I am compiling them as I find them. It’s mostly ex-moonie material with some general cult stuff in there too.
ItsOKtoLeave – a collection of ex-moonie resources categorised by themes.
Podcasts
FALLING OUT – a podcast by Elgen Strait – A podcast about leaving the Moonies and other cults, as told by the kids who grew up within them.
GROWING UP MOONIE – a podcast by Hideo Higashibaba – In Growing Up Moonie Hideo asks people he grew up with what their childhoods were like and shares his struggles to make sense of his weird sheltered youth and the person he grew up to be.
THE ARES MEYER PODCAST – My name is Ares Meyer. I grew up in the Unification Church and left after many years. Throughout my life I have met so many interesting and cool people and i want to share them with the world.We Discuss life Journeys, Passions and Hobbies! Enjoy!
BLESSED CHILD – Welcome to Blessed Child, a place to deconstruct the Unification Church and move forward
THE CULT VAULT PODCAST – looking at all cults, includes three episodes on the Moonies
THE GENUINELY INTERESTED PODCAST – Roy Bent Zvi- An interview with Teddy Hose an award-winning animator and filmmaker, designer, and storyteller of multiple mediums and I had the pleasure of speaking to him for an hour Teddy was on Vox’s Explained, A&E Cults and Extreme Beliefs and other programs where he discusses the life he lived being born into the Moonies cult.
GENERATION CULT: Episodes with Teddy Hose and Lisa Kohn including Moonies But Don’t Call them Moonies
Meet the Moonies – Andrew and Akina Cox
Films
BLESSED CHILD – The Documentary – More than a decade after leaving Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, filmmaker Cara Jones attempts to finally break free from the religious movement that dominated her childhood in an attempt to unpack the legacy of the decisions her parents made while challenging assumptions – hers and ours – about clts and family.
CHILDREN OF THE MOON – Children of the Moon is a documentary short about the consequences of leaving an all-consuming way of life, and the lasting effects of a radical paradigm shift on one’s relationship to themselves and others. Three people born and raised in the Unification Church (a cult formed in Korea in the 1950s), all having left the Church in their adulthood, examine their experiences within and without the cult that for them defined the entire universe.
TICKET TO HEAVEN – 1981 Movie about religious brainwashing
YOUTUBE:
FAITH Y3N (Youtube channel) – Faith Yen is an ex-cult member from The Moonies Cult. Learn about mind control, brainwashing, quantum healing, mental health care and more right here. Faith Yen is extremely serious and doesn’t ever tell jokes because laughter is the Devil’s ringtone. Giggles are not of God.
THE HALFIE PROJECT – Youtube video where we discuss the possibility that the Unification Church has had an impact on how many mixed people, primarily mixed Korean, there are around the world today.
SECRETS OF THE MOONIES (TALK BELIEF) – Photo -illustrated interview with TEDDY HOSE, a former member of the Unification Church (the ‘Moonies’), known for its unusual practices including stadium-filled mass weddings.
TO THE MOON AND BACK (TALK BELIEF)- LISA KOHN spent her early years in the Unification Church in New York. As a Moonie, she and her mother and brother rubbed shoulders with the ‘sinless’ children of the Messiah, witnessed mass weddings and followed the Divine Principle.
BEYOND BELIEF: BBC – Ernie Rea and guests discuss how the Unification Church is coming to terms with the death of its founder the Rev Sun Myung Moon. 2013
CULTISH – LEAVING THE MOONIES – In our latest series, we talk with Hana Castañeda who grew up in the Unification Church better known as “The Moonies”.
REFLECTIONS ON BEING A BLESSED CHILD IN THE UNIFICATION CHURCH – ICSA – Donna Collins, daughter of the founders of the Unification Church in England, was the first “blessed child” born in the West. She recounts her experiences growing up in this group and the factors that led to her departure.
