Was I In A Cult? - [UPDATE] Jehovah’s Witnesses: “Shut Up and Be Blessed”

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

**Note: This episode originally aired in September 2021. Stick around til the end for a catch up interview with Daniel 4 years later.**With rockstar aspirations, Daniel O'Brien wasn't looking for anything but a good time. But when heartbreak rocked his world, he tripped into something that lifted his spirits and rallied his hopes - the Jehovah's Witnesses. Before he knew it, Daniel had traded his guitar for a green Bible and found himself rapidly rising through the ranks of the religion. A wife, and two kids later, he was a fully indoctrinated, high ranking Elder in the church. But when Daniel realizes that he's part of a life much different than the one he originally signed up for, he knows that he must leave. The only problem is... he can't._____FOLLOW USFor more culty content, follow us on Instagram & TikTok:→ @wasiinacultSUPPORT THE SHOWIf you believe in what we’re doing — please rate, review, and share the podcast. It helps more than you know.And if you’d like to go a step further, join us on Patreon. You’ll get ad-free episodes, bonus content, and our eternal gratitude for helping us keep these conversations going.→ Join us on Patreon.HAVE A CULTY STORY?We’d love to hear from you.→ [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. Welcome, everyone, to Was I in a cult? I'm Liz Iakousy. And I'm Tyler Meesam. Now, before we get into today's, story. A quick note, yes, this is a classic. We're dusting off a re-release, but this isn't just any old episode. Yeah, this one actually won us guys a Webby Award. It won us two Webby Awards, which are relatively prestigious, I got to say. It won us two Webby Awards and I, I'm cringing. Yes, I'm cringing saying that. You know, Liz kind of has this allergy to self-congratulation. I do. It's true. And I don't really understand where it comes from,

but I'm sure my therapist would say it's some version of a deep fear of being seen mixed with perfectionism, mixed with the whole I grew up as a girl thing where I confused confidence with arrogance or think that being assertive is somehow masculine. So, yeah, I can sit here and unpack cult trauma for hours, but can't really say, hey, I did something good, guys, without sweating through my shirt. I'm kind of seeing through this, though, Liz. I'm kind of seeing through this. What do you mean?

I mean, you kind of humble bragged. Oh, I just humble bragged about not being able to humble brag. I get it. It's a real gift, Tyler. You should, it's a gift. But one, you can always be improving on, Liz. I will. I will continue to try.

But if there is ever an episode worth risking a mild panic attack over self-promotion, this would be the one, Tyler. And I'm not just saying that because they say quefe tent in the first 10 minutes. This episode, it has been a long time. I did forget that you use the word queef tent. And you were hoping to never be reminded again. But today's episode is from our very first season. It's featuring Daniel O'Brien.

It's about his life inside and fortunately outside the Jehovah's Witnesses. It was one of our very first episodes that really, I don't know, defined what was Anacult is all about, I would say. It's funny. It's heartbreaking. It's deeply human. Liz makes a man cry. And it's not me. And because this episode resonated so much, we caught up with.

Daniel again for a little update interview to see where his life has taken him since the episode. So stick around all the way to the end for that update. I'm not going to say much here, but I will just say that what he has to share will sadly only solidify the fact that yes, absolutely without question, Jehovah's Witness is a fucking cult. C-U-L-T. Straight out of the cult dictionary. Yep. we are taking a week off because we are letting our dear editor sound mixer Rob recover and enjoy a deserved break with his loved one. But next week we will be back with, I don't know, one of, but next week.

I want to say it, Liz. Self-congratulate, say it. It might be one of the most incredible stories we've had on the show. I'm just going to say it. I mean, look, I'm going to agree with Liz. Look, so what happens with our show is usually Liz does a, you know, a three-to-four-hour interview with a subject, and then she'll dump. truck it on me and I will

go through and I will edit it and I'll take out the redundancies and all the things that aren't necessary. Cut out anything that isn't germane to the story. Cut out anything that isn't germane to the story. Which sadly means we lose beautiful moments that don't directly serve the cold narrative.

When in doubt, throw it out. Tyler hates a tangent if you didn't know. There's an art and a gift to telling stories and taking people's stories and making them better. And they are, even though the people who tell us this, I'm no, none, zero, zero. Being self-congratulatory. Look at Tyler, the man over there, being like, I'm really good

at my job. I just, I have a gift. What can I say? I'm trying to help you, Liz. I'm trying to show you how to do these things. So, anyway, look, so what happened is, Liz does an eight-hour fucking interview with this woman, Pamela Jones. dump trucked that shit right on to Tyler's laptop. And I had no idea what to cut out of it. It has everything this story. It's violent. It's raw.

It's devastating. It's got some sexy stories in it. It's got polygamy. It's got wives. It's got kids. It's got the best escape story I've ever heard. I had chills just reading it. And I did it all.

And I made it all happen. Here's a teaser that I did. But anyway, so he goes off and starts marrying all these women, and they start having babies, and I'm having a bunch of my own kids. He was engaged 11 times in the years that I was married to him, and he married five other women. He married some outside the cult and some inside the cult. Then he just brings them in, and once they marry him,

then they become God's House of Israel. So, guys, that will be coming up next week. We are going to be doing a three-parter on Pamela Jones from the LeBaron Mormon polygamy cult based in Mexico because we didn't want you guys to miss out on any of that germaneness either. But first, here's our Webby winning episode that I did. No, excuse me. Here is our multi-Webby award-winning episode. Fico Liz, you're learning already. Fine work.

