The Grotto: Crypto, NFTs, & An Online Hellscape (Part 2)

[00:00:00] A Little Bit Culty, Sarah Edmondson amp. 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

[00:00:39] the podcast and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business, individual, anyone or anything. I'm Sarah Edmondson. And I'm Anthony, air quotes Nippy Ames. And this is A Little Bit Culty, a podcast about what happens when things that seem like

[00:01:04] a great thing at first go bad. Every week we chat with survivors, experts and whistleblowers for real cult stories told directly by the people who live through them. Because we want you to learn a few things we've had to learn the hard way.

[00:01:16] 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.

[00:01:29] Sinking down to the depths of the ocean, hanging on to a wave of my love. Hello everybody and welcome back to part two with our brave four ex-members of The Grotto. If you did not listen to part one, put it in reverse for thirst.

[00:01:59] Let us know what you think of this intense episode over on Patreon or Instagram, wherever you communicate with us. Enjoy. We are going to now hear the red flags that started to emerge in this discord community called The Grotto.

[00:02:28] FOMO, tell us where did shit go wrong for you? I'm not sure I can identify it, but I started to notice a pattern of abuse and the project is mostly male collectors and it was with the men.

[00:02:40] I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes with how he was abusing and manipulating women, but I know that he was loaning money to people and then controlling them that way. He would love bomb the men as well. He love bombed me.

[00:03:00] Luckily, I never was in a position where I needed to loan money from him, but he would publicly reward you and talk very sweetly about you. Behind the scenes, he was really terrorizing people who were beholden to him and he was really abusive.

[00:03:19] One of the things that was really good about The Grotto in its heyday was the community. You really made wonderful friends and you were communicating with them on a daily basis and you were participating in this very competitive thing, but it was a friendly competition.

[00:03:38] At a certain point in the destruction of the project, he started pitting us against one another and he started triangulating people to have them compete with one another for all kinds of things. Either it was his attention or money or we weren't spending enough money and this person

[00:03:58] was spending more than you. He really destroyed the thing that was most beautiful about the project, was that it was a lot of fucking fun and it was wonderful to compete and play this game with all these very interesting people.

[00:04:17] It was unsustainable for some reason in his mind and he needed just to pit people against one another. That's when I was no longer having fun and I forget the term that you mentioned earlier about diminishing returns or how you're stuck in something financially. We were all victims.

[00:04:37] I was absolutely a victim of this fallacy because I had invested so much money, but more importantly, I had invested an incredible amount of time. I think it's worth telling the audience the absurd amount of time that was required of us to participate in this project.

[00:04:57] It could be between three to eight hours a day during some of the more complicated events that he would have. I am not exaggerating. There was one week where it was eight to 10 hours a day for our team to participate. And how much financially for you?

[00:05:14] For me, enough to send a student to Harvard full scholarship for a year at least by the end of it. And for some people, it was a lot less. I was one of the top collectors and I can say I was in the top 10 collectors.

[00:05:31] I stayed on very good terms with him the whole time. You know why? Because I didn't complain. I was very quiet and I never questioned anything he did. I was just sort of the way I played it. And I mean, I regret that a lot.

[00:05:46] So if you did those three things, you didn't get in any trouble. But as soon as you started questioning, forget it or criticizing or saying, you're hurting this person. Why are you abusing this person? I actually watched my friends get abused and I watched them get canceled.

[00:06:02] He would expel people eventually from the project for maybe just asking the wrong questions really. So there was this culture of fear, a culture of fear where you wouldn't even want to question him publicly or privately for the kind of retribution that you might get, verbal abuse.

[00:06:22] But also he could penalize you in the play of the game somehow. And it eventually led to that situation where if you weren't spending enough, you were penalized in the game. You were not allowed to proceed. He put roadblocks in front of you.

[00:06:39] That is at the very end of it. That's when things really started falling apart. Before we get to that, were you also part of the real life events, these house parties? Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:06:50] My first impression of him was very bad because it was just during the LFGs that I spoke about. But when I first met him, I was very charmed. He seemed like a very great, smart, gracious, generous person, fun, who had brought all these people together.

[00:07:06] The first time I met him was in New York City. He rented a loft just off of Gramercy Park to throw a huge party with a DJ, very generous spread there. And it was a lot of fun.

