One Tree Hill actress Bethany Pleasure Lenz is getting candid concerning the decade she spent in a cult in her new memoir, Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While Also in an Actual Cult!), out Oct. 22.
One factor she needs readers to remove from the ebook? To know that it is really not that laborious to fall for a high-control group just like the one she was lured into, below the appropriate circumstances.
“I had all the time been in search of 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 connected to new associates she’d met at a bible examine. 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 form of intimacy,” says Lenz. “The concept that somebody out there says, ‘It doesn’t matter what you do or how badly you would possibly behave or what dumb decisions 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 along 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 “Large 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 methods within the books: Isolation of members from family and friends.
“What was actually insidious about the best way 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 just deserved. You didn’t get the upbringing that you must 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 best way 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 understand what I imply? Do not be part of a cult as a result of your loved ones’s bizarre.”
Lenz says her relationship along with her dad and mom is nice now.
“It took some emotional moments and a while to only 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 the planet. Please do not abandon me.’ They’re like, ‘Do not be ridiculous. We love you.’ And it is turned out nicely. I like each my dad and mom.”
Under, in an unique excerpt shared with PEOPLE, Lenz shares what occurred when she and her father reunited.
Dad’s voice stored pinballing up excessive behind his nostril, as if he would possibly burst at any second. It had been six years since we’d final talked — since he’d refused to come back to my marriage ceremony, absolutely satisfied that I used to be in a cult. He’d apologized later and desperately tried to remain related, besides he had been so insistent that I used to be in peril, and I couldn’t enable in a catalyst to that form of doubt. I needed to imagine to outlive, so I instructed him he needed to discuss and make peace with my husband first — which he tried to do. However my husband minimize 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 eventually capable of see my dad’s fears a couple of cult had been warranted. So I referred to as him. Making that decision was so troublesome 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 cherished and missed me time 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 deliver any negativity or anger into our reunion. I promised to introduce him to his granddaughter as quickly as I may.
Just a few months later, Dad came over me in LA. I had rented a Sundown Blvd. home in West Hollywood that supposedly Errol Flynn stored his mistresses in. I couldn’t afford it, particularly with my rapidly mounting lawyer prices. However I believed for certain, given the success of One Tree Hill, I’d ebook 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 stated: “Actors become old, actresses get outdated.” The one form of auditions I used to be getting was for “Mother of 10-12 months-Previous” on Regulation & Order.
I used to be so burdened I began smoking — nicely, trying to smoke. It was the primary time since briefly in highschool, and I’m undecided I knew methods 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 answerable for one thing.
Earlier than my dad arrived, I made certain 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 disenchanted in you for utilizing tobacco.
I didn’t have to fret. My dad seemingly wouldn’t have seen 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 stated.
To learn extra about Bethany Pleasure Lenz and the way she lastly managed to depart the cult, learn this week’s subject of PEOPLE on stands Friday.
After I minimize him out, I believed he’d merely tried to maneuver on together with his life. As a substitute, he’d devoted his time to finding out cults, studying how they labored and chasing down any data he may discover concerning the Management group. I used to be so moved I burst out crying. Then, as I flipped by way of the folder’s contents, I felt like crying for a distinct 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 obtained 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 at the present time.
I shared all of it with my lawyer, who appeared to agree that this proof could possibly be damning sufficient to show how harmful it’d be to grant custody to my husband who was nonetheless absolutely enmeshed together with his father — Les — and the remainder of the “Household.” My lawyer 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 distinct form 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 skill to belief God, or imagine something religious in any respect. I questioned if these witnesses my Dad discovered might need the reply to a query I’d requested myself many occasions within the years that adopted my exit from the cult. Whereas most individuals are likely to marvel why God permits so many dangerous issues to occur, I questioned 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 in probably the most surprising method.
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 Show (While also in an Actual Cult!) comes out Oct. 22 and is obtainable for preorder now, wherever books are offered.
