Cults have always been an interesting topic. They are filled with weak-minded humans who follow the most pathetic people and accept them as their owners, just like a flock follows their shepherd. Throughout human history, there have been many cults. Some were a secret, and some were not. Some were very violent, and some were for the betterment of humankind. Here is one such cult, one of the most gory, violent and inhumane. This cult was known as The Ant Hills Kids.
Birth Of The Priest
Just like how every cult has a mastermind, Roch Thériault was the mastermind of this infamous cult. He was born on May 16, 1947, in Quebec, into a French-Canadian family. He was a child prodigy in studies. But, he dropped out of school in 7th grade and began studying Old Testament. He believed that the world would soon get destroyed because of the battle between good and evil. Soon, he converted from catholicism to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He began practising the denomination’s regular holistic beliefs, a healthy lifestyle free of unhealthy foods and tobacco. During this period, he developed his social and manipulation skills, and soon he did the unbelievable.
The Cult Begans
Roch convinced a group of people to leave their jobs and join him in his journey, forming a cult in Quebec, where people could listen to his speech and live in unity and peace. His fear of the world getting destroyed was growing. He claimed that God himself had told him about the destruction of the world. Soon, out of fear, he moved his cult to a mountainside in Saint-Gogues. He believed that he would be safe there. After reaching the site, Roch ordered his commune to make a town. He compared his commune members to ants, working on an ant hill.
He prophesied that the world would end in February 1979, which never happened. His commune started questioning him. But, he defended himself, saying that time works differently in heaven, and he must have miscalculated the exact time. He expanded his community, marrying all the females and impregnating them. He fathered 20 children, and by 1980, there were 40 members. All the followers wore identical tunics to represent the equality and unity of the commune.
Torture Worse Than Hell
After some time, he became totalitarian over the lives of his followers and irrational in his beliefs. Members were not allowed to speak to each other when he was not present, nor were they allowed to have sex with each other without his permission. He started to be abusive towards his followers, yet, they still didn’t question his authority. Soon, he began inflicting punishment on his followers. At first, he used to hit them with a belt or hammer, suspend them from the ceiling, pluck each of their body hairs individually and even defecate on them. Over time, He became very violent. He used to make his members break their legs with sledgehammers, sit on lit stoves, shoot each other on the shoulders and eat mice. Followers were asked to cut the toes of other members to prove their loyalty. Children were sexually abused and were nailed to trees while other children threw stones at them. A woman left her newborn child outside to die in freezing temperatures to keep him away from the abuse. Roch started to perform surgeries where he injected a 94% ethanol solution into the stomach of his followers. Once, a lady complained of stomach ache, Roch laid her naked on a table, and punched her in the stomach, then forced a plastic tube into her rectum to perform a crude enema with molasses and olive oil. He cut open her abdomen with a knife and ripped out part of her intestines with his bare hands. He made another member stitch her up using needle and thread and had the other women shove a tube down her throat and blow through it. The lady died the next day from the damage inflicted by the procedures. Claiming to have the power of resurrection, Roch bored a hole into the lady’s skull with a drill and then had other male members (along with himself) ejaculate into the cavity. When the lady did not return to life, her corpse was buried a short distance from the Ant Hill Kids commune.
Lavallee, a member of the commune, was brutally punished. She suffered welding torch burns to her genitals, a hypodermic needle breaking off in her back, and eight of her teeth being forcibly removed. She tried to escape from the commune but failed. Upon her return, Roch cut parts of her breast, smashed her head on the blunt side of an axe, pinned her hand to a wooden table with a hunting knife, and then used a cleaver to amputate her arm.
Behind The Bars On The Pool Of His Blood
In 1989, Thériault was arrested for assault after Lavallée had fled the commune again and contacted authorities, effectively dissolving the Ant Hill Kids. Provincial authorities had long-held suspicions about Thériault’s cult due to the particularly primitive living conditions of its membership, but because the commune was officially registered as a church, officials were legally unable to investigate the adults, and could not do much except ensure the welfare of the children. Thériault was found guilty of assault and received a sentence of 12 years imprisonment. The vast majority of the cult’s followers abandoned Thériault after his arrest, but during his imprisonment, he fathered another four children with remaining female members during conjugal visits. Lavallée’s report allowed further investigation into Thériault’s actions, exposing the wider abuses at the communes and Solange Boilard’s murder. In 1993, Thériault pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the death of Solange Boilard and was sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2000, Thériault was transferred to Dorchester Penitentiary, a medium-security prison in Dorchester, New Brunswick. In 2002, Thériault was rejected for parole as he was considered too high a risk to re-offend, and he never applied again.
On February 26, 2011, at age 63, Thériault was found dead near his cell. His death is believed to be the result of an altercation with his cellmate, Matthew Gerrard MacDonald, a 60-year-old convicted murderer.
Conclusion
We humans are so dependent on each other that most of us can’t live without putting our trust and faith in another person. Most of the time, we trust the wrong person and end up ruining our lives. We must learn how to be independent or people like Roch would come and make us their slaves. We shouldn’t be like a flock of sheep that blindly follows the shepherd. We should rather be the shepherd or the wolf.
