Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host for today, John Dehlin. I'm super excited for today's episode. It is June 3, 2022 and today I'm so excited to have back as riding shotgun as a co host the Samantha Shelley. Hey, Sammy.

Samantha Shelley [00:00:20] Hi, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:21] Welcome back.

Samantha Shelley [00:00:21] Thank you. Very excited to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:24] You'll, you'll recognize Samantha from my original interview with her and Tanner Gilliland losing Mormon Millenn. She's also one of the two or three main figures in Zelf on the Shelf, which is an amazing YouTube channel. And she also does life coaching for people in faith transition and for other types of things. So Samantha and we, we've had you recently come back, you and Tanner to kind of do a re, kind of like an update. So Samantha, you're, you're a important friend to me and to Mormon Stories. So is that a good enough, an intro?

Samantha Shelley [00:01:01] Yeah. Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:01:01] Anything else you want to add?

Samantha Shelley [00:01:02] Brilliant.

John Dehlin [00:01:03] Okay. All right. Well, today's episode is near and dear to my heart in kind of a sad, dark but important, profound way in the and I'll just give as short of an intro as I can as I studied psychology and mental health, got my PhD in clinical and counseling psychology. I studied a lot about good and bad forms of mental health. And, and today we're going to be talking about Teal Swan or Mary Teal Bosworth, which is her birth name. Teal Swan is a at this point world renowned sort of new age guru, I would say. She's got like 1.5 million followers on YouTube and on Facebook last I checked.

Who Is Teal Swan and Why She Matters

John Dehlin [00:01:51] And there's a new who series out called Deep, the Deep End. The Deep End. And I, I, I knew I was going to forget it again called the Deep End. It's three episodes in, I think there's four total episodes, but shows Teal Swan behind the scenes.

John Dehlin [00:02:12] When you, when you find out about Teal Swan, usually you're sad, you're depressed and you're googling trying to get support for, you know, mental health. And oftentimes her niche is sort of providing herself as support for people who are suicidal. And when you stumble upon her stuff and start watching her videos, you'll, you'll get kind of a mishmash of pop culture, new age secular Buddhism kind of stuff. But then there, there's a lot of energy and crystal and chakra kind of talk and then it kind of graduates the more you get into her, into things like ritualistic child abuse, recovered memory sort of techniques and Then if you really follow her down the chain, some of her most damaging teachings are around almost encouraging suicidal ideation and really, really harmful psychological techniques.

John Dehlin [00:03:08] And I'm not a fan. And on Mormon stories, there's two ways that I've tried to explore these sorts of things in the past. One was talking about the satanic ritual abuse panic that, that happened in North America, let's just say in the early 80s and 90s, which was where mental health professionals started using really unethical and unscientific techniques to kind of almost hypnotize people or lull them into having what are called recovered memories or fake memories as children and sort of almost seeding or planting fake memories of abuse that both the patients and the therapists would then treat as real.

John Dehlin [00:03:59] And this victimized a lot of people, caused a lot of innocent people to be accused of really horrific things. And you know, 10 to 15 years later, the whole satanic ritual abuse panic was kind of universally debunked. It was certainly debunked by the American Psychological Association.

John Dehlin [00:04:19] Recovered memory was, was also condemned. And, and there was really never any meaningful evidence ever discovered of actual child satanic ritual abuse. So we've covered that in a few episodes on Mormon Stories podcast. We'll make sure in the show notes to include links to those episodes.

John Dehlin [00:04:40] And we also. But, but then what grew out this young girl named Mary Teal Bosworth, growing up in Cache Valley as a non Mormon, she connected with Barbara Snow, which was a Mormon therapist that was sort of one of the main therapists behind the satanic ritual abuse panic in Utah, particularly I think in Utah County, Highland, Alpine area. But you know, it, it went all over the state. And, and because Teal was exposed to Barbara Snow, Teal sort of imported these techniques into kind of her new age self help stuff. And, and that's an important part of what Teal Swann is now doing, which in essence is nurturing her clients to create fabricated false childhood memories of abuse and then to turn around and accuse her family members or loved ones of things that, that likely never happened, then causing alienation from their families, then causing them to be more attached to her and her cult following.

John Dehlin [00:05:52] So these are the types of techniques that, that we're going to be talking about today. But most importantly, what are we doing today in this episode? Diana Rivera also grew up in Cash Valley. I have been friends with Diana Rivera before, you know, before either she or I really looked into the satanic ritual abuse stuff. We go, you know, several years back and it was just through Kind of our ongoing connections where Diana reached out to me and let me know that Teal, her former friend Mary Teal Bosworth had assumed a new name called Teal Swan and was now gaining a large following. And I think when you first reached out to me, she had maybe 100,000 followers or a little bit more.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:06:39] I was really believed you hadn't even heard of her. So I was like, okay, maybe this isn't a big deal, but I don't recall how many she had at the time. I don't think she had hit mainstream media at the time.

John Dehlin [00:06:48] Yeah, yeah. So we, we kind of caught it, you know, relatively early on. But Teal is just skyrocketed into popularity since then. I did also have on Mormon stories, one of Teals, what, five ex husbands.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:07:05] He was just a boyfriend. It wasn't made legal. Maybe spiritually legal.

John Dehlin [00:07:09] Spiritually husband, anyway. Jared Dobson, Right. Yes, was his name. And, and we'll, we'll also make sure and share that in the show notes. But the reason why we're doing today's episode is because Diana Rivera grew up with Mary Teal Bosworth or Teal Swan, and they were childhood and teenage friends.

John Dehlin [00:07:29] And because of Diana's experiences with Teal, Diana feels like, number one, Teal isn't. Her story isn't accurate or honest. Kind of her founding story of, of what she tells people. It was her childhood and her background. And we'll get into that, including the claims of really horrific ritualistic child abuse that are frankly just completely unbelievable.

John Dehlin [00:07:55] But we'll get to that. But, but also, Diana feels like Teal has hurt way too many people, including. And that's one of the biggest criticisms of Thiel, is that her work has led to deaths by suicide, multiple deaths by suicide. And that's covered in the series. It's also been covered on another Canadian podcast called the Gateway, I think it's called.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:08:19] Yeah. And there was a BBC episode that went over the suicide catalyst claims about her. But yes, also the Gateway by Gizmodo podcast.

John Dehlin [00:08:27] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:08:28] Covered it extensively.

John Dehlin [00:08:29] And we'll include show notes to links to all that as well. But that's, that's, that was a long intro but like saddle up for a long form, in depth, personal, powerful, moving Mormon stories episode with Diana and Sam. And we're going to be talking about modern day cults. We know about Jim Jones, we know about David Koresh, we know about, you know, Keith Rer and Elron Hubard and they're all kind of mostly things of the past.

John Dehlin [00:09:00] But there are cults alive and well today, and Teal Swan is absolutely leading one, and she's doing it here in Utah, primarily, and in Costa Rica. So, Diana, I am sure that I left some stuff off. And in your notes, you were beautiful about articulating your intentions for why you wanted to come forward because you're a private person. You're not some public figure. But. So there's always risk or fear and anxiety. So take. Take over the mic and. And share with us if you want to start with anything you want to correct or add to what I said and just your intentions for why you wanted to do this today.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:09:43] No, I think you covered it pretty well. I mean, this is such a long story and it's been going on for so long that there are so many misunderstandings about it. And it's been hard for me to see everything in the media when I know the real story and I just thought someone else would catch it and I would never have to say anything. This is the last thing I ever wanted to do at all. Even when I reached out to you two years ago. I was hoping you could do the podcast, cover it without me being on it, and then I could kind of nudge things.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:10:14] But I. I hate how important my experiences was with her. It explains. It kind of debunks a lot of her claims and kind of explains what she's doing now and how it all started. And sadly, I had a front row seat to it all starting, which I never wanted to be. My life story don't want to be known for this.

John Dehlin [00:10:39] But is it also fair to say that you. I mean, every. Every one of our teen sort of experiences can be fraught and problematic. And you. We can never know for sure what the cause of it, what single cause for anything is. But I get the sense that your teenage years were kind of troubled in some ways that can be directly tied to your friendship with. With teal. Oh, 100% that you've suffered.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:11:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:07] Because of that relationship.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:11:09] Now there's a lot of people around me that suffered from the relationship with Teal. I mean, a big thing I wanted to set straight before for anything really, was how cruel she's been to her parents in the media. And it's just so unjust. So that was one of the big points I wanted to make because I knew.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:11:33] I mean, I guess I can name her parents, Boz and Bobby. They were amazing. They were the best neighbors you could ever have. They were there for me during my struggles. They were always trying to help Teal with hers, like they were there a hundred percent. They're not at all how she claims to be. So I just wanted to make sure.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:11:48] I kind of went to bat for them because no one else has. And they're, they're getting such a bad reputation and it's not true what they're being accused of. So I find it not fair at all.

John Dehlin [00:12:00] Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. And, and I think we want to help people who are looking, looking into her. Maybe we can avoid, maybe we can avoid some people falling into her trap and the abuse, you know, and maybe even prevent some, maybe even save some lives. I don't know.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:12:22] I mean, after there was one girl in particular, I heard her story. She was 17, her name was Mackenzie. And her parents came out and talked about their daughter committing suicide after being on the Teal Tribe website. And it was heartbreaking. I mean, just being a teenage girl myself and almost dying of suicide and then hearing about someone else that actually died and how those families will forever be affected. That was kind of when I decided I have to speak out about this. I can't keep staying quiet and just hoping someone else will catch this and make it go away. Yeah. It's just, it's, it's horrible what's gone on, but I mean, just the beginnings of just. I never would have thought this is where it would be at today.

John Dehlin [00:13:12] Yeah. And just super quickly, Samantha, this is a topic you feel really passionately about as well. I, when I, when I kind of told you about this, it's not that you were excited, but I mean, you care about this kind of stuff. Do you want to just talk super briefly about that?

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:13:27] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:13:28] I mean, for those of you who have seen my Mormon stories or Zelf on the shelf, like I joined Mormonism As a vulnerable 17 year old, also battling some of the things that are going to come up in this story, like, you know, eating disorders and depression, anxiety. So I know the appeal of cults to vulnerable people. Yeah. And I mean, there's a world where I could have fallen into a teal swan hole instead of a Mormonism hole. You know, it's just you don't, you don't really get to choose what cult you fall into, especially as a teenager. I mean, you're just so vulnerable.

John Dehlin [00:14:11] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm super glad you're going to be here to help share your perspective and help with this interview. So thanks for being here.

Samantha Shelley [00:14:18] Yeah, no, thank you.

Diana's Mormon Upbringing in Northern Utah

John Dehlin [00:14:20] All right, well, Diana, where does your. And it is a Mormon story, by the way. Like, Diana was kind of, at least for a Good chunk of her life raised in the Mormon Church. Now, Teal wasn't, but there may be some connections there. But this is a Mormon story. But, you know, the focus is Teal. You can talk about the Mormon Church as much as you do or don't want to, but, you know, it's certainly. It's within a Mormon lens that all this happens.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:14:46] Oh, for sure. No, I was born and raised Mormon and was active in the LDS faith up until. I mean, one of the positives I give towards my relationship with Teal is I left Mormonism at a fairly early age because of some of the things I learned. Like her. Her parents were very well educated about the church. There was things I had no idea about that they talked to me about very openly. And I really appreciated that. Where I'm sure some of the other neighbors might have been like, oh, no, this family's turning people against it. But I. I learned a lot of things about Mormonism that no one would have told me otherwise. So.

John Dehlin [00:15:26] So were Teal's parents Mormon at some point?

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:15:29] Do you know? They weren't. They weren't any specific religion.

John Dehlin [00:15:32] Okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:15:32] So, yeah, they knew about it. Yeah. No, they. They researched a lot of religions heavily. They explored Buddhism. There was even a Quaker church in Cash Valley that I went to with them. And it was just a great experience being exposed to these other religions where I thought I was in the biggest religion in the world. Maybe I was not sure if that's where it's at today. I really don't follow Mormonism heavily anymore.

John Dehlin [00:15:56] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:15:57] And yeah, they just. I really appreciated my time initially with the Bosworths because of how much it expanded my worldview from small little Cache Valley.

John Dehlin [00:16:08] Yeah. Well, let's back up. So let's talk about whatever. From birth to meeting Teal, what background do you think is worth knowing to kind of set. Set a bit of a stage of your background in preparation for meeting Teal?

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:16:24] Yeah. So I had fairly normal childhood. It was fun. I mean, I grew up in North Logan, not far from where you're from. I loved it. We. My mom was like, girls camp leader. My dad was a teacher in the church. Um, I mean, he'll always tell you he wasn't an actual teacher. He just taught philosophy about it. He could never teach actual doctrine, and he's fairly open about that. So I think he's okay with me saying that.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:16:52] Um, and then the big life changing moment that was kind of the catalyst to me being in a more vulnerable spot when I met Teal was my parents Got divorced when I was 8 years old and we moved. So I moved to Hyde Park.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:17:08] My mom got remarried fairly quickly to my stepdad, who I love. Amazing man. And he lived next door to the Bosworth. Our driveways were parallel to each other. So if you went out my front door, there was the Bosworth house.

John Dehlin [00:17:21] And this is Hyde Park. So this is north of North Logan, right?

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:17:24] Yeah. I mean, we were north. We were on the border. North Logan, Hyde Park. So, yeah, depending on the day, if I said which city.

John Dehlin [00:17:29] So yeah, okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:17:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:32] And it was horse property, kind of.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:17:35] So there was five homes total in our little area. We were the main home that had kids. My poor stepdad never been married. Six girls moved into his house all at once, along with my mom and six girls.

John Dehlin [00:17:49] Where were you in the birth order?

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:17:50] I'm daughter number four.

John Dehlin [00:17:52] Okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:17:52] But there's also a five year gap on each side of me.

John Dehlin [00:17:55] Oh.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:17:56] With the siblings. So I call myself like the only child in the middle, which is where I had pets that were my close siblings. It's kind of a joke in the family. Yeah. So I'm trying to think what else would be relevant to Mormonism. But yeah, my family was a long line of Mormons. I even had the story of. We had a relative that was a bodyguard to Joseph Smith. And I later found out everyone has that story. Like when I got my first Book of Mormon thing, when I got baptized, it was highlighted in my Book of Mormon. You're related to this bodyguard. And wow. Isn't that amazing? You have that claim to fame.

John Dehlin [00:18:37] But yeah. Do you remember, like, life pre Teal, like happy or sad or, you know, like adventurous or creative or, you know, whatever.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:18:49] I had an idyllic childhood. I had an amazing group of friends. We kind of grew up at the time where your parents knew where you were based on where your barks, your bikes were parked in the neighborhood and just really fun. Like, even then I enjoyed my time in the church because that's where all our activities were. That's how all of us friends got together. And I have really fond memories of my time as a child up until the divorce when I was eight years old. I. I have no complaints about then. It was just really. It was really fun.

John Dehlin [00:19:23] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:19:24] Kind of. Everyone wants to go back to childhood. I'd go back to that time period if I had to.

John Dehlin [00:19:28] Right. Okay. So I guess let's talk about your first impressions of meeting Teal and how that went.

Meeting Teal Swan as a Childhood Friend

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:19:38] Yeah. So I met Teal as soon as we moved in. They'd been Kind of living up there without many children being around them. And yeah, T and I hit it off right at the get go. We were both massive animal lovers. Both had a huge love for horses. And we were pretty much inseparable from day one. I think there was even a point where her mom had to let me know, you need to take a break from playing 24 7. And yeah, we were together so much.

John Dehlin [00:20:12] Were you the exact same age or a little.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:20:14] No. So Teal is two, three years older than me, so.

John Dehlin [00:20:18] Okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:20:19] Yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:20:20] And you were. So you're how old when you met her?

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:20:22] I was just barely nine years old. She would have been 11, 12 when I met her.

John Dehlin [00:20:28] So there's a little bit of influence. Age, age privilege there.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:20:31] Yeah, a little bit of an older friend having more of an influence on a younger friend. But, yeah, fairly positive from the beginning. Yeah, we, they were great neighbors. They came down to our house to hang out. We went up to their house. We all had the background of Edith Bowen. We had gone to Edith Bowen as kids.

John Dehlin [00:20:53] So I, I. Because I know what that is. Maybe talk a little bit about that. She mentions it in some, one of her YouTube stories. She tells.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:21:00] Yeah, Edith Bowen was like a, a nature school. I mean, I'm trying to think how to describe Edith Bowen.

John Dehlin [00:21:06] It's kind of a research school.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:21:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:08] At Utah State University. On campus.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:21:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:11] It's connected to elementary school on campus at usu where they would also do research, but, like, have the best teachers in Cache Valley. Were there the best run school. Like, a lot of parents, you had to, you had to be in a lottery to even get in. So literally, it's probably the best elementary school in all of Cache Valley. I. That's how I remember it.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:21:32] No, it really was. And I think Teal had the same experience as me where she didn't go to East Bowen all the way. I think she stopped a few grades in. I stopped a few grades in after the divorce. I had to change schools just because of the back and forth. But we had that in common. Where both of our families were really into those more not, not alternative things, but more down to earth things. So my parents built the playhouse at Edith Bowen and we're heavily involved in it. So, yeah, we had a few things in common with our families. Despite the different religions, it never felt like a factor that we had different religious beliefs between our two families.

Samantha Shelley [00:22:13] How hard was the divorce and having to move for you? Like, were you scared to have to move into this new house?

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:22:19] Oh, I was the kid that Took it all on myself. Thought it was all my fault, really took the guilt of it. And I know as an adult that wasn't how it was, but at the time it felt like my whole world had ended and just nothing would ever be the same. And I was very depressed even as an 8 year old. I've read through my journals and I can't believe how depressed I was. I've got an 8 year old child now and it's kind of scary how far down the rabbit hole that took me so quickly. But just knowing my personality, where I'm a more anxious type already, it definitely took a toll on me.

Samantha Shelley [00:23:01] And were you leaving good friends behind in moving or.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:23:04] I was still going back and forth. So I had my original friends in my dad's neighborhood and then they came visiting my mom's. It was three miles. I could ride my bike back and forth if I wanted to. It was pretty, pretty easy. But no, it was, it was devastating at the time for me for sure.

John Dehlin [00:23:24] And I'm wondering if what you're thinking, Samantha, is that oftentimes people who tend to wield undue influence look for vulnerable people.

Samantha Shelley [00:23:34] Yeah. And it sounds like Teal was maybe like a relieving force, like to. To make friends with the next door neighbor and click with her.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:23:41] Oh yeah, she was very understanding about what I was going through. I mean, she was making the odd comments about what I was going through at the time, but like things like how can you think there's a God that loves you if he's letting this happen to you in your life? And just there was a slow progression of the more negative thoughts that were kind of being put into my mind that had a real impact. And so yes, I'm grateful she helped me leave the church in that sense. But the way it originally started happening was it was just sad to look back on.

John Dehlin [00:24:20] But it's like telling a little kid Santa doesn't exist. Like it kind of just made you grow up or start thinking about things that maybe weren't age appropriate or just healthy for you.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:24:32] I never would have thought about those things because I still was like praying every day like, maybe they'll get back together. Maybe my life will go back to normal. And I kind of got out of that once my parents both got remarried. But at the time I was in a very vulnerable spot. And I guess trigger warning, even at that age I debated like, do I want to keep on living? And I mean, just to be at that age and already having those thoughts is so depressing to me. Just, it's heartbreaking.

