Was I In A Cult? - The Town In The Shape of a Cross: “Thoughts Are Free”

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Michael grew up believing his hometown in Germany was just that — a quiet, picturesque community with cobblestone streets, tidy homes, a school, and a grocery store. At its heart stood the church, looming over daily life.But what looked like small-town order was really something far darker. Built in the aftermath of World War II, by leaders with lingering Nazi ties, the town was engineered for control: walls without walls, designed to keep its people in and the rest of the world out.Years later, in a casual conversation with a sibling, the truth unraveled:This wasn’t just a devout community.It was a cult.COME SEE US LIVE!!!Los Angeles • September 9, 2025With special guest: comedian Moses Storm@ Dynasty TypewriterVIP “Meet & Greet” tickets available!Not in LA? No prob — livestream available too!Special Thanks:Big thanks to Maura Streppa for her gorgeous rendition of “Die Gedanken sind frei”→ Follow Maura on Instagram @maurastreppamusicFollow Us for More Culty Content:Instagram & TikTok → @wasiinacultSupport the Show:If this episode moved you — share it. Leave a review. Scream-sing Die Gedanken sind frei in your kitchen.Thank you to our Patreon members — we appreciate the hell out of you.Want ad-free episodes & exclusive content? → Join our Patreon.Share Your Story:Had a culty experience of your own? We want to hear it.Email us: [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The views, information, or opinions expressed by the guest appearing in this episode solely belong to the guest and do not represent or reflect the views or positions of the hosts, the show, podcast one, this network, or any of their respective affiliates. Hey, friends, before we dive in, we wanted to let you know that we will be doing a live show, September 9th, in L.A., Dynasty Typewriter is the venue. Just about two weeks away, guys, Tuesday's September 9th, Dynasty Typewriter in Hollywood. we have a very, very funny opening act. The always endearing Moses Storm will be our guest. He will join us on stage. We're going to dig into all things cult. We're going to talk about our stories.

And Moses will regale us with more tales of his incredible upbringing in a doomsday cult. So come join us. Bring your questions. But don't question us, of course. So if you aren't in Los Angeles, we do have live streaming tickets. they are available at dynasty typewriter.com. The link is in our show notes. Can't wait to see you guys there.

Let's get on to today's show, shall we? Just a quick heads up, listeners. Today's episode contains references to child abuse, sexual trauma, suicide, and transphobia. So please take care while listening. I thought my entire childhood was normal. and then one day I was hanging out with a sibling and we were talking about random stuff from our childhood and they were like, yeah, that's because we were in a cult.

And my brain just went, wait, what? And then I did a deep dive into researching cults and their techniques and I was like, holy shit, I was in a cult. Welcome to was I in a cult. I'm Tyler Meesam. And I'm Liz Iikousy. And real quick, last week we did an episode on the Cult of American Apparel. Go listen to it if you haven't.

But come to find out, the whole time we're recording, Rob's here, Tyler's here, Rob's our wonderful sound person. And Rob was just silent the whole time. But after we finished... Rob dropped a bomb that he actually worked at American Apparel. For a year, and he met Dove. What did Dove say to you, Rob? Dove asked me if I wanted to be his next It Girl. That's not true.

That is true. It is unfortunately true. What? Yeah, let's dive into this more later. I have a lot to say on this topic. But I think we need to get to the actual topic of this episode. If you want to hear more about Rob's experience. Being the It Girl at American Apparel.

Stick around to the end. In his booty shorts. Yeah, we'll put it at the end. But right now we are going to stay on course and turn our attention. attention to today's guest. Today's story starts in a small, charming town built around a church, both literally and ideologically. And at the center of it all was a child learning that perfection equals survival and

asking for any help at all means total failure. And this entire town with banks and markets and schools, well, it was just one big cult. And not in the United States. but in wait for it guys Germany and sadly no I don't spreckens the Deutsch I've been known to sprecken

every once in a while you spreckin a lot I've spreckoned when the time is right so this episode dear listeners is perhaps definitely more intense in parts than some of our others

so we just wanted to make that clear from the top Our guest is so lovely, and like all of our guests, after we did our interview, I was just wildly inspired by his spirit after all that he's been through. This is an important story, and we're honored to be the place where he felt comfortable sharing it. So with that, let's welcome today's guest. Don't spare my life, crucify. All right, so my name is Michael. I am purposely choosing an anonymous name because even though I have been free of the cult,

I do still have a lot of people that are trying to make my life miserable. As far as I'm concerned, there never has been anyone who's talked about this cult. no one really admits that it exists. So it doesn't fit any definition, but it fits all of the definitions. I grew up in Germany. There was a group of Presbyterians who decided that the church was getting too liberal for their liking. And so their solution was to find a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, build their own city with their own rules that everyone can thrive in.

And then they decided, okay, so we're going to need housing and we're going to need shops. Their solution was to build that in the shape of a cross around the church. In order to get from one side of the city to the other, you had to go around the church so that every day it was this overarching presence of God is always watching. To protect his identity, he chose not to share the particular town in Germany with us today, but I did see photos and it is just as he described. The town is in the shape of a cross with the church at the center. And from the outside, it looks like a very charming European town.

