One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz has revealed how she became entangled in a religious cult – which she remained part of for a decade.
The 43-year-old is about to release a memoir titled Dinner For Vampires, in which she claims she experienced “manipulation, abuse and fear” at what she thought was a church pact.
In the official description of her book, she says she was under the control of The Big House Family’s “dominant minister” for ten years before finally leaving.
She claims the minister convinced her to marry his son and stole millions of dollars of her television revenue from One Tree Hill, which ran from 2003 to 2012.
With her book hitting shelves next week, she has told the story of how she was first enticed to join the organization People.
One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz has revealed how she became entangled in a religious cult – which she remained part of for a decade; pictured 2022
Bethany has always come from an evangelical Christian background, but moved several times during her childhood and “was always looking for a place where she belonged.”
Her parents divorced when she was 16 years old – a 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 take root in her acting, but also in the Bible study group where she met people who shared her worldview.
The Bible study sessions were “water in a desert” for Lenz, who talked, prayed and sang about God with the other members of her group.
‘We long for that kind of intimacy. The idea of someone saying, ‘No matter what you do, how bad you behave, or what stupid choices you make, I still love you and I’m here for you,'” she explained.
Soon, a preacher she called “Les” showed up at the Bible study, where he took charge of the sessions—and persuaded attendees to move to his communal “Big House” in Idaho.
‘It still looked normal. And then it just changed,” she said. “But by the time it started to change, I was too deep into the relationships to notice it. Besides, I was still so young.’