Yolande Brener is a 55-year-old woman who became involved in a cult known as the Unification Church, where she married a stranger and belonged to this group for several years with the promise that she would be happy.
The woman related her story to the British site The Sun , where she confessed that her life was like that of any other girl at age 15, when her brother Adam began to present symptoms of schizophrenia.
The aftermath of her brother's illness began to cause anxiety problems in her, so she was at a very vulnerable time in July 1990, when she met a man named Andreas, during an interview for a movie in which she was working.
“Andreas showed me a video about the struggle that humans have to be happy in the modern world, which resonated with me and I wanted to hear more. I didn't realize it at the time, but the center was a way to recruit people for the Unification Church, a religious cult that had five million members at its peak, ”he revealed to the site.
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A week later, Yolande met a woman named Eva, who promised her that her brother's illness would be cured if she dedicated her life to the group's teachings, so the woman decided to leave her family and friends to move. to a church department in London.
It sounds crazy, but I thought these people had the answers they needed. I even shaved my head after being told that evil spirits cling to a person's hair, "he noted.
Despite a friend and ex-boyfriend trying to convince her to leave this group, Brener decided to move to New York as part of a mission to recruit more people. Back then, the woman learned that the church leader, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, was planning to hold a massive wedding celebration in Seoul, Korea.
Yolande was going to participate in this ceremony and was going to marry a man chosen by the reverend, who was one of the characteristics of the cult.
"I felt a flash of fear when I saw his photograph, this man was a stranger, how could I marry him? But I tried to convince myself, telling myself what God wanted, "she said.
Brener married Gabriel, a man from Ecuador, four days after they met at a massive wedding with 30,000 other couples. Upon returning to New York, they were prohibited from living together as they would not be allowed to have sex.
The couple had two children, but it was not until 2002, when Gabriel separated from his wife for not being "loving enough" that she was able to leave the church and take her children with her.
"In 2005 we legally separated and divorced in 2006. Although the church did not interfere with our separation, members of the church contacted me multiple times, asking for my children to attend, but most rejected me," he said.
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