A new season of The Turning has launched, sharing the story of two girls who escaped a cult after years of hidden abuse.
Season three, called The Turning: River Road, investigates the Christian commune in rural Minnesota known as River Road Fellowship, where charismatic leader Victor Barnard created a secret world of ritualistic marriages and child abuse.
When Lindsay Tornambe was just 13, she was chosen as one of Barnard’s maidens in a ceremony that married her and nine other girls to him. Over the next decade, she suffered repeated sexual, physical and mental abuse within a community that shielded their leader and ignored the girls’ calls for help.
Years later, Lindsay and Jessanna Schlinsky, the two youngest maidens, decided to run away. Their escape sparked an international manhunt in 2014 and led to Barnard’s arrest. He pled guilty to sexual assault in 2016.
Nearly a decade on, Lindsay is telling her story publicly for the first time, saying: “For all those years, Victor was the predator, and I was the prey. And then he became the prey.”
The podcast examines how a group of ordinary families transformed into willing enablers of abuse, and how survivors like Lindsay and Jessanna are rebuilding their lives. It will also ask whether families can ever truly heal from betrayal and trauma of this scale.
Hosted by Erika Lantz and co-hosted by Elin Lantz Lesser, The Turning: River Road explores why the families gave their daughters up, how the girls survived, and whether it is possible for them to trust again.
The series offers a redemptive focus on its survivors, showing them as heroines rather than victims.
Produced by Rococo Punch and iHeartPodcasts, The Turning: River Road launches today, 8 July on the iHeartRadio app and other podcast platforms, with new episodes every Tuesday.
