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RIVEN by a need for acceptance and a desire to be clean from all the drama of my high-school years, I gave my life to God after I wrote my final matric exam. Soon after finishing school I left on an overseas trip that, instead of being a gap-year, stretched into 10 years of being in a cult in America.

My long-suffering mother suggested I write a book after I returned to South Africa, but it was only 15 years later that I could write it. I wrote with the intention of exposing life in “the Church” — the cult I became part of. There’s plenty of information online about the Jim Roberts Group, but nothing as personal or as revealing as my story. I wanted to share some of the testimonies that surprised and wowed me on that long, strange journey.

My decade in the group radically changed me. It was not a fun, easy 10 years, but it sure was an interesting time. I married a man I hardly knew. I learned more than any university could have taught me. I acquired vital survival skills.