John Dehlin [00:25:05] At 10 or 11, my journal entry,

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:25:07] I was 9 years old when I went and read through it about just not wanting to be here anymore if this is what the world is and I don't want to be in it. And so I was in that mindset when I met Teal already. And I don't know if at that time she was necessarily targeting me because I was vulnerable. I think it was just I was close by. She needed a friend, I needed a friend.

John Dehlin [00:25:34] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:25:36] And you'd been baptized at 8. Yes. Okay, but. But Mormonism wasn't giving you much comfort.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:25:43] No, I mean, I left it in my teenage years. I had moments where I tried to go back, but no, I left it really early on. I was the only one in my family also that had left it. So still the only one that's never gone through the temple and things like that. But it's not the worst thing.

Samantha Shelley [00:25:57] Congrats.

John Dehlin [00:25:58] Yeah, we'll get there. Okay, so I'm gonna do something I normally do. I'm gonna pause your story because I want to ask some questions about Teal story, and then we'll kind of do a dance back and forth.

Teal's Claims of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:26:11] Perfect.

John Dehlin [00:26:11] To kind of merge the two. So one of the videos I want to make sure we include in the show notes is this YouTube video where teal is being interviewed by some Idaho journalist and she does like a two hour interview about her story.

John Dehlin [00:26:26] And the reason why I want to do this is because every cult leader has a founding story. And the. And almost always the founding story has to involve. Has to be dramatic. It kind of has to claim special powers of some sort. And it has to be kind of shocking enough to make people think that this person's special. And I need to follow them. Right. And so usually it's like I saw, like with Joseph, it's like I saw God in Jesus. Or, you know, pick your. Pick your leader, Muhammad, you know, they had some, we'll call it theophany where they saw God or were visited by an angel.

John Dehlin [00:27:04] And hers is very different, but I think of it as quite similar. So forgive me for pausing your story, but I'll just tell you a brief excerpt of what I remember about her story. And you, you too can add if I'm. If I'm missing it, but it's basically something to the effect of. And this is Teal telling the reporter. Like, when I was four, I started getting ritualistically sexually abused.

John Dehlin [00:27:29] I, you know, my abuser would bathe me in. In animal blood. My abuser Would prostitute me out to 10 men a day at a gas station bathroom. I would watch children being thrown on to bonfires. I probably watched at least seven children murders.

John Dehlin [00:27:50] Like, you know, I was part of multiple satanic cults. And it was this kind of horse trainer guy who led me into it. And I didn't escape from it until I was 18 after witnessing at least seven children killed and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like it's, I mean, if it were true, it would be like next to like witnessing the Holocaust. It would, you know, it would be like a world record in like resilience. Right. And then in inspiration, you know. And she also will claim that she from birth had special powers. She was an oracle. She could see the past, she could see the future.

John Dehlin [00:28:36] She could read people's minds. She could speak to the dead. And part of why these cults kept her captive, you know, was because they would, they would harness her special powers for their own good. Right. And, and, and then you're like, oh, wait a minute, like, how. Why did. Where were the parents? You know what I mean? And, and she'd be like, well, they would come to Edith Bowen and they would take me out of school for the entire day. And that's, you know, my mom thought that I was getting horse lessons, but really I was watching people throw babies on bonfires.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:29:13] Well, she would say that she was pulled out of her room every night at 3am and was back before sunrise. And this is to go all the way to Idaho to participate in all these cult crazy cult things. And then she'd be back in time to go to school. No harm, no foul, look, just fine.

John Dehlin [00:29:30] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:29:31] And I mean, yeah, those would be the world's worst parents if they didn't see this happening.

John Dehlin [00:29:38] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:29:38] There's no way, with the way our house was set up too, that it was feasible.

John Dehlin [00:29:41] Yeah. And Sam, I want to throw it to you, but I'm just going to say one thing as a disclaimer. Like, I have members of my family that have been assaulted and abused and even raped. I believe in. Start by believing. There's a huge problem with not believing abuse victims. There's a huge rape problem. There's a huge abuse problem, especially within Mormonism. So I, I have to do my best to always say, yes, all of that. Yes, we need to believe victims and root out abuse and abuse and rape is horrible and it's underreported and egregiously and it's horrific. All that's real and important.

John Dehlin [00:30:21] And if you study satanic ritual Abuse and recovered memory. You'll know that there's this other huge area of creating fictitious memories about abuse and then having hosts of family members get falsely accused for events that never happened for which there's no evidence. That's completely unbelievable.

John Dehlin [00:30:45] So we obviously, I think all three of us side on the latter as it relates to Teal. And who knows if some of the former did happen to Teal? Oh, for sure, we don't know. Maybe it did. But that's a disclaimer because we do not want anyone to walk away from this saying, don't believe people who claim abuse or rape or that rape doesn't happen or that abuse doesn't happen, or even the Teal wasn't raped or abused. We don't know.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:31:13] No, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:31:13] All we know is, like, this founding story of her watching children be thrown on bonfires and stabbed and sacrificed and bathed in blood is part of these horrific satanic ritual abuse cults. I'm not buying it. And we want to get your perspective on whether that may or may not be realistic, because it. She's associated with Barbara Snow, who was at the center of the satanic ritual abuse panic in Utah in the 80s and 90s. And that's what infects the whole story as being dubious to me. So I'm giving my bias away. But I'm also trying to do my job to psycho educate as a PhD in psychology and as someone who cares about people and mental health and our community. Samantha, you were gonna say or ask something?

Samantha Shelley [00:32:01] I was just gonna ask. According to Teals account, does she claim that her parents were complicit in this? Like they just kind of looked the other way, or does she. Was it like this person just snatched her away from her home repeatedly and they never knew?

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:32:14] I'd say it's kind of both. She says they were complicit in the sense that they didn't recognize the signs, that they just weren't understanding what they

John Dehlin [00:32:24] were seeing and they wouldn't believe her.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:32:27] Yeah, it was. I mean, they've been really good about not discrediting her. And that was. That was a huge thing I had with trying to come forward. How do you talk about someone that you think is telling a false abuse story without kind of, I mean, not believing a true abuse victim? And that was one of the things I struggled with talking to the documentary group that I didn't know how to explain without sounding like I was discrediting someone's experience. And her. Her parents were really trying so hard to help their daughter with whatever was going on. I mean, they had her in therapy, and they were there trying to help her through this.

John Dehlin [00:33:10] Yeah, and we'll. We'll cover that as we go through the timeline a bit as well. My. My answer to your question would just be she'd made her. Her parents her enemies, and that became part of her modus operandi for her future clients. It's like she turns almost all of her clients against their parents and turns them into abusers when they often probably weren't, or there's no evidence that they were. But anyway, the reason why I'm asking all that was just to say by age 10, 11, 12 for you and. Or her, like.

John Dehlin [00:33:51] And then we can talk about what you saw from then on. Were there any signs or. Did she ever mention that, or is there any. Is there anything that would. That you could be able to say that would either say that doesn't seem true based on my experience, or. Yeah, there were signs of that, and I saw evidence of burn marks or she told me about killing children or whatever, you know.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:34:14] Yeah. No, there was no physical evidence that I ever saw on her, and I was with her fairly intimately pretty early on in our childhood, and I never saw any physical signs. I even met the alleged abuser when

John Dehlin [00:34:27] I was younger, and we can tell that story, actually.

Samantha Shelley [00:34:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:31] Yeah. But, like, when you first met.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:34:34] When I first met her, no signs

John Dehlin [00:34:35] of all this trauma. I mean, this would be a traumatized child, right?

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:34:39] No, she was a very confident, outgoing child. There, again, nothing physically even. Nothing with what she initially said that would have stood out to me as something that had happened. She did have bizarre behaviors, but nothing that I think would point to abuse.

John Dehlin [00:35:01] Okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:35:02] To the level that she claims. And again, I didn't know anything about this abuse until I was older. The alleged abuse, she claims. So I wasn't in my twenties till I heard about all of this, and I was baffled by it. So even looking back, I am. I really can't think of anything that would point to her having been heavily abused.

John Dehlin [00:35:26] So you were her closest friend from the beginning. Is that fair to say, one of her closest friends? Closest friends among her closest friends?

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:35:34] Yeah. I only know of one other friend she had, and that friend was out of state and only visited periodically.

John Dehlin [00:35:40] Okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:35:41] There. There was no one else around us. I don't believe she had close friends at school, at least. I never heard about any of them, but, no, there was no one else around but me.

John Dehlin [00:35:56] So from that very beginning, she was never like, something bad's happening to me. Or I'm being harmed, or there's these

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:36:02] mean people, or, I mean, she did things that were more like concerning around me that looking back gave me pause to be like, is where would you learn these things as a child? And I kind of figured out, let's go there.

Early Warning Signs in the Friendship

John Dehlin [00:36:18] So start, start talking about your relationship and how it became problematic, what behavior started emerging.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:36:23] So my first big memory of it is we had a sleepover when I was 9 years old. She would have been 12 years old. So we were in the apartment at the bottom of her house and she went up to her parents alcohol supply and brought down what's called, I think, Irish cream, Irish whiskey. I'm not great at the drinking stuff and I had never tried alcohol. She's like, oh, well, I have, like, I'll have a sip of wine with my parents at dinner, like, but that's normal, I guess. And coming from a household with no alcohol, all new, all new things to me. But I didn't want to not seem cool to this new friend that I looked up to.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:37:05] So she was pouring shots of the Irish cream, tried to drink it. About died the first time. Then she went and took a shot. Easy peasy. Didn't even phase her. So I took a shot, tried to do it. And we had a few. Like, I recall feeling a little sick to my stomach, just like the burning coughing. Um, and the thing that stood out to me at that is she said, you can't tell anyone about this or else they'll never let us play or be together again. So this has to stay secret between us.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:37:40] And some of the more bizarre things started coming out around that time. Um, I mean, it just, it gets so crazy. And I didn't ever want to talk about this before because it was so shameful. Embarrassing to have been in the situation, to have been scared to kind of talk about parts of it. But there was like, when she would have been 12 or 13, started looking up pretty, pretty disturbing pornography. So I'd never seen any form of pornography at that point. And she goes straight to showing me, like, I mean, see, I still even hate saying it, even now, like S M porn.

John Dehlin [00:38:28] And so I. Bdsm. Bondage. Sadomasochism. Bondage.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:38:33] Yeah, the porn.

John Dehlin [00:38:34] The kind of more hardcore porn.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:38:36] Oh, yeah, so. And I would have been about 10 years old at the time, so it was just, again, didn't want to seem like I wasn't cool, that I was judging her. A lot of. Just a following, wanting to be as cool as my. My friend was.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:38:53] And the Reason I mentioned this pornography thing is because I feel like it played into some of the things she came up with later on. And there was even the most disturbing one. This is a funny and embarrassing story.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:39:08] She came down to my house and on our computer, we had a better computer than hers. And she's like, you have to see this crazy thing I found and starts pulling up, Googling, bestiality, mortified. That was the one where I was like, I don't think we should do this. Like, this is scary. My mom's gonna come home any minute. And lo and behold, my mom starts driving down the driveway.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:39:32] And back in the day. Some people might know this. Pop ups were a big thing on a computer. Once they started, they wouldn't stop. I panicked, unplugged the computer, and we ran up to her house later on. My mom's like, hey, I plugged in our computer. There's a lot of weird things on there. I'm like, weird. I don't know how that got there, so. And she didn't push it, which I think she was very uncomfortable by it too. Yeah, that was a mortifying moment.

Samantha Shelley [00:39:59] So she was generally like quite hyper fixated on sex.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:40:03] You said she was very, very hypersexual. And I attributed that to becoming, like, coming from a more laid back, kind of hippie esque family. They were very free about bodies, things like that. Like, it wasn't unheard of just to like, nudity wasn't a shameful thing. It wasn't something to be embarrassed about. And it didn't bother me at their house. Like, I didn't. No, I didn't see like the parents naked or anything like that. But Teal and I were fairly free with being new together from a young age. Like, seemed so normal at the time, looking back in hindsight, which. Not normal at all, but. So when I say I knew Teal intimately. I knew Teal intimately.

Samantha Shelley [00:40:53] You also said that she told you she was the Wiccan goddess of sex and believed she had power over men.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:41:00] Yeah, there was a lot of.

John Dehlin [00:41:02] Was that in this. We're in the timeline. Because I don't want to rush it, but I mean, no, that. That was fits.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:41:07] That was early on. She loved the Wiccan stuff. And I don't recall. I don't want to do the Wiccan beliefs a disservice by trying to explain

John Dehlin [00:41:18] them, but because it can just be kind of secular pagan kind of spirituality that loves nature. And it doesn't have to be some satanic thing. It can be a Good, beautiful, nature loving thing.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:41:28] Right, that way, yep. And she could take anything that had the potential to be beautiful and put a darker turn to it. So her being the Wiccan goddess of sex, teenage, early teenage, she really thought she had power over men. All the boys at school, she said, had things for her, and she thought it was laughable how she could get them to be so attracted to her. Just really talked about having a power over men. And I always was almost envious because I'm like, look at this tall, beautiful girl. Here I am short. I wasn't a petite person by any means.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:42:08] And it was actually. It was a huge factor in me kind of developing an eating disorder later on. But she really knew how, at least. She talked like she knew how to manipulate men from an early age. And sexually. Sexually, yes. And really loved having that power over them.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:42:28] And, I mean, these were the things that made me pause when I look back on why would a child that age be so hypersexual with where they grew up and things like that. And I can't say before I met her that nothing had happened. She hadn't been exposed to things like, I can't.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:42:52] I can't attest to that by any means. I didn't see any physical signs on her at the time when I met her. There were no scars on her body, anything like that that would suggest something like that.

John Dehlin [00:43:03] Samantha, you. You kind of had a theory that kind of is in between being part of a satanic sex culture and, like, lying about everything. Right?

Samantha Shelley [00:43:12] Well, just when you hear about her being so hypersexual at a young age, I feel like that is often kind of a response to childhood sexual trauma. But obviously, like, there's such a big difference between claiming childhood sexual trauma and saying, I was in a satanic cult that sacrificed infants for 13 years and I watched seven babies die. And, you know, like, those are very different. Like, one is, like, beyond reasonable doubt. You know, it's so going back to your point about believing victims, it's like, this is just a totally different ball game that we're talking about. But I do find that interesting that even though it seems like her intensity, how extreme she was with things like extended beyond sex, like, it's an interesting data point that she was so hypersexual. Yeah, the computer thing you attend. She was 13.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:44:02] And I'm rough guessing some of these ages because it was such a broad period of time and these things happened multiple times. And it's more. I can just. I'm trying to kind of attest to how young some of these things started.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:44:18] So, yeah, there was a lot of those kind of disturbing detail things she would talk about, but there, there was no place they could have actually came from. So when I bring up the pornography stuff, it's really some of the bizarre stories she would talk about.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:44:36] They matched up to some of the darker things she was showing me, the disturbing things. And she, she almost seemed like she was excited to see, like, the shock effect it had on people. I mean, on me, just because I was so disturbed by these things, they scared me. I was like, I can't believe these things happened. She's like, oh, you wouldn't believe how dark the world is outside of here. Like, you don't even know what the world is. And how did she know what the world is? We were in a small town, she had parents. We didn't even have cable growing up. So the Internet was our access to things.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:45:21] And even that was really sporadic. So it's. That's why again, I say I can't attest it, nothing having happened to her, because I, I do suspect there's a high probability of something happening to her when she was younger, just based on how she's acting. But that could also be explained in other ways. But I'm not a psychologist. I.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:45:46] I can't say 100. But there was nothing I knew of or that she told me early on in her childhood, before she knew me. So I guess that's my disclaimer is I have my opinion on it, but I can't say 100%.

Samantha Shelley [00:46:01] Yeah. And to be fair, regardless of what abuse she did or didn't suffer, like we are, she's a public figure with, like a specific founding story that seems not true. And so that's kind of like the focus here. You know, it's kind of irrelevant in a way what she, you know, I mean, like, whether she suffered things maybe more like boring forms of abuse before then. But what is relevant is like, this is the founding story that she's selling people. And, you know, people are really drawn to this idea that she went through such a unique hell and has triumphed over it.

John Dehlin [00:46:38] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:46:38] Hence the focus on like. Yeah. I mean, she probably wasn't in a Satanic cult for 13 years.

John Dehlin [00:46:44] Yeah. And I'd say on the flip side, even on the empathetic, compassionate side, even if she's making it all up.

Samantha Shelley [00:46:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:52] And was never abused, this could be a personality disorder. Right. This could be mental illness that she experienced from a very young age.

Samantha Shelley [00:47:02] She's not choosing to be this like unhinged 13 year old. Like kids don't have that kind of free will. So it's like clearly she's going through something one way or the other.

John Dehlin [00:47:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hard to have empathy when the stakes are so high. But I mean, we are all people. We're all, we're all humans.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:47:19] So even then she thought she had some sort of mental condition and she was really almost proud of it at times. Like we went through. Her mom's a school counselor at an alternative high school. They had all the psychology diagnostic books and we read through those trying to figure out what our diagnosis was for fun and what the symptoms would be of certain ones. So I mean, she really, really was into that stuff. But one of the things, when I'm watching the deep end and I'm seeing her mannerisms, her more flat effect when she's talking, all those things were present when she was a child.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:47:55] There wasn't the appropriate emotional response for certain things. When she's talking to me about these horrific things, she's smiling, thinking like, I guess when as someone that's been a victim of trauma myself and I've talked with many other people that have been through trauma, that there's different ways they go about it. But I guess, I mean, everyone promise processes their trauma differently. But the way she went about it, it felt like she was excited and really, I mean, she really put a lot on me from such a young age and I felt like she really almost enjoyed that.

Samantha Shelley [00:48:37] Yeah. Will you explain a little bit more about kind of the power dynamic between you two? Again, because there's the age gap, but also it's. She's such a strong, confident child.

John Dehlin [00:48:46] Tall.

Samantha Shelley [00:48:47] Yeah. Tool towering over you and.

John Dehlin [00:48:49] And before. Answer that. But right before you do the personality disorder or two that just immediately come up for me. One is what's called antisocial personality disorder, which is totally a weird name for how I think about what it means. It means a lack of empathy, like not feeling emotionally affected by things that would be troubling or sad to other people. And when you think about, I don't know, I'm not trying to say she's like Jeffrey Dahmer, but when you think about people that can do really horrific things and just not even bat an eye, kind of like Dexter on Showtime, like that's one possibility.

John Dehlin [00:49:29] Of course there's borderline personality disorder, which is always testing limits of relationships. It can include self harm, real difficulty with emotion regulation. I'm not trying to diagnose Her, But I'm just saying. And then there's also narcissistic, which is like, everything's about me. The world revolves around me.

John Dehlin [00:49:48] And there can be multiple diagnoses. That's. That's called comorbidity. And then another is histrionic, which is where you, like, have an overinflated sense for your power or influence or for, you know, the situation or the events that you're involved in. So it could be any of those candidates, you know, personality. You know, Samantha's asking me about possible diagnoses, and we were talking about it, and those are for personality disorders. That immediately jumped to my mind now. Yeah, you can respond to that, but I don't want to lose Samantha's question. So did you?

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:50:21] Well, I was gonna say that's very relevant. Her parents talked about those same diagnosis when she was a child, along with schizophrenia and things like that. So those were things that were considered about her when she was young also.

John Dehlin [00:50:33] Yeah. Okay, so back to. Back to Samantha's question or prompt.

Power Dynamics and Emotional Manipulation

Samantha Shelley [00:50:37] Yeah. So, like, the power dynamic.