[00:07:19] And it was the first time I got to meet all of these virtual friends that I had made over the course of the year. And we had a lot in common. And we all kind of suffered from this collective hallucination. And we were aware of that.

[00:07:34] And as Shaina said before, it was sort of like a joke. Were we part of some weird culty group? Why are we doing this? Oh, I don't know. It's a lot of fun. And we've made friends with each other and we're really, really enjoying it.

[00:07:49] So the first time I met him in person was a very favorable event. When did you feel as though something wasn't right about The Grotto or about Dean or both? What happened? So I think I could start.

[00:08:03] There's a million different stories I want to tell you all at once. But they all sort of come back to this main point that people tell you who they are and you just need to learn to listen.

[00:08:15] And I think we all thought it was his humor and his sarcasm and maybe even just his hubris and his ego and this socially awkward, avoidant personality type who was an artist and misunderstood and as Katerina said, the underdog kind of thing.

[00:08:32] So we all made excuses for him. We all made excuses for him. And I think at some point you realize that he has issues with everybody. And then maybe there's a common denominator there.

[00:08:47] And so, for example, once we were on one of these LFG broadcasts and he spent a good portion of the time just talking shit about another artist. And right or wrong, it doesn't matter if you're in a power position.

[00:09:01] Why are you telling your community not to collect or not to like this other person? It doesn't even matter. It's just like it feels below where you are. If you're this visionary artist, why are you spending so much time in the mud?

[00:09:15] And this would turn into three becoming the great protector role of everybody in The Grotto. And he would protect us from all those scams coming in. And again, he would tear people down to build them up. But he would trash talk The Grotto too.

[00:09:32] He talked about his community manager and he would call him an idiot and a moron all the time despite the fact we all love this guy. And he was sort of our touchpoint to three.

[00:09:41] And he just like would find ways to like tear others down to make you feel better. Like they didn't spend that much money but you did. Their gameplay wasn't good enough but yours was. I'm not telling anybody else but you this thing.

[00:09:53] And like when you like extrapolate it, one of the main problems is that he has problems with everyone but everybody doesn't realize it because they're being love bombed and being told they're wonderful privately even if they're publicly being, you know, raffed at. Right.

[00:10:11] Can I add something to what Charm said? He at some point became very paranoid and jealous of other artists in the NFT space and started demonizing them and basically convincing us that they just wanted to rip

[00:10:26] us off and take our money and that he was the only one in the space that would, where our money was safe and that was looking out for us. And the other people were basically criminals.

[00:10:36] You know it's basically I'm the one true God routine and the other ones are false gods. You know that was just so clear to me that that was the game he was playing at that time and it was a red flag. I ignored it.

[00:10:50] And as Charm said, I was able to overlook it because well we were having fun for a time and I don't know you just overlook these things and you forgive them and pretend they're not there until things just get to a breaking point. Right.

[00:11:06] Well just as a reminder at least with me that we've learned is that you overlook them because the good outweighs the bad. And also like you're clearly all good people and you're projecting goodness onto this man.

[00:11:20] If you knew what you know now, you'd be like oh well he's blah blah blah whatever we decide about him. I don't know if he's a sociopath or a con man or what but. It's in that field. Yeah.

[00:11:30] But you're like dismissing it going but he's as good as I am. That's her natural tendency. Shamana Montel talks about it in her new book. It's like a halo effect and it's a very natural tendency. I 100% yeah I think that the halo effect really was in play.

[00:11:46] I think because you know innately we're not liars and innately we saw the good in the project and the art and the people that we just assumed like this was that persona talking and it was a joke.

[00:11:58] I can think of like a really crazy story where like I can't believe that I thought that it was okay. And I think this maybe would dovetail into some stuff Kat might want to share. There was another member of the Grotto. It doesn't matter.

[00:12:15] He was a prominent member, a big collector and he disappeared for a while. And you know it was just notable that you know everybody was supposed to be there and present for these meetings so if somebody doesn't show up you kind of knew it like what's up.

[00:12:30] And so I was on a date with Three Sims. We went to dinner. We went for a walk in the park. We just had a nice New York City date and he kept talking about it. Where is this guy? I'm nervous. Like what's going on?

[00:12:45] And after dinner he gets this call from another Grotto member and he gets like quiet and he gets upset and he like visibly starts to like tear up and cry. And so I hold him like he's huge.

