"Nobody joins a cult" is not a statement you’d expect to hear from someone who has spent the last few years investigating how widespread they are.
But at second glance, it goes to the heart of what Sarah Steel has repeatedly found as she traverses a secretive and bizarre world for her hit podcast Let's Talk About Sects.
No-one thinks they're joining a cult, Steel says, that realisation comes later — if at all: "People like to think that it could never be you, but the more people I've spoken to, the more apparent it becomes that anyone could end up in a cult."
That's because not all cults are made equal. While many preach religion, others prey on people's desire to make a difference in the world, whether it's presented as an organic farming commune or a platform to help people less fortunate.
The type of people they attract are equally varied, according to Steel, who says the only thing members seem to have in common is they found the group at a time when their life was in flux or they were seeking change.
"You're not joining a cult, you're joining what looks to be a really great group that you can dedicate yourself to for the greater good, or self-improvement, or something as simple as a martial arts class," she says.
"It can happen to anyone if they come across the wrong group at the wrong time."
Many people will only ever hear about a handful of cults, often via sensationalist reporting that focuses more on kooky details than their tragic legacies.
In Australia, there's The Family — a doomsday cult founded in the 1960s, covered in the first episode of the podcast. Even after the death of the organisation's leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne in 2019, few will be able to forget the photo of 13 children standing in order of ascending height, donning matching blue and pink outfits and bleach blonde bobs.
Internationally, you may have heard of Heaven's Gate, responsible for the largest mass suicide in United States history, the notorious Manson Family, and Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese doomsday cult that launched a deadly sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subway in 1995.
But beyond the headlines, Steel says, many dangerous organisations continue to slip under the radar. A spreadsheet she uses to keep track of such groups currently includes 146 names and that "wouldn't even be taking a small chip out of what's out there".
"The number of people you speak to who have had a personal experience, or have a friend or family member who has been involved, is just off the charts — it's way more than you would ever realise unless you were always having those conversations," she says.
In her upcoming book, called Do As I Say, Steel delves deeper into the motivations of the people who join these cults. And while there are few similarities between those that become trapped, the tactics used to lure them in could come straight from a playbook.
A brush with a con woman
Steel has good reason to believe we can all fall victim to manipulators. On top of her extensive interviews with cult survivors and experts, the Sydney-based filmmaker has experienced firsthand how easy it can be to trust the wrong person.
Melissa Caddick is now a household name, after it was alleged she swindled millions of dollars from investors — often her friends and family — while posing as a financial adviser. Her shock disappearance in 2020, and the subsequent discovery of her severed foot on the NSW South Coast months later, have spurred public interest in the case.
But Steel knew Caddick as her long-term partner's cousin, to whom she had handed over her savings to invest. When details of the Caddick's ruse were revealed, she discovered she was among the victims.
"Going through something like that showed me how vulnerable we are to manipulative people," Steel says. "It never occurred to me to question her at all."
Steel had been researching cults for years when the story broke, but says the realisation she had been tricked still came as a shock. "It opened my eyes to almost the banality of it," she says, describing how long it took her to reconcile that she had been conned. "It doesn't happen at all the way you think it will."
When it comes to cults, which can usurp a person's entire identity, there's a lot more to unpack: "It might start by thinking there were just a few people who were messed up, but the leader was good; or they had good aims but it became corrupted over time; and then it starts to dawn on you that actually the whole thing is a massive manipulation, that you've essentially been conned in a way."
A cult without a name
As part of her research, Steel set out her own criteria for what makes a cult organisation: they have a charismatic leader or leadership group that closely controls members, the leader or leaders believe they have exclusive access to the truth, and the group is highly secretive about their workings.
Janja Lalich, a cult survivor and international expert on cults and coercion, has these elements in her list of common cult traits, including a group that has an "excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader" that regard their "belief system, ideology, and practices as the truth, as law".
Over the years, Steel has expanded her definition to take into account behaviours used to control members that are replicated across groups, such as gaslighting and coercive control.
"I've come across groups which do have a leadership that's closely controlling, but they don't necessarily have a leader," Steel says.
As an example, she points to the Two by Twos, one of many labels outsiders use to describe a religious sect that claims they don't have a name or a leader. Founded more than 100 years ago, the "really secretive" group operates throughout rural Australia preaching beliefs that stem from a literal reading of the bible.
In a podcast episode dedicated to the group, former member Laura McConnell describes the sect's beliefs as "in a nutshell, take everything you know about Christianity and make it as conservative as you possibly can and you're pretty close to what they believe in".
"Everything we share is done through word of mouth or preaching, there is no information written down in books, for instance, which makes the group really difficult to examine and to dissect."
Even though the Two by Twos meet only two of her criteria for a cult, Steel says it's important to define the group as such, "because if you're not saying that the group is damaging in the way that it operates, then you're not talking about the phenomenon that I'm talking about."
Red flags are everywhere
While the Two by Twos are, in some ways, an exception to the definition, Steel says it's striking how often the same types of structures and behaviours pop up in cults all over the globe.
In the book, Steel lists some of these as an "us and them" mentality, exploitative labour and intense schedules, and restricting access to professional help and the media.
An entire chapter is dedicated to coercive control — an insidious pattern of behaviour designed to entrap, isolate and terrify victims. Often the practice is discussed in the context of domestic and family violence, with state governments in NSW and Queensland recently committing to outlawing the behaviour.
In cults, there are many ways this type of control plays out — often with the aim of getting people to do what you want. "Love bombing" — the act of overwhelming a new recruit with attention and adoration to inspire loyalty — is common, so too is gaslighting, referring to attempts to undermine someone's sense of reality.
"Hot and cold" treatment by leaders, whereby members are treated with love one minute and scorn the next, is also common. This, Steel writes, can lead to trauma bonding where members adjust their behaviour to get back onto the leader's good side, and begin to blame themselves when they're mistreated.
"There are all of these ways that [leaders] undermine people's self-confidence and have them second-guessing themselves, that keeps them entrapped in the groups," she says.
Steel would like to see coercive control laws targeted at domestic abuse expanded to include group settings, "because they're the same tools that are used on a wider group of people, it's all the same stuff".
"It's controlling people and having them behave in ways they otherwise wouldn't have, handing over their money, monitoring their communications, alienating them from family and friends," she says.
"Then people come out of these organisations and the cults won't take any responsibility for them, because they shun anyone that leaves, and they have no help from society because people look at them and say, 'Well you chose to join'."
The aftermath
This victim-blaming mentality once again parallels with the treatment of domestic and family violence survivors, who are time and time again asked: why didn't you just leave?
It's perhaps why many former cult members turn to psychologists experienced with domestic abuse — that, and there's a dearth of professionals with specific expertise in cults.
For those that do take the leap and leave, the trauma can stay with them for decades to come. Steel says it's rare for former cult members to want to go to the police, but when they do, they're often told no crime has been committed. This lack of recourse, she says, is one of the toughest things for survivors to deal with.
"There's this concept that if you get out, then you're just suddenly free and everything is great," Steel says. "But there are so many people I'm in touch with that are really struggling, and there's very little help for them."
Do As I Say, published by Pan Macmillan Australia, is out on June 28.
