Was I In A Cult? - Hare Krisha—Pt2: "Thank You For Not Drowning Me in a Bucket"

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

*CONTENT WARNING: *This episode contains discussions of child marriage, sexual assault, domestic abuse, homelessness, parental abandonment, and religious trauma. Please take care while listening.* Married off by her mother at thirteen. Abandoned in India. Sent back to America at sixteen with a one-way ticket and a hundred dollars. Part 2 picks up where the unthinkable left off, and follows Vilas through what comes after, which turns out to be harder, stranger, and more devastating than anyone could prepare for. But also braver, more defiant, and darkly funny.     This is a story about what happens when no one is coming to save you. About strangers who showed more decency than your own family. About becoming a mother while still needing one. About breaking every cycle you were raised inside. And about why, in 2026, child marriage is still legal in most of the United States. Today, Vilas uses her experience to advocate for children and raise awareness about the lasting impact of child marriage and childhood trauma. This is the final chapter to her remarkable story of resilience and reclamation. A true badass, she is. _____ FIND VILAS: Website: vilaswright.com Instagram: @vilaswright / Facebook: @vilas.wright END CHILD MARRIAGE — GET INVOLVED: Unchained at Last — Advocacy and direct services to end forced and child marriage Tahirih Justice Center — Legal services protecting those fleeing gender-based violence Equality Now — Global action to end legal inequality for women and girls AHA Foundation — Protecting women and girls from forced marriage and honor violence ___________________________________ FOLLOW US  → For more culty content — follow us on Instagram & TikTok → @wasiinacult SUPPORT THE SHOW Join our Patreon! Get ad-free episodes, bonus content, and behind-the-scenes conversations. (And our forever gratitude)   HAVE A CULTY STORY? Email us → [e-mail]

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of Lipson or its affiliates. Guest accounts or personal recollections shared from their own perspectives. References to specific individuals, organizations, or groups are presented as commentary, opinion, and personal experience and should not be interpreted as definitive statement of fact. This podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. Hey listeners, this episode contains descriptions of child marriage, sexual assault, domestic abuse, homelessness, and parental abandonment. So please take care while listening. Welcome back to Was I an Occult. I'm Tyler, Tyler Meeson. Over here is Liz Ayakousi.

Today we continue Velas' unbelievable story of her time in the Hari-Krishna movement. If you want to call it a movement, I would have another word for it, but we... Rhymes with bolt. Or tult, which isn't a word. It still rhymes with it. Or galt. Or gold. So this is obviously episode two of her remarkable story.

If you haven't heard episode one, go back and listen to it. We'll wait. Okay, you're back. That was very quick. Wow. How did you do that? Super steady, listeners. Yes, this is a tough listen. This is a hard episode to listen to. But you know what? Living it was tougher. And I just want to thank Velas again for trusting us with your story. It was really an honor to just be the holder of space for you. So thank you. And now a little recap of what happened last week.

My name is Velas. grew up in the Hari Krishna. No meat eating, no eggs, no onion, no garlic. is only for procreation. You renounce everything. You renounce your family. When I was three years old, I was sent to boarding school. There was no care for these children. Zero. My mom and I went to India. She's not like me. Nobody else in my family had red hair, so I'm weird. My grandmother said, just don't marry her off when she's 13. So I was 10. There was a festival and this random guy shoves me down and violently rapes me. I had no idea what had just happened to me. And my mother says, I found a husband for you.

Well, that recap sums it up better than we could have. So let us stand. And that is where we left off last week. And today is where we learned how this incredible woman survived and became the warrior. Badass. Badass. That she is today. Yeah.

I'll use the word badass. I mean, come on. Badass. It's pretty rad. Much like the previous episode, we are going to keep our speaking to a minimum. Yeah. Thank you for all that fan mail saying that you much prefer Tyler, just to look pretty. That didn't happen.

Did we actually get people saying we appreciate you and not talking? No, we did it. Okay, good. Good. Just kidding. We will listen to the people. If the people want that, then the people shall have that. Well, they're going to get it right now.

Welcome. Yes, they are. Welcome back to the show, Velas. Take it away. You're raised. You're groomed from the time you're born that your job is to cook and sew and clean and birth. And so that dynamic only fits with you're going to get married and you're going to be a wife and you're going to be his servant. And so that was the trajectory that my life was on.

And so when she said, you're going to get married, this guy doesn't know. And so you've got to get married now before anybody finds out. Well, he did know. I quickly was informed by him that I know and I'm doing you a huge favor. So I was like, oh, I'm lucky that he's willing to marry me given that he knows that I'm tainted. I'm not a virgin. So about a week after that, I was sat next to him getting married off. He's white.

He had dark hair. He wore white clothes, which is what somebody wears if they're open to getting married. If you wear orange clothes, you're renounced. You're not doing that. So the temple in Vrndavans is a huge temple and there's a huge marble courtyard in the middle of it where ceremonies would take place. The Golden Temple's in West Virginia and that's called New Vrndavn. So it was a normal ceremony. This type of thing wasn't necessarily a party about the bride and groom at all.

