Shows
The Cult VaultEp. 308 The Unification Church with Jen Kiaba - Episode 88 RemasteredIn this episode we continue our coverage of The Unification Church. This episode includes an interview with artist and activist Jen Kiaba who creates art depicting the spiritual abuse that comes with control and coercion. Find her work here at www.jenkiaba.com.Get in Touch or Support:Patreon - patreon.com/thecultvaultCrimecon UK 2024 - https://www.crimecon.co.uk - use code CULT for 10% off tickets!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cultvaultpod/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CultVaultPodReddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/Cult-VaultGmail: cultvaultpodcast...
2024-03-301h 51
Speaking of Cults#333: Growing Up in the Moonies (Part 1) ft. Jen Kiaba
This week I am once again joined by second-generation former Moonie (Unification Church) Jen Kiaba, this time to discuss her personal story. This is not for the faint-of-heart as there are details about child labor trafficking and physical abuse in this podcast, but this is as real as it gets when it comes to what destructive cults like the Moonies are doing right now to the children of their members and why they must be stopped.
The post Sensibly Speaking Podcast #333: Growing Up in the Moonies (Part 1) appeared first on The Sensibly Speaking Podcast.
2022-03-052h 10Speaking of Cults#328: Cults, Education and Controversy ft. Jen Kiaba
This week I am joined again by Jen Kiaba, a second-generation survivor of the Unification Church (the Moonies) and a fellow student on the same psychology of coercive control program I am currently finishing up. We had a great chat this week about cults, the rigors of an academic education and a lot more. Enjoy!
The post Sensibly Speaking Podcast #328: Cults, Education and Controversy appeared first on The Sensibly Speaking Podcast.
2022-01-221h 58Speaking of Cults#323: Walking Away from a Cult with Jen Kiaba
This week I welcome back cult survivor Jen Kiaba, who also happens to be doing the same Masters program I am in the psychology of coercive control. Jen and I talk about walking away from a cult and what that takes, as it’s not as easy as some seem to think. We go into what keeps people in and also I get to talk more about critical thinking. Enjoy!
The post Sensibly Speaking Podcast #323: Walking Away From a Cult appeared first on The Sensibly Speaking Podcast.
2021-12-181h 31Speaking of Cults#318: Dealing with Cults ft. Jen Kiaba
This week I welcome Jen Kiaba, a woman who grew up in the Moonies, escaped and is now doing the same academic coercive control program I am doing at Salford. We have a very wide-ranging discussion about her own experience in the Moonies, how education has helped her in recovery and a lot more on coercive control. Enjoy!
The post Sensibly Speaking Podcast #318: Dealing with Cults ft. Jen Kiaba appeared first on The Sensibly Speaking Podcast.
2021-11-131h 58
Blessed childPart 2.) Rice and French FriesJoin Kyle, Andrew and myself as we talk moonies and how they found out what the UC was really all about. Podcast list- Falling out pod with Elgen Straight, Jen Kiaba's Lessons on leaving, The cult Vault, Luna stream done by current 2nd generation members, What the faith, qanon anonymous.
Evidence for labor trafficking in generation peace academy at Generation Peace Academy .
For Qanon anonymous episode with Elgen Straight https://open.spotify.com/episode/1nruCzCXmmPAmGg8zRtblZ?si=1UXMihDrQiKjsBrpuxA8Gg , the undercover freedom festival podcast with Sean moon is episode 163. Also find ex-moonie Jen Kiaba's https://op...
2021-10-3147 min
And Then Everything ChangedCults in Our Midst featuring Jen KiabaWhen Jen Kiaba was growing up in the Unification Church, known as the Moonies in popular culture, a main mantra was “absolute faith, absolute love, absolute obedience” which did not leave most people much room to question authority. Violence was not condoned but children were often hit, and as she came of age and noticed other contradictions, she didn’t have a safe space to process her feelings or make decisions that were right for her. Finally, when she faced an arranged marriage like that of her parents, she knew she had to leave. And when she did, she lost e...
2021-10-261h 13
Free Your Inner Guru#igotout: Every Cult Survivor's Story Makes a Difference#igotout is a hashtag, website and movement to make abuses of power unacceptable in all kinds of groups, not just cults.
Gerette Buglion and Lisa are two of the founders of #igotout. They believe now is the time for survivors of cult dynamics to share their stories with unflinching honesty. Every story matters, and the ripple effect of speaking up can make a difference.
Survivors of cultic abuse can raise awareness of undue influence and coercive control. The goal is to change the cultural acceptance of abuse of power in all kinds of groups, not...