[00:13:01] One thing about Three Sims which is interesting is he's a big dude and I'm just like putting my arms around him and I'm holding him and I get him a tissue and I'm like what is it?

[00:13:13] And it takes him a minute and he's like well he got the guy got arrested. He was taking upskirt photos at a bar but when the police looked through his phone they found child pornography. Okay, pause.

[00:13:29] He then says if he was a senator's son he would not been arrested. Like there was some unfairness to this situation and I have this moment like record scratch where I'm like no, no, no, no, no. I get you're shocked.

[00:13:48] I get you've been scared for this guy but that is not the takeaway. The takeaway is not that if he was a senator's son he wouldn't get arrested. The takeaway is that nobody should have child pornography. Nobody and it takes three a minute and he gets there.

[00:14:04] But like I just thought it was shock and he wasn't processing and he wants to like take care of his people, right? But now like when I look at it and oh like I didn't know again people tell you who they

[00:14:17] are if you listen that he was texting and calling with Kat at the same time who's 18 and things are getting like sexual and intimate with them. So it's like he telegraphed it. I just couldn't see it.

[00:14:34] And one last thing I want to say is he had this joke and he did this with Shana too where he would say to us and we didn't know he was recycling the line but I just want you to

[00:14:45] look at me the way that Just Lane looks at Jeffrey. And it was like this gross Jeffrey Epstein joke who he seemed to be obsessed with in a weird way.

[00:14:55] And again, we just thought it was so absurd that it had to be him just laying it on thick. I'm going to hand it over to Kat because she probably can expand on that one. This podcast wouldn't happen without our amazing supportive generous patrons. Are you with us?

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[00:16:12] Now let's get back to a little bit culty, shall we? Okay, Kat, you've shared how you got in. What were some of your first red flags and when did it go from, you know, flirty DMs to whatever you want to share? Well, it is.

[00:16:27] I intend to get personal on this because it really paints a picture, really paints a picture. So basically like two weeks after we started talking, we got to a point where he declared we're falling in love and that we need to have a conversation about it.

[00:16:42] So the situation is when I was at the point in a two years long relationship already with a boy, like that relationship helped me to deal with the death of my father and we started living together after I was 18 and we met the war together.

[00:16:59] So it was a personal, like a very, very decent one. But it was at the same time, like I already moved out of the country, he was left there, we were on distance and also it was a coming of age relationship.

[00:17:12] You know, I was still in that space where I am very much a child. It's very much not that physical and I was not used to even thinking of myself as like a body that can be objectified or desired.

[00:17:26] So my feelings for him in the beginning were the ones where I found in him this father figure who wants to care for me, like in a sense that he can advise me on something,

[00:17:37] he can provide some support, say it's all gonna be fine because my state was very turbulent at that time. And he also saw this connection but he imbued it with a very romantic twist before I was able to recognize what my feelings and my attachment was.

[00:17:57] And so it began to get more and more intense. He said he doesn't usually fall for women younger than him and that the fact that I am the age of his children was also scary for him but I was someone who transcends age in his opinion.

[00:18:15] And this is a hook for people who kind of have to be smarter and wiser than their age and they're still teenagers. But the thing is with that it is a trap because he makes you feel like you are equals but

[00:18:26] in that at the same time I was super naive, super inexperienced, unable to protect myself from anything but I was made to feel that we're equals in this. So in the same conversation where I shared my doubts, he said that he imagines having

[00:18:39] a child with me when he's 50 because my problem was like where this can go at all. He also said he can fly anywhere, anytime. A year later I found out he did not have a passport at that time already.

[00:18:52] So with progress from there he said like okay we can go for this, I will protect you and myself. And I was not ready to do anything yet but he started calling me his love and he never

[00:19:05] asked me to change my life yet he continued to talk to me and like promised me all these things so I could not choose two futures so I had to have a conversation with my boyfriend

[00:19:15] because this connection started to feel to me like it was meant to happen. And the reason for that was that he was using a lot of religious language when he was talking to me. I come from a basically a religious family.

[00:19:30] The way he talked to me was like I was meant to have you, like we were meant to meet at this point in life, you were made to me. He repeated this like a lot. Do you realize you were made for me?

