Shiny Happy Warrior: Lindsey Williams on the IBLP

[00:00:00] This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical or mental health advice. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast and are not intended to malign any religion group, club, organization, business,

[00:00:13] individual, anyone or anything. I'm Sarah Edmondson. And I'm Anthony, air quotes Nippy Ames. This is A Little Bit Culty. A podcast about what happens when things that seem like a great thing at first go bad.

[00:00:36] Every week we chat with survivors, experts and whistleblowers for real cult stories told directly by the people who lived through them. Because we want you to learn a few things we've had to learn the hard way.

[00:00:46] Like if you think you're too smart to get sucked into something culty, you're already prime recruitment material. You might even already be in a cult. Oops, you better keep listening to find out. Welcome to season six of A Little Bit Culty. Welcome back to our regular programming.

[00:01:20] Thanks for sticking with us as we navigate the murky waters. Season six is on its way. It sure is. And we've really been enjoying the conversation. Nippy and I were just talking about how one of the challenges with cults and groups

[00:01:34] where they tend to stay in their own little echo chamber of beliefs. What is great about this community is that we can have different beliefs, which is awesome if you look at the conversation regarding our guest from last week, Dr. Shafali. But normally we're right.

[00:01:48] I mean, obviously we're right. Nobody needs to be right. No, it's actually really interesting. 90 percent, I'd say, found the conversation helpful. 10 percent didn't totally fine. And our goal is not to have one way of thinking, which I think is a problem.

[00:02:03] And one of the things I'm very clear about right now is that I don't want to just, for lack of a better word, preach to the converted. I want to reach people who really need these red flags and need this education.

[00:02:16] So if I'm going to be in front of people who are still open to personal development and still open to transformation and to evolve themselves and all those things, I want to be in that conversation.

[00:02:28] I don't want to shut those people out and say we throw it all out. So maybe out with the bathwater. Guess what? It's not always going to be smooth. No. It's not always going to be clean. And sometimes it's going to be messy. People are going to disagree.

[00:02:39] Yeah, people are going to disagree, which is totally fine. And we're going to make mistakes. And one of the things I wish that I had said in the moment of the conversation when Dr. Shafali was talking about bringing that woman on stage

[00:02:48] who was not happy with the retreat. There was this distinction that I wanted to make there, which is I think it's really unhealthy. And we saw this a lot in Nexium, when people are kind of shamed regarding their reactions or it's just their reactions or just their projections,

[00:03:02] which is sort of a gaslighting thing that can happen a lot in this industry. When a leader or something gets feedback, they say, well, that's just their projection. There may be a projection there and there may be feedback from the person. Could be both.

[00:03:15] It's not one or the other. So two things I wanted to address that like her concerns may have been valid and it wouldn't necessarily, it might not have been appropriate to put the person on stage to address it publicly.

[00:03:26] One of the reasons I didn't address it in the moment is because I had read her book, Radical Awakening, and I had heard her discuss this story already. And part of that discussion was that it was an invitation to the woman to come on stage.

[00:03:38] She didn't like force the person to come up on stage otherwise she wouldn't get her money back, which would have been more problematic. Well, like there's a Tony Robbins where? Yeah, that there's a Tony Robbins story about this.

[00:03:47] It's in his documentary that he produced, I'm Not Your Guru. Which is a whole other episode we should probably talk about. Not right now. Not right now. But my point is, is that I got a couple of messages about that

[00:03:58] and I wanted to say that that didn't, that wasn't lost on me. And I guess I, you know, even though not everyone loved the episode, I also got a lot of private messages from people saying how helpful it was for them for different reasons.

[00:04:10] And I just think it's really interesting that somebody can say, wow, that really moved me and somebody else can say, nope, not for me. And we go great. And I kind of agree with both. Yeah. It's called a civil discourse.

[00:04:19] It's called a civil discourse and reminder, if it's not civil, it will be addressed because we really want to create a safe community where people can have these conversations. And guess what? Nippy, not so much. I'm still on the seeking path specifically regarding being a better parent

[00:04:32] and like wanting to address some of my core wounds. I hate that word, but, you know. Nippy, not so much. Well, you're not like a big seeker. You don't, you don't like, you don't identify as being a seeker. Yeah. Right? I self clean.

[00:04:46] Nippy was more of a self cleaning oven. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that about Nippy. Well, I mean, pretty obvious when I, I go from zero to 10. So. And then he comes back and Nippy, have we talked about it? Nippy, apologize? Pretty sure we've done this.

[00:04:59] Nippy's version of an apology. I think we talk about it in our episode with Jamie Mahler, which hasn't dropped yet. It comes in a couple of weeks. Nippy's, should we save it for then? No, you can tell. Nippy's version of an apology as he comes in,

[00:05:12] he looks at me in a loving way and he goes, have you thought about your behavior? Because I've thought about mine. It's just, there's, it's a character that Nippy plays. Nippy's also, we're just debating if Nippy should be the cornbread cowboy for Halloween.

[00:05:26] Which is less known, but like, I think me being cornbread cowboy, if you look at him on Instagram, he's just this kind of redneck guy who's just funny as shit. Nippy loves it. Like it's just funny. But I think that Nippy should be baby Billy. Baby Billy.

[00:05:39] Baby Billy Boba Bonkers from Righteous Gemstones. I'm your father. No, I done raised you and shepherd you through this time. I'm your daddy. You're not my daddy. You're not my daddy. You're not my daddy. I'm your daddy, damn it. You're not my daddy. It's so good.

[00:05:51] I just want to put it out there to the universe that like, I'm really not missing acting, but if Righteous Gemstones season four has a role for me, I'm there for it. I am there for it. I will work on my Southern accent. I'll be an extra.

[00:06:03] No, I'd be a PA on set just to hang out with those people. I would just hang out. It was funny. And that Judy character is the funniest character in the show. And you might think, what does the show have to do with a little bit culty?

[00:06:14] Season three of Righteous Gemstones. We could do a whole episode on the subplots, the cult subplots. It's funny. The cult dynamics. There's one character who says they have a direct line to Jesus and how that is expressed is. It lampoons the whole concept. The whole concept. The absurdity.

[00:06:33] The absurdity of it. Which is a great segue, Sarah. Is that a good segue? Yeah. Oh, we do have a segue, but I have two housekeeping things I have to say. Oh my God. Did you just trump my segue? I saw a trumped your segue.

[00:06:43] I rarely get the segue. It's segue, Sarah on this show I got. Here's a segue, Nippy. You just say trumped, which reminds me, I have to say that if you ever, If somebody ever types something about being a trumpet,

[00:06:53] if you don't watch yourself, it actually changes it to trumpet. Has that happened to you? That's actually an interesting play on word. Which I think is funny. Yeah. Like, oh, they're a real trumpet. You're a trumpet. It's the female supporter. You're a trumpet. A trumpet.

[00:07:07] All right, we're pulling straws. A trumpet. Which also reminds me, I'm sorry, I'm digressing all over the place, but quote of the week. Life with Sarah. Last night we were putting, I don't know why the word narcissist came up in conversation

[00:07:18] as we were putting Troy to bed, but Troy says, Dad, sometimes when you say narcissist, I actually think you're talking about the exorcist. Which made me laugh so hard out of the mouths of base. Location joke. Location joke just for our audience. Yes. Location joke. Yes.

[00:07:33] So the quick housekeeping thing, as you all know, if you're a fan of the show, you know that we are huge supporters of the hashtag I Got Out movement for survivors of cultic abuse. So check it out. Brave souls from coast to coast are joining together

[00:07:46] to create an unforgettable storytelling event for the public in St. Louis, Missouri on October 21st. You can buy your tickets to the Story Jam or partner with I Got Out as an event sponsor today. Just go to the Story Jam page on Igotout.org

[00:07:59] or click the link in our show notes for more. I'm going to be there. I don't think I'm going to perform, but I'll sign some books and chill with all these people that I'm so excited to finally meet in person in this incredible movement,

[00:08:12] which has really been a huge support in my recovery. So hope to see you there if you live in St. Louis or nearby or just want to hop on a plane and come meet all of us. Some incredible people in the call space will be there.

[00:08:23] So that's my housekeeping. OK, since my segue was ruined. Well, how good are you? Let's try it again. It's OK. Shiny happy people. Here we are. Have you seen Shiny happy people, the Dugger family secrets on PrimeMap?

[00:08:34] We have and it's really, really good and also hard to watch. Also a bit infuriating as so many culty docuseries tend to be. If you've already followed the Duggers, that's the reality TV mega family behind the hit show 19 Kids in County. Imagine dropping 19 bombs there.

[00:08:49] That means you're pregnant for nearly two decades. It's insane. I can't even. I can't. There's so many things I can't even with. Well, even if you haven't, you'll find that shiny happy people is full of disturbing insights in their scandals, their demons and a radical organization

[00:09:01] underpinning the whole let's call it what it is, a shit show. That would be the Institute in basic life principles, an evangelical Christian ministry on steroids. Lindsey Williams is featured in Shiny Happy People and is here to talk with us today

[00:09:14] about her experience as a former IBLP member and her personal journey from dug in to playing footsies to fuck this. I'm out. We chat about IBLP founder Bill Gothert and his deranged dogma about what was like living in the orbit of the embattled Duggar clan

[00:09:31] and how she's doing now that she's self-proclaimed shiny happy warrior for cult awareness. Just a heads up, please know that this IBLP organization has some seriously shady philosophies on things like sexual abuse. So this episode may get into some gritty territory. Please listen with care.

[00:09:46] Here's our chat with Lindsey Williams. Thank you for being on, Lindsey. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I've been so excited to be with you guys. Awesome. Well, we have a million questions and obviously we're going to refer people to the documentary.

[00:10:12] But if those people are like don't have Prime Amazon Prime or they just don't want to for whatever reason, can you give us the cliff notes of your life? Just my whole life. No, no biggie here. Let's do this in five minutes.

[00:10:28] I'll lead you in with a question just to kind of like get you started at ground you somewhere, which is, you know, you didn't choose to be raised in IBLP. Your family got involved when you were young. What did they think they were joining? What was the vision?

