Lightbulbs | Dangerous Memories Ep 6

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Coming soon to Gilroy. Tortoise.
And then somebody told me about this man called Steve Hassan. In almost every direction I've turned in this investigation, there's one term I keep brushing up against.
Cult. When I'm at my laptop, looking back over interview transcripts with experts, investigators and other former clients of Anne's, it's everywhere.
And by the time Huey's mum Sarah picked up the phone to Dr Stephen Hassan, it was on her mind too. Friends and family had been scouring the internet for answers.
They were looking for someone who understood the situation they found themselves in and who knew how to get them out of it. I'm Dr.
Stephen Hassan. I am a licensed mental health counselor.
I got interested in the area of mind control cults due to my own involvement in the Moonies in the mid-70s. Everything else had failed.
The legal letters, the attempts to contact Huey and Torrey directly, the police investigation. And the more they looked online, the more they started to come around to Phipsy's thinking.
The conclusion she reached when she ended her sessions with Anne years earlier. I'm looking for help, to help my friends who I love.
I need to coax them into a place of trust, but somehow help them understand that they are victims of a sick, disturbing cult masquerading as a compassionate, kind, and most of all, knowledgeable woman who has contact with the spirit world, and at the end of the day, always knows best. What can I do? Also, it is possible...
The question became, if Anne really was behaving like a cult leader, how could anyone convince her remaining followers to leave? And Dr Stephen Hassan said he had some ideas. But here's the thing.
Even if you can bring someone home, it doesn't mean it's the end of the story. For the clients, the families, or for Anne.

Getting out doesn't mean the dangerous memories fade away.

I'm Grace Hughes-Hallett, and from Tortoise, this is episode six, Lightbulbs Oh, oh, oh, oh Hey, oh, oh, oh Nah, oh, oh Hey, oh, oh, oh Nah, oh, oh, now. So what I teach family and friends is the strategic interactive approach.
And the idea is to be very focused on the goal, which isn't to get the person away from the cult, but the goal is to empower the person to think for themselves and make their own decisions. After Sarah explained the situation, Dr Hassan said he could fly over from the US to meet in person.
You know, I hired him for the day to give us a workshop. The plan was to hold a team preparation meeting.
Sarah was tasked with gathering all of Huey's closest friends and family to learn about this strategic interactive approach. They would listen to what Stephen had to say and come away with a new plan of action.
And I'll do a primer on brainwashing, mind control, how to understand it, and then how to talk to somebody and how to interact in effective ways. So Sarah invited 20 of the people closest to Huey, including Phippsie, to come and meet in the Sloan Club in Chelsea.
Tori's mum and friends came too. And so I don't know what to expect.
I just know I'd shelled out quite a bit of money and organised some food. And anyway, this man walks in and he says, I'm Jewish and I'm incredibly intelligent.
And if somebody had told me a few years ago that I would work for free for a madman called Moon, then I would have told them they were crazy. But he said, the Moon has got me.
Stephen's own story is important because he has first-hand experience of life in a cult. I wanted to know what you would say to a listener who might be hearing the story of Huey and the other young women and thinking, that would never happen to me.
I would never believe things that weren't true of my past, of my family. Well, what I would say to people is that's exactly my mindset that made me so vulnerable to being recruited into the Moonies.
It was the 1970s. He was 19.
At the start of a new college semester, a group of women asked if they could sit with him at his table in the cafeteria. He said yes.
He thought maybe if things went well, it might lead to a date. But these women weren't fellow students as he'd assumed.
They were members of the Unification Church. Its followers are known to the wider world as Moonies, after their leader, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
And that meeting would be the first in a series of events

that would lead to him joining a cult.

Over time, Stephen says he was brainwashed.

The people, the place and the time

were different to Huey and Tori's experiences.

But he came to believe similar things about his own family

and his own past.

As a Mooney, I believed I had a terrible childhood and I had been physically abused by my father.

He dropped out of college.

