Everything we were taught warned us never to leave, but for Meleah, staying became impossible. In Part 2 of The Escape, Meleah shares her journey of questioning, isolation, and ultimately running for freedom as a teenager inside a high-control religious group.

Baptized young and constantly monitored, Meleah describes how curiosity, independence, and simple human connection were treated as rebellion. As restrictions tightened, friendships were weaponized, private thoughts were criminalized, and authority figures constructed a narrative that painted her as dangerous for asking “why.”

After secret phone calls, betrayals, and escalating punishment, Meleah was made an example; cut off, interrogated, and forcibly isolated from siblings and community. With no access to identification, money, or outside support, escape meant planning in silence, trusting strangers, and leaving everything behind without knowing where she would land.

This episode explores cult control, adolescent indoctrination, enforced isolation, fear-based compliance, and the courage it takes to choose freedom when the cost is family, identity, and safety.

Everything we were taught warned us never to leave. In Part 1 of The Escape, Rebecca recounts the moment her life inside a high-control religious group collapsed and the slow realization that followed.

Married at sixteen and pregnant at nineteen, Rebecca shares how loyalty, obedience, and fear shaped every decision she was allowed to make. When her husband suddenly disappeared, she was given no answers; only orders. Removed from her home, separated from her husband, and cut off from communication, Rebecca was told he was “dead” to her, and that obedience to leadership mattered more than marriage, consent, or survival.

This episode explores cult control, spiritual abuse, enforced separation, and the psychological trauma of having autonomy stripped away; while pregnant, isolated, and grieving. What begins as a story of betrayal becomes a deeper examination of power, compliance, and the cost of unquestioned authority.

What we were taught to call tradition was actually control. In this episode, we expose how religion inside a high-control group governed every part of daily life. From mandatory rituals and prayer schedules to education, relationships, weddings, and funerals, nothing was left to choice. We break down how religious customs and repeated ceremonies shaped behavior, enforced obedience, and maintained loyalty to a single belief system. What once felt like faith now reveals itself as indoctrination.

This episode explores cult control, religious trauma, and how devotion quietly became compliance.