I have now spent years walking intensively with survivors of srm and it is harrowing to realise more and more what an incredibly complex world they live in. They have to function in two completely different worlds. One world of absolute hierarchy and obedience, where any 'mistake' is ruthlessly punished; a world that constantly sends the message that it is they who control this planet and that it is impossible to escape them. As one of the first threatening emails I received said: 'we are everywhere, are always around you'.

If you grow up in this cult from babyhood, if you meet all the people of influence in your life also in the cult. If - as many survivors tell you - people of influence, whom you see on TV, are also sometimes your rapists. And if they use symbols and hand gestures as signs of their supremacy, which you also see in 'ordinary' life. If those gestures are also sometimes made by people on the stage in the church you go to and plenty of other places. What child and later adult will then not believe that it is cult who rules the world?

As Friends of Esthers, we want to help survivors find a way out of this. We want to show that a life is possible based on bonds of love instead of destructive bonds of fear. We want to make them feel that there are people who want to stand around them, who want to learn to understand how incredibly difficult it is to break free. People who are reliable, stay and don't leave, no matter how long the struggle and how many times you relapse.

But what if you are a survivor and then get sent pictures via cult of those people, your new friends. Where they are standing friendly talking to one of your rapists, in 'ordinary life' postman or bank manager or Christian leader or...(fill in the blank). Or your new friend is standing on a stage worshipping God and next to your friend is someone with their fingertips together making a triangle, making the silence sign (finger to lips) or some other gesture you know so well from cult? Is this new friend actually correct? Or does he secretly belong to cult too and is he going to betray you rock hard soon? This has happened so many times in cult, you don't know any better.

What can make it that much more difficult for a survivor is that these kinds of pictures can be seen by a part of the person that the 'ordinary world' is virtually unaware of. He or she does not have the whole brain at his/her disposal to conceive that cult is deliberately trying to prevent safe relationships from forming around the survivor.

The other world a survivor has to deal with is the world I live in, let's say a naive citizen or Christian ('all is as it seems'). Recently, I watched a video of a Christian gathering, paying specific attention to whether I saw someone on stage making cult gestures. I saw nothing. A survivor who watched the same video sent me a screenshot showing quite clearly a cult gesture, made by one of the people on stage, which went on for a longer time. How could I not see that? I learned again: you don't see what you're not used to paying attention to. My attention was drawn to other things happening on stage at the same time. This survivor immediately saw that cult gesture, having been trained from childhood to pay attention to that very thing. To which I would note, by the way, that someone can also make a gesture that has a certain meaning in cult without knowing it and without wrong intentions.

On several occasions, Esther told me that I had stood talking to someone she knew from cult, or had even visited. She had been given photos/movies and panicked because I seemed to be friends with one of her perpetrators. After calm had returned, she knew exactly which door I was standing at or how my car had been parked and what the house looked like, including inside. There was no other way she could have known this. I myself thought it was a chance encounter from which a spontaneous contact arose. I could draw no other conclusion than that these encounters were deliberately arranged to drive a wedge between me and Esther. In short, for a survivor, cult is everywhere. Not just in places where they have a collective presence, worshipping Satan in dark gatherings, making films for (child) porn industry or running human trafficking. But also in churches, sports halls, political gatherings, meetings of (world) leaders. They are also close to the people who help you, and these don't notice anything. There is insecurity everywhere.

If you are someone who helps a survivor, try looking at your own life through the eyes of a survivor. How many people do you know, how many places do you go? Be aware of how to your innocent contacts can be very threatening to 'your' survivors. Let them know that you are open to hearing it, if they become terrified of places you go or people you interact with. That it is allowed to be there, and not waved away or trivialised, is already worth so much!
If you are a survivor, try to remember that people who are not from cult are (can be) very naive. That they need your information to be able to see what you see. Tell your other person parts that you can talk to your friend or therapist together, if you have been frightened by e.g. pictures you have had about them.