[00:10:40] I would say at this point, actually, I don't have all the answers for that. I am estranged from my parents currently and anytime I've ever tried to really pry and try to understand what was this all about. I'm kind of hit with a wall of resistance,

[00:10:55] which also feels like denial and trying to kind of save themselves in the reasoning of why they did these things. I choose to believe that I think they originally got into it because they just wanted to booster pack to their Christianity.

[00:11:08] They just wanted to like up the level of faith and up that level of commitment so that they could keep their kids pure from the world. You know, they went through the 70s and you know, all this like free love and the world's getting a little crazy.

[00:11:20] And I think with the satanic panic that was oozing into this 70s and the 80s, they just wanted to protect their kids. Unfortunately, Bill Godford's system preys upon these people that want to have a better relationship with God and want to protect their children.

[00:11:35] And they went to some of his seminars, his basic and advanced seminars that were just open to the public whoever wanted to go to those seminars could. And then in the mid to late 80s, he started his homeschooling program, which I still believe that it's very predatory.

[00:11:51] This choice that he made, it was a financial move as well because he had so many ardent followers and they were all in the baby making phases of their lives and getting into their families. And he thought, well, hey, let's, you know, let's just continue this on

[00:12:05] and have a homeschooling program that will isolate your children even more. This is going to keep your family even more protected from the outside world. So all they're ever going to know is scripture and God. So I think that's one of the big reasons

[00:12:17] that my parents got into it. It was very attractive to a lot of families that were maybe struggling or floundering or fearful of the world around them. That makes sense. And to be clear, it wasn't a church. It was a seminar program

[00:12:31] that was offered to Christians with us. So it was separate from the church. Yes, that gets mixed up so, so much. It actually drives us all crazy. As X, A, T, I and I, B, L, P kids. It's not a church. It's not its own stamp free religion.

[00:12:44] This is a Christian based organization. And then they just created all these. I like to think of them, honestly, as self-help. It's a Christian self-help program that just gives you all of the answers to everything you need in life. He is going to give you success.

[00:13:00] He promises it. If you follow his non-optional principles because they're not optional, is what my parents would always tell me. Like, you don't have a choice. It's not an option. You have to do this. You don't get to decide yes or no today. Good flag.

[00:13:14] Well, it also sounds like a business model as well. Oh yeah. Nipi and I were joking. This is like next year. And it's like ESP, Executive Success Programs for Christian Fundamentalists. Yes. In terms of the success aspect of it and the seminar aspect of it

[00:13:26] and the money making aspect of it and the promises. Tons of promises. And the predatory. Predatory, yes. We'll get to that. The predatory promises? Yes. Predatory promises. And I did notice another similarity that both KR and Bill Gothard, the head of these programs, loved acronyms.

[00:13:44] Three-letter acronyms to be specific. Red flag right there. That's exciting. Yeah, well, what does ATI and IBLP stand for? IBLP is the Institute in Basic Life Principles. Rope basic. And then the homeschooling program ATI. It actually started out as ATIA, the Advanced Training Institute of America.

[00:14:03] Then it shifted to the Advanced Training Institute International. And then he dropped off both and they were just the Advanced Training Institute. So I've always found that the words to be so funny to me, the Institute in Basic Life Principles.

[00:14:19] But then if you're going to homeschool your kids, it's the Advanced Training Institute. Right. Again, a higher level for your children. Upselling. Yeah. There's always got to be more. Oh, and he always had more. Always. He never ran out of ideas.

[00:14:35] And in this more, tell us about all the rules that everyone was forced to follow. Respectively, what's the umbrella of authority? The umbrella of authority, the umbrella of protection. Yeah, it's all about authority. It's all about leadership. And to me, because I was a female and a child,

[00:14:51] I was on the very bottom rung of this big, you know, multi-leveled umbrella system. God and or gothard were at the top as the biggest overarching umbrella. And then underneath, you might have pastors or the father, always male headship. And then underneath the husband,

[00:15:08] you would have the wife. And then under the wife, you would have children. Now, if depending, like, if you're a family as big as the Duggers, I only had three kids in my family. So we don't really play the game of like older raising the younger.

[00:15:20] But if you were in that type of a system, then you'd the older children might have a mini umbrella because they are also, they have children that are under them as they are parenting those children. They call it the buddy system with the Duggers.

[00:15:32] But all of it truly is you always default to the umbrella above you and then that defaults to the umbrella above them. And to me, it's a very trapped system. There's nowhere to go. It's led by fear and control.

[00:15:44] If you step out of the umbrella, you will get rained on by Satan's darts. Bad things will happen to you. It's a way to get you to a point where you self police because you have so much fear of moving left or right.

[00:15:57] You always stay right underneath your umbrella. If you're a kid like me where you're a little more resistant, a little more effervescent in your energy, you don't do well in these systems. You're constantly getting in trouble for even the smallest infractions.

[00:16:11] In my home, my dad was also an Air Force guy. And so it was a very militant home. It had to be yes or no. Sorry. Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am. If you've been said, aha, sure. Okay, got it coming. It wasn't enough.

[00:16:22] That was that was an infraction enough for discipline and things that you wear, your clothing became a very big part of it too. When we were younger, it wasn't as big of a deal. But as I started to grow into my body as a female

[00:16:35] and curves started to show up, we had to get more shrouded and more covered. And I was a tomboy of two younger brothers and I loved being able to go outside and play with them. They were very active in sports.

[00:16:45] I was the tall one in the family for years. So they always wanted me on their sports teams and things like this. We would play around. And then, you know, one day my parents were like, well, you're going to have to start wearing skirts.

[00:16:56] And I'm like, well, I can't play football in a skirt. How's that going to work? And all of my kind of like athleticism sort of just stopped because I didn't want to do it. I'm like, I can't run fast enough. I can't I can't do this.

[00:17:06] And really, that was the whole point. Like, OK, yeah, because now you're supposed to be a lady. You're supposed to be a woman. Now I had to have tea parties and little Bible studies and, you know, just become an 1800s frocked and frilled girl.

[00:17:18] And I was I just didn't want to be about that. I liked getting in the scrapes with the boys and being out and having a lot of physical activity and fun. So that was hard for me. Almost everything was hard.

[00:17:30] You know, our toys started getting taken away from us. The music changed in the house. Everything was get up at five thirty six in the morning as a child to read the Bible. And it would be like five Psalms and then one proverb.

[00:17:43] This was just the way the bill kind of figured out the math. So we would have to do that and then we would get into the homeschooling. When we got up in the morning, we would have to get into.

[00:17:51] I always called it like our Wednesday night or Sunday night clothes, like church clothes. You'd have to be in the skirt and the blouse. My brother is in dress pants and a shirt like we were, I don't know, going to a Catholic school at our dining table.

[00:18:03] And so everything always felt very pressured and perfectionistic. Like you had to be, I don't know, just this visual of the perfect person. What would happen if you didn't? What was the punishment? Well, there really wasn't a choice. I didn't have other clothes at this point.

[00:18:19] Like that's just what it was and I didn't have jeans. I didn't have shorts. I didn't have tank tops. I didn't have rebellious clothes. But I also discipline. It was always spanking, always by your parents. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. By my father. Yeah.

[00:18:32] If I didn't want to get up and I was too tired, that it just honestly, it would it just became not a thought in your head that it was not an option because laziness or talking back and things like that. You would get hit again.

[00:18:45] So you learn like you do as an animal, if you're going to keep hitting me, then I'm going to stop doing that because that hurts and I don't like it. And it's embarrassing and shameful. And for myself, I think the discipline went on from like eight years old

[00:18:56] to 15 to 16 years old, you know? And you know, there's so much about that amount of time for me that I realized now with a lot of therapy that that was so intensely damaging in ways I didn't even understand at the time

[00:19:11] until I got a lot older, got married. I'm 45 now and still even to this day, there are things that will creep up that I know is because of the discipline that I received back then.

[00:19:23] But just this weird underlying fear that if I don't do exactly the right thing, something is going to happen. It's hard to let go of that hypervigilance that ends up being instilled in you for 10 years. Sounds like for yourself and most people in your situation would develop CPTSD

[00:19:37] from absolutely that constant abuse. Yeah. Anxiety, panic attacks. But none of that actually happened or manifested until I was 40. I had done such a job of controlling myself and holding all of it so tightly and shoving it into spaces in my body that it actually took my body

[00:19:58] letting me know that shit was wrong for me to actually realize, wow, I think I might need some help. So in watching that, it seems like just the process of indoctrination is ensuring later life trauma or health issues.

[00:20:10] Is there zero sensitivity or awareness in the church that when this stuff does peak up and it always does in some way, whether it's sexual perversion or something, is there zero sensitivity to the church that they might be causing it?

[00:20:24] Or is that evidence that still evidence that you haven't done more work or whatever? The church does not identify mental health issues. They just don't. If you are having those troubles, if you are having anxiety or panic or overwhelming fear, you just haven't sacrificed enough to God.

[00:20:43] You haven't emptied enough of yourself. You haven't become the emptiest vessel possible. You're holding on to your earthly desires. Your I don't even know how it would articulate that. But basically, you just haven't you haven't given enough to God. You haven't tried hard enough.

[00:20:57] I've been told even on TikTok, the reason you're no longer a Christian is because you weren't truly one in the beginning and you didn't pray hard enough. And I'm like, thanks for the gaslight because don't even think for one second

[00:21:09] that I wasn't praying as an eight year old for the abuse to stop. Like I didn't have any other avenue or outlet or access to anybody that didn't believe what my parents believed. The only access I had were people in the church who thought the same things.

[00:21:24] And I was told that, you know, the police and psychiatrists and all of this were bad, that they wouldn't understand what we were being trained with because we are supposed to be a peculiar people as Christians.

[00:21:37] We're supposed, you know, things aren't always going to make sense to the outside world. So as a child, you are you're already put in fear of everything on the outside. So the church doesn't take a lot of responsibility.

[00:21:48] IBLP does not take responsibility for what a lot of us children endured by our parents via the information they received through Bill Gotherd and through IBLP as a whole. I want to start shifting this narrative where we don't just point the finger only to Bill

[00:22:05] because as we do that, we are ignoring that IBLP itself still exists as an organization and is still getting pushed out there to the world. I think they've they have been able to slip under the radar

[00:22:21] even with this documentary because they are happy that the eyes are on Bill Gotherd. Like, yeah, Bill Gotherd got ousted. He's been gone for 10 years, you know, and so they're just going to stay quiet over here. Their programs are still existing.