He believed Sun Myung Moon was his true parent, and he cut ties with his family and friends. In the end, it took a near-fatal accident that led him to reconnect with his sister, before Stephen began his long journey back to himself and to his family.
so he knows what it means to be under the influence of someone you believe in

and he knows what it means to be under the influence of someone you believe in, and he knows what it takes to end that relationship. And now he was going to teach the team Sarah had assembled how to give themselves the best chance of getting their daughter, their friend, back.
It was the most fascinating day, and the three things I got out of it most which actually changed everything for me the first thing he said was you can put a bullet through the woman but you'll never get your your daughters back until their light bulb comes on so you can't do any force you know other people say well why don't you just kidnap her why don't you do this why don't you do that and he force, you know, other people say, well, why don't you just kidnap her? Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? And he said, you know, their light bulb has to come on. They have to see it for themselves.
You can't do physical separation. Step one, be patient.
Stephen told them that the interventions they'd been trying, turning up on Huey's door, sending emails pleading for her to see sense about Anne,

they were never going to work.

Instead, they would have to wait.

And then the second thing was, he said,

if they ever put their head above the parapet,

hi, I'm here, you don't say,

how could you have done that to me?

He said, you just say this is the best day of my life.

You know, you do not make any judgment on them at all because they will disappear under that parapet, you know, immediately. Step two, acceptance.
And then the third thing he said was, even when their light bulb comes on, and even when they realise that they have got everything wrong and that the person who they think is their saviour or their guru or their mother or this person, even when their light bulb comes on, they realise that the person is a fraud. The hardest thing is for them to come back home because they have to admit that every decision they made was wrong.
So he said even when the light bulb comes on, even when they've escaped, it's very, very hard for them to come home. Step three, prepare for the future.
It's a long road they have to travel. And these three steps only get them home.
They don't deal with everything that follows. But

Sarah wasn't thinking that far ahead. She was still waiting for that light bulb to come

on, waiting for her daughter's head to appear above the parapet. And then Tori had moved to this place called Groheathrow and Tori was like, hey, why don't you come and live here? Tori, the client Anne referred to as the other person when she told Huey about her, was living in a kind of makeshift protest camp in a field called Grow Heathrow.
It was built in a bid to stop the expansion of Heathrow Airport in southwest London. And now, Huey was thinking of joining her.
They'd kept in touch ever since they got to know each other, during the period that Anne was on police bail. And Anne was very like, I'm not sure you should do that, I'm not sure.
But I just didn't, her rules didn't affect, if she said I could or couldn't do something, it didn't have that same very subtle shift. It didn't have that same grip on me.
And she said, well, ask in a dream tonight if you're meant to go. The dream apparently confirmed that she should go.
But almost immediately after she arrived, there was a problem. On my first day of moving there, Tori had a session with Anne and then she came back and did not speak to me again it was interesting because Anne would say quite harsh things about Huey to me how Huey was trying to take my experiences from me and by coming to Grow Heathrow and yeah encouraging me to see Huey in sort of a in not such a good light and it definitely it was like she was setting us against each other you know.
They'd been gravitating closer to each other becoming allies who are now only living meters apart but it seemed like Anne was intent on stopping that, exerting her remaining control by pitting them against each other. And I remember sitting in Anne's car with her.
Tori remembers Anne coming to visit her when she was living at Grow Heathrow. I remember saying to her, like, Anne, I can see some improvements in my life, but the 18th not getting any better and I still feel really suicidal and I still just have no desire to be living this life and I remember her looking really panicked and she said okay I think you should see this woman called Vivian and Vivian was someone who was helping Vivian was a healer who Anne was also seeing.
Vivian worked with angels and energy. And Tori took Anne up on the offer.
And I remember saying to me in the first session that my energy was really bonded to Anne and that she was going to help me kind of break those bonds and I remember sensing from

the way she said that she said it in quite a neutral way but I was like I know this is like

not a it's we're bonded in an unhealthy way. I don't know why Anne made this suggestion

or if she knew what the outcome of it would be. My first reaction was that either Anne had panicked

about Tori's state of mind and felt overwhelmed or that she could sense Tori was looking for a way out of their journey together, and that she hoped Vivian could talk Tori back around. But Tori has a different interpretation.
At the time, she saw it as a genuine act of concern for her well-being. She says there was almost a mother-daughter dynamic between her and Anne.
But with the benefit of hindsight, she wonders if Anne used this dynamic in order to coerce her. Tori still finds it really hard to figure out what Anne's intentions towards her were.
Do you remember when the idea came to you to leave England? Anne and I, we went to the beach together. She drove us.
And we went, we walked along the beach. And I just remember thinking, like ah i just want to be free of this this woman and I remember like I couldn't help I just walked off and I just felt like I was shaking some energy off me and my energy was expanding like like massive like almost like taking over the planet um and yeah I just knew I just I needed to leave I need to leave England leave and leave my family and just almost put everything that I had experienced in a box put it to one side and just go out into the world and stop asking myself this question was I abused was I not abused and let life show me the truth and I wanted to have experiences that made me want to be here,

made me want to be alive.

