Overcoming Cults and How to Avoid Them with Peter Young

Episode 039 — Overcoming Cults and How to Avoid Them with Peter Young

Cults don’t usually look like cults at the beginning. They often look like community, certainty, faith, mentorship, or “the one person” who finally understands you. In this episode of Overcoming Anything, host Anne Vryonides sits down with Peter Young, who shares how a hidden religious cult quietly infiltrated his marriage, manipulated his family, and nearly destroyed his identity—until he found his way out and rebuilt his life with clarity, faith, and hard-won discernment.

Peter Young is a former national sports broadcaster with CBS, ESPN, and Outdoor Life Network, and a bestselling author. He now shares his story as a cautionary tale to help others recognize cult dynamics early—before they lose their voice, their relationships, and their freedom.

Key Takeaways
• No one knowingly joins a cult—people join something that seems good, then truth gets slowly twisted over time
• Cult leaders commonly use fear, isolation, secrecy, and “gatekeeping God” (or truth) to keep followers dependent
• The strongest protection is community: stay connected to trusted voices, ask questions, and don’t let one person become your only source of truth

Timestamps
• 00:00 — Introduction: overcoming cult influence and learning how to avoid it
• 02:10 — Peter’s mantra: Proverbs 3:5–6 and trusting God through dark seasons
• 05:00 — The hardest part: brainwashing and “retraining your mind” after you leave
• 08:30 — How it started: meeting Paige and hearing about “Uncle Robert” early on
• 12:00 — The control mechanism: “Uncle Robert taught me that” (and why questions were punished)
• 16:30 — The slow drift: how cult leaders twist truth gradually (the “golf ball” analogy)
• 22:00 — Motives: ego, adulation, control, and money (tithing)
• 28:00 — Red flags: isolation, rule-making, grandiosity, and “rules for you but not for me” behavior
• 34:00 — The cost: marriage destruction, parental alienation, and being labeled “the devil”
• 40:00 — The darkest season: fear-based control and doubting your own salvation
• 46:00 — The turning point: small “aha” moments that broke the spell (not one big moment)
• 52:00 — Recovery: replacing one controlling voice with trusted voices + truth-based discernment
• 58:00 — Helping the kids + writing the memoir as a healing and truth-telling process
• 01:03:00 — Advice: stay in fellowship, stay connected, and bring in outside perspective early
• 01:06:00 — Recommended book + where to find Peter

Connect with Peter Young
• Peter’s website: https://authorpeteryoung.com
| Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

Resources
• Stop the Tall Man, Save the Tiger by Peter Young, Amazon Link

If this episode helped you, share it with a friend who’s being isolated, someone who’s following a “guru” who can’t be questioned, or a loved one who needs permission to trust their instincts and ask hard questions. I’ll see you next time on Overcoming Anything.
 ❤️ Anne

Disclaimer
The content of this episode is for informational and inspirational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional therapy, diagnosis, legal, or medical care.

#overcominganything #midlifetransformations #energyhealing #resilience #cultrecovery #cultawareness #brainwashing #mindcontrol #religiousabuse #spirituala

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Welcome to Overcoming Anything, the podcast where we dive deep into stories of resilience, transformation, and growth. I'm your host, Anne, and today we have an incredible guest who has overcome and left a cult. Joining me today is. Peter Young Peter is a former national sports broadcaster with CBS ESPN and Outdoor Life Network, and a bestselling author too, who shares his story of escaping a hidden religious cult and is now sharing his story of faith, resilience, and reclaiming his life. So welcome to the show, Peter.

Speaker 2 0:31

Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 0:32

Absolutely. So before we dive in, I always love to ask, what's one quote or mantra that keeps you going in tough times?

Speaker 2 0:39

That would be Proverbs three, five and six. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. I gotta remember this. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understandings. In all ways, acknowledge him and he will direct your paths. And I tell you what, Anne, uh, I have had some dark moments in my life and those verses in others. Got me through 'em.

Speaker 0:57

That's great. That's great. Yes. I love those bible verses. Just that, that knowingness that he's there to support you during those challenging times. So let's go ahead and start at the beginning. What is the most difficult thing that you've had to overcome in your life and walk away from leaving this cult?

