Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1275 | Cult Survivor: Child 'Maiden' Escapes & Is Set Free by Jesus | Lindsay Tornambe

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

At the age of 12, Lindsay was handed over to cult leader Victor Barnard as one of his “maidens.” For 10 years, she endured grooming, sexual abuse, and spiritual torment — all justified by a twisted interpretation of scripture. At 23, she fled. Thirteen years later, the true gospel broke through. Allie hosts this gut-wrenching, hope-filled story of escaping a cult, confronting evil, and discovering the real Jesus who heals the deepest wounds. Buy Allie's book "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion": ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.toxicempathy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Timecodes: (00:00) Intro (01:40) Raised in the Way International (11:40) Moving to Minnesota (18:20) The Summer of Love (29:30) Life as a "Maiden" (36:30) The Cult Beliefs (40:40) Moving to Brazil (47:20) Returning to Pennsylvania (51:20) Finding God (55:15) Learning Christian Theology --- Today's Sponsors: A'del — Visit ⁠adelnaturalcosmetics.com⁠ and enter the promo code ALLIE for 25% off your first time purchase.   Good Ranchers — Give a reason to gather. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠goodranchers.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to start gifting, and while you’re there, treat yourself with your own subscription to America’s best meat. And when you use the code ALLIE, you’ll get $40 off your first order. NetSuite — Every business is asking the same question: how do we make AI work for us? Right now, get our free business guide, Demystifying AI, at ⁠netsuite.com/allie⁠. Seven Weeks Coffee — This is the pro-life coffee you’ll want on Christmas morning. So go to ⁠sevenweekscoffee.com⁠ and save 15% forever when you subscribe, and this holiday season, you can claim up to four free gifts with your order!  Plus, use code ALLIE for an extra 10% off your first order.  Hillsdale College — Hillsdale College’s new Colonial America miniseries takes you back to that beginning, exploring how faith, liberty, and virtue built the groundwork for a nation unlike any other. Go right now to⁠ hillsdale.edu/relatable⁠ to enroll for free.  Every Life — Visit ⁠everylife.com⁠ and use promo code ALLIE10 to get 10% off your first order today!  --- Episodes you might like:⁠⁠⁠⁠ Ep 1186 | From Crunchy to Cultish: The Deconstruction of 'Rose Uncharted' ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1186-from-crunchy-to-cultish-the-deconstruction/id1359249098?i=1000706883726⁠ Ep 1166 | Ex-Cultist Gives Harrowing Insight into Mysterious '2x2' Cult | Guest: Elizabeth Coleman ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1166-ex-cultist-gives-harrowing-insight-into-mysterious/id1359249098?i=1000702102417⁠ Ep 1154 | Ex-New Ager Reveals Cults’ Secret Invasion of the Church | Guest: Melissa Dougherty ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1154-ex-new-ager-reveals-cults-secret-invasion-of/id1359249098?i=1000698790509⁠ --- Buy Allie's book "You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love": ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.alliebethstuckey.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Relatable merchandise: Use promo code ALLIE10 for a discount: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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That's fellowship homelones.com slash alley, term supply, see site for details, fellowship home loans, mortgage lending by the book, nationwide mortgage bankers, DBA Fellowship Home Loans, equal housing lender, NMLS, number 819-382. Lindsay Tornambay was raised in an abusive cult. It wasn't until she was 23 that her eyes were opened and she left that cult. But then 13 years after she left, after 13 dark and very tumultuous years, she finally heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and he saved her. Her testimony is heart-wrenching, but it is also such a beautiful and powerful reminder that God turns beauty. out of ashes. You will be so encouraged by Lindsay's story. Our episode today is brought to by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use Code Alley at checkout for a discount. That's good ranchers.com. Code Allie. Lindsay, thanks so much for matching me on my podcast today. We didn't plan it, but here we go. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do? Yes, I am Lindsay.

I'm a single mom. I work from home, which has been such a blessing being a single mom. I have a testimony of faith and survival that I'm now sharing with the world, which I'm really thankful for. Yeah. Yeah. You left a cult. Yes. And a lot of people have no idea what that really entails. Before we get into that part of your testimony, though, I want to know how you were brought up. Were you brought up in a cult? I was brought up. My parents were involved in something called the Way International, which was started by a man, Dr. Victor Paul where, well, I believe in the 1950s in New Knoxville, Ohio. And there were some major differences that they believed. They didn't believe in the Trinity. So God, Jesus Christ, and

the Holy Spirit were all three separate beings, which is really important to remember as, you know, my story continues. And so we believed also in speaking in tongues, interpretation, and prophecy. We had church in our home. So I grew up having a genuine love for the Lord, reading the King James Bible, praying at such an early age. My mom would tell me stories of even in preschool kids were afraid to walk into school and I would grab their hand and ask to pray with them and lead them in. And so, yeah, I would say grew up pretty normal from what I thought, you know, still seeing family members and celebrating Christmas, Thanksgiving birthdays. But yeah, learning about Jesus and God at home, not going to a traditional church.

Interesting. So did you believe that Jesus was God? No. You didn't. Okay. Because this is kind of reminding me a little bit of Jehovah's Witness. But of course Jehovah's Witness, they don't celebrate things like Christmas. I'm not sure if Jehovah's Witness would speak in tongues.

