S3:EP 12 - Postscript: Christa

This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? I've just been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind games. a new podcast exploring NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How are you doing? I'm doing really good. It is the hottest day of the year today, so... Oh no. I'm sitting in a room where they can't have air conditioning. Oh no. Oh, we better make this quick then. Should we just call it? It's okay. No, it's okay. From Rococo Punch and Die Hard Podcasts, this is The Turning River Road. I'm Erika Lance. I have to ask, as you were listening, how does it feel to have your story out there in this way? It feels, um, hmm, liberating. That's the best way I can describe it is liberating. especially to have my voice and Lindsay's voice heard simultaneously and being able to hear the differences but also the similarities in our stories it feels very validating honestly in what way I think when you go through something like she and I went through, there can sometimes be a little bit of a sense of imposter syndrome or you've been gaslit for so long, like maybe this didn't actually happen this way. And so to hear her side, which is arguably very different than what I experienced, it feels very validating. I can imagine, because I believe you and Lindsay hadn't really been in contact, so you're hearing a lot suddenly from her about many years that had passed and she's hearing about you, but you had never really spoken about it with each other before. we had not so i mean we knew each other but we didn't run in the same circles at all yeah never really talked to her at length ever in my life and like i had said in the podcast i knew jess very very well but i didn't really know lindsey at all just the other youngest maiden Lindsay's friend and your friend. Yes. My parents and Jess's parents were very close. In fact, her parents lived with my mom all the way up until 2023 from 2012, the end of 2012 till the end of 2023. Wow. So, and I don't have contact with her parents anymore and that's my choice, but you can understand that our families they were very intertwined they kind of had a aunt and uncle feel to them more than even my own aunts and uncles so I knew her well and her brother and sister I knew them well too but Lindsay I didn't so everything that I had heard from her, it was projected in a way that spun a narrative, right? What do you mean by that? So when I would listen to interviews like The Hunt with John Walsh, there was a 2020 in an instant or something like that that was put out about it. It was all very heavily on the the sexual aspect of it when there was so much more beneath the surface that led to that happening that this wasn't just like a quote-unquote sex cult this was so much more and there was so much more abuse that was taking place and it was very systemic the abuse took many forms and people experienced it differently or experienced different parts of the abuse. And that's something I've been reflecting a lot on lately is how different people can have different experiences of the same person or the same group. And I wonder how you've seen that come up. Do you think that, like, what are some of the different versions of experiencing River road that existed for members? There's a few that I am aware of. For example, my mom, when she and I talk about this kind of stuff, I have a hard time talking with her about it at length anymore because she always kind of brings it back to herself. And she said, I just wanted to learn God's word, which is a beautiful thing, right? And I think she has a lot of guilt for what happened to me. And whenever I start talking about that, she kind of gets really uncomfortable because she just feels the consistent need to apologize. And what she sees is we came together to do a ministry. And she was like, I didn't see the other things that were going on beneath the surface. The reality is, I think she did. I think everybody did, but nobody wanted to pay attention. Yeah. When I say everybody, I mean those who are old enough to discern. Obviously, I was a child. I was just there for the ride but I know that there are people who have said you know in hindsight this is a very unsurprising thing that happened so you know there's that she just wants to remember the good things I don't fault her for it but then again she also has a whole life previous to that to fall back on right she has a frame of reference for what life is outside of the cult whereas I really didn't. So there's that. I talked to a woman after she listened to several episodes of the podcast. She was very close to my parents and to the Bernards. She actually left. The Bernards being Victor, Bernard and his wife, Victor being the leader of River Rhone. Yes. And she had left in 1993. So I was still a very young child. I was only about a year and a half when she left, but she was very dear to my parents and even though they never saw her again they talked about her quite a bit so she reached out to me on social media and she talked about how she was listening to the podcast and obviously a lot of the things that she heard happened after she left and she was asking herself, like, how did it get there? How did that happen? How could that have happened? And she said, but to be completely honest, I can see how it could have gotten there. So, you know, there's that. And then even Lindsay and I have had disagreements, nothing like major, but there were things that I have said in the podcast that she didn't agree with and brought them to my attention. So, for example, I had said that they were moving these young people around to spy on us. And while I do believe that that in a sense is true, she didn't see it that way. And I'll explain where she came from and where I came from and sort of the middle ground that was probably the reality. And you're talking about how one time a maiden was very quickly moved into your home and then very quickly moved out