‘I was part of a cult for 10 years’.
On her gap year in America, Lesley joined a cult and had an arranged marriage. She tells YOU about the experience
WHAT do you do when you receive a letter from your child telling you she’s joined a cult and is getting married to a man she’s only just met? Pat* Smailes was worried sick – when she’d sent her 18-year-old daughter, Lesley, off on a gap-year holiday she’d hoped the experience would broaden her horizons. Little did she realise it would be a decade before her child would return home.
Within months of swopping her sheltered life in Port Elizabeth for the freedom of America in the early ’80s, Lesley had joined one of the country’s more secretive and conservative cults, turning her back on everything she knew, forsaking all modern comforts and living according to a strict interpretation of the Bible.
And there was nothing her poor mom could do even though she was horrified her headstrong daughter had committed to a life that saw her often living in buildings without electricity or running water, surviving by foraging for scraps in dustbins and wandering the country as a travelling pilgrim while spreading the word and trying to recruit new members.
Married to a man she barely knew, Lesley was initially happy to play the role of submissive wife, accepting all the radical church’s rules without question. But when she finally started having doubts it was too late. She was in over her head. By this point she had three children. Where would she go? How could she leave?
It sounds like the script of a Hollywood movie, so little wonder Lesley’s new book, Cult Sister, has been causing major waves since its release last month. Just about everyone who picks up the candid memoir has the same question: how could something like this happen? How could an intelligent young girl get caught up in such a strange group?
EVEN though it’s been 25 years since she fled America and returned home to escape the clutches of the cult, Lesley (52) still gets emotional when she talks about her time with the group.
As she chats to us at a hotel in PE the tears flow. There are things she’d rather forget but by committing them to paper they’re now out there for the whole world to see.
“I had a very difficult childhood,” she says. “My dad died, I was raped when I was in high school and when I got pregnant by my boyfriend my mom forced me to go for an abortion. Everything had a tremendous influence on my life.”
Lesley kicks off her shoes and gets comfortable on the couch so she can continue her story.
“I just wanted to get away. I thought that if I were to take a gap year after matric I’d somehow deal with everything that had happened to me and find peace.”
Ironically before her departure her mother’s parting words to her were, “Whatever you do, don’t get married and don’t join a cult.”
But the warning fell on deaf ears. Within months Lesley encountered a man in a New York park and this meeting changed everything. He was clothed in a long brown robe and sandals and had a long beard and a Bible in his hand.
“I was already a Christian,” Lesley explains. “But for some reason this man
caught my eye. I think it was because he looked so much like one of the disciples.”
They started talking and the man later introduced her to some of the other “sisters” in the group. They lived in a house in the city and for the first time in years Lesley felt like she “belonged”.
In her book Lesley explains that the Jim Roberts Group, also known as “The Brethren” and “The Brothers”, was founded in the ’70s by an enigmatic man named Jim Roberts, a former US Marine known as “Brother Evangelist”. By the middle of 1984 his sect had more than 100 members.
The men and women wore long garments that covered their entire bodies and were forbidden from cutting any of the hair on their body. As they travelled around America they’d feed themselves by scavenging through rubbish bins. Lesley describes the group as “the original freegans (people who try to live without buying consumer goods)”.
“I actually really enjoyed it,” Lesley says. “The shops threw out loads of cheese, meat and other delicious food. I never got sick of it and I do believe we ate more enjoyable food than the average American.”
Although she respected Brother Evangelist there were a few things she found disturbing.
“When someone from the ‘outside’ wanted to join the group the brothers would force them to cut all ties with their friends and families. They weren’t allowed to have any contact with them. Through this a lot of children just disappeared and their parents never knew where they were or what had happened to them.”
Lesley says they’d often see missing-person signs posted by worried parents, offering rewards for any information about their children.
“Luckily they allowed me to speak to my mom every once in a while because I was from a different country.”
After she’d been in the group for only a few months Brother Evangelist approached Lesley, then just 19, and encouraged her to marry one of the group’s top members, Thomas*, who was eight years her senior.
Although the young girl had her reservations she went through with the arranged marriage. But it turned out to be a loveless, joyless affair. Thomas expected her to be totally submissive, always deferring to him and in public walking a few steps behind him.
Even though Lesley was unhappy she took her wedding vows seriously and once she fell pregnant she saw no way out. As the group didn’t believe in allowing members to receive medical treatment, each birth took place naturally with the other sisters helping her.
AFTER 10 years it all finally came to a head when an irate father, who blamed Lesley and Thomas for his son having cut all ties with him, threatened to report the couple to the welfare authorities. During the time they’d been travelling with the group this was always one of Lesley’s fears – that social workers would catch wind of their unorthodox living arrangements and take their children, who were home-schooled, away from them.
Worried that it was going to happen, the couple decided to flee America with their kids. And this is how it came to be that 10 years after her departure on a gap-year holiday Lesley finally returned home with her husband and kids in tow. But it was an awkward homecoming – Lesley’s family and friends didn’t know what to make of her in her long flowing dresses, or her introverted husband.
“It wasn’t easy going home. I was painfully aware of how peculiar we were. Of how peculiar I’d become,” she writes.
Without the church to keep them together, she and Thomas eventually drifted apart and divorced. He travelled to South America and is still in touch with members of the church.
After returning to SA, Lesley spurned religion until three years ago when she joined a church in PE. “I followed my own head and did what I wanted.”
She trained as a reflexologist and meridian therapist (who restores energy flow through the body’s 12 meridians) while raising her three children. Eager to forget about her past, when she met new people she avoided talking about her “lost decade” in America.
But with the encouragement of her mother she eventually started writing her story, using letters she’d written home during her time in the US to jog her memory.
Initially Lesley thought it would only take a few months but in 2014 when her eldest son, Reuben*, died unexpectedly of a suspected heart condition aged 29, it really hit her and her other two children, Lily* (now 29) and Avisha (27)*, hard.
Devastated, Lesley put her writing project on hold. But eventually she found the courage to go back to it – and although it was a painful process she’s glad she did it.
“It was necessary to tell my story,” she says. “Through telling it I finally got the healing I desperately needed.” *Not their real names.