One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz has revealed how she got roped into a religious cult – which she remained part of for 10 years.
The 43-year-old is about to release a memoir called Dinner For Vampires, in which she alleges that she experienced ‘manipulation, abuse and fear’ at the hands of what she thought was a church covenant.
In the official description of her book, she said she was under the control of the ‘domineering minister’ of The Big House Family for a decade before she finally left.
She has claimed the minister convinced her to marry his son and stole millions of dollars from her television income from One Tree Hill, which ran from 2003 to 2012.
Now, with her book arriving on the shelves next week, she has told the story of how she was first enticed to join the organization to People.
One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz has revealed how she got roped into a religious cult – which she remained part of for 10 years; pictured 2022
Bethany always had an Evangelical Christian background, but during her childhood, she moved several times and had ‘always been looking for a place to belong.’
Her parents divorced when she was 16 years old – one year before she got her big break on the soap opera Guiding Light after years as a child actress.
Amid the instability of her upbringing, she was able to root herself in her acting, as well as in the Bible-study group where she met people who shared her worldview.
The Bible-study sessions were ‘water in a desert’ to Lenz, who would discuss God, pray and sing with the other members of her group.
‘We crave that kind of intimacy. The idea that someone out there says: “No matter what you do or how badly you might behave or what dumb choices you make, I still love you, and I’m here for you,”‘ she explained.
Soon, a pastor she refers to as ‘Les’ began appearing at Bible-study, taking charge of sessions – and persuading attendees to move to his communal ‘Big House’ in Idaho.
‘It still looked normal. And then it just morphed,’ she shared. ‘But by the time it started morphing, I was too far into the relationships to notice. Plus, I was so young.’
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