One Tree Hill star reveals how she got roped into cult for 10 years: ‘I was looking for a place to belong’

One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz has revealed how she got roped into a religious cult – which she remained part of for 10 years.

The 43-year-old is about to release a memoir called Dinner For Vampires, in which she alleges that she experienced ‘manipulation, abuse and fear’ at the hands of what she thought was a church covenant.

In the official description of her book, she said she was under the control of the ‘domineering minister’ of The Big House Family for a decade before she finally left. 

She has claimed the minister convinced her to marry his son and stole millions of dollars from her television income from One Tree Hill, which ran from 2003 to 2012. 

Now, with her book arriving on the shelves next week, she has told the story of how she was first enticed to join the organization to People. 

One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz has revealed how she got roped into a religious cult – which she remained part of for 10 years; pictured 2022 

Bethany always had an Evangelical Christian background, but during her childhood, she moved several times and had ‘always been looking for a place to belong.’

Her parents divorced when she was 16 years old – one year before she got her big break on the soap opera Guiding Light after years as a child actress.

Amid the instability of her upbringing, she was able to root herself in her acting, as well as in the Bible-study group where she met people who shared her worldview.

The Bible-study sessions were ‘water in a desert’ to Lenz, who would discuss God, pray and sing with the other members of her group.

‘We crave that kind of intimacy. The idea that someone out there says: “No matter what you do or how badly you might behave or what dumb choices you make, I still love you, and I’m here for you,”‘ she explained.

Soon, a pastor she refers to as ‘Les’ began appearing at Bible-study, taking charge of sessions – and persuading attendees to move to his communal ‘Big House’ in Idaho.

‘It still looked normal. And then it just morphed,’ she shared. ‘But by the time it started morphing, I was too far into the relationships to notice. Plus, I was so young.’

Lenz has previously spoken about how her membership of the organization became a ‘whisper behind the scenes’ on the set of One Tree Hill.

Lenz is about to release her memoir Dinner For Vampires, in which she alleges she experienced ‘manipulation, abuse and fear’ at the hands of what she thought was a church covenant 

Lenz (right) is pictured with her One Tree Hills co-stars (from left) Sophia Bush, Chad Michael Murray, Hilarie Burton and James Lafferty in a still for season three, which began in 2005 

The Drama Queens podcast host previously revealed in July 2023 that she was working on a memoir about the 10 years she spent in a cult and the following decade she spent healing

Her co-stars ‘were all trying to save me and rescue me,’ but she was too ‘stubborn’ to be prevailed upon, she confessed Variety last year.

Now she has divulged that she could ‘see’ on the ‘faces’ of her One Tree Hill co-stars that they knew was entangled with a cult. 

‘But I’d justify it, like: “I couldn’t possibly be in a cult. It’s just that I’ve got access to a relationship with God and people in a way that everybody else wants, but they don’t know how to get it,”‘ Lenz recalled.

When her co-star Craig Sheffer told her to her face that she was in a cult, she shot back at him: ‘No, no, no. Cults are weird. Cults are people in robes chanting crazy things and drinking Kool-Aid. That’s not what we do!’

In 2005, Lenz married musician the late musician Michael Galeotti, formerly of the band Enation, and also a member of the Big House Family.

The couple gave birth to daughter Maria Rose, now 13, her only child, in 2011 – and one year later, she decided she wanted to leave him and the organization.

However she had difficulty extricating herself as the ‘stakes were so high,’ given the degree to which her life was intertwined with the organization.

‘They were my only friends. I was married into this group. I had built my entire life around it. If I admitted that I was wrong…everything else would come crumbling down,’ the actress and singer said.

Back in December 2005, the singer-songwriter married Michael Galeotti, formerly of the band Enation. She shares daughter Maria Rose with the late musician

In January 2016, four years after Lenz left Galeotti, he tragically died at the age of 31 from atherosclerotic heart disease.

Lenz has described her story as one of ‘forgiveness and a roadmap to how manipulation works’ with ‘heartache and humor’ woven in between, in an Instagram post this March promoting the pre-sales of her memoir.

She wrote the book because she wanted to remind people that everybody makes mistakes and ‘no matter what weird roads you’ve gone down, you’re not alone.’ 

The book description recalled Lenz being cast as one of the leads of One Tree Hill.

Despite her career on the rise, ‘her personal life was slowly beginning to unravel’ because nobody, not even her fans or co-stars, knew she was living a ‘secret double life in a cult’.

The narration described Lenz as ‘an only child who often had to fend for herself and always wanted a place to belong’ and discovered what she thought was a ‘safe haven’ in ‘a Bible study group with other Hollywood creatives’.

However, she had gotten entangled in ‘a slowly woven web of manipulation, abuse, and fear under the guise of a church covenant called The Big House Family’. 

She did not ‘find the courage to leave’ until a decade later when she gave birth to her child and became a mother because she wanted to ‘spare her child from a similar fate’. She gave birth to her only child, daughter Maria Rose, 13, in 2011

She wrote about losing her autonomy and later moving to the cult’s Pacific Northwest compound ‘overseen by a domineering minister who would convince Lenz to marry one of his sons and steadily drained millions of her TV income without her knowledge’. 

Within the cult, she said, there were Family ‘minders’ keeping an eye on her on set as well as ‘Maoist struggle session’-inspired meetings in a ‘filthy’ basement.

In her book, she also opened up about ‘regular counseling’ with whom she called ‘Leadership’, which she claimed kept her under their control. 

She did not ‘find the courage to leave’ until a decade later when she gave birth to her child and became a mother because she wanted to ‘spare her child from a similar fate’.

She also credited the ‘unlikely help’ of a One Tree Hill super-fan with helping her ‘escape the family’s grip and begin to heal’.

Dinner for Vampires will be available in bookstores on October 22.