So it seems like a convergence of a lot of different Christian beliefs, but also polytheistic beliefs, too. Yes. Yeah. I just thought that he was a man. You know, God was his father, but he himself was not God. Okay. But did you believe that he died on the cross for your sense? Okay. Yep. I believe that he died on the cross and that, you know, Romans 10, 9 and 10, once I can. believe that he was my Lord and Savior, confessed it with my mouth, that I was saved and would be going to heaven. And tell me about the rest of your upbringing. It was pretty normal. I'm the oldest of five siblings. We started getting homeschooled when I was in the fourth grade. My parents met this man, Victor Bernard, when I was nine years old. He was also a member of the Way International. The founder had died in 1985 and things kind of broke up, but we still had, you know,

church in our home. And he came to visit. It was November of 1996. And he carried this, you know, when you meet someone and they like carry this authority and you can just tell that they are someone who wants to be respected. And he definitely had that. And I was nine, And so I didn't really see any red flags or anything. My sisters and I put on a dance for everyone in the living room. But I do remember after he left, my parents made it very clear that we were going back to Scripture, that they had gotten involved in something called Amway. And so our house was filled with pictures of cars they wanted.

You had gotten involved in Amway before. before Victor. Right. Did Victor have anything to do with Amway? No. No. Nothing. This was different.

Okay. Who was Victor? He told us that God had audibly spoken to him and had told him to go shepherd his flock and to find people who had once belonged to the way international and bring them to his ministry. Okay. He said that God ordained him and that he was an apostle and called of God to now. be our shepherd. Had he been a part of the way international previously? Was he in leadership? He was not in leadership. He was a part of the way international. He did at one point get assigned

to Dr. Werewell's wife to kind of, you know, walk with her to meetings. And it was after, I believe it was after Dr. Weirbel had passed away that he was assigned to her. Okay. So that's the guy who started it. This Victor guy was assigned to his wife after her husband died, who started it to try to, I don't know, kind of be her guardian, be her helper and things like that. Right. So he felt tasked by God as an apostle to go shepherd the flock of the way international. And he came to your parents' house to say, you know, this is not over. You might have felt like this was breaking up because the doctor died, but we're getting

back at it. And y'all are going to, you know, come back into the fold. and your parents after his visitation, they had a renewed figure that, okay, we have to get serious about this again, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, things started changing. My mom, my dream at that time when I was nine years old was to be an Olympian and I was in gymnastics.

And my mom pulled me aside and told me that when Jesus Christ comes back, he's not going to care. how many gold medals I won, and that none of that mattered in this life, which in a sense is true. You know, like now I want my life to completely glorify the Lord. It was in light of what Victor just kind of shared with them the urgency of Jesus Christ coming back. And her point to me was that none of this stuff mattered. And so we're just going to live our lives for Christ. How else did your life change? Um, we started really only hanging out with people who had been involved in the way ministry. So my parents reconnected with some friends, former friends, who had been involved in the way, who also knew Victor Bernard. And so we started having fellowship in the home. That's what we called it, church in the home, together, started visiting their house a lot more. Um, they started making plans for us to visit. Minnesota, which is where Victor was from and where his cult was at the time.

And what was the significance of Minnesota? I know you said that he lived there, but why were people visiting there? To do what? Basically to hear him preach. They had a compound there. It was called the Shepherds Camp where they had a bunch of staff housing, a big chapel, the dining hall, places for visitors to stay. And so my family, my parents, my parents, Parents really wanted to be around Victor to learn more about God's Word. I think they definitely saw him as a shepherd, as somebody who was ordained of God. And so they really wanted, I think they were seeking someone to follow. And do you remember the first time you went to Minnesota to visit him?

Mm-hmm. How old were you? I was 10. My parents, we drove out there. They brought me and my sister right after me and another friend from the fellowship. And it's this tiny little town. I remember my dad joking that if you blinked, you would miss it. Finless and Minnesota.

The camp, it was down this long dirt road. And you turned in pine trees everywhere, very, very secluded, but also beautiful, absolutely beautiful. There were so many families that lived there and lots of kids. I had a blast pretty much the whole time. I was there because I was just playing with kids the whole time and there were so many animals. There were a few things that scared me though. We would have meals that would last for a really long time and people who disagreed with Victor, I saw him spit in people's faces and throw chairs at people.

He just definitely gave me the impression that I never wanted to make him mad. First sponsor for the day is seven weeks coffee. This is a great Christmas gift for the coffee lovers in your life because this is a pro-life coffee company. They're called 7 weeks coffee because it's 7 weeks gestation. That little baby inside the womb is the size of a coffee beam. Yet he or she, no matter how small, is made in God's image. Therefore, they're worthy of life. That is why 10% of every sale of 7 weeks coffee goes to a pregnancy center across the country.

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My parents did listen to a lot of the tapes that Victor had given them of teachings he had previously recorded and he had given them a bunch of books he had written to read. So September of 1998, Victor flew to Pennsylvania, which is where he was. where my family lived and pretty much gave them an ultimatum that we either needed to move to the camp and join his ministry there or we were no longer allowed to visit. So you had to move there full time? No, we hadn't at that point. We had just visited a few times.

But you had to. That's what he was trying to say. Right. Okay. Gotcha. Yes. And I wasn't in the meeting, but I know from just seeing my parents afterwards, It was very somber and very serious. And it didn't take them long, though.

They decided to sell the house and pretty much get rid of everything besides what some people maybe in Minnesota needed. And I don't even really remember my parents making it a big deal of us moving. You know, like I don't remember being a big deal with my grandparents or aunts and uncles. And looking back, I almost feel like it was on purpose because if I had known that I would really never see them again, I don't know that I would have wanted to go because we were very close with my mom and dad's side of the family. And I found out later after I finally left in my 20s that my mother had actually written a letter to her parents and siblings saying that if anyone tried to stop us, She would cut all communication off.