[00:22:33] Even during the documentary, they had programs that were running. They still have upcoming seminars and camps and things like that. Tim Levendusky is now the president of this organization. And because no one really knows these names of the people that are now on their board,

[00:22:47] they're just the unknowns and everyone's like, well, it's Bill. Bill Gotherd. Well, yeah, he started it, but they're still perpetuating this information and his teachings. That's definitely a huge problem. And we want to get into what, you know, all of that and where it is now

[00:23:01] and what people can do about it and how to like raise awareness on those things. Just a circle back for a second. Obviously, you had your own things that were terribly traumatic and horrific growing up

[00:23:11] and you didn't reconcile that till later with some of the things that we saw that I just wanted to draw attention to that were major red flags. I want to shine some light on or if you could elaborate also on some of the things

[00:23:23] that were, and again, it's not just Gotherd. It's not just IBLP, but like blanket training. What is that? And why is that? Like I want to look at the foundation of all the things that you were taught

[00:23:34] and how that just set you up to be abused and victimized. Sure. Sure. So blanket training, I will first say I didn't go through blanket training because my parents didn't get into this until I was about eight years old, so they didn't really work on that with us.

[00:23:48] But blanket training is where you have an infant, truly an infant that would lay on a blanket, not even capable probably at this point of really crawling. They could be on their stomach, able to scoot around a little bit.

[00:23:59] But the blanket becomes their boundary and you will actually antagonize that child and tempt that child with items off of the blanket. And if that child gets to the edge of the blanket and goes off of it, you will either, I hate saying this, but you will either

[00:24:16] swat the child, pinch the child, flick the child to inflict pain so that they will know, oh, I shouldn't do that. So you are already conditioning a child at infancy in their brain that things are bad and that only what you are given and deemed

[00:24:34] as your space and your boundary, that is the safe place to be. So a child's experience with their mother is pain. So I don't know how you are, like you're also kind of gaslighting the child

[00:24:48] where you're like, there's nothing to see here, but wait, no, you can't do that. And here, let me put this out here. To me, it already instills a lack of trust in who you should be believing in and trusting in and nurtured by.

[00:24:59] And it completely aligns and sets you up for the umbrella system. You will obey what I say. You will not go outside of the box. And it actually creates a system as that child gets older of self policing,

[00:25:12] of self reporting, of not considering the door is wide open and I could just walk outside of it because you just use self control everything about yourself. The hyper vigilance and awareness is so real. And as that grows into adulthood or your teen years,

[00:25:29] it just depends on each family, the decision of the father and mother, how long they want to continue with these disciplines. The other thing it teaches is that I can't as a kid, I can't get what I want. I can never have what I want.

[00:25:44] Only other people can decide that for me. And also just the feeling like you said, the hyper vigilance pain and punishment could happen anytime. Always. And you never know where it's going to come from because the goalpost moves all the time because it's based on your parents' emotions,

[00:25:58] your parents' belief system, their consistency or hypocrisy in my home. It was a lot of hypocrisy. They would say that we couldn't do certain things and then I would see them do things and I'm like, well, what why can you do it? And I can't. Yeah.

[00:26:12] And I don't even know if they realize that they were doing that, but children are pretty aware. And when you do this to them, they're even more aware. We have no choice but to be very, very paranoid of what's going on around us.

[00:26:24] Or you have the children that will go the opposite direction and they're just super compliant. Right. They've been so beaten down that they really are an empty shell of themselves where they reduce so far inside of themselves. And I think people go, well, they're introverted.

[00:26:39] That's my quiet child. And I'm like, that's probably your most abused child actually. Or their mental capacity has just completely shut down because they can't handle what's coming at them. And there's just no way for them to navigate. That was me on the inside.

[00:26:53] On the outside, I put forth a very strong willful exterior. You know, like, I'm good. I've got this, you know, if I'm going to get in trouble, well, I'll face it. You know, but then I would get into that situation

[00:27:04] and the humiliation of the way that my father would discipline would just break me. And I would just be like, why did I do this to myself? Why did I think today I could be stronger? It's gut-runging. For more background on what brought us here,

[00:27:18] check out my page-turning memoir. It's called Scarred, the true story of how I escaped Maxi. I'm the cult that bound my life. It's available on Amazon, Audible and at most bookstores. And if you want to see that story in streaming form,

[00:27:30] you can watch both seasons of The Vow on HBO. The Frankies were a picture-perfect influencer family, but everything wasn't as it seemed. I just had a 12-year-old boy still appeared asking for help. He's emaciated. He's got tape around his legs. Ruby Frankie is his mom's name.

[00:27:53] Infamous is covering Ruby Frankie, the world of Mormonism and a secret therapy group that ruined lives. Listen to Infamous wherever you get your podcasts. Meals bring people together, but for many families, providing their next meal can be a challenge.

[00:28:11] You can help by participating in Macy's annual Feeding the Hungry Food Drive. All proceeds go toward local food banks and families. Now through January 31st, you can purchase an icon in-store or online or watch out for the blue Feeding the Hungry Shelf Tags,

[00:28:27] where a portion of your purchase will be donated to local pantries. Together we can combat hunger in our local communities at Macy's. Break time's over people. Let's get back to this episode of A Little Bit Culty. It's a good one.

[00:28:44] Well, the other horrendous vision of that whole documentary, the video where the leader is showing how to spank, which first of all is like so inappropriate and horrific on so many levels, but like this, you know, if I was in the audience and someone pulled my son up

[00:28:59] and touched his butt, like that is one thing. And then hugging them, like showing how to spank and then forcing a hug after. I was just like every part of my body wanted to scream in in revulsion and I didn't even know what to do with that.

[00:29:12] I wanted to grab the man and put him over my knee. Yeah, I wish somebody would. Are you kidding me? And I've seen just about everything IBLP and ATI material when it comes to videos. But maybe in the last 10 to 15 years, I've been out of the system.

[00:29:27] You know, I don't watch their stuff anymore or follow it. But when I saw that was the first time I'd ever seen that clip or ever heard of it. You share with the audience what the clip was?

[00:29:37] The clip, I mean, it's there is a segment within the documentary. I think it's episode two where they talk about all of this discipline and the practices of it. And to be quite frank, like Bill Gother did talk about discipline a lot.

[00:29:51] But then he also promoted books, you know, and train up a child by Michael and Debbie Pearl is the one where blanket training came into view. So with this discipline thing, they literally call up a stranger's kid. Like they don't know this child to what I understand.

[00:30:07] They bring this child up on stage and the man who's giving this talk about raising your children literally bends the kid over his lap and mock Spanx him. This isn't his child. This child has done nothing wrong.

[00:30:19] They had to get a child up on stage to what show everybody as if they don't have imaginations and then this poor child, you know, he stands up and he's like, well, let's restore the relationship. We need forgiveness.

[00:30:30] And so he forces the kid to give him a hug and because the hug wasn't fervent enough and passionately, you know, embracing. Well, it's time to discipline you again. You haven't quite learned your lesson. The abuse mentally and emotionally aside from even the physicality of it

[00:30:44] is just so raw and wrong. I had to stop the video. I was screaming. I went into like a full on panic attack meltdown for about 15 minutes. Hyperventilating my therapist called it exposure therapy. She was like, you were exposed to something that you experienced for

[00:31:00] years and years and years, and now you just had to watch it happen to somebody else. And I was like, the fact that it is still happening is what has me the most enraged who hits children.

[00:31:13] If you hit a child, you need to really look inside of yourself because you do not have your head screwed on straight. This is not how you raise children, but it's all about training children.

[00:31:24] And that's what I feel P stands for and is about along with ATI with homeschooling. It's about training your child like they are an animal, putting the bridle in the bit in their mouth and leading them the way you want them to be led.

[00:31:38] Not about them fulfilling great purpose in their life and opening themselves up to opportunities and information. Keep them as throttled and tight as possible, put those blinders on and keep them in the straight and narrow of Jesus. And somehow all of the world will be right for them.

[00:31:55] It's proven to be so wrong for far too many of us. It ensures the opposite. Yes, it really does. It's really just about the control aspects, but of every bit of your life. Purity culture. There's no dating. Your heart is given to your father. Modesty culture for boys.

[00:32:11] It's all about becoming an authority themselves and learning to grow into their manhood and basically controlling other people. But all of it is in the system of how Bill has set it up. It's not in just its own in Christianity, in Christian faith.

[00:32:26] It's now in a very confined even more confined filtered system through Bill Gothard, which really takes it into fundamentalism and what brings it into a cult because it's now a very specific way in which everybody has to live, behave, think the hive mind scenario. You're very trapped.

[00:32:45] Yeah, he's leveraged the principles of religion to justify his behavior. Yes. And he cherry picks his scriptures and things like that. You know, he knows what he wants everybody to be like, and then he finds the scriptures to back it up.

[00:32:57] That chaps my ass also the hypocrisy of him teaching people how to be a parent and how to be in a proper relationship when he's done neither. Yep. And thirdly, and this is a line from the trailer for Shining Happy People,

[00:33:11] just how he turned every dad into every father into a cult leader. And every family into an island. And every family into an island. So that's the isolation and basically giving the fathers the authority to be abusive.

[00:33:25] And then the other line from the trailer, he franchised the abuse. 100 percent he did. Literally put a franchise like a little TM beside being a dick. Yeah. OK, so that's sort of the backdrop of what we're talking about here.

[00:33:41] And in this world where you're the lowest on the umbrella tree, which we'll post in our show notes, when did you get plucked out to go train? Was it called the Institute? No, the headquarters. Yes, the headquarters, the Institute. There's a lot of them. The mother ship.

[00:33:57] So they call it, yeah, the mother ship, you know, the hill, the glass house on a hill. Headquarters was I think I even say it in the documentary. It was the shit. Like if you got invited to go to headquarters, that was a fast track.

[00:34:09] You didn't have to do all the legwork again. I think sometimes I'm like this has to have been created to be complicated to explain on purpose. I feel like now as I try to explain things to the public, I just need a flow chart sometimes.