[00:19:43] It was all like this is a fate, this is destiny. It was all odd for me but with time it grew on me. I started to ease into that space because well it was repeated so much and yes the love

[00:19:57] bombing it was on for months like not days or weeks. It was very stable, it went on for months. We talked through the day for many of the months and we had long regular calls. We watched series and movies together.

[00:20:10] We are both good with words so it was easy to recreate the illusion of both emotional and physical proximity. And the fumes of excitement about this life we are starting together were very high.

[00:20:21] And the other hook was like he said we can do great things together that our values are in the line with each other. We will do great things together, our skills and strengths combined.

[00:20:32] And it was very important for me because I felt at the time I cannot do anything about anything. Also on my 19th birthday he said this is my gift for you. I decided I want to transfer you a thousand dollars for you to donate them to the Armed

[00:20:50] Forces of Ukraine but I want to be doing it every month of the year on the same date. And for me it was first of all I was shocked. I was like no this is too much even though it is very important for me.

[00:21:03] It is too much, I cannot take this. I was very repeatedly saying I'm not comfortable with it. But he said you have to trust me on this. Just love it, just take this. I know it's your people. I also care for them.

[00:21:16] And so that was the point where yes we did the donation through the months and I felt very great because I can do something but he did not donate the money directly. He transferred the money to me so that I feel that this transaction takes place.

[00:21:31] I feel that I'm taking money and doing it on my own but I also owe him something in that sense. So the physical and sexual part of the story is the hardest for me to talk about but yeah

[00:21:42] basically his first steps in this direction were very careful and cautious. He would use euphemisms and talk about sex as if he's writing poetry. Like I am a reading person so it was a language I understood and it felt less scary.

[00:21:56] He would hint, he would throw comments about my beauty and sexiness but he would check my feelings and he would also make sure he doesn't comment on my body aside of my personality and me as a person.

[00:22:08] So yeah I was pretty scared of the whole thing because I also am never attracted to older men and it was not fine for me but he made me, he normalized this thing, this space by

[00:22:20] repeatedly putting me into the topic, into the position to contemplate us being physically together and as it was a relationship that was every month I was told I will get my passport back, I will fly to you next month, next month, next month.

[00:22:35] It was something where I gaslighted myself that I'm fine with it and this is what relationship means. Even though it was very hard for me and I never got finally comfortable with it.

[00:22:46] I just gaslighted myself into feeling okay with it and it got to the point where he also came up with the idea for me to tell him every time I come which was also then used

[00:22:59] the same way because he is very proud of the fact he managed to avoid through the year asking me directly for the lewd pictures. He's very proud of the fact he never had to ask but there are many other ways you can

[00:23:12] make a person do something for you without asking and that was the coercion, that was the encouragement of any visuals that I was posting on Instagram or sending him, doesn't matter which context, dressed or not, I would get the double portion of love bombing for

[00:23:31] it and then it became a part where in the second cycle of this relationship where it would get darker, where he would start picking fights with me, he would start checking how far I can fall for him, how much I can break.

[00:23:47] He would start doing the silence treatment saying that I need to answer some questions for him to decide what I want to do with this relationship, that there was a problem with me hanging out with other people, talking to people in the discord, other men, etc.

[00:24:04] And that would become the point where he gradually stops chasing me so much and I start chasing him in the sense that I'm already dependent on the harmony in this relationship, I'm very emotionally invested, my whole family knows about him, my friends know about him.

[00:24:21] I made this relationship for myself as real as it can get because I could not afford for this to be a failure, like I risked so much on it. And then the sexual content and sexual part of it would become the only point where he

[00:24:37] would turn his attention to me and consider my existence. And later in months he was not there for me anymore, but he would apologize and he would say he loves me, etc. when I would do this. So I was basically like a trained animal.

[00:24:54] And as soon as I got to the point where I'm doing this for him anyway, he stopped seeing sense in the love bombing and got kind of bored, I think.

[00:25:03] So it was through the year going on, he would show me who he is, his behavior got very unstable. I was going physically through a lot, I could not eat sometimes, I could not fall asleep. Normally my physical and mental states were very affected.

[00:25:20] And yes, I would have nightmares. I would have nightmares about my father and him merging into something and those nightmares were about some sexual content behavior. And I would wake up in stress and think, this is not real. It's fine.

[00:25:35] But it was very heavy and I did not realize what he did to this relationship and connection like a father-daughter dynamic. What he did to me, that I was in terror. I was living in terror all this time.

