Church Of The Lamb Of God: How The Cult Used Fear For Control
Anna LeBaronAnna LeBaron with her brother Eddie before she escaped the famous cult.
Anna LeBaron was not only born into the Church of the Lamb of God cult — she was fathered by its leader, Ervil LeBaron. Responsible for more than 20 murders, LeBaron was a ruthless patriarch. While Anna LeBaron can count the number of times she was in the same room as him on one hand, his power was indisputable.
“We were taught to live in awe of him as God’s prophet, as the one true prophet on Earth,” recalled LeBaron.
Though he had practiced polygamy since at least the 1950s, he started his own sect as an offshoot of the Mormon religion in the early 1970s. His devoted members included his 13 wives, with whom he fathered more than 50 children. And while Anna LeBaron and her peers were taught that they were celestial children born from a prophet, they were treated horribly.
“He used fear to manipulate and control people,” she said. “We were absolutely afraid of not doing what we were told. And we didn’t have a choice.”
It was only after the fact that LeBaron realized that her Mexican birthplace was really a cult hideout. Separated from her mother — the cult leader’s fourth wife — at an early age, LeBaron was constantly forced to move around so that the law wouldn’t catch up to the group.
“We were taught that we were being persecuted because we were God’s chosen people and that the world outside didn’t understand us,” she recalled. “That was how they used to explain all the moving in the middle of the night and staying ahead of the law.”
The cult used its children as manual laborers, with domestic appliance repair shops serving as the cult’s source of income. Any attitude from the kids was met with brutal punishment.
“And these are young kids,” recalled LeBaron. “They’re kids. How much work can you really get out of a 10-year-old, or an 11-year-old, really? You can get work out of them if you are beating them.”
Anna LeBaronErvil LeBaron with his fourth wife, Anna’s mother, Anna Mae Marston.
“It was patriarchy, for sure,” said LeBaron. “And the young girls were groomed to become wives of polygamist men that already had wives. We were groomed to accept that and to know that that’s where we were headed when we became of marriageable age.”
Making matters worse, the marriageable age for Ervil LeBaron was 15 years old. Fortunately for Anna LeBaron, she escaped two years prior to her 15th birthday. But little did she know that her father was being hunted by the FBI at the time, for several murders on both sides of the border.
Naturally, he rarely got his own hands dirty — once again using devoted cult members to do it for him. However, he was eventually captured by the Mexican police and handed over to the FBI in 1979. He died just a couple years later in prison.
When he died, most of his 200-plus followers began to splinter from, and ultimately abandon, the faith. Despite her traumatizing upbringing, LeBaron is grateful to have escaped and is now fully aware of what to avoid.
“When you are so convinced that someone is right, that you are willing to do anything — and even if you disagree, if you are so afraid to voice that disagreement and you just go and do it — that’s the ultimate control,” she said. “And he had that. People did what he said. To their own detriment.”
