Good Girl

On the back porch of the S.F. communal house in the fall of 2018.

I was deeply involved with the Welcomed Consensus for 18 months. I lived in the communal house in San Francisco from September to December of 2018.

The programming I underwent with the Welcomed Consensus was subtle and swift and was taking effect within a few weeks of my first contact with the group. I was, from day one, being systematically molded into RJ Testerman’s version of the perfect sex toy: unemotional, feminine, sexual, apolitical, pretty, well-behaved, celibate, mute, passive, guilty, turned on, and fiercely devoted. 

While living in the communal house, I never could, nor would, have believed the extent to which my body and my desires were being mined to serve the group agenda. Each day that I spent embedded with the Welcomed Consensus, I struggled to reconcile the mental and emotional contradictions and confusion I was confronted by.  Physically, I was experiencing euphoria and elation, but emotionally I was plagued with anxiety, frustration, and feelings of extreme alienation. 

Three months after moving out of the San Francisco group house, I learned, by chance, the sordid, non-fictionalized history of RJ and his following. It was then that I woke up and realized the extent to which my identity had been wiped clean and replaced by the misogynistic ideology of RJ and his followers. Textbook mind control tactics including love bombing, trance states, loaded language, and gaslighting kept me loyal to this high-demand, high-control group, even when my intuition was continuously imploring me to get away. 

The communal house on Joost Avenue in San Francisco.

I took my first Common Sensuality Course with the Welcomed (Welcummed) Consensus in the Fall of 2017. The course was held in the intimate living room of the group’s communal house in San Francisco on Joost Avenue. Common Sensuality is the introductory level course and it is a prerequisite for most of the other courses offered by the Welcomed Consensus. There were about 18 men and women in the class; some were newcomers and some had taken the course many times before. The students sat in chairs facing couches at the front of the room where the instructors, RJ and two of his women (Susan and Rachael), were seated.

The course was a weekend-long lecture on the “viewpoints” of the Welcomed Consensus–principles of “pleasurable living” packaged into one-liners which, when combined, allegedly serve as a manifesto for better relationships and better sex. Susan read the viewpoints from a binder on her lap. Questions from students were permitted but treated as a disruptions. Occasionally the instructors asked students to share on a specific topic such as goals for the course, lists of gratitudes, or a description of a sexual fantasy.

RJ Testerman and the Welcomed Consensus. From left: Rachael, Francoise, RJ, Susan, Sheri and Wendy.

Rachael wrote down the students’ responses in a notebook. Commentary from students was not permitted. Discussion was not permitted. Note-taking was not permitted. The information was delivered in a subdued, monotone manner, punctuated with long pauses and protracted eye gazes that gradually lulled the room into a trance-like state. Susan slowly repeated lines. There were extended stretches of silence between utterances. The warm, terra-cotta-colored walls of the living room seemed to pulse in rhythm with the semi-conscious, semi-aroused brainwaves of the fully immersed students. My body felt tingly and sedated. 

Just as the class had fully settled into this hypnotic rhythm, RJ broke the spell by blurting out, in describing the orgasm of a woman he had once known, “Yeah, she was a well-trained woman.” The new students simultaneously snapped to attention. Well-trained? Did this guy just say well-trained? Was this guy really just describing a woman as well-trained? Did this guy just describe a woman as well-trained based on her ability to orgasm? Who the fuck is this guy? What have I signed up for? Who the hell describes a woman as well-trained? Do I want to be a well-trained woman? Am I okay with that?

RJ Testerman

RJ glanced around the room, passively challenging someone to object to his off-color remark. Students shifted in their chairs and flicked their eyes toward each other wondering who was going to reject this blatant sexism. Who was going to be the spokesperson for the unknown, well-trained woman? Who was going to stand up to the impish, offensive man sitting at the front of the room?

But no one said a word. No one was willing to be the rule breaker. After a full day of being lectured on all the ways women are constantly resisting fun and pleasure, nobody wanted to be the unfun one. No one wanted to make a fuss or leave the course or be the party pooper. No one wanted to be that person. After a few minutes, a softening of the room signaled the class’s unanimous acceptance that a woman could be trained to orgasm to satisfy a man’s standard, and the lecture continued. 

This is how, despite my better judgment, I came to take my first giant step toward accepting an impish, sexist, offensive man as an expert on female pleasure. It was with my silence that I declared, unknowingly, my willingness to agree to just about anything in order to be accepted by RJ and his followers. It was in this moment that the depth of my desire to be a part of something…anything…was revealed. Even in the face of overt objectification of a woman I was going to keep my mouth shut and be a nice, fun, little cummer. I fell for step number one in the playbook of every sexual predator, conman, and sociopath: test the mark’s boundaries. See how far she will bend…

The living room of the Joost house.