And so that's what I did.

Tori's light bulb was flickering into life.

But she told Anne they could continue working together,

just less frequently, from a distance.

So she moved to Spain.

She had a plan to go and work with horses near the sea.

She was interested in a specific method of natural horsemanship,

where the trainers encourage you to create bonds with the animals,

without manipulation.

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See site for details. So I lived there for like a year and a half at Grohi Thro.
And then one day I told Tori that I was leaving.

Before Tori left England, Huey had also decided to make a move.

I kept having dreams that I needed to move to Brighton

and so I went down to Brighton one day on the train

and I found a little caravan on sale and I bussed.

I had no money when I went down there.

For a while, when she was at Grohi Throw,

she'd felt that she'd had a little more freedom from Anne.

Anne seemed more concentrated on Tory.

And then she was suddenly like,

oh, Huey, you know, you're actually the one I need.

You're the one I need to get to the light

Thank you. Anne seemed more concentrated on Tori.
And then she was suddenly like, oh, Huey, you know, you're actually the one I need. You're the one I need to get to the light, and you're the one, and you're the chosen one.
With Tori out of reach, Huey felt Anne's focus retrained on her. When Huey moved to Brighton, life was not straightforward.
She started out living in a caravan with her two cats but in a bit of bad timing the council wanted to clear the site not long after she'd moved in so with nowhere else to go she bought a little tent and she went into the woods. She'd learnt how to live outside at Grow Heathrow

and she hoped she could make it work with the help of a portable solar panel.

It sounds ambitious.

As the season turned from autumn to winter,

it became clear that Huey's tent wasn't going to offer her or the cats much protection. But then someone made her an offer.
She'd recently turned to her music, and now she was writing and performing her own material. She'd met people through busking, and one of them, a woman called Didi, offered her a place to stay.
It was a kind offer, but a big shift. She hadn't trusted anyone in that way for some time, so she was apprehensive.
And she turned to Anne for her opinion. Really encouraged, she was saying, look, you found your way, you found your way with the tents, and just find another spot to camp,

don't move in with her, just keep being a free spirit.

So I was trying to walk through all the woods near Brighton,

trying to find another spot and it just wasn't anywhere appropriate to live.

A likely friend says a sister can dance, come be free.

So she moved in with Dee Dee and it turned into a positive experience. She felt a sense of belonging with Didi's family and her music was taking shape too.
She'd travel into London and busk in front of crowds of tourists on the South Bank. She'd try and sell the album she'd recorded with her own artwork on the cover.
Sometimes she'd play alongside other musicians, and one day, one of them, who she didn't know too well, struck up a conversation about spirituality. He just started talking to me about these spiritual kind of gurus who are actually really controlling and they use spirituality and spiritual practice to control people.
And it was suddenly like just something shifted in me. I don't know how to describe it, but I just felt, I think, a lot of anger towards Anne suddenly.
It doesn't sound like much, but for Huey, this was a huge moment.

Sometimes it's just about the right person saying the right thing at the right time,

and everything changes.

And this seems to be the lightbulb moment Stephen Hassan was talking about.

Step one, complete. When Huey was on the train home to Brighton later that day, she checked her phone.

