"The nearer Kim and I approached the decision to marry, the more I was filled with a paralyzing fear. Was I ready? Was I making the right choice? Was Kim the right person to marry? Would she make me happy? Then, one fateful night..."
"I looked back to the bed. Still empty. And then it happened. I fell to my knees, and then to my back. It came from up from my gut. I could almost physically feel it moving to the top of my abdomen, to my chest, into my neck and then my head. I cannot describe the pain."
“If you were trying to leave the industry to try and have a child or start a family, I would understand," he said. "I can’t let you out of the contract for a fantasy like God.”
Though I wanted to be able to be strong enough and “spiritual” enough to combat the darkness and depression, I could not. It had very little to do with what “I” did to make it go away.
“A piece of cloth was stuffed in my mouth. I was kicking and hitting out and trying to scream. When I managed to push the gag out, I screamed: ‘It's my wedding day!' That was when I got the first blow. One of the men told me to ‘cooperate or you will die.’”
"The Manipulators used words and phrases that I had heard before. They seemed biblical and very right, but they were not. I had been groomed for this."
“These are our people. It's our tribe," Brian Welch says. “Jesus…he didn’t tell people to go into tribes and say ‘hey, don’t use your tribal language anymore, because we’ve gotta do it this way…’”