again, which happens sometimes. People moving around all the time. You never know where you're going to live. Even if you own a house, it's not really yours. And you felt like that maiden maybe had been sent there to kind of spy on your family. And it wasn't just the maidens. There are quite a few young people that were moved around very randomly, very quickly, and it happened to us more than once. Now, Lindsay, when she heard that, she sent me a text and said that she didn't believe that that was the case. When the maidens were moved out from their home, it was usually because Victor believed that they weren't doing well spiritually. and kind of as a punishment kind of as a punishment yeah that having been said i bounced this off of a couple of people who i grew up with and grew up around and what i came to was maybe the intention that was told to them wasn't you know go in there and report back whatever you see. But these young people were so conditioned to basically tell the leadership or even tell Victor anything that they saw that could possibly be, you know, darkness or sin. Everything has to be in the light. In other words, Victor has to know everything. Exactly. So you feel like you're always being watched. Yeah. So even if Victor didn't say so-and-so, you're going to move in with the Lester family, which was my family, to report back to me what you see would happen was, and this I know, this I know for a fact, and it wasn't any of the maidens. It was a couple other young women who lived with us who were around the same age as the maidens, but they weren't the maidens. they lived with us and they would see things that happened in my home and then they would report those to the leadership or to victor and then my parents or even i would you know get in trouble for whatever it was so i felt the need to clarify that that there wasn't this network of like spies, but it was a conditioning. It was a manipulation to be foot soldiers, to report back what they saw. And they absolutely did do that. And it was a culture where it was really hard to have privacy. Exactly. And live the life that you wanted. I mean, you had to live by certain rules. And if you didn't, you would hear about it. What I was going to say was, did Lindsay ever do that? I have no idea because she never lived with us. And that's not something that I feel is worth nitpicking about. What I do know is that it happened. So, you know, there are definitely differing stories, differing opinions. There's still people who believe that they were there to live the word of God, like my mom. She doesn't deny what happened happened, but she has a really hard time wrapping her head around that it could have been all bad, you know, and I don't think it was all bad, but she really doesn't want to address the things that were. She wants to hold on to the good things and say some bad things happened. Exactly. In your inner conversations with her. Exactly. And I think a lot of people can relate to that when they're talking to parents, you know, more extreme example, you're in a cult. Other examples, you have issues from the family dynamic or things that happened when you're a kid and different people kind of focus on different parts of the memory. That can make it hard sometimes to talk about the past without feeling invalidated or without feeling like you're kind of talking past each other. Mm Then my sister she doesn even want to listen to this podcast which is fine with me She in a place that I know that a lot of people I grew up with are where she just wants to leave the past in the past and move forward A couple days after the first episode aired I brought up the podcast and was talking about some of the things in there. And she said, you know, I know a lot of bad things happen to you, and I'm really sorry about that. but it's I feel like I'm in a really good place in my life right now and I think I just need to leave the past in the past and I hope you can respect that and of course I can't of course I can't but something that Lindsay and I have talked about is how hard it is to have all of these people that you grew up with and who experienced the same life you experienced for the most part and nobody wants to talk about it. And so I'm thankful because Lindsay and I are now talking and I'm very grateful to have somebody that I can talk to about things that come up for me because sometimes I will have the most random memory and to have somebody that I can just text and be like, I just thought of this and isn't this crazy? Yeah. It's really- Someone who actually gets it. Yeah, it's a huge blessing. definitely very healing to have somebody like that. What are some of those memories that have been popping up lately? One of the things that popped up for me a few weeks ago was going to heaven. We used to say that we will be with Jesus Christ for all eternity. That's a wonderful thing. But then somebody was like, well, why would we want to be with somebody that we don't even know? And then somebody was like, basically spun together that because Victor was Jesus Christ in the flesh, that who we were going to be with wasn't going to be some stranger we had never seen before, but that it was going to be Victor. That Victor was going to take that personification of Jesus Christ. That's such a stark statement that Victor is Jesus. even when you go to heaven the Jesus you meet will be victor yeah so that's not biblical at all um and to be quite frank I feel as though I know Jesus and when he's I see his face I will know him and it won't be victor's face and it won't be victor's face thank god but yeah that was that was a really fun one to like kind of remember remember and actually be able to chuckle about and be like we were really that far gone. Hindsight. Yeah. Yeah. In the series, we tell your story and we talk a lot about your early childhood. You were in the group since you were born, essentially. Your parents knew Victor for a long time. And we talk about kind of your middle