There were several missed calls from Anne. And then Anne rang again.
So Huey picked up. She says Anne started asking her why she had been out busking for so long, why she hadn't gone home.
And so I was on the phone to her on the way home and I just said, look, Anne, you know, I really value our communication and our friendship and everything you've done for me over the years. And I just feel like maybe we don't need to speak every day.
Maybe it would be really nice for us if we could just like, you know, you have a few days experiencing life how you do and I can experience life how I do and then we can like catch up after a few days and she just said well maybe we'll just never speak again and just hung up and um I said what the hell I tried to call her back and her phone was off and she wouldn't pick up and then eventually she picked up and I was like Anne what's what's the matter I'm not saying I don't want to speak to you again I just said you know maybe we could just not speak every day and I feel it would be good for me to have a bit more room to experience life and then we can chat about you know our experiences and share you know in a nice way like have a nice friendship and a nice relationship and she just sounded really wounded, really upset, and quite fragile. I was like, okay, Hughie, okay, yeah, that's fine, okay.
And then I never really spoke to her again and that was it. Hughie had one more conversation with Anne after that.
There was an important development in her life that she wanted to share. When she'd moved to Brighton, she'd met someone who would become her partner.
And she was pregnant. So she emailed Anne.
She planned to tell her about this big update. She wrote back this message saying, I can't speak now.
I'm sorry I cannot be distracted I'm about to get all the final pieces it's all coming together it's all about the police it's all coming together I just I just can't be distracted from my journey now and I was like my god it's been like a year since we last spoke for like eight months and you're still talking about the same things like for years it was always oh this is the final piece of this is the last piece it's all coming together we're going to break through we're going to break it and so much had happened to me in my life huge life shifts that give you a different perspective and there she was still in her like obsession with these pieces and the

police and and yeah it was like the first moment where I was like something something not right

and yeah that's basically the end

but it's not the end it's not really the end. But it's not the end.
It's not really the end at all. There's an important distinction to make here.
Leaving Anne and reuniting with all the family and friends that have been cut from Huey's life are not the same thing. One doesn't necessarily lead to the other.
The sessions and everything else that came with them might have stopped there. But the thoughts and beliefs that had formed in Huey's head over years hadn't changed.
She still believed she was the victim of abuse at the hands of her family. As for Sarah, she had no idea that Huey had left Anne, or in fact, where Huey was.
She was still missing. The parapet that Sarah was so carefully watching from afar, the one she was praying to see her daughter emerge from under, didn't feel any closer.
I was sitting on a bus on my way home. I was about seven months pregnant and I don't know, it was really weird.
I was trying to decide what to make for dinner and I was like, okay, either I'm going to make veggie lasagna or I'm going to make a stir fry.

But each one was going to take me to a different shop. And I remember it felt like the biggest decision in the world.
And I was like, why does this feel like such a big decision? In the end, I chose the veggie lasagna. And I had to go to this health shop in Brighton to get those ingredients.
and so I was like and then one afternoon

I get an email

from someone in Brighton to get those ingredients. And so I was like...

And then one afternoon,

I get an email from somebody I'd been at school with

who said, oh, Sarah, my son Leo

is walking down a narrow alley in Brighton today

and he saw a vegan cafe

and he went in and there was Huey. And I sort of just saw him.
And by the time I'd seen him, it was almost too late to move. So I tried to just act really cool.
And he was like, hi. And I kind of had my shopping basket kind of, I think, almost in front of my tummy.
I was just trying to protect my just trying to hide and

somewhere I was like hi oh hi hi funny funny to see you just trying to act as normal as possible and then he just looked down at my tummy and was like what's this he then went on because I didn't know that he knew my family and he then was like oh I saw your mum recently and then suddenly I went into this plummet of despair because by this point even though I wasn't in touch with Anne anymore I still believed really strongly that all the stuff was real all the abuse stuff was real and Anne always said that if my family ever got me back, they'd want to section me, especially my grandmother,

because she'd want all the family secrets to be hidden.

So when he said that he knew my family,

I became really, really frightened.

And I remember walking...

And I just remember, you know,

I hadn't known where she was for two years,

and my legs just buckled under me.

