I survived a sect: the experiences of religious cults become a mine for the platforms

Promotional image of 'Seduced: Inside the NXVIM cult' (Amazon), one of several documentaries where people from the NXVIM cult tell their story.

The history of the NXIVM (pronounced

sect has everything to be attractive for the media: connection with famous or semi-famous, a message of self-help between corporate and

(the cult was sold to the public as a system of self-improvement ) and enough lurid detail to attract attention, starting with the burned-out mark the leader made on women new to the cult, a kind of seal at the hip.

Even so, the amount of audiovisual content that this story has generated since it came to light almost five years ago, with an

(first-person complaint) in

in which several victims told their story, is enormous. even for the

.

This is the label with which the journalist Molly Fischer has baptized the dominant trend in audiovisuals, that of making products that tell the same well-known story over and over again (Monica Lewinsky, the swindler Anna Delvey, the founder of Theranos, ladder crime in North Carolina) because, as he says in the article, “the entertainment market is defined by the limitless potential of preexisting intellectual property.”

Anyone who wants to find out or gloat over the NXVIM case can, without a doubt, watch the HBO documentary series

, which will premiere its second season in the fall, but they also have the option of listening to

Canadian journalist Josh Bloch's

, which it is based primarily on testimonies from former cult member Sarah Edmonson.

Or you can put on another

that Edmonson herself does with her husband, whom she met in the cult, Anthony Ames.

It's called

, it's highly produced, and it's been running for four seasons now.

In it they talk about their experience, but they also dedicate themselves to interviewing survivors of other groups with sectarian potential.

Portrait of NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere during his trial in October 2020 in New York. JANE ROSENBERG (Reuters)

The producer India Oxenberg, who was also in the sect, but did not want to sell her testimony to

series , offers her own version in another documentary hosted on Amazon and entitled

, in which she explains her seven years as a victim of the leader and abuser, Keith Raniere.

In turn, India's mother, Katherine Oxenberg's actress, tells in another documentary, this time for Netlix

what she did to get her out of the Raniere's claws.

If there was someone who still had an appetite to know more about the subject, they could continue at it and look for

like

or

, which focused on the trial in which Raniere was sentenced to 120 years in prison for conspiracy, trafficking sex and child trafficking.

With all intent, when the Canadaland platform did their own show on the subject, they directly titled it “another

NXIVM

It can be said that NXIVM, more than a sect, is already a content creation industry.

Edmonson and Ames, who in their

show empathy with the interviewees who have left organized religions such as Mormonism or the Jehovah's Witnesses and consider other groups, such as sororities of girls in universities of elite, they are part of the growing group of people who have managed to make a living telling it, who are somehow monetizing their experience as former members of sects and religious groups.

In some cases these are people who grew up in a cult and didn't fully realize how extraordinary their childhood was until adulthood.

This is the case of Alesia Galati and Jada Smith, who grew up in a Christian fundamentalist sect and explain it on the

,

where they also deal with other similar cases.

Its tone is lighter and more humorous than that of other products of the same genre.

The idea of ​​reexamining one's family's decisions is also in

.

The host of this

Growing up around a guru who progressively went by the names of Adi Da, Bubba Free John, and Da-Love Ananda, Jonathan Hirsch wonders what might have attracted his parents to dedicate their lives to following him. this narcissistic leader from California to Nepal.

Still from the docuseries 'Wild Wild Country' (Netflix).

Growing up in a cult certainly equips victims to understand all sorts of weirdness.

This is also deduced from listening to some of the 87 chapters of

.

The host, Sadie Carpenter, spent her childhood in a group called the Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement, and she is exploring stories of other sects and interviewing other survivors.

Her focus is on what she calls “next door cultists,” that is, cults that don't necessarily involve living on a ranch or wearing orange but can be just as toxic in their inner workings.

As usually happens in this type of

, Carpenter is dosing his own story, which is what keeps listeners hooked.

The story of how she managed to escape and deprogram does not arrive until chapter number nine.

, which is run by two survivors of the Children of God sect, has a less journalistic point and is closer to therapy, in part because the experiences of the two narrators are more sinister.