Speaker 2 1:14

The most difficult thing would've been the brainwashing. I would've only been brainwashed by our cult leader. It's a guy we called Uncle Robert. His real name was Robert Booty, and he wasn't related to anybody. Certainly not, my family or my former wife's family, but we called him Uncle Robert. And, my wife would've been brainwashed for most of our marriage. He eventually brainwashed our children. My in-laws former in-laws were certainly brainwashed and I took a long time to get there. I finally got worn out and beaten down, and I was for probably two years, two and a half years brainwashed. And so coming out of that was very difficult, because when you're brainwashed, number one, you don't know it. Then number two, coming out of it is difficult because, it's almost like you have to retrain your brain to not hear the voice of the person that brainwashed you in everything. In other words, what would Uncle Roberts say about this? What would he say about that? And it took a while to overcome that, but thank the lord I did. And,

Speaker 2:01

absolutely.

Speaker 2 2:01

And there's a lot more layers to that in terms of overcoming the brainwash of just doubting everything you say or do the pain of what I went through, et cetera.

Speaker 2:09

So take us back to the beginning. So how did you meet your wife and did your wife already know this Uncle Robert? And was he already a part of her life when you met her?

Speaker 2 2:19

It's a fascinating story, and I literally get goosebumps every time. I try and tell this story, but we met at a singles Bible study in little old Pocatello, Idaho. And, before I'd even met her, and I call her Paige in my book, my, my memoir that I wrote about all this, I was at a gym working out with a buddy named Gary. And you couldn't miss Paige, six foot, one long, blonde hair, athletic, beautiful woman. And I'd seen her around town. And Gary says, oh, I know who that is. That's paying age in the clause. Just be careful, Peter. They've got this weird family guru. So before I ever even met my future wife, I knew about the weird family guru. So we met at the singles Bible study. We started dating very quickly and but she would talk about this Uncle Robert Guy all the time, and he lived in Southern California. We were obviously in Idaho. And so she talked about her father and this uncle Robert. And, so Uncle Robert had met Paige's parents at a seminary, a tiny little seminary before Paige was even born in the early seventies. So she grew up in a world where Uncle Robert was the expert on everything, and I mean everything, most importantly, the Bible, their faith and all that. But. The expert on everything. Let me give you an example. We're dating for a month or two, and I'm 90% sure I wanna marry this woman. But I needed to meet her father and Uncle Robert. cause I thought there's such a big part of her life. If we get married, there'll be a big part of my life.

Speaker 3:28

Right.

Speaker 2 3:29

So I drive to Northern Idaho where her parents live. It's a long drive. I just met them. I go down the hall to use the bathroom and I'm a guy and I stand up to go pee as soon as I open the door and come out. There's my future father-in-law. Standing right there in the doorway stands really close to me 'cause he didn't have good hearing. And he says, I heard you go to the bathroom. That was weird. Sign number one. And he says, in our house, the men need to sit to pee. I thought, wow, that's really weird. Didn't say anything. He said, it's cleaner. This reduces splashing. And then he said to me, the thing that I heard hundreds of times over the next 20 years. Uncle Robert taught me that. And Uncle Robert, if he taught you anything, it was unassailable. You couldn't question him. cause cult leaders hate to be questioned. So literally how the men had to pee to everything else, if there was a question, my wife or my in-laws went to Uncle Robert, first and foremost for everything. Wow. I'm talking everything. And with he pronounced. His judgment or his opinion, you could not question it. Now. I did. I was the frog in the pot of boiling water. That proverbial frog as the water gets hotter and hotter.

Speaker 4:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2 4:29

And I would ask questions and he hated questions and usually the answer was not, I'll explain this, but Peter, why are you so stupid that you don't understand me? Which again, is a classic trait of a cult leader. They don't wanna be questioned, they want blind. Loyalty. So that was 29 years ago.

Speaker 4:46

Wow. So how did Uncle Robert put this hold over Paige's parents when they're in Idaho and he's in California?

Speaker 2 4:54

Yeah, good question. So again, they would've met at that seminary. And, and then they went their separate ways, but he would come visit or they would go visit him.

Speaker 5:02

Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 5:03

He, and then you just, they'd get on the phone. They'd talk on the cell phone. And for the first few years of our marriage. I only met the guy like maybe once a year. I met him before we got married 'cause I had to, I needed to meet this guy. I thought I met Paige's brother's wedding and I thought, he is odd and eccentric but not dangerous. I was wrong. He then spoke at our wedding. It was really weird. We got, and then I'd see him like once or twice a year and for the first few years of our marriage, I thought we had the best marriage ever. I was the best husband ever. She was the best wife ever, was madly in love with this woman. Okay. And Uncle Robert did not have as much of an influence on us as he did later on. My wife would be on the phone with him, not every day, but later on in our marriage. It was every day, and she would talk to him about anything and everything. So he was always just a cell phone call away. And then we would have these conferences once or twice a year. So if you and I, Anne get together, it might be just a Bible study, a book club, just go get a cup of coffee, let's have a meeting. Robert, it was a conference 'cause everything he did was more important. So it was a conference and we would drive to Northern Idaho. So he'd come up from California. Mike family would go to Northern Idaho and we would sit around and listen to this guy talk for hours and hours or days on end. And that was our conference. And again, a lot of it was utter nonsense and craziness. But some of it was brilliant, which is an important point for your audience. Cult leaders don't start spouting utter nonsense in lies right away. Otherwise no one would believe them. Cult leaders sound really good at first, and then they slowly but surely twist the truth. So the analogy I give is if you miss Hitt, a golf ball by this much, and I'm holding my fingers like a quarter inch bar. If you miss Hitt a golf ball by a quarter inch, way down the fairway, it's gonna be a hundred yards to the left, or a hundred yards to the right, nowhere near where you wanted it to go.