And, I mean, it was completely extraordinary. Sarah had no clue where Huey was.
At one point, she heard a rumour she was abroad. She thought she'd lost her.
So this chance encounter, it was a new lead. And Sarah knew who could put it to use.
The private detective she'd used in the past. She picked up the phone and asked him if he could find Huey's current address.
And four hours later, four hours later, I get an address. And then I'm thinking, oh, you know, what do I do? What do I do? Sarah decided to send a postcard.
She worried that a letter in an envelope might be left unopened. I just wrote on the postcard, I hear you're having a baby in October.
I love you very much. This is my email.
She had no idea what, if anything, the response would be. So Sarah and her husband Henry went on a holiday they'd planned.
And they waited. I think it took me one or two weeks to decide what to do.
And eventually I was like, I can either spend the rest of my life running from my family, or I can turn and face them. When Huey met her partner, he'd listened to what she believed about her family and accepted it as the truth.
It was, like, a massive thing for him. But then after, like, a bit of time, he was like, you know, have you ever asked your family these things? Have you ever spoken to them? And he started challenging me quite early on he was like who is this woman I would sort of describe Anne he'd be like but that just doesn't sound normal why was she behaving like this or why was she like that and but he'd always said to me you need to speak to your family you need to confront them you need to at least if you can look them in the eye and say, I never want to speak to you again, it's better than just running and not talking to them.
Hughie decided to reply. She agreed to meet, but she had conditions.
She wanted to agree on a timeframe. It could be a 40-minute meeting in Brighton, no longer than that.
And then she sent her mum an email. The first contact she'd made in six years.
Ten days later, it's 11 o'clock at night, I can feel it like yesterday. My phone goes bing! And there's an email from her.
She's like, woke up Henry, was asleep. She said, she's answered, she's answered.
And he said, we'll answer in the morning. I said, no, no, we'll answer now.
And I just sent an email back saying, I accept any conditions, I love you. They agreed on a time and place to meet, just the two of them, mother and daughter.
And I remember walking towards the bus stop where we agreed to meet and I was so nervous. When they finally saw each other, it was a bit stilted and formal.
They'd not been around each other in this way for years. It was all unfamiliar and awkward.
They shook hands. And so she came round the corner, you know, this shawl over her head, and I wasn't quite sure.
You know, I was apprehensive, and I wanted to touch her, but it was definitely not a question of putting my arms around her because that would have been such an invasion of space. They started to walk up a hill, and after half an hour, Huey's nerves started to dissolve.
She was kind of able to undo so much in that

initial meeting that had taken years and years and years to build up so much mistrust, so much hatred, so much, you know, anger. And then it was just like melting away and melting away.
And she She was so soft and kind and non-confrontational.

I told her so many things that I believed had happened to me or that she'd done to me or that others had done to me and she never got angry with me. She wasn't defensive in any way.
I was able to just be really open with her and we just had a really honest conversation and so even though I'd given her this like 40 minute window I think we chatted for like two and a half hours and then literally we were like back straight back to being so close we called each other all the time and had these we had these long mammoth like two hour phone sessions where we would just talk about everything and anything

and we were just so close and it was really amazing.

Step 2 of Stephen Hassan's strategy was complete. And there's a temptation to leave it there with Huey and Sarah.
Often when I tell people about this story, they ask me, have they reunited with their families? It was one of the questions Mick Brown, the Telegraph journalist, asked me early on. He wasn't sure what had happened with them.
And it's what people want to hear. A coincidental meeting.
A joyful reunion. A neat and happy ending.
But the reality is much more complicated. The reunion is not the end of the story.
It's just the end of a chapter. And it's the final chapter, I think, that makes this story so

important.

Step three, coming to terms with the idea that everything you had believed was wrong you know it was just obviously you know one of the best days of my life it was just you know but it's you know i don't want anyone to think you know yes i got huey back five years ago but having to talk to somebody for three hours a day for two years, because it goes back to Steve Hassan saying, the third thing he said was the hardest thing is for them to come home because they have to accept that every single decision they made was wrong. And, you know, darling Huey for, you know, for three years said, you know, well, I completely accept, you wrong and you know and darling Huey for you know for three years said

you know well you know I completely accept you know you know that none of this happened but something must have happened to me because I can't believe I could have been taken and that's what's so frightening so Huey has definitely accepted that nothing happened to her but you to, you know, to come to that conclusion after you've been reunited with your family, it just shows how dangerous this mental abuse is. How do you think Huey is now? Well, I think she's, you know, she's, you know, an incredible mother and a wonderful daughter.
But, you know, she's been, she does get triggered because, you know, that woman took away her self-belief. You know, when other young people between 22 and 32 were learning to love themselves and to grow up, that woman stole that from her.
Ever since Huey reunited with her family, she's been trying to untangle herself from Anne's web, thread by thread. In the early days, she found help through a qualified and regulated psychotherapist.
He was very helpful to her. Huey says seeing him was a revelatory insight

into what good, effective mental health support should be.

And then about a year ago, I wanted to start dealing with Anne.

