Download or read book Sex Cult Nun written by Faith Jones and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Book of 2021 by Newsweek and a Most Anticipated by People, TIME, USA Today, Real Simple, Glamour, Nylon, Bustle, Purewow, Shondaland, and more! Educated meets The Vow in this story of liberation and self-empowerment—an inspiring and stranger-than-fiction memoir of growing up in and breaking free from the Children of God, an oppressive, extremist religious cult. Faith Jones was raised to be part a religious army preparing for the End Times. Growing up on an isolated farm in Macau, she prayed for hours every day and read letters of prophecy written by her grandfather, the founder of the Children of God. Tens of thousands of members strong, the cult followers looked to Faith’s grandfather as their guiding light. As such, Faith was celebrated as special and then punished doubly to remind her that she was not. Over decades, the Children of God grew into an international organization that became notorious for its alarming sex practices and allegations of abuse and exploitation. But with indomitable grit, Faith survived, creating a world of her own—pilfering books and teaching herself high school curriculum. Finally, at age twenty-three, thirsting for knowledge and freedom, she broke away, leaving behind everything she knew to forge her own path in America. A complicated family story mixed with a hauntingly intimate coming-of-age narrative, Faith Jones’ extraordinary memoir reflects our societal norms of oppression and abuse while providing a unique lens to explore spiritual manipulation and our rights in our bodies. Honest, eye-opening, uplifting, and intensely affecting, Sex Cult Nun brings to life a hidden world that’s hypnotically alien yet unexpectedly relatable.
Download or read book Sex Cult Nun written by Faith Jones and published by William Morrow Paperbacks. This book was released on 2022-11-08 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Book of 2021 by Newsweek and Recommended by People, TIME, USA Today, Real Simple, Glamour, Nylon, Bustle, Purewow, Shondaland, and more! Educated meets The Vow in this story of liberation and self-empowerment--an inspiring and stranger-than-fiction memoir of growing up in and breaking free from the Children of God, an oppressive, extremist religious cult. Faith Jones was raised to be part of a religious army preparing for the End Times. Growing up on an isolated farm in Macau, she prayed for hours every day and read letters of prophecy written by her grandfather, the founder of the Children of God. Tens of thousands of members strong, the cult followers looked to Faith's grandfather as their guiding light. As such, Faith was celebrated as special and then punished doubly to remind her that she was not. Over decades, the Children of God grew into an international organization that became notorious for its alarming sex practices and allegations of abuse and exploitation. But with indomitable grit, Faith survived, creating a world of her own--pilfering books and teaching herself high school curriculum. Finally, at age twenty-three, thirsting for knowledge and freedom, she broke away, leaving behind everything she knew to forge her own path in America. Honest, eye-opening, uplifting, and intensely affecting, Sex Cult Nun is a complicated family story mixed with an intimate coming-of-age narrative that brings to life a hidden world that's hypnotically alien yet unexpectedly relatable.
Download or read book Sex Cult Nun written by Faith Jones and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2021-12-09 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Both inspiring and disturbing, Sex Cult Nun unravels Jones’ complicated upbringing, the trauma she endured as a result and her eventual path to liberation.’ TIME ‘A moving story about family, courage, religious oppression, and more, and readers will have their heads spinning.’ SHONDALAND
Download or read book The Nuns of Sant Ambrogio written by Hubert Wolf and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-01-13 with total page 557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true, never-before-told story—discovered in a secret Vatican archive—of sex, poison, and lesbian initiation rites in a nineteenth-century convent. In 1858, a German princess, recently inducted into the convent of Sant’Ambrogio in Rome, wrote a frantic letter to her cousin, a confidant of the Pope, claiming that she was being abused and feared for her life. What the subsequent investigation by the Church’s Inquisition uncovered were the extraordinary secrets of Sant’Ambrogio and the illicit behavior of the convent’s beautiful young mistress, Maria Luisa. Having convinced those under her charge that she was having regular visions and heavenly visitations, Maria Luisa began to lead and coerce her novices into lesbian initiation rites and heresies. She entered into a highly eroticized relationship with a young theologian known as Padre Peters—urging him to dispense upon her, in the privacy and sanctity of the confessional box, what the two of them referred to as the “special blessing.” What emerges through the fog of centuries is a sex scandal of ecclesiastical significance, skillfully brought to light and vividly reconstructed in scholarly detail. Offering a broad historical background on female mystics and the cult of the Virgin Mary, and drawing on written testimony and original documents, Professor Wolf—Germany’s leading scholar of the Catholic Church, and among the very first scholars to be granted access to the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the office of the Inquisition—tells the incredible story of how one woman was able to perpetrate deception, heresy, seduction, and murder in the heart of the Church itself.
