All documentaries are not the same. I watched the 3 episodes of Unveiled: Surviving La Luz Del Mundo on Max the past several days. This was not the first I had heard of the abuses in this church, and to be depressingly honest, nothing that happened there is particularly new and/or unique. Money, sexual abuse, pedophilia, and violence are rampant when organizations exist for the veneration of the leaders rather than serving any other purpose. Every whim and desire, no matter how disturbing, is satisfied because…well, the same reasons.

Every cult documentary follows a similar script. The (whatever) grows and sounds awesome, the people are finding a beautiful community, they feel like family, the leader/teacher/visionary has some special gifts of charisma and a magnetic personality. The first episode, usually, leaves us cringing because it all sounds fine, like a place we’d like to be. There are probably a few hints as to the coming nightmare, but (insert name here) is great. Then, in episode 2, the head man starts with the controlling, then leveraging his position to start abusing those “lucky” enough to have such access to a “Man of god.” Episode 3 is when it all falls apart and people die, or the authorities finally get involved and inevitably ends with a sad caricature of “justice,” leaving the victims further damaged.

Most docs detail the abuse and interview some victims, and it’s awful. This one, though, followed mostly the same template (down to the inept prosecutors), with a noticeable exception. The victims told the story. There was no “and it all seemed so good,” it was “we thought it was good, but…” right from the start. You’d think this would lessen the impact, but the filmmakers trained the cameras on the faces of the abused and left it there. There weren’t sound bites, the people were able to tell their stories the way they wanted to, in the time they needed. They cried, and so did we, as all of our hearts broke. I felt the “apostle’s” hands on me, his words in my ears. We, as human beings, were all violated.

Episode 3 ended with the head of the monster getting 16 (!!!) years in prison (amid the looming question of, if they were white women, would it have been more? And the obvious answers in the form of previous cult precedents), and many in the church still defending the guilty. Sometimes it’s harder to wake up, isn’t it?

I know why and how this happens, but that doesn’t make anything less horrific. These documentaries expose us all – the reason they persist is in our unwillingness to relate. We think we’re so different, and that this La Luz Del Mundo congregation is a separate incident of corruption and abhorrent behavior. But it happens too much for us to call it an isolated incident. Too much to call it “them.” There’s no them, it’s all us. And we should all have to look in the eyes of the victims, because maybe then, we’ll feel enough to get off our couches and stop this nonsense, because as long as even one of us is seen and treated as less than human, we all are.