Right after World War II, where it ended, there was German soldiers in the war, some of them high rankings. And they were all looking for a place that still had rules, where they still had their authority, where they weren't going to be judged or penalized for the actions they did during the war. Because a lot of the really bad guys went to, like, Portugal. Now, after World War II, a lot of the top Nazi. Brass escaped prosecution through these so-called rat lines. Basically, escape networks often assisted by sympathetic clergy. Brazil and Chile were major destinations, but so was Spain or Portugal.

Argentina basically became the unofficial Nazi retirement community. But the in-between people, the people who weren't fully convinced that it was the wrong idea, they were the ones who ended up in this cult. Honestly, some of them were proud of it until the day they died. Around 8 million Germans were registered members of the Nazi party at the end of the war in 1945. Only a tiny fraction faced trial at Nuremberg. Now, many mid-level officers, bureaucrats, and military men reintegrated into society during denazification. Some slip through, often rebranding themselves as simply traditional conservatives or devout Christians.

Tyler, did you know that there are over 50 active neo-Nazification? groups in the U.S. right now? Hmm. Sort of seems like we're overdue for another one of those denatsifications. Just saying. And then Germany did this massive re-education system where they really tried to teach everyone what was wrong, but then there's this coat that's isolated, and it's not really following that policy.

So these ideologies were allowed to keep existing. We were raised with the same kind of... authoritarian military leadership. So that kind of the Nazi origin created this dichotomy of concept. Tire city. There's probably a couple thousand people. We had a little bank. We had a small natural pharmacy. We had a chain grocery store. That was pretty much it. But it still was a cult with a hierarchy.

Of course. Cults love a hierarchy. don't they guys? Each section, because it was kind of divided into, I think, four sections. Each quadrant has its own income bracket. So depending on your hierarchy, you move to the nicer part of the town. So you're only socializing amongst your own. My dad managed to work his way up in a company, and because of that, he was able to make a good income for himself. We were definitely on the more upper side of the quadrant. We were closer to the church.

Both my parents were raised in this cult. My mother got pregnant at 15. They got married, and from then on, basically, my dad's job was to provide for the family, and my mom's job was to keep having children. It is one of those classic, the more children you have, the better you are, so most people did have four to five children. My parents had five kids in total. I am the youngest.

I think the reason my parents had five children is because they wanted more sons. Women are not seen as any value other than to pretty much give birth. So my brother was second born and he's the son. I myself am transgender, so I guess I'm another son, but they don't really see it that way. So I honestly still don't know what the official, religion is that I was raised in. It was the church. The leader, in a sense, was the minister. So there were different rules for children versus adults, but for adults, the rules were no television, no outside media, had to go to church at least once a week. You had to participate in the

Bible study twice a week. Women were not allowed to cut their hair. Men were not allowed to have long hair. Children are not supposed to be reading, but my parents were more on the rebellious side so i was exposed to a lot more literature i definitely grew up with the harry potter series i so associated with the whole like get under the stairs and yes he did go to school but it was still a school in a cult there was this german educator who created a school where it was decided to try to break the regiment of world war two and try to break away from all of that and created this free exploration education program. The idea is the kids are not in classroom settings, but they're out doing the things and learning in person. And they also strongly encouraged

sexual exploration. That's what the cult captured onto and was like, we're going to go with this. Crids were kind of encouraged to just explore themselves. Now, the model they latched onto was part of a wave of anti-authoritarian education that swept Germany after World War II. Inspired by a British school called Summerhill, the idea was that kids should learn freely. No rigid classrooms, no authority figures telling them what to do. Which sounds utopic, right?

No desks, no authority, just children, free to learn on their own terms. But the reality was far darker. In Germany, one of the most infamous figures was Helmut Kentler, a Berlin psychologist and professor of social pedagogues. who in the 1970s pushed the idea that children should be, quote, sexually liberated as part of their education. His so-called Kentler experiment often placed foster kids with known pedophiles. Yeah, deliberately.

He claimed that it would offer stability. I'm pausing so that people can really let that sink in. Instead, what happened? Well, the boys endured years of sexual abuse. Instead, the boys grew into well-rounded men. And guess what, guys, this wasn't a secret. The state actually backed it for decades. The full scope didn't come to light until the 2010s, which was years after Kentler died in 2008.

Now, as it turns out, Kentler wasn't just some rogue academic with a few fucked up ideas. Nope. A 2024 investigation out of the University of Hilder, revealed a sprawling network of psychologists, social workers, researchers, and yes, churches, all knowingly enabling or ignoring sexualized violence against kids. Now, it wasn't just Berlin. It reached into many other cities throughout Germany, and even Odin Waldschulen, which is a prestigious progressive boarding school, was later exposed in its own abuse scandal.

