A gripping account of the brutal impact of spiritual and violent extremism.
Carli McConkey was 21 years old when she happened upon New Age guru, Natasha Lakaev, and her personal development company, Life Integration Programmes, at the Mind Body Spirit Festival in Sydney, Australia in 1996.
What at first appeared professional and promising, became a vehicle for psychological and physical abuse. Over the next thirteen years, Carli lost her freedom...her mind...and her family.
This memoir demonstrates the subtle and insidious process of mind control, gives insights into the period of recovery after escape, and shows how determination and strength can overcome adversity.
McConkey, Carli: - At 21 years of age, Carli McConkey was recruited into the doomsday cult, Universal Knowledge (formerly known as Life Integration Programmes), run by cult leader Natasha Lakaev (now a registered Clinical Psychologist with AHPRA, Australia's psychology field regulator). She escaped at age 35 with her three children in January, 2010. Carli says 'escape', because she was threatened by Lakaev that if she left, Lakaev would report her to the Department of Child Safety (DoCS) as an abusive mother, sign off as a Psychologist, and have Carli's three children taken from her. The group's members were indoctrinated to believe that Lakaev was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ, the Queen of Atlantis, and "one of 12 on the Intergalactic Council of the Universe". Lakaev prophesied that the world would end in an Armageddon scenario around 11:11:11 (later 12:12:12) and said there would be few survivors apart from herself and her group and that members and their children would only survive if they remained with Lakaev. From a young age, every week at Mass in the Catholic Church Carli was told: "Jesus will come again". After initial love bombing and mind control techniques had been utilised, when this manipulative and persuasive personality presented herself as a reincarnation or 'shaft' of Jesus Christ and preached that the world as we know it would end, these concepts did not seem so far-fetched in Carli's mind. Carli won judgement in her favour on 1 March 2024 in the Supreme Court of Tasmania, Hobart, defending herself (self-represented) in defamation proceedings instigated by Lakaev in 2018. Justice Estcourt AM described Lakaev as "an arrant liar", and ruled her "a cult leader", "a criminal", and "a violent extremist". Carli educates on cults and coercive control as well as advocates for State and Federal Police to investigate and prosecute cult leaders for their crimes including coercive and deceptive recruitment, grooming, physical and sexual assault, fraud, human trafficking, and Modern Slavery.