Speaker 6:34

Right.

Speaker 2 6:35

So Uncle Robert would, if I keep the analogy going, would tee up the right golf ball. He would read the Bible and he knew it, but then he would give each heavy verse his little quarter inch. Twist interpretation. So 5, 10, 15 years down the road, you're nowhere near the gospel. So some of his crazy ideas, he would call casinos, the true churches in America. And he said that the churches you and I would go to on a Sunday were utter waste of time because only he knew the true gospel. And all the other pastors were just false teachers. And, anybody could go into a casino and be blessed by the Lord. And I'd say, oh, okay. But I usually see people worshiping money in the casino and not the Lord.

Speaker 7:06

Right.

Speaker 2 7:06

Then, one of our conferences, and this is a little earthy and pretty blunt, we had three of my kids run at the age of 10 when they heard this. And again, for a cult leader, whatever will be inappropriate for you and me is never inappropriate for the cult leader they can do or say anything. And because of their hold and their grip on the followers, they're allowed to get away with it. So in 2016 at one of our conferences, and I was almost on the verge of being brainwashed by this point, right? Like I've been married 17, 18 years. The dominant story in America was the presidential election between Trump and Clinton. And, booty go about hated Clinton. And so he started talking about the, laughing hyena pack. In Africa and how the dominant figure in that pack is the female that's given birth several times. And the female laughing hyena who's given birth several times, develops this fleshy appendage after having given birth. It looks like a penis and it's bigger than the guy's penis. And so she's dominant. And then the males figure to, will kinda lick the groin as they sign a submission to the female. And then he compared her to none other than Hillary Clinton and saying if she's elected president, she's gonna strut around the world stage with this fake penis. Which again, is okay, if you don't like Hillary Clinton, that's fine. But it's disgusting analogy. And yet there are my kids listening to this and Paige and my in-laws thought it was perfectly fine. And I was repulsed by this. And I'm like, why are we doing this? And yet that was just one example. I could give you a dozen like that.

Speaker 8:20

So what was the ulterior motive of Uncle Robert to brainwash all these people? What was the benefit he was getting other than, let's say a power trip?

Speaker 2 8:29

That's the classic question of what was his why? Why do cult leaders do this?

Speaker 8:33

And,

Speaker 2 8:33

and I'll answer it this way. I always say that cults come in all different shapes and sizes, and no one ever knows they're in a cult. You only know you were in a cult. And at their foundation, cults have two things in common. They have a leader. Then they have undue manipulative mind control. That's where it always starts. Then from there, it could look many different ways. Thankfully, we had no physical or sexual abuse in our cult at all, which was great.

Speaker 8:54

Thank goodness.

Speaker 2 8:54

Yeah. But clearly Uncle Robert had, he was the leader and had a hold on all of our minds again. So then, so why did he do that? I think it takes a very special person. To tell those that are, like figuratively bowing down to you and worshiping the ground. You walk on to say, no, wait a minute that you know, that's not me. I'm fallible. I'm a sinner just like you. Yes, I may be a little older and wiser, stop trying to worship me. Stop trying to put me on a pedestal. I'm not that person. Okay. It takes a very strong, mature, disciplined person to say that. That was not Uncle Robert, we all thought the guy was brilliant, especially my wife, especially my in-laws. We had another guy, brother Michael, we called him Michael, and he was like Robin to, uncle Robert would be Batman. So whenever, uncle Robert would drive up to these conferences, brother Michael would come with him. And there was a time where Brother Michael, literally in one of our conferences, was kneeling. On the floor. Listen, uncle Robert and bow down to him because he's, he said, I don't mind being submissive. And he's a guy that's in his sixties, just like Uncle Robert was at the time, literally bow down to Uncle Robert and most Christian leaders would say, wait a minute, Michael. Come on. Stop that. I'm not that person. Uncle Robert never did that. He loved the praise, he loved the adulation. Now, did we also a tithe to him? So the Christian faith tie, I think is gonna give 10% of your income to the church,

Speaker 10:06

right?

