Cults, Cartels and Combat Culture

Yesterday, we celebrated veterans. As one of the first women in deliberate ground combat in Afghanistan, and a well-known activist in Washington State, I could have marched in my share of parades. Instead, I was at home, replaying the images of the murdered women and children of the US-Mexican religious fundamentalist group in LaMora. Because while I’m a veteran, who’s seen the horrors of war and lost loved ones — my brothers-in-arms — I’m also a survivor of a similar religious cult, the Children of God. When I look at the pictures of those pretty blonde women and children, in their flowing white dresses and the Mexican desert behind them, my mind fills in what’s not being photographed or written about in the news. There’s a story here, about extremist thinking and the systems of group think that affects the lives of women, of children. And how it kills them.

The funeral pictures draw me in, white-washing the story, covering up horror. White women, sparkling dresses, little blonde girls holding posies and crying. Brown Mexicans in cowboy hats faded into the background, almost as if they are just a part of the scenery, rather than an integral part of this independent religious group that somehow coincidentally has ties to both the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints and Nxivm. The cults know that Americans will care about little, blonde girls. And when those same little blonde girls look up from their tears and tell you that they are not being abused, we will believe them. I should know, I played that role often enough throughout my childhood smiling through my tears; and in the Army, pretending I was tough as nails. Pretending that child abuse didn’t bother me, that military sexual assault couldn’t slow me down; that nobody on the outside should ever know what was truly happening in our circle.

The words used are like codes, the language of insular groups. The way they pose and posture themselves for the outside world; the white-washing, the group think, the small lies that we tell because those on the outside just won’t ever understand our way of life. They’re called Mormons or fundamentalist Mormons, the LeBaron clan, or just the LaMora community. The practice of polygamy is mentioned in passing, phrased in such a way that it seems eclectic more than horrifying. I was in a different cult, but we had some eerily similar beliefs. I lived in Nuevo Leon and Guadalajara, not Sonora. My mother was 13 when she was married to our “prophet,” along with other girls, ranging between the ages of 14 and three-years-old, including his own daughter and granddaughter. Much like when I read the stories of my sisters-in-arms controlled by rape-culture and assaulted overseas, I know the truth in my bones — the details might be different, but the stories are the same.

The facts I know: Joel LeBaron fled the US after traditional Mormons gave up the practice of polygamy in order to be accepted in America. His brother Ervil went to jail for leading his own followers in the practice of blood atonement — the murder of those who didn’t believe. Joel’s group fled to Mexico to evade authorities and continue practices that are illegal and unconscionable in America and they remain there, splintered throughout the country, to this day. I know too that the practice of polygamy in almost every single group, organization, or country that practices it leads to children being forced into sexual acts with adults. You can rebrand any way you like. It’s still happening.

Growing up, hidden in communes in Asia, South America and Mexico, we claimed religious freedom too. We claimed to be innocent, different, and pure — we just wanted to be left alone to serve God in our own ways. Like them, we parsed our words, we claimed distance from controversial sexual practices without ever renouncing our belief in them, which always, always means they are still happening — even if in secret from others within the same group. Like the LaMora group, we lived in places with mostly brown people, yet we always used pretty, blonde American children, like me, smiling in photos and appearing happy in order to show how we were normal missionaries abroad. The photos don’t show the abused children we were.

News stories like the ones about the kids in Mexico make me relive my own childhood much too vividly for parties and parades. They make me grateful for America, happy that I got the chance to escape my own cult experience in the heart of Mexico and to come live here. They make me happy that I got to grow up and didn’t end up burning to death in a ditch somewhere — dying as a ‘martyr’ for my faith, the way our prophet had prepared us for all my life. I got the chance to have a beautiful, little blonde girl of my own. And I got the chance to go to war against extremism — in more ways than one.

During my time in the US military, I served as an intelligence officer, someone tasked with running the departments charged with getting into the heads of terrorists, drug lords, murderers and violent criminals, attempting to understand and predict their actions and their thoughts. I joined an amazing group of women breaking barriers — going into deliberate ground combat with all-male units for the first time in American history. Before one of those historic patrols, I was warned by a senior officer to be on my guard, that the men in my patrol group might suddenly decide to gang rape me. All of a sudden, being the only woman out there on the sand with a large group of armed men didn’t seem brave, it seemed stupid. Nobody, even me, questioned the culture making that warning a necessity.

I loved my service, loved breaking barriers for women, and I’ve never regretting joining the Army. Not even when I experienced sexual assault while deployed to Afghanistan. Not even when I couldn’t report it because I knew it would end my career. Not even when male colleagues jokingly threatened me with rape if I didn’t behave. I loved serving my country, but I hated the toxic culture of the military, the silos that we lived and worked in and the extremist thinking that I encountered every day — often glazed over as ‘’good guys fighting bad actors.’’ Many experiences that I had in the military were examples of group think as extreme as what I experienced in the cult.

And just like when I grew up in the Children of God, just like in the news all of last week, we white-washed the truth. Operational necessity and the needs of the Army made it important for women to stay silent and tow the party line. Even when I wanted to speak out about my experiences I was told to take one for the team.

We don’t have accurate counts on the numbers of American women who’ve died in Iraq or Afghanistan. It’s harder still to swallow the fact that more than half of them have died from non-combat related incidents — murder, suicide, illness and accident, often related to the aftermath of sexual assault. Those of us who make it back don’t talk about it either, because we feel lucky, we feel grateful, and because we want to be considered part of the team. If we do talk about it, we blame it solely on bad actors — individuals who harmed us, one bad guy, the Mexican drug cartels — rather than the systems and the culture that created those situations in the first place.

I spent this Veteran’s Day reading stories of the great American Solider. Seeing school girls play band concerts to recognize and honor our service, the processions not that different from the last week’s funeral marches for those trapped in a cult portrayed as a drug cartel. I look at these girls and shake, needing them to grow up to a different path. One in which an American Hero isn’t raped and denied justice and support. To do that, we need to stop blaming the horror, violence, and death on individual bad actors and start looking much, much deeper at the systems and cultures of extremism that cause it.

Daniella Mestyanek Young is an American author and TEDx Speaker. Daniella has been breaking through barriers and challenging authority figures since her earliest childhood memories growing up in the horrifying Children of God Cult and on through her service and deployment to war twice. Daniella served as part of the first group of women who integrated into deliberate combat arms missions back in 2011 and has since spent the majority of her time leading in veteran service organizations to try and help folks heal and find their own definition of success after their service.

Daniella is married to the world’s best special operations helicopter pilot and speaks primarily in Brazilian Portuguese with her daughter, who sasses her back in three languages. Daniella is currently at work on her memoir. She can be found speaking speaking truth to power, irritating vetbros and stamping out the kyriarchy on Twitter @daniellamyoung. She can be contacted at daniella.m.young@gmail.com