[00:34:21] But as an ATI kid in Bill Godford's Advanced Training Institute being homeschooled, you had privileges to go to other programs and other opportunities. If you were, I don't know, a kid in a youth group at a church,

[00:34:34] you would not have access to a lot of these programs like the alert program that you guys saw in the documentary or the paramilitary type vibe. And then there was like the journey of the heart. I went to the OG one called Excel in the Dallas Training Center.

[00:34:48] So he had all these training centers that popped up and then you had all of these different programs that you could go to. And he tried to expand as many programs as possible so that you wouldn't go to the outside world for them, like midwifery training,

[00:35:01] which no one had any business doing. He tried to start a cosmetology for young women, but then you couldn't learn a lot of different things because those weren't biblical. So then that became an issue.

[00:35:12] And I was like, how in the world is someone going to get a cosmetology license with this because the state requires certain things? So that ended up failing. But there were a lot of things like that where he would just try to

[00:35:21] incorporate, he tried to start his own university, his own college program. I think the only successful thing that has ever come out of it has been the Oak Brook College of Law, where there is an actual law program that was created.

[00:35:35] I truly believe it only became a quote success is because they pulled Bill Gotherd away from it and went and did their own thing with these other lawyers that were involved in creating it, Christian lawyers. It still exists to this day.

[00:35:49] And there are a lot of practicing lawyers that have come out of it that are of Christian faith. But that to me is like the only successful program, but you had to be an ATI student, I believe, in order to originally in order to even enroll in it.

[00:36:00] So my brother and I were teaching little mini seminars for the Institute in Basic Life Principles. Like I said, it gets so freaking confusing. But for the main seminars that he was giving to the wide public, we would teach the children kind of like a children's church.

[00:36:16] So when the parents were learning their thing, we were teaching them children stuff. It was at one of those seminars that Bill saw me in a breakfast room and just locked eyes on my being. And I will never forget him staring at me from across the room.

[00:36:30] It was like he was like three or four roundtables away from me. And he was not looking around the room. He was competing, just landed on me. And I at this point, I did not really have a faith in God.

[00:36:43] I had a crying to God all the time because they knew that's what I was told to do that, like, that's that's just my only way to please. I hope something changes. But in him looking at me the way he did, I was like,

[00:36:53] does he seek God in me? Like, he is our prophet man. He is our leader of this program. My parents have idolized him for a decade. So I'm like, maybe he just sees that I've tried so hard.

[00:37:03] And of course, like the title of the show, shiny happy people, I'm sitting there with a big smile. I'm in the room with all these other young people. I'm excited to be there because I'm with other other people

[00:37:13] instead of my house where there's no one's there but my brothers. And he walks over to me. He just gets up and he comes over and he asks me if I would come and meet with him that evening and have a conversation with

[00:37:25] him in his office and meet him after the seminar. So I said, sure, you don't say no to him. And I went into his office later that night and he started asking me like all the normal questions like how long have you been in the program

[00:37:38] and how many siblings do you have? And does your father have your heart? And I was like, well, I mean, yes, but there is this. He's like, is there any young man at home? Meaning, you know, is anyone interested in courting me?

[00:37:50] And I was like, well, yeah, there is. There is this like 35 year old guy that's been wanting to get into courtship with me since I was 17 and 18 now. And he's like, well, what's that? What's that about? Tell me about that.

[00:38:01] And so I'm just all I really know is he wants to enter into this, but I'm not in courtship yet. And he was like, well, are you a virgin? And I'm like, what? Like I don't even think I had ever heard anyone else but my parents

[00:38:12] use that word maybe once. And I still when I even say it, I feel the same like chest arrest of like, what? Like, why are you asking me that? This is not. I don't even know how to answer you right now.

[00:38:27] And so I don't know what my face looked like. I don't know if I was I was masking well, if he was able to get a read on me, that it made me feel uncomfortable. But I learned much later on in life that he asked many,

[00:38:40] many, many girls when they were alone with him. And these were just rapid fire questions for you. Yeah, boom, boom. What's your birth order? What's your spiritual gift? How long you been in the H.I. program? Is there a guy in your life?

[00:38:52] He wants to court me, but I'm not courting. Are you a virgin? And I'm just like, and there was a male student that was one of his assistants sitting over in the corner typing away, doing other stuff. And again, was just mortified, you know,

[00:39:05] that Bill would even be asking me this. But then I also on the flip side felt proud that I could say yes, I was. So, you know, he asked me what my home life was like. And of course, because you just become it's just like verbal vomit.

[00:39:17] You're just like, you just share everything because you don't think to filter yourself. I told him that I, you know, as far as my authority structure, I was born without a birth father, like obviously had a birth father, but he's not who I call dad.

[00:39:33] I have a stepdad. He adopted me when I was a year and a half. And he's like, oh, so you are the you are of the fatherless. You're a bastard. And I was like, huh? I have a dad, dude. Like, but what?

[00:39:45] So and even just him using that term, it made me feel so yuck, you know, like, wait a minute. I here I felt proud that yes, I'm a virgin. No, no, you're a bastard. And I'm like, and then he was just like, well, it sounds like

[00:39:57] you don't really have a father figure in your life. And I'm like, I literally just said that I have a stepdad. I mean, he's like, I, you know, I can be your spiritual father. And he just kind of took that on. And I was like, OK.

[00:40:10] And he was like, what do you think about going to headquarters? And there it was. So your target aesthetically and then he went for your profile. Yeah, I firmly believe so. And I came from a broken home, you know.

[00:40:21] And honestly, I was more than happy to say yes, because 35 year old dude wasn't looking too cool to me, tired of being abused at home, tired of like not being able to do anything. Because at this point, I am just like rotting away at home.

[00:40:34] I have nothing to do. My dad won't let me work outside the home. I'm basically just a housekeeper because I'm not really going through the ATI materials anymore, the wisdom booklets and all of that. I'm not really doing that anymore.

[00:40:47] I'm just existing and going to church and I was bored out of my gourd. You know, like give me something to do. I'm young. I have energy. I want to explore. I want to travel. I want to do things.

[00:40:56] So when he offered it, I'm like, get me away from my house. That is amazing. I also don't have to go through all these other programs, which are sort of the barrier to entry when you go to headquarters.

[00:41:06] You have to have experience in some of these other seminars. And he made me go to a counseling seminar in Indianapolis directly after this seminar that I was teaching. I had to go up with three other girls that he found at that seminar, three other little broken birds.

[00:41:21] And we all went up to the counseling seminar. It's a two week seminar to be able to now you can counsel anyone in their spiritual faith and walk with God at 18 whoopee. So then I go straight to headquarters.

[00:41:33] And when I got to headquarters, he very quickly told me that when while I'm here, a lot of girls will not understand the relationship that we have. So I need to be very cautious of what I say to others

[00:41:47] and just realize that there will be jealousy because a lot of girls that come up here, he spends a lot of time with them. And then, you know, he ends up helping other people and then they get jealous. And I was like, well, gosh, that's really weird,

[00:41:59] especially given the way that he teaches and what he teaches. Like girls shouldn't be getting jealous. And so I already very quickly realized I had a target on my back, partly because they didn't go through all the barriers to entry. You skipped to the front of the line.

[00:42:13] Yeah. And I was just deemed right away as gothards pet. I was one of gothards pets. That's what they said for a long time. And then it kind of stumbled into it being gothard girls. But I was Bill's pet. Yeah.

[00:42:23] And tell us about the first time you do feel comfortable talking about the time. Yeah. OK. The first time it was very early on when I got there, I don't actually think the first week I was there, he was not at headquarters.

[00:42:34] And so I was, you know, trying to assimilate with everything, understand the girls. I was in all of these people because at seminars, the big family seminar that they had back then, they don't really have them now because the numbers are so small.

[00:42:46] They have the family camp down in Big Sandy, but they used to have these huge seminars in Knoxville, Tennessee. We took over the vols their campus. University of Tennessee. Yeah. The Vols University of Tennessee. Did you fill that stadium? Yeah. Were they play football?

[00:42:59] No, where they played basketball. OK. Still. Yeah. Now all of the leacher seats are blue, but they were this painlessly bright caution orange when we were there. It's I'll never forget that stadium. I went to so many yearly seminars there for ATI.

[00:43:13] At those seminars, the headquarters staff would run the seminar. They would be at the booktables. They would be, you know, doing all of the stuff for stage and sound and lights, etc. And so here I am. I've seen them once a year and I just idolize these people.

[00:43:28] Like, these are the cream of the crop special pick from around the world and around the U.S. from major big Christian families. And now I just am lucky enough to get to be a part of this.

[00:43:38] But very quickly, I realized, yeah, no, this is not not what I thought it was going to be. Girls, big girls, and they were very tattle-tally. You know, I would get in trouble for the smallest, most ridiculous infractions.

[00:43:50] I had the soundtrack sense and sensibility, and that was not pure enough because it was a movie soundtrack. I was like, what? It's such a beautiful CD. OK. You know, we had to wear long skirts. Sometimes they'd be a little more tight and skinny

[00:44:05] and not have a lot of walk room for your legs. And I am a fast walker, so like one button would come undone. And I would get talked about it later at lunchtime because my button was undone and that was immodest. So you had your own cancel culture.

[00:44:18] Oh, my gosh. Yes. It was daily. And again, at some point, you're like, it's such a default to just be like, well, this is what it is. You're so used to hyper vigilance anyway. And, you know, it's clearly no different here than it was at home.

[00:44:29] It's just you didn't expect it among maybe like your peers. You know, you expected it with authorities and parents, but you didn't think your peers were going to be the proudly tattle-y ones. So that was a little disappointing to me and frustrating

[00:44:41] and also caused me to really lock down in I did not trust anyone there. I didn't have confidence. And if they thought I was, they didn't know the real me. But as far as Bill, he comes back from a trip and he immediately,

[00:44:56] he just had a sonar when it came to me. If it was a morning meeting, he would just like, there's Lindsay and he would cut, he would just find me with eyes across the room. So at some point within the three years I was there,

[00:45:07] I would stop looking in his direction so that I wouldn't see him and become hither with his eyes. But yeah, so he was like, come up to my office this evening. And I was like, OK, no context, nothing. Just come into his office.

[00:45:21] And I was like, well, it'll probably be like what happened in Atlanta when I was going to the seminar when I met him at his office. So I bring my Bible, my notebook, I've got my little navy blue and white on.

