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Bethany Joy Lenz is opening up about her experience being in a cult.
The actress, 43, spent ten years in a small, ultra-Christian group during her time starring on “One Tree Hill.” She told PEOPLE in an interview published Monday that she defended being in the cult to the other actors on the show.
“I could see it on their faces,” said Lenz, whose memoir, called “Dinner for Vampires,” comes out Oct. 22.
“But I’d justify it, like, ‘I couldn’t possibly be in a cult. It’s just that I’ve got access to a relationship with God and people in a way that everybody else wants, but they don’t know how to get it,’” she recalled.
Lenz said that co-star Craig Sheffer, who played Keith Scott, once outright told her she was in a cult.
“I was like, ‘No, no, no. Cults are weird. Cults are people in robes chanting crazy things and drinking Kool-Aid. That’s not what we do!’” she explained.
Lenz joined the religious group after meeting the lead pastor at a Bible study that she joined when she moved to Los Angeles at age 20.
“I had always been looking for a place to belong,” she said, explaining that the group initially involved singing, worshipping, and having conversations about God and life’s meaning.
However, Lenz started getting suspicious when a visiting pastor (who she called “Les”) convinced members of the Bible study to move to a “Big House” in Idaho.
“It still looked normal,” she said about the cult. “And then it just morphed. But by the time it started morphing, I was too far into the relationships to notice. Plus, I was so young.”
Lenz eventually left the cult in 2012, one year after she gave birth to her daughter Rosie. She split from her husband and fellow cult member, Michael Galeotti, that same year.
“The stakes were so high,” she said about leaving the cult. “They were my only friends. I was married into this group. I had built my entire life around it. If I admitted that I was wrong … everything else would come crumbling down.”
Last year, Lenz said on the “Biscuits & Jam” podcast that the “One Tree Hill” cast — which included Sophia Bush, Hilarie Burton, Chad Michael Murray and James Lafferty — supported her after she left the religious group.
“I feel like a lot of the people there, whether consciously or subconsciously, knew that just their presence and being an encouragement and letting me know that they still loved and cared about me in spite of the fact that I was a little weird, that made a big difference,” said Lenz. “It made me feel like there was a safety.”
“When it came time for me to leave that group, I did still feel like there were many open arms and that felt really, really good, and it was very helpful,” the “Guiding Light” star added.
According to the description of Lenz’s book, the actress found the “courage” to leave the cult after becoming a mother, to “spare her child from a similar fate.”
“After nearly a decade, she finally managed to escape the family’s grip and begin to heal from the deep trauma that forever altered her relationship with God and her understanding of faith,” the description reads.
“Dinner for Vampires” comes out Oct. 22.