So she definitely knew, I think, what she was getting herself into. So you all moved to there. You were like 11 or 12? I was still 10. Or no, I was 11, yes. Okay. So you moved there, 1998. And what did it look like actually living there?

They moved our family into two separate units. There was this place called the fourplex. It was four kind of mini apartments, you know, with like a mini fridge, a tuna burner stove, had two bedrooms each. So because we were a family of seven, they split us up. And there were 80 people living at the camp. So you have four siblings. Four siblings. Yes. There were 80 people living at the camp at that time. So it was busy. I mean, kids everywhere for a while, Victor had he kind of made the rules and everyone had to be. follow. So if he wanted to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner all together, that's what happened. If he only wanted to have dinner all together, that's what happened. But many long meals, lots of teachings and sharing. For me, as an 11-year-old, you know, animal care, being homeschooled, skating on the lake, sledding. Did your dad have to work? I don't even remember if my dad, I know at that time, I don't think he did work. Later on, you

he did work at a cabinet shop that was run from one of the locations by the church. So is the food and all of the stuff being paid for by like tithing or donations or how does that work? Yeah. Great question. I honestly don't know that answer. I've always wondered where the money came from. I know people did tithe 10% was what they gave. But other than that, I'm actually, not really sure where all the money came from for everything. So for the most part, this kind of felt like a normal childhood at least at first. But you said that you noticed that Victor was very angry, that he would shun people, he would throw things, yell at people. You told a story about an elder shook your five-year-old sister so much that she ended up like wetting herself out of fear.

What was your reaction when you saw that? Oh, I was scared. I remember. comforting her. It's tough, you know, it's hard because your parents are there and they trust these people, you know. And as a kid, I was seeing all these things and getting scared, but my parents, you know, I felt like I trusted them at that time to do what was best for us. And they were okay with letting this stuff happen. And, you know, my parents, they did use corporal punishment on us growing up, not to that extent, but it wasn't. not normal to get, you know, hit with a rod or, you know, smacked around. So I think, yeah, it definitely made me scared, but I just thought this was life now. Yeah. And just to close the loop on this,

you mentioned Amway earlier, that your family had been in Amway. Is that a significant part of your story? No, not significant. I think it just, for me, I guess it kind of showed that we, my parents were really into the word when I was younger and then they kind of drifted away to more worldly things and then when Victor came they kind of went back to the word. Okay, so they quit Amway. Right, they did quit. Okay, and kind of pulled you all out of everything that was seemingly worldly, materialistic, earthly success, things like that.

And really went back to kind of like what they considered a fundamentalist peer view of the way. Correct. You'll move to this camp. Did you see, as you were getting older, into your preteen and teen years, things that started to disturb you? Yeah, when I was 12, at this point, my family, or the church had acquired another property about five miles from the camp. And so my family was sent to live there. And that's that summer of 1999, that's when the summer of love happened. Victor was really honing in on all the women at the camp, really portraying himself as our shepherd using the Song of Solomon as a reference to kind of relate to him and the church.

So you said we, like, including little girls? Yes, yes. September of 1998 before my family moved to the shepherd's camp, Victor had. taken off his wedding ring. He was married and had four children. He took off his wedding ring and said that just as Jesus Christ is married to the church and the bride of Christ, he was now married to the church, which I think is important to know because of, especially how we viewed God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit being all separate. Jesus Christ as a man, it was almost like him saying he is Christ in the flesh, you know, being married to the church.

Right. Okay, so tell me about the summer of love in 1999. The summer of love happened in 1999. Victor had an RV and he would travel. There was about three other properties that the believers lived on at this point. I think there was about 150 people involved in this cult. And so they were all spread across these three properties. So he would take his RV and travel.

to the three different properties where some young women are, including me, and I was only 12 at the time. He would do things we called grazing the sheep, where we would go out. He would take his shepherd's staff and blankets and lay down in the grass with us and even the married women and share stuff from the Bible or just things that he was thinking about in the church. And he didn't do this with the men or young men. he was very strategic on targeting the women and the young girls. He demanded a lot of respect at that time. You know, roses being placed where he would go to meetings. And again, always, I mean, I remember-

Roses being placed. Like someone would have to go before him and put roses there before he- Yeah, like at a meeting, put a rose there. It was something that Dr. Werewell did or had done for him in the way ministry. And so he was kind of adapting this. that for him. Did you ever think, as a 12-year-old, this whole grazing in the grass thing is weird? So, no, not at that point. I did not think it was weird. He at one point shared with me and my sister that before he came and found us in 1996, he was sitting in that exact same pasture, crying out to God

and praying to find survivors of the way international. And he told my sister and I that we were the joy of his tears and how we were the fruit of what God had told him to do. Yeah. So he, you know, as a young kid, and this is the person that God had put in our life, I feared him, but I also felt I am special, you know? Right, right. And your mom clearly trusted him. Was she going on these ventures out into the pasture?

Yes. Yes, absolutely. And you never got any indication from your parents at this time that, this is kind of creepy? No, not at all. So you as a child, you trust your parents. Right. Next sponsor is EveryLife.