And for decades, no one said a word. It wasn't until 2015 that Berlin even launched a formal investigation. And by 2020, they finally started offering compensation to survivors. All of this under the banner of progressive education, all supposedly in service of freedom. But it was freedom without protection and reform without oversight. So while Kentler's predator-enabling experiment was happening in Berlin, other communities like Michaels took those anti-authoritarian ideas and remix them. Instead of true freedom, they twisted it into this bizarre blend of rigid discipline in the classroom and total and complete chaos outside of it.

We did have her own elementary and high school within the cult. And so the school was considered non-religious, very science-focused, very math-heavy. The actual education form was very rigid. You stand up when the teacher comes in. You say hi in unison, they tell you to sit down, they tell you when to open your book. Everything was absolutely regimented. But at the same time, recess was no structure, no supervision. We were allowed to pretty much do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted. Hey, I can go explore the forest, I can go jump in the river, I can go play with animals that I find in the woods.

You could try cigarettes if you wanted to at like eight or nine. you could pretty much try alcohol. And so it was like this interesting dynamic of total freedom while also having complete control. The purpose of that was to teach you independence because you're not supposed to get help. You're supposed to figure it out on your own. Never ask for help.

So as a child, you have to figure out how to be a grown-up and the way you figure it out is by making mistakes and learning from your mistakes. Like, perfection was key. Anything lower than perfection does not count. And I think that really affected me negatively in the sense that I had too high of a standard. That was always impossible to meet, so I always felt like a failure. What sets this cult apart, it became these microcults of each family, had their own cult leader.

It's like, the matriarch is allowed to set the rules of how to achieve that perfection, but the perfection is set by the church. And the church encourages the spare the rod, spoil the child philosophy. If we didn't play our songs right, if we did our homework wrong. Like, homework is a very big trauma moment for me because I was born left-handed, which is wrong, so I had to learn to write with my right because it's the devil. I think that should be the tagline of the show, because dot, dot, dot, the devil. fellow left-hander, I understand his plight.

For centuries, the left-hand was literally branded evil. In fact, the word sinister comes from Latin for left. Medieval church teachings even link left-handers to witchcraft. My son is left-handed, Tyler. Yeah, and that he's rare because only about 10% of the world is left-handed. And it's always been that way based upon cave drawings. They found that 10% of the people. people who drew on the caves were left-handed.

Because half of them were smeared. Exactly, exactly. Now, 10% of the world is left-handed, but that is still around 800 million people. However, we left-henders are wildly over-represented among geniuses. It's true. And artists and athletes. I mean, think Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon, Paul McCartney, Jimmy Hendrix, Babe Ruth, Barack Obama. You forgot one.

Tyler Mason. Mm-hmm. I mean, not really. I'm just really trying not to smear ink all over my notebook. But studies do show it's not all rosy. Studies do show that lefties are more likely to struggle with dyslexia, ADHD, and oddly enough adult bed wedding. That's why my husband's always pissing the bed. Now, for most of the 19th and 20th century's teachers forced kids who were left-handed to

switch. I mean, they'd often tie the left hand behind their back, or they'd smack you with a ruler until you gave in. Thankfully, by the 1980s, most schools stopped trying to force right-handedness on us lefties. But Michael, he wasn't so lucky. And because my handwriting wasn't neat enough, my homework would get ripped up, and I would be sitting at the table for, yeah, seven, eight hours doing the same homework over and over again just to watch it get ripped up and do it again. There was this extreme fear. Like when you were getting beaten, everything else kind of stopped to exist. But this was purely just you're getting beat until the person beating you is no longer angry. My only thing that I remember is watching my mom's eyes because when she was mad,

they would dilate and be just pitch black. And then I would watch to see the white come back and then it'd be like, okay, it's going to end, it's going to end. And the thing that always messed with me, all of the adults, they were proud and sharing their abuse amongst each other. So it would literally be like, oh yeah, remember the time I put my son's head through the wall? That was hilarious, wasn't it? I really overreacted. I should have probably stopped myself.

But that's okay, it happens. But they were like one-upping each other. And I'm like 12, 13, sitting here going, something is really wrong here. I don't know what, but something is wrong. I for the longest time thought love literally just meant the fact that you're being kept alive. That's how my parents also always worded it. It's like, well, we provided clothing for you, we provided food for you, and we provided housing for you. So like the only times we ever got hugs or any signs of affection was after a punishment had been too extreme. And there's no talking of emotions. You don't talk about how you

feel. It was all just suppressed. If you did have emotions, it was always given a negative connotation. So if you're crying, you're being hysterical. If you're angry, you're irrational. There's always a connotation of, this is on you to fix. We'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by progressive insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? I mean, who doesn't like saving cash? Well, I use progressive. So I did, and progressive makes it easy.

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Progressive Casualty Insurance companies and affiliates. Potential savings will vary not available in all states. This message is sponsored by Greenlight. So parenting one of the months, my stepdaughter actually did her chores without me asking eight million times. What? It's amazing. Amazing. Your secret, please. Greenlight. Dear Tyler. Seriously?