[00:45:30] And I get up there and I just sit at a desk while he's at his desk. And for hours, two, three hours, I just sit there with my Bible and my notebook just ready to be of service.

[00:45:39] But he still had his dude that was over there typing out newsletters and stuff that he was, you know, saying out to him and materials and things like that. And then that was it. And then he's like, OK, well, the assistant was ready to leave.

[00:45:52] And Bill is like, oh, you go on ahead, you know. And so I kind of went to get up. He's like, no, Lindsay, we're going to pray. And I was like, OK, so this guy could tell he was not quite sure

[00:46:01] if he should leave because you're supposed to, you know, avoid the appearance of evil, meaning if I'm in this room, it could be two guys and one girl or two girls and a guy. But the second you only have one on one,

[00:46:11] that's an appearance of something bad potentially happening. And if someone were to walk by the window or see this, it could cause them to stumble by having thoughts of like, what are they doing? Are they being inappropriate?

[00:46:24] So you want to avoid all appearances of evil at all times. Again, hyper frickin vigilance. So this guy's not so sure, but he ends up leaving and then Bill's like, he gets up and he's like, come on over here.

[00:46:35] And there was a red velvety old timey couch on red carpet. I mean, just the red was so triggering now. I hate seeing red carpets. Well, why does he love red carpet so much? Why does Trump love red?

[00:46:47] Sorry, but I think it's this portrayal of or portrayal of royalty, of opulence, of power, assertiveness, strong energy. I mean, it's strong, it's bold. It's not warm and inviting if anyone thinks that that's what it is. It's very the opposite, power.

[00:47:06] So I go to sit down on the velvet couch and he's like, no, no, let's kneel to supplicate with the Lord. And I was like, okay, this is interesting. Which I've knelt to pray before, so it's not like it was weird

[00:47:17] to me to do, but it just, I was like, oh, this feels more intimate if we're kneeling on the ground. And so we do and I clasp my hands together and he's over there with his hands clasped and we bow our heads and all of a sudden

[00:47:30] I just feel him shifting on the couch. And I didn't open my eyes because I'm like, well, he's a little older. I think he was in his 50s, 60s, but I was like, he's a little older. It's probably uncomfortable to be on his knees,

[00:47:39] making all these excuses in my head. And then all of a sudden I feel him like intertwining his hand around mine and he pulls it over towards him. And I'm like, what is happening? Why is he touching me? And he grasped on really hard and started praying

[00:47:53] and my everything in my brain was just firing off. Like, wait a minute, what? There's the six inch rule. Like you're not supposed to get within six inches. It should be six feet really, but like six inches of the opposite gender.

[00:48:06] The only real touch I've had with men has been negative. It's been hitting by my father and not hugging and anything that could be more parental or kind. And then here's this leader who I'm like, I'm scared that first of all, if anyone sees this, I am screwed.

[00:48:24] Is he screwed? No, he's not. He'll be fine. I will be in trouble because I'm the young, vivacious new girl at headquarters and I have no protection in this. So I'm nervous. I don't like the way he was massaging my hand with his thumb while he was praying

[00:48:41] and it was very fervent. And then as I'm like trying to process all this, he starts leaning his upper body into me. So like basically we were just book ending, and his arm was on my arm and his elbow

[00:48:51] and you just, I could feel him just leaning into me. And I'm like, I don't even know what he was saying. I couldn't tell you one thing he was praying about. My brain was in fight and flight, but my body was in freeze.

[00:49:04] Like I couldn't get out of this and I didn't want to embarrass myself. I'd never been in a situation like this before. I'd never been taught how to deal with things that feel uncomfortable to you because just nothing should feel uncomfortable cause you're never gonna be touched.

[00:49:18] So he starts pushing his hip into mine and it goes all the way down, hip, thigh, knee, calf. And then all of a sudden our shoes hit, which to me I'm very a sensory person and of course we know why,

[00:49:30] but he starts like clanking his shoe against mine and like he was rubbing my thumb, he was trying to rub my foot. And I was like, stop it. This isn't, if you want to do this take your shoe off. I was like, this just feels so awkward.

[00:49:43] But again, he's praying. And then all of a sudden he gets quiet and I was like, oh no, no what? No, what do I do? And I went into panic and he nudges me with his head. He's all lovey-dovey. And he was like, it's your turn to pray.

[00:49:55] And I was like, oh yeah, that's what we're here for. So I just like prattle out some prayer as fast as I can and as fervent as I can and using all the language that I know is right because imposter syndrome comes natural at this point.

[00:50:07] Then I was like, all right. And then Lord name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. And I was like up off that couch, walked to the door grabbed my bag and I was like, well thank you so much, Mr. God that I'll see you tomorrow.

[00:50:17] I was just like, out I went. And that happened three to four times a week for the next six months, like constant. So is it a foot fetish? Is it just that he's repressed and he has some boundaries, but like what do you think his deal is?

[00:50:33] I do not know. It got weirder for me because I actually had someone, you know when this is happening to you you think you're the only one. And so you just wanna hide. I didn't want anybody knowing what those prayer times were like.

[00:50:48] And I would come up with excuses like, oh sorry I was at the office a little bit later or oh I was doing this or I decided to take a walk in the dark by myself as a girl in Chicago, don't big whoop. And didn't want everyone knowing

[00:51:00] that I was always at Bill's office. But people knew they weren't stupid. They knew what he was like. And then on some of the trips that I would take because again I was his pet for quite a bit in those like first six months.

[00:51:11] And he was like, oh come down to the Indianapolis Training Center which is like a three hour drive. And he had a van that was like outfitted and his own little like tricked up van where like there were multiple swivel seats. So like four swivels in the back.

[00:51:24] And so I would swivel to sit across from him and he would invite me to take my shoes off. And I wouldn't think anything of it. I'm from Florida, I don't like wearing shoes. So I took off my shoes and I have like pantyhose on

[00:51:40] because again it's proper attire. And after a while his socked foot would just find his way across the van. And he would just start rubbing on my foot and my ankle and I would kind of move it, tuck my feet back away.

[00:51:53] Just like oh I'm just readjusting my body. And so it looks really natural that maybe I'm not trying to run from your socked feet, you know? And I recently after the documentary one of the girls that went down on a trip or two with me

[00:52:09] she actually said to me, I remember watching him invite you to take your shoes off. And it just even now I'm just like, oh my God people were seeing this. Like you just hope no one's noticing no one says anything and I don't fault anybody

[00:52:24] for not saying anything honestly. Like we were all traumatized victims of everything. So I, to this person that said this to me I just was like, shit. People were, people knew. We all knew what was going on. And he would do it to me at delegations.

[00:52:40] They would, he would have me come and sit at the head table. I would sit across from him. And with delegations from Russia, Romania, Taiwan, New Zealand, he's sliding his foot across and rubbing it on my foot and my ankle.

[00:52:52] And I remember thinking we're at the head table. Somebody's gotta be seeing this. And I like, are they thinking bad of me because I'm letting him do it or that I'm like seeking it out hoping he'll do it? I didn't want any of it.

[00:53:05] But I also, the reason I think a lot of people question like, well, why did you stay? Like what's your problem? I didn't wanna go home to the abuse at home. The abuse at home to me was more trapping. That was worse.

[00:53:17] And more worse to me than Bill needing to get his foot fetish on. Like I could handle that. I felt like I had control of at least that because he never went further than that. He did it a lot, but he never,

[00:53:31] I still do not understand why he didn't push further because I feel like I was so compliant. Nobody's come out and said that he's gone further than that at all? People have, that's why they did the lawsuit. Yeah, other people have alleged

[00:53:45] that he did other things as well. And I believe them. Yeah, yeah, of course. It's interesting there's several girls that were pre-me and then during my time. And then there are a lot of girls that are after. And I find people fascinating. I don't like Bill Godford obviously,

[00:54:02] but I am intrigued by how it seems he got worse. He became more brazen and bold with time. I think as he realized how, he was testing it out with girls. Like how far can I push this person? How far can I go with this one?

[00:54:18] What is this personality like? Because a lot of things were similar, but then other tactics were a little bit different. So I think he was trying on different aspects or angles of things. Hey, let's take a quick break for a message from our A Little Bit Cultiv sponsors

[00:54:33] and then we'll be right back. We promise. Meals bring people together, but for many families, providing their next meal can be a challenge. You can help by participating in Macy's annual Feeding the Hungry Food Drive. All proceeds go toward local food banks and families. Now through January 31st,

[00:54:54] you can purchase an icon in-store or online or watch out for the blue feeding the hungry shelf tags where a portion of your purchase will be donated to local pantries. Together, we can combat hunger in our local communities at Macy's. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

[00:55:11] What are your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or never miss yoga. Maybe it's getting eight hours of sleep. I mean that's my personal and everyone's dream, isn't it? Well, I definitely have some non-negotiables like I'm in Vancouver right now

[00:55:25] and I'm spending literally as much time as I can outside of nature. Hashtag cold pools, hashtag crushing it. Nature is a non-negotiable. Not enough time in the fresh air and the trees around me and I start to feel not great, not myself, not grounded.

[00:55:38] Therapy Day is a bit like my nature walks. I try to not miss it and I know I'm just gonna feel so much better all around if I make it a priority. I get so much out of it. It helps me put my worries and anxieties

[00:55:48] in their rightful place and helps me clear my mind so I can focus on what I really need and sometimes what I don't need. Like, I don't need to be overbooking myself just because I hate to say no to people. You know what I mean? Thanks therapy.

[00:55:58] Thanks for helping me see that. And if you're thinking of starting therapy, give Better Help a try. It's entirely online designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire and get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists any time

[00:56:11] for no additional charge. Look, even when we know what makes us happy it's hard to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. Never skip Therapy Day. With Better Help,

[00:56:24] visit betterhelp.com slash culty today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash culty. Break time's over people. Let's get back to this episode of A Little Bit Culty. It's a good one. There's two components that might contribute to that.

[00:56:44] They have to keep getting it more perverse because it's not satiative enough so they have to keep pushing the envelope a little bit and then there's also the component of I've gotten away with so much. There's been no check and balance to this. I've lost touch with,

[00:56:57] or I haven't run into any sort of resistance because I'm in this bubble. I mean, similar with our scenario. I mean, and it's scary to think if you extrapolate out how far they would go if they didn't run into some sort of checks

[00:57:11] and balance that they run into. And it's consistent with a lot of the cult leaders Karrash, Jonestown and in our case, Keith Ranieri. They lose touch with it until they bump into something in reality that brings them back.