I became consumed with the Welcomed Consensus after my first Common Sensuality Course. The more I applied the group’s principles to my life, the more my outlook on life improved. The more I explored my orgasm, the more I experienced an internal sense of satisfaction. The concepts and practices were edgy and controversial and I liked being a part of what I thought was a movement promoting pleasure and personal empowerment. The San Francisco house was a 90-minute drive from the town where I lived in the North Bay, but I religiously attended the weekly BenchMarks in the city. I also drove down to the city every Sunday for a DOdate with Bill, the resident recruiter who had originally pulled me into the group via Tinder. 

When I wasn’t in the city, Bill was texting me hourly with effusive descriptions of the ways he wanted to DO me/love me/fuck me/save me. My excitement over this new group of friends bordered on obsession. I completely detached emotionally from my daily life and spent the bulk of my time texting with Bill and plotting my exodus from the matrix of modern life. It was all very intense and over the top, but at that juncture, I was perfectly poised to launch myself into the unknown.

March, 2019–Bill and I at a 1940’s themed Birthday party at Joost.

 I am a life-long traveler, creator, entrepreneur, and free thinker, who, after a series of hard knocks, had come to settle for a vacuous corporate job, an uninspiring living situation, and sporadic, loveless sexual encounters. My immediate family members are either deceased or estranged. Opiates I had been prescribed for a painful nerve condition also conveniently numbed the discomfort of a soul-crushing routine and mounting isolation. When, in March of 2018, Bill texted the message, “I want you to move into the house,” I didn’t need to be asked twice. That June I quit my job, threw all of my possessions into a storage unit, moved out of my rental, and geared up for my GAP, which had been scheduled for the end of July. 

Throughout the relocation process I was suppressing concerns I harbored about my new friends. Inherent contradictions bothered me. The group touts an elevated form of friendship, yet no one from the group, including Bill, had ever offered to drive 50 miles north to visit the town where I lived. The group claims to advocate for female desire, but one of the group-held viewpoints is that the only thing women want is to have their bodies pleasured. The group touts fun as its primary goal, but the social gatherings often have a stiff and contrived quality to them. The Welcomed Consensus brands itself as a community of “fun and friendship,” but, in reality, alliances between women are discouraged because it is believed that, “Women will conspire for bad when left to their own devices.”

August, 2019–Hiking with Ginger, Mallie, and Sven in Pacifica on the last day of my GAP.

Despite the ever-present contradictions, I continued to adhere to the Welcomed Consensus standard of acceptable and unacceptable behavior by self-policing every time a doubt crept in. If I had been working all day and didn’t feel like driving 90 minutes through rush-hour traffic to the BenchMark I would think, “There’s that female resistance again,” and would rally and go. Saying “no” to invitations from the group was invariably followed by an insufferable amount of guilting from group members. Declining an invitation from Bill invariably resulted in days of the silent treatment.

Immediately after my GAP ended and I had decided to move into the house full time, it was suggested that I drive to the group’s ranch in Klamath to participate in a Common Sensuality Course being held there that weekend. I drove the six hour stretch to the ranch full of excitement and reveling in my good fortune to have been introduced to this unique, exceptional group of people. As I drove, I fantasized about my joyful arrival at the ranch. I imagined fun-filled days of cooking, sharing, and laughing with my new “family”. I imagined closeness and comfort and intimate relating (sexy Little House on the Prairie!). The reality that awaited me upon my arrival couldn’t have been further from this fantasy.

At the ranch, nobody bothered to disguise the fact that this is a full-blown cult. My first disturbing discovery was that group members are segregated into 3 very distinct living areas based on their rank in the group. RJ (the king) and his two favorite women of the moment, Susan and Rachael (the queens), live in a small house at the top of the property. RJ’s retired favorite women (plus a few other higher-ups) share rooms in the large, main house. The worker bees (3 permanent ranch residents) live in a communal bedroom in the basement of the large house. 

A. Madrone Ranch–the group property in Klamath, CA.

I was a guest worker bee during my time there and the hectic schedule didn’t leave one second for cozy, fire-side chats. Wake up call was around 6am and the day didn’t end until after dinner around 10pm. The days were filled with a dizzying rotation of house chores, garden chores, DOdates, journaling and withholds. The worker bees shuttled me from task to task without a moment of downtime. 

