St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Aisha Sultan
October 13, 2023
Shelly Snow Pordea grew up in a fundamentalist religious sect.
Her parents moved from her birthplace of St. Louis to Hammond, Indiana, to be near the First Baptist Church, a fundamental independent Baptist megachurch then run by Jack Hyles.
Pordea, now 48, remembers her early life tightly revolving around this church. The outside world was taught to be a threatening and scary place. Her parents subscribed to Hyles’ child-rearing methods, which promoted hitting young children into submission — spanking babies as early as 6 months old. Pordea said her parents later told her that they kept rubber bands on her wrists when she was 2 years old. They would snap them against her skin to keep her in line. It wasn’t until Pordea was 14 years old and listening to a talk about promiscuous women during an Independent Fundamental Baptist youth camp that she realized she had been sexually abused as a 4-year-old by a church member.
After the lecture, she confided the abuse to a camp counselor.
“I was told I was tainted and not clean anymore,” she said. Pordea had been conditioned to believe it. “The scare tactics were very intense,” she said.
As a teenager, she tried to keep the peace in her family, especially after a brother ran away from home at 17. She attended the unaccredited Hyles-Anderson College, where she took classes that taught her it was a woman’s fault if a man strayed from his marriage.
It wasn’t until she got married and moved overseas with her husband that she started to get some physical distance from the church, although she was still emotionally and mentally deeply invested in it. Through the internet, Pordea discovered the accusations of sexual scandals and financial misappropriation against Hyles. She began connecting with former IFB members on social media who shared their own stories of abuse.
Over time, the indoctrination began to unravel. By age 30, Pordea began to believe she had been raised in a cult. In 2013, the church leader Pastor Jack Schaap, Hyles’ son-in-law, was convicted of taking a 16-year-old across state lines from Indiana to have sex with her. He was sent to federal prison.
“That was a point of no return,” Pordea said.
Pordea, who now lives in St. Peters, has joined forces with others in the cult survivor world to host their first-ever, live storytelling event on Oct. 21, at the Improv Shop, 3960 Chouteau Avenue.
She wants to raise awareness of how some organizations can be set up to use coercion, manipulation and undue influence in order to abuse and control people.
The movement began during the pandemic with the #IGotOut hashtag on social media, with people sharing their own experiences in cultic groups. A number of documentaries, podcasts and TV shows have brought awareness to the diverse range of cultic organizations — including some that are political, religious, multi level marketing, spiritual, self-help, doomsday or sex cults.
Gerette Buglion, an author and executive director of IGotOut.org, was a teacher for 19 years before she became involved with a self-help group that eventually took over her life. She was introduced to the group leader by fellow teachers who were getting dream therapy sessions by him. He used the personal information she shared in these sessions to slowly manipulate and create dependence on him. Over time, her husband also became involved in the group. They were spending more than $20,000 a year on sessions, classes and retreats with this teacher, who encouraged them to file for bankruptcy. For 18 years, Buglion remained under the mind control of a charismatic fraud.
Almost 10 years ago, another woman in the organization described how their teacher would yell at her for hours at a time for her perceived infractions. Because this was coming from a person within the cult whom Buglion trusted and cared about, it created a big crack in her perception of their leader.
That was the opening she needed to get out. She left that meeting knowing she could not go back. Her husband had left the organization two years earlier. When she woke him up and told him she was also done with it, he wept.
“I’ve been waiting,” he said.
Buglion, who has now heard hundreds of stories from survivors and their loved ones, said it is critical to try to maintain some kind of connection with a person you fear is being indoctrinated. She has since published a book, “An Everyday Cult.” In it, she shows how anyone can be susceptible to narcissistic leaders and groups that claim to know the truth. They use natural human vulnerabilities and group dynamics to slowly take over a person’s critical thinking skills.
Buglion says the work of Dr. Robert J. Lifton, who describes the criteria for cultic indoctrination, in his book “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,” was pivotal in helping her understand how she got caught up in such a controlling organization and stayed in it for so long. She is hoping the organization and its upcoming public event will help survivors shed the stigma of having been manipulated.
“The level of shame is very high for people coming out of cultic organizations,” she said. She was plagued with questions about how she, an educated person, could have let it get so bad and stayed for so long.
Todd Brown, 55, a graduate student in Carbondale, Illinois, has asked himself the same questions. He joined a mystic religious group when he was in a doctoral program in counseling psychology in Indiana in 1997. Within a year, he had quit the program and came to live in Carbondale with the group, the Dayemi Tariqat, which he now believes operates like a cult.
Brown, who goes by T., will be one of the speakers sharing his experience at the upcoming Story Jam. He went from being an out gay man to married to a woman in the group. For 23 years, he worked for the organization’s businesses and volunteered on their farm. It was during the pandemic lockdown that he got his first physical separation and time away from the group. He watched the HBO docu-series, “The Vow,” about the cult NXIVM and its leader Keith Raniere, who has been sentenced to 120 years in prison.
Brown noticed disturbing similarities from the show to the group he had been involved in and its guru. He began ordering books on cultic organizations and watching more movies and shows about them.
“It was a slow dawning,” he said. He came to realize that he had lost his entire identity to the group — his creativity, critical thinking and sexuality.
“There is indescribable grief and anger that comes with that realization.”
He has re-enrolled in a graduate program to help make sense of it.
“To explain how that happened is something I will spend the rest of my life studying and trying to understand,” he said. The public performance is a way for him to reclaim his voice.
The pandemic lockdown, along with a boom in programs about cults and the connection of survivors through social media, prompted many to reexamine their relationships with their tight-knit groups and the leaders.
Pordea recalls watching Leah Remini’s documentary, “Scientology and the Aftermath,” with her husband, when the parallels of how they had been raised finally hit him.
He looked at Pordea, stunned.
“Oh my God, it was a cult,” he said.
If you go
What • Tears of Eden and IGotOut present: Story Jam
When • 7 to 9:30 p.m. Oct. 21
Where • The Improv Shop, 3960 Chouteau Avenue
How much • $30 to $50
More info • TheImprovShop.com
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