[00:57:24] And normally it has to get too far for that to happen. I mean, enough girls finally came forth and said enough to at least shake it up. One of the things that I noticed is that there are good people in there. That's why they're attracted to this stuff.

[00:57:39] And ultimately it violates their principles to the point where like, wait a minute and the abuse washes up in their household. And so it self-corrects in a lot of ways which just seemed to what happened with Goughard there. Yeah, I wanted to ask before the lawsuit happened

[00:57:55] you got out before the lawsuit, right? Oh yeah, I got out in 2000. The lawsuit didn't happen until like 2013-14. Okay, how did you get out? I got out by getting married because I was one of those girls where yes, I was willful, independent had a strong willed spirit

[00:58:10] which is they're all negatives. But I was not aware that the door was open for me to just walk outside of it and go and leave. So I still was under a very mentally conditioned compliance even though I was fighting every bit of it with everything in me.

[00:58:27] I resisted it all, but I still complied. So I was pretty much denying my own self which just sucked. But I met my husband at headquarters. He was brought up there with his brother. They were in the computer department and we ended up meeting

[00:58:41] and through a lot of crazy circumstances I ended up pulling him up into the attic where there were filing cabinets and I decided to initiate a kiss with him and it's completely forbidden. And we realized that this was wrong of us to do.

[00:58:58] Like, we literally had a phone call conversation later that night and I was like, so by the way, kiss wonderful. However, cannot happen again. We just can't do this here. It's not okay here. Like it's dangerous. And so we were like, yeah, okay, okay.

[00:59:12] You know, and I'm thinking to myself, this is why my parents didn't want me to have physical contact with boys because I could just already feel the drive, like the drive of needing to be with him. But apparently when you hung up the phone

[00:59:25] someone had heard our conversation. We still to this day don't really understand how he had my husband had a cordless phone. So we think maybe the court, you know, back in the 90s, like maybe they both had cordless phones or something

[00:59:36] because we both had our own phone lines but this other guy who was awake also at a ungodly hour, you know who you are who came to the door of my husband's room and was like, hey, I just heard this conversation between you and Lindsey.

[00:59:49] And it was so inappropriate. And if you don't tell Bill tomorrow I'm gonna tell him in 24 hours. First of all, what were you doing up at 2 a.m yourself? Okay, being on the phone. I doubt you're calling your mommy and daddy.

[00:59:59] So anyway, we decided like my husband calls me back and he's like, so he wasn't my husband at the time but he basically was like, so this just happened and I just, oh my God, I felt so sick. I didn't sleep the rest of the night.

[01:00:10] I was like, we are screwed. We are screwed. We are screwed. It's finally happened. I'm gonna have to go home. I wasn't even worried about him at this point. I was like, I'm going home. This sucks. By the way, I'm 21 at this point

[01:00:21] and this is where I'm at in life. I kiss a guy one time and my whole world is crumbling. So we go in and he tells Bill first then I go and talk to Bill. Of course, Bill is so disappointed. Well, Lindsey, I'm so disappointed.

[01:00:36] And at this point, I was such a sarcastic brat at this point in my head. I was like, whatever, you know what? Whatever, I'm so tired of you. I'm tired of all of this. But again, wouldn't walk out the door and my husband and his brother

[01:00:49] ended up leaving the next day, sent home immediately. And his brother? His brother wasn't sent home but his brother wasn't gonna stay without him. So solidarity in brothers and they went home together which honestly was the dumbest thing for IBLP or the headquarters to do

[01:01:03] because they were in the computer department and I was just fluff, you know? I was just cute and cuddly kids. I mean, I did have a role in the department that I was in for homeschooling.

[01:01:12] So I did play an important role in the work that I was doing but I was not as important as those two. So it was really stupid. But three months later, Bill Godford pulled me aside and he sat me down and said,

[01:01:24] so Lindsey, I've been talking to the board for a while now and I've protected you as long as I can and unfortunately I can't do that any longer. They are demanding that you no longer be at headquarters. And so I have proposed

[01:01:36] that we send you to the Oklahoma City Training Center and I was petrified. No, no, no. I don't wanna go to any training centers. They are not the nice places like headquarters. I was okay with being there but Oklahoma City Training Center, Indianapolis or Dallas,

[01:01:50] your rights are fully removed from you and you are stuck in a hotel, AKA cage and the oversight is insane and I got such creepy vibes every time I would go to a training center. I never felt safe or secure or cared about.

[01:02:05] I was like, well, maybe it'll just go home. I think my family needs me. He knew about all the turmoil that was going on at home. My parents were close to separating. It was just, it was crumbling at home

[01:02:14] and he was like, well, I've already talked to your father. We're sending you to Oklahoma. You leave next week. I was like, what? I don't wanna go. So yeah, I was there for one more week, packed up all my stuff and was shipped down via 15 passenger van

[01:02:26] to Oklahoma City and I was there for five months. At that time I ended up getting IBS. Like IBS started presenting itself. I look back now and I understand completely why I was so terrified and so anxious. I also have a gluten intolerance

[01:02:43] and Bill Goddard heavily believes in whole wheat as being a part of your diet. So I was massively like gaining weight but then also having the worst stomach pain ever. And I was told constantly by the, for lack of a better term,

[01:02:57] like the leaders of the training center. It was always a husband and wife team. I was constantly told by the wife that the reason I was having like difficult period cramps or I was having stomach aches is because I had not fully confessed

[01:03:10] what had happened to me at headquarters and what I did at headquarters. That I still had sin in my heart and because I defrauded a young man and I thought that I knew better for myself. It was outside of God's will that this was God punishing me.

[01:03:23] And then until I really wished my will and yielded all of my rights to being an autonomous human being, until I yielded all of that up, then I was gonna hurt. Yeah, there was no care there at all. But I left, I ended up impostoring

[01:03:39] and getting my way through that and gave a wonderful testimony of how I had changed my life at Oklahoma City Training Center. I sang the song and I was finally allowed to go home and I swore I was never gonna go anywhere else

[01:03:52] with Ibeal Peer ATI ever again. Like it was done. And thank goodness a month later my now husband reached out to my dad to enter into courtship. We're two ATI families so we understood how all that worked and my dad said no at first.

[01:04:05] Asked me what I thought about it about him saying no to this potential guy. And I was so beyond livid. I was like, he is my one chance. He's my only chance. And my dad is sitting there like the cat that ate the cream

[01:04:19] telling me that he told this young man, no. And what did I think about that? I was at a Barnes and Nobles. I pushed that metal chair scraped it across the floor as loud and obnoxiously as I could. I stormed out to the van,

[01:04:32] stood there and waited for my authority to open the door for me because my arms don't work apparently which speaks to me even more. 21 years old and this is my life. I go home, I sit in my shower with my shower on hot for like three hours.

[01:04:47] I didn't care if it burnt me up to a crisp. I was so incapable of functioning at that point. I was like, I don't know what's going to happen to me. And unaliving was not really a thing in my head

[01:05:00] but I fear where I could have potentially gone in my thoughts had my husband not continued to pursue me to marry me because it was getting pretty hopeless. A month or two later, my dad finally gave permission because again, my husband sang the songs

[01:05:15] that my father wanted to hear and finally allowed us to get married in September of 2000. I was 22 years old. I got engaged before I got my driver's license. Yeah. Your first kiss is your... He wasn't technically my first kiss if I'm being real real

[01:05:29] but he was the, you're the one kiss. Like I knew that this was the dude but yeah, I had another kiss before that but we won't go there. No, no, no. But yeah. And marrying him, Bill tried to stop us from getting married.

[01:05:43] He actually wrote a letter to my fiance and told him that I was not ready yet that I had many years of single service still for the Lord and that I still had a lot of lessons to learn and that Bill being a father figure in my life

[01:05:57] did not think that this was the appropriate time for me to get married. And this is coming from a guy who's not a father and never had children. And never been married and enjoyed hands-y-ing and fiddling me all the time. Yeah, yeah.

[01:06:09] I did not know about this letter until after we were married. I'm really glad that my husband didn't share it with me because I think I would have, again, I was getting to that point where I'm like, if anybody dare tells me what to do anymore,

[01:06:19] I mean, I'm just gonna lose my mind. I have a question just in terms of you said all your experiences had men, had been you were scared of them. Number one, I'm sorry that was the experience. Yeah, me too. Because we're not all bad. And...

[01:06:34] I know that now. My question is, is, you know, your husband growing up in that, how do you think he had to transcend some of his indoctrination and for you to have an experience of him, obviously it's positive and you're still together?

[01:06:47] Like what was that like for you guys and was that something you guys did together and discussed? It was hard to navigate. It really was. I mean, especially for me and again, I didn't realize at the time, like even us just having an intimate relationship,

[01:07:00] like the spankings were a problem by my childhood spankings created such horrible experience for me being naked with him. You know, like it like the vulnerability was coupled with how I was being disciplined as a child. And so like even trying to like explain that to him

[01:07:20] and be like, cause he wasn't disciplined the same way I was. Again, like we were saying earlier, like each father was a cult leader. So however that father chose, like whatever their moral compass was within themselves, they would do what they deemed for their family.

[01:07:33] And yeah, so like I was very jumpy too. Like even if he would just come up behind me and just like put his arm around me, I was like, what is this for? It's leading to something. There's like, I just, again, the hyper vigilance would just mean like,

[01:07:44] oh, this now means we have to go have sex because you even just touched me or especially with IVLP and ATI teachings, the whole point of being a couple is to procreate. It's the quiverful, it's the, you have to have, you know, 50 kids.

[01:07:57] And I knew at a very, very young age, I did not want children. Like even my dollies, my dollies didn't have babies. My dollies were like doing stuff. They were going places. And so before I got married to my husband, I said to him, I was like,

[01:08:11] we are not having kids for the first five years. Like this is my rule. And if you're not okay with that, I'm okay with being single. Like as much as I liked him, I wanted me. Sure, yeah. And so I was like, we're not doing this.