I sound like a bitch, though, right? People are like, I don't know. She's so brave. Raggy. Yeah, say it like a man, Liz. Say it like a man. Do it. All right, everyone. And here is the Webby Award winning episode. In fact, we won two Webby's. In fact, oh, I'm sitting on the award right now. It's going straight up my tickets. Straight

into my taint. Oh, I kind of like the feeling of the award rubbing on my taint like any man would. Definitely men talk about their taints all the time. So you got that one right, Liz. I squeezed taint and queefedent into one intro. That alone, Warren's a webby. All right, enough, yep, and let's get to the story that I made, shall we? Guys, we already miss you.

We'll see you next week. Here you go. Listen to Daniel O'Brien's incredible story. We come from hundreds of ethnic and language backgrounds, yet we are united by common goals. Above all, we want to honor Jehovah, the God of the Bible and the creator of all things. We do our best to imitate Jesus Christ and are proud to be called Christians. Because we witness or talk about Jehovah God and His kingdom,

we are known as Jehovah's Witnesses. That passage was pulled directly from the homepage of the Jehovah's Witnesses website, J.W.org. So in your experience and point of view, what distinguishes Jehovah Witnesses as a church, or an organized religion, I should say, versus a cult? That's a really interesting question. No one joins a cult. right right who would knowingly join a cult hey we have a cult right come get fucked up nobody joins a cult you join a movement something you think's going to make the world better and make you a better

person take out your night purify me don't spill my line crucify me This is, was I in a cult? I'm your host, Tyler Meissam. And I'm equally your host, Liz Ayacuzi. You know, Liz, I don't know if you're really equal. I mean, if you're getting 80 cents to my dollar. That's what they call equal rights in our country, Tyler. Come on, Liz.

Have you been living in a hole? Or living in a cult? Living in a hole? We've reached equality, sister. Oh, right. In 2021, I now get 82 cents to your dollar. 2021 is looking out for me. It does seem more than fair, Liz.

I mean, considering the fact that... You're my assistant? Now, get me my coffee and tell us who today's guest is. Yes, ma'am. Today, we are talking to a gentleman by the name of Daniel O'Brien, an ex-Jahovas witness. And me, I personally love this story. A little man crush on him, don't you?

I mean, he's just so darned vulnerable. Take it away, Daniel. More like take it away from us. Please. I'm Daniel O'Brien. I'm here to tell my story, the journey of joining a cult, being in the cult, not knowing it's a cult, finding out that it is a cult, and then trying to figure out how the hell to get out. I was born in Beverly Hills. My father was raised as Irish Catholic.

My dad left the church, became an atheist. My mom was sort of a new-age hippie kind of spiritual person, but we never went to church. Well, even as a young child, I remember the witnesses would come by, and I was probably eight or nine. They left off some small book. My mom took it and threw it away, and that made an impression. You know, ooh, I want to know what that was. But it was a fleeting thought, because as Daniel got a bit older, his dad. Desire shifted to a much more grounded reality.

I had visions of being a rock star. I was a guitarist, and music was probably going to be my biggest passion. This was 1978, after all. How could anyone not want to be a rock star? You'd be the one to know, Tyler. I wasn't born yet. Yeah, millennial. And these two girls came by, and they were cute.

Frankly, I would have talked to them about anything. They're standing on the porch, and we just had a doorway conversation. So to me, the doctrine of Hellfire always seemed illogical. If God is supposed to be love, then why would he torture people forever? So when they said, we don't believe in Hellfire, it's like, okay, that checked a box for me. I do know the thing that really resonated with me were those ideas of an end to injustice, peace on earth, no more war. they even said you could live forever in Paradise Earth. I know I didn't buy that right away, but it's like, well, that sounds interesting.

Because the pitch for a cult is usually quite positive. You know, we want to better ourselves and better the world. Who doesn't want to do that? I don't know. Assholes, con artists, my friend, Steve, he is one self-obsessed, son of a bitch. Screw Steve. Yeah, you're right. Screw you, Steve.

I'd rather get trapped in a queef tent than hang out with Steve. Sometimes I fantasize about faking my own. death, just so I never have to talk to Steve again. Steve's not real, is he, Tyler? Can we get back to Daniel, please? Yes. They talked about an international brotherhood of peace, and that really appealed to me. So I agreed to what witnesses call a study, and they sent a man over.

His name was Bob, and Bob was Daniel's primary recruiter, sent to start the indoctrination process. A study is more or less the Jehovah's Witnesses' equivocal. to a traditional Bible study, but with a Bible that was quite different from any Daniel had ever seen before. It was different because it was green, and it didn't say Bible on it. It said, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, and it had this scrolly text. It was intriguing. So one time, he just said, let's go to the Kingdom Hall.

He had keys to it. The Kingdom Hall is their version of a church or synagogue. Today, there are over 105,000 active Kingdom Halls worldwide. We went inside. What struck me was there were no religious symbols or icons, no crosses, no images of Jesus Christ or anything. You won't find any religious symbols because witnesses don't believe in idolatry. Kingdom halls mostly resembled traditional lecture halls in an effort to promote functionality over decor. Of course, Bob was spinning this.

Our meetings aren't like a lecture or a sermon. It's more like a classroom with my interest in education. and my curiosity, I liked that. And so, slightly intrigued, Daniel dipped his toes in. So first you go to one meeting. And it's like, this is a little strange. But aside from cosmetic peculiarities, Daniel experienced more subtle oddities as well. One of them was the love bombing.

Uh, love bombing? Okay, well, you know when you first start dating someone, and on like the third date, she's like, Tyler, like, I thought you only lived in my dreams, but like you're actually here and you're here. Nope. No one's ever said that to me, Liz. Or she showers you with gifts, constantly compliments you, tells you're the one after the first time you sleep together. These are all examples of love bombing. Huge red flags. Sure. I mean, but that's a romantic relationship, Liz. What does this have to do with cults?