Seriously. It's the debit card and money app for families where you can set up chores, tie them to allowance, and send money right to your kid's wallet when they knock the stuff off the list. You know, I use it with my son. I've spoken about it a lot,

and it's been a helpful way to talk about real money, how to spend, and yeah, how to earn it. And it's not just about chores. There's stuff in the app that teaches kids how to budget and even invest, and it's all with you in control, which let's be honest, is ideal. You know, and kids actually like it.

I mean, my son gets so excited when he sees money in his wallet from a job well done. And he also, he invests money in it and checks on his investments. He's such a little stock pirate. It's just made the whole money conversation easier and way less awkward. Truly, I wish we had something like this when I was growing up. Mm-hmm. Millions of parents and kids are using green light to build confidence around money and raise kids who actually understand how it was.

works. So don't wait to teach your kids real world money skills. Start your risk-free greenlight trial today at greenlight.com slash cult. That's greenlight.com slash cult to get started. Again, that's greenlight.com slash cult. We're back with Michael and the cult that was his entire town growing up. And like every cult, there's always a reason and a justification for The end goal was isolation. Not be corrupted by any of the outside forces. Because if you have to use materials or products or things from outside the cult, that means you have to interact with other people.

The outside world is filled with devil-run evil people because they're engaging with people of color and people of different sexualities. You're engaging with the devil if you go outside. So once a week, you're allowed to go to go. to the town over after church and that was like a regular just city. Like we were allowed to essentially leave the cult

for shopping. That's the thing. Everyone in the cult automatically dressed the same because only certain stores in the next village over were okay and there was one place where we were allowed to go to get ice cream. It felt glorious. And of course like most

cults, the control wasn't just about behavior. It's stretched into every corner of life. There was more of that idea of you cannot under any circumstances marry anyone from outside of the cult and you can't be with anyone from outside of the cult. And so children were coupled up at a young age. For me in kindergarten, the first boy that I became friends with, his name was Lucas. From that point on, they're like, yep, you guys are going to probably get married. And it's so crazy to me the idea of like looking at two three-year-olds and being like,

yeah, they're going to get married. And it also makes you wonder where the pedophilia comes in here, or is it like a darker connotation to it? There was a bit of like that free love movement integrated into the cult. People would have sex with their windows open and you could see everything. Like, that's what was encouraged because that's what sex education is. This was a very sex positive, If God created us in a sexual being, we are supposed to honor him by engaging in these activities. And the idea is that your first hormonal rush is at around two to three. And so children at that age should be allowed to explore their bodies and learn how those hormones work in their bodies. In practice, it means that essentially pitiful,

Ophelia rampant amongst people. And I remember there was this boy about my age, and we went to the bathroom together, and he stood up to pee. And I was standing, like, watching him going like, what the fuck? That bathroom situation ended up in me being forced to perform oral sex. But that actually progressed from there to exploring different, yeah, like what you can put in things. And that was what children were doing. And the thing that messed with me as an adult is thinking back on those times, it was never done in secret. It was very obvious what was

happening and where it was happening. And everyone just turned a blind eye. So for me, it was never with grownups. It was always children. And it felt wrong but right at the same time. I think That's what really fucks with us kids in the cult because you're expected to do it. You know that there's like this, this is a good thing for you to do, but it feels very wrong when you're doing it for obvious reasons. Like, I know my earliest memory was when I was three. I think for me, that's when my trans confusion started because not only was this all wrong, but also I was on the wrong side of it. Internally, I was aware that I was a guy from the day I was born. I mean, if you look back on it, I was a classic boy.

I loved riding bikes, playing ball, just getting into trouble. And you were taught that everything bad, anything that makes you different, is from the devil. So I just spent most of my life thinking I was taken over by the devil and a horrible person. And in this community, being different or imperfect wasn't just frowned upon. It was treated like a disease. and the punishment was isolation or worse. So our cult had our own mental institution. It was up on the hill.

And we'd play in the creek and in the woods there. It was treated as if it was like the haunted space. Like you're breaking the barrier by going in there. And essentially like rule breakers, people who were creating issues in the community, people who were non-functioning alcoholics, Pretty much anyone not perfect would end up there. And in my entire life, I've never heard of anyone who's gone in and come out. So there would always be a few people that just didn't fit and were ostracized by the cult already,

and they would just eventually disappear. That's what we were told, because it was so hard outside of this cult, you cannot make it. You'll just end up killing yourself. There were as a set of twins in the community. One of them ended up turning out to be trans. I was told that they tried to transition, realized it was so much worse than actual life, detransitioned, and then committed suicide. The reality of it is, they left the cult, transitioned,

and have been living happily married ever since. Fucking cults. We'll be right, back. Okay, let's all just take a second. Seriously, everyone, just breathe, inhale. Yeah, if you're listening to this and you're feeling heavy, you're not alone. We feel it too, which is why we add humor when we can to this show. But doing a show like this every week can definitely sometimes feel very intense.

