'One Tree Hill' actress reveals how she was lured into a cult
"It looks so normal... and then it just morphed" - Bethany Joy Lenz's career, life, and bank account were once controlled by a cult leader.
Bethany Joy Lenz says she was "looking for a place to belong" when she became the victim of a religious cult.
She opens up about the experience in her memoir, 'Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!)'.
Speaking to People magazine, the 'One Tree Hill' actress says she led a double life while filming the popular American teen drama.
She was part of a religious group whose leader controlled almost all aspects of her life, including her career and her bank account.
Bethany met the pastor at a Bible study when she moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. Her encounters with the group started out innocently. Several members of the church moved to a different part of the country to live a communal lifestyle, led by a man called 'Les'.
It was nicknamed 'The Big House'.
"It still looked normal. And then it just morphed. But by the time it started morphing, I was too far into the relationships to notice. Plus, I was so young," she says.
She managed to escape the cult a decade later, but it wasn't easy. She was married to a fellow cult member whom she had a daughter with.
"The stakes were so high. They were my only friends. I was married into this group. I had built my entire life around it. I had given up so much of my career because of it. If I admitted that I was wrong, If I admitted there's holes in this, something off. The whole concept of everything else would come crumbling down," she told PEOPLE.
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Bethany says she hopes sharing her story will help someone else facing something similar.
"I am not interested in a witch hunt. I didn't write this book to get revenge on anyone. I just wanted to tell an honest story about what happened to me."
Her memoir will be released on 22 October. The New York Times shared the book under its recommended non-fiction reading list.
"My jaw is on the floor... I’m astonished and grateful. I also want to dig a hole and crawl into it and say 'make me a blanket of dirt and let me know when it’s over!' because I never learned how to process good things happening. Artists (and many other people) learn to wait for the bad news. I learned a habit early in life— ‘don’t get your hopes up for fear you’ll be made a fool, later.’ For the first time in my life I’m really trying to embrace the vulnerability of gratitude," she wrote on Instagram.
She added: "If you’re like me, it can be painful at first to enjoy and accept good things. Let’s do it together! Good things are coming out of all the muck, after all."
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Main image credit: Instagram/msbethanyjoylenz