Cults love bomb too. Anyone can technically love bomb, but it's most commonly a symptom of narcissistic personality disorder, which arguably all cult leaders have. abusive relationships most always start with love bombing. You walk in and they hear people who you don't know, and it's like, oh, we're so glad to see you here. You don't even know me. How could you be glad to see me here? That kind of turned me off. But why is that a red flag? I mean, it just sounds like somebody really likes me.

I mean, what's wrong with that? Because it isn't real. It's just a tactic to get you, a way to make you feel dependent on the love bomber. It's a very dangerous form of emotional abuse because once they have you, they start to devalue you. It's a cycle. Idealize you, put you on a pedestal. Once they have you, they break you down. It's a way to control you. Keep you always second-guessing yourself. But Daniel said he was turned off by the love bombing. Yes, he was. But yet he kept going to services. Then something happened that put Daniel into a vulnerable state. Which is right where the cult wants you to be.

The girl I was dating at the time, we were pretty serious. She ended up cheating on me. and that was emotionally devastating. That was what flipped the switch, and that's when I started taking the religion seriously. It was the perfect storm. People are more susceptible to cults when going through a big life change, like a big move or a divorce, losing a job.

Yeah, because when you're going through a life change, it temporarily leaves you in a highly vulnerable state. Therefore, you're much more willing to turn to someone or something to help you get out of that vulnerable state. So for Daniel, heartbreak was the thing. thing that sent him deeper into the religion, searching for answers to help mend his pain. So it was in 1984 at Dodger Stadium that I was baptized as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. At the very young age of 23.

From as early as 1971, you know, close to 50,000 members would gather at Dodger Stadium to witness the baptism. Literally, they were watching. I get it. You're using it for witnesses. Got it. You're overselling. Sorry. They would witness the baptism of about 1,500 new members and ministers.

Yeah. In fact, two huge portable pools were set up right on the field for the event. And after the baptisms, they'd celebrate with a huge group pool party. Of course, it was B-Y-O-B. Bring your own Bible. Green Bible, that is. Bitches. All right.

So Daniel had a new religion. and life assuredly is just going to get better. Right? Right, Liz? So my days of wild nights are few and far between these days and for good reason. Not even wild nights, Tyler. Nights where just, you know, a glass of wine might be nice. I'd wake up feeling not like.

like I used to. Let me tell you that. Which is why, solution forthcoming, Liz. We have a new sponsor. We're excited about. They're called into cloud. Like up into club, but you're up into cloud, which is how I actually felt the first time I tried one of their gummies. I was definitely, definitely not after a wild night. In fact, quite the opposite.

I just wanted some peace and quiet to relax without a toddler yelling, but mama in my ear over and over and over and one gummy later. I slept like I had in the months. That's right. Into cloud. It's your online dispensary for gummies, flour, pre-rolls, all federally legal, lab tested, ship discreetly. They have a ton of cool stuff.

They have like vape. I think it's funny to hear you call weed flour. Is that what it's called? Instead of weed. Cool kids call it flower. Flower. I didn't know that. Doing an ad about flour, you learned about flour.

They've got options for sleep, stress, just taking the edge of, off without the next day fog, which who doesn't want that? Right. And since my days of being up into club are long behind me. Did you ever have days of being up into club, Tyler? No, no. It was more like being in the Mickey Mouse Club or the clubhouse, which I was when I was a kid, which was nice, but now I'm up into cloud. I'm sleeping deeply, waking up feeling refreshed. Now that is a wild night. I am after. So, listeners, if you're over 21, go to Indocloud.com.

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Code in occult. 40% off guys, free shipping and a little extra breathing room for you. Our dear listeners. As always, please enjoy it responsibly, and thanks to Inda Cloud for sponsoring today's episode. Now, everybody say, ah. Ah. Grab a coffee and discover non-stop action with Bud MGM Casino.

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Please play a response. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531, 2,600, to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. So now Daniel is baptized and heartbroken. A lethal combination. However, the dogma of his new church begins to lift his spirits. It was feeling part of something, feeling like you're making a difference in the world, you're just hooked. At that point, witnesses had a lot of meetings.

Five meetings a week, two of them were back to back. On Sunday, there would be what's called a public talk. That would be followed by the Watchtower study, where the congregation participated in the indoctrination set. Then they would have what's called a book study midweek, and that was in someone's home. They also midweek had another pair of meetings, the so-called service meeting and Theocratic Ministry School paired with that service meeting. Saturday morning's knocking on doors, Sunday morning meetings. And with that many meetings a week, it's no surprise he started to conform. No one really had to say anything to me. You know, look at the pictures in their

publications. It was very noticeable the difference in their dress and their grooming and hairstyles, and so I started making these changes. I was still playing in bands. I had long hair. I was a rocker. As time went on, I started cutting my hair shorter. Long hair was a no-no in the church, as were beards. Your flowing locks would have to go, Tyler. Sigh. You never had a beard for a dumb reason that goes back about a hundred years to one of their early leaders who apparently couldn't grow a beard and was jealous of his predecessor's beard. Beard envy. Witnesses don't have beards. The Jehovah's Witnesses were started by a man named Charles Taze Russell, also known as Pastor Russell.

He was an American Christian Restorationist Minister from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. What's a Christian restorationist? I mean, it's exactly what it sounds like. A belief that Christianity should be restored to its purest forms. That's today's dose of irony for you. Pastor Russell founded what is now known as the Bible study. movement, and after he died in 1916, Jehovah's Witnesses developed from this movement. He was convinced the end times would come in 1914.

106 years later, we know that's not true. The church is a basic Christian faith with standard Christian beliefs. The basic one is there is one true God, Jehovah. Some people say it probably should be pronounced Yahweh. They don't believe in the Trinity. They believe Jesus did come to earth. He did all the things that are in the Gospels and that he died as a ransom sacrifice for our sins that we could have everlasting life. But they also believe that heaven is like a hot new dance club with limited capacity.