John Dehlin [00:50:39] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:50:39] I mean, obviously, you drank out of pressure, you know, wanting to be cool for her. Were there other ways that you felt like she had influence over you? And.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:50:50] Yeah, there was kind of a manipulation early on where I had other friends before I met her, and she didn't want me around my other friends, didn't really want me around anyone else. So I was starting to be isolated fairly quickly, which didn't help the mental state I was in at the time. And really, she wanted me around her all the time. And even her mom talked to us about taking breaks from being together because it was becoming such a problem. And really, anything that was her hobby became my hobby. I. I started writing English and dressage with her, and just really?

John Dehlin [00:51:36] That's horse riding, right?

Samantha Shelley [00:51:37] Yeah,

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:51:40] really. I just started taking on part of her life and becoming a part of it, and I was slowly losing the life I had before and connection with the people I had before. And just. I mean.

John Dehlin [00:51:56] Sorry, I just have to. I just have to say. Remember what you're about to say. But when I think about episode three of Deep Water, where. Where she's, like, alienating everyone from their family members, and she's telling people that if, you know, when she tells the one German. What's her name?

Samantha Shelley [00:52:13] Juliana.

John Dehlin [00:52:13] Juliana. Like, yeah. And Juliana just wants. When they're in Germany, she wants to visit her family, and she's like, no, if you're around me, you can't be a normal person. You can't do Normal things. Right. She wants to cut people off from their families, and then she wants to make her world everyone's world. The other one is when she. When the investigator is reviewing the contract, the people who join her inner circle have to sign. And. And the investigators talking about that with her former partner, whatever that guy's name is, the one that eventually I think is going to leave. Like the. The. It's basically just like what Teal wants, Teal gets. Teal's world is your world. At any point, you have to stop everything to do what Teal wants. It sounds like that's how she was with you.

Samantha Shelley [00:52:59] The one thing from the contract her inner circle has to sign that really stood out was you're not allowed to have any personal boundaries that might affect Till Swan in any way.

John Dehlin [00:53:10] Yeah. Did that sound familiar to you?

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:53:13] It was so familiar. And that wasn't just with me. Her whole family was wrapped around her finger, and they were in. In fear of upsetting Teal. Like, really, she. She ran that whole family, and that's also. She ran my whole world. And she.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:53:32] She really. It was Teal's way or the highway. If she didn't get her way, she's going to act out pretty aggressively. Her temper was pretty horrendous. She could go into these huge fits of just kind of extreme crying, and then just.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:53:52] She would accuse her parents of, you don't love me because you're wanting me to clean my room. And I mean, anything that was just normal day life was beneath her from day one. There was quite the superiority complex, and I definitely felt like I was a much less person compared to her, so why would I ever want to fight back with her? Obviously, she knows more than me, so I'm just. I'm going to listen to this person that I think knows so much, I'm learning so much from. And I felt that she had my best interest at heart and really wanted to help me at the time.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:54:27] And she was just a pro at taking over someone's lives, her family included, just from a very young age. So watching the deep end and seeing what she's doing as an adult, same thing when she was a child. It's. It's almost scary. You would think you would evolve as you get older, and if anything, it's almost like she's stuck in this one, this one place, her whole life.

Samantha Shelley [00:54:57] Something I found really fascinating from the documentary is, you know, she positions herself as this emotional healer who can help you, like, resolve your traumas. And I feel like a big part of Healing generally is learning how to sort of like regulate your emotions, not be so reactive. And she has got such a temper. Like, you just see her like, I, it, it blows my mind that people can look at the way that she is and like believe that she is like the most enlightened healed person in the world because she's so triggered all the time and it like she doesn't hold back on reacting to those triggers.

John Dehlin [00:55:30] Yeah. And there was that moment I texted you guys the, the quote. It was like between the fact that her mission is the most important thing on the earth and the fact that she's been through so much trauma and pain, there's no space for anybody else's emotions or opinions or feelings or thoughts. And so when you live in that environment. And it sounds like that's what her family system was, not necessarily the fault of her parents, because families are hard and parenting is hard. So not throwing shade on her parents. But like, if you grow up in a system where your thoughts and emotions are really all that matters and then that world gets built around you and you learn that.

John Dehlin [00:56:09] How would you ever learn? Why would you ever need to learn emotion regulation? You would never need to. Because that's not only was it a bug, it's a feature. If your tantrums are what gets you what you want, that actually reinforces your tantrums.

Samantha Shelley [00:56:22] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:56:23] And your lack of emotional regulation. Right.

Samantha Shelley [00:56:25] Yeah. And she's clearly, I mean, she has a degree of intelligence, like a high degree of intelligence in certain areas and she's clearly developed like high levels of cunning and she knows how to manipulate people and it's effective. So. Yeah, why change?

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:56:39] No, she was very smart from day one. I mean, she is very intelligent in certain aspects of her life, but she did know the power over doing certain things. So like for me, I started engaging in self harm at a younger age. I'm trying to learn.

John Dehlin [00:56:59] Did she show you that or model that?

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:57:01] No. So.

John Dehlin [00:57:02] Okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:57:02] Part of the stuff when I've talked about Teal is I've had this fear and this guilt that I helped create what she is now that I had this influence because I was the one that struggled with being suicidal at such a young age. And then I went on to engage in self harm. Oh. Without looking at my notes. I was 12 or 13.

John Dehlin [00:57:22] You can look at your notes.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:57:25] I think I recall that one well enough. And I recall the first time I engaged in self harm, I went up to the Balzar's house. I didn't tell anyone in my family. And Teal Helped me with it. She helped bandage me up and everything. And she had never engaged in self harm at this point. But when she was talking to me about this, she's like, you know, this is a sign of depression.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:57:47] Um, it's so you. You're probably depressed doing this, which fair I was. And then lo and behold, a few weeks later, Teal starts struggling with self harm. And the accused abuser. I read through one of his interviews, and he talked about how Teal saw how distressed my family was when I started engaging in self harm when they found out, and she really saw how upsetting it was for them. And he really felt like she was kind of harnessing that. When she started engaging in self harm very publicly, her self harm wasn't hidden in any way where I was in long sleeves. Didn't really want anyone to know.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:58:27] School counselor found out from friends. Hers was coming downstairs with bloody arms and saying, look what I did, mom and dad. And she really saw the power and how much that affected people. And that's where I felt so much guilt forever. I'm like, did I teach her this? Did I have that influence? And it's something she still does to this day, according to followers that are close with her.

John Dehlin [00:58:51] And Jared talked about that in, in my interview with him. Very disturbing. Cutting trigger warning. Sorry.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:58:58] Yeah, yeah. I mean, this whole, this whole episode, I guess, is trigger warning.

John Dehlin [00:59:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. And you're just trying to be a kid, right. And. And what's hard is she might be exacerbating your emotional distress. You know, if she's cutting you off from your friends and you feel inferior and you know, telling you God doesn't love you. Yeah. And yeah, like, so anyway, I feel sad for you childhood. You.

Diana Hansen Ribera [00:59:29] It's pretty heartbreaking to look back on. Like, that's been the hard part about kind of trying to write down all my thoughts about this is there's so many emotions that come up with it. It's taken me a long time to finally want to talk about, but it was self harm. And eating disorders were so misunderstood at that time also. So with her parents being. Or her mom being a counselor and then being heavily involved with like psychiatry psychologists at the time, because Teal was a little, for lack of a better term, a little off from the get go. So they were involved with therapists trying to figure out her kind of personality quirks, self harm, eating disorders. It was almost always assumed that person had been abused. So that's kind of a sad reality of that, that time. But I mean, it's not the case with all self harm and eating disorders.

Samantha Shelley [01:00:29] It's also so sad that you have had to like live with worrying about you influencing her because it goes without saying you were a child and did nothing wrong.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:00:39] No, I. I felt. I mean really, up until I talked to John a few years ago, I felt responsible for some of the followers deaths, the suicides they'd committed, because I thought I was the influence into her suicidal ideation. And I know now that's not the case, but it's still kind of. I still feel it a little bit, even though I know logically that's not how it works. But I still feel that.

Journals, Self-Harm, and Adolescent Struggles

Samantha Shelley [01:01:09] Another thing in your outline that you wrote about around. I think it maybe it started happening before you first cut because you're. You. You mentioned the journal entry from when you were 13, from the first time you cut. But you talked about how when you're going through puberty, she was like hyper fixated on your body changing. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:01:27] Yeah, and that's one of the harder ones for me to talk about. Like even I'm. I won't give full detail on all of that because I've kind of come to the conclusion that having an older friend, there was a level of, I mean, abuse I experienced from being involved with her, with that. But yeah, just really, she was delayed in going through puberty and things like that. And she was very aware of that, especially where she was the Wiccan goddess of sex at the time. So she pointed out all the things changing on my. My body and things like that. And the one time that stood out to me the most is I was with her in the bathtub in her room, which we did all the time, because it was. I don't know, it just was a normal thing for some reason.

John Dehlin [01:02:25] You bathed together?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:02:27] Yeah. And again, not something I would ever do at my house. I wouldn't want my parents knowing about that at the time. But I mean, from what she described her family, things were fairly normal like that. It wasn't body.

John Dehlin [01:02:40] Body positivity.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:02:41] Yeah. Wasn't sexual in any way. It was just a thing. So I didn't even think of it as sexual. But her mom came upstairs and Tia was like, look at what's happened to Diana's body. Like, can you believe this? Why hasn't this happened to my body? I'm three years older. And her mom's like, you know, maybe you guys have grown out of this phase, probably shouldn't be doing this anymore. And Teal's fascination didn't really even stop there. Like, she, my sister above me, she was with me. She's like, have you seen what's happening with Diana? Like, Diana, show her your body. Show her your body.

Samantha Shelley [01:03:11] Was that mortifying?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:03:13] So mortifying. And again, I lived in the house still where you didn't wear a tank top upstairs, you don't have your shoulders out. And then to go up to such a polar opposite that, I mean, it gave me a huge complex. I didn't want to be growing up especially so much quicker than my older friend. And it's actually a huge thing. Girls that go through puberty earlier are higher risk for eating disorders. So I had a lot of things stacked against me. And lo and behold, around fifth grade, I started having issues with bulimia. And it wasn't weight related. Then it was, I'm sick, I can't be at school. I'm too. I'm sick. So I'd make myself throw up so I wouldn't have to be in school. And then it kind of transitioned into the weight obsession later on. But initially it was my get out of jail free card.

Samantha Shelley [01:04:04] So was that just like a normal I'm a kid, I don't like school impulse? Well, I mean, they're not liking school part?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:04:12] Yes and no. I mean, I had such severe social anxiety. Like later on, if I thought I was going to be late to school, I couldn't go. I couldn't walk in late and be in front of people because then they would all have the focus on me. Um, which is probably why I'm like, one of the focuses on me right now. Um, I mean, just. Yeah, I never wanted the focus on me. And after having Teal so hyper focused on me and pointing all the things out about me, I never wanted someone to look at me like that again. It was. I was just so mortified with my body and the lack of control I had over everything going on. But, yeah, it's really sad to look back on.

Samantha Shelley [01:04:55] And you mentioned that you and Teal both engaged in, like, disordered eating behavior.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:05:01] So I, I debate whether Teal had a true eating disorder. And I don't want to discount that, but a lot of the stuff, again, she would see the attention I was getting for these things. Bulimia is very. It's very easy to diagnose. You're throwing up your bulimic. She started claiming she was struggling with anorexia and that one can take a while to diagnose. It can be written off as a picky Eater and things like that. And her claims of having an eating disorder started after I was diagnosed with an eating disorder. So I felt like often she was kind of mirroring my life.

Samantha Shelley [01:05:46] Yeah. Like she's learning at this young age that the way that you get attention is by being a victim of something. The bigger the victim story, the biggest flash.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:05:56] That's why I say she learned the response people got. People were freaking out. There's these two neighbor girls. They're both engaging in self harm. They're both engaging in eating disorders. What happened to these girls? Why are they doing this?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:06:12] And really everyone was trying to understand, like I think her mom, even when we watched the movie Girl Interrupted with her, which is very dark movie. Like even to this day I can't watch it without feeling horribly triggered.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:06:28] She wanted us to watch that with her to kind of see that, kind of see mental illness. And I think she thought we would really relate to it. And I don't know if the idea was it would be inspiring or maybe make us feel not as alone in some of these struggles, but.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:06:48] And Teal and I really had some parallels with that movie. I was the Winona Ryder character and she was the Angelina Jolie character. The one that she was a sociopath. And Teal loved the parallels between her and Angelina Jolie's character. It wasn't something I would. I would have. I struggled being the Winona Ryder character because I'm like a borderline personality. That's horrible. I don't want a borderline personality.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:07:15] And where she kind of. She didn't see some of those things as a negative. Where I saw them as a negative, she saw it as like a prideful thing. Like sociopaths are one of the more hardcore illnesses.

Samantha Shelley [01:07:31] She's like seeing herself in the character

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:07:34] and kind of taking pride in seeing herself as the character, which stands out to me now.

Samantha Shelley [01:07:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:43] Okay, so really quickly, when you were talking about the bathtub stuff. Well, don't talk about anything you don't want to talk about. But was there, I mean, was she. Is there anything you want to talk about her being abusive to you?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:08:01] More just the. The fixated on my body. And then there was talk of same sex relationships where again, Mormon me, I couldn't imagine being in a same sex relationship. I even said that to her and she always said like it.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:08:17] And she really liked me. So I'm not going to go so far to say there was inappropriate touching. That's a pretty serious thing to say. But there was definitely like affection shown towards each other. Like you know, cuddling, things like that. But it.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:08:35] There was enough things that happened now and that I've processed in therapy that I feel comfortable saying there was a level of. I mean, I still feel like abuse is a strong word for it, but again, therapists try to work with me on saying it. There was a level of abuse with that, even though it was just kids close in age. But the objectifying and constant discussions and wanting to see me in my entirety was really, really hard. And it's not something I was comfortable with even then. So I was very much coached into a lot of the things later on, the being more free with being nude and things like that.

Questioning the Truth of Teal's Childhood Story

John Dehlin [01:09:22] I. You shared with me a couple childhood photos. There was, I guess there was a fire in your home. So many of your photos were destroyed, but you were able to find a couple, is that right?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:09:30] I found a few. We. Yeah, we had two fires. Our house burned down twice in within a year time frame. So I have very few items from my childhood. So that I found. Even the picture I found kind of cemented between two other burned photos was crazy that I have that. That's all I have.

John Dehlin [01:09:48] Maybe, maybe we can show both and you can just describe what they are really quick. Is that okay?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:09:53] Yeah, no, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:09:54] Okay. So here's. So the first one, you can't see it. Sorry about that. But. But the viewers can see it's the childhood photo. Is the childhood photo.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:10:03] Yeah, the one her and I sitting together with the dogs. Yeah, that one. Yeah, yeah. And there was other people in that photo that I cropped out for their privacy.

John Dehlin [01:10:15] You're the. You're the blonde haired and she's the brunette.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:10:17] Yeah, she's the brunette holding the two little white dogs. I believe the dogs in that photo are Blanche and Sydney.

John Dehlin [01:10:24] Okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:10:26] And we had baby lambs. We were bottle feeding in that photo, so.

John Dehlin [01:10:31] And then the second one is a little more spicy.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:10:35] Oh, is this the. The lingerie in our field with our horse?

John Dehlin [01:10:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was going on there?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:10:42] I found that one when I went to look up the modeling photos because I don't recall her modeling when we were younger. My parents were mortified when they saw that photo. They're like, when was there a girl in underwear in our yard with a horse?

John Dehlin [01:10:57] And her pants are kind of. Those are chaps down. They're chaps.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:11:01] Those are chaps.

John Dehlin [01:11:02] Because she's in her underwear. For those who are. Those who are listening, she's in a bra and under. Black bra, black underwear with chaps next to a horse.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:11:12] Yeah. Pumpkin or Appaloosa.

John Dehlin [01:11:15] Yeah, any. I mean, what would have been the context for that?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:11:19] She. So when Teal talks about her modeling days, it was friends taking photos of her, which that one, I'm pretty sure was a friend. I mean, her parents took some photos of her up at Tony Grove, where they were forest rangers. And I mean, to my Mormon mind, they were risque. To anyone else, they were normal. They're just photos of her in normal clothes up in Tony Grove. And. But the horse one was one of her many trying to shock you photos. Yeah. Like I said, my parents are still dying over that one. But okay,

John Dehlin [01:12:00] maybe let's make a note to include that in the video cut.

Samantha Shelley [01:12:05] Did she. Sorry, go ahead. I just didn't want to move on from the modeling. Did she lie about how much modeling

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:12:10] she did or she lied to the extent of what her modeling was. She claimed to have traveled internationally doing Runway shows, that she was scouted outside of a feed store in Cache Valley,

Samantha Shelley [01:12:21] as all top models are.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:12:22] Yeah. And the one Runway show I went to of hers was Cache Valley Mall. I'm pretty sure it was for Maurice's. And all my neighbors were in it also. And it was just like a. Hey, you guys available? Come put the clothes on and walk for the back to school clothes. And if you know the Cache Valley Mall.

John Dehlin [01:12:41] Yeah, I've been there.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:12:42] Yeah, you'll. You'll understand what I'm talking about.

John Dehlin [01:12:44] They have a corn dog shop.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:12:46] I mean, they might have that. And I think the majority, like ZCMI was replaced with, like, Cal Ranch. So we have a ranch store in our mall. You can go buy feed for horses at the same time.

John Dehlin [01:12:55] T Mobile or, you know, I haven't

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:12:58] been there in ages.

John Dehlin [01:12:59] Chocolate store. Anyway, would you.

Samantha Shelley [01:13:03] Would she lie about a lot of things generally like that? Like, did you always catch her in lies?

John Dehlin [01:13:06] Exaggerating.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:13:07] I reached out to some of my friends that were around me at the time, and they had one of the kind of funniest, almost telling memories of her. And the three of us were at my house, and Teal was telling us about some international modeling show she had just done. And I was so annoyed with her at the time that I just got up and walked out and went out to our horse barn. And my other friend sat there talking with Teal. And this is Teal's embellishment. She had just done an international Runway show. And she's like, but when the show's over, what they do is they'll take you in the back room and rub your Whole body down with oil.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:13:46] And she's like. And I mean everywhere. Your whole body? Yeah. So my friend's like, what? They would do that? That's not okay. Like, have you told anyone about this? And she's like, Teal just thought it was great. She could see the shock on my face.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:14:02] So my friend went out to find me and I'm in the barn. I'm super annoyed with Teal. This, this is when I was a little bit older. She's like, can you believe this happened to Teal? I can't believe no one's like, should she tell someone about this? And I'm like. And I said to her, like, you know, this is all bullshit, right?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:14:17] This is one of Teal's many made up stories because the, the veil started slipping as we got older. And as I read through my journals, I was a lot more annoyed with her when I was around 14, 15, because you could see how far fetched all these stories were. And when I started calling her out on it, she would do the I'm not going to be your friend, I'm going to fully pull back kind of, I'm going to punish you for calling me out on this. And I'm stubborn. And as I kind of started getting more of a voice as I got older, I called her out on more of those things.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:14:56] And she was not as happy with me in our friendship. And I think that's kind of why some of the things she later did to me happened almost out of spite. And that's one of the, I mean, the craziest part of my story with her is kind of the spiteful things she did to me after I was kind of taken away from her.

John Dehlin [01:15:19] Yeah. And I want to go there, but before we do, let's go back really quickly. You talked about how you were with her so much, it was almost a problem for your parents or for hers or for both.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:15:33] For both.