Download or read book Manhattan Cult Story written by Spencer Schneider and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-07-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “We were invisible. We had to be. We took an oath of absolute secrecy. We never even told our immediate families who we were. We went about our lives in New York City. Just like you. We were your accountants, money managers, lawyers, executive recruiters, doctors. We owned your child’s private school and sold you your brownstone. But you’d never guess our secret lives, how we lived in a kind of silent terror and fervor. There were hundreds of us.” Right under the noses of neighbors, clients, spouses, children, and friends, a secret society, simply called School—a cult of snared Manhattan professionals—has been led by the charismatic, sociopathic and dangerous leader Sharon Gans for decades. Spencer Schneider was recruited in the eighties and he stayed for more than twenty-three years as his life disintegrated, his self-esteem eroded, and he lined the pockets of Gans and her cult. Cult members met twice weekly, though they never acknowledged one another outside of meetings or gatherings. In the name of inner development, they endured the horrors of mental, sexual, and physical abuse, forced labor, arranged marriages, swindled inheritances and savings, and systematic terrorizing. Some of them broke the law. All for Gans. “During those years,” Schneider writes, “my world was School. That’s what it’s like when you’re in a cult, even one that preys on and caters to New York’s educated elite. This is my story of how I got entangled in School and how I got out.” At its core, Manhattan Cult Story is a cautionary tale of how hundreds of well-educated, savvy, and prosperous New Yorkers became fervent followers of a brilliant but demented cult leader who posed as a teacher of ancient knowledge. It’s about double-lives, the power of group psychology, and how easy it is to be radicalized—all too relevant in today's atmosphere of conspiracy and ideologue worship.
Download or read book Heaven s Harlots written by Miriam Williams and published by William Morrow. This book was released on 1998 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An explosive first-person account by a young woman who spent 15 years in a sex cult which turned its female devotees into prostitutes, leading strangers to the love of God by enticing them with the pleasures of the flesh. of photos.
Download or read book Escaped Nuns written by Cassandra L. Yacovazzi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just five weeks after its publication in January 1836, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery, billed as an escaped nun's shocking exposé of convent life, had already sold more than 20,000 copies. The book detailed gothic-style horror stories of licentious priests and abusive mothers superior, tortured nuns and novices, and infanticide. By the time the book was revealed to be a fiction and the author, Maria Monk, an imposter, it had already become one of the nineteenth century's best-selling books. In antebellum America only one book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, outsold it. The success of Monk's book was no fluke, but rather a part of a larger phenomenon of anti-Catholic propaganda, riots, and nativist politics. The secrecy of convents stood as an oblique justification for suspicion of Catholics and the campaigns against them, which were intimately connected with cultural concerns regarding reform, religion, immigration, and, in particular, the role of women in the Republic. At a time when the term "female virtue" pervaded popular rhetoric, the image of the veiled nun represented a threat to the established American ideal of womanhood. Unable to marry, she was instead a captive of a foreign foe, a fallen woman, a white slave, and a foolish virgin. In the first half of the nineteenth century, ministers, vigilantes, politicians, and writers--male and female--forged this image of the nun, locking arms against convents. The result was a far-reaching antebellum movement that would shape perceptions of nuns, and women more broadly, in America.
Download or read book Uncultured written by Daniella Mestyanek Young and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2022-09-20 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A painful and propulsive memoir delivered in the honest tones of a woman who didn’t always think she’d live to tell her story." —The New York Times A Buzzfeed Best Book of September In the vein of Educated and The Glass Castle, Daniella Mestyanek Young's Uncultured is more than a memoir about an exceptional upbringing, but about a woman who, no matter the lack of tools given to her, is determined to overcome. Behind the tall, foreboding gates of a commune in Brazil, Daniella Mestyanek Young was raised in the religious cult The Children of God, also known as The Family, as the daughter of high-ranking members. Her great-grandmother donated land for one of The Family’s first communes in Texas. Her mother, at thirteen, was forced to marry the leader and served as his secretary for many years. Beholden to The Family’s strict rules, Daniella suffers physical, emotional, and sexual abuse—masked as godly discipline and divine love—and is forbidden from getting a traditional education. At fifteen years old, fed up with The Family and determined to build a better and freer life for herself, Daniella escapes to Texas. There, she bravely enrolls herself in high school and excels, later graduating as valedictorian of her college class, then electing to join the military to begin a career as an intelligence officer, where she believes she will finally belong. But she soon learns that her new world—surrounded by men on the sands of Afghanistan—looks remarkably similar to the one she desperately tried to leave behind. Told in a beautiful, propulsive voice and with clear-eyed honesty, Uncultured explores the dangers unleashed when harmful group mentality goes unrecognized, and is emblematic of the many ways women have to contort themselves to survive.