Some few people, 144,000, will have the opportunity to go and to reign in heaven with Christ. Ah, there it is, the ubiquitous chosen one theory that's part of every cult's dogma. It's a field day for the ego. I choose you, Tyler. I do not choose your friend, Steve, but I do choose you. Interestingly, some of them could be women, because once they die and are transformed, they are like angels, whatever that means, but now they're sexless and don't have a penis or a vagina. It doesn't matter.

Make of that what you will. Just a bunch of winged Barbie and Kendall's flying around. Yep, that's the Jehovah Witness Heaven. But it doesn't take much to get kicked out. If a person commits a sin, quote unquote, and the elders find out about it, that person will be disfellowshiped. There will be a quick announcement by one of the elders to the congregation. As that switch gets flipped, suddenly all your family, all your former friends will not talk to you. It's devastating emotionally, as you can imagine.

So in order to avoid the painful existence where his loved ones turned on him, he committed to a sin-free life. You can get kicked out for smoking, for being drunk, engaging in pornography, for having premarital sex. The list is long. It's many pages. If you join the military, if you celebrate holidays, witnesses don't celebrate birthdays, by the way. If you owned a gun, if you practice martial arts, you. If you went to another religious service, you would get kicked out. You were forbidden to go on the Internet except for the Watchtower official site.

Oh, you can't watch R-8 at movies. And you can't listen to rock and roll. I did purge some of my albums. I know I got rid of some of my Black Sabbath albums, but I kept all of my Led Zeppelin albums. I just wasn't going to get rid of those. Smart move. I, myself, would trade Eternal Salvation for the Houses of the Holy Album. And like many cults, Daniel felt the pressure to isolate, and he would only mingle with those of his own faith.

You're discouraged from forming friendships outside of that. They're part of Satan's world, and I don't know if you're aware of this. But Joseph's witnesses are very anti-education, extremely anti-education. They say things like, this is Satan's system of things, Satan runs everything except for their religion. As you can imagine, with their anti-education stance, a lot of witnesses are not very educated. And I have nothing against most individual witnesses. They're just good, honest, decent people who joined a movement, something that they thought was going to make the world a better place. But they lost all their critical thinking skills, and very few of them are highly educated.

When Daniel first got involved, he was going to college, which meant that he was braided. the rules. So I couldn't go to school. But cults will find a way to manipulate you one way or another, and one way they do that is by playing into your interests. You see, the witnesses have a ministry school that taught the tenets of the faith. And some of the people in the church knew Daniels' desire for education and to be a teacher. So...

When I was asked if I would like to conduct the school, I jumped at the opportunity, and I tried to make it a school. And by that, he means he tried to teach with constructive criticism. But as time went on... The Watchtower leadership changed some of the rules, and they made it less and less and less like a school. Daniel is referring to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, which is a non-profit corporation that is essentially Jehovah's Witnesses headquarters. It's located in Warwick, New York. The Society, as members call it, is used to support the church's worldwide work, which includes publishing Bibles and

magazines such as Awake and The Watchtower. Full name, the Watchtower announcing Jehovah's Kingdom. That rolls off the tongue. The society is members by way of invite only. And the members assist the governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses. And like many cults, there is a hierarchy within this governing body. Jehovah Witnesses' founder, Charles Taze Russell, died in 1916. But that doesn't mean his dogma doesn't live on.

If we had to assign a cult leader to this particular group today, it would collectively be the leaders at the watchtower. As they have the power to reform the rules. For instance, you used to be able to tell somebody if there was something they needed to work on, some public speaking technique, like using illustrations or following an outline that was coherent. They started taking those things away and said,

you know what? You can't tell anybody they need to work on anything anymore. Which was extremely frustrating to Daniel, because essentially he wasn't doing any teaching. He was just placating. Because in reality, the school wasn't a place to learn. It was a place to further indoctrinate people. And what exactly did the school claim to teach, Liz?

I was curious about that, too, Tyler. So I went on their website. And this is what's written verbatim about becoming a student at the school. Okay. With a view to helping you improve in your ability to use your God-given gifts to praise Jehovah,

we welcome you as a student in the Theocratic Ministry School. As you participate, you will be helped to cultivate such valuable skills as personal reading, listening, and remembering, studying, doing research, analyzing, and organizing, conversing, answering questions, and putting thoughts down in writing. I am going to take every one of those classes because I need to improve my personal reading. I need to improve my remembering skills. This next section really brings it home.

Bring it home. Make wise use of this textbook titled, Benefit from Theocratic Ministry School Education. That's a Chinese translation. That's a real title. It's a real title. Then it says, this textbook is also a workbook. When you read in it, important points that you feel will help you underline them. Yep.

Well, now I understand why. eyewitnesses condemn proper education. I mean, God forbid, they learn how to write good, der. Derek Zoolander would really appreciate this school. Just learn how to write gooder. All right. So back to Daniel. Yes. He was given a position at this school. Of course, it's something that only men can do in the religion. Women can have no position of authority or what they would call even teaching. Oh, really? I was going to say that it sounds like a woman wrote that inspiring copy. Oh, no, Liz. That was a man. who wrote those transformational words.

Surprising. Also surprising, or not, is the rampant misogyny inherent in the religion? As Daniel said, it's a patriarchal environment, and the Watchtower quotes directly from 1st Corinthians chapter 11, verse 3, the head of every man is the Christ. The head of every woman is a man.

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Start your risk-free greenlight trial today at greenlight.com slash cult. That is greenlight.com slash cult. Again, greenlight.com slash cold. So they have all these strange rules, you know, about head coverings, and it's just really bizarre. And yes, women do have to be okay with it, although often they're not. Sadly, a common thread of many cults is that women are often left powerless and are somehow manipulated to fit an antiquated, wildly sexist, of view of how women should exist, which, of course, is in the kitchen.