It was just an official officiating ritual. And my husband and I sat on the floor. There's a fire sacrifice ceremony. And I'm not in my body. I'm going through the rituals. I'm going through the things I have to do to get to the other side. I don't like any of it. It's all very uncomfortable.

and there's hundreds of people there. There's probably about 30 people that are also having another ceremony. Our marriage ceremony was sort of thrown into the mix. So and so it was called on and given their initiation and then the next one and the next one. And then we were just part of that. And so it's like, okay, wedding. The guru says, who gives this child away? I think it's possible that somebody's mother might stand up occasionally and say,

not my daughter, but not my mother. She didn't. She was glad to be rid of me in theory. We're sitting next to each other on the floor, and then at some point I had to stand up and I circle him seven times, saying that I would follow him for seven lifetimes and all that bullshit. And like the ceremony's done, but it's not like a party kind of thing. It's just it's done.

And later at night, he took me to the guest house. And it was painful and traumatic and weird. But if you want to just be semantic about it, you could call it consummation. and I can just call it rape for myself because what the fuck. I mean, he was entitled to do whatever he wanted to. I'm a child and you're an adult and you're sleeping with me. Let's call it rape. He just wanted to have sex and that was my duty.

So where the Vrndavan temple is, it's pretty expansive. but about 10 minutes walk away is the cow barn, which is called the Gosala. And the cow barn had some living quarters, and that's where married people lived. And so my mother was living there with my brother. And so that's where my husband and I were. And right after the wedding, he says, I'm going to go to Italy and see my mother, was already planned. And so he leaves to go to Italy. And that's when my mother beat the shit out of me with the brush because she was like, I can't stand the fact that you still exist in my life. I literally

gave you away and here you are. But he came back in June and he said, we're going to go traveling. So his job was he would sell life memberships. And so we traveled around. India selling life memberships. And we traveled for about a year. So he came back when I turned 14. And then at some point, he came back and said, I don't want to be married anymore. So I'm going to take you back to Rundavon and drop you off.

And that's it. We're done. And at some point, when I look back, retrospectively, I'm like, yeah, he probably got to the point where he was like, I'm tired of babysitting this child and decided to drop me off and maybe marry somebody his own damn age. So this train ride from Bangalore to Delhi was somewhat of an awakening. It's actually something that I want to do again. I want to take that train ride because it felt like freedom. I wasn't quite 15 yet.

but I had this past and now the future seemed to be different. And I couldn't quite put my finger on what that meant for me, but I knew that I wasn't going back to my parents. I knew that I wasn't going back to a girl's boarding school. And I didn't have a husband anymore. So it was really interesting. So he drops me off. and in the temple there's a guest house and he took me and checked me in.

It was 11 o'clock at night and he went back to the men's ashram and I never saw him again. And the following morning, the guest housekeeper let himself into my room and raped me. So I then went back to the Gosha, the barn that is where the married people, and I stayed there. And my daily existence was like this. Like, what will be my life tomorrow? My mom was now back in the States. And so I was on my own. I'm in one of these stalls in one of these cells that are at the barn.

The ground is concrete. and there's like cow dung and straw on top of it. And you sleep with a mosquito net over you. I slept for like two weeks. And I would get up when it was dark out. And so I would go to the outhouse and then on the way back, I would pump myself a jug of water and bring it into my stall and go back to sleep.

And I was really, really sick. and I thought I was going to die. I had lost sight and I couldn't get up at some point. I'd lost a bunch of weight and I was really, really sick. And somebody found me. They didn't know I was there or they didn't care that I was there. But a woman did find me and I was barely conscious. They got a rick shot and took me to the clinic.

And as we got there, they were like, oh, she's got malaria. yeah, it's fine. And I'm laying there on this concrete slab in this, you know, village clinic. And I was just like, dear God, if you exist, you will let me go. I've done all. I've been a good devotee. I've done everything you've asked. And I would really like to die. Because if the objective is to get to Godhead, I had done everything I was supposed to. I had submitted to everyone who took anything they wanted from me my entire life. And I was ready to die. And I didn't die. And that's how I know God doesn't exist.

Because if he does, he's just a sadistic fucking motherfucker. Okay. So if you're not a fan of baseball, you've probably heard the name Shohay Otani. Because he is arguably the best baseball player of our generation. Some people would say of all time. I have my debates about that, but the guy is ridiculous. He hits, he pitches, he steals bases. I mean, right now his ERA is, when I wrote this, his ERA was under one, but he gave up three runs today.

So it's slightly over one. And what does he credit as one of the keys to his success, Tyler? Please say it's beer in the morning. Please, beer in the morning. It's sleep. Otani sleeps about 10 hours a night, 10, and takes a nap. A two-hour nap before every game. You're telling me that if I slept for 12 hours a day, I'd suddenly develop a devastating

curb ball. No. But you might be easier to listen to. Possibly. I am talking about sleep, and one way to get better sleep is to upgrade your ratty-ass sheets, Alan. Right, Alan. I feel like we're about to talk about Bowling Branch.

We are. We are. We are. Because, actually, we love. I love Bowlen Branch, and Bowlin Branch makes incredible organic cotton sheets, pillows, blankets. Also, I'm loving their comforter. I don't know about you, but are you loving? No, I love it. I absolutely love it. The cloud one? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice. And it makes the room look nice.

