This is an ABC podcast.

It was the 70s.

Toro Cleviour was 22 and he was feeling a drift in life.

His mother had died a year earlier and now he was traveling through Europe.

And on the way back through to Australia, I was alone and feeling pretty lonely and lacking

purpose and meaning in life.

So you were at sort of an emotional crossroads, I guess.

Yeah, I think like many young people, I was very disillusioned with society.

I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.

One day, in the Netherlands, just on the streets, he met some friendly people from a church.

Yeah, they did a lot of recruiting out on the street, and they'd pass out and talk to people.

And I met them in that context.

Right.

And then it wasn't a typical church, so we would go back to a coffee shop and they would have performances

and things on the weekends in the evenings, and it was all very exciting. Yeah, so did you just think

you were joining a group of young Christian people, or, you know, like it was it a youth group

kind of thing that you thought you were joining? Yeah, they put themselves forward as being Christian

missionaries with a difference.

And, yeah, when I met them, they were the most wonderful pseudo family, very loving and caring.

And it was like joining a drugless hippie commune, if you like.

It was great.

Tara didn't know it yet, but what he had in fact joined was a cult, and he'd spend the next 11 years of his life with them.

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