John Dehlin [01:15:34] Okay, so. So if, if she's, you know, if we go back to her founding story, if she's in the sex cult where she's, you know, satanic murder, sex death cult from age 4 or 5 until 18, she's constantly, you know, with them, sacrificing children, bathing in blood, being prostituted out in, in gas station bathrooms to 10 men in a day. Right. So would she, if she's with you all the time and it's, she's with you so much that it's a problem for her parents and yours, in your mind, would she have had time to moonlight as a, as A member of a child satanic sex murder death cult.

Samantha Shelley [01:16:22] I mean, while doing the modeling internationally.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:16:26] Exactly.

Samantha Shelley [01:16:28] She's in Paris tomorrow.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:16:30] Just with the way our homes were set up, I mean if a car drove down a driveway or near us, all of our parents noticed because there's always speeding cars near our house. Like we. Everyone was always on alert. So if she's sneaking out at 3am we have dogs all around us too. We've got farm dogs. They're not quiet, they're gonna freak out and everything. I mean it's just. It's so improbable. And I had sleepovers at her house. She was never getting these calls to like magically wake up at 3am and leave. That never was a thing. So it just. Or even weekends, I mean, no, she was at. I talked to some of my family members about this and none of them have really followed her. This whole story of her abuse stuff didn't come out till I was in my 20s. So Barbara Snow, Till Barbara Snow, what

John Dehlin [01:17:23] was she all like? One last question about that, is like was she involved in hobbies, Was she doing soccer, was she doing dance? Was she doing, you know, was she involved in a lot of other extracurricular activities in addition to being an international model and spending all her time with you? That would have made it even harder for her to have time to be moonlighting in a death cult.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:17:43] Yeah, she did ballet at the Whitaker Center. I even went to do ballet out there cuz she was doing it. Thought it was so cool. I couldn't do ballet, lo and behold. So she did dance and then horseback riding. We both took lessons and we're always trying to find little 4H shows to compete in there. And then her family was very involved in like their forest ranger stuff. And if she's gone with her parents to the cabin up at Tony Grove for the month or two, they were there, they're all together 247 with no cable. I think there might have been some basic electricity up there. But it's so improbable with how present her parents were, how present my parents were, that this girl could just disappear for massive amounts of time and no

John Dehlin [01:18:33] one would notice, including from school. Like Edith Bowen wouldn't protest if some random she, she kind of passed it off like oh, back in those days, you know, Edith Bowen didn't care who checked you out of school. And I'm like what? Like, you know, Bowen would have very much cared if non parents were pulling kids out of school for entire days. But that was part of her narrative, Right.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:18:55] Oh, yeah. And Edith Bowen's a really progressive school. They're keeping close tabs on all their students. It was smaller class sizes.

John Dehlin [01:19:01] It's on the Utah State University campus. So they're not gonna. They're gonna be extra vigilant. I mean, about adults being around these kids. Right.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:19:10] And even then, it wasn't just anyone could check you out. That wasn't.

Samantha Shelley [01:19:14] I really feel like we're giving this theory too much credit. I know. We have to. I know we have to.

John Dehlin [01:19:19] Yeah, you're right, though.

Samantha Shelley [01:19:21] That's just so absurd.

John Dehlin [01:19:22] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:19:22] That's the hard part. And that's where I never.

John Dehlin [01:19:24] That's her founding story.

Samantha Shelley [01:19:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:19:26] That's where all her power comes from. Keep going.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:19:28] No, that's why I never thought I'd have to talk about it, because the police. When she. It was reported to police when she was older. Nothing happened because there was no evidence. There was nothing to go off of. There's no physical evidence on her body of these horrific things that had happened to her, aside from the self harm she did herself that she tried to write off as ritual abuse.

John Dehlin [01:19:50] Right. Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:19:51] And there was. There was nothing to investigate.

John Dehlin [01:19:55] Okay. Okay. So we're gonna say anything else about our extracurricular. Oh, how many siblings? How many siblings? Because, like, she would have had to been abducted. Abducted while other siblings were in the house, right?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:20:09] Yeah, no, she has. She has one brother and he. I think he's my age or maybe a year younger.

John Dehlin [01:20:14] Okay, so younger brother.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:20:16] He might be exactly my age.

John Dehlin [01:20:18] Okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:20:19] Yeah. Nothing ever was around him. He's never come forward and said anything. He's hid from this whole thing because it's been so destructive to his life. So he's not even a part of it, from what I understand.

John Dehlin [01:20:31] He just avoids it. Okay, tell me if this is the time to introduce this horse trainer guy that she ends up claiming is at least one of the people that was her. Her main sex death cult.

The Alleged Horse Trainer Abuser

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:20:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:46] Inductee. You met this guy, right?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:20:49] I did. I met him. I won't name him because I have a thing. I'm not with false accusations. They carry weight to some people and they do damage.

John Dehlin [01:20:56] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:20:57] So I believe she. Nick's name, nicknames him in her writings as Doc. And Doc was just a large animal vet. I was with him a few times. Nothing to write home about. Found him kind of boring. There was one night her horse had injured its hoof and he came over and her parents were all there. I was there. I think even my mom might have been There watching also. And it was just him explaining proper horse care for their hooves and treating the horse. There was nothing that would be a red flag. Um, and I saw him at their house one other time treating her other horse.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:21:34] But as far as him hanging out there on a regular basis, her leaving with him, and I never saw that. And I. I know she did go with him a few times. And that was according to his report, when some other people reached out to him and talked about was from like the hours of maybe three to five, if that.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:21:59] And it was not often. It was very sporadic. And he claims he had his wife with him whenever those things like that she was with them alone.

John Dehlin [01:22:11] Why would her parents have allowed her to be with this guy? What would they have been doing?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:22:16] Yeah, so they reached out to him after her mental health was spiraling. The self harm stuff happened, starting to happen. They were trying to give her some kind of hobbies, kind of get her more involved in horses, animals, because that was her strong suit. She loved animals. So they thought this might be kind of something that can take her mind off things, give her something to focus on, maybe look towards a future job. Is she going to be a veterinarian? So it was kind of just trying to find something to take her mind off things and maybe she would learn some things along the way that might help her.

Samantha Shelley [01:22:55] And doesn't she say that, you know, normally people would bulk at kind of her quirks, but when. When she talked to him about, like, her what I would describe as like synesthesia, you know, like hearing colors and all that stuff, he didn't think it was weird. And I think she describes it as. He was like, I can help you. She described, from what I heard from her, it sounded like he. He was claiming to take on like a bit of a bigger mentor role than just like, here's this thing. What's your impression of that?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:23:26] No, because I don't see him as being such a big figure in her life. As she puts out there. I feel like it was someone that had a few months, maybe that he was maybe like a few months. I remember them kind of being more in touch. And it was maybe one day a week, every other week, like probably a handful of times that they were together.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:23:54] And I think from what I've read about him, he has some kind of alternative healing practices, some quantum theory style things, and she learned some things about that from him. He also has a book out that kind of talks about those things that the Bosworth had.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:24:10] So she. She learned some things from him. But I won't say she was with him directly to learn all those things. There was also his books he had written, but she wrote him letters later on that have been published online.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:24:22] And to me, if this man was your abuser, why are you writing him these long letters? Even embellishing in the stories she wrote to him about being a playboy and things like that. And supposedly, according to this man, when he talked about it, she included naked photos when she sent this to him. And he wanted nothing to do with that, was shocked by that also. But she, I mean, she really reached out to him quite a bit when she was older from what the contacts close to her have told me. So I guess I'm saying some of that third hand.

Samantha Shelley [01:24:58] But she dedicated her first book to him, didn't she?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:25:02] So the books, I. I have a hard time reading the books. I was scared forever that I would be in them. So I've skimmed the books lightly. I don't look into them heavily.

John Dehlin [01:25:12] So that's your memory that she did?

Samantha Shelley [01:25:15] Yeah, I think she did. And it was like a positive, like, you know, dedication. I don't know when, I don't know, like the timeline of when she started claiming things on the horses. Had she, prior to meeting with the horse guy because she loved animals? Did she claim like supernatural animal powers or other powers?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:25:38] The other powers? No, she claimed to be unique is what she claimed, that she liked different colors than everyone else. She loved telling the story of when I was in kindergarten and they said, what's your favorite color? She's like. And I said brown. And she thought that was so special because she's like, brown is actually the most in depth color. It shows that you're such a. A myriad of things and just really, it's the most special color you can say is your favorite color.

Samantha Shelley [01:26:09] It's a really fun story. I feel like it represents a lot.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:26:12] Anything about her had to just be over the top special.

John Dehlin [01:26:18] So no special powers that you remember her claiming? I mean, you mentioned, you mentioned reincarnation that you guys would talk about reincarnation.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:26:28] There was the special powers that she. I have a hard time calling it special powers, but like things like Ouija boards and things like that she had at her house. And she would say she was in touch with dead people. That was the thing. She also said her home was on a burial ground. That home just got torn down recently. It's not a burial ground that she could really talk to the dead and things like that.

John Dehlin [01:26:53] That's special powers.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:26:54] I mean, all these dead people when she talked to him, just wanted to like scare us kind of thing. Like, there was always really dark things when she was like, oh, there's a dead person in the room. But she didn't do this around a lot of people. She didn't put this out there that she thought she was seeing dead people. Like my little sisters were around her also and they said she would kind of say these things, like, there's some dark spirits over my house right now, like, you should probably go inside and things like that. But she didn't talk about this to everyone. No one had heard about these special powers from this kind of quirky little girl. But she talked about being an alien as a child. And that's something she really talks about

John Dehlin [01:27:47] now that she, she was an alien,

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:27:50] that she was part alien, came from some far out there planet. And it's one of those things I just wrote off at the time because she was telling so many out there stories, like the modeling international stuff. And I'm like, you've been home all week. You weren't over in Europe. So it was around the time I was getting really annoyed with the stories. But she was hypersensitive to things like loud noises were really distressing for textures. She had a hard time with textures. And I mean, there was discussion when she was younger about is she on the spectrum? Kind of the autism spectrum, just with kind of like her rote memorization that she was really good at doing.

Samantha Shelley [01:28:42] And oh yeah, she says she has a photographic memory. Do you think that's true?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:28:46] I don't think it's true.

Samantha Shelley [01:28:48] Say that.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:28:49] I do think she has a very good memory. She was, like I said, she's very smart. She can. She can read something and really take a lot from it and she remembers the like the most minute details she can remember easily. So I think that's one of the things that's carried her so far is she is smart in that aspect. I would say she's lacking in some other aspects, but I can't say she's not smart. She is very smart.

John Dehlin [01:29:21] Well, that, that claim of an ability to talk to the dead plays into the Deep Water series into some really dark, dark stuff. And it also, just like for me, Red Flag number one of a charlatan is to claim special powers and that becomes one of the special powers she uses now along with her founding story. She claims to be able to talk to the dead and see the future and see the past and know what's best for people, know what they're thinking,

Samantha Shelley [01:29:52] like, know what happened to them in their past. They have no memory of it.

John Dehlin [01:29:56] And. Yeah. And to be able to channel the consciousness of their past selves or their parents or their prior lives and all that is like. I mean, that's Chad Dbell, Lori Valo stuff, right? That's. That's Julie Rose stuff in Mormonism, in the prepper movement, Right. It's. It's a way to claim power over people. And so you're saying you. You saw signs of that?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:30:21] Well, the disclaimer with that is the dead that we were talking to were. There was supposedly an Indian burial ground below her house, and it was them talking to her. And then the other group that was supposedly talking to her was. She always told me there was two dead children locked in the closet back in her bathroom. It was one of those old, sealed cupboards from an old house. And she's like, no, they're in there, and they still talk to me, these two dead children.

Samantha Shelley [01:30:48] And were you terrified when she would tell you something about that?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:30:53] I was so terrified.

John Dehlin [01:30:54] Did you believe she believed it, or did you believe she was just.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:30:57] I believed it at the time and just thought, like, I don't want to piss these little kids off. I don't want them following me down to my house. There's also the dead wiener dog that lived in her light fixture that was watching you, and you had sleepovers at her house. And this. Oh, that stupid dead dog. Alleged dead dog in the light fixture scared me so bad. She'd be like, no, don't be scared. He just laid down to go to sleep in the light. He's not gonna do anything. He's not gonna get out of the light. You're safe.

Samantha Shelley [01:31:25] He's a benevolent ghost dog.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:31:27] Yes.

Samantha Shelley [01:31:27] That's nice.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:31:28] You could think a wiener dog ghost would be, like, so cute. My wife's terrified of him.

John Dehlin [01:31:34] So let's. Now. So there's at least two stories I want to make sure we talk about in your and her adolescence. One is her meeting of Barbara Snow and her own treatment and. And her discovery of satanic ritual abuse and anything you know about that line of her story? And then there's a point where that bleeds over into your life. Those are two things I want to make sure and cover. Is there anything else you think we should cover before we go there?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:32:02] Like, in regards to her special powers? There was the other thing that she tried doing with me, the focusing. If you focus really hard, you can move objects with your mind. I'm sitting there with her both trying to do it, she's like my object just moved. Did you see that? No, I didn't see. I was focusing on mine. Now I'm going to watch you. You, you show me how you were doing it. Well, it can't move now that you're focusing on me was her thing. So if I wasn't looking at her, the objects were moving.

Samantha Shelley [01:32:30] But Joseph Smith, I mean, Joseph smith.

John Dehlin [01:32:33] Oh, the 160 pages.

Samantha Shelley [01:32:34] This is your fault for looking.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:32:36] Yeah. Those delusions of grandeur and her magic powers were something she talked about, weren't there. Again, she called herself the modern day Joseph Smith as a child. That was for me. I'm like, that's sacrilegious. You can't talk about the, the great and wonderful prophet at the time. But what a weird thing to claim, especially if you have this great disdain for Mormonism. You want to be like the Mormon prophet.

Samantha Shelley [01:33:01] But yeah, I know this is jumping back a tiny bit, but just in case anyone watching doesn't know, she does claim that the horse doc introduced her to the quantum realm. And I listened to an interview with him. He does, he did horse acupuncture. Now he says he doesn't need to do the needles because it's all about intention. So it does sound like he has like these spiritual beliefs that she caught onto. It kind of seems like what she claimed ability wise, kind of. She's like picking up stuff as she goes throughout her life and is adding to it through these various influences.

John Dehlin [01:33:34] Yeah. And I was just going to say thanks for bringing us back to that because I was just going to say Margi has enough sexual abuse in her family history. We would have Never let our 12 or 14 or 16 year old daughter be alone with some guy going to Idaho for hours at a time. So like we don't know, we don't want to falsely accuse, but like, I'm just saying we would never do that.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:33:57] No, it's.

John Dehlin [01:33:58] That's a little bothersome to me that that was allowed. Not stopping short of accusing him of doing anything.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:34:05] But let's see, that's troubling. The thing is, supposedly she wasn't alone with him. His wife was also with them.

John Dehlin [01:34:14] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:34:14] And I mean now in this day and age, I mean I would never let my children go off with just this healer friend of mine. So it's, it's definitely sketchy. But even for back in the day, there were some parameters around that. It wasn't, here's my daughter, free range. Bring her back when you're done and we'll, we'll go from there. It was all right, you're gonna go here and where you're gonna be doing what?

John Dehlin [01:34:43] And be back by when?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:34:45] Yeah, shoot. Back by dinner, if not sooner. Because I hung out with her after school, so it wasn't often.

Samantha Shelley [01:34:52] Yeah. Whereas the impression I got from her story was like, her parents just kind of put her in the hands of this guy and he kind of was then this full time mentor. That's just the impression I got from listening to her talk about it.

John Dehlin [01:35:02] Right.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:35:02] Yeah. That's classic Teal embellishment. Something that would have been fairly minor, innocent to her telling of it. Like the one quick example was she claimed she had an ex husband that dropped her off in the middle of nowhere because he was just sick of her and she had to walk home. I talked to her mom once after she had broken up with the first husband, and she's like, yeah, he just didn't know what to do with her. He brought her back home, just said, I can't help her anymore. I hope you guys can figure it out. Brought her home. But her story is I was dropped off in the middle of nowhere, middle of the night, had to find my way home. So it's just classic. Here's what happened. And then there's Teal's telling of what happened.

John Dehlin [01:35:44] Yeah. And yeah. Flipping to the other side. If even if none of this happened with Doc, if you're going to create a founding story, either one that you end up believing or one that's totally fictitious, you're going to root it in real things that happen to you with real characters in your life or things that would be at least semi believable to the people who would have been around you. Right. So I mean, so that's even what

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:36:15] made me question is there. When I found out about these allegations she was making happen around her childhood, there was elements of things that were true and then they were so mixed into all these crazy things. But those small true elements made me wonder, which is why around the time I reached out to other therapists and things like that to figure out what did I just get thrown into.

John Dehlin [01:36:39] Yeah. Okay. Anything else you want to talk about before we jump into Barbara Snow territory?

Barbara Snow and Satanic Ritual Abuse Claims

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:36:47] I'm drawing a blank, so lead the way.

John Dehlin [01:36:49] This is great. I'm loving it. This is so amazing, both of you. Thank you. Okay, so what do you know about her mental health treatment and the whole Barbara Snow stuff?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:36:59] Yeah, so she went to a therapist in Cache Valley. Cache Valley. Small town, so we were usually a little outdated on what Our treatments were. But this is kind of my. My theory mixed with some of my memories of how her meeting with Barbara Snow came to be is because of the things Teal and I were doing. It suggested trauma because of the cutting, eating disorder, depression. So they started reaching out to therapists that specialized in trauma and her parents. Her parents, yeah. And there was talk of the repressed memories, the recovered memories. When we were younger, it was kind of a maybe things have happened and you guys just don't remember until really latched onto that.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:37:48] And so they did see a lot of therapists in Cache Valley. I saw a lot of therapists in Cache Valley. None of mine brought up the repressed memory stuff. So I'm grateful for that. But it was something they were talking about way before her time with Barbara Snow. So my theory is that's why they reached out to Barbara. It's her specialty in trauma therapy.

John Dehlin [01:38:09] So you mentioned your notes, and this is where, weirdly, I come into the picture. You met. You mentioned in your notes that somehow the Utah State University psychology faculty, which is where I got my PhD, were somehow involved. Would that have been after Barbara Snow or before?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:38:26] Before.

John Dehlin [01:38:27] Okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:38:27] So, yeah. This would have been in the 90s, when we're. Yeah, 90s early. I mean, certain to bleed into the 2000s, that it was a common thing in psychology. From what I've come to understand that the therapists psychology department in Cache Valley, they believed in the satanic ritual abuse stuff. Sorry, if I'm jumping down. I'm bringing that one up so much that they went looking for where these things could have happened for the evidence

John Dehlin [01:38:53] and members of the Utah State University Psychology Department. And was that in conjunction with Teal or just.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:38:59] Nope. This is just things I've learned later on from other people that went to school in that department at the time.

John Dehlin [01:39:05] Okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:39:05] But it was. People really believed these things were happening, but when they went to look, couldn't find any evidence to corroborate.

John Dehlin [01:39:12] And how did that connect with Teal? Or did it.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:39:16] Yeah, I don't know where it connected with Teal so much early on, other than there was the assumption that there had to have been some form of trauma. And even Teal talked to me about how I could have had some abuse that was so horrific that I've repressed and that I think she learned kind of from therapy.

John Dehlin [01:39:40] Or maybe she saw therapists at Utah State.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:39:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:44] And have talked to her about satanic ritual abuse.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:39:47] And her mom was a school counselor in Cache Valley in the Cache County School District.