school years that were so terrible for you because Jan was insisting on these awful diets. And then we kind of fast forward to your early 20s when you're living in Washington State with other members of River Road Fellowship and the news is coming out about Lindsay and Jess going to the police about the sexual abuse. I'm really curious if you could tell us about the years in between, because there's probably about a decade in there. What was going on or what are some of the memories that are most vivid for you during that time of your life? During that time in my life, between the ages of 12 and 17, we had moved back home to the house that we owned on a satellite property. Originally, it was known as Eagle's Nest. And then Victor changed the name to Melita, which is the biblical name for the island of Malta. Oh. So I lived there from the ages of 12 to 17 without moving once. My life definitely calmed down a lot. Melita was kind of the location where conforming nonconformists lived, if that makes any sense, people who were a part of the church. but maybe they didn't fit the idea or the mold of like the model cult member so we were a bit more laid back Melita was actually a really great nickname for our property because it was kind of like an island the island of misfit toys if you will so we lived there it was during that time that I had been sort of inadvertently looped in with a group of young people that I don't think we really talked in this series about specifically, known as the Shepard's Corps. Yes. And the Shepard's... And we did not get into that. Yeah. Which is a whole, probably a whole other podcast series, if we're being honest. Because there were a number of groups, especially for young people, like the maidens and Shepherds Corps was another way that you're kind of showing your commitment. You're getting more deeply involved with the church. So you kind of, it sounds like, became part of the Shepherds Corps. I did, yes. The Shepherds Corps was originally, I think, like six or seven younger people. And then in 2003, Victor opened it up to anyone over the age of 12. I was eventually kind of brought in in 2005. And my impression is that the Shepherds Corps was kind of like a very intense church youth group. Would you say that's one way to look at it? Yeah. It's a really funny thing to talk about because at the inception of the Shepherds Corps, Victor's idea of what it was going to be was going to be very similar to the Way Corps of the Way International. Which is the group Victor was a part of before creating River Road Fellowship. And this was kind of a branch off of the Way. Very influenced by the Way. A lot of former members of the Way joined River Road. Yes. So that was his kind of blueprint. What it became was not that at all. There were Shepherd's Corps principles that we had to follow. There were verses that we had to memorize. It became a name, just a name only, really. You didn't really know. I never really knew what it meant to be Shepherd's Corps. He would take us on camping trips sometimes, or there would be classes. And I know that I talked about the classes. The original Shepherds Corps had been given like these sweatshirts that had the Shepherds Corps written on them. But it was kind of like when Lindsay had to give back all of the things that she was given when she left the maidens. if Victor didn't think that these young people were like spiritually well, or if he got mad at them, he made them turn in their sweats. I never had to do that because by the time I came around, nothing was being given to the shepherd's core. It was just sort of a name that Victor would throw around to make the young people feel good. It's interesting how he creates these like status symbols that he gets to choose who has them. And so he can give you that status or take it away at any time for any reason. And you might not know why. And that just turns into such a mind game and so manipulative. Yeah. So within the Shepard's Corps, there was the Maidens, which were kind of part of the Shepard's Corps, but kind of not. And then there was another group known as Origas Band, which was seven young women who were around the same age as the maidens. Some of them were younger sisters of the maidens, and some of them were maybe young women who had joined the church after the maidens were formed. And then there was a men's group that was eight young men, and they were known as the Gilead Gamblers. And from my understanding, these groups, they lived together. They did all their stuff together. Arriga's band, they had a commitment similar to the maidens to remain unmarried. The Gilead gamblers, from my understanding, it's funny because my brother-in-law's a former Gilead gambler. They had a commitment, I believe it was for seven years to remain unmarried and then they could get married if they wanted to. So interesting how the girls and the boys are treated differently. were the girls groups you're never getting married right could you talk about a little bit about how men and women or girls and boys were treated differently in the church women were absolutely expected to be quieter more submissive the way we dressed was more regulated the way we talked was more regulated where we went was regulated was the rule of walking in twos only applied to women and girls? Yes. Wow. I didn't know that. Yes. Men could go wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted. Yeah. That's so wild. It was a very... That's so oppressive. Yeah, very oppressive. And so gross. Mm-hmm. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One thing I've been wondering about is I remember when you were living in Washington and you finally had that brave moment where you said, I'm leaving. I know right beforehand you were dating someone at the time who you had met through a co-worker. And you finally told him at one point, I'm in a cult and I need to get out and I don't know how. And it really interesting to me that you use the word cult And I curious when did that transition happen where you actually in your brain I guessing that the first time you said it out loud And I wondering when in your brain you started thinking this is a cult that I in That's a really great question because it actually is a lot earlier than one might think. People always called us a cult, you know, and Victor would talk about people who called us a cult and how, you know, they were wrong. And really? Yeah. And I remember the mother of one of the grown women in our church coming to visit at one point. And she was telling her daughter, she's like, you are in a cult. And the daughter was like, no, I'm not. And she said, you guys live together. You eat together. You work together. You buy food together. She's like, for all intents and purposes, this is a cult. and the daughter the woman in the church she said oh I guess I guess it is well that's great and she's kind of like moved on so I kind of always just had it in the back of my head that like yes we were a cult but we were like the good kind of cult and that it was fine it wasn't like Jonestown where we were all gonna drink something and die like we would never do that so that was sort of when the seed was planted but when it was like solidified was when I originally watched the story with Jess and Lindsay and they talked about it as being a cult that was when it solidified for me that yes it was indeed a cult and yes it was not the quote-unquote good kind of cult, that it was very, very dark. What do you think made it a cult, you know, beyond the obvious terrible abuses that were happening? If someone is joining a new group, joining a new religion, a new community, what should people watch out for? Or what did you see? I mean, the list goes on, but a big one is isolation. if they are telling you that you can't talk to your family or your friends that you have to cut those ties that is cult red flag 101 in my opinion i think that there is definitely the opportunity and the availability for people to come together and work together and live in a communal environment and i think that there is the availability for it to be good but when there is somebody when there is a figurehead in the middle that is everything's trickling down from you cease to have free will because everything revolves around this one person and if you look at cults throughout time that's really the determining factor is that there is this one figurehead that is not god not jesus it's a person who has put themselves in a position of authority and has started making these rules and begun to isolate you into this community. I think that that is the main thing that people need to look out for. But also, it's not lost on me that a lot of people realize that too late. They're too far enmeshed. It can feel like a fine line at first, especially because we all want someone who has all the answers or who can guide us. We all want a mentor. We all want someone to help us figure out what to do in life. And once you find someone you trust, it very quickly can veer into an unhealthy balance of how much they're influencing you. and yeah that can be hard to identify sometimes and I it does seem to me that it can come in different forms I mean sometimes it's religion sometimes it's not religion based but it is a controlling situation yeah I'm curious as you listened back to the series you're hearing yourself you're hearing Lindsay's story did anything surprise you or did anything kind of make you see things differently? You know, I can't say that there was necessarily like an aha moment for me. There were definitely things that Lindsay said in general that I was like, oh, thank God she remembers it that way too. Because sometimes you wonder if you're remembering it correctly, like I said at the beginning. And you want to make sure that you are speaking the truth. Because if you're not, then the credibility of all of our stories goes out the window, in my opinion. So I guess that that was a really, really big deal for me is like hearing, actually hearing her speak and tell her story her way. Like I said earlier on the podcast, how her story was so spun to fit a narrative of that this was a sex cult and that gave their young daughters over to this man you're talking about in some of the media coverage because the media on the phone outside of interviews we've talked about this how yes you felt like a lot of the media coverage it didn't feel right to you right or how would you it didn't feel right it felt very inaccurate and then there were like a lot of third-party tellings of whatever these podcasters heard on the media and I was like none of this is accurate like this is such a skewed telling of my life and it made me so mad and I actually reached out to a podcaster that was like a third-party narrator of the story who just basically gathered all the information that they had from the media and talked about River Red Fellowship on their podcast and oh I was furious and I was like, they don't have the story. None of what they're saying is even factually accurate. And I actually reached out to them on Instagram and was like, hey, I grew up in this cult. If you want to know what really happened, go ahead and reach out. They never did, which is fine. But that was really what made me want to start talking about my story and really talk about the nuance of what was going on behind the scenes of this big blow up that happened because there's just, it was, it went so much deeper and there was so much more going on that led to this, this terrible thing that happened with these young girls. So hearing Lindsay now tell her story that felt, yeah, what did that it felt full it kind of felt full circle in a way I guess and realizing that that wasn't her like oh my god they took sound bites bits and pieces to make it sound a certain way and get the story across yeah you're saying that the the other coverage when sometimes it felt inaccurate it wasn't Lindsay's doing it you know you're like doing it wasn't doing it was people piecemealing things together to make a story and which is fine the end result was Victor Bernard was put in jail. That was what needed to happen. But also, Lindsay deserved to be heard. She deserved to share her truth. And so listening to her share her story on this podcast, I was just so happy for her. I'm so happy that she's gotten so much healing and that she is living a wonderful, good life with her child and that she seems happy and that she still is willing to speak about this. And that her intention is very similar to mine. And that this story, our experiences can help people, can help other survivors, can help people trying to figure their way out of these situations. Our stories can help with that. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict? A villain? A nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast Doubt the case of Lucy Letby we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was no voicing of any skepticism or doubt it'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong listen to Doubt the case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know that once you left River Road Fellowship, it was a really dark time for you. You talked about what do I do with my life now? I'm leaving behind everything and everyone I know. And I wonder if you could talk about some of the turning points or the stages you went through to get to your life now. How much time do we have? So I left in March of 2015, right after Victor Bernard was arrested in Brazil. He hadn't even been extradited to the United States yet. He was still in prison in Brazil. And there was a lot surrounding that. a big turning point for me, like maybe the first turning point was when I got in touch with one of the former clergy in River Road. He had actually left the previous year after he was kind of pushed out because he had called out some of the stuff that was going on in Spokane very bluntly, very frankly. And there was a lot of dishonesty going on about why he left. So when I left, I got in touch with his son. And I said, get me in touch with your dad. Because this is a man that I trusted. I knew that something had to have happened that caused him to walk out. Okay. And you want to know. You want to know what happened. This is a man that Victor called his true son in the faith. If he left, something had to have happened. That was a really big deal. Okay? So his son got me in touch with him, and I ended up going over to their house for dinner. and after dinner he and I sat out on the porch and he's like so you said you wanted to talk to me what can I help you with and I said I want to know what happened I want to know why we're sitting here today and not back there still and he basically told me that the church had gotten so far from the standard of the word of God that he just couldn watch it anymore and he had shown the leaders in Spokane in the Bible where things were going wrong and they sent him away So that was a big turning point for me to have some like validation that what I experienced was being seen by other people. Other people were being abused by this abuse of power. It seems that when you first left was really the hardest, hardest period. I didn't know how to be a person. It was literally like that. I did not know how to function in a world where my life wasn't regulated. I didn't know what to eat. I knew nothing. I didn't know how to manage my emotions because everything had just been pushed down. So I didn't know how to manage and regulate my emotions at all. It was just like I was a teenager. I was a child. How did that come up in your life? relationships, relationships. You know, I had been casually seeing this guy and that ended very poorly. I had been raised to just let people walk all over me. And he sometimes would be like, you're acting like you're 12, like grow up. I'm like, I, that's because I was, I was emotionally stunted at 12. Like, I don't know how to be a person. And that was actually like, actually a real concept to me that was like, I, I think that all of these things are coming to the surface because they couldn't for so long. These things being like kind of emotional. Emotions, experiences, like suddenly I'm going through some sort of like psychological puberty of sorts. Like it's all just coming to this, you know, rushing in and my whole world is new and it's overwhelmingly new and it's not that great. And I didn't know what to do with myself. And so I drank a lot to numb whatever I was feeling, put myself in a lot of dangerous situations with men, which I know that Lindsay talked about as well. And it is a miracle that I am alive. Let's just put it that way. Yeah, I poisoned myself with alcohol on more than one occasion. Ended up in the psych ward. It was just really, really, really bad. Moved home to help take care of my dad. got away from the pain of the environment of Spokane, but the pain was still very much within me. I didn't know how to deal. I got involved with another really unhealthy young man that ended very badly. After he broke up with me in September of 2016, I reached a point of I was so broken, I just didn't want to exist. I did not want to exist. I didn't want to die, but I also didn't want to live. And I was in the shower and I asked God, I said, God, I don't know if this is even possible, but I need you to heal me. And immediately the thought popped into my head that I needed to get sober. I needed to quit drinking. And so I did that day. I reached out to a person I barely knew to take me to a recovery meeting. And I started building a bit of a community there. And that was a big growth, time of growth for me. I started going to therapy during that time. I started learning how to heal. So I got into another relationship and then broke up with him middle of COVID while my dad was dying. After that, met my husband. One thing I wanted in a partner was somebody who wanted to better themselves, wanted to grow, somebody that I could grow with and build off of, and they could build off me. And I found that in my husband. I lost my dad in October of 2020. 