[01:08:24] And like, I will do birth control. We'll figure out all the other stuff. Cause all of that was even so taboo to me. Like the idea of a condom, I'm like, oh my, you know, that's just like, it's so against God and what's gonna happen?

[01:08:36] Are we gonna be penalized somehow for doing this for ourselves, for making these choices? Well, it's difficult enough without that. Going through it as teenagers and young adults is difficult enough, let alone with the added burden of that. Yeah. And then the pressure of your parents.

[01:08:51] Oh, when are you guys gonna have kids? Oh, it's been six months. Like I was sent stuff to help me be more fertile. He was sent stuff to be more fertile. It was just this barrage. And for the first many years of our marriage,

[01:09:05] we were such a weird couple because we didn't have kids. And I was just like, it's not your choice. You know, this is what I want for myself. Why do you think you have a right to whatever I'm doing in my relationship with my husband? Like stop it.

[01:09:20] I thought, I hate when women especially will ask other women, when are you gonna have children? It's none of your damn business. When they pop out of me and I invite you to the shower, that's when you know I'm about to have a child.

[01:09:34] Or if I initiate that conversation with you, it is so private. It's so true. And for me, I actually got to the point where I like when my mother would ask me, I would say, do you realize that every time you ask me

[01:09:44] if I'm pregnant, you are asking me if I just screwed my husband. You are asking me if I'm having sex. Like because it was so taboo for so long, you live in purity culture of like, don't be touched. Don't idolize anyone. Don't have a romantic attachment to anybody

[01:09:59] and you're trying to keep your blinders on and keep yourself away from everything. And then all of a sudden on the wedding night, you're supposed to do it like rabbits and they get pregnant the next day? Like what is this? Like sex was just a means to children.

[01:10:10] And I didn't want them. Therefore, I don't want sex. I also did not learn how to have pleasurable sex. I didn't learn how I was supposed to enjoy it. It was a task that I had to endure in order to move through the movement

[01:10:22] of being a Christian woman. I am not isolated in being this way. There are tons and tons and tons of women in Christianity that are technically raped constantly because we don't know how to enjoy it. Well, I can't imagine that the men know how to do it either.

[01:10:38] No, of course they don't. It's a deed to get done. And again, you feel like an animal because you're just being mounted and the deed is done. So yeah, it's a lot. I know that's heavy. But it was something that we really had to talk through,

[01:10:50] like you said, like we just had to. And to be really honest, it's still not perfect. I still have a lot of issues in that area of my life. And with therapy, it's getting better, but it's the conditioning. And I know it.

[01:11:04] I take it right back to the spankings. Absolutely. Yeah, it embrages me because it's one of the aspects of my life that I feel like Bill will never understand. IBLP never is gonna get it because they don't care. They prefer that women be joyfully available to their husbands.

[01:11:19] That's how it was always sold to us. We have to be joyfully available at all times. So I believed that that's all men ever thought about and ever wanted from me. Even the stranger at the grocery store, he's thinking about sex with me.

[01:11:32] I'm not saying that because I'm a cute girl or because I'm blonde or because I'm a certain body type. It was my understanding of men. And there's no wisdom booklet to teach you any of this. If anything, it's about creating and reproductive.

[01:11:48] Like we had conversations about reproductive systems and how all that works. I would imagine a lot of the men around you did have that problem because they talked about it so much. There wasn't any sort of organic process for you guys to explore in any healthy atmosphere

[01:12:05] for them to not come out that way. So it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I would imagine. Yeah, if you're told that that's what you are but women are the gatekeepers and we are totally shrouded. Yeah, you see an ankle and apparently you're getting a full heart on

[01:12:18] from seeing someone's ankle clavicle or their wrist. For the record, never happened to me. There's no ankle that's getting a full heart on. You should go through IBLP for two decades and see what happens. I have talked to a couple of guys, ex-ATI guys.

[01:12:31] It makes you too curious. Oh, for sure. It's the forbidden fruit. Right, exactly. Well then seeing an ankle is like, ooh, you know, or seeing your first boob. I'll bet you anything every guy in ATI remembers their first boob they've ever seen, you know?

[01:12:45] And I'm sure it was National Geographics or something. How would they go out in public and see someone like, you know, they sell beer with women in bikinis. Like what would happen there? When I say blinders, I literally mean that. Really?

[01:12:56] Like in my family, my brothers would do that. Yeah, if we were walking through the mall Victoria's Secret would come up. They would put their hand up so that they wouldn't look. They looked so peculiar and weird or they would shift their eyes over.

[01:13:08] Some families will call it out. I think the Duggars do, I forget what term they use, but they use this word that the girls will say it and then the boys will look away. Wow. And so yeah, again, self-policing, self-policing and self-reporting. Self-policing but also so much repression.

[01:13:24] Yeah, absolutely. Which leads to perversion. So much repression. It does. It really does because now your mind is going absolutely crazy with all of its assumptions and it wants more and small things become much bigger things. I'm just laughing because my family

[01:13:41] in the early 80s was like skinny dipping till I was like... That's amazing. Probably eight or nine or 10, yeah. I mean there was a point where I was like guys I don't wanna do this anymore but they were hippies. Here's where I told Sarah

[01:13:54] and this is what I would love to ask you and to address. So there is this movement. It's very real. It's starting to infiltrate and certain and a lot of the structures that allow our society to function in whatever way that they do.

[01:14:09] This is clearly a dysfunctional movement if it gets any sort of foothold into our culture, particularly government. Instead of, and I don't wanna say just talking about it because I think that's a lot as well but we've had a lot of very similar stories on here.

[01:14:24] We have a platform where we can hopefully inform and educate. I want action items. What do you think in addition to what we're doing and what you're doing and I commend that what do you think people can do and what else can be done to address it?

[01:14:38] Because I see my impression of what's going on right now is that a lot of fertile ground is being created for religion right now because of what's going on politically. A lot of stuff gets put in the political crossfire and I think that's creating fertile ground

[01:14:53] for what I see on the right wing is using religion to accelerate their agendas. What do you think can be done to address that? What else can be done? What are your feelings about that? And that's a lot and I'll just let you go from that.

[01:15:06] That's like eight questions. I think politically Christians are being exploited. Like it's fertile ground because they're being exploited and they are conditioned to exploitation. But they're a vote base. They've been in it for so long. They've been swimming in the vat of religion

[01:15:22] for so long that they are easily primed. Several years ago when government was getting real wonk, I saw the writing on the wall. I was like, this is the gateway. This is the gateway drug to Christians. This is gonna go so sideways for the rest of America

[01:15:38] and Christians are gonna be rejoicing and they are. They're so excited. They're so amped because their colonialism, they're just like, they're crazy conservative ways and they want to push it on everybody else around them. Religion is not about forcing it down on everyone else's throats.

[01:15:56] You're supposed to live and walk it yourself. Let other people be who they want to be. I always say, you can believe what you wanna believe. Don't harm other people. And through what's going on with government, they are harming people through the different laws

[01:16:11] that they are putting into action in this country. And I think number one when I'm on my TikTok page and I do lives and stuff, I have a lot of Christians that will stumble across my page. A lot are very resistant. They're like, oh, we're praying for you.

[01:16:24] And I'm like, well, good luck with that. But you know what you could really be doing? You could be speaking up in your own churches. All of the churches across America need to listen to victims. They need to start listening to survivors

[01:16:35] and stop allowing this fear to overtake them because in that fear is how these perpetrators and these predators continue to thrive. They live off of our fear and they survive off of it and they get bigger and better because of it. Once we all start talking,

[01:16:52] like Chad said in the documentary, when we all started talking is when things started to go downhill for these people. You need to start shedding the light on things. So I like to give, I like to implore to Christians, start talking. If it's uncomfortable, good.

[01:17:08] Because that means you're doing the right thing. If it is too comfortable for you to be quiet, that means you are complicit in the behaviors of these predators. You are allowing it to continue. And if that hurts your feelings, you need to wake up.

[01:17:24] I don't like this whole like it's a woke culture. I'm not woke, I'm aware. I am finally aware for the first time how much my conditioning and compliance kept me in a space that harmed others and allowed me to continue to be harmed for so long.

[01:17:40] It's another reason why I didn't wanna have children. I didn't wanna harm them. I wanted it to stop. And I was so afraid that if I had kids because I didn't have therapy at this point but I knew I would end up probably falling

[01:17:50] into the same thing because I had nothing else to fall back on. And I was really terrified of that. But back to the politics and stuff. I mean, I just think we also need to get into action in politics. Too many people assume everyone else will vote

[01:18:04] in your local elections, in your primary elections. Vote every time. Don't just sit and wait for the top two to show up. If you want to get involved, I am not someone who is interested in getting involved in politics. But I know several people on TikTok

[01:18:20] that actually are trying to get involved in their local elections and actually become elected officials. And I'm like, yes, this is what we need. The action is us actually getting out there and doing but also continuing to speak. And if you have a platform to speak

[01:18:33] even if you don't have one starting to speak will actually create one especially with all of this. And if you are a Christian, I am not a Christian anymore. I went from Christianity to kind of in the middle somewhere and now I am happily an atheist.

[01:18:46] I've chosen to believe in me because I've never been allowed to do that before. And I like the idea of trusting myself for the first time ever and not looking into this need to fall on my knees and worship something and or someone

[01:19:02] who never calls back to me. Never once have I ever heard God. And I think that most people that believe they've heard God, they've heard their own internal desires and they confuse it with God. It's very easy. I could go all day long thinking God told me everything.

[01:19:18] God pulled us together today, you guys. Like God's in here with us. I don't believe that. I believe that our energy brought us together because we have collective stories and narratives through pain and then wanting to get out there and shed light on it

[01:19:31] so that other people won't be hurt either. So I implore to the non-Christians but I think it's easier for all of us out here to see what's going on because we have distance from it. But those that are still in this faith system

[01:19:43] they don't have distance from it. They are absolutely ruled by conditioning and by fear and by indoctrination. So how do you just say, hey, it's time for you to come over here? We seem like extremists. I understand that. If I knew me back when I was younger,

[01:19:57] I'd be like, hell no! Who is this lady? Like that, you are all things scary. So I feel like we have to be able to communicate with them in love and gentleness but also with a firm hand saying, look, I know it's hard

[01:20:11] but I'm here on the outside and I'm telling you it can be done. But you will not be effective if you don't gain a little bit of distance. You need help to deconstruct. I don't really like that word either.