Speaker 2 10:06

Yeah, we all did. He wasn't getting rich off of us. We would tie it to my in-laws, would tie it to Michael, would tie it to him. The other families in the cult was there, very few. It was maybe a dozen to 15 adults in this cult. It was very small. And I remember telling my friend about all this after I had recovered and gotten out and she said, wait a minute, Peter. You guys all send him money every month. And he was constantly going to the casinos. I said, oh yeah. When you say it like that, it doesn't sound good, does it? Yeah. Yeah, he wasn't getting rich off of us, but, he was clearly dominating our time. We were sending him tithe money. It was his wife, uncle Robert's wife had a regular job. She really supported him. It was really getting his ego, stroked, and the adulation of praise that he loved it. That's the only thing I can come up with.

Speaker 10:43

Okay, so what are the red signs look or red flags looking back that you can see now that obviously you didn't know at the time to help others prevent themselves from becoming, a member of a cult as well?

Speaker 2 10:57

Sure. And no one ever knowingly joins a cult, they always think they're joining something else. It's a self-actualization or a business club, or, a church, it's a new pastor, whatever you wanna call it. They'll never call themselves a guru or a cult leader. They always think they're joining something else. But people that join something like this will often be in a very vulnerable position. Now I was a sports broadcaster at the time. I'm a six foot five guy. I'm married, I've got kids. I'm on, national tv. I didn't really look very vulnerable. My vulnerability was, I love my wife and I went along with this crazy guy to get along with my wife cause she adored and revered the man and I was trying to protect my marriage. Some people are vulnerable because of their life situation. They might be depressed, they're lonely, whatever. So the biggest red flags are there's probably a 50 50 split between what to look out for with the cult leader and then friends and loved ones who might be susceptible. So for the friends and loved ones, that's easy. If your friends start to cut off all historic communication, so they don't call anymore, they don't email, they don't text, they don't show up to bowling night, whatever it is, that they usually go to. They don't go dancing with you guys at the club on Saturday night. They pull back, they're now more isolated. That's a red flag. I'm not saying that person's headed into a cult, but that is a big red flag. Okay. When we are in community, we're in fellowship, as a Christian, we are in the body of Christ, then we're much stronger. And then for the person who again, will never think he's a cult leader, but they have a lot of, characteristics that are ubiquitous among cult leaders. And it's amazing. And when you peel back the layers of the onion. It could be Jim Jones, it could be David Koresh with, the Branch Davidians, or anybody else. That's certainly not, killing people. Cult leaders share a lot of these same traits, so they make all the rules, but none of the rules apply to them. They have a grandiose sense of self and mission. They try and destroy or blur the lines of the nuclear family so that everybody, grandparents, parents, and children

Speaker 12:38

mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 12:38

Generations. It is, they're all kinda like children to the cult leader. They hate questions and then they act as a gatekeeper to God, whatever your faith is. And I go, Robert, that, all of those now, as an outsider, you and someone who has 2020 hindsight, now I can see all this now and it's really obvious. When you are in a very vulnerable position, your vision gets a little blurry. So I always tell people that, again, your friend doesn't know they're headed down this dangerous path, but you do. So then you have to have that uncomfortable conversation with your friend, reach out and say, Hey, you keep talking about this guy or this person, or this church, or this group. Can you tell me more? I'm a little concerned, et cetera.

Speaker 13:15

Okay. So Peter, what made this whole experience particularly challenging for you?

Speaker 2 13:21

It destroyed my marriage. I loved my wife and we were married about 20 years. And, I never wanted to be divorced. I hate the term, divorce. Divorce, say XX this, I hate it. But yeah, we've been divorced now for six years. So it destroyed my marriage, broke up my family. When Paige left me in 2017, again, I had been faithful, didn't want the divorce. She left me to draw closer to him. To Uncle Robert, her cult leader. And again, the cult leader, that they tried to really destroy the nuclear family. So he had destroyed it by, convincing my wife very subtly. He never said it right out, he should lead Peter. He never said that, but clearly that's what led to our breakup. And then they certainly didn't want me in the role of father to my kids. So she and Uncle Robert started to teach. Our five kids that I was the devil, that I was Satan, that I was a sorcerer, I was a bloodline and a sperm donor. And kids, they believed it.

Speaker 14:05

Oh my gosh, I can't even imagine

Speaker 2 14:06

Fear.

Speaker 14:07

Yeah.