John Dehlin [01:39:52] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:39:52] I, I would have think, I would have thought that they were looking into those things also because they looked into every treatment under the sun to figure out what was going on with these spiraling girls. So yeah, it was a conversation back then. It wasn't heavily focused like it was later on after she met Barbara Snow, but it was something I was aware of, was talked about then.

John Dehlin [01:40:14] Yeah. Well, the reason why I'm bringing this up is not to insert myself in your story, but when. So I started my Ph.D. in psychology at Utah State University in 2009 and one of my super what one of my supervisors and or you know, mentors, faculty member was Carol. Doctor, not doctor was Carolyn Barkus. She was this 70ish year old woman with Native, Native American ancestry who as one of my professors taught us all as PhD grad students, 2009, 2010, that satanic ritual abuse was a real thing and that there were murders of children being cut up and, and burned alive or whatever. She taught us this as part of my training.

John Dehlin [01:41:08] And I had heard enough about the Mormon satanic ritual abuse stuff with the PACE memo where I knew that it was not a legitimate thing. But, but you're, as a grad student, you're in a position of no power, none. And if you cross a faculty member, you could be screwed immediately, you know, and after all that investment, it wasn't like I was like arguing with her during, you know, the time when she's training about that. But, but here's the other thing. Carolyn Barkis was really into horses and she lived in north, like north of, you know, North Logan, Hyde park, and had all this horse property in these horse ranches and would have been really involved in horsing.

John Dehlin [01:41:52] I, I might, I went with her once on a horseback ride with a bunch of other horse riders. So like, I don't know if there's some connection between Document and Carolyn Barkus. I have no idea or, or even teal per se. But the other weird thing is Carolyn Barkis helped run a trauma group at Utah State University in the clinic. And I used to, I used to provide therapy in my training next door to this trauma group that was going on. And I would hear people in the trauma group screaming at the top of their lungs in treatment with Carolyn Barkus. And Carolyn Barkus believed in this.

John Dehlin [01:42:36] Go back to your childhood as a baby envision. Is there a dark person next to you? Sort of like recovered memory techniques. And she believed in satanic ritual abuse and she was doing this trauma work where she was encouraging childhood recovered memories and she believed in satanic abuse. So, like it all, when you mentioned Teal and then the psychology department, it was an immediate connection for me to Carolyn Barcus, who was really good to me. So I'm not trying to, like, throw under the bus or allege anything other than just that connection's real and I personally experienced it. And I have no idea if there's any sort of triangle triage between Teal, Carolyn Barkus and Barbara Snow, but it would not surprise me if there was some sort of connection or if even Teal would have seen Carolyn Barkus or someone in that department in training.

John Dehlin [01:43:31] So if anybody ends up watching this can fill in any of those blanks or tell me I'm all wet, please do. But, like, I believe that. That the psychology department of Utah State might have played a role in. In Teal's journey.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:43:46] Oh, and the name, Journey. The name was so familiar when you mentioned it. So I can't 100 say she was involved. I don't know that involved Heal's therapist. But there we were heavily involved in therapy and with being Edith Bowen people and knowing all the faculty at Utah State. Like, I did psychological testing up near Edith Bowen. I. I mean, it probably was in the psychology department where I went and did testing to figure out what was going on with me. So we were heavily involved with those groups. And being a Hyde park native, the name is so familiar.

John Dehlin [01:44:23] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:44:23] But I left it at such a young age. But it's ringing a bell. I just can't tell you what bell it's ringing.

John Dehlin [01:44:29] Okay, so Barbara Snow and sra. Like, what. What do you remember about Teal and that? Anything.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:44:35] So I didn't know Teal when she went to Barbara Snow. That was around the time.

John Dehlin [01:44:39] What age would. What age would she maybe have gone?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:44:42] She says she started seeing her when she was 19. This part of the timeline doesn't add up to me because Teal claims she left Cache valley at age 19 and never came back. The last time I recall seeing her in Cache Valley was when I was about 18, 19 years old, which means

John Dehlin [01:44:57] she would have been 20.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:44:58] 20, 20, 21.

John Dehlin [01:44:59] Okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:45:00] And I was with my. Well, it's a relationship I don't even want to mention. She met him, then. Thought it. Thought he was great. And. Yeah, so she was in Cash Valley at that time.

John Dehlin [01:45:13] And so she was. You remember her being in Cash Valley? Later than her claims.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:45:18] Yeah, later than her story claims.

John Dehlin [01:45:20] And then. Okay, so then let's just back up then. Talk about the deterioration and the ending of your Friendship and any final memories you have. Oh, because she. She was involved in some things that were very traumatic for you personally and your family, right?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:45:37] Yeah, that's. That's one of the biggest things I can relate to with her followers. And when I can talk about repressed memory with the level of empathy, because I've been there and there was a huge focus with her on talking to me about having those traumatic memories that were so traumatic you didn't even know those memories were there.

John Dehlin [01:45:59] The idea is that you can have such horrible things happen to you at a very young age that you block them out and there's no memory of it. It. It starts with that idea, which I have to say generally has been summarily discredited by the American Psychological Association. It's rare that people have such horrific memories, even from a young age, that they have no memory of it into adulthood. But.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:46:23] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [01:46:24] Was she saying that to you pre Barbara Snow?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:46:26] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [01:46:27] Was it an idea she already had?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:46:28] This was pre Barbara Snow. That's why. That's why I have the theory. I suspect that's why they sought out Barbara Snow. But when I was younger and I was really, really struggling, doing really crazy amounts of self harm, I was having. I had multiple suicide attempts and just a fairly dangerous eating disorder. At the time, there was the discussion of for you to be acting like this, there had to have been something so horrible, so horrendous that happened to you. You don't even have any idea this happened to you. And that was terrifying to me. I was so scared that I had been abused. I had no idea what it was.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:47:05] And that was so traumatic in itself. Just this. It was distressing. It caused me to spiral even further because I had been destroyed by something. I don't even know what happened, and my life was over that I can't remember this, but I am so dysfunctional, so broken, that there's no way I'm gonna make it in this life, that it's just the end. It's the end for me. And I tried to reach out to talk to people about this.

John Dehlin [01:47:35] So she planted this idea in you. Okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:47:39] Yeah. No. Yeah. She really, really believed this is what had happened to me. I vaguely recall her parents mentioning it once, but they didn't put. Put it on me as heavily as. As Teal did. I think they were more just like, yeah, this is like a theory that's out there, you know, something worth keeping in the back of your mind. But when I was with Teal privately, it was the. These things happen. And Just you won't even know they happen. It's that. That crazy. And it's. You're so traumatized that your brain just shuts down and you can't recall and it starts coming out in different ways. And that's what was happening to me. According to her, all the trauma was coming out in the really damaging behaviors.

John Dehlin [01:48:25] And tell me if I'm wrong. But in addition to it being scary and unsettling, I wonder if when a kid is really troubled and feeling bad that they're troubled, feeling bad that they're not super healthy and normal and feeling bad that maybe even they're causing distress of, you know, people around them. It might even be both troubling and appealing to be told that maybe there's a cause. I don't want to plant that in you.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:48:54] That's a hundred percent what it was. Because I'm like, here's the answer to what's wrong with me. Why else would I be doing these things that I don't understand? And that's really. I'm so glad you brought up. That's a huge, huge factor in it, that there was a sense of relief with it, which is. It may sound weird, but when you're in that dark space and you don't understand and there's. You don't know what to do to make it better because you don't know what's going on. And once you think you know what's going on, you can start working on it to fix it.

Timelines, Inconsistencies, and Recovered Memories

Samantha Shelley [01:49:26] It's so appealing imagining that there's just this one silver bullet that can make everything better by uncovering it, figuring out.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:49:35] Yeah, yeah. Not that there's multiple complex issues that need to be worked through along with. There could. There's just a mental illness there that might need to be treated and so many factors that go into it. But to have one. I mean, it's not a great answer, but a more straightforward answer really is appealing when you're in that dark of a place.

Samantha Shelley [01:49:56] One thing that's interesting about this timeline is if this was pre Barbara Snow, then wouldn't Teal be in the cult at this time? When she's telling you, like, you can have memories that you can't recover when

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:50:10] supposedly she was in the cult.

Samantha Shelley [01:50:12] So she's telling you. So she's telling you you can have these really traumatic memories that are so bad you can't even remember them. But she's not telling you. And also I'm in this. This crazy thing's happening to me. Yeah. So by her Account is she had she not recovered them yet. But she somehow already believed in the theory of recovered memories.

John Dehlin [01:50:33] I mean, interesting. She

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:50:36] talks when I was listening to the Gizmodo podcast again this morning just to prep. Yeah, Just to get a little prep. And she was talking about she's rare. She's one of the people that didn't have repressed memories. She maybe had one or two memories repressed. But she said she went into Barbara Snow as a really rare case because she knew all her memories. She just hadn't told anyone.

John Dehlin [01:51:00] Or maybe she developed them earlier with a different therapist, you know?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:51:03] Yeah, that's where. That one's not very clear. I mean, it would be nice if her parents hadn't been mutilated in the media by her, that they could come forward and give some clarity on this because they were heavily involved in all her therapy. Really, they would know this is all

Samantha Shelley [01:51:22] giving Joseph Smith making up stories about Native American people when he's nine years old. And then it's like unsurprising that then later comes up with a fully fledged. You know what I'm saying?

John Dehlin [01:51:32] Yeah. Background of the cult leader or the high demand religion leader helps us understand and fill in pieces. Right.

Samantha Shelley [01:51:40] Yeah. And like she's workshopping, you know, various forms of lying and manipulation when younger that we now see in her coercion.

John Dehlin [01:51:50] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Seeing what. What scares people, what. What works with people. I mean, there's so many parallels. I want to list them all, but I'm. But so. So she's giving you this suggestion and kind of pushing it.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:52:07] So the. I was so scared that something had happened to me and I didn't know that. I even went down and met with our bishop at the time. And I can understand their confusion now, looking back on it, but when I went to talk to him, I said the lines of, I'm scared I was abused, and they don't. You wouldn't understand the nuances in that. Of, I'm scared that I've been abused. It's. I'm scared that I've been abused and I don't know I've been abused. So just.

John Dehlin [01:52:38] And there's someone who, through the power of suggestion, led me to believe I had been abused. That's an important part of it that you probably wouldn't have said to the bishop. Right.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:52:45] And bishops not being trained in mental health, they're not going to know the nuances in that. So, I mean, that was when they reached out to my therapist to say, hey, this girl's saying she's been abused. And it drives me crazy cuz I'm like, no, I never said I was abused. I said I'm scared. I don't know what happened to me.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:53:06] Scared. So with that, I understand now why they were confused about it, but so frustrating at the time. So then it gave even more credit to the crap. She's been abused. We really need to start looking into this.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:53:20] And with that kind of coming out and being a known thing to my family, they're like, well, we're gonna get Diana away from this situation. We know she's spiraling with this friend. We're gonna take Diana away from this friend and not have me be there all the time. So I left living at my mom's house full time and went and lived with my dad primarily.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:53:45] And that's kind of when Teal and I started seeing each other a little less. So she would have been 17, 16, 17 at the time. And I mean, it's hard because I know what was going on in that time with me. And then I've gained greater understanding of it later and learned about what her actions were behind the scenes. So if I talk about it before I knew what she was doing, it's that all of a sudden all these people wanted to interview me and ask me questions about what abuse I'd experienced. And there was police involved and I had no answers for them. I.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:54:29] I couldn't think of anything. And I'm really glad they. They didn't do any kind of like leading questions or anything like that. Like they're. There was nothing they could come up with. There was nothing I could remember other than the.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:54:43] I'm so scared. Something must have been so traumatic. I don't know what it is. I really was disappointed almost when they didn't find anything. Some. Then it almost goes back to the. I'm just broken for no reason. And so that, that led to an actual, actual investigation, which is horrible to look back on. It caused other people to be questioned about if they were abused also. So it just had this ripple effect that damaged so many lives with just

John Dehlin [01:55:16] this fear because one person, maybe someone was implicated as the potential abuser.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:55:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:55:24] So what's that rumor? I mean, it's that association and rumor like child abuse.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:55:31] No, there's. There's no coming back from that for a lot of people. And that's why I won't ever name who's been accused because of how serious those implications are. And it's not fair to them. They've already had their life destroyed from that personally. And I just want to, you know, you let bygones be bygones for them. No, I don't want to bring up their trauma with it. But it. It wasn't just me that was traumatized, because that put the implication that other people could have been abused. So when I say the ripple effect, it caused other people to question or be questioned about these things. And it's traumatic to be in those interviews and to, like, sit there racking your brain to look at every little aspect of your life of, was this okay? Was that okay? Were these things normal?

John Dehlin [01:56:19] Maybe didn't happen, you know?

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:56:22] Yeah, it's. It's horrible. It's really traumatic to. So at 14 years old, I was being interviewed about that, and I horribly spiraled around that time is when I had one of my attempts on my life that was. It would have been successful had I not been found. And it's now it's so crazy to, like, look back on what. I'm glad you have Kleenexes here. I'm gonna lean how I almost didn't make it out of this situation. So it shows you how. How damaging those things are and how scary, even though if you don't know anything, just the fear of not knowing or wondering is so horrific.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:57:09] Which is why it kills me that that's where her therapy stuff is based now. But because of how serious the suicide attempt was and my physical health declining from the eating disorder, I ended up going into a treatment center for a good period of time. And that essentially fractioned Teal and I off from each other. Between the investigation, me being so ill, it started naturally, kind of segueing us away from each other on top of just our age difference started showing at that time, like, life activities. But, yeah,

Samantha Shelley [01:57:58] this is really blowing my mind. The parallels to what we saw in the documentary and through the Gizmodo podcast, the Gateway, and you said before, like, just starting to wonder whether something traumatic could happen to you and, like, racking your brain for stuff you felt like you couldn't live anymore, like you couldn't go on, which feels so relevant to, like, you know, the biggest accusations against Teal.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:58:22] You're just so damaged that there's no hope for you. And watching this documentary has been so hard because it's like. It's like going back and you start feeling all those feelings again, and it's just. You have to be so damaged. And then now she comes out as this savior. That's the only one that can fix you. But she's putting this damage on them that it's not there. And even if these people had real abuse, she's just. Nick negated all of that. They'll never have justice or be able to actually process any real abuse they had. She's just ruined that for them by implanting more. I mean, it's, it's so. It's. It's awful what she's doing now

John Dehlin [01:59:14] because she can, you know, she's not helping you, she's creating the trauma that then she's raising herself up as the cure to which she doesn't have a cure for. But she's also ruining your relationships oftentimes with the people who are your maiden support system in your life.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:59:32] She's cutting off the lifeline for vulnerable

John Dehlin [01:59:34] people and their support systems.

Diana Hansen Ribera [01:59:37] Yeah. So she's taking advantage of these vulnerable people, cutting them off from anything that might be a support for them, and she's the only one that can save them.

Samantha Shelley [01:59:47] And even when that, that part in episode three when someone was saying to her, I think there was a couple of people who were like, I kind of do want to reconnect with my family. And she just actively discourages it without knowing anything about their lives. It seems like just her MO is just tell people to cut off your family because that's what she's done. And so everyone has to do it.

John Dehlin [02:00:07] It's almost like her M.O. is like, you don't know this, but you were sexually abused by your mom or dad or both.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:00:14] Oh, yes.

John Dehlin [02:00:14] And they are the problem and you need to cut yourself off from them and falsely accuse them. And if they don't believe you and agree with this abuse that I manufactured as your guru, then they're evil and cut them off. You know what I mean? Right.

Samantha Shelley [02:00:28] Yeah. It was also powerful in that episode when someone was saying, you know, we go to these retreats and then in, you know, the months in between the retreats, we're just so depressed and like at rock bottom and it's just like this never ending carousel. And then other people were like, my life hasn't got better. Like, and that woman Leslie, who, who killed herself, she had recovered these memories through Teal and suddenly she's dead. Like, it's, it's such a pattern. It's really. It's wild to hear it happening, like during a child, you know, when she's

John Dehlin [02:01:06] still so young and it makes sense, like. Yeah, like, like with Joseph Smith, the peep stone in the hat with the golden plates makes a lot more sense when, you know, he was a treasure digger. With the peep stone and a hat.

Samantha Shelley [02:01:20] But Coleman makes a lot more sense when, you know, he was coming up with those stories at nine.

John Dehlin [02:01:24] Yeah, the Native American stories, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:01:29] It kind of reminds me of back before I had the more serious attempt. The first time I had done engaged in self harm. Teal. One of the things she said to me was, you did it wrong. And she's like, if you were trying to kill yourself, you did it in the wrong place. And then demonstrated to me how to do it right if I were to do it again.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:01:59] And I did that later. And she. At first I thought I had given her these ideas towards suicidal ideation, but she had a fascination with it. There was a lot of talks about if we were to commit suicide at the same time, would we be able to reincarnate back together at the same time? And there was talks of having the intention in your mind of what you wanted to reincarnate as.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:02:36] And if we really had that right in our minds and we did it at the same time, theoretically that we could come back together with whatever we wanted. If we wanted to come back as a horse, as long as we timed everything just right kind of thing, then that's. We could have control over our destiny down the road or in our next life.

Samantha Shelley [02:03:00] It's.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:03:00] It sounds so bizarre, but it felt so plausible at the time. But thankfully, we didn't ever have an attempt together or anything like that. So I just should clarify that.

John Dehlin [02:03:15] But the. But the problem with that is one of the main criticisms of her is that she has a history of characterizing death by suicide as a reboot because. Because we all have, you know, multiple lives and can get reincarnated. Suicide doesn't. Death by suicide doesn't need to be a tragic thing. It's just a way to kind of start over. And so that, you know, that belief in multiple lives paired with suicide takes a really dark spin because it's. It's probably the main, most serious criticism of her to date is that that sort of language has. Along with her techniques of having people actively envision their death by suicide, which I don't think any mental health professional is gonna, like, nurture to someone who's depressed.

Samantha Shelley [02:04:11] And she's described death as the most amazing feeling ever.

John Dehlin [02:04:15] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [02:04:16] And she specifically, you know, in her SEO and just with all her, like her social media strategy, she's targeting suicidal people.

John Dehlin [02:04:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're sharing with us the origins kind of of all that.

Teal Swan's Influence on Vulnerable Followers

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:04:30] Oh, when I read the story about Leslie Wangsgaard her suicide. I felt sick because it was just the. The talk about this life doesn't matter. You can do your life over, just have a do over. And that's not that. I look back, I'm like, had I known she was going to continue this talk. It's one of those things where when I say I wish I'd spoken up sooner, I could have been the whistleblower for this. And that's where I felt responsible for some of these deaths. I know I'm not, but it's still. It feels that way. And so I wasn't going to cry. I was going to be all stoic this whole time.

Samantha Shelley [02:05:15] It's so heavy. And to have had that influence come into your life as a child and to then, like have to carry the burden of that forever.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:05:25] Yeah. Just feeling like I was the influence for it for so long.

John Dehlin [02:05:34] You were her guinea pig

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:05:37] was really crazy. To have that realization of all these things that she does now, the practicing of it on me, the seeing the reactions from the people around us and how we've all seen. She's very influential. There wouldn't be this many people following her. Not all of them are this. These mentally broken down people. There's a lot of really smart people.

John Dehlin [02:06:04] Oh yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:06:05] That get involved with her. So it shows you she definitely has a level of engagement that people want to be with.

John Dehlin [02:06:13] Yeah. Yeah. You were talking about. Now you know that behind the scenes she was playing a very different role. Is that right? Do you want to talk about that really quick just so to kind of close that story, or do you not want to talk?