Right, of course. Daniel was running the school, but naturally he wasn't being paid to run the school, so he had to make a living somehow. During that time, I started my own music production business and started writing music commercially, did a few low-budget films, worked for CBS for a couple of years. You'll tell your age if you remember Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, so I did music for that TV show, and that actually made me quite a bit of money. You couldn't turn on CBS without hearing music that I either wrote, produced, or all of the above. And it's like, yes, I love this. But I got a lot of pressure because the cult is always promoting, you just need to serve Jehovah, go to the meetings, pray more, read the Bible, go what they call witnessing, going door-to-door

proselytizing. So I got all this negative pressure. Okay, to recap, outside world bad, inside world, good. But Daniel kept his faith at full tilt, despite his secret penchant for listening to when the levy breaks. And he started to garner the attention of some of the leaders. You get just pulled in further and further in 91 of August. Two elders pulled me aside and said, we had a meeting and your name came up and it was recommended for you to be an elder. Elders are overseers within the congregation. And as Daniel mentioned, it's an appointed position, creating a false sense of honor. Becoming an elder just gets you in deeper and deeper, moving you further away from the life you once knew.

And it just eats up your life. You're going to five minutes a week. Conducting the Theocratic Ministry School. I had to read all the curriculum and all the points of counsel. I was also the person who arranged the public speakers that would come in every Sunday. You're supposed to study with your wife, study with your children. You're supposed to go knock on doors at least 10 hours a month. or they'll take these privileges away from you.

And then an auspicious moment happened that would seal Daniel's fate, whether he wanted it to or not. I met a young woman. We dated, fell in love, since premarital sex is a no-no, and you're young and horny, and you want to move things along quickly. We met in May. We're engaged in August and married by February. We had our first son in 1991, and our second, three years later.

We had these exquisite kids, and you get all dressed up, you go to the meetings. People always point us out as an example, not knowing the real serious problems we had. The whole time we were married, Tracy, dealt with debilitating depression. She was raised in this religion, and that really, no doubt, is the case. cause of her depression. She would not get help for it because witnesses not only are anti-education, they're anti-psychologists or psychiatrists or any kind of mental health professional. If you think every bad person is going to die at Armageddon, which in Witness Theology is 99.9% of the Earth's population. And you know that deep down, you're not the good witness that you could and

should be. You think you're going to die at Armageddon, too. And so, Tracy, she always thought, if Armageddon came today, she's probably dead. And I think many, many witnesses suffer from that. But that's the way that cults like to control people. You're never good enough. Despite his many time-sucking responsibilities at the congregation, along with raising two kids, Daniel still had to make a living. And since he couldn't make music any longer.

taught film scoring. I was also an editor for a now-defunct film music magazine. I started actually teaching at a local elementary school. I was the band director. But despite his hard work ethic, six part-time jobs, and I wasn't making enough money, I was going crazy. So I opened a music store. We bought and sold, new and used instruments. It was pretty great. When things fell into place to open that store, I thought, Jehovah's blessing me. I'm the golden child, right? God was blessing me. I I've working hard, things are falling out of place. But Jehovah, or Yahweh, wasn't just going to keep this lucky street going now, was he? The two best days of your life for the day you open the business and the day you close it.

The writing was on the wall. That business was going to close and we were going to go bankrupt. And that's when Daniel first began to question things. That was kind of a crisis of faith. Like, what? What did I do wrong? Well, Jehovah wasn't blessed me in the first place, and I didn't do anything wrong. That's just life, right?

It now gave me time to finally go to college and get my teaching credential. And this was the biggest gift he could give himself, because while he was at school, he started learning about his religion. And I started finding out a lot of things that were really mind-blowing. He discovered that the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, Charles Taze Russell, had purchased dilapidated buildings in Brooklyn. in the late 1800s. The leadership had held onto these properties for over 100 years, but... They sold them all a few years ago for billions.

And as most people know, religious organizations don't have to pay taxes. They've built a compound for the people who are the leadership now, and they're all living in upstate New York, like kings in this palatial compound. And technically, every local kingdom hall around the world, that main organization,

owns that property. So it's a huge real estate business. It's big money. But there were more issues to be discovered that, let's just say, we're a bit darker than simply real estate. In kind of the late 80s, when it was coming out about the Catholic Church, I remember we would wag our fingers and click our tongues, and we would say, aren't we glad we're not like them? Well, it started coming out that the organization has a very large problem with pedophiles in their ranks. A few years ago, there was a commission, a royal commission in Australia, and they found that over a 60-year period, there had been in the files, in the congregation files of Jehovah's Witnesses, over 1,000 people who had been identified as pedophiles

and abusing members of the congregation. Of that over 1,000 individuals, guess how many were reported to the authorities by the congregation? Zero. Not one. Not one. Because it will bring shame and reproach on the organization, the elders are instructed to do things to cover it up. I have a number of regrets about being in this organization, but I'm glad to say that isn't one of them. I never was involved in any of those situations.

And the more I found out, it's like, this religion is not what it claims to be. It is not the true religion. But it takes time for the awakening to happen. After all, he had been in for 16 years at this point. So he kept up his elderly duties. And then... One day I'm out in the witnessing work, as they call it. And there was an older woman in the congregation, and she had two kids at the time.

And totally unsolicited. out of the blue, she says, Danny, if I have to step over my daughter's dead body at Armageddon to get into paradise, I will step on her. And I remember thinking at that time, I'm in a fucking cult. There it is.

His aha moment, the point of no return. You would think, but his family and entire life was all about Jehovah. So... You know, you know, you stuffed those feelings away. But one day, shortly thereafter, Daniel's wife showed him a decades-old article from a witness magazine, ironically titled, Awake. Awake!

