One minute they thought they were the only true saved people on earth. The next, they were heading for eternal damnation. Even those who quit voluntarily live in fear. Bill Wildsmith left because he was deep in debt, his career was in danger and he could no longer take the demandsof his overbearing discipler. It took him two years, with intensive counselling, to recover.
Some parents resort to drastic action.
Christine Steele was so convinced that Lucy was being destroyed that she risked arrest for kidnapping. She persuaded her daughter to come home for a weekend, bundled her into a car with two security men, and drove to a remote cottage in Suffolk. There, for ten days, a former member of the Moonie cult reasoned with the young woman. After that had failed, her mother called in Graham Baldwin, a former London University chaplain who has helped more than 200 people to break away from cults by facing them with home truths about the way they have been manipulated. Only then did Lucy's illusions crumble.