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:06:30] No. In like regards to the. The repressed memories or the kind of

John Dehlin [02:06:35] suicidal and the accusations and, you know.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:06:38] Yeah. So there, there's a little bit more to the accusation story. I never ended up having a specific abuse scenario that I could talk about. Like, there wasn't one to talk about. So when I was hospitalized, all of a sudden there was kind of more questions. It kind of came up again. People were questioning me again. Nothing came out. Well, I later found out my mom kind of broke down and told me after everything because I. I had a relapse in my 20s and my mom came forward about this.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:07:21] Teal had written a letter to my. My parents, like, heavily detailing the things that she claimed had happened to me. And my mom said it was so believable. She's like, who would have that level of detail if it didn't happen?

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:07:39] And we really just thought you were too ashamed to talk about it. And I didn't know about that until I was in my twenties. So to think that she had really had made up this abuse story about me and no one knew what she was doing at the time. I think my family members really thought I still wasn't willing to talk about things for a while. There was a really like prodding questions throughout most of my teenage years about just pushing like are you sure there was nothing you remember? Like it never went away. The, the belief that I had been abused. And there's still in the back of my mind the fear of what happened to me.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:08:31] I don't know what happened it. And then when people would continue questioning me, it still felt like it was happening for so long. Just all the. There's something there. Even though there's nothing that didn't go away for a long, long time.

John Dehlin [02:08:44] Memory works that way. People can end up believing things literally happen to them when they weren't even at the event that they end up believing they were a part of. Like we know that memory can work this way that it's read. It's like a retrieve, write, store and then retrieve, write and store. Memory gets changed and stored over time. And that's just, that's psychology 101. You learn that in your, your basic introductory to psychology class that memory just changes over time. So you could end up believing that's. That's part, Part of the many ways that her work is so disturbing is that people who aren't trauma victims become trauma victims without actually experiencing the trauma. But then they live as if they are right.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:09:37] And that was the one difference between my story and hers. I never had a specific trauma put into my mind. It was put into my family members minds. So I didn't know the exact things. But when she does this to her followers, they're being abused in the sense they haven't been abused now they believe they are. It's, it's. Oh, it's just. As a psychologist you understand it better than I do the, the reasoning behind it. But how can you take someone that's in a vulnerable place, make them believe they're abused? In my mind, that's abuse a hundred percent.

Samantha Shelley [02:10:20] Well, and even you, even though you didn't recover a memory, I imagine you were still like brainstorming a lot of like potential scenarios that could have like the thoughts are always there in your mind. You're still like exposing your brain constantly to like images of you being abused almost. Even though you know that you're just brainstorming.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:10:36] You look through every aspect of your life and Question it. And then you don't know your life anymore. There's what's real, what's not real. It. You lose your life trying to find things that weren't there in your life that you kind of, kind of die a little inside from it.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:11:00] No, it's. It's a horrendous thing to go through. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I'm sad for Teal if that's what happened to her with Barbara Snow or others. So again, not trying to discount the. Her potential as an abuse victim, but the person I would say is the most culpable in Teal being abused is Barbara Snow. Like what Barbara Snow did with Teal, I would call abuse. To put that on someone to make them think those things happened. I mean, if it was Barbara Snow that implanted everything. I mean, Teal stories change so much when you go and read through them. It's hard to know what scenario is a real one or what one has changed. It's really. I think that's why it's so hard to research her. It's. It's like a slippery slope on everything. It doesn't make sense.

John Dehlin [02:11:57] And again, Joseph Smith. Right. Like his story changes over time and becomes more fantastic over time. Right?

Samantha Shelley [02:12:05] Yeah. And I feel like this whole situation is just highlighting how important it has, is to have evidence based approaches to mental health. And Teal is like the antithesis of that. She's just like, I've got this. I mean, she's basing it on this thing that was, well, at least where she lived a part of like mainstream psychology, which is pretty horrifying because, like, it wasn't evidence backed and now is just like disseminating it to the masses with no qualifications.

John Dehlin [02:12:34] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [02:12:35] So it's like we got to be really careful about how we like allow new treatments to come in with medical professionals, which she's not even.

John Dehlin [02:12:43] Yeah, yeah. And by the. I should throw in here a reference to the book Remembering Satan. It's written by the same author who wrote Going Clear. Oh, Lawrence, maybe someone can. Maybe Samantha can look that up really quick. I'm a little bit rusty on my SRA literature, but in this book, Remembering Satan, it's about. It's a real story about a family in Washington state and how a combination of bad therapists and clergy who got caught up in the satanic panic convinced some daughters in a family that their dad, who is a police officer, had ritually sexually abused them. And it became a huge community thing and the police got involved and There were multiple investigations, and.

John Dehlin [02:13:35] And at the end of it all, it was realized that there was no evidence for any of it, that it was just, you know. And also the book, the. The podcast, is it the Gateway? Is that what it's called?

John Dehlin [02:13:47] Yeah, it's another fantastic illustration of that. And there's others. So that's what. And that's what happened to you, and that's what happened to so many people in Utah. I do want to ask one quick question about that. The fact that she made up a manufactured abuse story with detail and sent that to your parents. Is there any chance she tried to do recovered memory with you and tried to get you to go back into your memories and even in sort of a creative fiction way, see if you could come up with stories and then from that attempt, wrote down the account the way she remembered it and then sent it to your family?

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:14:33] No, that's a great point to make because with these things, there's elements of truth in them. So there's very much discussing. Like, we'll look back on this instance or picture your parents or this teacher, this leader, and think, is there anything you can recall that they did that would be concerning to you that made you feel uncomfortable? So. So there were those leading questions where I sat and kind of analyzed things and just even talking about, like. Like an innocent memory of, like, the teacher leaned over my desk to look at the paper, and she could be like, well, that might be all you're remembering, but there could be more to it.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:15:16] And that's just the part your brain sees as safe for you to remember. So there. There were those leading prodding questions where I discussed elements of my life that were real, that I feel like that's where she twisted some of the real elements of my life and then put her spin on things.

Samantha Shelley [02:15:36] And then your mom just had to carry that for years.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:15:40] I. I think if I was a parent and I received that letter, I'd be doing the same thing. I was so mad at her for so long. And like, how Teal or your mom? My mom. I was mad with her because she had that concern that things had happened to me and really kind of talked to therapists about it. Want a therapist to talk to me about it? Because there was the belief that I was too scared to talk about these things. I was scared of the repercussions of it, so I would never talk about.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:16:11] Was definitely traumatizing for her. Also, just as a parent having that fear, there's something wrong with my child. Something's happened. I can't protect my child, like, as a parent now kills me to think what she would have been going through. And I can't fathom being in that position. I really hope I never have to be with four kids.

John Dehlin [02:16:31] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [02:16:31] Because of a child spinning tails. That's what's so crazy is just how much power Teal had over people as a child. Like, to disrupt families like that.

John Dehlin [02:16:40] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [02:16:41] Presumably because she, like, lived in a time and place where there wasn't the right mental health care for her. So she's just kind of allowed to spin out and wreck havoc.

John Dehlin [02:16:53] She's kind of darkly precocious.

Samantha Shelley [02:16:55] Yeah. I keep thinking of the word precocious darkly.

John Dehlin [02:16:59] I. I do want to just. And. And this is just. We tend to be exhaustive sometimes on Mormon stories, but, like, the really important element to this is that. Is that when the therapist or the charlatan convinces the person that they likely were abused, it's always in early, early childhood. It's always like, at 4 or 5. You can't say infant.

John Dehlin [02:17:23] So it's always like around 4 or 5. And then it's. It's with prodding. It's like, this happened. Go, follow it, Follow it. And there's usually some sort of hypnotic state where they're trying to get you to close your eyes or lie down and go back to an early memory. Right.

John Dehlin [02:17:43] And then as soon as you hit, like, there's a person in the room, or I remember being fishing with my dad or whatever, then it's like, okay, see if you can remember more. And that's where the creative imagination comes in. So there's the retrieval. There's something had been stored. There's the retrieval. There's the implanting of the idea of the abuse.

John Dehlin [02:18:06] And then there's like, after you've retrieved the memory, now start using your creative imagination. And then the sky's the limit of what you can imagine. And then if the guide or therapist is like, and then what happened? And then what happened? Yes, go with that. It's real. There's always this reassurance. And we actually have an episode on More Machine Stories of a woman who had a recovered memory therapist, the same one as Martha Beck, Hugh Nibley's daughter. And she tells about her unethical therapist. She does. She talks about these practices. She went through them. But as soon as you've retrieved a memory and then you start invoking your imagination with someone, prodding you and encouraging you and insisting that it's real, then your imagination creates the additional memories, and then it gets restored as true.

John Dehlin [02:18:53] And that's where. And then in the documentary going deep. I'm never going to remember that. Deep water, whatever the deep end in the documentary this is. Was the hardest. Most bizarre part is Teals bringing up audience members, other. Other participants in the retreat to play the dead mom or to play or. No, to assume the consciousness of the. The dead mother or to assume.

Satanic Panic and Its Utah Connections

Samantha Shelley [02:19:20] She says, this is literally your mother. This isn't. You're not just embodying the con. This is your. This is your mother. That was your mother.

John Dehlin [02:19:25] And it's just some random participant who then is using their creative imagination to then engage in a conversation with this guy who's sobbing because he's talking. He thinks he's talking to his dead mom. And then she's just using her imagination to like. Or in the instance of the troubled girl, Right. Who then she has two audience members assume the consciousness of her mom and dad. And then, oh, maybe abuse happened. And then all of a sudden it's like, hey, you were sexually abused. What, by your dad? I don't know. And then all of a sudden she's remembering it with the suggestion of other people's content and creativity. And all of a sudden these are when the accusations fly and people are cut off from their support systems and the people who actually maybe love them, and then they become victims and followers of the Teal tribe. Right.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:20:20] I haven't found many people in her workshops that aren't coming out with an abuse story. There's always.

John Dehlin [02:20:25] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:20:26] And trauma, abuse. There's. And it's not your mainstream abuse. Oh, it goes so much more bizarre. There's so many other people that have come out and said, I was in the cult with you. Oh, my gosh. I had the same abuse.

John Dehlin [02:20:41] We sacrificed animals. We were buried in a pit. We were kept in an animal cage. We were buried in blood. Killing children, throwing children on the top of a fire. Right. I mean, it's. I mean, how does so many people end up with those same memories?

Samantha Shelley [02:20:57] And the FBI investigated this phenomenon. Right. And found no evidence. And it. It's Utah had. It's like millions of steel swords being buried in the ground. Like there's going to be evidence for that. Like, these stories are not just like, I was sexually abused, he said, she said. It's like these things existed, these structures existed. This happened here. Like, those things can be corroborated if they're true.

John Dehlin [02:21:16] Never like, never. Like there was. There was some school, some. Some nursery or California. What's it called?

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:21:24] It was a daycare.

John Dehlin [02:21:25] Yeah, like, there have been so many. I feel bad that I'm not current on this stuff. It's been a few years in the

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:21:32] research you gave me, kind of when I was reading through things, and it was a daycare, and there was the two daycare people that were accused of doing these horrific things to so many kids.

John Dehlin [02:21:40] And then I'm gonna.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:21:41] I'm gonna Google there weren't any charges

Samantha Shelley [02:21:43] brought forward, but then they found out they were being asked a bunch of leading questions.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:21:49] That's what I was gonna say with the why these people's stories are corroborating. These therapists are seeing all these things in the media. The therapists are talking. So a lot of the details that they're kind of doing, the more leading questions to their clients are coming out. So people's stories are matching up because of those leading questions.

John Dehlin [02:22:06] It's the McMartin Preschool trial. Right. Of a McMartin Preschool in California, I believe. Manhattan Beach, California, which was one of the centers of the SRA panic. Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [02:22:18] It's interesting hearing about how. Well, apparently there's a number of factors that kind of played into the satanic panic getting the momentum. It did. But a big fear at the time was like, women going off to work.

John Dehlin [02:22:29] Yeah. Yeah. And Christians co opting that to say that society's going to hell because women are working and who's going to take care of the kids? And it fee. Christian evangelical Christians and. And frankly, Mormons at the time loved that type of thing because then it would discourage women from entering the workplace, and it would discourage, you know, allowing your kids to be in daycare. So the religious right loved this stuff and still does. And in fact, while we're at it just this week, there's some news stories in Utah of, Of accusations of. Of child ritual abuse reoccurring. And I'm also just gonna, like, throw everything on the pile. This whole Operation Underground Railroad thing, that. That has been a huge deal coming out of Utah. And now I'm forgetting the guy who leads that. But that was hooked to Trump. What's that?

Samantha Shelley [02:23:23] Is it Tim Ballard?

John Dehlin [02:23:24] Yeah, Tim Ballard. Right. Like, the children are being sex trafficked everywhere in every place is just like. And then QAnon. Like all of these are just slight, you know, slight alternate versions of the satanic ritual abuse. Whether it's Obama, you know, and Oprah and Tom Hanks all have a sex abuse ring running out of the basement of a. Of a pizza joint in D.C. and then when the. When the angry Christian brings his guns to like, break the children out of the basement of the Pizza Gate factory. Was it Atomic Pizza or whatever? It turns out there's no basement at all. You know, that was Pizzagate.

John Dehlin [02:24:05] That's. That's QAnon. Right. That fueled a lot of Trump's success. But then there's also Tim Ballard with Operation Underground Railroad and the tens of millions of dollars he's earned claiming that all this ritual abuse is happening with children everywhere. And it pulls on the heartstrings. It makes Christians feel like they're doing good. I'll give money to that because I'm saving children.

Samantha Shelley [02:24:29] And the perfect victim that always completely pure, you know, the victim always needs to be this innocent, you know, like, white child in people's minds.

John Dehlin [02:24:37] Yeah. And they do it. They do it overseas where it's unregulated. So they're like breaking into, like, shacks in Panama or Honduras, you know, and. And now we know that many of those operations have been staged or they never really found anything.

Samantha Shelley [02:24:53] And they're also the big donors get to come on the raid with them and feel like action heroes. It's so disgusting.

John Dehlin [02:24:59] Yeah, yeah.

Samantha Shelley [02:25:00] But you should put this in the show notes. There's a podcast episode by the podcast you're wrong about. They have an episode on human trafficking. Mind blowing. It's just like, packed with all the, like, evidence and data about what the reality of human trafficking looks like versus the narrative we've all been sold. And it is all interconnected. And like, there's a reason that the right is like, selling human trafficking in a very specific way that doesn't look like how it is playing out. Because it's advantageous. Because again, it's like always great to have a cause where there's this, like, perfect victim and, and there's evil in the world.

John Dehlin [02:25:33] And we've got, you know, end of times. Right. Also. Oh, I was just gonna say. Oh, man. Oh, dang. I just had a brain freeze. Anyway. Well, I mean, even like, Sean Reyes was involved, you know, Tim Ballard would fundraise for Sean Reyes and for Donald Trump. So, like, there's this weird religious and political connection. And. Oh, here's the disclaimer. This is what I was going to say again.

John Dehlin [02:26:05] Yes, there's rape. Yes, there's child sexual abuse. Yes, there's kidnapping of children. Yes, there's even, you know, enslavement and sex trade. Yes, that happens. So we're not, we're not those saying that that stuff doesn't exist. It's just that, number one, it happens far Less than these types of characters like Tim Ballard in Operation Underground claim it happens in that way. It's in it and it's not in that way.

John Dehlin [02:26:35] And it's. And it's. And it's a, it's basically fraud the way that these nonprofits are set up to earn fame and a crap ton of money. When you're offering nothing, that's actually a realistic solution to the problem.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:26:51] And it delegitimizes actual abuse victims. Again, because it's playing to our fears and it's. These are the attention getting words. They're going to bring in donations. It's going to ruin our, our view of what actual abuse looks like. So we're not going to see it because we're going to think it's this what they're putting out.

John Dehlin [02:27:08] Right. Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [02:27:10] Also, I feel like things like patriarchy and purity culture play a big role in like perpetuating abuse cycles. And like, you know, the more I say boring abuse, but I mean like it's not like a satanic demonic sex whatever. Like it's most abuse is happening like within family. Within families, trusted people, like in patriarchal structures where people don't want to believe that people could have abused kids.

John Dehlin [02:27:35] Your Boy Scout leader, it's your home teacher.

Samantha Shelley [02:27:37] So it's like the people that will be, you know, like we got to raise awareness about human trafficking and like are selling this specific narrative of what that looks like completely in opposition to all the things that would actually help produce. I mean. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:27:50] Under their very noses. Under their very noses.

Samantha Shelley [02:27:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:27:54] Right. Let's go save sex trafficked children in Honduras.

Samantha Shelley [02:27:57] Yeah. Where it's glamorous and we can bust a ring and we can sell the rights to join in on the action

John Dehlin [02:28:03] and flying on a helicopter with like Rambo style, you know, K47s when it's really your home teacher or your boy scout leader.

Samantha Shelley [02:28:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:12] Right.

Samantha Shelley [02:28:12] And it's like, let's fund mental health care or, you know, provide actual solutions.

John Dehlin [02:28:17] Yeah. Anyway, we've totally gone off the track of your story, but this is where the whole it's. You were influenced by the SRA thing. Satanic roots of abuse. And, and it's. It, it exists. It's important for us to highlight at some point that it still is affecting people today, whether it's through Teal Swan, Tim Ballard operation under Underground railroad, you know, QAnon, or the resurgence of claims of satanic ritual abuse in 2022. Like it's still here. That's why I'm doing this podcast, you

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:28:48] know, What I mean, well, it's interesting because I didn't know that's what I had been a part of until a few years ago when I reached out to you, because none of the satanic ritual abuse stuff was something I grew up knowing about. It was when I was 23 and ran into Teal. And then.

John Dehlin [02:29:09] So this is like you had. You had lost touch with her.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:29:11] Yeah, completely lost touch with her. They had moved out of their home there. And I just happened to run into her at a park when I had my son with me, and she had her son and her new husband with her.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:29:23] And we kind of had a moment of reconnecting that day, and everything seemed normal. It was just like talking about our kids and kind of like, look at us, we're adults now. We have kids. Isn't that crazy? These two crazy girls. Look at where we are in life now.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:29:41] So exchange numbers. Later that night, she texts me, hey, I really want to be close with you again. I just need to send this information to you so we can be close again. I give her my email address, and then I get the email from her. And it was one of the more horrifying moments of my life.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:30:07] And I. I forwarded you the email a long time ago. And the. It was. I was just. I was terrified, didn't know what to do with it. And it was her. When she emailed me, she said, you of anyone, have the most right to know about this because you were around it. You were there with me as a child.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:30:29] And it was detailing all the abuse that she talks about now publicly, that I was around for the things I would have seen. And as I'm reading through it, I'm like, there was children murdered around us. There was bestiality, necrophilia, photographer, pornography. And there's another version of her story she tells later on that I was photographed for pornography with her by this satanic cult.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:30:57] There is the worst of the worst, the things you could hear. So I'm freaking out. I've got this email and am I involved? Were there children murdered around me? Did these things happen? Were there cult leaders around our home, everywhere?

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:31:16] What do I do with this? Do I need to call the police? Am I culpable in some way? Like, what is going on? I had that moment where I questioned my memory again. It was terrifying. Most terrifying moment. Especially I'm a new mother. I'm getting my life back together after a messy divorce.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:31:37] And then to have that thrown at me, it was just. It put me into such a spiral where I was getting my life together. I was successful in my life at the time. I'd had a good job, I had a son. That was my world. And then the moment I see her, I get thrown right back into it. But it almost felt worse than before because it was so scary, the things she was sending me.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:32:02] I cut off contact with her that day, blocked her. I moved from Salt Lake two weeks later. I was so scared of running into her again. I went up to Logan. Blessing and a curse, because I met my husband the same week that I went up there. So another thing I can thank Teal for, I guess, but around what year is that?