[00:25:51] And yeah, I would even by the end of the relationship, by the end of the year, I was scared of the Discord sound message, iMessage sound. I was literally just a little scared of it.

[00:26:03] So that's where we get to the point where he basically finds another person, another younger woman in his real life environment. And after a month of seeing her, he decides to call me and break it down for me. But he does not say like, let's end this.

[00:26:18] He says like, I slept with her. There is another girl and he watches my reaction. And then I break absolutely like I'm destroyed at that time mentally. But he says afterwards that I did this, but I love you.

[00:26:32] So when the person stabs you and then immediately says, I love you, I still want to be with you. I don't know what to do. It is the most one of the most traumatic things someone can do to you.

[00:26:41] So he put the relationship on the pause for him to try the waters and I allowed this. I was all the time hell bent on taking the higher road on like being forgiving, understanding, etc.

[00:26:54] And for months I was kind of just on my own, just literally living in a depressed episode. Yeah, it was very heavy. So that's how it started to end. But it ended a little bit later than that. Forgive me if I missed this part.

[00:27:08] Did you actually met him in person at this point? Never. I never met him. He never got the passport. It was court ordered. We can assume it was for not paying the child support. Maybe it was something else, speculation here. But you know, it was court ordered.

[00:27:24] He didn't have the passport even when we started talking. Wow. It's amazing. So all of this over technology across the pond. Yes. Yeah. Wild. I was going to say, you know, hearing this from Kat, like it's very hard for me as a mom. I'm not very protective.

[00:27:42] And like, I just wanted to also just say Kat, like, thank you for sharing that. And like, I know that's not easy no matter what age you are. So that was just something I just wanted to like, I don't know, I wish we could all hug.

[00:27:54] And one other thing I think I just like want to make a point of is that like, these relationships are all happening simultaneously. He's with Shana more publicly as a girlfriend. So to me, he's telling me that they've broken up and that she's the one who's obsessed with

[00:28:11] him. That she calls him all the time that she won't let him go that she's begging him to move in together. She's begging him to move to LA like, and so he's doing that in a way where it makes

[00:28:21] me not want to talk to Shana because like, I'm like, well, if she's obsessive, like, meanwhile, he's telling me that we're together and I'm the true thing that he wants. And but it has to be a secret relationship because he doesn't want it to look like there's

[00:28:37] favoritism in the project because I was a big collector. And even in the downfall, he starts to tell people that I'm just an obsessive groupie that never got a shot. I mean, I wish I didn't get a shot.

[00:28:47] I wish I never let this man touch me to be like my skin crawls knowing that his hands have been on my body, you know, and then like, and meanwhile, to hear the narrative over and over and over again, that like, you know, it never happened.

[00:29:00] And then and Kat, I think he wouldn't let into the deeper portions of the project also to keep her away. But there were more women to we know of many other women at this point, basically, if you

[00:29:12] were a woman in the project, and you stayed for any time it happened to you, even if you're not comfortable coming forward, as many of them have told us privately. And then there were other artists as well.

[00:29:23] And I just want to say again, and the him having problems with everybody, he tells me those issues with Shana, he tells me issues about another ex girlfriend that only comes around and wants money and uses her body, you know, when she needs a little like topping

[00:29:38] off financially. And he talks a lot about his ex wives, he says to me at one point, I don't know how to make friends. I only know how to make ex wives. And I don't know, maybe that's a Shana.

[00:29:56] For more background on what brought us here, check out Sarah's page turning memoir. It's called scarred the true story of how I escaped NXIVM the cult that bound my life. It's available on Amazon, Audible and at most bookstores.

[00:30:07] If you want to see that story in streaming form, watch both seasons of the vow on HBO. Break time's over people. Let's get back to this episode of a little bit culty. It's a good one.

[00:30:59] Okay, Shana, where we left off with you was meeting in real life and the big parties. Where did it go south? And maybe you could be the first to start with how you woke up and then we'll go backwards and hear how everyone else woke up.

[00:31:15] For me, it didn't take very long, maybe like a month to become a part of a larger extended abusive relationship pattern that I had been in for many years with one boyfriend or another boyfriend that has now been broken. The spell has been broken. Amazing.

