Need to understand what shaped her.
What she's running from.
Why she's so terrified of her own body.
It takes thirty minutes of digging through message boards and ex-member testimonies, but I find what I'm looking for.
A blog post from a woman who escaped the Sanctuary fifteen years ago.
She writes about the purity culture.
How girls were taught that their bodies were shameful.
That desire was sin.
That they existed only to serve men and bear children.
She writes about the punishments.
Public shaming for minor infractions.
Isolation for asking questions.
Physical discipline for disobedience.
She writes about medical neglect.
Women dying in childbirth because the elders forbade hospitals.
Children dying from preventable illnesses because modern medicine was "corrupted by worldly sin."
She writes about the marriages.
Girls as young as sixteen being married off to men chosen by the elders.
No choice. No say. Just pure obedience.
And she writes about escaping.
About the years it took to deprogram herself.
To learn that her body wasn't shameful.
That pleasure wasn't sin.
That she had value beyond obedience.
I close the browser.
Lean back in my chair.
Eden's mother died in childbirth when Eden was twelve.
The file said complications, but now I know what that means.
Complications that could have been prevented with basic medical care.
Eden watched her mother die because the elders said it was God's will.