There were strict rules around permissible and impermissible topics of conversation. Talking about relationships, health issues, the past, healing, psychology, money, goals, diet, philosophy, feminism, kink, trauma, or any subject that might be considered a “downer” was frowned upon. Permissible topics of conversation included how lovely the tomato crop had been that year, how delicious the dinner was, how pretty the sunset was. The restrictions around conversation made for an unnerving amount of small talk and awkward silence. I was accustomed to censorship from living at the SF house, but at the ranch the conversation guidelines were much more strictly enforced.

RJ and his queens made the occasional appearance at the main house for meals or meetings but mostly they stayed in their little house at the top of the property and sent down requests for things like creamer and bread to be delivered to them.

A.Madrone Ranch in Klamath. One of the group’s methods of recruitment is through their WWOOFing.org program.

I was having a terrible time and felt like a homesick 12-year-old at summer camp. I just wanted to go home, but I had committed to taking the Common Sensuality Course and felt like there was no getting out of it. The isolation and Bootcamp-inspired work schedule at the ranch left no time to thoroughly process the experience I was having.

There was a momentary wave of relief with the arrival of a woman who had driven up from the Bay Area to take the course. She was one of Bill’s most recent recruits and I had met her a few times at the San Francisco house. My new classmate was witty, outspoken, and a bit wild, and she didn’t give a fuck about the creepy ranch hierarchy or the cranky worker bees who followed us around the property monitoring our conversations and correcting our behavior. I stopped giving a fuck at this point, too. I saw that I had been taking the whole situation much too seriously and surrendered to the fun, flirtatious rapport this woman and I had. 

We were having a grand time comparing notes on our journeys with Deliberate Orgasm, but I sensed that our lively banter and habit of breaking off from the rest of the class was ruffling feathers in the upper ranks. On the second day of the course, I was asked into a private meeting with two of the Welcomed Consensus senior members, Sheri and Francoise. I knew I was in trouble the moment I sat down on the couch. The course instructors, I was told by Sheri and Francoise, were creating a “ride” for the class. By engaging in the distractions and playfulness I was ruining the ride for the other students. The serious, scolding tone of this reprimand immediately snapped me back into cult form. As soon as I felt the weight of their disapproval, I regretted my breach in composure. I felt guilty for having had so much fun while attending a course designed to show people how to have more fun.

Welcomed Consensus promotional video.

On my drive back to the Bay Area I began the process of compartmentalization and justification that enabled me to continue down my misguided path of “enlightenment through female orgasm.” The oppressive atmosphere at the ranch had been weird, but I convinced myself that in the city, Ginger and Mallie (RJ’s daughters) were offering the “new and improved” version of the cultish ranch program. RJ was an unsavory character but, I thought, I would only have to see him on his occasional visits to the San Francisco house. I was giving up things that were important to me in order to stay aligned with this group but, as I had been coached, saying, “Yes! Yes! YES!” is the prerequisite to living a sensual life … to being a turned-on woman.

Back in the city I put my ranch experience behind me and embraced my new, unconventional existence at the Joost house. Living communally temporarily nourished a deep, primal hunger in me. After living alone for many years it was cathartic to be surrounded by people day and night. I was willing to relinquish parts of myself in exchange for a sense of belonging. I came to love my new friends (even the ranch crew), but I was always wondering where, for these people, the friendship ended and the agenda began; where the love ended and the manipulation began. Bill’s lustful pursuit dropped off once I was safely integrated into the house, but mentally and emotionally he kept me on a short leash.

RJ’s daughter Ginger and her partner Elliot in Welcomed Consensus promotional material.

Strict rules governing sexual activity between house members limit physical intimacy outside the context of the DOdates. Kissing with an open mouth is forbidden due to the allegedly life-threatening health risks it poses. Multiple levels of STD screenings and multiple layers of latex precede any sexual contact. Breaking screening (making out with someone from outside the house or a non-approved exchange of fluids) must be reported to the Welcomed Consensus screening team.

Within a few weeks of living at the house, I was actively participating in the group’s recruiting process. The system went something like this: Bill struck up conversations with unsuspecting women on dating sites, who, thinking they had met someone available for genuine connection, accepted his invitation to attend one of the weekly BenchMarks. At some point during the BenchMark, the women would realize they were actually one of several of Bill’s “special” friends who had been lured to this event. It was then that the Welcomed Consensus teamsters swooped in with their wit, sex appeal, and love bombs and charmed the women into overlooking the deception that had drawn them in.

Love bombing texts from Bill. At the Welcomed Consensus, mind control is framed as seduction.