[00:31:36] He would become a whole other person. It has to be stated that there's possibly no real core to this individual that we're speaking of right now, but if there, whatever that might even be, I've supposedly gotten

[00:31:51] the closest to it just because of the immense amount of communication and overlap in our existences that started happening. Even when we weren't in the same city, it's unbelievable later on to discover how he could

[00:32:06] have possibly put so much time into his project, which I worked for, by the way. Our careers became entirely entwined. He completely controlled my career later on. I was a mod in his discord.

[00:32:20] I was in almost every single access point of all of the chats in his project, all of the behind the scenes shit talking, all of the personal drama, hearing about domestic violence fights with his son, where maybe you need to call the police.

[00:32:36] The police might be here later, or something. Just extremes over the two years that I knew him. I ended up knowing the most. I did know his name this entire time.

[00:32:47] I knew some of his past and kind of assumed that that was a long time ago and that he had changed or that people can change, but it was a fucking nightmare to wake up and

[00:33:01] get slapped in the face with a few bits of truth over time that made it clear that I was protecting somebody that was legit hurtful. That's when everything turned around. One thing that I could say is he would have these outrageous, violent rage kind of episodes

[00:33:21] in private with me. It would be delusional often. He had a way of making it dissipate afterwards, and plus my career was entwined with him and several other control mechanisms at that point.

[00:33:38] There was a point where I began to feel like I was almost doing a service to the rest of the community because I had assumed that he was mostly taking out the bulk of his rage on me.

[00:33:50] It was actually a good thing that I had the capacity to swallow and take this rage. Thank you for sharing, Shana, truly. Wow. Virtual hugs. Okay, FOMO. Can you tell us about the moment when you decided to leave the grotto? It was clear that it was the end.

[00:34:10] That's what we're talking about, yeah. My exit point when I had to finally walk away. It would have been his solo show in LA. He was very excited about it. He had been given a solo show, and he asked my advice if I thought he should participate.

[00:34:30] I told him yes, it would be good for his exhibition history, etc. So nothing with him is simple. It involved a series of auctions. It wasn't just an exhibition. The actual physical paintings were there, and they had been turned into NFTs. They weren't simply for sale.

[00:34:51] I'm simplifying, but let's say half of them would have been offered to the inner grotto at a certain price, I think about $1,500 each. Half of them would then be subsequently offered to the public in an auction format.

[00:35:09] It was very important for him to have the first set of auctions be successful. We damn well had to bid on these things because it was all in the public register, and it would demonstrate to the wider world that things had value.

[00:35:26] God help you if you didn't buy one. Definitely lost your status within the grotto. What happened was, leading up to this exhibition, he was telling us how he had so many meetings every day with investors and new potential collectors and other gallerists for new shows

[00:35:47] and things like this. He was so busy networking. What happened was when the first set of auctions occurred within the grotto, the numbers were very lackluster, which was a very concerning sign that he had lost, that the grotto was losing faith in him.

[00:36:07] We had all been very financially exhausted. Leading up to this, he had really, really made us spend a lot of money leading up to these auctions. That was a disappointment. The second disappointment, which was really the death blow for me, was that no one in

[00:36:22] the public, not a single person was interested in bidding on any of his NFTs. It was as if a fraud had been completely revealed to us. The delusion, whatever delusion he was suffering from himself and whatever illusion he was trying to create for us just completely dissipated overnight.

[00:36:45] At that point, I just knew that it was doomed. With the collectors just turning on one another and with his really thinly veiled narrative that he was creating about himself being a really successful artist, it was all over.

[00:37:01] Two weeks later, Charm placed a personal phone call to me telling me about the abuse to the women. I immediately was horrified, but immediately I could see a parallel of how he was treating the women and the men, how he was love bombing them.

[00:37:20] He would say things to me in personal messages and calls that no one understood him. I was the only one who understood him. Everyone else is an idiot. I'm an art dealer. No one understands the art.

[00:37:35] This is the same thing he was saying to everyone, to the men, to the women, that they're special. They're the special person and they're the only person who truly understands his mind. That combined with the fraud of the auctions, I knew the whole project was over.

[00:37:54] That was it. It was incredibly painful for me. It was so sad. I was angry and sad. I'm still very sad. I'm not over it, but anger, not so much. It's been many months. The sadness is just to continue on and on.

[00:38:12] Going with what Foma was saying, there was this pressure to buy more and to buy more. You almost knew his financial situation in a weird way by what he was asking.