2021-09-301h 12
Shock Your PotentialArt Transcends Words - Jen Kiaba“When you see people put their heart into something, you want them to be validated for it because it is part of their soul” Jen Kiaba
The healing power of art has long been explored in different settings in an effort to influence, acknowledge and manage a wide range of human behaviors and functions. Our guest today, Jen Kiaba, has been working with people to help them heal by encouraging them to express their stories through art where she leads by example.
Jen Kiaba is an artist and educator who grew up in the infamous Unif...
2021-08-2325 min
The Phil Drysdale Show130 - Jen Kiaba - Let's Talk About CultsJen Kiaba is an artist and writer who covers the topic of cults and being a cult survivor regularly in her work.
You can check out her work at - https://www.jenkiaba.com
And her Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/jenkiaba
Support my work and join our private online community:
╰►Via my site: https://www.phildrysdale.com/partner
╰►Via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/phildrysdale
╰►Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/phildrysdale
╰►Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phildrysdale
╰►Find others deconstructing locally: https://www.thedeconstructionnetwork.com
╰►More about me: https://www.phildrysdale.com
2021-08-122h 03
Persistence U with LizbethEpisode 24: Jen Kiaba on Coercive Control and Her Life after Leaving the Unification ChurchLooking at Jen Kiaba's art and writing, you'd never guess that she grew up inside a religion that discouraged personal expression.In this interview, Jen talks about her wedding to a virtual stranger within the Unification Church, and how breaking her vow to him meant vowing to move toward freedom.You will learn:That oppressive religions and cults exercise similar control over members as abusers do over domestic abuse victims. That leaving the Unification church or similarly high-control groups can be dangerous and have many unintended consequences, including alienation from family members remaining inside the group.There is life after le...
2021-08-0426 min
Lessons on LeavingToxic Workplaces and the Cult SurvivorCult survivors make great little worker bees (and I say this with a lot of love, respect, and a huge dose of sarcasm), at least in the minds of bosses; especially second and multi-generational survivors. But this is because we spent years working in an exploitative and abusive system that formed the basis for our work ethics. While I think that many bosses probably do admire the work ethic of their survivor employees (and they usually are not made aware of the employee’s survivor status, because we often keep it hidden for fear of stigma), I think that th...
2021-07-1945 min
Follow the WooBreaking Free From the Moonies - PART 2Episode 20: PART 2 of my fascinating chat with Jen Kiaba & Lisa Kohn, two brave and inspiring women who broke free from the infamous Unification Church - AKA the "Moonies" cult. *Lisa Kohn's Website: https://www.lisakohnwrites.com/* Link to Lisa Kohn's Book (To the Moon and Back: A Childhood Under the Influence)https://www.mainpointbooks.com/lisa-kohn*Jen Kiaba's Website (you can purchase her amazing art prints here!): https://www.jenkiaba.com/*True Father at Belvedere 4/16/00 (speech):http...
2021-07-071h 02
Lessons on LeavingWere you brainwashed?During a recent podcast interview, my friend and fellow survivor Lisa Kohn shared that while she was on tour to promote her memoir To the Moon and Back: A Childhood Under the Influence, she had the opportunity to be interviewed for a popular daytime talk show.
She said that before she went on stage the producer was doing a pre-interview and asked her ‘were you brainwashed?’
I was tempted to completely derail the conversation and delve into a treatise on what thought reform is, and why asking a survivor if they were brainwashed is a stig...
2021-07-0546 min
Transcending Trauma with Moniquea SpiteriEpisode 40 - Jen Kiaba - Reclaiming the Self after OccultismJen is an artist and educator who grew up in the infamous Unification Church, a religious group referred to by popular media as “the Moonies” and a primary example of a cult. After escaping a forced arranged marriage, she fought her way out in her early twenties. After leaving the cult she went on to earn her BA in Art History at Bard College. As an artist Jen uses photography to explore the failure of faith and the resulting loss of identity that occurs. Her work has been exhibited internationally, was a third place winner of t...
2021-07-041h 09
Follow the WooBreaking Free From the Moonies - PART 1Episode 19: Don't miss PART 1 of my fascinating chat with Jen Kiaba & Lisa Kohn, two brave and inspiring women who broke free from the infamous Unification Church - AKA the "Moonies" cult. *Lisa Kohn's Website: https://www.lisakohnwrites.com/* Link to Lisa Kohn's Book (To the Moon and Back: A Childhood Under the Influence)https://www.mainpointbooks.com/lisa-kohn*Jen Kiaba's Website (you can purchase her amazing art prints here!): https://www.jenkiaba.com/
2021-06-301h 04
Lessons on LeavingToxic positivity and the thought-terminating clichéSome of the tactics that the Unification Church use to train members rolls up into the thought terminating cliché: that if someone is experiencing doubt, it is “evil spirit world invading.” These thought stopping techniques, also called a semantic stop-sign, are a mind control technique wherein loaded language is used to quell the cognitive dissonance that one experiences when encountering contradictory information or thoughts. It allows a person to remove the stress of the cognitive dissonance by avoiding all further consideration of a matter.