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So I think you had said that you were 12, so 11 or 12 at this in, in 1999, that this is happening. Okay. And Victor approached to your parents and said, hey, I need them to sleep in the RV with me. It was actually one of the older young ladies who was serving at where we lived at three taverns. I think she was maybe 19 at the time. And she had actually. asked my parents if it was okay. They said yes, which as a mother now, like I just, I don't know, there's so many red flags. I still cannot understand why my parents said yes to that. Yeah. We didn't sleep in the bedroom with him. We slept out in the kitchen area. But that was the first time he ever wrote us a note and it just said, I love you, and he

slid it under the door. But yeah, that just, I never really understood. It seemed like he was wanting love from us, but I definitely did not have it back for him at that point. I respected him and feared him, but it wasn't that I was like actively seeking. Romantic. Right. Right. Yeah.

And nothing else happened that first time. No. In the RV. No. But that was just the first time. there were other times. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Later that summer, he had a bunch of girls my age who had, you know, I'd known them since I was 10 when we first visited. And they were all at the location where I lived. He had set up a tent. And that same girl who asked my parents if me and my sisters could

sleep in the camper, she asked all of us who wanted to sleep next to him. And everyone raised their hand and I did not. I could, was so scared. I did not want to sleep next to him. I couldn't believe why the rest were. And she picked me to sleep next to him. And she told me it was because I didn't raise my hand. And I remember just laying there as stiff as a board, not wanting to move, afraid to breathe, because I was just so nervous. And you know when you can feel that people are jealous of you and they're that's what I was feeling from the other girls like they wanted to be me and I just didn't understand it you know I but nothing again he did not touch me that night um nothing happened until it was I think January of 2000 so I I think had just turned 12 at this

point and his camper again was at three taverns where our family lived and somebody had asked me I think it was maybe to go bring him the mail or, you know, give him a message. And I walked into his camper and he was standing in the back in the bathroom completely naked. And again, I'm 12, you know, not developed looking like a little kid and walked. He told me to come towards him. And I just stood there, you know, very unsure of what to do, very nervous, and he grabbed my hand and had me put it on his penis. And I don't even know if I was breathing at that point, you know? I just felt very alone. And he had me lay in the bed next to him. And I remember him telling me that I could do more if I wanted, but I didn't. And I didn't say anything. And I think he got the hint that I was not going

to do anything else, yeah. Oh my gosh, I can't imagine. He told me not to tell anyone that nobody would understand that this was just between him and me and God and, you know, that I was special. And I didn't. I remember you didn't tell your parents or sisters. I didn't tell my parents no. And, you know, my mom never had these kinds of talks with us. She never talked about inappropriate touching or inappropriate behavior. And from my, what I saw from my parents, And from the rest of the adults, everyone loved him and adored Victor. But I was just so closed off and nervous, and I just, like, shoved it in the back of my brain. Wow. Was that the only time?

No. That summer of 2000, Victor gave a teaching to the church about how in the Old Testament the firstborn children were to be sacrificed to God. he read off a list of names, mine was on there, and basically said that we could give our lives to Christ and dedicate a life of service to the church and how much honor it would bring on our family. I, you know, I saw all my friends deciding to do this, all the girls that I had been growing up with. And I didn't not at the time know that it was a lifetime commitment. And, you know, I have it in my memoirs that I wrote while I was there in 2008, that it became almost a running joke in the maintenance. Oh, Lindsay didn't know what she was getting herself into. And I told my parents, so I want to go. I want to go serve in the summer. And in my mind, I thought I'll be back to being homeschooled in the fall. You know, I'm only 13. And they were very serious. And they're like, are you sure you want to go? And my dad was crying. And I was like, yes, absolutely. It'll be fun. And did you know what it entailed? And so he just said, sacrifice your firstborn. Here's your life of service. Did he say what the life of service would be? Basically just serving at the camp and, you know, dedicating our life to just helping out, you know, serving whether it was getting ready for meetings. He didn't really give a laid out plan of all that it looked like. Boys and girls? Nope, just girls.

Okay, so even if there was a first born boy, he was not someone that was chosen for a lifetime of service. Correct. Did anyone say, well, hang on, I have a firstborn son. Why is it just, why is just my daughter? Yeah, not that I know of. Yeah. Maybe secretly, but they didn't protest publicly because obviously Victor had already kind of created that environment where you don't question him. Exactly.

Or you're going to be shunned. Okay, so you said a word, maidens. What's that? That became what the 10 of us were called, maidens. So my parents, yeah, July 23rd, 2000 dropped me off at the Shepherds camp. And ironically, the 10 of us lived in that fourplex, which was what, you know, my family lived in when we first moved to the camp. And things in the beginning were kind of okay.

We were assigned two by two, you know, kitchen duty, gardening, cleaning. Two people were assigned to help Victor, which was basically everything that a wife would do, maybe even more stuff than a wife would do, waking him up in the morning, making his breakfast, picking out his clothes, helping him out of the shower, organizing his day. How old was he? I think he was 39 at this point. Okay, so he didn't actually need physical help getting out of the show. shower. No. Okay. No. But it would be like handing him his towel, putting lotion on his legs,

things like that. Very disturbing. And what was your role? I think I was gardening at that point. Okay. So he didn't select you for the more intimate things. No. Interesting. No. Yeah. Thank God. Seriously. So much of the content that we consume online today makes us feel dumber, but not relatable, and not the online courses that you'll take with Hillsdale. If you go to Hillsdale.edu slash relatable, you can access all of these free courses, either on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, or the book of Genesis,