We haven't changed back to our old. I'm like... Yeah, same. No, it's great. Absolutely same. It looks... Honestly, it makes the room look really nice. It ties the room together. It ties the room together. Yeah, but we also, we have the sheets. We have the waffle blanket. And now we have the comforter. And I love getting in bed, you know, and it's like, I just feel the sheets. They're soft. They just make me go, oh. And then the comforter, I'm just, everything feels cozy and breathable.

And it's one of those products you immediately understand why people obsess over it, you know. Like us. We do. We do. We do like it. We do like it. You too. You guys can too obsess.

Yeah. Show Hey, you can sleep 13. hours a night if you had Bolandbranch. Yeah, bro. Sleep cooler this summer with Boland Branch during their annual summer event for a limited time. Get 20% off site wide at Bolandbranch.com slash cult. Did you say 20% off? You're a very astute listener, Liz.

Wow. That is 20% at Bolin Branch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D-B-Ranch.com slash cult. 20% off, bollandbranch.com slash cult slash cult, code, cult. exclusions to apply, though. National League MVP, not guaranteed. So I recover from malaria and my mother had come back. So this young woman asks my mother if she can take me traveling. And my mother agrees. She's in her early 20s. She was of Indian descent, but she was raised in the West. So she was probably born in the States. And she's, she was, you know, She's a devotee and she takes me and we start traveling.

We go around India for a couple of months and she gets us into these amazing, beautiful places by trading me and her. And she pimps me out to all of these rich, rich palaces that we stay in. And so I don't even realize initially, I'm just like, oh, yeah, sex is the ticket punch to get into whatever. My body is a commodity. It's how I'm going to survive now. I know it's not allowed and I know it's not part of the principles and we're not allowed to do that. But this is survival. And it's okay if we have sex occasionally.

It's okay if there's onion in the food and it's not offered. It's okay. I, you know, like, so we're slipping away from some of the things that have been very, very drilled and indoctrinated into me. And I'm 15 years old at this point. And I'm like, there's a whole world out there. Like, if these small morsels of exposure to the outside are mind blowing, I can't imagine what it's going to be like if I leave. And so after we get back, I was like, yeah, I'm out. I'm out. I'm done. There was a boys ashram at this school, and now I'm like, I'm done with rules.

I'm talking to the boys. These are boys I've known my whole life that I've never spoken to. And so I start talking to the boys, and they're telling me stories about who's doing what abuse to whom. And so I wrote a letter to the headmaster. I wrote this letter in whatever kind of chicken scratch. non-educated English letters I could muster. I wrote what the boys had told me. The boys had said, this teacher is doing this and this to this student and that student. And it's really devastating. And it breaks my heart because all of the girls and the child marriage and the rape and the abuse, like, we're not forgetting the boys. And I'm like, I know what's going on in your school. I know. And I hope you all fucking burn.

I got a rickshaw right outside the temple walls. And I took it to the train station and got on the train and used my hot commodity to survive for the next few months. So almost immediately, I'm like, all right, need a place to stay. I know how this works. So I got exposed to Western ideas, but still in the context of India. I spoke Hindi. I watched Bollywood movies. I had tons of friends.

And I was in Delhi for a while, and then my parents found me. And much, much to their chagrin, they took me in. It was very much me just rebelling and saying, You have lost all rights and privileges to demand anything of me. You married me off. He left me. I'm uneducated. I can't get a job.

What am I supposed to do? But also, don't tell me that I need to be a devotee anymore because that's off the table. I'm done. It sucks to be you that I'm not 18 and you're still responsible for me. So they kept me. My mom, like, avoided me at every turn as much as possible. And they ended up enrolling me in Calcutta International School. And so this is, like, essentially the first time I'm really going to school.

And I'm very lost. But I made friends and I tried and it was interesting. And I had friends and we played in a band and we made music. and we would ride motorcycles in Calcutta. I had a bicycle. I would take my bicycle everywhere. That lasted until my parents found out somehow that I had had a pepperoni pizza.

I was 16, and I walked in our apartment, and my father said, I've bought a ticket back to the States for you. You can do anything you want with your body. You can sell your body. you can do whatever you want, but you will not kill animals for your own sense gratification. And that's the limit. You can't do that.

So here's a ticket back to the States and $100. $100. They gave me a one-way ticket. And as far as I was concerned, they didn't really give a shit if I died. So now I'm on a plane to go for. from Calcutta to Bombay to Kuwait to New York to D.C. And I finally land in D.C. And it's 11 o'clock at night.

So I had to find somewhere to sleep. You know, I could have, I could have gone to the temple. I could have gone and slept there and eaten there and I refused. I just knew that every horror that had happened in my life so far was a result of that. I was like, I can't. I'd rather live on the streets. And so I was homeless. So far, my understanding of the world is that my body is my ticket. I had been told my whole life that my body existed to serve men and gods. You use your body to serve. And so I very clearly understood from both being in the Hari-Krishna's and having left,

that all men are equal in that aspect. They just felt entitled to my body. Yeah. So the only reason I slept with men was so that I could have somewhere to sleep, not for money. So I never took money, but I was a very sexual teenager.

