A woman who grew up in an extremist Christian ‘cult’ has opened up about the strict rules she had to follow as a child.

Marissa Martin, 24, has taken to TikTok to discuss the religious ‘cult’ she was forced to be a part of during her childhood.

She noted at the start of the clip that she usually doesn’t get hate on any of her content, but this changes when she opens up about her heavy Christian upbringing.

Marissa, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, made no mistake of describing the experience as a cult, and made sure that people were not mistaking it for something less intense.

“I grew up in a cult.” (TikTok/@marissagmatin)

She said: “This cult I grew up in, yes it was a Christian cult. So a lot of Christians that watch my videos or see the video get personally offended by me saying, ‘I grew up in a cult’.

“But here’s the thing – it was an extremist Christian religion. Extremist, okay?”

More specifically, her family had been a part of the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church.

The organisation, which is made up of local churches who preach deeply fundamentalist Christian beliefs, was actually part of a docu series called Let Us Prey: A Ministry of Scandals.

The group was depicted to be harrowing in the series, bringing specific attention to the sexual abuse of women and girls that had been happening across congregations.

But Marissa went into more detail about the strict rules that people were made to follow as part of the cult.

She said: “We had to wear skirts down to the mids of our calves.

“We couldn’t show our ankles. We had to wear crew socks. We also had to wear pantyhose [under skirts]. We couldn’t show our shoulders or our collarbones.”

She further explained that nail polish was completely banned, unless it was the lightest shade of pink possible.

She noted that guys and girls were basically never allowed to do anything together.

Listing more rules, Marissa continued: “We weren’t allowed to listen to music – no CDs, no MP3 players, no phones.

“When I was in school as a kid, my parents had to sign a contract at the beginning of the year that we would not have a phone. The list goes on and on.”

She went on to add: “If you’re one of my haters that is personally offended by me saying, ‘I grew up in a cult,’ because you feel like I’m being disrespectful to the Christian religion, all I have to say is, if you’re wearing pants in your videos, they don’t like you.

“They think you’re gonna go to hell, so you can’t win.”

Warning: This article contains discussion of child abuse which some readers may find distressing.

A man accused of the murder of a 13-year-old girl has had his ‘disgusting’ text messages to her revealed in court last week.

On January 9, 2024, Na’Ziyah Harris was last seen getting off a school bus in Morningside, a neighborhood in the east side of Detroit, Michigan.

The middle schooler has not been seen since and is presumed dead, with her body not yet being located.

More than nine months later, Jarvis Butts was arrested and charged with first-degree premeditated murder, second-degree criminal sexual conduct and child sexually abusive activity.

His preliminary hearing to conclude whether the case should go to trial began on January 6, 2025, to Thursday (January 9), with various witnesses testifying to the court, ClickonDetroit reports.

The 42-year-old is accused of having an intimate relationship with Na’Ziyah, with authorities believing he’d been sexually abusing Na’Ziyah since 2022.

The text messages between the pair were read out aloud in court by Sergeant Shannon Jones, who is in charge of the case surrounding the 13-year-old’s disappearance.

Exchanges between them began on September 27, 2022, but the messages interchanged suggest they had been talking for a while beforehand.

Na’Ziyah Harris went missing last year and is presumed deceased (WDIV)

The messages on September 27, 2022, showed Butts asking her where they were ‘doing it’ before concluding the exchange with ‘And make sure you erase the messages’, to which the teenager replied: “K that is what I planned to do.”

Other text messages show Butts texting the 13-year-old ‘I stole your panties’ and then later on June 27, 2023, the accused messaged ‘Are you naked yet’, to which Na’Ziyah replied: “No I don’t wanna get naked.”

On September 26, 2023, Na’Ziyah told Butts that she believed that she might be pregnant.

On November 27, 2023, Na’Ziyah sent a series of text messages to Butts, with one reading: “I don’t what your problem but I need you to bring me what I need tonight it’s hard doing all this gym s*** with this baby and if I don’t do em I’m gonna get a F.”

According to ClickOnDetroit, further text records show that Butts was searching for abortion pills and drinking red anti-freeze online.

Then the final message came on the day of Na’Ziyah’s disappearance.

Jarvis Butts is accused of murdering Na’Ziyah Harris in January last year (Detroit Police Department)

On January 9, 2024, she text him: “Don’t forget be there before 3 I will let you know when I’m leaving the school if you not there I will wait.

“Send OK if you see the message so I can delete your number.”

To which Butts replied: “OK.”

Following the preliminary hearing, Judge Aliyah Sabree decided that Butts will stand trial for Na’Ziyah’s murder, telling him (via CBS News): “You’re the monster in this whole picture.”