Speaker 2 14:07

And, it was for my attorney and a counselor and the, we had a guard ad litem involved in our case. 'Cause of course I went to the courts 'cause she filed for divorce. They all said it was the worst case of parental alienation they'd ever seen. People that say parental alienation is not real. I have no idea. It is very real. And I can tell you this too, like, to kind of give it a bit more of a background, just to kind of describe how deep the brainwashing was. We had five kids, 17 years, 18 years maybe into our marriage. Paige approached me and said she had this desire for another child, and we had talked about having a fifth child, and if it was a boy, we'd name a Matthew. That's not what she was talking about. Uncle Robert had two sons who were, they're probably now in their forties, and these sons got married, had daughters, so Uncle Robert had granddaughters, no grandsons. So to Paige, who literally thinks the only reason we haven't had World War III yet is 'cause of Uncle Robert. cause he would go to DC and spread his pearls of wisdom and save the world. A world without his offspring is just intolerable. So she wanted to be a surrogate and provide a male grandson for Uncle Robert. And I was repulsed by this idea. Oh, wow. She was gonna get pregnant in vitro fertilization with one of Uncle Robert's two sons. Of course, he thought it was a great idea and I thought it was disgusting. Thankfully, it didn't happen. Then about two years later, after she's left me, she and Uncle Robert are using bloodline and sperm donor as a pejorative to denigrate me in the eyes of the children., Peter, you're not really a father. You're just a bloodline and a sperm donor. That was one of the first moments where I really knew this was wicked and it helped me on my road to recovery. Having your children, one of my, one of my children, look me in the eye, said, dad, you're a devil with no soul.

Speaker 15:35

Oh my gosh, I can't even imagine that. Wow. That hurt.

Speaker 2 15:39

I remember another child saying, dad, if I were a devil, I'd want someone to tell me. This is all from Uncle Robert's, teaching that, of course we're all little devils until we are saved by him, that we're finally shown the truth of the gospel. And of course, they would still believe that I haven't seen it, that I am still a devil and not all my children believe that, thankfully, although it's unfortunately, I can't say that for all five of my kids.

Speaker 15:59

So was there a specific moment where everything just felt impossible? And how did you make it out of that, that like really dark place where you decided, hey, I'm gonna leave Paige and everything is turning against you.

Speaker 2 16:11

Yeah, remember she didn't, I didn't leave her. She left me. Oh, sorry. Yeah, no, that's okay. I was devastated. Let's go back to January, 2017. She left me, I was devastated. She took the three youngest kids with her to Northern Idaho. The two oldest who were, late high school, early college, stayed with me. So they didn't have their schooling disrupted. Okay, so she leaves. I'm devastated and at this time I'm brainwashed. So I think that the only way my marriage and family can be rescued is Uncle Robert, which of course now I look back, he's the reason all this happened. And and at the time he's also trying to convince me that I'm not saved. I'm not a Christian. He tells me I'm incapable of receiving salvation. I have a legion of demons living inside me and inhabiting me. I am demonic and if I'm in a tough moment and I'm praying to the Lord, he's not hearing me because I am not saved. So now she starts to tell the children and says, uncle Robert, you know that I'm a devil Satan, and a sorcerer and a bloodline of sperm donor and a liar, and a fraud and an alien, and so she's left. The kids think this, and I'm now wondering, am I really saved? Do I even have faith? So I was never suicidal. It would've been, about a month or two after she left. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. I'd lost 30 pounds. I'm getting like an hour or two of sleep at night, and no one knew because when she left me, she told me not to tell anybody. And let's wait until we can let the dust settle. Then we'll tell the children and everybody else. And cults control their members through isolation, paranoia, and secrecy. So no one really knew what was going on. Nobody in my community here in Montana, none of my family. So my parents, my brothers, my sister-in-laws, aunts and uncles, they had no part in the cult. They had no idea. So here all this is happening and I had no one to talk to. And oh boy, those are some dark moments. And again, I was never suicidal, I was ready to just to be done with life. I would cry out at night, I couldn't sleep. I'd get my Bible out, I'd cry out, I'd read the Psalms out loud. And on one hand, I'm listening to this crazy little voice in my ear telling me that I'm full of Allegion, of demons and incapable of salvation. And the other hand, I knew the Lord heard me. Like I, I'd been, I grew up in a Christian home. I was singing, I've been baptized well before I met this crazy guy, uncle Robert. So I've got this awful cognitive dissonance going on in my head. And of course, when you can't sleep, you don't think very clearly. Then I finally reached out to my family and friends and told 'em what was going on. And, it was really through them that they, the Lord rescued me.

Speaker 18:12

Oh, thank goodness. I'm so glad that you were able to hear God and put his voice aside. So what was the turning point when you realized things had to change?

