It was almost 20 years ago that 50-year-old Southern Highlands woman Kylie (not her real name) was first approached by a particularly friendly and accepting group of people at community markets in Sydney.
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What began with an invitation to a meditation session turned into a decades long nightmare, which has devastated her life in every aspect, including work, finances, relationships and health.
Now, she has a warning for people in the community.
"I just don't want anyone to go through what I've gone through," she said. "There's nothing to be gained from these people, nothing at all."
Twelve or so years after she extracted herself from what she came to realise was a cult, Kylie is still reluctant to name the group, or allow herself to be identified for the story, fearing repercussions.
But the organisation, based in regional NSW, is growing, often targeting young people at festivals and markets and seeking to sell 'artefacts' that are supposedly imbued with powerful, mystic energies to enhance 'enlightenment'.
While they wouldn't be the first New Age group to sell items of dubious effect, Kylie says they employ cult-like practices to recruit followers, who are then exploited financially, spiritually, physically and even sexually.
Love-bombed by 'friendly people'
For her, it began with what she calls 'love-bombing' at a vulnerable time in her life, just after a marriage break up.
"Most people say, 'I would never get involved in something like that, that just wouldn't happen to me'," Kylie said.
"That's what I thought too.
"It was the vulnerability, which happens to most people, after something in your life that's happened.
"I was 31, a time for having babies, making big decisions ..."
She was in Sydney having a coffee and "it was either go to the pub and have a drink or go to the markets and we chose to go to the markets".
"We came across these girls wearing all these beautiful stones, and selling them," she recalled.
"I was with a girlfriend who had a break up at the same time, and they said, 'Come to this meditation next week, we do really soft meditation,' and we thought, yeah that sounds really nice, these girls are really lovely.
"We're like: new friends, new fresh start.
"So it seemed really quite uplifting in that moment, but it was like they saw you coming, and I look back and reflect on that and it's like we were a target, there's no question."
Kylie said it is clear in retrospect that the group then started to research her life, how much money she had, and discovered she had funds from her marriage break up.
"Then you become a priority to them, so then that gets taken back to the leader," Kylie said.
"At work they were calling me constantly or I'd be at barbecues with girlfriends and they'd be calling, saying, 'You've really got to come to this conference, we're doing this great blast for healing, and you really need to attend.'
"And that's like $150 and then it goes to $200 and then it's $500, then it goes to these big jumps when you buy these energy things and once all that starts to happen, you start to lose yourself.
"You stop thinking critically, and when people do try to think critically for you, like my sister, they would like surround me almost in a cage and say, 'Look, your sister's being quite annoying, she doesn't understand that you're on a different spiritual journey to her,' which is quite wounding in itself, a long time after the event, because it was a betrayal to my sister."
In one particularly manipulative instance, members of the group accompanied her to an ATM, urging her to donate a large amount of money to the group, saying they had received a spiritual message that included her PIN.
"I was taken to the bank by four other members and they said, 'We need you, this is a pivotal point in life, a make or break,' and for whatever reason they knew my pincode, which I didn't know they knew," recalled Kylie.
"I wasn't eating, I wasn't thinking properly, and they said this had been given from above, and they said a number and it was my number, and I was like okay this is a message, but it was all part of the indoctrination - I was in a bubble of bullshit."
That day she extracted $70,000 and handed it over.
That day she extracted $70,000 and handed it over.
She was already buying the group's 'artefacts', which at the time she thought were helping her heal.
"At first I really did think I was feeling happier because I was lighter, I felt like they were bringing this lighter energy," Kylie said.
"But when you're meditating with everyone about the same thing, you don't have anyone to bounce off, because you're all in that one world, so it was like - how would I know anything different now?"
Life in the cult
Over the following six or so years, Kylie legally changed her name to one supplied by the group, gave them thousands of dollars, spent much of her time at their headquarters, dressed in the "flowy, hippy clothes" they insisted upon, and was worked 'to the bone' for them.
She saw the founder luring pretty young girls to his home to attend to his every need while he 'transcended his ego', and was groped by the same man, an experience she called "disgusting".
The founder has since died, replaced by his long-term partner as leader.
The beginning of the end came when Kylie realised how much they were controlling her.
"It wasn't until this snap moment when I was yelled at once at a conference to be quiet because I was having a glass of champagne, and I said, 'Don't tell me to be quiet.' And they said, 'You're to be silent.' And I was like, wooh, this is really not in my interest," she said.
In another instance, a member told Kylie she'd be silenced for days for expressing some doubts to her.