MARRIED TO THE MOONIES – UK Channel 4 documentary – This revealing film takes viewers inside the little known world of the Unification Church, commonly known to outsiders as the Moonies, and branded by some as a brain washing cult. The film follows three young British followers as they prepare to travel to Korea to be blessed alongside thousands of others by their Messiah, the Reverend Moon, in one of the movement’s controversial mass weddings.
TED TALK: HOW CULTS REWIRE THE BRAIN Diane Benscoter spent five years as a “Moonie.” She shares an insider’s perspective on the mind of a cult member, and proposes a new way to think about today’s most troubling conflicts and extremist movements.
CBS News – CBS News Interview with Nansook Hong, daughter-in-law of Sun Myung Moon Unification Church “Reverend”
IGotOut – Creating an online community of survivors of cultic abuse.
We tell our stories. We change the world.
JenKiaba – Int’l award winning artist using self portraits to examine #coercivecontrol
“Healing Through Art” at Conference on #ReligiousTrauma 5/15. Signup www.jenkiaba.com/links
Yoseikuun – Burnt out photographer, wannabe musician, fantastic faker of fuckall, temporarily on a mission to talk about that Moonie s**t
YT MOONIE PLAYLIST:youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmw8sgnrf6Dz63ZTXMnn49Hf482fDM35Y
RenRobotArt – Tattoo artist . Registered Nurse. Cult Survivor. I just like stabbing people. Etsy.com/shop/Renrobot anchor.fm/blessed-child2/episodes/Deconstruction-of-high-control-groups-Information-
Faithy3n – i left a cult and i have a youtube channel #igotoutyoutube.com/channel/UCC2eGLsbToZ5so4VVpRuJPw
2ndgenvengeance – Blessed Child. Bring down the Moon
Teddy Hose – Artist, Writer, Humorist CV = Huffington Post, Laughing Squid, McSweeney’s. Cult survivor on A&E + Vox’s Explained on Netflix. NY>Seattle>NY>SF>NYteddyhose.com
European_x – a platform for everybody who grew up in the unification church. Let’s share our experiences and help each other heal.
Iwannariot819 – Second generation grew up in the Unification Church. STOP THE ABUSE, STOP THE #childmarriage #forcemarriage 同じ虐待、望まない結婚が若い人たちに繰り返されないように伝え続けます。#宗教二世
Baby_steps_wiser – A safezone to share ideas. Welcome:) Please check ur emotional responses & triggers at the door, you can pick them back up as you leave. Thank you.
Rebuilding.myself.for.myself – A journey about rebuilding my life after growing up in a cult saturated with narcissists. #igotout #exmoonie #cultsurvivor healing #emotionalabuseyoutu.be/tzrc-CySUHo
BlessedChildDoc is a documentary about two siblings raised in a religion known for arranged marriages and mass weddings who must find their own paths outside of it.itunes.apple.com/movie/blessed-child/id1522361718
Blogs/websites
How Well Do You Know Your Moon? – “How Well Do You Know Your Moon” (HWDYKYM) is a tumblr-blog dedicated to reporting on the Unification Church. HWDYKYM is firmly opposed to the UC and the schismatic groups that have split from the mainline Family Federation for World Peace & Unification because of their continual deception, abuse, and corruption.
Jen Kiaba – Lessons on Leaving – 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.
Leaving the Unification Church – Reddit
TEDDY HOSE.COM – Teddy has been featured in Vice, UPROXX, and notably A&E’s Cults and Extreme Belief and Vox’s Explained on Netflix for his research on cults, after growing up in one. His insight into this issue informed his writing as a contributor for The Huffington Post, a comic for The Nib, while also contributing writing to The Bold Italic and McSweeney’s.
