My name is Yuan Rong (a pseudonym). I’m 40 years old now and from Wanzai County, Yichun City, Jiangxi Province. In October 2018, I was sentenced to three years in prison for participating cult organization and violating state laws. In October 2021, I was released and went back home.
My husband and I got married in 2005. We have two children, a girl and a boy. The daughter is 15 years old and in her second year of junior high school, while the 12-year-old son is in the sixth grade. We used to have a very warm and happy little family, but I ruined everything because I failed to preserve my moral integrity and went astray after “unexpectedly” meeting with the evil “Almighty God” cult.
It’s unbearable for me to recall the past. In 2016, my husband, as a long-distance freight driver, started to have an affair. Since then, his heart had gradually drifted away from our family. Not only did he ignore us at the usual time, but also he didn’t go home even on New Year’s Day or other festivals. While no longer bringing money back home, he conned me out of all our savings to buy a car for his mistress, leaving rest of us so poor that I couldn’t even afford the cost of daily meals for the children when they went to school.
Because of my husband’s ruthlessness, I was under tremendous mental distress to the verge of total emotional breakdown. Looking back on our marriage of over ten years, I gave birth to two children, I brought them up, I worked very hard for this family, but I ended up having a family which was more in name than reality. I felt too shamed to face my parents who had endured hardships to raise me. At that time, I had the idea of committing suicide, but I didn’t do so only because I still deeply cared about my children.
One day, I ran outside alone and wept. At that time, an elder sister saw me in sorrow and came to comfort me. She asked me what difficulties I had first, then she told me that she was also in similar pains brought about by her failed marriage. But she said she had found a new spiritual pillar which was “Almighty God”. She further appeased me that no matter what difficulties people run into, they would be helped by “God” as long as they believed in “God”, relied on “God” and prayed to “God”.
I was so depressed at that time that the elder sister and her comforting words were like life-saving straw at which I was desperate to clutch. I promised to listen to it with her. The other people there were all as nice and kind to me as the elder sister, making me lose my judgement and think that I could find the long-lost warmth again in that family there.
In this way, I unwittingly fell into the “trap” set for me by my “friends” and joined the “Almighty God” cult in February 2017. The closer I was with the elder sister, the more obsessed I became with “Almighty God”. I basically spent all my time on it. In the meantime, dramatic changes had taken place in my mind as if I could finally forget about those pains and heavy burdens in my life. And I could even become indifferent to my children. I would do whatever the “Almighty God” cult demanded me to do. It was not until I was arrested by police that I suddenly realized I had violated laws and committed inexcusable crimes.
During my years in prison, with the patient and meticulous help of deprogramming police officers, I gradually realized the true colors and evil nature of the “Almighty God” cult.
The deprogramming police officers were always patient to me and educated me in a meticulous way, making me fully realize hideous features of the “Almighty God” cult. When in the prison, I reflected on my mistakes and looked back on every single detail of my days as a follower in the “Almighty God” organization. I felt deep remorse about wrong path I took from the bottom of my heart and made up my mind to clearly break away from the cult and to make a fresh start in life. In the near future, I will go south to Guangdong Province to find a suitable job and earn some money. In this way, I could make a living by relying on my own efforts so that I wouldn’t be a liability of the society. Furthermore, I could save some money to fund my daughter and son for their tuition fees at universities in a later time so that they could enjoy a promising future.