2021 had my son. These are all like turning points, things, you know, growth, times of growth. My husband is a recovering addict. And 13 days after my son was born, he overdosed. And I'm so sorry, Krista. And he was revived. And there is no reason logically, scientifically that he should be alive today because he was on some very quiet side street in a very quiet neighborhood in his truck when it happened. So it wasn't like he was out in public. He was just alone. And somebody found him and revived him. And my therapist had said to me, because I couldn't make sense of it, I was like, I don't understand how this happened. I'm happy he's alive, but I don't understand why or how. And she said, Krista, sometimes miracles just happen and you just have to be okay with that. It was really just like blunt. And it was in those moments following that, that I started to actually believe in God again. I started realizing that my God was a God of love and a God of healing and forgiveness and patience and goodness. And that God never wanted to hurt me, that he only wanted to see me thrive, and that the people who said that they were acting in God's name were false prophets, essentially, and that they were liars. Earlier this year, I finally had the courage to walk into a church again, which is something I never swore I'd do. And God met me there. And I don't know what you believe, Erica, but that's what I believe in my heart. It's so powerful to hear how you've built a life that focuses on being loving and focuses on the love part and not the punishment and the blame and all of the self-criticism you had to live in for so long and to find something that can lead to just this happy life that you have. I'm sure there are not happy parts too. There are definitely not happy parts. There's definitely still stuff I struggle with. I'm still very traumatized when it comes to eating and diet, which is something that I am in therapy for now. That is a big, I actually should bring that up, that that was a big aha moment I did have when I was listening to myself and I realized that my eating patterns were disordered and they've been disordered since I was a teenager. So that coming to light was a big deal for me. And I was able to get back into therapy with my old therapist. So I get to address that now. And she's wonderful. You've realized that you are still carrying some of those disordered behaviors and way of thinking. Yes, absolutely. And I will probably always, to some extent, carry some part of it with me. It was my entire childhood, so it's not like I can erase it. but I think even if I still have things that I need to heal from, which I know I do, I can address it in a healthy way where it doesn't take me out emotionally, physically, because I have such a beautiful life now. What is your life like now? It's very simple, which is what I wanted. I wanted a simple life. I live in a three-bedroom apartment in a college neighborhood I have two dogs that are very crazy um I have a wonderful husband that I've been married to for almost three years our third anniversary is coming up I have a son and a daughter who are the loves of my life and I know that I've talked about my son in this podcast but since then I've had a daughter and she is wild and I say that in the best sense of the word she is wild and she is joyful and she is fierce and she is fearless and I kind of said tongue-in-cheek a couple weeks ago to somebody I said I think Maddie is everything that I would have been had I not had my entire personality beat out of me at a young age. And I'm just so happy for her that nobody's ever going to take that from her, that she gets to grow up and shine and be bright and be loud and people are going to love her for it. And that is so amazing to me. I don't need that. I have built my life around whatever happened to me and have integrated that into who I am now. And it's, you know, maybe not who I would have been had I not had those experiences, but I love myself. I love who I've become. But to see people just light up when they see my daughter's face because she has so much joy and she's so fearless. It's healing. It's so healing to watch. Is there anything that comes to mind that you want to share or you want people to hear before we close? I looked up a recent mugshot of Victor Bernard a few weeks ago when the podcast first started airing. I hadn't seen his face in years, many years, but I was curious. And so I looked up a recent mugshot of him. And he looked weak. He looked thin and sickly. He was missing a tooth. He looked small. And I looked at him and I said, that's who he is. That's who he always was underneath the guise of what he tried to portray to us. He's small and weak and ugly. And man, that felt good. Oh my God, that felt good. I want people to know that healing is available. It is hard and it's messy. but it can happen. You don't have to hurt forever. It's available to have a happy life. So true. Thank you so much for talking with me for all the interviews we did before for this one today. It has meant so much to both Aylan and me. And I know it's meant a lot to people who have listened. So it's not easy to talk about this stuff. And I think we all just really appreciate it. Well, I appreciate you giving both Lindsay and me a platform to tell our stories in the way that we wanted to tell them. So thank you. The Turning is a production of Rococo Punch and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and produced by Aylan Lance-Lesser and me. Our story editor is Emily Foreman. Mixing and sound design by James Trout. Grace Doe is our production assistant. Fact-checking by Andrea Lopez-Crusado. Our executive producers are John Parati and Jessica Alpert at Rococo Punch, and Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etor at iHeart Podcasts. 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