[01:20:22] Ginger Duggar in her book likes to use the word disentangle which I think is just another way to say it but the one thing about disentangling when you disentangle necklaces what do you do with those necklaces? Do you throw them away? Now you hold onto them.

[01:20:34] So she's holding on to the tenets of her faith. She's not destroying anything that mangled her up and I feel like deconstruction is actually pulling the house down to the foundation and rebuilding with something stronger and better and more beautiful for yourself. I like that.

[01:20:49] So I think that it's about encouraging people to not be afraid to maybe poke at the bricks in your house and be willing to let some of them crumble and topple and boldly face that. It takes a lot of courage and bravery

[01:21:02] to walk outside of a system you have been involved in for your entire life. It's very, very scary. It's very lonely. But I'm here to tell you, as I love how Tia says the universe will catch you and I didn't know that the universe was catching me

[01:21:17] for 20 years. I didn't know it until I went through therapy and I realized how many beautiful non-Christian friends I have that have shown me more of Christ, quote unquote, than Christians I've known my whole life who have done nothing but abuse. I'm so glad you've had that experience.

[01:21:32] That was a great answer for me too. It was, it was a great answer. It's funny like I don't know how much you've listened to this whole thing but like I very much an atheist but I also do believe in the universe

[01:21:41] and some people like, well that's another word for God or like, okay, well I believe in the universe catching me and I believe in, or what did Alice say? Spiritually curious. Yes. Spiritually curious atheist or whatever. There's all the different words for it.

[01:21:55] I had a number of questions when you were talking I didn't want to interrupt you but one of them, I think that's a good antidote to what I was most shocked at at the end of the documentary was just how there was this plan with the Joshua generation

[01:22:06] and to get these young children infiltrated into all these different areas and you know, what's the, yeah, how do we fix that? How do we amend it? I think you answered that. I know people want to know where is Bill Gothard now?

[01:22:19] He lives in his house in LaGrange, Illinois doing his thing. He has a embassy university, I say with full sarcasm, Bill. It is approved by the state of Florida. Are we surprised? Absolutely not. Don't know if anyone's ever enrolled in it but it's all about meditation and prayer

[01:22:37] and memorizing scripture and meditating on that scripture every night. And if you do it for a year or two you can get an MBA or an MA, a BA. You could also go on to get a doctorate I believe if you do it for four years.

[01:22:50] Just praying and meditating at night. Yeah, that's all. Probably a little fuzzy. I'm gonna go ahead and try a little fuzzy. With socks, shoes, doesn't matter as long as you're meditating. He also has power prayer teams or something like that. He's still trying to grift.

[01:23:05] The grifter will always grift. However, he's not doing it with IBLP because he's no longer president of IBLP, the Institute in Basic Life Principles. So he is off doing his little thing out of his house. He's got little minions that help him out with this

[01:23:20] and you know who you are. And then there's IBLP, the Institute in Basic Life Principles that is still run by a board of I think four people. Tim Levandusky is the current president. So people want to focus on Bill Gauthard. He's no longer functional within IBLP.

[01:23:37] All of his materials are still there and they sell them, they still do seminars. They have not stopped at all. They are still doing all of the things. They have a podcast, they are rebranding. They don't really want to be known now

[01:23:50] as the Institute in Basic Life Principles. I wonder why? So they're now going off as the home discipleship network because it's so much easier, right? Like no one's gonna think that that's a problem. Home discipleship network, a ministry of IBLP. They also have a podcast.

[01:24:08] I am not saying all of these things because I'm trying to have an infomercial of them but I want people to be aware because some don't wanna talk about it. Like, oh, don't mention it. You don't want people to know. And I'm like, yes, they do.

[01:24:18] I want people to know about this because they want them to avoid it at all costs. So commands of Christ is their podcast and literally all of this is Bill Gauthard's teachings. They're just renaming it. That's upsetting. Very. And the ATI program is no more.

[01:24:35] The homeschooling program has ended. I believe they did it ahead of the documentary because once the documentary did their first announcement that they would be coming out very shortly after that ATI was disbanded. Some of the materials are still available

[01:24:50] but they're kind of reworking that narrative as well. The wisdom booklets, I think are available from like wisdom booklet one through 14. There are 54 of them. Up through wisdom booklet 14 still exist and now they are being touted as Bible study materials. So my education from eight to 18

[01:25:10] are now just simply Bible study materials. It is such a slap in the face but also validating that it was nothing more than Bible studies. Right. Here I am trying to get out into the world. It was zero education being told I have an education.

[01:25:25] Speaking of which, you did get out into the world and you're very successful in what you do. Can you tell our audience what you do now and where they can find you? I am now a makeup artist and a hair stylist,

[01:25:35] a licensed hair stylist I'm proud to say as a homeschooled kid. I had to go and get a high school equivalency test to do that at the age of 30, which was pretty terrifying. It was one of the most humiliating things I've ever done.

[01:25:46] I should have been proud of it but I wasn't because I barely passed it but whatever. As my husband said, it doesn't matter the test score you got through it. Yes. But yeah, so I'm a cosmetologist and a makeup artist.

[01:25:57] I've been in the industry for over 15 years now. I go all over the world, do fashion week and magazine covers and beauty campaigns and you can find my work at crazypretty.com or crazypretty on Instagram. Just putting it out there

[01:26:09] that I'd like to work with you one day. Yeah. Like do something creative together. That would be fun. That would be so cool. Also wanted to know, it's so cool that our Patreon audience is really excited about this and reminded me that you had pink hair

[01:26:21] in the documentary. It was out on purpose. A little fuck you to the... I had pink hair for maybe eight years at that point. Peachy pink hair. Oh, okay. Yeah, so that was not an F you really to bill.

[01:26:31] It was, I feel like I've been in my space as an artist for a really long time now and that was just, that was my thing. My fuck you to bill was really the black jacket, the suit coat, the v-neck because I showed my clavicles,

[01:26:44] the white t-shirts, the jeans. Throwing some ankle on there. I didn't notice that. Exactly, the ankle. Caught the ankle. The ankle, yeah, yeah. Yep, yep. I see what you're doing there. And like my nails were black. I had a ton of jewelry.

[01:26:56] I wear a ton of jewelry now because I wasn't allowed to wear it back then. Lindsay, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Lindsay, you rock. I wanna thank God for bringing us together today. Thank you, universe. Thank you, Tia.

[01:27:08] Thank you for taking the time. Thank you guys. Yes, thank you, Shine Happy People. I really appreciate that you have spoken out. Your story is very inspiring and I know that you're gonna continue to go on to do great things and keep shining light and being a force.

[01:27:23] Thank you so much, you guys. You don't know how much I was looking forward to this. To be able to speak to other cult survivors, you're really, really inspirational to me because I remember when the vow was coming out and all the stories about Nexium,

[01:27:36] I was watching everything about it because there were so many things that felt so similar to Bill. And watching all of you guys process what felt like truly in real time as you were going through everything with that gave me strength for going into the documentary for us

[01:27:51] because I was really, really scared to speak out. I wasn't involved in the lawsuit for fear because I was asked to be a part of it and I was way too afraid. It's weird to say, but I'm grateful to have found other people that have a platform

[01:28:03] and are willing to speak out when it is the most difficult to do so because it is giving other people strength. It gave me strength. So thank you so much. That means the world makes it worth it. Exactly. You like what you hear?

[01:28:17] Please do give us a rating, a review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you listen. Every little bit helps us get this cult awareness content out there, smash that subscribe button. You know what to do. So if this has been interesting for you, breaking news,

[01:28:32] we will be doing a catch up with a guest that was on our early, one of our early episodes of our show, Eric Skorzynski, who is of the IFB. I always want to say IBS, which is something different international fundamentalist fundamentalist Baptist.

[01:28:48] And he talks a lot about the show and also Jill Duggar's book and what's been happening in terms of some of the arrests that have been made and a little catch up with Eric. That's gonna be over on Patreon this week. And that'll be-

[01:29:00] I want to get to the bottom of how TLC just sits back and rolls the camera. I do too. That's the ass-chapin' for this episode. Absolutely. And one of the things we didn't get to chat about with Lindsay when we interviewed her

[01:29:11] that was sort of has remained in my mind is that there's this thing that they talk about in Shiny Happy People. I don't know if you remember, Nip. It was called Loyalty and Adversity. How that's like a thing that the IBLP and I think a lot of- Double-bind.

[01:29:25] Yeah, it's a double-bind where basically you're saying, if you are loyal, you will be loyal even in adversity. And that's the real test. That's like the test from God versus, oh no, the adversity is showing that this is a sign to get the fuck out

[01:29:37] and I'm done with this bullshit. But they stay because of the loyalty and adversity tenant, which where else did we see that, Nipi? Dare I say, Naxia. Yes, let's dance outside the prison. Oh my God, don't even get me started. Let's start a movement to show how-

[01:29:51] I'll leave it alone. Yeah, that's obvious. If you missed it, you missed it. Anyway, would love to hear rethought about the episode. You can find Lindsay Williams on Instagram at Cult Chronicles. We'll have that in our show notes and you can find us over on Patreon

[01:30:04] talking more about the Shiny Happy People docuseries and all things culty at patreon.com slash a little bit culty and just a reminder, we have about 15 pencil sets left for those who wanna join the inner circle. These are Shiny. They are metallic.

[01:30:17] The flying off the shelves, they're dope. And if you're into pencils- How do they write, Sarah? What? How do they write? I haven't tried there. I'm probably never gonna open my package. They're gonna sit on my desk as a, almost like a trophy of what we've accomplished.

[01:30:28] We have our own pencil set and you can too, dear listeners. Thank you again. I'm sure they're very well. We'll see you next week for more of our regular programming. Bye bye. Here in a little bit culty. Sinking down to the depths of the ocean

[01:30:43] hanging on to the wind in my love felt like all of it, all I could leave but I know I won't. A little bit culty is a Trace 120 production executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Nippy Ames in collaboration with producer Will Rutherford at Citizens of Sound

[01:31:04] and our co-creator Jess Temple-Tardy. Our writing and research is by Holly Zadra and Matthias Rosenzweig and our theme song Cultivated is by the artist John Bryant and Nigel Aslan.