I wanted to do this video for years. Right now I have the courage, I might delete this later.

Growing up in an abusive, misogynistic and homophobic cult as a sensitive, bisexual woman, there were a lot of things I always felt were wrong. But they were so normalised in the church culture that I thought I was the problem. Now, 8 years after leaving, I am finally breaking the silence about the disturbing practices happening behind the church's walls.

00:00 Intro
00:52 Background information on the cult
01:25 Evangelisation services that spread fear
02:28 Rules that keep you in the church
03:32 Rules that keep you isolated from “the world”
06:51 Rules on appearance, s*xualisation from a young age
08:53 Rules on s*x & dating (purity culture)
09:44 Marriage rules & nonconsensual s*x
12:03 Abstinenceonly policy, LGBTQ+ issues
12:51 No contraception / forced births
14:16 Child abuse physical “discipline”
15:16 Sexism & traditional roles for men vs. women
17:18 Justification for the rules
17:55 No privacy, every detail shared with everyone
19:55 Funny rules that show how s*xobsessed the rulemakers are
21:43 Outro

—

The background picture from the Thumbnail is a random church in the Network, not the one I grew up in. I got the picture from here: https://www.comeon.de/volmetal/kiers...

—

In this video, I share my personal experiences growing up in the mostly unknown religious community that can be classified as a cult or sect: The BrüderBaptistengemeinde in Germany, a GermanRussian Baptist church. I’ve wanted to make this video for years but was too scared, since so much of my personal history is connected to this cult and I still have many people I love in there.

Nonetheless, I feel it's important to expose the disturbing truths that happen behind closed doors. From child abuse and marital r*pe to the severe oppression of women and many bizarre and oppressive rules related to purity culture, I lay bare some dark realities of life in this cult.

I do not want to offend anyone’s religious beliefs or speak against Christians or Baptists per se. That is not my intention at all. While I focus on the negative aspects in this video, I admit that the religion also brought many good experiences.

But there were also a lot of negative experiences, connected to the rules that I describe in this video. And just because people willingly follow these rules, it does not make the rules okay: People would follow anything if they were strongly convinced not following it would lead to eternal damnation!!!

Okay, I’ll end my rant here. Please share and comment if you have any similar experiences or if this video resonates with you in any way. (Also, probably no one reads this until the end, but if you have, let me know by commenting this emoji: )

—

If you like this video, you might also like my acoustic cover of Bird Set Free (it’s basically my life story in a song):    • This Sia Song is the Story of my Life