She also called the text messages ‘disgusting’, adding: “Na’Ziyah deserved so much more.”

He has also been charged with the sexual abuse of two other girls in separate cases. His murder trial is scheduled for today (January 16).

If you’ve been affected by any of these issues or want to speak to someone in confidence regarding the welfare of a child, the Childhelp USA National Child Abuse Hotline (1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453) operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and receives calls from throughout the United States, Canada, US Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico.

A woman who escaped a ‘polygamist sect’ known as the Kingston Group has detailed the exact moment she knew she had to get out.

Priscilla Tucker, who is from Utah, was raised in the Kingston Group, which encourages polygamy and marrying someone within your own family.

Priscilla, who has since escaped and is living a very different life at the age of 27, has been speaking about her time in the ‘cult’ on social media and podcasts.

At the age of 17, Priscilla was told she’d been marrying her cousin.

A disturbing family tree

“My whole entire family wanted me to marry my first cousin,” she told the Cults to Consciousness podcast. “But I didn’t want to marry my first cousin. So I told him not to propose to me, and he said he wouldn’t.”

Priscilla managed to escape the ‘cult’ (TikTok/@priscillatucker882)

Priscilla added: “”It was such a weird feeling for me because his mom is my mom’s sister and then my dad is his dad’s uncle so I was related on both sides.

“Normally in The Order, when you marry your cousin, you don’t grow up playing with them and doing everything with them but I did because it was our moms that were sisters.

“It was just so weird because his mom would be like, ‘Oh my gosh I’m so happy because I know that you’re going to be so amazing and I already know you’.

“And then our grandma said, ‘Oh my gosh I’m so happy that my two grandkids are getting married’.”

Priscilla didn’t end up marrying her cousin, and managed to put together an escape plan to leave the life she was brought up within.

Plotting to escape

She ultimately got away from her family at the age of 17 by moving to a safe house – but her family were certainly not going to let her leave without a fight.

Priscilla was close to marrying her cousin (TikTok/@priscillatucker882)

Priscilla’s mom organised a ‘kidnapping’ which saw her taken to a camp where they taught women the teachings of the sect.

She did manage to escape once more, but it was certainly an eventful one.

“I ended up running away in the middle of the night and I took a bus to Las Vegas,” she explained.

Priscilla’s life is very different nowadays, living with her partner and their daughter.

“There’s so many issues and honestly I feel like the main issues are mental,” she added.

“Like, you can obviously tell from the physical issues, but the mental issues are so much worse.”

A woman admitted she was ashamed of her actions when it was discovered she had kept her friend’s body in their home over a year after his death.

In a rather macabre story, a Michigan woman admitted she had kept her friend’s dead body for months in her home.

The bizarre incident occurred back in July 2012, with reports identifying the woman as 72-year-old Linda Chase.

The flatmate and friend she had kept in the home after his natural death was identified as 67-year-old Charles Williams Zigler.

Charles Williams Zigler’s body was found 18 months on from his death following a welfare check (Family handout)

Chase admitted to keeping his body and cashing social security checks, but said she was doing this for him when he was alive anyway.

She also said that she would speak to him everyday and would watch NASCAR on TV with him in the living room, also taking efforts to wash his body.

Chase said: “It’s not that I’m heartless. It’s just that after so many bad things happen to you, I don’t know. If you had to know Charlie, he had the best sense of humor in this whole world.”

The pair were had been living together for ten years and Chase attempted to explain why she did it.

She said: “I know this is horrible, but after awhile, you get… I don’t know what you call it, I don’t know. I didn’t want to be alone. He was the only guy who was ever nice to me.”

The discovery was only made after Zigler’s family asked for a welfare check as they hadn’t heard from him in a long time.

The home in Jackson, Michigan, where Zigler’s rotting body had been for 18 months (MLive)

Explaining to the dispatch why a check was necessary, his neice, Barb Zigler, said: “We’ve been trying to get a hold of him. My aunt is being put in hospice – that’s his sister – and my cousin’s been trying to get a hold of him for quite a while.

“My brother even stopped in about a month ago and his girlfriend’s always saying that he’s gone. But he’s on oxygen, he can barely get around by himself. Nobody’s heard from him in quite a while. We’re concerned about him.”

When the police arrived at the Jackson, Michigan, house, they found Zigler’s mummified body covered in blankets and lying in a cloth recliner chair in the living room.

Police believe he had died around Christmas 2010 and his body had been left decaying in the house since that time. An autopsy also concluded that he had died of natural causes.