Ding, ding, ding. For those who care, the May 22nd, 1969, Awake, the title of the article is, What Future for the Young? And here's the quote that she shared with me. If you were a young person, you need to face the fact that you will never grow old in this present system of things. you'll never graduate high school, you'll never go to college, you'll never have a career, you'll never have children, because Armageddon's coming and you're going to survive it and you're going to live forever on Paradise Earth. I couldn't believe it, but there it was in black and white. Clearly what they said wasn't true. That was the first domino that got things moving. There was the beginning of the end for my belief in that religion. And finally, the messaging was too loud for him to ignore. I went to tell Tracy about this. and she literally put her hands over her head,

turned her back and walked away and said, I'm not listening to this. That's the thing about cult control is that you can't even make your wife see the light. That's the trouble with black and white thinking in general, Tyler. When you have no room for even the slightest possibility of another truth, it can destroy relationships. I ended up starting to sleep on the couch.

We ended up having essentially a celibate marriage. So now Daniel is stuck between a rock and a hard place, sleeping on the couch, dealing with a family who won't listen to him when he tries to share his newfound clarity. Every scenario I rent ends up with, I'm not in that religion and we are divorced because I couldn't stay in that religion

and she's never going to leave it because she has so many family members in it. If you're single, you can just quit going and fade away and don't let them talk to you. That's the best way. If you have a family, they can use that lever over you as they do. I started gradually thinking, how can I just get out with my kids? Because this marriage obviously is going to happen.

Being the dutiful father and husband that he was, Daniel stayed, hoping that one day his wife and children would see the light like he did. But it would take years of living a lie before he could find his freedom. I was always trying to pretend I was someone I wasn't. I still served as an elder. I kept up the facade, but it was difficult. Untangling the knot of how you end up getting to be involved in a cult like this is really difficult, and it takes a lot of work. It must have been like 2007. I was in a meeting with the other elders, and we got a letter from the Watchtower Bible and Tracks Society, once again, clamping down more on education.

Basically, they said that if anyone pursues higher education or sends their kids to college, they can't be an elder. I just got my teaching credential like a couple of months ago. If this letter had come out three months ago, I would have been forced to not get a diploma that I've worked for decades to get because of a change in policy. By now, I was ready to leave. He may have been ready, but his kids were not. Well, I kept telling myself I was going to hang on until Andrew and Connor both graduated from high school. And I almost made it. So here's the part that I'm not particularly proud of, but this is what happened.

So for the last six or seven years, I was basically in a celibate marriage with my ex, I was sleeping on the couch. I was still a young and healthy man going to college and seeing all these beautiful people. there were a lot of temptations, but I resisted them. One day, I happened to be in line behind a woman. We started talking, we were flirting, I got her number, we started a friendship. Well, one thing led to another and our relationship became intimate. It probably would have been better if I just moved out and didn't have a relationship, or if I had the relationship that I kept it secret. But one of the problems,

being indoctrinated as a witness for so long, I was torn up with this guilt about I'm living a double life and I'm lying, I'm not being who I am, and I just, I didn't want to be fake anymore. I wanted to be who I was. So I went and told the elders about my sexual relationship and a few days later, it was announced that I was no longer one of Jehovah's Witnesses,

and that was it. In one short sentence, My relationships with all my friends and my kids was ended. I wish there would have been a way that I could have figured out how to maintain a relationship with my sons, even if I hadn't gone to the elders, and just said, I'm resigning as an elder, I'm moving out, and if they asked me why, I would say it's none of your business. And if they asked me again, I'd say it's none of your goddamn business. It's interesting because, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you couldn't leave your children.

Right? Like, how could you leave your sons? So, on some subconscious level, perhaps, you told the elders because you knew you'd get kicked out. But that way, you don't have to be the one to leave because how do you leave your kids? I need to take a break. Yeah. I just broke my glasses I'm sorry I don't know

I ever thought that I never thought of consciously Yeah Probably that Take your time yeah So this is all So this is all still rolling right Yeah

Well That's an interesting idea, right? I never thought that in that way explicitly, but, you know, maybe on some subconscious level. How do you leave? You can't. Tyler, could you? I mean, you have two kids.

Could you leave your children in exchange for your freedom? Absolutely not. Exactly. So instead, he got disfellowshiped, and this backfires in the exact horrible. horrifying way you might imagine. My sons wouldn't talk to me because I was just fellowship. So he does what any good father would do.

He fights for his family and tries to get reinstated. Diving straight back into the lion's mouth. So for four years, I went to every single meeting, not believing any of it anymore, going through these humiliating sessions, all in a vain attempt to reunite with my children. Four whole years. did this. Daniel voluntarily handcuffed his soul in an effort to win back his sons. So what would happen in these meetings? You're listening to this now what you consider bullshit, right? Yeah, total. Not just bullshit, but total bullshit. Let's be clear. Right. Let's be

very clear. Yeah, and now I had to pretend. It was like going undercover. Yeah. So by this time, I had long since gotten my college degree, and so I'd learned more critical thinking skills, and I would look for anything that was propaganda, anything that was misleading, and I would highlight them. Jova's Witnesses are very proud of their highlighters. One of the elders made a comment that he noticed how much I studied to prepare for meetings because my magazines, I had multiple colors and notes, and what he didn't realize is that I was making notes of all the false and most leading statements.

Interestingly, the last meeting I ever went to was sometime in January of 2014, and this was read to every congregation on earth in that week. All of us must be ready to obey any instructions we may receive from the Watchtower Bible and Tracks Society, whether these appear sound from a strategic or human standpoint or not. All of us need to be ready to obey, even if what we're told makes absolutely no sense. And that is a direct quote. For a religion that claims to be the truth, it's not about truth at all. It's about sit down, shut the fuck up, listen to the rules, know your place, and be blessed. So I knew I would never go again after that. And so seven years later, after the very first realization that he was indeed in a cult,

he finally left once and for all. because he realized that sadly you can't force anyone out of a cult, not even your own children. I left the religion and began my relationship with Cotty. This is the woman he met in college. And Daniel, he started to rebuild his life. So I started teaching, I was the band director at Oak Park High School. I still write music a lot. I recently took up martial arts, which is forbidden to Jehovah's Witnesses.