So she went to see someone called Dr Alex Stein,

who helps people understand how to identify and protect themselves

from recruitment to cults. She's destroyed people's lives, made them sick, and it doesn't just destroy the life of the person directly involved, it destroys their families as well.
It has a wide effect. And they're friends.
It wrenches someone out of their social world into this crazy world. When you first were told this story, did you recognize it immediately as a cult? Yes.
Yeah. I mean, the fact that it was tiny and sort of informally structured doesn't really matter it was a small group and it fit all my criteria of what a cult is you know there are cults everywhere you may be going to yoga you may join a running club you may join a christian study group, it was not surprising to me in that way.

You know, I hear these stories all the time, and there's so much more of this than people

understand. Yeah, it's a real threat.
It's a real threat to people.

Dr. Stein told me about a list of warning signs she's identified,

things to look out for that suggest someone is engaging in a cultic relationship. Dr Stein told me about a list of warning signs she's identified.

Things to look out for that suggest someone is engaging in a cultic relationship.

And as I listened to that list, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

You know, don't see your old friends anymore because they're going to hold back your development and your progress.

Warning signs include the leader being the only person with the answer. Only they can solve your problems.
Attempts to isolate you from existing relationships. You also isolate people from each other in the group.
The leader creates conditions of extreme stress. And the leader's world, you state, is the good world, the best world and the only good world.
And the leader's the only good person. And everything else outside is negative.
Then you arouse stress, threat, fear in the person. Those who leave are shunned or pitied.
The list goes on. And it takes a lot of bravery to speak about the perpetrator and about the group because they've spent a lot of time telling you, you know, that you're going to die if you break the rules.
And so you have to work through that fear. And I think that must be what Huey is confronting.
And again, I think it's really admirable. Good on you, Huey.
When Huey told Alex about what she'd been through with Anne, it proved to be cathartic. But there were so many lightbulb moments that first session with her where I was telling her all these things that Anne would teach me and the more she explained to me the more I was like I stopped feeling guilt that I was angry with Anne, I stopped feeling loyalty to Anne, I just felt so much anger because I was like oh my god she must have known she was doing.
But I swing in and out of it. It's very hard.
I've spoken with other cult experts too, to test what we've heard about Anne from her former clients. One, Daniel Shaw, a psychotherapist, believes that most cult leaders are often in denial about their own history of trauma and their solution to that is what he calls a delusion of omnipotence.
So in Anne's case, that's a belief in herself without any real credentials and without any real training, an entitlement to interpret and control other people based on a delusion, an omnipotent kind of righteousness. The term he uses to refer to this type of character is the traumatising narcissist.
This is not a clinical or definitive diagnosis. And of course, I'm not qualified to make one.

It's not my job.

But when I think about Anne,

what she was doing and why,

there is one thing I'm clear on.

The journey she took Huey and Tori on is not over.

The sessions may have ended a long time ago now,

but both of them are still dealing with the game. I appreciate the support, people.
This'll never get old. Okay, this is starting to get old.
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From her time with the horses in Spain, Tori went hitchhiking around the world. She said she put her experiences with Anne in a box in the back of her mind and hoped that the truth would emerge naturally as she roamed.
She can't recall one definitive lightbulb moment, but she does remember when she put her head above the parapet. Her cousin sent her a message while she was in New Zealand

that eventually led to a phone call.

But it would take some time before Tori spoke directly to her brother,

then her dad,

and longer still before she spoke to her mother.

It was the first conversation she had chosen to have with her in nine years. When we spoke for these interviews last year, it was only the second time Tori had visited London since she left on her travels.
And it was clear, like Huey, she was still figuring out just how far into her mind and memory Anne's web extended. It was like actually only last night that...

I'm going to get upset.

Yeah, it was only last night that I was able to actually like write down

like the main things that I was believing that really

were like the anchor points of my work with Anne for better for a better word and yeah last night was the first time like I actually typed it out and and and sort of faced it in a way so I think I'm still experiencing the effect of that and And I think there's a lot of feelings that I just haven't wanted to feel or confront or deal with. I'm still kind of landing with it.
But certainly there's a lot of emotion and yeah probably a lot of sadness

and I guess I didn't realize how much of an impact it had on me somehow maybe because I just how much believing that yeah I thought oh okay I'm I sort of thought I was fine somehow yeah

what first got me interested in this story

was that a woman

my age from a was fine somehow, yeah. What first got me interested in this story

was that a woman my age, from a similar world to mine,

had gone missing for years

because of what I heard was a rogue therapist figure.