[00:38:24] I think that it got to the point where the cost of the seasons and to play this game were becoming uncomfortably high. It was also putting a wedge in the players who just simply couldn't afford it.

[00:38:39] There was a lot of international people in Indonesia and stuff where what he was asking could be a month's salary. It was unfair to have these people participate. We were really being asked to make, in some cases, big decisions for what was supposed to be our fun pastime.

[00:38:58] I just want to tell one story really quickly, which was I went out to a bar to meet another member of the Gratu who also lived in New York City, just a quiet guy.

[00:39:09] He starts to tell me how much he believes in the project, grotto first, so to speak, but that he is over leveraged. He has taken money against credit cards in order to buy because he knows it's going to hit, almost like a gambling addiction.

[00:39:26] I know it's going to hit any day and then I'm not going to want to be left behind. Also, if I get left behind, I'll never be able to come back. There was this feeling that if you didn't do what threesomes asked, if you missed a

[00:39:39] piece of it or you missed a day, you missed one buy-in, you'd be out of the game forever. There was no day of which you could take a stop or even a pause. It was hard to be sick in this project.

[00:39:51] While we were there, it got to be the time of day that the LFG broadcast would happen. He starts to reach for his phone and kind of panic. He puts the LFG on, on the phone, up and just hits mute. I'm like, what's the point of that?

[00:40:07] We're not listening to it. We're together. Besides, Threa said when members of the grotto are together, it's always worth celebrating. We're still doing it. He's like, no, no, I can't miss it. I don't want him to know that I missed the broadcast.

[00:40:20] What happens if he gives away a piece of art that's really valuable or what happens if we're not going to be able to participate unless we were on this broadcast? You could just see him spinning.

[00:40:35] There was palpable fear of retribution and wrath and financial consequence of which he had no finances to spare already. That to me was yet another red flag of even though this person didn't have that same personal

[00:40:50] personal connection to Threa, it was hitting him so hard in the pocketbook that he still had the control. That is a great story to, not great, but a perfect red flag story to show, to exemplify that particular pattern.

[00:41:06] It reminds me of our NXIVM conference calls of which we had like 40 hours of them a week. I would get on, I'd log in on time, otherwise you'd have to fill out a breach form and then

[00:41:16] I'd mute it while I was doing the dishes, but like I was there. So we get it. Let's end on that lighter note and just say that this is hard because A, I know you've never talked publicly about it.

[00:41:31] B, I know this is still very fresh for all of you and vulnerable. And like we said at the beginning, still a lot of shame and embarrassment, which is a totally normal stage mixed with of course the anger and sadness and the loss and everything.

[00:41:44] So appreciate you trusting us with the story. I really look forward to coming back next time and hearing how you all escaped. And this will be in the Netflix docuseries, the most dramatic part of the whole series

[00:41:57] when it gets made, I'm sure it will, and how you're healing. And between now and then, please, I think you'd all really enjoy Terror, Love & Brainwashing. It is on Audible by Alexander Stein, and I think you'll get a lot of healing from that.

[00:42:11] So I hope that resource helps you. Thank you guys for sharing. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us. Like what you hear, do you? Give us a rating, a review and subscribe on iTunes. Every little bit helps us get this cult awareness content out there.

[00:42:27] Smash that subscribe button. You know you want to. That was part two of The Grotto. Stay tuned for part three on Monday, wherever you listen to this podcast. Be safe out there, people. Sinking down to the depths of the ocean.

[00:42:45] I'm hanging on to the weight of my love. If I let go of it, all I could leave but an old wound. Thanks for listening, everyone. We're heading over to patreon.com slash a littlebitcultynow to discuss this episode.

[00:43:06] In the meantime, dear listener, please remember, this podcast is solely for general informational, educational and entertainment purposes. It's not intended as a substitute for real medical, legal or therapeutic advice. For cult recovery resources and to learn more about seeking safely in this culty world,

[00:43:23] check out a littlebitculty.com slash culty resources and don't miss Sarah's TED talk called How Cult Literate Are You? Great stuff. A Little Bit Culty is a Trace 120 production, executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and

[00:43:35] Anthony Nippy Ames in collaboration with producer Will Rutherford at Citizens of Sound and our co-creator and show chaplain slash bodyguard Jess Temple-Tardy. And our theme song Cultivated is by John Bryant.