doomsday cult

Raël: The Alien Prophet is a Netflix docuseries exposing Raëlism, the UFO-based cult founded by French ex-journalist Claude Vorilhon, accused of fraud, abuse, and a cloning hoax.

Sins of Our Mother is a Netflix docuseries about the Vallow-Daybell murders — Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell, charged in the deaths of her two children and others.

The Jesus Army case is a widespread institutional abuse scandal involving the Jesus Fellowship Church in the UK, where multiple leaders and members committed sexual and physical abuse over decades.

The Rajneeshee case is a 1984 bioterror attack in The Dalles, Oregon, where followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh poisoned restaurant salad bars with salmonella, sickening 751 people.

The ACMTC case is a New Mexico child abuse and kidnapping prosecution of cult co-leaders Deborah and James Green, tied to the 2014 death of a 12-year-old boy at their rural compound.

The Samuel Bateman case is an Arizona child sexual abuse and unlawful imprisonment case from 2022, in which a self-styled polygamist prophet was prosecuted for abusing multiple underage girls in his sect.

In July and August 1978, a religious cult case in Utah ended in multiple deaths when cult leader Immanuel David took his own life and his wife Rachel David threw the couple's children from a hotel balcony.

On April 19, 1993, a federal assault on a Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, resulted in a fire that killed 76 people, including children. The siege remains one of the most disputed law enforcement operations in American history, with questions about government tactics still unresolved three decades later.

Founded in the late 1960s by former pastor David Brandt Berg, the Children of God grew into a global organization with an estimated 10,000 members by the 1970s. Operating across 70 countries, the group systematized child sexual abuse under religious doctrine, leaving survivors with lifelong trauma.

Ervil LeBaron, leader of a polygamous Mormon fundamentalist cult, orchestrated at least 25 to 33 murders across two decades from his base in San Diego, California. Even after his death in Utah State Prison in 1981, his followers continued committing killings in his name well into the 1990s.

Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader responsible for the deaths of 1.5 to 3 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979, died in 1998 without ever facing trial for crimes that devastated a nation. His regime systematically murdered intellectuals, religious minorities, and perceived enemies of the state.

In 1977, Roch Thériault established the Ant Hill Kids, a commune in Quebec that became synonymous with systematic torture, child abuse, and murder. By the time authorities dismantled the cult in 1981, Thériault had fathered over 20 children with members and subjected dozens—including 26 children—to horrific abuse under the guise of religious purification.