I wondered how that would be possible.

Maybe it was an isolated story.

But over the months that we've been investigating,

it's become clear that Huey wasn't alone. After I sat down and listened to her story,

and then Tori and Phipsy, we started to hear from more former clients who had their own concerns

about Anne Craig. They came to eight in total, and we know of more who chose not to speak about their experience.

What emerged from the world was the first time I was in the world.

I was in the world of the world.

I was in the world of the world.

I was in the world of the world.

I was in the world of the world.

I was in the world of the world.

I was in the world of the world.

I was in the world of the world.

I was in the world of the world.

I was in the world of the world.

I was in the world of the world.

I was in the world of the world.

I was in the world of the world.

I was in the world of the world. I was in the world of the world.
I was in the world of the world. I was in the world of the world.
I was in the world of the world. concerns about Anne Craig.
They came to eight in total, and we know of more who chose not to speak

about their experience. What emerged from these conversations was a theme of controlling

unprofessional behaviour from the person they had sought help from. And so I became fixated

on trying to find out what had motivated Anne to behave that way, as did the rest of my team. It was the question that drove the making of this podcast.
The final one, I asked every person I interviewed, what do you think it was that motivated Anne? I think it was a power thing. Entrap and control people.

It is certainly not unusual for it to happen,

and I think sometimes they just enjoy the power.

Driven by their personalities and the needs of those unhappy

and unhealthy personality types.

It sounds to me like she's overcoming her own trauma

and trying to make everybody else join her club.

They might not admit that to themselves,

but I think that often is a motivation. I suspect we wouldn't have been as fascinated by the inner workings and psychology that drove Anne if she was a man.
I think I have, for better or worse, an inner propensity to expect and believe that men can intentionally do serious harm, whether it's dropping bombs on civilian populations, sexual assault, ruthless lies in the workplace at the cost of others, forming cults to manipulate people for their own personal gain. But women and malice.
Women knowingly doing serious harm. My knee-jerk response is to try and find a reason why that might not be true.
An excuse for why they did it. Or even a man who might be manipulating them.
It's a kind of inverse sexism against my own, I think. I went round and round with that thought process a lot in the making of this, and at times I felt concerned about Anne, in the way I don't think I would have worried about a man.
But the fact is that two young women lost years of their young lives to isolation and misery under her unwavering mission, and she destroyed their families in the process. And more than that, it's clear from spending time with Huey and Tori, both now well into their 30s, that they're still searching for the footing they lost in this world and in their

families and for the self-belief that Anne denied them. So what in the end do I think about Anne's motivations? Well, towards the end of our reporting, it felt like the right time to speak to her and ask her directly.
I'd always hoped to sit down with Anne and hear her side of the story. So we sent her a letter explaining what we'd been working on and asking if she'd be open to an interview.
And then we waited. Her response via her lawyer made it clear an interview would not be happening.
So instead, we sent her a list of the allegations that had been made against her, and a set of questions we hoped she'd answer. Questions like, are you still practising as a teacher of personal development? What motivated you in your work with clients? As we were writing this episode, we got a reply.
In a long letter from her lawyers, Anne Craig claims it is abundantly clear that we've been told inaccurate and incorrect information by those who feature in this podcast. Anne disputes or vehemently denies almost everything Huey, Tori and Phippsie have told us.
She claims that the allegations are baseless, false and defamatory. The details, fabrications.
The letter argues that because the police investigated Anne in 2014 and found no evidence of criminality, that it therefore means our investigation is of no purpose. But this was at a time when Huey and Tori were still having sessions with Anne, writing letters of support in her defence.
In the lawyer's letter, Anne says of Huey that she's prone to exaggeration and had difficulty with the truth. When I read this, I was reminded of something.
When I was interviewing him, the Telegraph journalist Mick Brown told me that Anne had said something very similar of FIPC in 2017, at a time when FIPC had left her, but Tori and Huey were still seeing Anne.

One of the few things Anne does admit to is instructing her clients to burn the writing they did for her.

She says, solely for confidentiality purposes.

She refutes that her actions have had damaging and lasting consequences,

and she refused to answer any of my questions, including the one about whether she's still working. So there it is.
No answers from Anne on why she did this. So I can't know what motivated her.

