Many people think of cults as strictly religious, but that's not always the case. And though most people don't want to believe it, given the right circumstances, it can be easy to fall prey to a cult.Still, there's hopeand here are 10 stories of people who say they successfully escaped from a cult.Maude Julien wrote a memoir about how her father created a "three-person family cult."In 1936, Louis Didier, a 34-year-old businessman in northern France, convinced a poor couple to let him take in their6-year-old daughter named Jeannine. By 1957, Didier had married Jeannine and he decided they were to have a child together. They had a girl they named Maude Julien.Julien describes how her father attempted to make her into a "superhuman" child. In the time between the first and second World Wars, he would experiment on her.Around the age of 6, he would ply her with whiskey and then command her to do complicated tasks. He also regularly made her hold onto electric fences with her handsor kept her in a basement in the darkness with bells on her sweater so he would know if she moved.He also reasoned that since musicians survived concentration camps, his daughter needed to learn as many musical instruments as possible. That's eventually how she escaped; a music tutor convinced her father to send the formerly homeschooled Maude away to "a harsh school" to continue her music training.Today, Julien is 60 years old and is a psychotherapist. She went on towrite a memoir about her experiencestitled"The Only Girl in the World."The entire Phoenix family of actors ' River, Joaquin, Rain, Liberty, and Summer ' spent part of their childhoods as members of The Children of God.In 2014, Joaquin Phoenix sat down for an interview with Playboy andtalked about growing up in The Children of God."My parents had a religious experience and felt strongly about it. They wanted to share that with other people who wanted to talk about their experience with religion," he said. "These friends were like, 'Oh, we believe in Jesus as well.' I think my parents thought they'd found a community that shared their ideals."But according to Phoenix, that wasn't the case and the group was actually a cult."Cults rarely advertise themselves as such," he continued. "It's usually someone saying, 'We're like-minded people. This is a community,' but I think the moment my parents realized there was something more to it, they got out."In reviewing a biography of the tragically short life of Joaquin's brother River Phoenix, LA Weekly wrote that Children of God "infamously encouraged both incest and adultery." The parents constantly preached the Children of God word to any who would listen in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuelawhile the Phoenix kids begged from localssince families in the cult were responsible for providing their own food. The family eventually left. In Joaquin's interview with Playboy, he said that he could see the cult's beliefs and actions evolving in a disturbing way.Rose McGowan also spent her childhood growing up as a member of The Children of God.For the first nine years of her life, Rose McGowan says she and her family were a part of a Children of God branch in the beautiful Italian countryside. According to McGowan, her dad was a leader in the branchnot just a run-of-the-mill member.The Children of God believed strongly in both an imminent apocalypse and also free love. McGowan told People that when theChildren of God started heavily pushing the idea of child-adult sexual relations, her father left and took her with him. McGowan talked to People magazine about her family's escape. "My dad, Nat, Daisy and I escaped with my dad's other wife in the middle of the night," she said. "I remember running through a cornfield in thunder and lightning, holding my dad's hand and running as fast as I could to keep up with him[The cult] sent people to find us. I remember a man trying to break in with a hammer."See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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