Speaker 2 18:22

The turning point would've been, a good question. I used to pray that the Lord would give Paige and my former wife the road to Damascus type moment. So that's where Saul becomes Paul, right? Saul's persecuted in the church. Now he becomes, writes half the new Al. And I remember I used to pray for her that she would've a road to Damascus type moment where she would see the truth. And unfortunately never happened. But that didn't happen for me either. It was a series of little ones where it was an aha moment filed, followed by another and another. And the first aha moment that I had was when I got a, an email from Paige, describing how, she and Uncle Robert, feel like you know you're just a bloodline and a sperm donor. You're not a true father. You are imprisoning our children in biological determinism. Just because I provided the sperm and I thought, wow, that is wrong. Because remember at the time I, I thought Uncle Robert was right. I was wrong. I thought Paige was right. It was all my fault. So for that first time where the light bulb switched on to where I could say, you know what? I don't think they're right. And that doesn't sound right. And then it was like a snowball rolling downhill.

Speaker 19:20

Okay. So what emotion kept you loyal? How did you override, or how did those emotions override your logic?

Speaker 2 19:27

Rob, great question. As I read the Bible, really it was my faith, right? I guess the short answer is, the Lord helped me by opening my eyes and ears to the truth. And I guess the way I would say it is, the truth doesn't really care about your emotions. I know that kind of sounds blunt and difficult to hear, truth is truth. Whether you like it or not, whether, you wake up in the morning and you don't feel like going to work, you don't feel like working out. If your goal is to lose 10 pounds, it does not care how you feel. If you don't get up and eat right and exercise, you're not gonna lose 10 pounds,

Speaker 19:54

right? You don't

Speaker 2 19:55

care about your emotions and yet, clearly emotions at times. Control our lives and run our lives, that could be a good thing and a bad thing. And so it was the ability to then go back to the word of God and read it and read the truth of it, and then compare it to what they were doing to me. And I go, wait a minute. That doesn't match up. And so the emotions that I had really had taken over, because it was very fear-based. So cult leaders don't want you to be strong and independent. They really control you through, again, I said isolation, paranoia, secrecy, but at the bottom line it's about fear. And so when I was at my lowest point, which would've been where I really was believing him the most, I doubted everything. I doubted every thought that came through my head. And every word that I spoke, I doubted. And I had to run it by him first. And that is a miserable way to go through life. And so being able to get rid of that fear, have victory in Christ. It was, incredible to be able to get that, monkey off my back.

Speaker 20:44

So what do you feel was the biggest fear that you had was that you wouldn't be saved or that you weren't a Christlike person unless you listened to Uncle Robert?

Speaker 2 20:54

The biggest fear for most of those years would've been losing my marriage. Okay. And I would not have been able to articulate it like I just did. Gee, I'm afraid I'll lose my marriage. Because, again, I was a Christian and I believe that my wife was, and, she was faithful. I was faithful. We never hardly ever argued. But the elephant in the room was Uncle Robert. And I knew that she adored and revered the man and respected him in way She didn't me. It bothered me and it was really difficult. So that kind of unspoken fear that I had for years was, I'm going to lose my marriage. And then as it really spiraled outta control, and it was clear, oops, my marriage is hanging by a thread. I'm also wondering, is my faith hanging by a thread? It really spiraled outta control very quickly. It went from. Okay. My wife sees me as a guy that's always questioning Uncle Robert. She's doubting my faith, but she's not gonna leave me to Wow. She left me and my life is crumbling before my eyes.

Speaker 21:43

Wow. You have really been through some challenging times, so after years of being told, like what to believe, how did you learn to trust your own mind and make decisions for yourself again?

Speaker 2 21:54

It took over a year probably. Again, I would've been brainwashed for about two, two and a half years, so I can't imagine, if Paige or my in-laws ever have that road to Damascus type moment, what will it be like for them? They'd lived most of their life this way. For me, thankfully, it was only a few years and it took at least a year to finally get back on my feet. And so the process. I don't know if this answers your question, but I could just tell you the process was praying, reading the word of God, and then having my friends and family, other people that I trust and believed in slowly but surely not off the bat. Hammering Uncle Robert, hammering Paige, Peter, you're an idiot. Why would you believe that you're crazy? I could look back now and say, yeah, he's crazy, but it, I needed it to be a slower process. And so then I heard other saying, voices instead of just hearing that one crazy voice. I heard other voices slowly but surely questioning like I did counteracting or counteracting.

Speaker 22:41

Yeah.