I'm sure there were times where I was like, sure, yeah. let's have sex. I'm not going to throw a blanket over every single sexual experience I had and say it was like non-consensual. And I was very sexual and I did want to have kids. I had a different idea of how. I had, you know, a fantasy of somebody loving me. But I also can't imagine that I knew what love was. I had never experienced it from anyone. Okay, we are back. Now, just because Velas left the Hari-Krishna's doesn't mean that the movement disappeared, obviously. In fact, today, the Harri-Christian movement looks much different than it did during its airport chanting heyday of the 1970s. What was once seen in America as a fringe counterculture movement has evolved into a global

religious organization with temples, schools, restaurants, festivals, and millions of followers and supporters worldwide. Millions with an M. Many modern members simply view Iskan as a devotional Hindu community, centered around prayer and chanting and service and the worship of Krishna. So after former Hari Krishna children began speaking publicly about the abuse in Iskan schools, they did, make. themselves more mainstream.

And the organization now says it has safeguards. Yes. But we don't judge a high control group on this show by what they say on the brochure, do we? No, we don't. And Colts, they love a brochure. They really do. They love a brochure.

Yeah, like funeral homes and touristy spots and cults. They pretty much have the brochure market cornered, don't they? A brochure is the same as a pamphlet, right? I think a pamphlet might be a little longer. Oh, right. I'm uncertain. I don't know.

The pamphlet versus brochure debate. I think we need to go into that at some point. Not on this episode. Not on this episode. But we do judge high control groups by what happens to the least powerful person in those groups. Children.

Especially the children. Because if the basic message is still surrender, obey, don't question. and don't leave, don't doubt, don't put your own needs above the mission, then I don't care how pretty your temple is, or the festival you have with the colors, or how good your vegetable samoses are. Yeah, sure, maybe the cat got groomed.

Maybe the cat got a better website. Maybe the cat has a great social media manager now and does live stream Kirtan. But if the cat still scratches children and calls it spiritual enlightenment, then I still have a lot of questions about the cat. So I was living on the streets of D.C. I got a job as a hostess at the American Cafe in Georgetown, and I got a fake ID. I figured out how to survive.

I don't know. I did the same thing I did in Delhi. I met some people through the grace of some very amazing people who did help me, and did not need to sleep with me in order to let me sleep on their couch. An amazing man, his name is William Nelson, and this was a 40-something-year-old black man, and he had a studio apartment, and he would let me sleep there if he was working the night shift somewhere, because he knew that it would look bad if I was there when he was there at night. and that man was probably my first introduction to a shred of decency in my fucking entire life.

A very sweet man. And at some point, I had been fired from the American Cafe because the manager found out that I was actually 16. And so I got a job with Time Life magazine selling subscriptions and didn't do very well there because I'm completely uninterested. educated and didn't know how to say street names properly. So I was between jobs and I had signed up for a temp jobs. Couldn't run to place. So if I could crash on somebody's couch or I was just on the street and it was really rough. I would try to find a place to hide to tuck in somewhere where I couldn't be found. It was the middle of the night on Christmas Eve and I was standing. And I was ending at a pay phone and I called my grandmother who was in California and said, I just wanted to say

Merry Christmas. And she says, oh, you know, what are you doing? Where are you? And I told her, I'm in D.C. and I'm working temp jobs and trying to figure it out. And she says, well, you know, if you want to come here, I can loan you the money for the flight. And my mother had specifically told me not to go there. I was like, I'm not listening to her anymore. So a week later, flew to California and stayed with my grandmother for a year. It was wonderful, really. I got to be in a bed. I had my own room. There was electricity and heat, water. It was really cool. But ultimately, we would fight over my mother. My grandmother did spend a lot of time defending my mother. And I was always very, very, confused about that. And I would say to her, I was like, look at who I am where I am. How can you defend this? My mother and father did keep in touch with my grandmother and I refused to talk to my parents. They would call or she would be on the phone with him and I would be like, absolutely not.

They abdicated responsibility for me and I went out and figured it out the best way I could. The breaking free part was hard because I had culture shows. from number one being in the cult bubble and then being sort of exposed to modern society but in India. So I was trying to figure it out. I watched every television show that I could come across to soap operas, sitcoms, everything because I was like, what is this world? You kind of have to know some pop culture references to even have conversations

and not seem like a weirdo. I'm 16. Am I supposed to go to school? I feel like I can't really go to school. I know so much about the world and about life, and yet I know nothing about education. So I got a job, and I was working as a receptionist

in a high-end appliance place in Pasadena. I made friends with people there, and they introduced me to this guy. He was actually a refugee from Central America, and I ended up getting into a huge fight with my grandmother over my mother, and I ended up leaving my grandmother's house, and I ended up on his couch. He lived with his mother and father and two brothers, and so we kind of accidentally ended up together, and I ended up pregnant. And so I said, we can't stay in your parents' one-bedroom apartment with me being pregnant and having a baby. So we moved to San Francisco, and that's where my daughter was born. I went into labor, and my landlady who lived upstairs, she took me to the hospital and dropped me off,

and I was in labor for about 10 hours. And I told the nurse, I couldn't do it, that I changed my mind. she's like that's not how it works honey i have a picture of right after my daughter was born and i literally look like i'm 14 years old i look like an infant and i and i question whether i had the right mother skills but i was really desperate for this love that she was going to give me this child I put every single pain and suffering and lack of love that I had ever had on this little brand new baby girl. She was going to be everything. I needed to have her so that I didn't kill myself.

