Actress Bethany Pleasure Lenz Explains How It’s Simple to Fall For a Cult (Unique)

One Tree Hill actress Bethany Pleasure Lenz is getting candid in regards to the decade she spent in a cult in her new memoir, Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Present (Whereas Additionally in an Precise Cult!), out Oct. 22.

One factor she needs readers to remove from the e book? To grasp that it is really not that arduous to fall for a high-control group just like the one she was lured into, below the best circumstances.

“I had all the time been on the lookout for a spot to belong,” she explains to PEOPLE on this week’s cowl story. “I want somebody had simply instructed me after I was younger that that is the common human situation, however I did not know that.”

Raised an solely little one to younger evangelical dad and mom, she moved round rather a lot and says she had a lonely childhood. When she moved to L.A. at 20, she quickly grew deeply hooked up to new pals she’d met at a bible research. Quickly, the group members started to really feel even nearer than household, and it was like nothing she’d ever skilled earlier than.

“We crave that type of intimacy,” says Lenz. “The concept that somebody out  there says, ‘It doesn’t matter what you do or how badly you may behave or what dumb selections you make, I nonetheless love you, and I am right here for you.’  I by no means had that. To stroll into an setting that felt like that is what I used to be surrounded by, it was like water in a desert.”

Lenz was quickly having fun with life together with her close-knit group when a brand new pastor she calls “Les” infiltrated the group and commenced to take over the weekly dialog. Quickly he’d satisfied a choose group of them to remain on the “Huge Home,” the place he lived in Idaho. Though she was starring on One Tree Hill, which filmed in Wilmington, N.C., Lenz visited as a lot as she may.

And because the “household” morphed into one thing darker and extra controlling, Lenz says she was too deeply entrenched to note. It did not assist that “Les” quickly used one of many oldest cult tips within the books: Isolation of members from family and friends.

“What was actually insidious about the way in which they dealt with parental isolation was by zeroing in on actual issues,” Lenz says. “They’d be like, ‘You didn’t get the parenting that you simply deserved. You didn’t get the upbringing that you need to have had. Allow us to mother or father you. Allow us to  give this reward again to you of what you missed out on, household and oldsters that basically present up on a regular basis and see you.'”

She continues, “Then I get out of the group, and it is like all these issues are nonetheless true about the way in which I grew up. So it was like how do I put a brand new lens on it to see it as one thing that’s regular? All of us simply develop up with bizarre issues in our household, you realize what I imply? Do not be a part of a cult as a result of your loved ones’s bizarre.”

Lenz says her relationship together with her dad and mom is nice now.

“It took some emotional moments and a while to simply work out what sort of relationship I needed to have with them for the primary time in maturity as a result of I simply went from being a bratty teenager to isolation and being like, ‘You are not even my household!'”

However she says that when she left the group, her dad and mom had been there with open arms.

“I used to be like, ‘Okay, now you’re the solely individuals I’ve on this planet. Please do not abandon me.’ They’re like, ‘Do not be ridiculous. We love you.’ And it is turned out effectively. I like each my dad and mom.”

Beneath, in an unique excerpt shared with PEOPLE, Lenz shares what occurred when she and her father reunited.

Dad’s voice saved pinballing up excessive behind his nostril, as if he may burst at any second. It had been six years since we’d final talked — since he’d refused to come back to my wedding ceremony, totally satisfied that I used to be in a cult. He’d apologized later and desperately tried to remain linked, besides he had been so insistent that I used to be at risk, and I couldn’t enable in a catalyst to that type of doubt. I needed to consider to outlive, so I instructed him he needed to speak and make peace with my husband first — which he tried to do. However my husband reduce him out and Dad was left for years making fruitless communication makes an attempt through e-mail, voice messages — even snail mail.

I had missed household weddings, children’ birthdays, and milestones, and I wasn’t keen to overlook any extra. I used to be now separated from my husband, in protracted authorized proceedings for the decision of our divorce and custody of our daughter, and at last in a position to see my dad’s fears a couple of cult had been warranted. So I known as him. Making that decision was so tough and shameful, however listening to his voice full of heat was all of the reassurance I wanted. 