"That was a bit of an eye-opener, a bit of a shock, but then they put you to work, and it's proven that if you work, like in the army, and you have all your clothes and individuality extracted from you, that's how they break you down, like a horse gets broken down," she said.
Starved down to about 40 kilograms, Kylie had to continually make confession about everything she was feeling.
Starved down to about 40 kilograms, Kylie had to continually make confession about everything she was feeling.
"It's called witnessing, you have to give accountability for everything, it just became so exhausting," she said.
"Then you would witness it through the energies that we used to bring you back to a conscious, a higher vibration I suppose, which is a lot of bullshit anyway."
A family perspective
Kylie's father happens to be a qualified counsellor and psychotherapist so, although it took a long time to pin down what was happening, he was perhaps more perceptive about her situation than most.
"We were suspicious that something wasn't quite right due to the fact that wherever we saw her she always had a 'protector' - we were never allowed to be alone with her," he said.
"She started to display some symptoms of mild dissociation - she just seemed to be vague.
"When I said I think you're in a cult, she had a very rehearsed response, but the real worry was when she actually moved into a house with them, and she was paying the rent."
He and Kylie's mother went to see some specialists, and they confirmed their suspicions.
Then, while in Sydney, Kylie entered what could only be described as a 'psychotic state'.
"You could run your hand past her face and there was no register," her father said.
The group whisked her away and she was admitted to hospital.
"One of them was a nurse in the psychiatric centre, and we struggled to get anything out of them because of client confidentiality," Kylie's father said.
Eventually, the group decided Kylie was "too big a problem", according to her father, who rented a flat in the same building as his own and installed her in it.
"They abandoned her - they'd got through all her money," he said.
"She was in a very bad way, childlike, had to be near me all the time - effectively I was looking after her like she was an infant. She slept a lot."
She was in a very bad way, childlike, had to be near me all the time - effectively I was looking after her like she was an infant.
They tried various counsellors but found they weren't specialists in this particular kind of trauma, until they came across a group called Cult Information and Family Support, who directed them to a recovery program in Derbyshire in the UK for people have been in cults.
There Kylie started to slowly recover, learning that the experience hadn't been her own fault but the result of something that was done to her.
"Within cult recovery circles, we say no one ever 'joins' a cult, and Kylie is a classic example of that," her father said.
"They use what's called mystical manipulation.
"When you're in it, it's hard to get out, they encourage you to break off with friends and relations, ultimately a lot of people get disillusioned and leave, but they've pissed off family and friends, they can't account for five years on their CV, their skills have atrophied, and they end up going back.
"It's like an abusive relationship, and also about total control.
"It would also be fair to say Kylie's more damaged than other cult survivors - she's always been a very open person, very kind, with not as strong filters as others have, so she was more damaged, and then more triggered."
He believes the solution is to furnish people with critical thinking skills, which would also help combat the rise in adherance to conspiracy theories.
"It's a skill that needs to be developed at schools - there are serious implications to a lack of critical thinking," he said.
After the cult
Kylie has spent the following years struggling to put herself back together.
After some years, she attempted to go down a legal route, to try to hold the group accountable, but was plagued by obstacles.
"I went to the police here, who said, 'I think it's time you just got over it'," she said.
"That was another one of those poignant times...I had folders this high trying to get my redemption through (the legal system).
"I really had had enough and I just went outside and threw all my folders on the ground outside the park in Bowral and I just burst into tears and I just said, 'What is this worth, I'm trying to find the truth.'
I just went outside and threw all my folders on the ground outside the park in Bowral and I just burst into tears...
"I was trying to put in a statement, to front up for the ones who can't speak, and that was hard enough."
She continued to try to follow it up but found the whole experience too confronting, facing re-traumatisation every time she had to speak about it, and, on her therapist's advice, had to take a step back.
To this day, she still suffers from extreme anxiety, among other things, and blames the fact that she never had children on the fragile state she was in following her exit from the cult.
Kylie warns that many in her position feel like they have no recourse, no action they can take, to hold anyone accountable for what they've lost.
"When I went to the police, they said I needed more information, which is what happens to a lot of people," she said.
"And when the police try to talk to people inside they say they're fine, because they're indoctrinated.
"There's the families on the outside that are trying to intervene.
"And then the hard work starts after that, getting them back into society - you've lost your identity, I lost my whole work identity, one of my big bosses I was working with before said I'd gone a 'bit trippy', it affected my whole world and career, my finances, my wellbeing, by family, my friends, then the ripple effect on my health, I couldn't have children.
"There was nothing gained. The only thing I gained was people that I cared for but the loss...there's nothing to gain from these people, nothing at all."