The lure of a sex cult: ‘I fell in love with this ecstatic vibe’

If there is one common denominator to all sex cults, it’s the exploitation of women, with an estimated 40 per cent of female participants suffering sexual abuse, according to a new book called Cult Trip by New Zealand-based journalist Anke Richter. One of the myths Richter is keen to dispel is that those who become seduced by cults are gullible, New Age types easily manipulated by a charismatic leader or a sales pitch promising unparalleled personal growth and sexual liberation.

“Cult followers are not what we think they’re like. They’re actually people like you and me who are out to improve ourselves,” explains Richter in this week’s episode of Good Weekend Talks, a “magazine for the ears” featuring lively conversations with news-making people on the issues of the day. “We all have blind spots, we all have something we can be infatuated about.”

In this episode, Richter describes her 10-year investigations into sex cults, which began with her own participation in a festival of sexual freedom. “I went to a festival in Byron Bay called The Taste of Love Festival, a sort of neo-Tantric festival, and something for me clicked,” she says. “And I thought, ‘Wow, actually, there’s something here for me that I need to explore …’ I fell in love with this ecstatic vibe.”

At that festival, Richter met a woman from New Zealand who had once been a member of Centrepoint, a sex and therapy cult that ran in that country for almost 20 years in the 1980s and 1990s. “She said she was the ‘commune concubine’ as a way of surviving that environment,” says Richter. “Later, when she left Centrepoint, she was completely lost in the real world. Centrepoint had demonised so much for her that she fell into alcoholism and prostitution and at some point tried to kill herself. She tried really hard to get her life back.”

Centrepoint was a commune in Albany on the north island, created by Herbert “Bert” Potter as a “therapeutic” encounter group. “They had police raids and 10 people went to jail for drug manufacturing and sexual abuse of children,” says Richter. “And it was a massive, massive scandal … that has never been properly looked at since. It all happened before the internet.”

Richter embarked on a personal quest as well as a journalistic investigation, which involved travelling across the globe. What has fascinated her is how sexuality is almost always manipulated by cults in some form. “In every cult I know of, sexuality is controlled in some way or another. It’s either repressed or it’s amplified, or it’s somehow distorted.”

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Despite growing public awareness of cults through a litany of scandals and sensational news stories, they continue to thrive through the echo chambers of social media, says Richter. “Many of us don’t really go to church any more; we don’t consult the pastor or priest so much. So, it’s more like this therapy space has been taken over in part by healers, or shamans, or anyone in the wellness world basically promising some kind of solace and healing. It’s become a massive unregulated market. And there’s a lot of good, but there’s also a lot that sounds very seductive and promises transformation: 10 sessions of this big online course, retreats, and then you’re locked in. You’ve paid a lot of money for something, and you want to get an end-result. So, you’re probably not going to speak up if something feels dodgy or is not right or unethical.”

Even normally sceptical or jaded folk can be manipulated with a promise. “It’s not like we deliberately want to be in a cult,” says Richter. “We join something that has been misrepresented or misrepresented to us.”

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