Cult Survivor Recovery: Healing After the Daybell Case When the Abuser Never Changes
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 907 Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2026
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lori Vallow still believes she's chosen.
In a 2025 Dateline interview, she maintained her innocence. She claimed Jesus showed her she'd be exonerated. She showed no remorse.
Meanwhile, her surviving son Colby is trying to figure out how to live in the aftermath of something that can never be fixed.
This is Part 5 of "The Chosen Ones," Hidden Killers' final episode examining the psychology of spiritual abuse and religious trauma through the Vallow-Daybell case. Today we focus on the survivors — and on everyone who has ever walked out of a high control religion and had to rebuild from nothing.
This episode is for you if you've ever asked: How did I believe this?
The answer isn't stupidity. The answer is that you're human. Belief systems that promise meaning, identity, and belonging are designed to be compelling. They target seekers. They target the faithful. They catch good people.
The shame you carry was put there by the system. You can put it down.
Sometimes the person who hurt you never wakes up. Sometimes the apology never comes. You have to heal anyway.
The apocalypse Chad Daybell predicted never came. But you're still here. And being here matters.
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#ReligiousTrauma #SpiritualAbuse #ChadDaybell #LoriVallow #ColbyRyan #HiddenKillers #CultSurvivor #Healing #Deconstruction #HighControlReligion
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 0:03.4 | Here now, Tony Bruske. |
| 0:06.7 | In October 2024, Colby Ryan posted a recording on his YouTube channel. |
| 0:12.1 | It was a phone call he'd had with his mother from prison. |
| 0:16.3 | In it, Lori's voice is calm, almost, and I don't say this in a way of like, wow, she's dreamy, |
| 0:26.4 | but it almost sounded dreamy, kind of like out there, dreamy. |
| 0:32.1 | She tells me, son, that Jesus has shown her she will be exonerated. |
| 0:37.7 | Well, your mother's just, you know, been convicted of murdering your brother and sister |
| 0:43.6 | and she tells you on that jailhouse phone call, hey, guess what? |
| 0:46.7 | Jesus said, I'm going to be exonerated. |
| 0:48.7 | Well, it's game over for me too, isn't it? |
| 0:51.2 | I mean, I'd be like, all right, mom, cool. |
| 0:57.1 | And she and Chad will be freed that everything is going according to the divine plan. |
| 1:02.5 | Colby, listen, you can hear the exhaustion in his responses. |
| 1:07.4 | He's not arguing with her. He's not trying to convince her of anything he's just present |
| 1:13.2 | witnessing surviving another conversation with the woman who was convicted of killing his |
| 1:21.4 | siblings because that's colby ryan's life now his younger brother j j's dead his sister tyly's |
| 1:27.3 | dead his stepfather charles is dead, his sister, Tiley's dead, his stepfather Charles is dead, |
| 1:29.2 | his mother is serving life without parole. |
| 1:31.7 | Her husband is on death row, and his mother still believes she did the right thing. |
| 1:37.4 | This is the position. |
| 1:40.0 | Spiritual abuse leaves you in. |
... |
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