It's good for my mental discipline, my physical discipline. And it's a big fuck you to the Watchtower Violent Tracks Society. And if they have a problem with that, they should bind their own business because now I am lethal. Today, Daniel is a beloved teacher at California's Oak Park Independent School and revels in giving constructive criticism and encouraging critical thought. He is also happily remarried. Turns out he and Cotty were meant to be, and they tied the knot in 2011. Daniel left Jehovah's Witnesses over 13 years ago. Yet sadly, his children have not.

And to this day, his sons won't speak to him. One of his sons lives only two blocks from him, yet he still refuses to acknowledge Daniel's existence. Andrews married. They were married six years ago. I wasn't invited to the wedding. He actually discovered his own son was getting married from one of his students. I found out about the wedding registry and bought them, a set of pots and pans.

About a week later, it showed up on my porch with an incomprehensible note from my son. I mean, they were English words, and Andrew's intelligent, but it made no sense. He was probably so angry when he wrote it. Yet, with all of the rejection, Daniel still tries, even after all of these years. Every year on their anniversary, I send them a card, and this year I got the anniversary card back, It had been opened, so they obviously read it, and Andrew had written on the outside of it not just returned to sender,

but he wrote spam and big letters with a Sharpie, like the post office cares. I would love to have conversations with my kids. I'd still talk to my ex-wife if I could. They're the ones that block phone numbers, that don't respond to emails. My son Andrew even changed his phone number, so I couldn't call him anymore.

I don't give up hope, but every day it gets a little less likely. Maybe something will happen eventually and Andrew or Connor will one day wake up. People often say that one of the hardest things about leaving a cult is the discovery, that the friendships they cultivated inside of the cult weren't real.

Apparently I was better at teaching them beliefs than I was at teaching them what real unconditional love is because all this love bombing, it's also fake and bullshit because if someone can say someone is no longer a Jehovah's Witness and suddenly all your relationships are instantly over, then that wasn't love. And it's understandably painful losing those relationships.

But for Daniel, what he has now is something he can trust, which is worth its weight and gold. Now I have friendships with people who love me for who I am rather than what I used to believe. And that's huge. My last question, let's say you go home today and those two girls that knocked on your door ever many years ago were to knock on your door today,

what would you say to them? Are you still in that fucking cult? You can edit that one out. I would try and patiently and kindly help them to see that, In fact, the group there with is not, in fact, the one true religion and that, in fact, it is a destructive group, and it's harmful. I still believe in the ideals. I think it would be nice if diseases could be cured.

I think it would be nice if there could be an end to crime and violence and warfare. I don't see them happening. They're certainly not going to come about from any cult, in particular Jehovah's Witnesses. But that doesn't mean I want to give up. That's one of the things I found so damn infuriating about that religion is that one of the things they say is read your Bible, study your watchtower, go to meetings. It's so passive. That's depressing to see injustice in the world and to just wait and do nothing rather than doing something. And funny, I didn't think this would be a hard part to get through.

Doing nothing is unacceptable. Jehovah's not going to do it. It's up to us. It really is up to us. One of my students once asked me, so how are you going to change the world, Mr. O'Brien? And I said, through you, you are my superpower.

A lover. Thank you, Daniel. Quite a story. Thank you for sharing it with us. In summation, Liz, Daniel, was he in a cult? I'd say most definitely. What about you? What do you think?

Yes, affirmative. Jehovah's Witnesses? Very cult. Very cult. Capital cult. Ding, ding, ding. Here we are again. Good to see you, Liz.

So great to see you. I'm excited. We do these interviews, and then you go off on your life, and I go off and do a million other interviews and stories. But everybody's story I always cherish, and it always affects me, and it stays with me, and I always wonder. What's going on now? So we are re-releasing your episode this week.

It did win us an award. A webby, right? A webby. Two webbies, Tyler corrected me on, which is true. It's because I made you cry, I think. Oh, usually I'm the one making someone cry. So I guess I deserve that. Why are you making people cry?

I'm a teacher. That's my job. I'm a high school teacher. For everybody listening, he is in his classroom currently doing this on his little break. So appreciate you taking the time. And I guess the one thing everybody would want to know is about your sons and what's evolved since we spoke. Well, yes. Okay. It's been five years almost since we did that interview. And sadly, in that amount of time, even though I've continued to reach out and try to make whatever efforts I can, I wish I could report things are different,

but they're not. My Angerson Connor has moved to Arkansas, where I understand he's a barber. I did send him a brief little card there to the barbershop where he works. He didn't acknowledge it. I can only assume that he got it. You know, mail works there. The last time he and I talked was winding down a family business partnership that we had. We met in a park. This was about three years ago. And he shared with me that he actually listened to this podcast. I was shocked. How did he get it? I asked him that. And he wouldn't tell me. Because I'm surprised. He, of course, did a great exception to the fact that I called his religion a cult. And I said, well, I can understand why that would maybe be hard for you to hear. But that's what I now believe it is. But I did say to him, and I hope this is a seed that will someday bear fruit. I said, well, Connor, you're not old enough to appreciate this. But as you get older, you all realize that sometimes we believe things in our life that as we get older, more life experience, more knowledge. We realize what we thought was true before, we realize this. So would you have me to continue to pretend to believe something that I no longer believe in it, that I no longer think is true?

And he just got really quiet. So I think that's the seed. When people get out, they always can harken back or point back to like a seed that gets planted, right? Something that sticks with them. Now, however long it takes to get out is however long it takes. However long it takes. And it's a journey for everybody. But I would be very honored if that episode was his seed.