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which kind of referenced, you know, bringing in the harvest and thanking God for all that he had done for us that year. And so I was under the impression that I would serve there and live at the camp until that. And then I would go home and be homeschooled. I didn't bring any of my winter stuff with me. And I was talking to, we'll call it. We'll call it. We'll call it. We'll her Jan, if anyone listened to my story on the turning. She was referenced as Jan. And we were gardening in front of the chapel, and she was asking how things were going. And I was like, oh, great, it's been fun. I'm really excited, though, to get home, to see my family. I really miss my siblings. And she looked at me, and she goes, Lindsay, you're not going home. And I just kind of looked at her,

and I was like, what do you mean? She said, no, this is a life. time commitment. You're not going home. This is your home now. And I said, well, what about homeschool and my winter clothes? And she's like, well, your mom will send it over and we'll take care of schooling here, which they never really did. I really only had a sixth grade education. And it was shortly after that that I was raped by Victor for the first time. You were 13, 14? 13, yeah. He called me up to the lodge. That's where he lived. We called it the lodge one night. And he was sitting, you know, just how we are. There was a fire going in the fireplace. And it was small talk at first. And then he looked at me and said, have you ever masturbated before? And I, honest to God, didn't even know what that word meant. You know, again, my mother had never talked to me about these things. And I, you know, pretty sheltered being homeschooled and we didn't really have TV, uh, besides movies. Um, and I don't know why he thought I was lying. And he kept asking me again and again. And I

kept saying, no, I didn't know even what he meant. And he slapped me across the face and yelled at me to get out of the lodge. And I had been sweating so much that it felt like the couch was leather. It felt like ripping band-aids off of my legs when I got off of the couch. And I ran down the dark road back to the foreplex, just sobbing and cried, you know, went to my room and cried into my pillow. And I kept thinking at that point, God, why is this happening? Why did my parents leave me here? It was about 45 minutes later. One of the maidens came and said that Victor was on the phone for me.

and he asked me to come back to the lodge. And when I got back in there, his whole demeanor had changed. He was very nice, didn't bring up anything that had happened. He started off by telling me that Jesus Christ had Mary Magdalene and the Apostle Paul had Phoebe and probably other women as he traveled throughout Asia. And he is a man of God because of his calling. and my calling, dedicating my life to God, that it was spiritual and natural for him to have sex with me.

And that even though he would be having sex with me, I could remain a virgin spiritually. And again, I didn't say anything. I feel like I was just a deer in headlights, unsure of what to do. He led me back to his bedroom, and I remember he put a towel on the bed, He told me that sometimes the first time you have sex, the woman can bleed, which made me even more scared.

And it was almost like an out-of-body experience in a way. He had a deck on the back of the bedroom with glass doors. And it was like I was looking in seeing what was happening to me. And I was just laying there so scared. And he got really mad at one point that I wasn't being passionate enough. I still just laid there. You're a child. Yeah.

Didn't know what to do. And then that was pretty much it. I mean, he just sent me back to the fourplex after that. And I remember just again asking like, why God? Why is this happening? Why can't I go home? I miss my siblings. I miss my parents.

And yeah, that was the first of many, many times of being raped by him. Okay. And how old were you when you left the cult? 23. You were 23. So 10 years of that of being a maiden. And so was there at any point, obviously you were so scared and so hurt the first time, but was there at any point before you left that you were like, yes, I love him. And, you know, I believe that this is right and good.

What did that look like before you left? I would say it wasn't until end of 2005, 2006. It took me a long time to get there. A lot of fear, a lot of manipulation. One thing that Victor would tell us is that the more we dedicated ourselves to him in this life and to God, the better place in heaven we would have. And so I think the thought of not being in heaven with the maidens and with Victor really scared me. Yeah. And so, but it took five, six years for me to really get fully dedicated to him. And finally, to the point where I was like, okay, I will die for him if necessary. You know, I mean, he would tell us a story all the time of Silas in jail. And, you know, if that ever got to the point where he was in jail, would we stay in our faith and, you know, stand up for him? And, yeah, it was. It took a while, but I did finally get to that point.

Did you ever get pregnant? No, no. I did try when I was 14. You tried. I tried. It was before he had a vasectomy. He had these, it almost looked like a tampon. And I don't even know what it is because I've never researched it since.

But it was like a jelly that the woman would insert herself to kill the sperm. Yeah, sperm is. So, okay, that's interesting. He wasn't necessarily trying to breed as many babies as possible. It was just about his pleasure manipulating y'all. Okay, let's fast forward a little bit to, okay, at some point you think that you're in love with him. I guess when you're about 18, 19 years old. In these last few years that you're in the cold before you leave at 23, like, what does that look like?

and then what did those final days and hours look like? We had sold the Shepherds camp at that point, so the maidens were living at a different location. We had started a pottery business together. We were just doing a lot of things. We really became a sisterhood at that point. Let me see, hold on. I'm trying to like think of it was kind of it was a quiet,

for the maidens. You know, our life had been so public at the Shepherds camp, and so moving to this other location kind of gave us time to grow. Victor would come over for dinners a lot. Yeah, so it was almost like a slowing down, really getting to, I guess, know one another even more, not much jealousy, more of a working together. In 2008, one of the maid. and she was originally from Brazil. The U.S. wouldn't renew her visa, and so she was extradited back to Brazil. Victor would always have a stay in twos,

and so he would send one of us down to live with her every six months, and we would switch out. It also, kind of during this time, it came out that he had been sleeping with some of the married women. One of the married women he had slept with went to the police, and shared with them what was going on, wrote a bunch of stuff about the maidens, and in Minnesota, it's illegal as a pastor to be sleeping with the people you were pastoring. And so he shared this all with us, but in a way that would make you feel bad for him, you know, like David and Bathsheba,