I Got Out – The sole mission of #iGotOut is to inspire survivors of cultic abuse to tell and share their stories, creating an online community dedicated to unflinching honesty. We believe this simple but profound act is a catalyst for personal healing as well as community education and prevention that corrects the many systemic misperceptions of cultic involvement. We believe the collective potential of ALL of our stories will help steer society into a new day where abuse of power is not tolerated. We tell our stories. We change the world
Art
Jen Kiaba – Burdens of a White Dress – ‘In my ongoing project Burdens of a White Dress, I use self-portraits to explore what it means to leave an identity, a culture, a language and a family behind.’
Renrobot – ex moonie artist explores church trauma through compelling art work.
Articles
From growing up in religious movement ‘The Moonies’ to starring in ‘The Watch’, Marama Corlett on her remarkable journey – Glamour Magazine, 2021
I grew up in a cult — and there is nothing more intoxicating than knowing you have the ‘Truth’ – Lisa Kohn, Insider, 2018
Dark side of the Moon: How megalomaniac Moonie leader built a billion-dollar business empire through sinister cult – Daily Mirror article 2012
I was a Moonie Cult Leader – Steven Hassan, 2012
Followers begin to see the Dark Side of the Moon – The Irish Times, 1997
Books
TO THE MOON AND BACK: A Childhood Under the Influence – a book by Lisa Kohn – Lisa Kohn’s memoir of being raised in and torn between two conflicting worlds. There was the world she longed for and lived in on weekends – her mother’s world, which was the fanatical, puritanical cult of the Moonies – and the world she was forced to live in during the week – her father’s world, which was based in sex, drugs, and the squalor of life in New York City’s East Village in the 1970’s.
IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOONS: My Life in Rev Sun Myung Moon’s Family – A book by Nansook Hong
HEARTBREAK AND RAGE: Ten Years Under Sun Myung Moon – K Gordon Neufeld
HOLY CANDY – Why I joined a Cult and Married a Stranger – A book by Yolande Brener about joining and leaving the church
WHY I LEFT THE MOONIES – A book by Beth Axton
THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOONIES: A book by Erika Heftmann
SHOES OF A SERVANT – Diane Benscoter. In “Shoes of a Servant” Benscoter weaves a gripping story of her servitude in the cult, the deprogramming staged by her desperate family, and her subsequent involvement in the underground world of deprogramming, culminating in her arrest for kidnapping. Often humorous and always heartbreaking, Benscoter’s story carries the reader on a journey into the world of mental manipulation, providing compelling insight on how human vulnerabilities open the door for extremism.
HEAVENLY DECEPTION – By Maggie Brooks. Carmen, a young woman in search of her missing sister, enters the closed world of the Unification Church, and when she finally finds her sister, attempts to break the cult’s hold over her
HEAVENLY DECEPTION – By Chris Elkins. He was “searching desperately for community.” Walking through the streets of Berkeley in the summer of 1975, Chris Edwards was approached by a young man his age who invited him to have dinner with “the family” he lived with, “a very loving, very idealistic group of young people.” They had a country place in Boonville, ninety miles north of SanFrancisco. “Since you enjoyed this evening so much, Chris, why don’t you join us for the weekend?” Chris continued to feel extraordinarily loved and appreciated during his weekend at the Family’s farm. His initial unease with their frequent God talk vanished during the strenuous program of singing, shouting, and group games the Family indulged in throughout the three days. Chris is never given a moment to be alone, he’s not even allowed to go to the bathroom by himself. He soon experiences “the ecstasy of merging into the mass, tasting the glorious pleasure that accompanies the loss of the ego.”
TAKE BACK YOUR LIFE – Janja Lalich. Cult victims and those who have suffered abusive relationships often suffer from fear, confusion, low-self esteem, and post-traumatic stress. Take Back Your Life explains the seductive draw that leads people into such situations, provides guidelines for assessing what happened, and hands-on tools for getting back on track. Written for the victims, their families, and professionals, this book leads readers through the healing process. A resource list and numerous personal accounts of those who have successfully made the transition to the “normal” world provide help and inspiration.
The Comfort Zone 