A woman who grew up in a cult where she was subjected to public beatings, days of food deprivation and being locked in a closet has laid bare the nightmare of growing up in fear.
Actress and screenwriter Guinevere Turner, 57 – known for her work on the American Psycho movie – was born into the Lyman Family after her pregnant mother voluntarily joined the commune when she was nineteen.
In 1966, musician Mel Lyman founded and headed the group, also known as the Fort Hill Community, in the Fort Hill section of a Boston neighbourhood.
Like many cult leaders, Mel was a charming, charismatic and highly manipulative individual, who saw himself as the greatest man on earth, the ‘living embodiment of truth’, a world saviour, an alien entity in human form and Jesus Christ.
In one piece of writing published by Lyman titled ‘Declaration of Creation’, he alleged: ‘I am going to reduce everything that stands to rubble and then I am going to burn the rubble and then I am going to scatter the ashes and then maybe SOMEONE will be able to see SOMETHING as it really is WATCHOUT.’
The family was formed of 100 adults and sixty children in 1968, when Guinevere was born.
They took LSD and smoked marijuana – many of their beliefs revolved around astrology and they had faith in a cosmic messiah.
Although they shared some ‘hippie’ attitudes, the commune’s values were very traditional, with women dressing conservatively and cutting their hair in short, modest styles.
Guinevere Turner, pictured as a young woman, was born into the Lyman family and lived with the cult until she was 11
Musician Mel Lyman (pictured) was the leader of the Fort Hill Community, also known as the Lyman Family
Guinevere (pictured in 2018) was forced to leave the Lyman Family when she was 11, after her mother fled, to adhere to rules about at least one parent being a member of the commune
Mel discouraged sexual activity and ordered one commune member to get an abortion on at least one occasion, according to journalists reporting on the family in the 70s.
Couples in the commune were discouraged from spending private time together. Mothers lived separately from their children and women were expected to serve men and obediently carry out domestic duties.
In a first-person piece for the New Yorker in 2019, Guinevere described ‘not knowing her mother very well’ as they were often in separate compounds, of which there were five – in Kansas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston and Martha’s Vineyard.
She remembered girls aged 13 or 14 being ‘chosen’ by adult male members of the family for ‘marriage’, although there was no formal ceremony.
And Guinevere spoke about one thirteen-year-old who lived right next to cult leader Mel’s room.
She wrote: ‘It was commonly known that she belonged to Mel, and no one else would be allowed to have her, or think about having her, for the rest of her life.
‘When we were alone, she would cry and say that she didn’t want to have sex with Lyman but knew that soon she would have to.
‘She already slept in his bed. If I had stayed a few months more, I probably would have been chosen by a man, too.’
Mel’s followers strived to create a suitable environment for Mel (pictured) to create art and music
Guinevere (pictured in 2006) remembers how children were punished by being locked in cupboard for a whole day and subjected to public beatings
An atmosphere of machismo and bullying prevailed, guns were brandished and Mel claimed that true creativity only came to those who were ‘real’ or ‘awake’.
To ‘awaken’ his followers, he created an environment of intense pain and fear, which meant they were often subjected to cruel discipline.
Mel believed that fear and cowardice kept people ‘asleep’, and could even cause them to die.
And Guinevere recalled the severe punishments inflicted upon the children, including being beaten in front of the others, locked in a cupboard all day, and going a whole day without food.
She was once punished for looking at someone ‘with that Scorpio soul in your eyes’, owing to the family’s proclivity for astrology.
Less well known than the infamous Manson family, likely because the Lyman clan never murdered anyone, they nonetheless shared similarities.
Mel’s followers were desperately devoted to him, and their primary goal was to foster a suitable environment for Mel to be creative.
Guinevere wrote: ‘True, Lyman never ordered his followers to kill anyone, the way Charles Manson did. But, if Lyman had asked, I’m pretty sure they would have complied.’
Mel (pictured far left) pictured as part of the Jim Jug Kweskin Band circa 1970. He then went on to form a cult
Guinevere, pictured here in a shoot for the film Go Fish, is now 57 and has a career as an actress and screenwriter
The actress, pictured along co-star Christien Anholt, both in the film Preaching To The Perverted
Mel convinced his followers that they were destined to live on Venus, and when the world ended on January 5, 1974, as the cult predicted, they would be taken away to the planet.
‘As the day approached, we children were told to put on our favourite clothes and pick one toy to bring on the journey,’ Guinevere later said. ‘We sat in the living room all night, listening for the hum of the U.F.O.s.’
But, when the prophecy failed, the family’s faith in Mel wasn’t shaken. He convinced his followers the spaceships hadn’t arrived because their ‘souls weren’t ready’.
‘We hadn’t done the work on ourselves that we needed to, and we had ruined things for Mel, whose soul was exactly where it needed to be,’ said Guinevere.
‘[After the Venus trip failed] we kids weren’t allowed to speak for the foreseeable future. We passed notes, we whispered to one another when we were sure no adult was within earshot. Meals were silent. It was a dark and uncertain time.’
According to Paul Williams, a Lyman Family member interviewed in the early 70s, Mel frequently intoxicated members of the family, giving them large doses of LSD or LSA, a similar compound found in morning glory flower seeds.
Paul, who had to escape under the cover of darkness after being told he wasn’t allowed to leave, said: ‘Everybody was getting f***ed up. Mel just had them swallow the seeds, not soak them and everything the way [we were supposed to].
‘And all these people were falling down on their faces and haemorrhaging and falling down in the bathroom and talking about how great it was afterwards.’
Guinevere insists her time with the Lyman Family was not all bad, having offered community and togetherness
Guinevere recalls how doctors were only called upon for serious medical emergencies.
‘Only the direst circumstances called for medical professionals,’ she wrote. ‘Fingers cut off while we kids were chopping wood, or a young body scalded by boiling water during the sorghum harvest.’
Ouija boards, said Guinevere, were a routine part of life on the commune, although the children were only allowed to communicate with one spirit, ‘Faedra’, who told Guinevere she was a ‘lazy girl’.
But, it wasn’t all bad. Guinevere, who was forced to leave the commune when she was 11 after her mother left, remembered some wonderful moments.
The children played together, read stories, wrote plays and slept in piles of three or four on a bed.
They had a kids’ house, with only a few adults to monitor them, where they took all their meals and she and other children would sing together for hours, looking up at the stars.
Guinevere wrote: ‘There will always be people in search of what cults have to offer – structure, solidarity, a kind of hope.’
In the mid-1980s, members of the Fort Hill Community claimed their leader Mel Lyman had died in 1978 at the age of 40 – but offered no death certificate, no details about how he died and no information about what happened to his body.
Author Ryan Walsh, who investigated the group, noted that there was never any legal inquiry into Lyman’s alleged death.
One former member, speaking anonymously, told Walsh that Lyman ‘purposefully overdosed on drugs in Los Angeles, California, sometime in 1978’ after battling a long illness.
