"Cult Survivor" wrote on the Fellowship of Friends Discussion blog, February 3, 2019:
A Story of Domination and Sexual Abuse
I joined the FOF in February of 1988, when I was 25 years old. In November of 1988 I moved to Apollo (Renaissance at that time) and started working at the winery. I was working 8-10 hours per day, 5-6 days per week, for a salary of $350 per month without a working visa (that’s right, $350 per month — it’s not a typo). After a week or so I was approached by a lady — she told me that I was invited to a “Symposium with the Teacher” that evening. I had no idea what a Symposium was so I asked her and she replied “Oh, it’s an informal dinner just for men. Casual dressing.” After a long day of work at the winery I went home, took a shower and headed to the Goethe Academy (now Galleria Apollo) for my first encounter with my Teacher. When I entered the Academy, Robert came straight to me, kissed me on the lips and said “I was waiting for you dear, I got a fortune cookie recently saying ‘A tall man will enter your life'” (I’m 6’ 2″). He asked me to sit next to him on a sofa in the salon and held my left hand while I was served a strong gin and tonic. After 15 minutes or so we proceeded to the Goethe Room where the Symposium for Robert and another 12 young men was going to happen. I was already a bit tipsy because of the gin and tonic on an empty stomach and the long day of work at the winery, but my state was quite high (no pun intended) because I was meeting my Teacher for the first time and he told me that he was waiting for me (I have a vanity feature). I was asked to sit opposite to Robert — later I discovered that that was an important place — while 2 young men, one a permanent lover and the other a new one, sat on each side of him. During the dinner Robert kept looking at me and spoke several times to me directly and, after with 2 glasses of white wine, a glass of red wine, a glass of dessert wine and finally a glass of cognac (don’t forget the gin and tonic at the beginning) my state was quite high (pun intended). At the end of the dinner I went to the kitchen to have a coffee before going home (I remember walking with difficulty) and was approached by one of Robert’s assistants that told me that Robert wanted to talk to me privately. The assistant said “Follow me” and started walking towards Robert’s bedroom. I followed him without really knowing what I was doing and when I entered the room I saw that Robert was already in bed. He said “Come here, dear. Sat on the bed” and I did as he asked. He placed his hand on my chest and started doing circles with his fingers while saying things like “C Influence sent you to me, remember the fortune cookie”, “Why don’t you remove your clothes and get in the bed”, “Don’t be afraid, it’s just your instinctive center and feminine dominance”, etc. Suddenly he placed his hand on my penis over my pants and started massaging it trying to excite me and get an erection but after 2 or 3 minutes he realized that I was too drunk and that nothing was going to happen in that department, so he said “It’s okay dear, we have plenty of time” and got up, opened the door, and asked one of his assistants to take me home. I remember that I was silent all the way to my place — I felt a mix of shame and embarrassment. I know it seems absurd, but I was not ashamed because a men 20 years older that was supposed to be my “Teacher” tried to seduce me and have sex with me (I’m heterosexual) but because I couldn’t perform my duty with my Teacher — I felt that it was a honor to have been chosen to be his lover and it was my fault that I couldn’t rise to the occasion. I went to sleep feeling guilty and woke up in the morning with the thought “when he calls me again I’m going to do what he asks”. And then… something happened. Two days later a tall guy moved to Apollo and soon after became Robert’s lover. I was friends with him because we are from the same country; one day he told me that Robert had told him that he was waiting for him because he got a fortune cookie saying that a tall guy was going to enter his life… At that moment my feature of vanity said “No! I am the tall guy of the fortune cookie!” and my friend just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Whatever”. I felt humiliated and offended and made the decision to leave Renaissance immediately, but after a couple of days vanity and the queens succeeded and I changed my mind (unfortunately). I hoped that Robert would invite me again to a Symposium or a “Wine Cellar Dinner” (those were diners for 25-30 young men that Robert started to host after he stopped hosting Symposiums — I guess he realized that 25-30 men is better than 12 for hunting purposes) but he never did. After two years I heard a knock on my window in the middle of the night: It was my friend that had “escaped” from the Galleria — he had been living there all that time — because “he couldn’t do that anymore”, he told me. He asked if he could stay with me and I said that it was fine. We talked until the morning (he was in a very disturbed state) and he told me several stories about Robert’s manipulation tactics and deviant sexual habits that I will refrain to mention here because they are second hand and I want to stick to what I experienced myself. In the morning I received a call from Wayne M. asking me if Anthony (not his real name) was at my place (Wayne M. knew we were friends) and when I confirmed that he was there they sent a car to pick him up. After a few days he was sent back to his country because of “psychological problems”. I tried to contact him but his family refused to let me talk to him — I was told that he was undergoing psychiatric treatment and that he was not allowed to talk to anybody, especially from the FOF. After a few months another young man moved to Apollo and became Robert’s lover; at a reception at the Galleria Robert told me “Anthony was payment for him” and kissed his new lover on the forehead.
My aim telling my story was to show the power that a cult leader has over his followers regarding sexual favors (Charles Manson, Jim Jones and Osho, for example, were also extremely manipulative and promiscuous). Fortunately, I was “saved” by some Divine Providence and didn’t become Robert’s sexual slave. I believe that several people that wrote here in this blog about Robert’s sexual abuses have a story similar to mine — the ones that didn’t have the luck to escape and succumbed to Robert’s powers are probably too fucked up to write about their experiences.