Yeah, and to help us regroup, we love using the app. headspace. It's true. If you guys haven't tried headspace, but I've been wanting to find a way to meditate or breathe or just help getting calm before bed, headspace is great. And it's not an intimidating approach to meditation at all. I'm not one to meditate, but it's not kind of like sitting on a mountaintop and clear your mind. It's more like, you know, you have two minutes before you lose it. Cool. Let's just breathe. All right? Or you haven't slept in three nights and your brain's stuck in a doom loop? Great. We can help you with that too. They've got meditations, yes, but they've also got sleep stuff, focus stuff, little mini resets when your days going sideways.

I love it because it doesn't feel cheesy or pretentious. And if you're over the whole guru meditation vibe, which I'm pretty certain if you're a listener of this show, you are, it's perfect for you. It's science-backed and you learn from experienced meditation teachers. not TikTok life coaches. I always feel better after I use it, calmer, and easier to work with. I love a headspace to Tyler. Mm-hmm.

It helps me a lot with my stress and anxiety. When I'm overwhelmed with all my to-does, it helps me focus on what exactly I need to get done that day. Feel good. And mean it when you say it. For a limited time, get Headspace free for 60 days. So go to headspace.com slash cult pod. That's H-E-A-D-S-P-E-E-S-P-E.

P-A-C-E dot com slash cult-pod P-O-D to unlock all of Headspace free for 60 days. Headspace.com slash cult-pob. And exhale. To some extent, my parents were always slightly on the rebellious side. It started with them buying a tiny little TV. During the week, we were allowed to watch half an hour a day. And if anyone was coming over from the church, we had to quickly hide it in the basement and cover it in blankets. The first pushpack was the TV.

The second pushback was a computer, where at first we were only allowed to play games that let you memorize Bible verses. But then slowly Pac-Man appeared and Tetris appeared. Yeah, at the time, my parents were already starting to draw away. And my mom used to sing a song a lot around the house. Once we got to that point, and I realized now as an adult, that song is actually a song that was written in a concentration camp about how physically you can crush someone emotionally, but you can never kill their voice. Thoughts are free is what it's called. The song Diger Duncan, Sindh Fry, meaning thoughts are free. It dates back to the 18th century.

It was sung by revolutionaries. It was banned by kings and whispered by political prisoners. The message is simple but powerful. You can chain my body, you can punish me, but you can't own my mind. By the 1940s, it became an anthem of defiance against the Nazis. It was sung in concentration camps and by the White Rose resistance. The White Rose Resistance is a group of university students in Munich, who in 1942 began secretly printing anti-Nazi leaflets. These weren't soldiers or spies. These are just college kids, you know, with typewriters, some paint, and a whole lot of guts.

And their courage echoed far beyond Munich. The song they sang showed up in protests, from East Berlin all the way to Selma. Mm-hmm. And every time someone tried to ban it, and it often happened, it only grew stronger. After the war, it showed up in protests worldwide, East German dissidents, Vietnam war demonstrations, even American civil rights rallies. Folk singer Pete Seeger even recorded it in English in the 1960s. In German's in pride, my thoughts give me power. No scholar can map them, no hunter can trap them, no man can deny.

In Germany, the song became a symbol of staying strong. And for Michael's parents, strength meant packing up and getting out. and then my parents decided the best way to get us out would be to leave the country so the church had at this point two microchurches one in Canada and one in New Zealand I think mainly just because

Nazis be running away from Germany I think that's the best way to put it and so my parents decided that they wanted to leave the big cult and move towards one of the smaller cults My parents decided we'd want to move to Canada. Shipping containers showed up and we loaded everything in, and then we said goodbye and got on a plane.

It was never really explained, like, we're not coming back. We landed near Kitchener Waterloo, Cambridge area. Kitchener Waterloo, where Michael's family landed in Canada, was originally called, oddly enough, Berlin, because of its large German immigrant population. The city was renamed Kitchener, in 1916 after World War I. Why?

Well, there was obviously some anti-German sentiment. They swapped Berlin for Kitchener after a British war hero, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener. Today, Kitchener still celebrates its German roots with bakeries, butcher's folk music, and every fall, it hosts the second largest October fest in the world outside of Munich. But for Michael's family,

it was less about the brats and the sour crowd, they were adjusting to a brand new life in a foreign country that also was the first time they had ever lived outside of the cult's grasp. It was a very difficult time for my parents. They had five kids and a new country, new languages. So it was just like a holy shit. Everything's different. Everything's new.

