2025
What makes an intelligent Norwegian teenager join a cult and let her self be seduced and brainwashed by a disturbed cult leader?
As a 19 years old teenager, Cathrine Mostue moved from her home in Oslo to Eskilstuna
in Sweden to go to theater school. While she was a student there, she was
recruited by their teacher into a cult – a small, isolated group
that was supposed to “save the world”, and that was ruled with an iron fist by
a charismatic leader. At one point she even had to give up
her own name and take the name the sect gave her: Roxy Lenina.
But after seven years of humiliation and indoctrination,
she finally managed to escape.
How could this happen? What makes a Norwegian teenager let her self be
seduced and brainwashed by a disturbed cult leader? And which
mechanisms make radicalization possible?
In the book The Cult the author reflects on her personal story, based on her professional competence as a psychologist.