And it's really sad for me to look back on it because I put such a burden on her right from the moment she entered the world. In the meantime, backtracking a little bit, my sister had gotten pregnant while I was still in D.C. And my parents convinced her to give the baby up for adoption. I was very angry about that. She had given my niece up for adoption. So there were some rocky times ahead with them, too, because they'd now come back from India and they were back in the States. they moved to the East Coast and I was still in San Francisco. And I had started to take a medical assisting course to work in a hospital.

And I did really well, shockingly, to me, I was now qualified to get a job. And I was 18 and I told my parents that I would like to move back to Maryland and could I rent a room from them with my daughter and my husband. we got married right after she was born. And so my parents agreed. I came back, but my mother was like, if your sister comes over, you have to put the baby away. Like fold it up and put it in a drawer? Like, what do you want?

It's duct tape? How do we? Yeah, we don't want to make my sister feel bad for my parents' decisions. But I did live with my parents for a year. I got a job in a hospital. Now I'm making money. I'm paying rent.

and I'm trying to figure out my life, and my daughter's father decides that he didn't want to live in Maryland. So he left, and he went to Florida. And she was 18 months old. And my parents had moved about an hour away. Again, one of those things that they didn't have to do. I had spent some nights living in our car, me and her, and then finally found a room to rent.

And then on her second birthday, he came back to visit. And so on my daughter's second birthday, we had gone there to my parents. And much to my surprise, my mother had invited my daughter's father and his new girlfriend were visiting. And so I'm going to go back to my place, sleep,

and then go to work in the morning, and I'll phone, because they're all going to be at the house and hanging out. So I called the next day, and I said, Yeah, how's it going? How's Feebs, right? And she said, oh, well, I really thought it was best if her father took her back to Florida. Because his girlfriend can take care of her while he's working. And you don't have any business having a child. That was pretty crushing. But there were voices in my head. that kept telling me that my mother's right. And the parts in my head in my entire life that have said your mother is right are my biggest regrets. I thought I didn't deserve her.

I ended up getting a phone number for him and calling him in Florida. And I was crying at work one day and one of the doctors said, you know, why don't you go see her? and he gave me the fucking money to go see her. This doctor bought me a ticket to go see her. But the confession part is that I did go see her and I spent the night on the floor of his apartment just holding her and believing my mother. I believe that she,

She should stay there. I had no, I had no way to have her. I was alone and it wasn't treading water. I was drowning. That's probably one of the biggest regrets in my life. I came back and I remember standing there in Miami airport and like the shame that I still feel to this day that I left her. and then they moved and I didn't know where. So now I have to make my life worth something.

It can't all be for just pain and suffering. So I have to make it worth it. A year later, it's now 1990. And so I was dating another guy. I met him at the hospital. he was a firefighter and I told him I'm going to get my daughter back. There will be no us kind of family without my child. I owe her before I owe myself a new life.

So I'm calling 4-1-1 to ask for anybody by his last name. and he had a last name that is similar to Jones. Like I'm calling, asking for anybody named Bob Jones in Florida, in California. And I think I called 1,400 numbers. And finally found him at his mother's house. And I had somebody drive by to see if he. they could see my daughter. And they did.

So at Christmas, we had gone up to my parents, and I announced to them that I'm going to get her back. And my dad offered to loan me the money to go fly to California, which is where I found her. And so I bought the ticket and got all the muster I could find. and walked up to the apartment complex, and she was playing out front. And she came running up to me as if she had just been waiting for me to pick her up.

And she was like, oh, are you here to take me? So I told her, yeah, I'm going to take you home. And I said, show me where your grandmother's house is. and they knew it was not a stretch for them to be like, oh, she's here. I mean, I'm sure it was very sad for them that her father wasn't capable of being in touch with me. So it was going to be this way. And as I'm leaving, we just grabbed like her favorite doll. And as I'm leaving to go get in my little.

rental car, I see him walking up the road. And I said, I'm taking her. And I took her home. And no word at all from my daughter's father ever. So I introduced her to this man and he was good to her. And I ended up marrying him. He owned his own home and he had a job. And he lived. liked me. And we were together for for 10 years, two more kids. I was always really conscious to try to make sure I preserve their childhood. And I really wanted them to be kids. And I had some really good structure with them. I really celebrated everything that they wanted to be for themselves. I listened to them and I didn't judge them for any of their choices or actions or mistakes. I didn't shove dogma down their throat, but exposed them to as many things as I could so that

they would have all of the information. I did a good 20 years of like serious self-work. Like I had severe PTSD. I had chronic nightmares. I had anxiety, depression. I was triggered by everything. I would see other people smiling and I didn't understand how they could do it. But I had gone into therapy a few years before that and was starting to work through a lot of my childhood and learning who I was.