I think I was just so overwhelmed. And because I didn't speak English, I also had a really hard time making friends. and so I was a little bit of an outcast and my mom homeschooled us because that's what the church encouraged and so from there we just moved around for a while like every two, three months

they would sell the house, we would move and we'd be in a new place. I think that they were trying to make it less accessible for the person who was leading the cult here to talk to them because they did not agree with his ideology. First it was we'd miss a Sunday

and then we'd miss another Sunday, and we slowly stopped going to church. Then we were put into public schools, and from there, we just slowly broke free. And then once we moved to the suburbs, I started becoming friends with kids, and that was the easiest thing, because they would be outside playing in the streets,

and I could go out and play in the streets, and just join them. So at this point, it was just try to be as normal as you can be. Go to school, you go to the movies, movies, you hang out at the mall after, like, if you're a teenager. Even once we broke free of the cult and we were just like in this normal environment, we didn't talk about gender or sexuality. It was just like, I didn't know what transgender was. I didn't know, like, I didn't even really know that gay people existed. But internally, Michael knew something felt off, way off.

being out in the street playing ball hockey because I always had predominantly like guy friends all the guys would take their shirt off and I would be frustrated that I couldn't so then in the evening at night I would be like trying to duct tape my chest to be like it's just the same as everyone else it left me very confused

and so I just felt like I was broken so I did things in secret and one of the things that I did is in high school I did realize that I was attracted to women. I realized that this whole being with a guy thing is never going to happen for me. I thought that I was a lesbian,

and I secretly had a girlfriend at the time. And so our only way to hang out was to hang out at the local mall. And then the guy who was basically like the cult leader here in Canada, he saw us and it was terrifying for both of us because like he pretty much yelled at us in the middle of the mall and told us we were going to hell and that he was going to tell our parents. And so for her coming from a very strict religious but like regular religious upbringing and me coming from my upbringing, for both of us that felt like a essentially like, oh my God, we're done. And she ended up committing suicide that night. I think the hardest part about it all was that because I couldn't tell my parents anything about our relationship. And we were talking on the computer at the time.

And she told me the plans and I was, I came out of my room and told my parents. and they just told me like, yeah, no, that's not true. She's just playing with you. I went back to my room. I tried to sneak out, but I couldn't. And so I just sat there crying and knowing that she probably was, I did call an ambulance to her place because her parents weren't home. and she was, she did pass away.

It was heartbreaking. This is the really hard part of our show, hearing all the devastation that comes from fear and hatred. So if you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, please don't wait, talk to someone in the United States. States, you can call her text 988 to reach the suicide and crisis lifeline any time.

However, it must be stated that the Trump administration just last month eliminated the specialized suicide prevention support for LGBTQ youth callers through the 988 suicide

and crisis lifeline. There's no words. I don't fucking, I can't. We'll be right back, guys. Hi, I'm Jesse Prey, and I'm Andy Cassette. Welcome to Love Murder, where we unravel the darkest tales of romance turned deadly. Our episodes are long form, narrative-driven, and deeply researched, perfect for the true-crime officinados seeking stories beyond the headlines.

Like the chilling case of Blanche Taylor Moore, the so-called Black Widow who left a trail of poisoned lovers. Or the shocking murders of Chad Shelton and Dwayne Johnson, where family ties masked a sinister plot. Subscribe to Love Murder on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Just as Michael was starting to find his footing in Canada, boom, it's time to move again. So at 16, he moved back to another European country, which he didn't want us to name. I finished high school there, and I did.

not do well with this move at all. Like, I had been figuring myself out in Canada, and now we were once again moving to a country where I didn't speak the line. Like, it just felt like I was back in square one in a world I don't know, with people I don't understand. So I went to university for basically like pre-med. And still, up to this point, Michael didn't have words for who he was. And then one day... Eurovision was on and there was a genderqueer performer. The performer Michael saw at Eurovision was Conchita Worst, the bearded drag queen who won Eurovision in 2014 with the song Rise Like a Phoenix.

A full-throttle power ballad that sounded straight out of a James Bond movie. Mmm, out of the air she's seeking world, an angel's retribution, you were borned. Once I'm transformed, once I'm re-burned, you know I'll race like a phoenix. Mm, the power of song. Now, this song, for some countries, did cause absolute meltdown-level outrage. But for millions of LGBTQIA people around the world,

Conchita Worst wasn't just a performer. She was a beacon. For many, it was the first time they had ever felt seen and seen without an apology. And the entire country just went into an uproar about how inappropriate it was. And for me, I just got curious. And so I started going down the rabbit hole

of gender, queer, what is it? Okay, that led me to trans people and I was like, oh my God, it all makes sense. I semi-started to transition at school and at work. And in my second year, I got to do an out-of-country scholarship program, which means I was completely alone for a year to just figure things out.

a little bit and I started to secretly transition and my parents they found out about my mental health issues and used that as an excuse to basically like come pick me up from university and bring me home and I think my mom actually I know she knew because she had been snooping through my room so she had found the clothes and stuff but one day she sat me down she's like just promise me you're not trans and I just stood there and at first I didn't know what to say because like I I can't lie, but I also can't say the truth. And so I was basically like, yeah, I can't do that. And I walked away.

