When we talk about cults, we ask ourselves, why? Why did people follow a person who claims to be god or someone who claims they speak to god, were they so desperate for a tangible way to reach god or was it desperation, loneliness and being lost that led them to follow without an ounce of logical thinking about what they were asked to do? and who they were following whether that person was sane or not and if that leader has their interest as a priority?
Some cults had a tragic and bloody ending to their stories, and this one is unfortunately no different, and since asking why won’t help bring back the dead or heal wounds, all we can do is try to understand what led to such unfortunate events and do our best to help prevent their recurrence and maybe see the early signs of a developing dangerous cult.
The Ant Hill Kids originated from Canada, it was one of the apocalyptic cults (simply explained, this kind of cults believe that the apocalypse is approaching and the only way to escape is following the leader who will guide them to safety as they will survive, and the rest will perish).
The devil claims to be Moses
Roch Theriault, was born on May 1947, in Quebec, Canada to a poor family, he was a well-read student, but his education came to a halt at the seventh grade, and like all famous cult leaders, he sure was charismatic and highly manipulative to the point that even after his atrocious crimes, he was described by a psychiatrist as a “Renaissance man” who possessed a “bright, inquisitive, and sensitive nature.”
Roch Theriault’s family were Roman Catholics, they belonged to a movement called the Pilgrims of St. Michel, they wore white hats and went door to door promoting their beliefs for a more Christian society which would logically be accomplished by an equitable class structure and the disbandment of banks which sounds like how the Amish live their lives. Roch hated the Catholic church, due to his strict upbringing. By 1970, he was penniless with a wife and two kids to take care of, he despised his misfortune, and he escaped by reading in medicine and religion, then he joined the Seventh-Day Adventist church, a protestant church with apocalyptic agenda, they encouraged their followers to become vegetarian before it was even a thing. Even though his time with the church was brief, it did leave the biggest impact on Theriault, and it was the foundation that made his cult a reality. In the beginning Theriault was charming and fun to be around and he won over the leaders of the church, he was even teaching a class on quitting smoking. But he fell out of favor with his new brethren, and he fell from the leader’s grace as fast as he had gained it; the leaders of the church soon noticed that his arrogance was unacceptable, and he was kicked out.
A cult for vulnerable spirits
Even though Theriault’s time was brief in the Adventist church that didn’t stop him from influencing weak spirited individuals who where lost and wanted a tangible answer to their lost wandering destructive minds, Of course Theriault claimed he was conversing with God and that he had all the answers and that was before he renamed himself Moses, yes! As in the prophet who saved his people from mass slaughter in the Old Testament.
The unfortunate souls that followed the delusional cult leader were eight women who were polygamously married to Theriault, two men, and 28 kids (most of them are Theriault’s biological children).
Most cult leaders tend to keep the women in the cult for themselves, either by having a ridiculous number of wives, or monopolizing who gets to marry whom, with no regard for freedom of choice or love. What the leader orders must be obeyed. And this is how you keep your control by depriving people of the idea of free will and choice. They no longer make any decisions for themselves because the leader’s disobedience is a sin, and sinning usually means corporal punishment.
Theriault’s first plan was establishing a center for alternative treatments you might even say that he took the term alternative treatments and went far beyond it to the point of actively being the reason for someone’s death. An unfortunate woman who was diagnosed with leukemia was prescribed grape juice as a prescription by Theriault, which let to her death.
In 1978, Theriault claimed that God had a new plan for him, he was sent a warning by God that the end of the world is near and Theriault even had an exact date and as many other cult leaders who believe in their survival along with their followers, which always entails rebuilding a new world and moving to a secluded forest or desert or farm maybe even a mountain property. In this case it was the thick Canadian woods in the Gaspe Peninsula. As they arrived in July, they were ordered by their leader to build a communal log cabin while they worried about scarcity of food and living in tents, the number one priority was building a community from scratch with astonishingly was done in a month. Of course, being tired and poorly fed the Ant Hill Kids didn’t notice the drastic changes that occurred to their leader, who became adamant about lecturing them about the corruption of society and how evil conventional families are, he even forced his followers to share stories from their childhood while enforcing the idea that their parents gave them nothing good and that only Theriault can provide good things.
Most cult leaders or the smart ones at least, take the approach of changing the person’s identity as a whole and a crucial part of that is changing their names because a name holds so much importance and has a significance to one’s identity so by changing their name, they would be fully rebirthed aka fully under the control of their leader.
Changing the followers’ names was Theriault’s way of christening them and it would be the true new beginning of his cult’s new chapter in the wilderness and away from society. The followers were granted biblical names, and Theriault saved the name Moses for himself to symbolize saving his people.
A leader’s madness
Contrary to the vegan lifestyle and clean eating he imposed upon his followers, Theriault indulged in meat, soda, and alcohol, generously donated by local residents.
Unsurprisingly, the prophesied apocalypse date passed without incident, but the cult leader was quick to rationalize this discrepancy, asserting that the divine operates on a separate timeline than mortals. By 1978, Theriault had taken a minimum of seven wives and numerous concubines, reputedly fathering 28 children within the cult.
