Religious Trauma Syndrome: Surviving the Daybell Case | Lori Vallow's Son Speaks
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Tony Brueski
4.2 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2026
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
In October 2024, Colby Ryan posted a recording of a prison call with his mother.
She told him she'd be exonerated. That Jesus showed her. That everything was according to Chad Daybell's plan.
His siblings are dead. His mother killed them. And she still believes she was right.
This is Part 5 of "The Chosen Ones," our final episode examining the psychology of spiritual abuse and religious trauma through the Vallow-Daybell case. Today we focus on what happens after — the long, painful work of rebuilding identity when everything you believed has collapsed.
For Colby Ryan, it means loving a mother he can no longer reach.
For Melanie Gibb, it means living with the question of why she didn't see sooner.
For everyone who has left a high control religion, it means carrying a question that never fully goes away: How did I believe this?
This episode is for survivors. The answer isn't that you're stupid. The answer is that you're human. Someone exploited your best impulses — your desire for meaning, belonging, purpose.
Religious Trauma Syndrome is real. Dr. Marlene Winell coined the term to describe the complex PTSD that results from authoritarian religious environments.
The apocalypse Chad Daybell promised never came. But you're still here. And that matters.
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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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