and the temptation was too big, and just as God forgave David, he would forgive Victor, and we needed to find it in our hearts to forgive Victor. But he kind of went on the run. at that point. Sometimes we didn't even know where he was. And at that point, again, I did wrestle with the fact that he had slept with married woman. It's strange because I knew that was wrong. I felt that that was wrong. But I didn't at that time even know that what he had done to me was rape. Like I didn't see it that way. And so Victor sent me down to Brazil. September of 2009 to March of 2010, which was my first time traveling alone, really getting away from the camp. And I remember I sat in one of those seats on the plane and they had the TV screens there, which I hadn't ever seen that before. And I was like, oh, do I watch a movie? Do I not? Like, surely they're going to find out. I thought everything was tracked, you know. The pilot's going to tell Victor, there's going to be a bill somewhere. You know, I just thought,

everything I did, they would know. But I did. I watched a movie. Just one, though. And I was like, what was it? It was this British teenage rom-com called Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging. Yeah, like didn't even know what I was picking. But I remember watching and thinking, oh my gosh, I wish I had a life like this, you know? And I'd remembered being 10, 11, having crushes on some of the boys there. And it was just, I. I don't know. I watched the movie and I was like, okay, that's enough. No more because I'm already in enough trouble. Yeah. But living in Brazil, it was my first time almost remembering that there was a world out there. You know, we had been so sheltered. We didn't have TV. We didn't have radios. I didn't even see images in 9-11 until 2010.

Wow. Yeah. Just what Victor told us. I didn't even think of that. Yeah. Wow. Like so many things that happened. And so, yeah, and I remember kind of feeling distant and more distant from Victor. And he did overlap my visit. He came down March of 2010 with his wife and one of the other maidens. So he was still married during all of this.

Still married. In fact, she lived in the house next door to where the lodge was at the camp. She lived in the house right next to it. Wow. Okay. So he came down in person. Yeah, in March of 2010 and overlap my visit for 15 days. And I purposely positioned myself to where he would not be able to have sex with me. I just felt very distant from him and did not want that from him. So then they sent me at that point, most people had relocated to Washington State. And so I went back out to Washington State. The maidens again were living in one house. And they had started to cleaning company. So we were going door to door, just giving our flyers and asking to clean people's

homes. And I remember going in and seeing tons of like family pictures on the walls. And at one point, the Titanic soundtrack was playing. And I was like, oh my gosh, I remember this. Like, you know, like it was just, why can I? Why can I? Because that was like 1997. Right. Right. Yeah. I had a life before this, which you had probably almost kind of forgotten about. quick pause to tell you about our next sponsor it's adele natural cosmetics you guys know how much i love adele arline and her family are amazing they're the real deal they love the lord they love america they're unapologetically pro-life plus all of their products really work i use their cosmetics their skincare items on a daily basis they're completely holistic natural none of that fake stuff plus

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Yeah. The blood of the lamb covers all sin. You just need to forgive him and move on. Then they got Victor on the line. And still to this day, I'm like, how did I stay? I'm like, how did I stay Because there, I mean, there's been a few other times that I had tried to leave as a teenager that I told Victor I wanted to leave and it just did not go my way. So he just manipulated you into staying. Yeah, yeah. Called me Judas Ascaria, you know, just like said all these terrible things. So, but I told them, I was like, nope, I am leaving. I want to leave.

And they called my family who had in 2009, I believe, moved back to Pennsylvania because of Victor sleeping with. the married women, a lot of things had kind of broken up in Minnesota. And they said, yeah, I can move in with them. So they, everything happened really fast. They gave me $500 and bought me a train ticket. And I took Amtrak all the way from Washington State to 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. And it took me three days. But they were still, well, your parents still in the way?

Yeah. Yes. Yeah, in Victor's Ministry. And but I guess they weren't worried about going to get. Victor, they let you come home. They did let me come home. They still were sending money to him and had pictures of him up in the house. My mom was very much involved with everything out going on in Washington on the phone with them all the time. I think my dad had kind of started slipping away from the ministry. Yeah, so I moved and oh my gosh, I like didn't even know what the

internet was. I remember somebody telling me what a cell phone was and how you could text on it. I'm like, how is that even possible? Like, how is that faster than calling someone? You know, things were just so foreign. Yeah. Wow. I remember one of the first things I looked up was the backstreet boys because they were popular when I left. You were like, what is Nick Carter doing now? Yes. I was like, oh my gosh. Like, is he married? Yeah. Wow. You were like a time capsule. Mm-hmm. Okay. So when you mean you were like a time capsule? Okay. So when you mean, move back home to Pennsylvania, did you leave? Or like, what was your faith like at that point? Yeah. I would say, I would say I still believed in God at that point, but I was not wanting to remain

faithful to Victor and the maidens. I had gotten a few letters, a couple phone calls, and I would write back here and there, but eventually I just stopped responding. I really, gave myself over to, or at that point I thought the only way to make a man happy was to sleep with him. And so I slept around a lot. I lived in a lot of sin. I didn't, at that point, I didn't know what Victor had done still to me. I would just tell people, oh, I was really sheltered because they would say, what have you lived under a rock? Like, how do you not know these things? Yeah. You were, you said 23. 23. So you were just going out. out into the world. Yeah, I got my first job. I joined three ultimate frisbee leagues at one time.