And she's definitely not offered any form of admission or apology, that's for sure.

But I think what her lawyer's letter does make clear to me is that whatever it is that drives her

has made her either blind to the damage caused

or has given her the conviction to willfully ignore it. After speaking to everyone involved in the story and the experts who have commented on it, it seems to me that a part of Anne may have believed in the lies she was feeding her clients, but that at the same time she was also

actively seeking more and more destructive power over these young women and over their families. And if she genuinely believed in and was concerned by this endemic sex abuse being covered up by the English upper middle class, then I can't make sense of why she aligned her own personal life so closely to that exact tiny world, whilst encouraging her clients to cut all ties with it.
Ultimately, though, we can't have total clarity on why she did this. But what I do have clarity on is that the impact she had on her clients, in particular on Huey and Tori, is a world away from what trained therapists, coaches and counsellors would want for their clients.
And that really is what matters.

That and the fact that she was able to do harm and to keep doing harm.

Because there will be others out there like Anne, with their own set of motivations,

who are treating paying clients and have access to their minds without the knowledge or training of what to do with that privilege. When I spoke with Dr Stein, she said that one of the problems is that we don't have any useful laws.
Huey's mum Sarah agrees, and she's actually been campaigning for that to change. She's very clear that the way Anne behaved was coercive and controlling.
And there is legislation that covers that kind of behaviour. But as it stands, it only applies to relationships that are intimate or within families.
So it's just not possible to apply that law to a relationship like Anne had with her clients. Sarah is not alone in thinking that the law around coercive control is too narrow.
And she's got the support of some politicians to push for change. But it's been slow work.
And even if there was an amendment to the law, there will always be loopholes. Arguably, a better way to start is to deal with a prevention rather than a cure.
Because for Anne and for other untrained, unregulated individuals doing harm under the guise of the title of healer, counsellor, therapist, analyst or self-development teacher, there is very, very little to stop them. The therapy and wellness industry is booming and like booming industries before it, it can be a wild west.
In this case of people who are not qualified to be entrusted with our mental health. There is also a wealth of trained and regulated practitioners out there who are qualified and are trustworthy and who are there to help make our lives better.

So be careful. Be careful who you choose to trust with your mind and your memories.
Tick the words right out of me, oh Lord She wouldn't stop screaming Hello What would you like to come out of you telling your story? I'd really just want to be part of raising awareness around mind manipulation and to be part of raising awareness of what that looks like and for my children to know exactly what that looks like. If Anne is working with other people

that I just hope she's not working with other people but I think there's a fear that maybe she is. But I'm not on a mission to hurt Anne or ruin her life, I'm just wanting to tell my truth so for me it's my anger towards towards Anne for not having proper training for believing that just because she broke down a company and put it back together that she could do that with people and people's brains and she didn't put me back together.
Yeah, I'd really like to see change that people no longer have the power to work

with people when they don't have the proper credentials to do so.

That's my answer. if you'd like to get in touch with us about your own experience

you can send us an email it's dangerousmemories at tortoisemedia.com If you're looking to speak to a reputable If you want to hear more of our investigations, you can listen to previous series right here on Tortoise Investigates. To hear more from Tortoise's award-winning newsroom, you can search for Tortoise wherever you get your podcasts.
You can get early access and ad-free listening to all Tortoise shows

by subscribing to Tortoise Plus or downloading the Tortoise app. Dangerous Memories was written and reported by me, Grace Hughes-Hallett, and by Gary Marshall.
The producer is Gary Marshall. Additional reporting and production from Imogen Harper.
Fact-checking was by Xavier Greenwood

Sound design and original composition Marshall. Additional reporting and production from Imogen Harper.
Fact-checking was by Xavier

Greenwood. Sound design and original composition from Tom Kinsella.
The theme music is Far Gone,

Don't Leave by Pictish Trail. Podcast artwork by Lola Williams.
The commissioning editor

was Basher Cummings. The executive producer was Kerry Thomas.

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Order once or set up recurring shipments for more savings, more convenience, and inflation proof pricing. Want to change your menu? No problem.
Swap items, skip a shipment or cancel

at any time with no questions asked. You're in control to get what you want when you want it.
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See site for details. Hello, it's Basha Cummings.
I'm one of the editors here at Tortoise. If you're a fan of our podcast, you won't want to miss the latest episode of the news meeting.
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