but my husband, you know, he used to get mad at me for talking about anything involving my childhood. Oh, you're just such a, you know, just sensationalism. You're just trying to just shock value and you're just trying to say things to people because they're like, oh my God, really? And I'm like, okay, but oh my God, this really happened. I don't know what to tell you. And it was just annoying that I had a past or a life or anything outside of what he thought our life should be. He didn't even know the kids. I mean, he just worked all the time. And we weren't

happy. He was a miserable person anyway. And you can't make somebody else happy, but you can't. He threatened to leave for years. And one day I was just like, okay, go, just go. And when I divorced my ex-husband, I bought our house from him. I was a single mom working a part-time job with three children and I was like I'm not going to displace my children. And so I really had to figure it out on my own. They got to see their dad all the time and it was really hard in the beginning. He didn't know them at all. So he figured it out and he did step up. And then And I really did some self-examination and decided to come out. And pretty quickly realized that I could have happily gone my whole life without ever having sex with a man and I would have been perfectly fine.

I missed the good young lesbian days of my life. But I feel like I was so naive. And I didn't have any concept of being able to be gay. I didn't know anybody that was a lesbian. There was only men and women. Women served. Men are in charge. And so it wasn't for many, many years before I was like, oh, right, the part where I'm attracted to women, that actually could be a thing.

Could I have that life? My mom had now moved to Idaho and my dad had moved to New York and they had gotten divorced. So long gone. They don't, they really can't wrap their brains around the fact that it's a cult. They really can't say cult. In about 1998, there was a lawsuit against the Hari Krishna's that the kids put together. And we hired this attorney and he filed a force. $100 million lawsuit against the Hari-Krishna's. And during that time, I did a lot of interviews for

magazines and articles and news outlets. And Glamour magazine had done an article. And I called my mother and said, they want to interview you. And she said, no, I'm not going to do that. And I said, listen, I've never asked you for anything. You didn't raise me. I've never taken anything. I've never taken anything from you. Can you just do this for me? And she said, do you think you're the only person that has ever been raped? She said, do you know why I've always hated you? Do you know why you are filled with anger and rage and nothing but hate? It's because you're a product of rape. And that's why I've always hated you. Interesting. I always wanted to know the answer to that question, but I never knew that I didn't actually want to know the answer to that question. And I put the phone down and I didn't

talk to her again for years and talked to her for years. She called me many years later, happened to be on Mother's Day. And I said, you know, I was wondering what I would say to you if you called me today. And I said, I just would like to say thank you for not drowning me in a bucket. And she goes, well, you were a cute baby. Oh, thanks for that. My dad is a wanderer. We connected 10 years ago. We have Band-Aids. And I really appreciate our relationship because it's something.

It's not only something, but it's enough. I don't know that I need more. My mother's pretty fucking legendary, as much of a monster as she is. She went back to school. She would have been late 40s and got a degree in underwater geography and got a job with Noah and was working as fucking underwater geographer mapping the fucking Olympic coast like on a boat. She was probably 70-something when she retired. I found out from my father that she had a brain tumor.

And I hadn't talked to her in a while, so I tried to. call and left a message and she didn't answer. And I was like, okay, I'm done, we're not doing this. And I told my dad, I was like, she's not answering the phone. She's not answering text. And I'm not going to force it. And my dad said, well, are you sure you're going to be okay, not seeing her before she dies? And I said, can you tell me that she will be nice to me if I go there? She's a monster and she doesn't deserve my forgiveness. And so she died in November of COVID 2020. And of course, my heart was broken.

And a friend told me that now that she's dead, she is free to love me unconditionally now. And she's not bound by the confines of whatever made her the monster she was. And that bizarrely gave me a lot of comfort because that's probably the only way I'm going to get loved by my mother is to create a scenario where that's possible. So I had actually met a woman through another friend that I had worked with and we were just friends. She was living in another state and we would talk all the time and it just kept flowing. It just kept feeling right. And she ended up.

moving up here and one day she's like, we should get married. And I was like, that's like the best fucking proposal I've ever had. We had our 10 year anniversary and I was like, so are we, we're still doing it? It's so easy. It's a song, easy like Sunday morning, you know. And that's who she is. I would not be sitting here right now if it wasn't for her. Like her support is, so completely opposite of everything I experienced in my life. And I didn't think I was worthy that somebody would love me. And I created the person that made me worthy. And it's not an accident. I feel like I'm doing the right things and my heart is in the right place. I have a real estate and property management company. We manage about 100 properties in Maryland.

When I took my broker class, I was under the impression that I was not smart enough to do this. And then took the exam and I passed and I cried all the way home. I've believed the lies. I've believed everything bad about myself that I've ever heard. And I've had to prove to myself that they're wrong. I am successful. I am competent and confident. I am in charge of my bills, my life, my home, my happiness, my existence. I'm in charge of my mental health. But I still struggle every day. but there are some things, some damage, that will never be repaired. And there's just holes in my soul that will never be healed. I will never see justice for what happened to me as a child. I will never see justice for my life. So I have to create justice if I can.