John Dehlin [02:32:24] Back to Logan?

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:32:25] 2010.

John Dehlin [02:32:26] Okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:32:27] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [02:32:28] And before that incident, had you abandoned the idea of you having these unrecovered memories?

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:32:34] Yeah, I. I didn't think there was anything there. And after going through treatment and kind of getting a little better, it stopped being as much of a focus when I was doing well. It wasn't brought up, and it just seemed kind of like this weird blip in my life, and I didn't think about it. I also didn't want to think about it at all. So I really did everything I could not to talk about it, think about it. So I definitely wanted that gone in my past. So to have it brought back in an even more disturbing way was beyond shocking.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:33:19] Yeah. So I took that. That email, met with a therapist, and the moment he looked at it, he said, this is a person that's either sociopath, delusions of grandeur, like, listed so many mental illnesses. He's like, none of this can be real. It's not probable in any way, because I was like, do I need to call the police? I don't want to be.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:33:45] Have any inclination that I was involved. It was the children being murdered that upset me the most. I just. I shouldn't say the most everything upset me, but I was the most concerned about that, because if someone's emailing me that people were murdered around me, you go to the police. You have to disclose all of that.

Diana's Life Entangled in Teal's Controversies

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:34:09] It. It's so hard to explain that without sitting there reading these things and thinking, oh, my gosh, my life is ruined again. I'm associated with these things. My life is over. I can't have my life over right now. I have a new baby.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:34:30] I. I can't. I can't just end my life. I can't. I'm responsible for something now where. If I didn't have my son, I think that would have been it, because it just. It took me all the way back.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:34:46] And my life felt over in that moment where I questioned if I could even, like, what do I do with my son if I'm all of a sudden, like, arrested because there's these allegations that I was there for these things.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:35:07] And I mean, just. These are just my worst fears going through my head. And not all of these things are feasible, but it was. It was beyond horrifying. Still. It's still hard to talk about, but. You just. You don't know what it's like to be associated with something so horrible until.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:35:34] Until you are, which I hope no one ever is. Yeah. So sorry, I'm going to lose my train of thought. So get me back on track, babe.

John Dehlin [02:35:48] Oh, so that's 2010. And. And ironically, I knew of you guys indirectly while I was in Cache Valley, both because I think one of my daughters knew either your husband or your husband's brother, but also you guys ended up putting into Logan Art. Logan Art Cinema, which showed, like, classic movies and stuff. And so I knew you without knowing you. I guess I knew of your work and some cool stuff that came out of your early marriage during that time. And I'm pretty sure somehow my. My two oldest kids who were into tennis were somehow connected with either your. Your dad or your step parents.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:36:35] My younger sisters went to high school with some of the. Your kids. I mean, Cache Valley is such a small world.

John Dehlin [02:36:41] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:36:42] It's amazing we didn't bump into each other more.

John Dehlin [02:36:44] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:36:45] Sooner.

John Dehlin [02:36:45] Especially before I knew you. I knew of you or. And. Or your husband a little bit.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:36:52] I feel like he was. His brother was your kid's teacher. My husband was actually a teacher at Edith Bowen when I met him. Full circle. But, yeah, that was. I didn't. I met him right after finding all this out. I didn't. I'm really good at kind of tamping things down. Didn't talk to him at all about it.

John Dehlin [02:37:17] Oh, wow.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:37:18] Until after we were married. And. Yeah. So positives, like I said, when I saw Teal caused me to be so fearful of her that left Salt Lake, moved, and it turned out to be a good thing going back to Cash Valley for a little bit, which I never would have thought, but. But put me back on the. The path of struggling, even though I didn't even know I was struggling at the time with it.

Samantha Shelley [02:37:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:56] Because she had traumatized you and you had untreated trauma.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:38:02] So. Yeah. I married my husband about a year and a half after that. Within three months of us getting married, I had started to struggle with some. I was struggling After I got the email from Teal and started relapsing into the eating disorder.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:38:21] And it got so bad to the point where three months into our marriage, as I had started going to counseling again, my eating sort of got so bad that I almost died. My son came to the hospital to essentially almost like say goodbye to me.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:38:42] And that was after this email that I was still so embarrassed to tell. I didn't tell people about it. It was. I talked to a counselor about it and was just told, this is improbable. But that fear still in the back of my mind, I mean, even now, knowing logically those things weren't true, just that the damage is done. It's. It's affected my entire life since then. So it's, it's life altering to be associated with that. And now that she's doing on such a large scale and people are being hurt, people are dying from the associations with her and her teachings.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:39:36] I didn't like when I reached out to you two years ago when you did the. Ended up doing the interview with Jared. At the time, I was like, if I go back into this, I'll die. I can't. I can't go back into.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:39:49] Will be the end of me. I hopefully I can kind of give people some of the information on this and they can take care of the story.

John Dehlin [02:39:58] Okay, John, look into this. This person named Teal Swan. I'm like, oh, okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:40:03] You know, so, yeah, I didn't want to come forward. I didn't want to talk about any of this because I thought, I can't survive this again. But it actually turned into the best thing possible because John instantly knew what was going on.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:40:19] I didn't know the Satanic panic was a thing. I knew nothing about it. And as I talked to John, all of a sudden it was like this. All the pieces clicked together. Things made sense for the first time where I just couldn't make sense of it. And I had the guilt with it and it all of a sudden made sense.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:40:43] I just, I had no idea I was at the tail end of the Satanic panic, that it was a thing in my community. And so, I mean, in a sense, I mean, it was life changing for me to find all these things out. And then it also felt empowering enough to where I started considering coming out about all these things. I just.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:41:13] The where, where it's at today, I never thought it would get to. And I didn't think I'd ever have to come out. So I'm really grateful that thanks to talking with you a few years ago and doing my own research also. Since that I feel strong enough to start tackling some of these things. And, Yeah, I just.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:41:43] I can't keep staying quiet, even though it's so hard for me to talk publicly and. Crazy antisocial. I don't like being in front of people, but it's gotten to such a point where I'm putting all my personal fears behind me. Like, you can't. You can't stay silent when you feel like you have the key that might give people the real insight to what's going on with them. And I've. I've been there. I've survived this. But I also know how deeply damaging it is from experience. And I decided I can't just keep on watching it happen and keep waiting for someone else to fix this problem that Teal's created. You just can't stay quiet when you hear how bad it's gotten.

Samantha Shelley [02:42:42] And I also don't think anyone would blame you if you hadn't wanted to do this. Like, it's so brave. It's so much to, like, unravel and just. I can't imagine what the process of, like, processing all of that has been like from something that started at 9, that when you met her at 23, was still able to, like, profoundly affect you. It's just absolutely wild.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:43:07] It.

John Dehlin [02:43:08] Courageous. Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [02:43:09] So courageous.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:43:11] It's trauma that doesn't go away. So, yes, I understand it, but it's forever affected the path of my life. And if I go down a rabbit hole and think, what if I hadn't met her when I was younger? Where would my life be now? Would it. I mean, I just, like, would have. I would I have had a normal life?

Samantha Shelley [02:43:35] Like, would have.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:43:35] I've been able to go to high school and not have to go to, like, treatment, Miss out so much of my life, all my relationships be compromised. So it's. I understand it, but I. I still grieve what I missed out on and what I'll never get back.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:43:58] That damage is there. It's not something that you just snap your fingers. This is all fake. I. Not going to affect me anymore. It doesn't. It doesn't work like that. So I just. I can't fathom that she's openly doing this. And these families are losing their children. They're. I mean, these families are losing themselves and all of this, and you'll never. You're forever altering the course of someone's life and all the people around them, and it's. It's not this like self help thing that's going to make anyone better. It destroys lives, which is the opposite of what these things are supposed to be doing. Which shows you when you have.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:44:53] I mean, I guess this is where I have stronger feelings about Teal. When you have someone that I believe to be almost a sociopath in nature, playing mental health, playing spiritual guru with vulnerable people. I mean, you're ruining. You're ruining their lives for your own gain so you can be viewed as something special and unique.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:45:24] You're not trained to help anyone. You're trying to elevate yourself. That's what she's doing. She's elevating herself, really wanting to be viewed as this, like, deity. And it's, it's just up. It's. Yeah, I don't even have words. I can try to explain it. I don't have words for it.

John Dehlin [02:45:48] Well, in addition to the recovered memory and the false accusations of abuse and the isolating people from family and claiming to speak for dead people and claiming to have special powers and all the lizard alien stuff, like, in addition to all the troubling things and the suicide, encouraging suicidal ideation and actual death by suicide. Like, in addition to all that. Two of the most startling moments in the documentary, in addition to the part where they're drowning someone, literally waterboarding someone as a, a form of trauma treatment. Right. So, like, putting all that aside, like, there's this point where this is it. A British guy, like, is challenging her authority in a. In a retreat setting. She's like, why should anybody be over me? What's your problem with me having no one over me? Like, no one, no one is above me. Is there other better words for that part of it?

Samantha Shelley [02:46:53] Yeah, I think he asks, you know, is there anyone you look up to and, or you know, that could like, challenge your authority? She's basically like, you wouldn't ask the fastest runner in the world who they look up to. Which is also weird because I feel like the fastest run in the world probably could point to people that inspire them, but.

John Dehlin [02:47:08] Right.

Samantha Shelley [02:47:09] Yeah. And she's clearly like, triggered in that moment. Like, she's not just like bringing like a calm, serene guru energy. She's very much like, how dare you challenge my authority? And you see that time and time in the, in the documentary and I feel like in my mind, spiritual teachers that are worth anything, they're like, please challenge my authority. Like, by all means, like, be your own guru.

John Dehlin [02:47:30] Don't believe me? Trust your own inner voice.

Samantha Shelley [02:47:33] Yeah. She's so triggered by Anyone suggesting that, like, her power isn't, as, you know, what she claims.

John Dehlin [02:47:41] And then the other just jawed dropping moment, like at the end of part two, where she says she wants to be bigger than the Pope.

Samantha Shelley [02:47:48] Yeah, yeah, I know.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:47:51] She even tried to explain that one away and say that was taken out of context. It's more of like my little joke that I want to be as spiritually influential as him. But if you know her, it's not a joke.

Samantha Shelley [02:48:01] She doesn't seem very jovial, like quite melancholy as a person.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:48:06] No, just that. That intense stare and the kind of half laugh thing she does, man. She's. Yeah, joking is not her strong suit. So

Samantha Shelley [02:48:20] what was the other thing while

John Dehlin [02:48:23] you're thinking, Samantha, like, Yeah, I like 1.5 million YouTube followers. That's not easy to get. And then you see these events that she's holding, and I'm literally, literally stalling for you. You see these events that she's holding. She says she charges $5,000 a person for retreats. So, like, you get 40, 50 people in an event and then she's holding these events where she's filling auditoriums with people that are worshiping her. I'm like, how is this selling? Like, that's. That was also another really troubling thing. And then I'm. I'm on Instagram and my daughter Maya had the same experience, and I'm seeing that a ton of my friends follow her.

Samantha Shelley [02:49:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:49:05] And like, her wisdom and her advice,

Samantha Shelley [02:49:07] because it's easy to hear a sound bite and be like, yeah, that's. That, that's true. You know, she taps into some true concepts.

John Dehlin [02:49:15] But yeah, it's like warmed over secular Buddhism, warmed over New Age chakra, energy crystal spirituality stuff with some reincarnation and some. You know what I mean?

Samantha Shelley [02:49:27] Like, what's also wild to me is she's not inspiring as a person because, like, she doesn't seem particularly happy or, you know, like the Dalai Lama, he's always joking around. Like, you can see where people are talking. Yeah. He's got his little German jokes. But like, with Teal, you're like, do you. I think this is the reason why when, you know, I have tiktoks of hers come up and even if there's like, you know, they get me on a line that I might agree with. I'm like, it's. Why are people. I mean, I guess it's because they're very depressed in a lot of instances. But she seems so unappealing as someone to look up to because she just Seems so morose.

John Dehlin [02:50:02] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [02:50:02] She doesn't seem to have a good time.

John Dehlin [02:50:04] And unstable. Like. Like, I. I cannot believe she allowed that camera crew.

Samantha Shelley [02:50:10] I know.

John Dehlin [02:50:11] To go behind the scenes and film her for multiple days. And then I see her reaction. Episode two, where she's like, they took everything out of context and they used creepy music. And I'm like, they could have been playing, like, circus music. And I would have thought, this is evil what you're doing. But she's like, I can't play. Believe they. They told me it was going to be a hero's journey. And I'm like, well, first of all, you're dumb for believing that a documentary.

Samantha Shelley [02:50:39] Don't you have access to the Akashic records? Couldn't you have predicted this, Teal.

John Dehlin [02:50:43] Sorry, say it again.

Samantha Shelley [02:50:44] She claims to have access to the Akashic records. Every thought that's ever been thought.

John Dehlin [02:50:48] Where's your superpowers then? Right?

Samantha Shelley [02:50:51] Also, the scene I was thinking of before, that I can remember, is when there's a woman who's not doing well at the retreat because she's like, every time it's. I'm still so depressed. It's not making my life better. You've made me have these memories come up and my life still sucks. And then Teal is in just, like, a fit of rage, ranting about, like, why can't these people see that I have all the answers? Why can't they do it?

John Dehlin [02:51:12] And then excuse the swearing, but is, like, your favorite word. These people, like, a regular Gary problem. They think I'm fucking. Blah, blah, blah. Sorry for the swears, but. Right, like. And when not the swearing's bad, per se, but it's. It's part of this. Dark, weird.

Samantha Shelley [02:51:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:51:28] Unhappy.

Samantha Shelley [02:51:30] And then in her case, German convert Juliana says, well, we can't force them. You know, essentially just trying to be like, well, if they're not ready for the message, you know, fair enough. And then she's like, well, yeah, we can. Or, like, we have to. Or she just can't think outside of. Like, I have the answers and these people need to. Like, she wants. She. She says this thing in that episode as well, about how I'm immune to becoming a cult because I know what it takes to. To be a cult and because I know so much, therefore, I would never become a cult.

John Dehlin [02:51:55] I've been in one then.

Samantha Shelley [02:51:56] I know, and I was in one for 13 years. Yeah, but, like, she does want cult, like, commitment. Like, everything she says about the way people should view her is in line with that. She's, you know, she. I think she made one comment, like, I'm telling people to follow their own intuition. It's like, how can you say that when you're telling people their own memories that they don't have? You know, like, telling people things that happened in their life.

John Dehlin [02:52:19] Not just that, but like, when they're reviewing that contract you have to sign to be in her inner circle. Like, no, you can have no family. Like, like we referenced earlier in this episode. My needs drop everything for my needs.

Samantha Shelley [02:52:31] Like, she doesn't even have a pretense of not being a cult leader. She doesn't even, like, sugarcoat certain things. She's just like, no, do not have personal boundaries.

John Dehlin [02:52:39] And when. And when what's her name wants to visit her family in Germany, like, she's like, no, you can't. What was that line? Like, you can't have a normal life when you're in my.

Samantha Shelley [02:52:48] Anything remotely resembling a normal life when

John Dehlin [02:52:51] you're in my orbit, which is more cutting people off from their families.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:52:55] And even when you were talking about kind of the incident where she was talking about, like, these people aren't ready to hear the message. When that girl was talking about being suicidal still, she kind of said, is this girl trying to blackmail me with her being suicidal? She's going to come to a Teal Swan retreat and then she's going to commit suicide and it's going to come back.

Samantha Shelley [02:53:12] She's instantly thinking about her brand.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:53:17] I mean, just for someone that's supposed to be a healer that's helping people, she'll go back and say, if someone committed suicide, it's because they were beyond help. Whether they knew me or not, they were going to commit suicide. So you can't count that against me. And she can't take any responsibility for her part in these things. And it's. The blame goes back on them. She's the victim to all of her

Samantha Shelley [02:53:41] victims, and she does like to talk a lot about, like, you have no idea how many people hate me. You have no idea how. And that also just feels classic cult, right? Just constantly reminding everyone we are being so persecuted. And that's why you can't have any personal boundaries. And I just need to be number one all the time because I'm such a victim and I was in a cult for 13 years.

John Dehlin [02:54:00] Yeah, it's really, it's. But it's like, it literally, I. I think Warren Jeffs, David Crush, L. Ron Hubbard, like Keith Ranieri, Joseph Smith, like, take. Take your pick. We're watching a death cult unfolding before our eyes. Now, whether it ends in that, I mean there's already been deaths, but like whether it ends in that this is that, this is that.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:54:28] Even along the lines of other cult leaders that she's talked about, she knows the recipe not to. She's also discussed partially to me in the past and then to those closest to her about kind of what she sees as the strong points of some of the, like serial killers like Ted Bundy and things like that. She's like, they're very misunderstood just because of what they did and what this is. Maybe sounds conspiracy theory esque, but after my experience with her and being really pushed towards suicide and I'm watching her with these people envision your death and all these things, I almost feel like at times she's playing the puppeteer. She's not going to be the one doing the thing. She's holding the strings where you do the things. So I,

Samantha Shelley [02:55:16] and she said, this is so interesting. She said in the podcast, well, first of all, she said, I'm the most complex person in the world. And then she was like, there's a part of me that's this, there's a part of me that's this. And one of the things was there's a part of me that's a serial killer. I was like, that's interesting because I don't think that's. There's some ways where it's like we can all relate but that doesn't seem like a, like a universal thing where most humans are like, ah, yes, my shadow side of being a serial killer. But like that resonates with her apparently.

John Dehlin [02:55:45] Yeah, I've never endorsed, never been tempted, mass murderer. My personality. Yeah. And, and it, I think you're onto something. Like if you think about Jim Jones or Heaven's Gate, it ended in mass suicide. But what if you could do that without it ending in your death and you being directly linked to the deaths. But like you said, you're still pulling the strings. Like it's dark, it's a dark accusation.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:56:12] But like just, it's a dark accusation. It's not that far fetched. Like it. So many things around her are unbelievable and extreme and this one feels very, very real because I've come out of it before I even started learning about her and I'm like, how did I survive this person?

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:56:32] Everything was pushing me to do these things, telling me how to do these things. Now I'm watching other people, I. There's almost like excitement, enjoyment. When I was with her over These dark things. And then I'm watching her do these things and really like being excited, kind of relishing and watching these people in distress. It's, it's, it's so disturbing. So I, I feel like she pushes people towards this and then puts the blame on them and she can't take any part of it. I don't think she's doing that much to pull them back from the ledge, even though she says no. My whole goal is to save people from suicide.

Diana Hansen Ribera [02:57:16] It's, it's not. Her whole goal is for people to be damaged enough to need her. And if they don't need her, it's their problem. They get out.

Samantha Shelley [02:57:26] And you as a child kind of got like the most raw, unfiltered version of her. And she was like, cut your wrists this way to be more effective. So she does have it. Like there are some dots that are connected there with her saying, there's a part of me as a serial, you know, I'm not making any grand claims, but like, she clearly is fascinated by the idea of like death. Like, it's a big fixation for her. And if she as a child was like telling her friends, here's how you could be more effective at killing yourself or like kind of pushing people towards it a little bit. It's like she's, she's learned that like, distress is power. And so if she can create distress in people, she can then harness that power for her own benefit.

