Like many people, I’d imagine, I’ve never understood how people get caught up in cults. But in Dinner for Vampires, actress Bethany Joy Lenz lays bare the 10 years she spent ensnared in a cult, while to the outside world, she was one of the leads of a cult TV show. And it makes for fascinating reading.
By the time Lenz was cast as Hayley in One Tree Hill, she was already involved in the Big House Family. She’d moved to Los Angeles at just 20 years old and was looking for a community to belong to. She found it in a Bible study group frequented by others in the entertainment business. For a while, it provided a safe, supportive space.
But the group started to change when a new pastor joined the meetings and gradually assumed the role of de facto leader. In Dinner for Vampires, Lenz refers to him as Les. The names of all the cult members and the location they were primarily based in have been changed in the book. But in reality, it’s well-documented that the leader was Mike Galeotti, the man who would later become her father-in-law.
Convincing Lenz to marry his son was just one of the ways the cult’s leader exerted control. Another way that’s painfully recounted in Dinner for Vampires was persuading Lenz that taking her dream role as the lead in Beauty and the Beast on Broadway wasn’t in her best interests. The offer came on the back of a One Tree Hill concert tour that had taken her on the road for months. So in reality, ‘Les’ sensed this could mean her slipping further away from the group. He convinced her that what she really needed was the Big House Family and spending more time at their commune-style home in ‘Idaho’.
All of this, of course, came at the expense of her own family. Over time, she became physically and emotionally separated from her parents. She also distanced herself from fellow cast members at One Tree Hill, who, it later emerged, were becoming increasingly concerned about her. As a UK fan of the show, I was totally oblivious, though eventually rumours did start to emerge Stateside.
In Dinner for Vampires, Lenz lays it all on the line, often with humour and great humility, trying to help others understand how cults or ‘high-demand groups’ draw people in. She also explains just how hard it was to get out. Once she did, she realised $2m was missing from her bank accounts and getting it back was impossible. But she fought hard to gain custody of the daughter she shares with ‘QB’ aka Michael Galeotti Jr, not wanting her to be any further exposed to the Big House Family world.
Rosie is clearly the one good thing that came from Lenz’s time with the cult. But despite that, I think writing this book is her way of trying to ensure that others don’t get caught in the sort of web that’s very hard to untangle themselves from.
I borrowed Dinner for Vampires from my local library, but it’s also available from bookshops, including the charity Oxfam, which is Europe’s biggest retailer of second-hand books. For more book reviews, visit the Books section of my blog.