We escaped a doomsday cult—and took our fight to Parliament

Ryan Carey grew up in the Geelong Revival Center, a Pentecostal Fundamentalist group where nuclear Armageddon was apparently on the calendar, but choosing your own career or dating without permission was a bridge too far. He joined us to talk about doomsday beliefs, religious trauma, shunning, and the coercive control that dictated everything from relationships to access to mental-health care—and what finally made him stop doing the mental gymnastics and leave.

But Ryan and his wife Catherine weren’t interested in playing cult whack-a-mole. Alongside fellow survivors and journalist Richard Baker, they helped push for a Victorian parliamentary inquiry into cults and fringe groups, taking their fight from the lounge room to the halls of government. We get into survivor advocacy, group-based coercive control, child protection, and the work of turning recommendations into legislation—because “religious freedom” shouldn’t come with a complimentary license to abuse people.

Follow Stop Religious Coercion Australia on TikTok @stop_religious_coercion and check out Ryan at the DECULT conference this weekend.

Trigger warning: This episode contains frank discussion of religious, spiritual, and child sexual abuse, childhood trauma, suicide, grief and death, doomsday and nuclear-war fears, denial of mental-health treatment, misogyny, shunning, and family estrangement.

Also…let it be known that:

The views and opinions expressed on A Little Bit Culty do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. Any content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business, individual, anyone or anything. Nobody’s mad at you, just don’t be a culty fuckwad.

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CREDITS:

Executive Producers: Sarah Edmondson & Anthony Ames

Production Partner: Citizens of Sound

Co-Creator: Jess Tardy

Audio production: Will Retherford

Production Coordinator: Lesli Dinsmore

Writer and administrator: Sandra Nomoto

Social media team: Eric Skwarzynski and Brooke Keane

Theme Song: “Cultivated” by Jon Bryant co-written with Nygel Asselin