Download or read book Sex Lies and Two Hindu Gurus written by Karen Jonson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When she joined a spiritual organization in an attempt to regain control of her life, Karen Jonson had no clue that she would one day become a Hindu nun living in the US ashram of two men she called her gurus. She certainly never guessed that both of them would turn out to be conmen and that she would expose their dark secrets to the world. But that is exactly what happened. Her mission led her in several directions - including approaching an investigative reporter and an FBI agent, organizing a group of ex-devotees to support the gurus' victims, sharing insider information with prosecuting attorneys, and using social media to expose the organization.Sex, Lies and Two Hindu Gurus chronicles a world that is spoken of only in hushed whispers. It exposes the twisted goings-on inside the dubious spiritual cult she was part of and gives readers a rare insight into a dangerous con game. The perversions the gurus indulged in, how they preyed upon the vulnerabilities of their followers, swindled them and ruined their lives, and why no one has stopped the fake gurus from sexually violating underage girls - every detail comes under scrutiny. It is a thriller comparable to any piece of fiction. It is also a crime drama, and a cautionary tale for people seeking to connect with the divine.
Download or read book The Devil on the Doorstep written by Annabelle Forest and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-08-14 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annabelle Forest was just seven years old when she was inducted into a twisted sex cult by her own mother. For the next few years she was brainwashed by the cult's leader, Colin Batley, who ran a harem of followers from his unassuming cul-de-sac in Kidwelly, Wales. Batley ruled the cult with an iron will, his twisted ideology based on Aleister Crowley's Book of the Law, which informed their day-to-day lives. From the age of 11, Annabelle was repeatedly raped by Batley, and threatened with going to hell if she angered 'the gods' by refusing Batley's sick demands. Annabelle's mother joined in the sessions and even filmed them. Annabelle lived a double life - a schoolgirl by day, a sex slave at night. It might have endured for years had she not fallen pregnant at 17 with Batley's baby. In February 2008 she gave birth to a daughter, Emily, who gave Annabelle a reason to live and hope. Now she knew she had to escape, especially after Batley forced her into prostitution when Emily was three months old. She contacted relatives through Facebook on a computer in the public library and found the courage to report Batley, her mother and the other cult members to the police. In 2011 her evidence helped convict 48-year-old Batley for life on 11 charges of rape and numerous other sexual offences.Annabelle's mother was also jailed, along with two others in a case that came to be known as the 'cul-de-sac cult'. But Annabelle's story was far from over - she had to adjust to a new life away from the rules and rituals of the cult. Today she lives a happy and settled life with Emily and her partner but the nightmares of her damaged past will haunt her forever. Child of Couragerefers to Annabelle herself but also her daughter, the child who gave her the chance to hope, the will to fight and the courage to live again.
Download or read book The Fires of Lust written by Katherine Harvey and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2022-11-28 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating exploration of the surprisingly familiar sex lives of ordinary medieval people. The medieval humoral system of medicine suggested that it was possible to die from having too much—or too little—sex, while the Roman Catholic Church taught that virginity was the ideal state. Holy men and women committed themselves to lifelong abstinence in the name of religion. Everyone was forced to conform to restrictive rules about who they could have sex with, in what way, how often, and even when, and could be harshly punished for getting it wrong. Other experiences are more familiar. Like us, medieval people faced challenges in finding a suitable partner or trying to get pregnant (or trying not to). They also struggled with many of the same social issues, such as whether prostitution should be legalized. Above all, they shared our fondness for dirty jokes and erotic images. By exploring their sex lives, the book brings ordinary medieval people to life and reveals details of their most personal thoughts and experiences. Ultimately, it provides us with an important and intimate connection to the past.