Speaker 2 22:42

The stuff that I was hearing from Uncle Robert. And so as I would hear multiple voices sharing different viewpoints, that kind of slowly but surely pull back the veil. And so then what happens then is you're thinking. You go from, Hey, it's all my fault. 'cause I had told my kids this, I take all the blame. I still love your mom. I'm so sorry this happened. You go from there to wait a minute. I never wanted a divorce. I was faithful. I loved her. I was a believer and a Christian. It's not all my fault. And so when you are able to go from, it's all my fault to not all my fault, that's an empowering moment.

Speaker 23:12

Definitely. You should be very proud of yourself for that.

Speaker 2 23:15

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 23:15

And so how have you tried to help your kids now that you see everything clearly? What steps have you taken and how are they progressing?

Speaker 2 23:24

So we have five kids and, the courts did intervene. My wife did file for divorce. She got the divorce. I was devastated. The divorce took three years because we fought over the kids. The courts clearly saw cult influence from Uncle Robert and then parental alienation. One parent tries to denigrate the other in front of the kids. And the court said, this is, it's one of the worst cases we've ever seen. And so I believe they made the right decision to protect the children. So the three youngest came to live with me for several years. The two youngest are still with me. And then I wrote my book. So my book is called Stop the Toll Man, save the Tiger. It's a memoir, and the title might sound odd, but it has to do with a dream Paige had before we even met. It's a fascinating story. I highly recommend you read it because it's a incredible and intense and bizarre story, but there's also a lot of great lessons within there. So I wrote the book for the kids to read. And a few of 'em have read it, not all of them. And one of them, said as he was reading the book that, he realized that he had never asked for my side of the story. Wow. Most of the kids really just believed Uncle Robert. They believed their mother and they believed, their maternal grandparents again, my side of the family had no idea this was going on. And so I wrote the book, so that they would be able to know what I believe is obviously is the truth of all this. And, they still love their mother as they should. I think hopefully they realize that there's a lot of unhealthiness with Uncle Robert and that side of the family and for those that still follow him. And so I try not to speak, ill of her at all. Because kids love their parents. They should at least, no matter what. You may think I'm a horrible guy. I am still dad, I'll always be their father.

Speaker 24:47

Right.

Speaker 2 24:47

So I've tried to, show that be an example. That, yes, you should love your mom and your dad. And, and now Uncle Robert has, nothing to do, with the kids' lives. Certainly with, the ones that I'm still in touch with the older children. It's a work in progress. I don't have a whole lot of contact with them, and it's very difficult. It's, it's a challenge. But,, parenting is a marathon, not a sprint. I pray for my kids. I pray for them that they will finally, have the veil lifted from their eyes and that they will see, and it might take a long time, when their parents, a father, a mother, and they're a husband or a wife, and they'll really see, wow, being married is difficult, being a parent's really difficult. It's really challenging. And I, yeah, my dad was right. I now see what he went through. And so I pray for that day.

Speaker 25:24

Wow. So. When you wrote the book, did you feel or did you fear retaliation from Uncle Robert when you wrote the memoir?

Speaker 2 25:31

Not really. When you haven't gone through the court process, you actually get dragged into court. You gotta go testify. It's a little unnerving. But then once you've gone through it, it's not that scary. I am a much stronger. Courageous man now, and I don't say that arrogantly, I say that because that's what the Lord has given me. And I've asked for the Lord James chapter one says, and I'm paraphrasing, if you lack wisdom, ask the Lord will give it to you. And he has, he's given me strength and courage and discipline and energy for each and every day to be a single parent. So he's given me all of this. No, I don't have fear. I don't have fear of retaliation. 'cause I know it's the truth. I stand behind every word in my memoir. It's about 115,000 words, over 300 pages, and I stand behind every single word of it. And the amazing thing is, Anne, that a lot of, I think 11% of my book are quotes from letters and emails from Paige and Uncle Robert because again, when you are brainwashed and you think your cult leader's nearly flawless. By the way, uncle Robert taught us he only sinned once in his life. That's it. If you think the guy's flawless and he thinks he's perfect or near perfect, you have nothing to fear. So they put all of this crazy stuff in letters and emails. So it was never a he said, she said thing that the court had to sift through. It was, here you go, court. It's all in writing. This is the stuff they said in writing. They said, you're gonna lose the kids. You're a sperm donor. You're a bloodline. You're the devil.

Speaker 26:43

Wow.

Speaker 2 26:43

It's all in writing. So it was during COVID when my three youngest kids were with me and they're watching videos all day. I just wrote a book, spent three, four hours a day writing, and it was in incredibly cathartic and therapeutic because again, for so long I thought, what happened? What happened to my marriage? My family wasn't my fault. And I look back and I would find these old letters and old emails. And I was able to piece it all together like a gigantic, 50,000 piece puzzle, and I was able to fit it together and have peace about it and realize I now know what happened.