Whether they are stories about groups that are “versions of versions of versions of Christianity”, as Sadie Carpenter defines the cult her parents joined, or beliefs related to Eastern mysticism, such as the one explained by Una Morera in

—his parents joined a Tibetan community led by a guru named Chögyam Tungpa and based in Colorado—, if enough stories are heard, the same themes always emerge: sexual abuse, isolation, economic fraud, lack of protection of minors.

In fact, there is an accepted way of measuring what does and does not constitute a cult, a ten-point test called the Boyd Scale that takes into account factors such as devotion to the leader, dependency, coercion, isolation of members, and a point called “cognitive restructuring”, that is, to what extent the members are reprogrammed.

Those who now tell these stories usually do so from the point of view of the victim or, if they harmed others while in the cult, with a clear message of repentance.

But it's not always like this.

In 2018, the fashionable sect was not yet NXIVM, not even Heaven's Gate, the macabre cult that led 37 people to collective suicide in 1997 and which starred in a documentary series on HBO in 2020, nor the Davidians, who returned to the arena when HBO again premiered the documentary

.

No, then only the Rajneesh were talked about.

Netflix 's

series was so successful (and much to watch in the

later of this subgenre) that thematic parties were celebrated in which the assistants had to dress in red and orange, like the members of the sect.

Memes circulated with the best phrases of Ma Anand Sheela, the lieutenant of the leader of the sect and manager of the

, almost a self-sufficient city, that the group set up in Oregon.

A man shows the site of the 1993 Waco Branch Davidians tragedy.PXS

That same spring, Sheela, as everyone who watched the series called her, went to Barcelona, ​​invited by the Primera Persona festival.

Considering that the former leader, turned nursing home owner and then resident in Switzerland, had pleaded guilty to a bioterrorist attack that caused salmonellosis in an entire city, starting a fire and conspiring to assassinate a United States prosecutor United, she was not an easy guest for the festival.

Still, she was itching to talk.

“I wrote to the residence where she lived, in Switzerland without much hope of getting a response, at least from an assistant.

But a few hours later she answered from her email, ”explains the writer Miqui Otero, co-founder of the festival, which is no longer celebrated.

“It was so easy and made it so easy that I asked her for a video call to verify that it was really her.

I suspect that she didn't get as many speaking invitations as she expected, precisely because she's such a troublesome character."

The video call took place, and caught Otero in a Madrid bar "decorated with photos of Kennedy and with Javier Gurruchaga at the bar."

The vice-guru (she was for years the right hand of the leader, Osho, a collector of Rolls Royce and gold watches and also a sexual predator) did not demand more money than the rest of the guests.

In fact, she hardly asked about the rate, nor did she set special conditions for the trip.

She will only be accompanied by an assistant.

“In the theater you could see how the most skeptical people who came gave up.

If you watch the video it is clear that people laugh too much and clap too much.

She had amazing self-confidence and was delighted”, recalls Otero, despite the fact that the presenter, Bob Pop, asked her uncomfortable questions about her past and told her right from the start: “You represent the two things I hate the most:

Sheela did do a long round of interviews and starred in her own documentary last year,

, in which Netflix followed her back to India after 30 years.

She there she is seen filling auditoriums and attending the media as a charismatic rocker.

The report is available along with the other dozens of sectarian content on Netflix, which have their own subsections.

Anyone who wants to take a crash course in the dissident polygamous factions of Mormonism, for example, can choose from dozens of options, bordering on

(

) or docu-reality (

).

This same month,

, about religious leader and serial rapist Warren Jeffs.

All with their testimonies of victims in the first person.

According to Anette Porter, a media analyst linked to Johns Hopkins University, the fascination with this type of phenomenon is not new.

The content about sects guarantees mesmerizing characters (the leaders) and allows drawing moral boundaries that are comfortable for the viewer, creating a Them vs.

Us.

In his opinion, all these

and articles and documentaries generate questions of the type "what is good?, what is evil?, what is the limit of the will?, for what reason would you give up certain freedoms?".

In the era of testimonial television, which seeks well-known labels (Waco, NXIVM) that facilitate the search for content on platforms, the industry encourages each individual to monetize the most newsworthy of his life, whether it is having been part of a series of success, as is the case with the dozens of

hosted by ex-stars of series from the 1990s and 2000s, or having survived a cult.

And this experience sometimes turns into a full-time job.

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