The concept was popularized by Robert Jay Lifton in his book Thought Reform and t...
2021-06-2824 min
Lessons on LeavingThe Trauma of First Love in a CultMembers of the second generation ex-Unification Church community are beginning to speak out about their experiences, going so far as to coin the phrase “first love trauma” in online conversations. It wasn’t a phrase I’d heard before, even as I’ve studied the intersections of purity culture and religious trauma. But boy could I relate to it.
So it made me wonder if there was any research on second generation adults who have left cults, and their first experiences with romantic love. I looked at the psychology of first love to see if I could make conne...
2021-06-2128 min
Lessons on LeavingMemory Loss, Dissociation and Euphoric Recall in CultsSometimes I struggle to recall things from my childhood in the cult. There are long blanks in my memory, or when I do excavate memories, I have to sit with them for a long time and ask “did I hallucinate that experience?”
These days, I’ve been talking to a lot of survivors, many of whom are actively sharing their stories online. But the theme of doubting our experiences is something that seems to come up again and again. I began to wonder why that is.
Could it be that many of us blocked out memori...
2021-06-1414 min
Lessons on LeavingWhat is love bombing?The term “love bombing” seems to have come into the cultural consciousness in a big way in the past several years, perhaps because of the prevalence of toxic behavior in arena like online dating. Culturally we’re at a point where the term gets tossed around quite casually. A quick Google search on the term brings up cautionary articles from sources as varied as Cosmopolitan to Business Insider and Psychology Today.
Many articles highlight the fact that love bombing is a control tactic, and so go as far to say that it’s generally used used by people o...
2021-06-0718 min
Falling Out with Elgen StraitS2 E1 - The Fucked Up Brady BunchWe got the band back together! This group episode was so much fun to record! If 3 hour long group interviews aren't your thing, we will be back to the 1hour-ish interview format from the next episode! Find a list of social media, books and resources mentioned in today’s episode below: OrganizationsInternational Cultic Studies Association: https://www.icsahome.com/I Got Out: www.igotout.orgPodcasts Ares Meyer Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ares-meyer-podcast/id1549515902Shunned: https://shunnedpodcast.com/epis...
2021-06-063h 20
Lessons on LeavingWhat’s so bad about growing up in a cult?A few years ago someone commented on one of my social media posts, asking me to explain why I felt that growing up in a cult was such a bad thing. So I wanted to take the time to answer the question fully. And to be clear, I don’t think that it should be the survivor’s job to take on the emotional labor of educating the public about childhood trauma in cults. But this is an area that I’ve been diving into a lot lately, and so I wanted to create content that other survivors could direct...
2021-05-3130 min
Project Hope PodcastEp. 22: Jen Kiaba on Being Raised in the Unification Church (aka. The Moonies)Jen Kiaba is an artist and educator who grew up in the infamous Unification Church, a religious group referred to by popular media as "the Moonies" and a primary example of a cult. After escaping a forced arranged marriage, she fought her way out in her early twenties and went on to earn her BA in Art History at Bard College. As an artist she uses photography to explore the failure of faith and the resulting loss of identity that occurs. Her work has been exhibited internationally, was a third place winner of the Julia...
2021-05-261h 37
Lessons on LeavingHealing Through Art - Part Two: The ResearchIn focusing on art as a healing tool, I want to hone in specifically on religious trauma because that area of focus is where my personal experience is rooted. However, I believe that many of the resources shared in this post apply to other areas of trauma as well. I'll start by defining religious trauma, then go into the developmental considerations of that trauma, and finally share some of the research around art as a healing and integration tool.
2021-05-2422 min
Lessons on LeavingHealing Through Art - Part One: My StoryI believe we are all born creative, or at the very least, with the capacity to be creative. If we’re lucky, we grow up in an environment where the adults around us encourage and foster that creativity. But what happens if you grow up in a cult, or a similarly abusive structure? In this episode I explore what happens to creativity within the cultic milieu, using my story as a lens.
2021-05-1720 min
Lessons on LeavingThe Illusion of ChoiceOverlaying bounded choice framework onto the biological need to survive within the human group, we can see that there is only the illusion of choice for people within cultic systems. At every crossroads, where my intuition was screaming for me to not take a prescribed path, my conditioning told me that total abandonment and death awaited down the other path. Even if I was told that I had a choice, did I really?