After that, we would be fighting 24-7. And by fighting, I mean more kind of like me sitting with her screaming in my face. Hours and hours and days of just, you don't even understand yourself. You're messed up in the head. This is all just, this isn't how it is. So essentially, I started to have a little bit of a fuck you attitude. I'm not going to live my life for people who don't even know me. And at work, that resulted in me just absolutely insisting people called me by the name that I had chosen at the time

and insisted on being called he and having the male uniform and all of that. But I did have a co-worker who had serious problems with me. And then we had an event in a town, two hours drive away. And it was like this really fancy wedding. And things came to head when he ended up actually getting himself and his friend kicked out of the venue by the bride and groom. And I was asked to leave with him and his friend. and I had no choice in the matter so we started driving back

around two or three in the morning highways completely abandoned no one's there and he pulls the car over and says based on my religion I get to kill you and I don't think I've ever felt more fear

in my life but it was like a different kind of fear because I knew he was saying the truth He actually believed it. And so, yeah, he pulled me out of the car. He held me up at knife point and sexually assaulted me multiple times. And when I fought him, he would essentially kind of stabbed, but more kind of like cut me. And then he just kind of eventually stopped. and got in the car and they drove off.

I genuinely thought I was going to die that day. I reported it to the police, and their response was essentially, what do you expect when you look and act the way that you do? But that was the moment when I knew I had to get the fuck out of there. I ended up saving every single penny I could worked every hour of every job and just saved up and came back to Canada. I contemplated a long time about telling my parents about me leaving or not,

and I did end up telling them, and they did drive me to the airport, and we said goodbye, and then I got on the plane and didn't really look back. When he landed in Canada, he was taken in by his loving sister. But luckily, like, yeah, my sister helped me through a lot of that. Without her, I probably would not have made it. She was, like, a lifeline of someone who understood. And when things really hit Max, she helped me get out. And here's one more bonus point for our neighbors to the north, Canada.

Oh, Canada. There's a huge queer community in most big cities for transition care or in general medical care it's all informed consent-based. So essentially, you're in charge of your own choices. They cannot say no. I started to transition, and then two years later, I had top surgery, and I've been on hormones ever since I came back to Canada. It was one of the best experiences of my life.

It just felt like everything clicked into place. And now, for the first time, Michael's body and soul were finally speaking the same language. And so it was just like everything that I had been criticized and judged for before, like the way I speak, the way I move, the sports I play. Now it was all seen like a positive thing. Like that's what actually got me punished a lot more growing up because my natural behavior is more masculine. And so when I transitioned and I stopped filtering myself and trying to be a proper lady, I just started becoming myself. And the journey continues. But Michael has lived his truth now as a trans man for over a decade.

And today, he gives back to help those who were once like him, lost, scared, and without support. For me, I would have never been able to survive or be the person I am today without the help of my sister creating a safe space for me to run to. And so my goal has been to always do the same. I've also been working with the queer community. We've been trying to create and infinite information refuge guide of everything you could possibly need, queer-related, how to access services,

anything from like legal stuff to which coffee shops are queer-friendly or which legal centers can you go to. We've been trying to create a network of preparing for the worst. Like, for me, especially having come from a place where transphobia was really extreme, I'm seeing a lot of the same parallels to the United States right now. And we're already starting to see people working on immigrating here. So we're trying to expand that network and working with, like, immigration lawyers, trying to just prepare for the worst, hope we don't need it.

The best thing that we can do to fight transphobia is to stay calm, be open-minded, and try to just educate in the kindest way possible. Michael, thank you for your story and for your openness. He has never shared his story in this much detail before, and that takes an immense amount of courage to be as vulnerable as he was. So we feel humbled and honored that you chose our show to share. Yeah, thank you, Michael. And as the father of a trans daughter, I can understand this story a little bit. It's important to listen to your children. It's important to understand them and be okay with it.

And when it happened and when I first learned about it, it was scary. I was nervous. It was weird. I didn't understand it. And I did the research. and I listened and yeah and I talked up the pronouns and I messed up the names and it was a difficult switch for me making it about me of course but my daughter she's doing great and she's doing well and she's accepted and I accept her and her parents accept her and America maybe doesn't

accept her as much as they should but that's okay because she accepts her and people accept her so keep going, Ruby. And what about the cult today? Basically, the cult, I found out, kind of fell apart largely when my parents left and when a few other families left after that, it just lost its momentum. And then the more and more urban sprawl kind of, like, moved in onto the town and made it more into a city. The more regular people moved in, the less the cult was.

able to actually keep their ideology alive. Michael's journey proves what that old German song was saying all along. Eager Duncan, Sin Fry, thoughts are free. And now, so is he. And our very talented friend and listener, singer-songwriter Mara Strepa, was lovely enough to cover this song for us. So this one is for anyone who's ever been told. to stay quiet

and chose to sing instead. Give it to us, Mara. Digga Dunkin' Sinfri, my thoughts freely flower. Digga Dunkin'Rae, my thoughts give me power. No scholar can map them, no hunter, can trap them, no man can deny,

Diggin' donkinson fry I think as I please and this gives me pleasure My conscience decrease this right I must treasure My thoughts will not cater to Duke or dictator No man can deny Diggin' don't sin fry And should tyrants take me and throw me and throw me in prison

My thoughts will burst free Like blossoms and season Foundations will crumble And structures will tumble No man can deny Dig a Dunkin Sinfry No man can deny Dig a Duncan sin fry