Punishment and brutality were no strangers to the Ant Hill Kids Cult. Theriault who was becoming moody and unpredictable used to pin the children against trees with a knife and force their mothers to throw rocks at them, before going further in this weird and disturbing story please keep in mind that no one contradicted Theriault or stood up to him, so it only makes sense that it escalated to murder and mutilation.
In 1981, 2-year-old Samuel Giguere cried nonstop, he wasn’t one of Theriault’s off springs, his parents were cult members who were working at that time while the babies were left with another cult member who was a former patient of a mental hospital. The former mental patient’s solution to a crying toddler was to hit him five times so that he would stop crying, resulting in the boy being unable to sit up on his own or eat solid food. It only got worse for the child as his caretaker noticed a swelling on his penis that prevented him from urinating normally, and unfortunately for the poor child Theriault insisted on performing the surgery himself, with no medical background of course. And three days after the surgery the boy died. Theriault and the boy’s parents decided to burn his body so it wouldn’t be dug up and eaten by wildlife of the forest. The babysitting former mental patient was later castrated by Theriault, later the former mental patient escaped the cult and told the toddler’s story to his neighbor who informed the police, which resulted in a raid on the commune and the arrest of the leader, the parents and of course the babysitter. And they were all found criminally responsible of the child’s death.
You would think that was the end but how many times has the system failed to protect souls from being slaughtered by its incapability of distinguishing dangerous individuals who should never walk among civilians. Theriault was released after two years in prison and he assembled his Ant Hill Kids once more and relocated to a land outside Burnt River, Ontario.
The tragic end of the Ant Hill Kids
Not long after the cult’s reunion another baby died after Theriault ordered the newborn to be put in a blanket and put outside in the winter as a punishment for crying. In late 1985, a government child welfare agency raided the commune and took 13 children and placed them in foster care. Now the mind-blowing fact that an independent child abuse expert named Martine Miljkovitch who evaluated eight of the children that were taken from Burnt River and heard their stories about assisting with births, and watching adults have sex. That same expert recommended for the children to be put back in the care of Theriault because according to her these children were subjected to such things as a form of education and that the principles were not bad. Luckily this absurd opinion was not taken into consideration by the judge and the kids were placed with adoptive families, hence ending their extraordinary and sad life in the commune ruled by a mad man and parents who obeyed whatever they were ordered to do.
You would think that losing custody of your own kids would be a wake-up call for everyone to just abandon this god forsaken commune and see their leader for the lunatic he really was. But that didn’t happen, in 1988, Solange Boilard a cult member aged 32 was complaining of stomach ache, Theriault saw that as an occasion to show himself as a savior for his people and he dressed for that occasion in red robes, jewelry and a gold crown, he displayed Solange naked on a table and punched her in the stomach then shoved an enema tube up her rectum as a way of treatment with a combination of oil and molasses. Without anesthesia he cut open her abdomen and ripped out her intestines with his bare hands and finally she was stitched up. Solange died a day later, and her body was buried on the property.
You might think that Solange’s suffering ended by her brutal murder but that wasn’t the end for that poor soul, Theriault loved Solange dearly and her death caused him distraught. Before her burial, he took her body and cuddled with it and proclaimed his love to it, she was buried in a pine coffin the following day. Theriault ordered for her body to be dug up, she was buried and dug up many times, and some cult members testimonies claimed that the manic leader did practice necrophilia with the dead body, a part of her rib was also taken out of the body and turned into necklaces for the cult members.
Gabrielle Lavallee was one of Theriault’s wives and a key figure in the cult. Lavallee was a trained nurse who was also addicted to drugs and to fuel her addiction she started working as a stripper, she was depressed and suicidal, she met Theriault while working at a Seventh-day Adventist retreat. She was lost and she found comfort and ease in Theriault’s presence along with some dreams and visions she claimed she had that showed her that her higher purpose in life would unravel when she joins Theriault. For Lavallee joining Roch Theriault was destiny. Now as we fast forward to 1989, that whole scenario drastically changed, Lavallee got punished for disobeying a direct order given by her husband and cult leader which resulted in him stabbing her hand to the kitchen table and carving away at her arm for hours with a small carpet knife blade, he carved to the bones. Later, her savior and destiny turned to the devil and amputated her arm with an axe. Lavallee survived miraculously and she escaped three weeks later to a nearby town, but she didn’t report Theriault to the police. It was his only legal wife Gisele who reported to him, and later the insanity would come to an end with the arrest of Theriault and other cult members. To escape harsh sentences and long trials which would bring more horror to light, Theriault plead guilty to second-degree murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison in 1993.
Surprisingly some of his wives, exactly three of them, stuck by Theriault and remained loyal to him and they even moved next to the prison where he was kept. Theriault tried to apply for parole, but it was denied and in 2011 63-year-old Theriault was stabbed to death by another convicted murderer in his cell. His murder was even captured on closed circuit video.