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Dr. Janja Lalich's book Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults.
A Psychology Today article o...
2021-05-1010 min
Lessons on LeavingWe Are All VulnerableAlthough media coverage of topics like cults and QAnon are important, in that they help us understand the very real threat of radicalization, I sometimes struggle with how the coverage is handled. Oftentimes the subject comes off as “crazy,” or is treated like a circus sideshow. Rarely is the coverage nuanced enough to help viewers understand what indoctrination is and how it happens. More often than not, we come away thinking, “at least that could never happen to me.” But the truth is far more complex.
2021-05-0319 min
Finding Food & Fitness Freedom: An Empowered RX Podcast015: Jen Kiaba- Artist, Educator and Cult SurvivorJen Kiaba is an international award winning artist using self portraits to examine coercive control. She dives deep into her experiences with religious trauma after being raised into the Unification Church. This church was referred to by popular media as "The Moonies". After escaping a forced arranged marriage, she found her way out of the cult in her early twenties. Head to her instagram or website listed below to view her AMAZING and profound art.
Her art work is hauntingly beautiful and speaks to her experiences and trauma during her time in this cult. Sh...
2021-05-0246 min
Lessons on LeavingWhy Didn't You Just Leave?The question “Why didn’t you just leave” is one I’ve heard more times than I care to count and, sadly, I think that’s something many cult survivors can relate to. This is also a question that many survivors of domestic abuse/intimate partner violence are faced with. As a survivor of both, I want to draw a direct line between cultic abuse and domestic abuse. Because the more that we understand about these systems of control, how they are similar and how they function, the better we can understand and support survivors.
2021-04-2618 min
Lessons on LeavingLet Us EmbarkAfter many years, I decided to try blogging again about the things that have been rattling around in my brain - and then it was brought to my attention that audio might be an easier format for some people to consume. Right now it’s Spring in 2021, and we’re inches away from the anniversary of when the COVID pandemic shut things down in the state of New York. Plus, we are all only a few months past the riots at the US Capital. This has me thinking about trauma, both collective and individual, healing and cults. So, that is w...
2021-04-2608 min
Falling Out with Elgen Strait15- Her Name Was ****** *****: Jen Kiaba Part 3Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/falling-out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
2021-04-2052 min
The Cult Vault#88 The Unification Church - Jen KiabaIn this episode we continue our coverage of The Unification Church for the month of April. This episode includes an interview with artist and activist Jen Kiaba who creates art depicting the spiritual abuse that comes with control and coercion. Find her work here at www.jenkiaba.com and follow the #igotout movement for support.Get In TouchInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/cultvaultpod/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CultVaultPodTumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/cultvaultReddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/Cult-VaultGmail: cultvaultpodcast@gmail.comPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/thecultvaultSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/cultvaultpodcast/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsP...
2021-04-161h 56
Falling Out with Elgen Strait14- Scorpion House: Jen Kiaba Part 2Recommended reading from Jen: "Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free" by Linda Kay KleinSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/falling-out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
2021-04-131h 38
shunnedEpisode Eighty Eight - Do You Know Where My Family Is?Note: This is the first of back to back episodes on the Unification Church, often referred to as the Moonies, named after their leader Sun Myung Moon. Jen Kiaba is an award winning artist and an educator, and in this episode she educates us on this particular group. You will learn how the group worked, the unique terminology of the group, but above all you will meet Jen herself as she details her story of growing up in the Church and eventually escaping a forced arranged marriage. As she tried so hard to be what they wanted...
2021-04-092h 30
Falling Out with Elgen Strait13 - Fuel For Nightmares: Jen Kiaba Part 1Jen's website: jenkiaba.comIntroducing a new segment "Autotune the Moon.""Bad Moon Rising" by John Gorenfeld - Recommended by Jen.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/falling-out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
2021-04-061h 10
The Ares Meyer PodcastConceptual Self Portrait ArtistJoin me in conversation with Artist Jen Kiaba as we talk Poetry, Self Portraits and Child Marriage.
2021-02-0549 min
The Artist Entrepreneur PodcastHow to push through fear and stand out in a crowd of good artistsOur guest today is Jen Kiaba, an artist and educator who grew up in the infamous Unification Church, a religious group referred to as a primary example of a cult. After escaping a forced arranged marriage, she fought her way out of the cult and went on to earn her BA in Art History at Bard College. She now has a flourishing art practice and career and she also writes and speaks about art, healing, and their intersection. Together, Jen and Catherine talk about the challenges and insecurities that come with building an art career, especially when everyone else...
2021-01-2049 min