I was just anytime somebody said, hey, do you want to do this? I was all in. I just wanted to live life. Understandable. And I made a lot of terrible choices, though. I don't think I thought much about God. I knew I believed in him, but I did not pray to him, really. I didn't read my Bible. I just was really interested in exploring and living life and making friends and getting away from my parents, you know, because they were still supporting Victor. Right. Yeah. Tell me about hearing the gospel. Oh, gosh, that was 13 years later. after that. So up until 13 years later, when you were 36, you were just basically living a secular life. Yes. Yep. And you had a job, you had boyfriends, you had friends, but you were lost.

Yeah, very lost. I had a daughter in 2014. Oh, gosh, which she, it's like cliche to say, but I know God gave her to me just at the right time. I was really at a low place thinking of ending my life. You know, I just kept thinking over and over again, if God is a God of love that I read and believed for so long, why would he let this happen to me? You know, if heaven is so great, why don't I kill myself now and not live in this internal pain that I feel, you know?

Because of everything that had happened. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And my daughter, Francesca, five or six years old started asking questions. Why don't we pray, Mom? I remember driving down the highway in New Jersey and she said, Mom, if a mommy has a baby and that baby dies and goes to heaven and God sends that mommy a new baby, is that like God giving her a new baby for her to care for? And I, I didn't know what to say, you know? I did know that I didn't want to put my trauma on her. You know, I had enough sense to

to think, okay, if she wants to go to church, I will support that. I want to support this. But it wasn't until we moved to Texas in 2022 that we met some friends in our apartment complex, and they just had this light about them. You know, when you meet people and you're like, I want to be friends with them. They just have exude this love, and they were Christians. They did not pressure me to go to church, though, which I really respected, because I, a lot of people had done that. They almost made me feel guilty for feeling the way I was feeling. Yeah. And I shared my story with the wife one night after we had gotten close. And it was a couple months after that. We were sitting after dinner and I looked at her and I said, this is going to sound

crazy, but thank you for never inviting me to Bible study. And she started crying. And she said, Lindsay, when I heard your story, I went home and just wept tears for you because the God I know is not the one who was preached to you. And I think my heart, like God was just drawing me in. It was the timing of it was amazing. They asked if I wanted to stay for devotions that night, and I said yes. And they picked a him that they didn't know I knew, but I had grown up singing it since I could remember. And what was it? I don't even remember now.

Maybe they will have to ask. But the husband used to be a pastor. And I told them later that night, I said, I would love for somebody to sit down with me. And I can go through things that Victor had taught. And then I want to open the Bible. And I want to see what God actually says. And immediately they said, we'd love to do that with you. And I went home that night and opened the Bible.

It was the one that Victor had given me. me. I sat on my couch and opened it and just cried. And it was like coming home to an old friend because, you know, like, I did know him when I was little. And I read through my journals now, even from when I was in the cult. And it's always, thank you, God, for keeping me safe. Like, thank you for providing bread for us today. I didn't know where we were going to get any. You know, thank you for giving a shampoo and conditioner because we were out. And it's just knowing and believing that he was there the whole time. You know, even after I rejected him for 13 years that he was there carrying me, just so overwhelming, you know? It's like that he leaves the 99 to find one. He was just

all those years drawn me in, drawing me in, and my heart was open to him. And we started going to church. And I remember the first few times I went, I, you know, we were singing hymns that I had grown up singing and just crying through them because it was just such an overwhelming sense of, thank you, Lord, like, this is what I've been missing. And I had tried before this, all of the self-help stuff, you know, the self-love, the crystals, the, I bought a book on witchcraft, you know, like all the things that I always came up feeling so empty, so unsatisfied. And it wasn't until going back to church and reading the Bible and knowing and believing truly in in Christ, in God that I just felt so full again.

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and that Jesus is God who died for you on the cross? Like I imagine some of those things you're like, what are you talking about? It actually, when they explained it to me and we read it in the Bible, I was like, that makes so much sense, you know? It was like things just aligned for me because I grew up believing that they were three separate beings, but not really explained why, you know. But, and it almost, it took the, believing before that Jesus Christ was just a man, it was so clear being explained that he is God, how Victor twisted it to make, almost make it into himself that he was Christ.

Yeah. Wow. What happened to Victor? Me and one of the youngest maidens, Jess and I, we went to the police. What year did you go to the police? 2012, we went to the police. Okay, so this is 10 years before you became a Christian. Yeah, yeah, we went to the police. And it was two years of just telling our story over and over again. It felt like nobody was believing us.

January of 2014, we got an email from Tom Liden at Fox News. He asked if we'd like his help, and we said yes. because the statute of limitations was going to run out. So the media got involved and things kind of blew up. I was on Dr. Phil and John Walsh. And from John Walsh's airing, Victor came on the U.S. Marshall's top 10 most wanted list. Wow. And they ended up finding him in Brazil and extraditing him back.

And we had the hearing in 2016 and he was sentenced to 30 years in jail. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And your parents, what are they doing? doing now. They're no longer married. My mom actually passed away last July. I did talk to them. My mother supported Victor throughout the whole trial. Her and two of my sisters wrote letters to the judge on behalf of him saying terrible things about me. Yeah, I'm sure that was really hard.

