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The Ant Hill Kids
A Canadian cult leader sounds bad, but like a little brother to a REAL cult leader. Bad, but could-be-worse kinda thing. Canada has cults, operating right now, and are every bit as horrible and terrifying as anywhere else in the world.
Trigger Warning — this story is not for the faint of heart, and deals with physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Take this as a warning from someone that researches crime all the time — this story made my stomach a little queasy.
Roch Thériault was a Canadian cult leader that founded The Ant Hill Kids in 1977 in Sainte-Marie, Quebec. Proclaiming himself a prophet, he was able to convince multiple people to leave everything behind and join him to form a religious commune.
Roch said that it was so people could freely listen to his motivational speeches.
Basing his teachings on the Seventh-day Adventist Church he originally preached the Churches healthy lifestyle, free of unhealthy foods and tobacco. Slowly, his teachings shifted. Slow enough that it probably would have been hard to notice if you listened to it every day, but he was getting more and more paranoid.
Members could not contact any family or have any contact with the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Roch claimed God spoke to him, and revealed that the world would end in 1979, so he decided to move the commune to a place in a mountainside he called “Eternal Mountain” in Saint-Jogues, where he said they could all be saved.
As his followers built his commune, Roch lounged around watching them thinking everyone looked like little ants, making an anthill, hence the name The Ant Hill Kids.
Roch’s paranoia got increasingly worse, as did the abuse suffered by his followers. Members were not allowed to speak to each other when he was not present, and there was no sex between members without his permission.
Punishment for misdeeds in Roch’s eyes was sadistic and often brutal. He would spy on…
