Healer who survived 10 years in a US cult

LESLEY SMAILES is from Port Elizabeth where she has practised as a reflexologist and meridian therapist for the past 17 years.

I chat to her at the Cape Town launch of her book, Cult Sister.

Lesley is petite with warm eyes and an engaging and everpresent smile. One would never guess that she had spent 10 years as a “Sister” in an American cult started by Jim Roberts.

She has an effervescent personality and her energy for caring for people is palpable – she clearly has a lot of love to give.

The honesty and detail about those 10 years, makes Cult Sister an absorbing read. Lesley tells me how difficult she found writing the book. Each time she put pen to paper, it brought up many painful memories she had banished to a less accessible part of her memory.

She is quick to say that cults have often received bad press, but not all of them deserve this. “The Church”, the cult she belonged to for those 10 years, was a benign one – it was a disciplined cult with none of that strange sexual practice that one reads about with some cults.

The opposite was true, with the Brothers and Sisters kept separate from each other except for those who were married.

After reading the book, one feels that there must be much that Lesley has not included, maybe stuff too painful to share.

Lesley tells me that there were lots of untold stories. But she would never publish anything that would upset or hurt the people involved and she is ever mindful of the fact that her children were born during her years with the cult.

“I believe in forgiveness and protecting people’s privacy, especially that of my children.”

She says that she tries to live her life with no regrets. But often during our conversation I notice her eyes welling up.

I suggest to her that I suspect her healing process is an ongoing “work in progress”, and she agrees.

Lesley says that she has come a “long, long way” and that she is a much better rounded woman than she was in America.

Sometimes she looks back with disbelief at the lifestyle she endured in The Church.

Maybe she will only feel truly healed when she feels able to exorcise those buried memories.

I have a feeling that that day will come. She deserves nothing less.

I end my chat with Lesley saying that I am in awe of her resilience and her Herculean ability to cope with difficult circumstances. Maybe that is really what her book Cult Sister is about.