Thank you, Mara Strepa. You can find Mara at Mara Strepa Music and Instagram. That's M-A-U-R-A-Srepa music. The links in the show notes. And we will be back next week with a very interesting story, The Cult of Influencing. Oh, I'm growing at 7,000 followers. a month and I got distracted and now I'm growing at 4,000 followers a month. So what does that tell

me? That tells me that if I leave this and start to invest in my romantic life or take a couple days off to be with family, I'm paying the price of less followers. I need to keep going and growing. I cared about Instagram more than the relationship. I was dating my followers. There wasn't really any room for anyone else. If you've made it this far into the episode, it is obvious that you're a super fan, and because of that, we want to hear from you. What kind of cults are you, our dear, diehard listeners,

wanting more of? You can email us at info at wasa an occult.com, and we would love to hopefully give you more of what you want. Was I in a cult is written produced hosted by Liz. My Thoughts Freely Flower, Ayacuzi. And Tyler, my thoughts give me power. Meatham. And Rob, who is our producer and sound mixer,

My Thoughts Will Not Cater to Duke or Dictator, Rob Perra. And Greta, our assistant editor, The Lovely Greta, My Thoughts Will Burst Forth, Stromquist. Stick around, and you can hear, the story of Rob being the It Girl at American Apparel. Okay, Rob, now's your chance. Tell us all about your brush with cult. He met Dove, he knows Dove the whole time.

He just sat there like, do do do do clothing called so this is strange. Rob, Rob, you chime in with bad jokes all the time, but yet you had something pertinent and germane to the story and you didn't bring it. What do you have to say for yourself, Rob? I didn't want to insert myself into somebody else's trauma. You know, it kind of timestamps me, too, as like a very specific generation. And I like to be more of like this ageless figure that kind of covers all realms of culture. And I don't want people to know that I like peaked in 2008 to 2010. Okay.

Well, we're going to go there for just a minute. So you worked there? I was a backstock coordinator in the San Francisco suburbs. It was right at the start of the recession. And I had just graduated college. And a friend of mine asked if I wanted a job. fast forward to a couple months later I was quickly promoted to

not the store manager but backstock coordinator is like manager B basically another elusive made up job title at American Apparel yes exactly and was it because you looked so good in the booty shorts or

I had probably 30 or 40 pairs of those little underwear no but really you did let's be real for a second because you did say you you met dove he was a creep he said creepy things to me. He did ask if I wanted to be his new it girl, which I don't really know what that entails. No, he did not. Come on. No, he really did. Yeah, he liked my whole thing, I guess. But he probably says, he says that to all the girls, you know. But did he make you uncomfortable? It made me more

uncomfortable the way that he talked to other women. He made some more inappropriate comments to some of my female co-workers. He came to our store only once or twice. and I think the weirdest comments he made were to this one girl who worked there who was really out of place. Honestly, I don't know why she worked there. She was very Christian and had kind of like a superiority complex about that. I didn't get along with her very well. But she was in charge of merchandising odd job for a young Christian girl to be doing store displays

for, like, a highly sexualized company. But he made some really awkward comments to her about how there were some dead flies in the window. And he said, Is that your thing? Are you some kind of bug freak? Do you like to fuck those bugs? Where do you put those bugs?

Those bugs are my bugs if they're in my store. You got to let me have them first. And she looked so uncomfortable. but, you know, I didn't like her that much, so it was kind of fun for me to see. You're part of the problem, Rob. I think so. So were you on a cult, Rob? I was not personally in a cult.

I had a fair amount of detachment from the job. You know, I just graduated college pretty recently, and I'd done some pretty cool internships before that, and I got a little bit of an unearned ego. I was ready to land some great job right at a college and start my life. but it's pretty discouraging to learn that the only job I was seemingly qualified for was barely above minimum wage in a really high cost of living area. And then at American Apparel, it kind of dangled the dream and said, if you work hard, you'll move up.

But the truth was there kind of were no jobs. Like the latter didn't really exist unless you were one of Doves girls, of course. So, you know, I looked the other way when employees were stealing, Something that Jouji didn't speak on, that's an interesting part of the American Apparel culture, was they didn't really mind shoplifting. And Dove actually mentioned a few times that we don't care if somebody's shoplifting. If they're shoplifting, they're probably the kind of people that we want wearing our clothes. So, you know, I didn't really care about my job that much. And I'd worked there for about a year and they ended up closing our store because of poor sales. It was just

completely the wrong neighborhood. They gave us one inventory gun to do inventory on the entire store, which was like 35,000 pieces of inventory. At that time, we would do overnights to do inventory. It would take 15 people from store closed to 5 a.m. to do that entire store with 15 inventory guns. So it was just like unrealistic to expect that one person could get it done in a couple of days. So I think we can safely say that the inventory wasn't accurate and a lot of people that worked there went home with a lot of free stuff. So I, you know, I had a pretty good balance of, I was never in the cult, I would say, but there were people that I worked with and around that were absolutely in the cult. We're going to let Rob process. Yeah, don't let Liz get into

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