More often than not, this bait-and-switch was effective. I enthusiastically partook in the ruse because I subscribed to the belief that women are resistant to pleasure and need to be tricked a little in order to come around to a new way of thinking. These women would be grateful they had been lied to once they woke up, I rationalized. I was a convincing and successful recruiter because I whole-heartedly believed I was part of a women’s liberation movement. As cult expert Steven Hassan succinctly writes in his book, Combatting Mind Control, “By accepting the way in which I was deceived, I set myself up to begin deceiving others.” 

At the Welcomed Consensus, DOdates are not only the cornerstone of the educational program but also of daily life. DOdates are offered before, during, and after the BenchMarks, the sensuality courses, and social gatherings. Women visiting the Joost house take turns stepping into the guest room for their session with one of the men from the house. The pressure to have DOdates is constant.

When you live in the communal house, DOdates are incorporated into every aspect of the day: waking up, going to sleep, leaving the house, or returning to the house, or whenever you might feel like it. If your mood is down, or you are starting to ask too many questions, or you are wanting something that is not group-sanctioned, you are advised to find someone to have a DOdate with. Like a one-night stand, the DOdates provided a rush of comfort and pleasure, and like a junkie, I found myself going back for more and more to stay high. 

I was also becoming a junkie for the approval of the group–approval which, over the months, had become increasingly difficult to attain. The feeling of perfection and unconditional love I had enjoyed during my GAP slowly wore off until I was constantly scrambling to feel “right” in the group’s eyes. Through passive comments by group members (often delivered at BenchMarks) I received subtle but clear messages: my wardrobe was too black, my diet too Paleo, my desire for relationship too unevolved; so I shopped for colorful dresses, ate pizza, and squashed my romantic fantasies.

RJ’s daughters, Ginger and Mallie. Their presence legitimized RJ and his teachings in my eyes.

The group collectively contracted when I inadvertently stepped outside the parameters of appropriate speech or conduct. Members of the group are expected to be “fun”, but it is a no-no to be an “energy sponge”. Where is the line between the two? I had no idea, so I watched Ginger and Mallie closely for social cues, and I stayed in a neutral zone of projecting happiness and positivity while being conscious not to attract excess attention to myself. 

The woman I had gotten into trouble with at the ranch moved into the San Francisco house a few weeks after I did. She and I would sneak out of the house to talk and vent to each other. Every conversation between us started with, “What the fuck…?”  We spoke in hushed tones when we were in the house, joking that RJ had probably bugged the place, but we were only half-joking. Outwardly, I convincingly played the part of the poster child for an orgasmic revolution. Inwardly, I felt lost and lonely. 

In mid-December, I announced I was moving out of the house at the end of the month. It was a difficult decision to make. I felt sad and conflicted. I fretted about where I would get my orgasm fix, I fretted about returning to a life devoid of purpose, and I fretted that by leaving, I was failing in my quest to embrace a sensual life. I told myself and the group that the reason for my departure was unfinished business I needed to tend to back in the North Bay, but looking back I see it was a tiny glimmer of self-preservation that compelled me to make the decision to leave. It would still be several months before I fully reclaimed my mind

Francoise, Sheri, and Rachael. The women’s habit of dressing the same was a red flag.

A few days before I moved out of the house on Joost Avenue, a small gathering of friends and family was invited over for a dinner party. Sheri and a few other ranch residents were down in the city for one of their regular visits. Sheri and I were chatting before the party when she let me know her brother would be attending that evening. I had never met her brother before. Sitting close to me and gently stroking my arm, Sheri asked, in her sultry “just between us girls” voice, if I would take extra good care of her brother … make sure he had a good time. I looked into her eyes and smiled, understanding the plan of seduction and accepting the mission. “So this is how it happens,” I thought to myself as I basked in the warm, cashmere glow of Sheri’s presence, “this is how you become one of RJ’s whores.” Instead of being troubled by this revelation, I was thrilled. I was delighted to be granted an opportunity to please Sheri; it felt like a right of passage like I was being rewarded for my loyalty and good behavior by being trusted with a taste of the inner sanctum. I spent that evening dutifully lavishing Sheri’s brother in my turn-on and feigning interest in his online book business. In reality, I had zero interest in Sheri’s brother, but at that stage of my indoctrination, I was programmed to please my masters and probably would have fucked the guy if she had asked me to.

BBQ in the back yard behind Joost.

After moving out of the San Francisco house, I moved into the guest room of a friend who graciously invited me to stay at his place until I got myself established again. It was a wet winter in Northern California and I spent many days lying in bed watching sheets of rain pelt the windows. I was relieved to be away from the S.F. house, but I wasn’t making any progress in creating a new life for myself. I had neglected my finances and most of my friends during my communal living stint, and I wasn’t sure where to begin recovering the wreckage of my previous life. My body felt numb. My brain was blank. Sex seemed dirty. Conversations seemed vapid. I sorely missed being around people who spoke my “language”–the specialized lingo of the Welcomed Consensus. My body, my community, and my personality were alien to me. 