Speaker 27:12

I'm sure that really helped you to just get it outta your head and put it on paper and that way you could see from like an outside perspective that wow, this really is what I went through and to see it so clearly. So if you hadn't experienced this whole like cult process, who would you not be today?

Speaker 2 27:30

Whoa. Never had that question. I would say I would not be, I would be a different man. I would not have the strength and the courage and the fortitude and the resilience, that I have now because of what I've been through. I'm reading a book by CS Lewis called The Problem of Pain.

Speaker 27:44

Yeah.

Speaker 2 27:44

First of all, reading CS Lewis is painful because the guy's so brilliant. It is really hard to read him. But he basically, he talks about how the Lord uses pain as a megaphone to get our attention. I think about when you go to the gym and work out when you, lift the weight to do a barbell curl. You're causing little micro tears in your muscle pain. And that's how it grows. And I grew so much through this process to become the man I am now. I have far more wisdom and discernment, and so in a way, I'm very thankful for all this. I also at the same time think, I really wish I could have learned these lessons another way. I really wish my life didn't have to implode and explode in front of my eyes like it did. But it did. And so I experienced the pain. I don't experience it anymore. When I talk about it, it doesn't hurt at all. And so why not use that experience, all that pain and my lessons to share with others so that they don't have to go through what I did. cause I can tell you the journey in and out of a cult is very painful.

Speaker 28:37

Yeah, I can only imagine. And you're probably one of the few that actually make it out because so many people are never able to break free. So if someone listening is going through something similar right now, what advice would you give them?

Speaker 2 28:51

So if a person is in a situation like I was in, remember they don't know it, right? No one ever knows they're in a cult. They only know they were in one. So the advice is almost for the person who sees their friend and loved one in it. Or for the person that might be headed down that road. And the best, if I like, if you comb away with one thing, the best piece of advice is to stay in fellowship. Again, in, in the Christian faith, we talk about the body of Christ. Okay, if you cut off my thumb, I'm not gonna die. My thumb will die. But when you get cut off from the body of Christ, or from your friends or your relatives, you are vulnerable. You are susceptible to false teachers, to cult leaders, or even on a cult, just unhealthy culture. Someone who likes to gaslight you, someone who's a narcissist, that's where we are most vulnerable, and that's a dangerous position to be in. So for the friends and loved ones who see someone headed down that road, stop them. Reach out, have the difficult conversation. It might be uncomfortable, but you need to have it and stay in contact. And just know that if you are headed into something and it doesn't feel right. It might be, it might not be. But in that moment, before you go any further, bring in other voices. Bring in your historic communication, your friends and loved ones. Don't cut them outta your life. Get their opinion. That's probably the biggest piece of advice I could give that will help prevent someone from going down that road to be where they would be brainwashed. Fantastic advice. So is there a book that helped you on your journey that you could recommend to our listeners? I would recommend that they read my book. It's called Stop the Tall Man, save the Tiger. Again, it's very intense. Once you pick it up, you won't be able to put it down. And again, there is because you, you see the smile on my face, yeah, I've been through a lot but I have true joy. I'm still a single man. And there's a lot of things that would make me happier in my life, but true joy has to come from within. It can't come from external sources. True joy, I believe, comes from the Lord. I have joy. So there is redemption, there is success, there is joy at the end of this book, but boy, getting through is really intense and it's really hard. It's a forewarning if you read my book, but I do feel like it will help people. There's a lot of great lessons in it, and it gives you a upfront seat to what it looks like to be brainwashed in a tiny little cult, and it also gives you that same front row seat of what it looks like recovering.

Speaker 30:57

Awesome. This has been such an inspiring conversation. Thank you, Peter, for sharing your journey with us. Where can people connect with you, follow your work, and learn more about what you do?

Speaker 2 31:06

Sure. So you can go to my website. It's author peter young.com. And so I've actually written three books working on my fourth. I love to write

Speaker 31:13

Awesome

Speaker 2 31:13

of the Tel Torres, excuse me, tel tell stories. And then you can find all my books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Cobo. So again, the memoir is Stomp the Tall Man, save the Tiger. And I love coming on podcasts like this, like yours. And I also, love to speak publicly again to share my story as a cautionary tale. And I'm happy to share this story anywhere and everywhere so that people can learn, from my failures before they have to repeat them.

Speaker 31:34

I love it. Thank you. So if you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who might be facing a similar challenge and needs to hear this message of hope. And I'll see you next time on overcoming Anything.