He was so overcome with emotion that the dialog was principally simply him saying how a lot he liked and missed me again and again. That was all that mattered to him: reassuring me how a lot I meant to him. He didn’t even point out my husband or the cult. He didn’t wish to convey any negativity or anger into our reunion. I promised to introduce him to his granddaughter as quickly as I may.

A number of months later, Dad came around me in LA. I had rented a Sundown Blvd. home in West Hollywood that supposedly Errol Flynn saved his mistresses in. I couldn’t afford it, particularly with my rapidly mounting lawyer prices. However I believed for positive, given the success of One Tree Hill, I’d e book one other present and cash wouldn’t be a difficulty. Shock, shock, an actress in her thirties coming off a CW teen drama wasn’t precisely in excessive demand. As Ava Gardner as soon as mentioned: “Actors become older, actresses get previous.” The one type of auditions I used to be getting was for “Mother of 10-12 months-Previous” on Regulation & Order.

I used to be so pressured I began smoking — effectively, making an attempt to smoke. It was the primary time since briefly in highschool, and I’m unsure I knew the best way to correctly inhale any greater than I did then. I by no means smoked in entrance of my daughter or in the home. I’d savor them late at evening on the again balcony, watching the palm timber sway within the breeze and the automobiles whip previous on Sundown Boulevard. Holding a stick of fireside made me really feel in command of one thing. 

Earlier than my dad arrived, I made positive to cover the cigarettes and clear up any butts on the balcony, reverting to my teenage self, afraid of getting busted, not greedy the hilarity of this. You simply spent 10 years of your life in a cult, however sure, completely fear about your dad being dissatisfied in you for utilizing tobacco. 

I didn’t have to fret. My dad doubtless wouldn’t have observed if the home was filled with ashtrays. He barely even glanced round when he walked in. He went straight to the eating room, unzipped his suitcase, pulled out a crimson folder, and dropped it on the desk. It made an enormous thud, sending the canine scampering into the bed room. The folder was stuffed so filled with papers it barely stayed closed. 

“What’s this?” I requested. 

“The final six years of my life,” my dad mentioned. 

To learn extra about Bethany Pleasure Lenz and the way she lastly managed to go away the cult, learn this week’s problem of PEOPLE on stands Friday.

After I reduce him out, I believed he’d merely tried to maneuver on together with his life. As an alternative, he’d devoted his time to finding out cults, studying how they labored and chasing down any info he may discover in regards to the Management group. I used to be so moved I burst out crying. Then, as I flipped by the folder’s contents, I felt like crying for a special purpose, realizing how little I knew about Les and the way gullible and naive I’d been. 

It was web page after web page of emails, letters, newspaper clippings. The allegations bought darkish. Witness after witness referred to his purported sexual misconduct, supposed lawsuits, monetary “wrongdoing” and an inclination to destroy marriages and break up aside households. 

My dad had mapped out a timeline. He had compiled lists of identified associates and people with one horrible story after one other. All these years he had been planning for this present day. 

I shared all of it with my legal professional, who appeared to agree that this proof might be damning sufficient to show how harmful it’d be to grant custody to my husband who was nonetheless totally enmeshed together with his father — Les — and the remainder of the “Household.” My legal professional additionally jokingly provided my dad a analysis job on the legislation agency.

However for me, the folder was solely the beginning. It made me wish to attain out to those individuals who additionally had their lives (and religion) destroyed. I noticed in them a special type of household into which I’d unwittingly been inducted. As a result of, except for severely warping my view of relationships, this cult had ravaged my potential to belief God, or consider something non secular in any respect. I puzzled if these witnesses my Dad discovered might need the reply to a query I’d requested myself many instances within the years that adopted my exit from the cult. Whereas most individuals are inclined to marvel why God permits so many unhealthy issues to occur, I puzzled why God allowed so many good issues to occur to me whereas I used to be concerned in one thing so damaging. The reply would are available probably the most surprising manner.

From DINNER FOR VAMPIRES: Life on a Cult TV Present (Whereas additionally in an Precise Cult!) by Bethany Pleasure Lenz. Copyright © 2024 by Bethany Pleasure Lenz. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, LLC

Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Present (Whereas additionally in an Precise Cult!) comes out Oct. 22 and is out there for preorder now, wherever books are bought.