around a lot, and he seems to be doing really well.

Let me tell you, the kid is overjoyed with the casual dating model in the secular world. He has been putting a lot of mileage on the apps.

He doesn’t think he wants to go to college, but I’ve been encouraging him to look at trade programs and apprenticeships; we’ll see.

The most recent recipient of the Justin and Ray Instagram DM foundation for cult escapism is Ry’s 25-year-old cousin. She was stuck in an abusive marriage.

The religious group and her family was basically telling her to suck it up and deal with it and be a submissive Godly wife. They told her to try harder to get pregnant to make her husband happy.

She got in touch with Ry because she had no one else to turn to. Ry helped her get out and come to our city.

That’s been a bit of a weird situation because unlike the other two, the cousin is still more or less a True Believer. She only left because she was convinced her husband would unalive her.

She’s been kind of crappy and homophobic about Ry’s wife, even though Ry is literally the only one helping her. Ry has been an absolute angel to her despite that.

Ry keeps telling us that deprogramming takes time when we complain about her. It’s unclear yet how the family feels about Justin and Ray helping the three escapes.

It is also unclear whether they’re blaming them as corrupting influences. Weirdly, the cousin and the friend have both been getting the same harassment that Justin and Ray have consistently gotten over the years.

But Justin’s sister hasn’t heard a single peep, either here in our city or away at college. Beats me as to why or what the difference is.