Me too. But I've had other people reach out to me about that, that they heard it and somehow they found me my email or whatever online. And they said, we listened to that. And it was really powerful. It's interesting in the years since we've done that, that was really a turning point for me. I feel like the whole cult experience, it never goes away. It's never totally in your river mirror, but it gets farther and farther away. And it's just always there, but it's not as painful. It's not as difficult, but it is there. I know there have been some changes in the religion. When I was there, you couldn't have a beard. And so, you know, one of the things, of course, I did after I left was grow a beard. I happen to like it. They've changed the religion that women are allowed to wear pants out when they're going door to door proselytizing. I thought, if you need someone else to tell you, you can grow a beard or wear pants or say hi to somebody, you're in a cult.

ding ding ding i know right anyways um so you ask about both both my sons i have an older son andrew conner's in his early 30s andrew is in his middle 30s andrew lives about a block from me and i literally drive by his house a couple times a week just going to the store or whatever anyways we haven't had any kind of meaningful dialogue or conversation in the whole 16 years since i left So a couple of weeks ago, almost a month now, my father passed away. He was 92, so it was not unexpected. And we had a memorial service for him two weeks ago. And at the memorial service, there was a lot of family, a lot of friends who were about 70 people. I had seen on the RSVP list that my son Andrew said he was going to go. And so I had very mixed feelings about it. It was at a yacht club in Marina del Rey in Southern California. We pull in the parking lot, and as we're walking in, a red car pulls into the valet place right in front of us, and this tall, beautiful, young black woman gets out. And I've never met Liam, his wife, but I've seen pictures ever. In fact, I have a picture of her on my bookshelf right next to me, so I know what she looks like. And then this guy gets out of the car, and that can't possibly be my son. And I can only see him from behind. And I haven't spent time with him in 16 years. He was a high schooler last time I saw.

How old now? About 34. Anyways, so they walk in front of us, and I don't know if he saw me or not, but they walked off to the side. My wife and I went to the door, I opened the door. I turned to them, and I motioned them, hey, come on in. And he wouldn't make eye contact with me. We walked in, and I saw Andrew and Leah come in and go upstairs where the memorial was, and I saw them talking to a few people, my siblings, the three younger ones.

And everybody sat down, and I looked around, and it's like, they're not here anymore. And so I can text Leah, like if there's a fire and we have them here in Southern California or the power goes out or something, almost always, 95% of the time she'll acknowledge it. Like, thank you. Yes, we're fine. Whatever. Andrew just blocked my phone, so I can't even possibly reach him. And so I took a chance and I texted her. Did you guys leave? And she said, yeah, we had to go. And I said, I was really looking forward, hoping maybe I could actually meet you. And she said, well, it was nice to see you from afar. And that was it. And it's like, so I can only speculate he got there. And maybe it was just too emotionally difficult for him to be in the same room with me, which as a father sounds pretty damn hard to say. I don't know. And do you still have hope that you'll one day have a relationship again with that? That's a difficult question. I think of them often. I do have hope. I wrote an essay on hope that's pretty dark a few years ago. But my conclusion was that hope is something that only exists where there's fear.

If we have no fear, we don't need hope, right? So, and there's like that old saying, I probably will misquote it, Dante's Inferno, abandon hope, all ye who enter here. So I'm not saying I should give up hope or any of us who's in a similar situation should give up hope, but I think we have to be realistic. It's an emotion we hang on to because we're afraid of what might happen. I'll never see him again. In the 16 years since I left the cult every year,

I have sent Andrew a birthday card on his birthday. Every year, for 15 years, he wrote on the outside of it, not at this address, returned a sender, which we can guess the message he thought he was sending to me, but at least I know he saw it. He didn't open them. They were all unopened, and I have saved everyone. This year, he didn't send it back.

Here, too, I did a gay list. I didn't want to make you cry at school in the middle of the day at school. Yeah, let's let's be my job. Maybe he opened it this time and kept it. One could only hope. You know, I don't know, but I sent it. That's all I can do. What if they did listen to this episode again?

And you just got an opportunity to, there's no. No audience. I'm not here. They're standing in front of you. What do you want to say to your boys? I should have known you were going to ask me that because he asked me that last time too when I wasn't prepared. It's not prepared. Probably the same thing. Andrew, Connor, I love you, I miss you. I know it's been hard for you to wrap your head around and understand a lot of the things that happened. I know a lot of things have happened in your lives and to you, but I've heard about some of the challenges that you've had to deal with it. I would have loved to have been there to support you and comfort you. I would have been there 100% had I been able to. If you can ever

in your heart find it to forgive me, not for me, but for you, beautiful things can happen. I hope to hear this. I hope so too, but there's that hope thing. You have so much to give. You're an amazing dad and you're an amazing man and you help so many. people. And I'm going to say not hope. I'm going to say, I know your kids will come to that realization. Thank you, Liz. I can't say when, but I know they will. I look forward to that day. I'm sorry to bring all this up. I hope it was. No apologies are necessary. Here's the thing. It's been 16 years. It's been almost five years since you and I talked. I rarely get emotional about it anymore, but obviously it's still there. Thank you for sharing and updating. You're welcome.

It's good to be part of this. And from what you've told me, a lot of people listen to this and your other podcasts as well. I listen to quite a few of them too. Interesting about Colts is they all seem so different on the surface, but underneath the hood, they're all pretty much the same damn thing. Skeleton is all the same. Yep. It's all about control. That is it. All right. Thank you. You will die in seven days. Scream. And from dusk till dawn.

This is my kind of place. And don't miss the man-made nightmares in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or the world ending chaos in 28 days later. There's something in the blood. All the scares. All for free. Pluto TV. Stream now.

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