Download or read book Slonim Woods 9 written by Daniel Barban Levin and published by Crown. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “extraordinary” (Nylon) firsthand account of the creation of a modern cult and the costs paid by its young victims: a group of college roommates “Intense . . . [a tale] of hard-won survival, and creating a life after the unimaginable.”—Salon The inspiration for the Hulu docuseries Stolen Youth, directed by Zach Heinzerling and co-produced by Daniel Barban Levin In September 2010, at the beginning of the academic year at Sarah Lawrence College, a sophomore named Talia Ray asked her roommates if her father could stay with them for a while. No one objected. Her father, Larry Ray, was just released from prison, having spent three years behind bars after a conviction during a bitter custody dispute. Larry Ray arrived at the dorm, a communal house called Slonim Woods 9, and stayed for the whole year. Over the course of innumerable counseling sessions and “family meetings,” the intense and forceful Ray convinced his daughter’s friends that he alone could help them “achieve clarity.” Eventually, Ray and the students moved into a small Manhattan apartment, beginning years of manipulation and abuse, as Ray tightened his control over his young charges through blackmail, extortion, and ritualized humiliation. After a decade of secrecy, Larry Ray was finally indicted on charges of extortion, sex trafficking, forced labor, and money laundering. Daniel Barban Levin was one of the original residents of Slonim Woods 9. Beginning the moment Daniel set foot on Sarah Lawrence’s idyllic campus and spanning the two years he spent in the grip of a megalomaniac, this brave, lyrical, and redemptive memoir reveals how a group of friends were led from college to a cult without the world even noticing.
Download or read book Little Sister written by Patricia Walsh Chadwick and published by Post Hill Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine an eighteen-year-old American girl who has never read a newspaper, watched television, or made a phone call. An eighteen-year-old-girl who has never danced—and this in the 1960s. It is in Cambridge, Massachusetts where Leonard Feeney, a controversial (soon to be excommunicated) Catholic priest, has founded a religious community called the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The Center's members—many of them educated at Harvard and Radcliffe—surrender all earthly possessions and aspects of their life, including their children, to him. Patricia Chadwick was one of those children, and Little Sister is her account of growing up in the Feeney sect. Separated from her parents and forbidden to speak to them, Patricia bristles against the community’s draconian rules, yearning for another life. When, at seventeen, she is banished from the Center, her home, she faces the world alone, without skills, family, or money but empowered with faith and a fierce determination to succeed on her own, which she does, rising eventually to the upper echelons of the world of finance and investing. A tale of resilience and grace, Little Sister chronicles, in riveting prose, a surreal childhood and does so without rancor or self-pity.
Download or read book Alcoholics Anonymous written by Charles Bufe and published by See Sharp Press. This book was released on 1997-12-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This well researched, painstakingly documented book provides detailed information on the right-wing evangelical organization (Oxford Group Movement) that gave birth to AA; the relation of AA and its program to the Oxford Group Movement; AA's similarities to and differences from religious cults; AA's remarkable ineffectiveness; and the alternatives to AA. The greatly expanded second edition includes a new chapter on AA's relationship to the treatment industry, and AA's remarkable influence in the media.
Download or read book Shambhala The Sacred Path of the Warrior written by Chögyam Trungpa and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic guide to enlightened living that first presented the Buddhist path of the warrior to a Western audience There is a basic human wisdom that can help solve the world’s problems. It doesn’t belong to any one culture or region or religious tradition—though it can be found in many of them throughout history. It’s what Chögyam Trungpa called the sacred path of the warrior. The sacred warrior conquers the world not through violence or aggression, but through gentleness, courage, and self-knowledge. The warrior discovers the basic goodness of human life and radiates that goodness out into the world for the peace and sanity of others. Interpreting the warrior's journey in contemporary terms, Trungpa shows that, in discovering the basic goodness of human life, the warrior learns to radiate that goodness out into the world for the peace and sanity of others. That’s what the Shambhala teachings are all about—and this is the book that has been presenting them to a wide and appreciative audience for more than twenty years.
Download or read book Cult Following written by Bexy Cameron and published by Manilla Press. This book was released on 2022-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can you ever escape your childhood?
Download or read book If Nuns Ruled the World written by Jo Piazza and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Fascinating profiles” of remarkable nuns, from an eighty-three-year-old Ironman champion to a crusader against human trafficking (Daily News [New York]). “In an age of villainy, war and inequality, it makes sense that we need superheroes,” writes Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. “And after trying Superman, Batman and Spider-Man, we may have found the best superheroes yet: Nuns.” In If Nuns Ruled the World, veteran reporter Jo Piazza overthrows the popular perception of nuns as killjoy schoolmarms, instead revealing them as the most vigorous catalysts of change in an otherwise repressive society. Meet Sister Simone Campbell, who traversed the United States challenging a Congressional budget that threatened to severely undermine the well-being of poor Americans; Sister Megan Rice, who is willing to spend the rest of her life in prison if it helps eliminate nuclear weapons; and the inimitable Sister Jeannine Gramick, who is fighting for acceptance of gays and lesbians in the Catholic Church. During a time when American nuns are often under attack from the very institution to which they devote their lives—and the values of the institution itself are hotly debated—these sisters offer thought-provoking and inspiring stories. As the Daily Beast put it, “Anybody looking to argue there is a place for Catholicism in the modern world should just stand on a street corner handing out Piazza’s book.”