But I am in a place in my life. where I live extremely intentfully and on purpose. I look for joy. I look for humor, comedy. I steal away drunken lunches. I have amazing friends. I have amazing circle of people. I have amazing clients.

I have an amazing wife. I have an amazing home. I have a very curated, intentful life. I appreciate everything around. around me. I question everything. I sleep well. I love very deeply. And I feel like I'm doing pretty good. Like I fucking love my life. Maybe we should all live such a life, regardless of how it started, just to say it out loud. I fucking love my life. Yeah, like Velas, can we claim that statement? Can I? Can you? Can we, or at least just work towards that statement? Or at least say it out loud, if nothing else,

to maybe convince ourselves that it's true. Fick-a-to-make-it kind of thing, right? Like, right? I fucking love my life. I fucking love my life. I fucking love my life. I fucking love my life. I fucking love my life. Your turn, people. Say it. Say it with us. Come on, go. Louder. Can't hear you. There it is. It kind of feels good, doesn't it? Yeah.

Fucking love my life. It'd be cool to be a rock star and just like say something and be like, put your ear out like, uh, uh. And then everybody goes, uh, uh, and you're like, I fucking love my life. And they're like, I fucking love my life. And we're just here on some podcast going, say it back to me, Invisible Person, driving in your car. Yeah, and there's Becky in her Toyota Tersel saying it out loud. I'm saying it. You can't hear me.

I see you, Becky. I see you. We feel you, Becky. Thanks, Becky. Thanks, Becky. Eyes on the road, Becky. Now I want to be a rock star. Maybe I should be a cult leader slash rock star.

You know what I mean? That ship has not sailed. Now, just to finish the outcome of the lawsuit, Velas earlier spoke of. After years of legal battles, the case was eventually settled in 2005. Former students were awarded roughly $9.5 million through a compensation fund that was established as part of the agreement. But once that was divided amongst all the kids, it didn't really come down to much. And the lawyers who obviously took their share. Now, look, to be clear,

no amount of money really fixes a childhood. But for many survivors, the settlement represented something they hadn't received for decades, which is acknowledgement. And for Velas, she continues to fight like hell to make sure this same shit doesn't happen again. In fact, when I reached out to her a couple weeks back to let her know we were releasing her episode, she was driving home from Ohio after attending a protest to end child marriage. She said they have a bill that has received no opposition, and yet they will not advance it. Former students were awarded roughly $9.5 million through a compensation fund that was established as part of the agreement.

But once it was divided among all of the people, it didn't really amount to that much. I'm extremely fortunate somehow to have survived all of the things, and now I want to make sure that my experience can help prevent others. from suffering any kind of childhood tragedy. So my mission and passion at this moment is I'm very actively involved with the national organization to end child marriage in the United States and several other organizations that do work in that sphere. And there's just absolutely no good reason at all ever for a child to be married. There isn't a reason.

No. No, there isn't a reason at all. And I'm quite disappointed in our country here, Tyler, and even more in our state of California, because I don't know if you know this, but the state in which we reside still has no minimum marriage age with parental consent and court approval, and they are New Mexico, Mississippi, and California-A.

But across the country, the laws are kind of all over the place. There are a group of states that have banned child marriage completely, and because we're going to reward them, we're going to share them with you. Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Michigan, Washington, Virginia, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon, Missouri, Rhode Island. If you live in those states, here, here. Good job. But that's only 16. It's only 16. D.C. has also fully banned child marriage, for the record.

But there are 33 states that still allow some form of underage marriage. Like what the hell, America? What is going on? I mean, Europe isn't necessarily out of the woods here either. Now, the trend is moving towards 18, no exceptions, but the rules still vary by country. And in Australia, there are loopholes for 16 and 17-year-olds to marry. But on the whole, it is a bit stricter than most U.S. states. But why?

Why? Who are these rules for? I believe, I don't know, cults. Because what girl wants to get married at 14? Or better what, 14-year-old has any clue about anything at that age? I mean, if we were getting married at 14, I would have married the soccer player that I was infatuated with at the tournament I went to in Amsterdam,

and I probably would have married him right there in the gas station where we made out drinking our hynigans. That would have ended well. That would have long-lasting love. I mean, it's insane. People shouldn't be allowed to get married. until at least their brains have fully developed, which guess what, is not even 18 by any stretch of the imagination. No, nor do men's brain stop develop not ever.

What age two men's brains stop developing, Tyler? Baseball. Now, here are some heroin statistics, according to Unchained at last. Nearly 315,000 minors were legally married in the United States between 2000 and 2,000. And 86% of them, take a guess, were girls. And most were married to, drum roll please, adult men, about four years older on average. And almost 67,000 of those marriages happened with an age gap that would have been a sex crime if they weren't married. Right. So no, these aren't kids wanting to marry for love.

These are kids who are stuck in something not good. They're either pregnant or they're pressured or they're escaping abuse or they're trapped in a cult where the adults decide marriage is the answer. Let's figure it out, shall we? America, get your states together. It just doesn't make any sense. We will leave you on one piece of good news if that's even possible with this subject. Oklahoma. Oklahoma. Oklahoma just passed a full ban. So it's set to become the 17th state to completely outlaw child marriage when the law takes effect, of course, on November 1st of this year. So California, take a note from Oklahoma. Never thought I would say that, but I'm saying it here.

Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Now, that is a bit of tiny hope in a really messed up situation, but it's just not enough on its own. So if you want to help push for 18 no exceptions, you can donate and you can find out more at www.unchained at last.org and tahiri.org, tachir-I-H-R-I-H-R-H.org. Those are organizations that are on the front lines fighting to close every loophole in every state. Marriage should be a choice made by two adults who are actually adults, not too kids. kids, and not a kid and an adult. Not a teenager whose parents, pastor, guru, judge, or community has decided that this is what God wants. And it is most definitely not to be used as a legal loophole for abuse. Damn, drop your mic. Can you drop it?

Yep. Just drop it. If I drop it, I won't be able to read the credits. Also, I won't be able to fill the audience in on the event. very important breaking news that the difference between a pamphlet and a brochure, I was wrong, a pamphlet is smaller. It's usually one page. A brochure is more of a trifle.

It has a design. You give a brochure to a graphic designer, a pamphlet you create on WordPress. Yeah, it's a page. You can print it out, hang it on the office board that says, hey, everybody, I'm having a barbecue this weekend come. That's kind of a pamphlet. Maybe, maybe not. I will dive more into that pamphlet versus brochure.

I might even come with some visuals for you all. I think here's what we did. We didn't talk during the whole episode. And then at the end, we just have to say all the shit that we've been wanting to say. It's stupid. Pamphlets, he's just been sitting on that. Maybe you can make a pamphlet for the United States government and say, and child marriage, you fucking morons.

That would be a good idea. And just put it all over the country because I don't get it. I'm going to make a pamphlet on the differences between a pamphlet and a brochure. That's our show, everyone. Thank you again, Velas. You are incredible. I don't know. I don't know what else.

I don't have anything else to say. No, I'll tell you what I have to say is that I edited this and I was very, very moved by being in this story for so long. And what I will say, and I genuinely mean this, it just, it really gave me more empathy for what it must be like to be a woman. Do you know what I mean? Like, men, we kind of have it easy a little bit more. I don't fear being raped. You know that they say the number one fear that men have. What is the number one fear that men have?

I mean, my Chicago Cubs are playing really, really, really poorly right now. that's a big fear of mine that I'm overcoming at this moment. It's shame. Yeah. I'll go with that. Women's number one fear? Sexual assault. Getting murdered by a man.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, men are pretty much... You're so scared of your shame. And we're like, no, we're just walking around with water bottles that are made out of stainless steel. When I used to live alone, I didn't have parking. And I didn't live in, like, the best neighbor. and if I come home late, I had a whole routine.

I'd walk in the middle of the road down the center, you know, and I'd have this like really dense, heavy, stainless steel water bottle. And I would just sort of like hit it on my leg. And I would just be like talking to myself, like, I'd dare you. I dare any of you right now. Come, come at me, try it. Like I was so amped up to just beat the shit out of a guy. Because that's all you think about.

You're taught how to like hold your keys the five ways. There was like a whole movement where like Mace was on a key chain and I had the, I've had the whistle like on my keychain where you pull it off and it makes that horrible dog whistle noise. I've had all of the things. Yeah. I mean. But I feel bad for you guys and your shame. It is hard. It is.

Also the losing streak's been really tough on me too. Yeah, I know. That is tough. Let's not spend too much time on me. Let's not do that. You've had it rough too. But what was about this story that made you more empathetic towards? I mean, look, I kind of sat and thought about what it must have been like for her to have been raped in that situation.

Like really tried to put myself in that situation as a young girl. and it really kind of affected me. It really got to me the more I thought about it. So I really sunk into this episode. I really did in putting it together. It really got to me. And we've done hundreds of these bloody episodes. This one really got to me.

I mean, they all get to me. The next one, this is a good lead in for what we're about to do. And the next week. The next one really kind of kicked my ass. And it's a great story. And it really is something I have a bit of knowledge about, which is magic. and fake magic. And next week, we have the wonderful Hannah Murray, who previously from the Game of Thrones.

She played Gilly. She shares her story of being in a magical cult. Let's roll some tape, shall we? It was maybe two to three days in that we started talking about this kind of ultimate goal. You know, why are we doing this? Why are we learning to perform these healings? And it was saving the world. bringing about a sort of utopian paradise. I was then kind of like, okay, this is what I was put on this earth to do. I've found exactly where I should be, because I'm going to be part of saving the world. Was I an occult is hosted, Leha. By the man whose brain is still developing.

As we speak, it's developing. Wasayna occult is hosted, written, produced, da-da-da, etc. By Tyler, I fucking love my life, Mism. And over here, Liz, I fucking love my life, Ayacuzi. And sound design by Rob. He fucking loves his life, Pera. And I'm going to give Greta. Greta, she fucking loves her life, Stromquist.

Yes, she does. Our assistant editor. She's great. She's on it. Great. And we'd like to thank all of our Patreon listeners and subscribers. because they fucking love their lives as well. Yeah, and we fucking love all your friends' lives

that you tell about this show. We love it all. We love it all. Thank you, everyone. Join us next week.