Yeah. But I did talk to both of them in 2022. My mom and dad on a conference call. And oh, man, I told, this was blatantly honest. I said, I used to wish you guys were dead. I used to wish that you were in jail. I have scars on my wrists from cutting, you know, from trying to deal with the pain. And I said, but as a mother now, I want you guys to know that I'm doing really well. And I wish you both well in your life. And we'll never have a relationship. You will never know my daughter, but I wish you guys the best, and I want you to be doing well. And I wasn't able to forgive them at that point, but I was a few months ago. I'm still in therapy, have a wonderful Christian counselor, and we talked about forgiveness. And in a way, it's taking them

off my hook and putting them on God's hook. And I felt this for a long time, the sense that I needed to be the one to get justice. You know, I needed to hold people accountable. But really, truly believing that God has got it all, you know, we all have to face him in that day. And I'm able to forgive my parents and those who harmed me. And it was honestly such a burden lifted, which I never thought it would be. I was like, I don't need to forgive them, you know, like, I'm doing fine. but being able to truly forgive them and knowing, like, just putting it in God's hand was so freeing. Yeah. Wow.

What about your siblings? My siblings, I have contact here and there with one of them, but not really with the rest. I mean, my youngest, my brother, he was five when I left home, so I don't even really know him. And the others, I think they're doing well. you know, they all get together. It's been tough for me because they supported my parents. And so it was hard for me to, you know, trust them. But I love them and hope they're all doing well.

Yeah. Well, I fully pray and believe that God is going to use you to bring them to Christ and that y'all will have that reconciliation and relationship one day. I'm hoping for that anyway. Can you give a message to people who have been, hurt by people in the church who claimed to be messengers of God. It may not have been a cult. They could have been a Baptist church,

but someone who claimed that they were doing this on behalf of God and they were abused or they were betrayed in some way and they're feeling like I could never, I could never believe in God. I can never be a Christian because of what happened to me. What would you say to them? I would say what I've had to do is not put my faith in man. I've had to put my faith in the Lord because it wasn't God who hurt me. It was a man who hurt me.

And we are all, we live in a cursed world. None of us are perfect. But that has really helped me be able to step back into a church and kind of have discernment, you know, on where I'm placing my trust and my faith is that it is ultimately in God, not that we can't have people in our lives, you know, that we trust and we hopefully get sound advice from. But yeah, I would say putting your trust and faith in the Lord knowing he is good, he is perfect, not in man, because we ultimately will be let down. We will be hurt. You know, I'm sure I'm going to continue to get hurt throughout my life. But I have the Lord.

So, yeah. What is the journey like to forgiving Victor? I would say that's still a work in progress. I had a session with my therapist a couple months ago talking about I'd had a panic attack in Kroger because I saw somebody that resembled Victor. First time that has ever happened and I just really had to focus on grounding myself. My daughter was with me and I didn't want to scare her. And I talked to my therapist. I said, what if Victor does repent and I see him in heaven? You know, like, and it, yeah, it's something that I'm still working through. I think one thing that's helped is knowing hell, anyone who goes to hell, like how awful it must be to go there. And that scares me, you know, like thinking of people there.

I used to wish my mom was there and gosh, I hope to God she repented, you know. I think truly believing we are all made in the image of God, you know, even Victor, even somebody who hurt me so badly, he is made in the image of God. So I do pray for his salvation, you know, but I think truly forgiving him in my heart is something I'm still working through. Gosh, yeah. Well, I love what you said about, it's really about putting someone off of your hook and onto God's hook. Because when I think about that, I don't want to think about forgiving

someone like that. I just don't. I'm going to be honest. Like if that happened to me or if that happened to my kids, like, I'm not really interested in that, but I am interested in God's justice, you know? And of course, yes, God's grace if someone repents and if God chooses that, But I love the idea of you trusting God's justice, that that is the release. It's not feeling happy thoughts about them. It's not being like, gosh, I just hope he's doing great. Actually, like, we're thankful that he is being punished. That is earthly justice.

That's why governments were instituted to do exactly that. But, like, releasing that, it seems like that's kind of how you've defined forgiveness. And I think it's a good one. And I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that that happened. And I'm so thankful that God has given you the courage to share your story because you don't have to be crying on this couch and reliving this pain. But it's amazing what God does, that he is the God of redemption.

And he brings beauty out of ashes. And Satan would have love to silence you and to keep you ashamed and scared. And just say, okay, you have your nice little. story, but just keep it over there so people don't criticize you. But God has really given you boldness and I'm just very grateful for that. Oh, thank you. Me too. I keep thinking, you know, I may not know until that day the fullness of why it all happened, but if I didn't use it now to bring glory to God to hopefully save, for him to save one person, what am I doing with my life? you know so i am just praying that people hear this and they hear yeah um how can people

support you in your story um gosh definitely pray for me um i oh this is i don't even i don't know i mean i would love to write a book someday um prayer is good yeah is good and share this time and share this Testimony. Share the story so that more people hear what God can do. Yeah. And also it's just good warning signs too because the story that you told, I'm like, yeah, that red flag, I've talked to a lot of people who have left cults. And I'm like, it's the same story, like not the same story, but the same thing that the cult leader does and says every single time. What I think is interesting is that clearly from a young age, God put something in you that was like, It's not quite right. Even though sometimes you convince yourself it was,

it was like he was working a long time ago, sowing those seeds of doubt against the entire, you know, cultish mechanism there. And, you know, you tried to resist that for a long time, but he had already kind of captured you and was working on you from an early age. He was.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, praise God. Thank you so much for sharing your story, Lindsay. And we will be praying for you. Thank you. And just praying that God continues to use. your life and your story for his glory. So thank you so much. Oh, thank you for having me on.