Hoping to distract myself in my state of limbo, I randomly selected the podcast Escaping NXIVM to listen to while I worked in the garden. This CBC Radio six-part documentary is actor Sarah Edmondson’s account of how she narrowly escaped and then exposed Keith Raniere’s secretive sex cult. Knots formed in my chest and throat as Ms. Edmondson recounted her experience of recruitment, indoctrination, and enslavement by a sex cult that fronted as women’s empowerment movement.

Sarah Edmondson was groomed for 12 years by a sexual predator and the women who protected him.

As I listened, the picture she painted became uncomfortably familiar: the “personal responsibility” rhetoric that had dismantled her resistance in the early stages of her recruitment; her unwavering loyalty to the cause, even in the face of overt degradation; a female empowerment group conceived of and led by a man; an elite society of women posing as mentors who, ultimately, became her abusers. I went to my computer and Googled “RJ Testerman,” discovered the Truthaboutrj.com  blog, and understood, in an instant, the nefarious nature of the influence I had been embedded with.

It is a scientific fact that the lateral orbitofrontal cortex–the part of the brain considered to be the voice of reason–is radically altered during orgasm. The reduction of blood flow to this part of the brain during orgasm significantly compromises our capacity for good decision-making and accurate risk assessment. Value judgments become skewed and we become prone to behavioral dis-inhibition. Multiple studies have shown that the brain’s response to orgasmic hormones is almost identical to the brain’s response to a shot of heroin. 

When you combine the Welcomed Consensus’s mandated frequency of DOdates with the suspension of rational thought what you are left with is the perfect physiological environment for complex, ongoing psychological manipulation. DOdates disengage critical thinking and open the mental/emotional gateways for new thought patterns to be implanted; they are ultimate thought stoppers … the proverbial Kool-Aid. 

In my early days of getting to know the Welcomed Consensus, I conducted multiple online searches and found little information to dissuade me from becoming involved with this group. I Googled, “Signs you might be in a cult,” and checked every box on list after list, but thought, “I might be in a cult, but it’s a cult of fun! And friendship!” When my skeptical, concerned friends questioned the control this group retained over my thinking and my relationships I would argue, “What is RJ getting out of me? I am not signing over any assets? I am not having sex with anybody? I am not being locked on a compound somewhere?”

Fall, 2019–Volunteering with Free the Need in South San Francisco.

The truth is, RJ was gleaning many things from me. I was paying $1900 per month to live in his San Francisco house; I was paying for courses and actively recruiting my friends and family (and strangers if they would listen) to attend BenchMarks and sign up for courses; I was volunteering almost every Friday with the Welcomed Consensus non-profit, Free the Need, which also happens to fill the refrigerators and outdoor freezers of the San Francisco house with free, donated food. I was enthusiastically offering up my story of salvation to newcomers as a glowing endorsement of how, “You, too, can enjoy a life of round-the-clock fun, utopian communing, and orgasmic bliss!!!”

Most importantly, I was feeding the narcissistic complex at the heart of RJ’s self-serving operation. RJ derives a tremendous amount of pleasure from watching independent, attractive women relinquish their values, their histories, their personal styles, their voices, their desires, their time, their power, and their pussies in order to become crusaders for his harem of “friends and researchers.” For a despot like RJ, the reward of mind control is incentive enough to run a scam of this nature; the money, status and comfortable lifestyle are just added perks. 

I am sharing my experience because you lose days, months, and years of your life when you are in a cult. When you wake up from a cult trance, you realize that you came very close to making decisions that would have been catastrophic and irreversible; that you have abandoned the people and things you love the most; and that your body and sexuality have been exploited to a criminal degree. Prior to this experience, I would have argued until I was blue in the face that there is no such thing as brainwashing. People in cults, I would have insisted, are making conscious choices to give up their freedom. Cult members will swear up and down that they are staying with the group on their own volition, that they are happy and being treated well and having the time of their lives. The formula for recruitment and persuasion–charm, isolate, abuse–is always the same, and it is being applied both in plain view and behind closed doors at the Welcomed Consensus. I lived it. I swore by it. I defended it. I handed over my life to it. And until it happened to me, I never would have believed it was possible.

Read Catherine Oxenberg’s book, Captive.

Listen to Rachel Bernstein’s podcast, IndoctriNation.

Watch the Netflix documentary, Children of God.

Steve Hassan’s book offers a comprehensive overview of how to recognize a cult and how to help a friend or family member leave a cult.