Does Teal Believe Her Own Story

John Dehlin [02:58:09] Yeah. And like with, with, with Joseph Smith, the question. Or with modern day Mormon prophets and revelators, the question is, do they really believe it or were they conscious frauds? Or then there's the hybrid model of Dan Vogel's kind of pious fraud, where they, they do believe in the woo and the superstition or the magical powers or in their destiny, but they also realize that sometimes you have to fool people knowingly and intentionally as. Because people are dumb and lemmings and they need to be fooled. So like, one of the questions I wanted to make sure we talked about was, was, is she sincere? Does she believe she has special powers?

John Dehlin [02:58:54] Is she literally mentally ill and deluded and she, she believes her own press, so to speak, or is she like consciously knowingly deceiving people and relishing and harming people? And I think that latter thing is probably so dark and hard to believe that we don't ever want to put, put that in anybody. So if we take the first scenario and play with that for, or just think about that for just a second, there is A possibility that she. I mean, just like with Joseph, you pick.

John Dehlin [02:59:30] You pick a domain that is difficult to disprove and is. It is an area where you can't be fully challenged. And suicidality is a real problem. Like I did. I'm. I'm literally a psychology PhD. I didn't know what to do. I felt lost.

John Dehlin [02:59:53] We don't necessarily have good treatments for that. Same with eating disorders. Eating disorders are among the most fatal mental illnesses and, and psychology would tell you we don't have good treatments for that right now. OCD is different. Eating disorders are super hard. Hard. So like that's part of her messages. Well, I'm.

John Dehlin [03:00:13] Psychotherapy isn't effective with, with severe suicidality. True, but I. Without evidence based treatments, without any data to support her claims, I have figured this one out and I can solve the problem now. Maybe she believes that she's figured out suicidality and that she has the answer. So that's one question. But then I can also imagine when she's dealing with people who are suicidal and they're not getting better. Well, blame reversal is One of the 31 techniques of undue influence that Luna, Lindsay Corbden and others, Stephen Hassan, cult experts have taught us about. Where if you get better, it's because I helped you get better, or my teachings helped you get better.

John Dehlin [03:00:59] But if you don't get better, well, it's your fault, you didn't do it right, or you are weak or bad or feeble. So I could see when she's playing in such a serious game at such a high level with such high stakes that there would sort of be this.

John Dehlin [03:01:15] Oh, you. You let me waterboard you. Okay. Oh, and you. Now, you had a good experience. Okay. I love you. I love you too. You know where they whisper to each other, I love you after this girl's freaking waterboarded.

John Dehlin [03:01:28] But then if she hadn't have complied, well then it's like, well then you deserve death because you just don't want to get better. I'm your cure. You're not listening to me. So you, you may as well just like. Like she. Jared says he, she said to him, you may as well just kill yourself because you're. If you're not going to take the answer, which is me, well, then you may as well just die because that's what you want anyway, right? So pushing. I guess I could see her pushing people off that edge without a desire for them to die. But then if she really does believe in the multiple lives like you said, then literally suicide isn't literally. Suicide isn't bad.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:02:04] It's not. When she talked about Leslie's suicide, she did her retreat thing and there's a video of Teal saying, you know, I lost my first client to suicide. But interestingly enough, she reincarnated three days later and then everyone clapped in the audience.

John Dehlin [03:02:16] Oh my gosh.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:02:17] So when I say I think she's pushing people to this, she has thinks of it as a positive that I'm giving them a reset from this life. But also the dilemma with this is she's pushing people to envision their death. Kind of talk about suicide and then those people go off into their life. There's no follow up. This is unprofessional. There's no clinical trials. You don't know what happened with those people after that. So there's no way to a longitudinal

John Dehlin [03:02:45] study to see the impact of her quote, practices over time. We don't know.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:02:50] Yeah, it's so, it's. It may sound far fetched to say she's pushing people towards this. So that's why it's not a com. I don't want to.

John Dehlin [03:03:03] Well, she is pushing people towards it. The question is whether she's wanting them to die.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:03:08] You know, I think kind of like what you said, if they're falling in line with what she wants to have happen to them and they're her picture perfect, I saved them and she'll keep them as a collectible to showcase.

John Dehlin [03:03:21] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:03:21] If they're not, and they're not, she can't fix them. That person's so damaged, it's probably better for them to reset. And it's. It's horrible.

John Dehlin [03:03:33] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [03:03:34] If people don't want me, they should die. I feel like that's a potential schema. I don't know if that's a schema, but you know, like a thing that's there in her brain because like her saying to Jared, well, then you should just kill yourself. Like, that's so reactive. It feels like a reaction to rejection, you know, rather than like a logical thought out. Like, this is my philosophy, you know, I think it's all just like, she's very reactive to her emotions. She clearly like feels a lot of like dark, intense things.

Samantha Shelley [03:04:06] And so she's just kind of like moving through life with that combined with her grandiosity and like, I don't know, I don't see her as being. I do think she buys into it fully, like. Yeah. But I think she's fine with the cholesterol damage and is able to, you know, I don't think. I'm not sure if she's someone who doesn't have empathy. She seems like she maybe does. I don't know if it's like a black and white there, but it definitely seems like there's situations where she doesn't have empathy, where a regular person might, you know, and where she's just like, well, if they don't.

Samantha Shelley [03:04:37] It's like when people. When she feels rejected by people and anything less then seeing her as ultimate most enlightened person on the face of the earth is a rejection to her and she's triggered by that. Like, anything less than that is a rejection. Then she's very quickly just like, I don't care. They didn't listen to me. They chose. Whatever bad happens to them, they deserve it.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:04:57] And even when people come out in opposition to her, the big thing I've noticed is they're not spiritual enough. They don't get that we're different. We understand what's going on because of that and kind of discounts any detractors from it. Just with that whole line of they're not as elevated as we are with these things. They can't understand it from our level and we see the big picture. They don't.

John Dehlin [03:05:21] So that's.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:05:21] We're special.

John Dehlin [03:05:22] She's like, my staff is elite and you can trust them.

Samantha Shelley [03:05:25] You know what I mean? Also, I feel like the teal swan version of like, they left the church because they wanted to sin is like, they're just mad at me because I didn't respond to their email. And I'm like, I think it's a bigger problem than that too.

John Dehlin [03:05:36] Or. Or it was like, oh, he's just threatened that I have a vagina and I have power. And again, I'm a feminist. Like, I know men have mistreated women forever. Forever. But like, there's also kind of this feminist empowerment.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:05:51] But see, she knows that too. It goes back to her manipulation of things of can't come at me. I'm a woman. As a leader, I'm going to use that to. This is why people are attacking me. Because she knows the power in those statements. And again, me trying to talk about why I think parts of her abuse story aren't real. You can't attack an abuse victim. She also knows the power in that. And there's just. She knows.

John Dehlin [03:06:16] And you can't disprove of a memory that doesn't exist. Like, there's this. I had this aha moment recently where, you know, Joseph Smith, he gets the Peep stone. Well, no, he. He tells Emma he's got the plates and he hid him in a log. But then word gets around, and Emma hears that a bunch of people are going to find the plates. Right. What does Joseph do? He says, oh, Emma, just a second. Let me. Let me look. And he looks into his stone, in his hat, and he says, oh, no, they're safe. They're fine. Now, how was he able to do that? Why was he able to do that? Because the plates didn't exist.

Samantha Shelley [03:06:57] Access to the Akashic records.

John Dehlin [03:07:01] Right. But then later, when Martin Harris takes the 116 lost pages, gives them to his wife, and then they're lost, does he look in the stone, in the hat to find where the lost 116 pages are? Now they're real, isn't it?

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:07:13] That they didn't have enough faith, and so now they're being punished and they don't get those pages back or something like that. This is where I left Mormonism earlier.

John Dehlin [03:07:19] Well, that's part of the gaslighting. But my point is, the powers are always in the unseen and the undisprovable. And for Teal Swann, how do we know some guy named Doc didn't abuse her? You can't disprove some. A negative. You can't prove a negative. And that's where all her power is, is in the disprove. Undisprovable.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:07:40] It's also an illusion of her power because the level of things she's saying happened. There's. There's proof. There would be proof for those things. So if I were to put it back on her. Yeah, don't just tell your story. Show us the proof it could.

John Dehlin [03:07:55] Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Yeah, she has no evidence of that. Right.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:08:01] That's where I. I don't think she can claim this abuse story without the proof. And.

John Dehlin [03:08:06] And like. Like Samantha, you said. She said, without that story, there's no Teal Swan. Right.

Samantha Shelley [03:08:12] Even though you can be a perfectly fine spiritual guru with no abuse story, a more regular abuse story, like, it's not necessary. But it is. That's just her thing. Everything's in the extreme.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:08:25] And I feel like there's a path for Teal to be in the field she's in. I mean, growth and acknowledging our limitations and even coming out about what she claims happened, you can say you can come back from that. Like, she doesn't have bad advice. She has some really great moments. It's not all bad. And she's kind of pushing away kind of. In the church, we don't talk as much about the Joseph Smith story. There's more of a focus on being Christ like and focusing on him. She's really pushed back that abuse story, but it's also the foundation that gave her the platform she's at and the believability.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:09:03] But I mean, I would like to think she could come out and be human and say, hey, some things were really far fetched. Let me set the record straight and set it straight for real. I mean, I feel like that would make her the bigger person in this situation. Like I feel like she still at this point could make things right if she wanted to.

Samantha Shelley [03:09:27] But how would she shed her grandiosity enough at this point? That's the thing. I did notice that she in, in that last episode they showed her saying whatever memory comes up, don't take it as true or false. Just kind of, you know, just acknowledge that it's there, accept it. Which I wondered if that was like her walking back on some of her previous approaches because she's now being accused of being the suicide catalyst. And that is, I mean it's this, it's still so problematic. But there is a world where you can say like, you know, it just see what comes up in the psyche and maybe something comes up and it's not that it was literally true, but it does tell you a little something about like the way your psyche works.

Samantha Shelley [03:10:09] And so there's maybe something you could dig out that that'll be valuable. I don't know that she's equipped to really like navigate that either.

John Dehlin [03:10:14] But like, you know, but the Internet makes it hard. It's, it's hard to start a cult in the Internet age. You know, it was, it was a mistake for Joseph Smith to start a church after the advent of the printing press. It's even harder to start a cult in the Internet age because everybody's got a cell phone, everyone can record audio or video and she's held accountable. So yeah, she's going to walk back the things that are potentially going to get her arrested or blamed for deaths. But then she can always just say stuff in private, which is that double speak where you say certain things in public and then you have these techniques. They're all horrendous techniques that she's now letting film crews film. That's audacious, isn't it?

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:11:01] That was shocking that they let that, that she let that level of her life be seen.

Samantha Shelley [03:11:07] Yeah, that's what makes me. Why do you do that into it fully? Yeah, she's like, they're going to be wowed. Yeah, I'm gonna be bigger than the Pope.

John Dehlin [03:11:13] After the stock, they'll witness the hero's journey and we're going to be good. Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [03:11:17] It is interesting how she is such a modern day cult leader. And yeah, the Internet means that more people can expose her, but I don't know that it will necessarily like work because the same mechanisms that keep people devoted to cult leaders, regardless of evidence, are still at work with her. And so I feel like that's this. She's still always going to have a following, that it's like nothing. You can't say anything bad about her.

John Dehlin [03:11:41] Can I blow your mind, Samantha? I once saw Teal Swan at Rotopia.

Samantha Shelley [03:11:45] Did you?

John Dehlin [03:11:46] She eats a raw token. I know, I know, I know. You've eaten there.

Samantha Shelley [03:11:50] See, that's why the algorithm sends me her videos.

John Dehlin [03:11:52] Yeah, yeah, I, I went to our. I mean, yeah, but now it's Rotopia. It's just off like here in holiday.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:12:00] I know. She ruined it for me too. I'm sad. I went in and there was a poster for her new book. No, I went right back out. But you could doordash it. So I still can get my favorite salads from Omar.

John Dehlin [03:12:11] Well, I, I saw her there and then she like when she. This is after I'd interviewed her ex boyfriend or whatever, Jared. And then she like left pretty soon after. She had bodyguards there. But I asked the waitress and the waitress is like, oh yeah, she comes in here all the time.

Samantha Shelley [03:12:30] Does she live in Utah?

John Dehlin [03:12:32] I think that retreat is in Park City. I mean, that's what it looks like to me.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:12:35] She rents a home in Heber for those retreats. She lives, she lives in Park City with her, her group, Teal Tribe.

John Dehlin [03:12:45] Teal Tribe.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:12:46] I mean, she goes, what?

Samantha Shelley [03:12:48] Sorry, I said that.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:12:49] Squad goals. I mean, in her mind. Yeah, it is squad goals.

John Dehlin [03:12:54] It's squad goals.

The Cult Dynamic and Those Living with Teal

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:12:56] And going back to the people that, when you mentioned that, the people that live with her. When I saw that third episode of the documentary and just knowing how she reacts to things, I was so scared for the people that are there with her. I even reached out to some of the people that are still in touch with her. And there's a real fear that people are almost in danger with how it's going right now, with how she's being exposed to the media. And it's kind of scary to think the people closest to her, pretty much the people that have come out to me that I don't want to name, they're. They're scared for the people with her right now.

John Dehlin [03:13:35] Yeah. In. In part three of. Of the documentary when Jared's talking this. Jared appeared on Mormon Stories and on this documentary. Good job, Jared. He talked about her. The loyalty test. That was. The whole Jim Jones thing was like, drink this Kool Aid. It's poison. Drink the Kool Aid. Oh, it wasn't poisoned. Loyalty test. Joseph Smith. Bring me your. Bring me your wife. I'm going to get married to your wife. Bring the wife and then seal the person to their wife. Loyalty test. Right. She was doing this with Jared. It was like, how do I know you're really loyal? How do I know you're really true? He admits in the documentary that he said to her, I would kill for you. Right.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:14:20] And then the tattoos on his hand.

John Dehlin [03:14:21] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:14:22] The tattoo she had in. Tattoo that says, is this true? On the palm of his hand.

John Dehlin [03:14:26] Yeah.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:14:27] Because she was drilling him.

John Dehlin [03:14:29] So, I mean, that was so shocking. Like. Yeah. The level of power she has.

Samantha Shelley [03:14:33] And she gives people new names as well. Right. Classic coat type.

John Dehlin [03:14:36] I wouldn't be surprised.

Samantha Shelley [03:14:36] There's at least two people that mentioned it.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:14:38] Okay. Jared's name was Fallon and he was with her. One of her other husbands came from a cult, the Circle of Friends or something of friends out in California. He chose a new name, went Valiant after meeting her.

John Dehlin [03:14:55] That's classic. That's textbook. She's like reading the textbook.

Samantha Shelley [03:14:58] I know. How does it always happen? Like, she says she knows what it takes to become a cult. So I'm like, look out for your pr. Don't give people new names. That's a bad one.

John Dehlin [03:15:06] It's a bad look for your brand feel Swan.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:15:10] And supposedly after husband number four is when that list came out of the rules for the people that lived with her closest. And husband number four was raised in a cult. And he's. From what I've been told, he still, even though they're divorced, thinks of her as a. A deity and worships her. And he's sacrificed his family, his kids, left all of that to go. Even though he's not married to her, still worships her and now has his own spiritual practice.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:15:43] So it's just this, this really out there, whatever it is Teal's doing, it breeds more of these. And it's just. It's a never, never ending cycle, it seems. So it's. It's kind of disheartening to see you kind of. I don't want to say squish spider. Cause that sounds morbid. Like you kind of put out one candle and then a 10 more relight. Like, you're just. You're never going to catch up to these. And it's so daunting when you feel so small, when you realize how big this is.

John Dehlin [03:16:15] Yeah. And that's all my. My final thought with all of this, other than just my gratitude for you and my. Yeah, just my appreciation for you and my inspiration at your courage is just, like, how in 2022 are people like this getting traction? How are people in 2022 getting 1.5 million followers, selling $5,000 retreat tickets and filling auditoriums? Like, where's the. Where's the skeptical thinking? Where's the understanding of logical fallacies of coercion techniques and undue influence and cult techniques? Where's. I mean, how many cult documentaries. The vow going clear, wild, wild country. Like, how many. How many cult documentaries do we have to have on Netflix and Hulu and Amazon before there's kind of cult awareness and critical thinking and skeptical thinking so that people don't get sucked into this?

Leaving Mormonism and Vulnerability to Cults

John Dehlin [03:17:15] And I'll just be honest. Like, you know, when people tell their stories about Mormonism and when people lose their faith in Mormonism, sometimes that creates a vacuum because they no longer have identity, morality, spirituality, community, meaning, purpose, resolutions about the afterlife.

John Dehlin [03:17:37] And sometimes that vacuum, ex Mormons leave Mormonism and freaking go join a cult. And it drives me crazy. Like, did you not learn anything?

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:17:48] Well, it's one of the points you made to me back in the day that really stood out is these good parts of the church, even these good parts of Teal, they're not exclusive to these organizations. You can have all these good things in your life without swearing your life to these people, without the dangerous side of teal things. You can have all these positive things without committing your life to a cult leader and an organized religion.

John Dehlin [03:18:14] Right. But here's the rub. And I'm just. Now, I don't mean to make this about me, but there's a bigger problem that I'm trying to highlight. So, like, back when I was in Cache Valley, we created this organization called Oasis. It's like, oh, secular church. Come on Sunday. Samantha. You were a part of that. You helped me found that you were at the original like. Like the Unitarian Universalist meeting that we had pre.

Samantha Shelley [03:18:38] Yeah, Oasis. I came a couple of times. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:18:41] Yeah. Okay.

Samantha Shelley [03:18:41] Don't give me too much credit. I didn't help. You found it. Okay, I knew about that.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:18:44] I had no idea until just now. That was you.

John Dehlin [03:18:46] Yeah, Yeah. I started Oasis with. You know, I was influenced by Others. But we started five. Oasis is throughout Utah, along the West Hatch front. And they were fine for a while, but then they all died. People want to go, they want brunch, they want to sleep in on Sunday. They don't want new gurus, they don't. They'd rather watch binge Netflix than like be sermonized to about how to live a healthier life. Like it's just a non starter, right?

John Dehlin [03:19:13] And, and so like, okay, a week, you know, weekly Sunday thing isn't going to work. So Oasis dies. Then years later, it's still, I'm having retreats, right? And people are like, I just, I don't have community. I want community. I need community. I'm lonely, I feel alone. I don't have friends. Like I'm empty. I don't, you know. And so we start thrive.

John Dehlin [03:19:33] But it's the same sort of thing. It's just like it's, it's really hard and people lose momentum and they're not interested in healing and growth. They want scandal, they want, they want documentaries that are solid. You know, they want Game of Thrones and they want, you know, like the Kardashians. Like people don't want, they don't want to be part of a community that's ex, that's intentionally and explicitly dedicated to healing and growth. They don't want it. So like, like in my mind I'm like, why take, Take what? Take Teal's model, right? And by the way, this is triggering for me because I hold retreats and I have social media and I have YouTube channel and I have TikTok and I have a platform and I'm trying to help people heal and grow and every.

John Dehlin [03:20:22] I'm like, whoa, I counsel people sometimes and I've done coaching and, and it's just like I see how like, and there's way too many similarities to the structure that she's created. But I've thought about like, okay, well I'll get Margi involved and Samantha and, and really smart people and good people and honest people and non predators and we'll try and create a community of healing and growth to fill the vacuum and to fill the need that otherwise people like Teal Swan swoop in to feel Phil. But like people don't want it. People don't want it. Well, like I don't think they want it.

Samantha Shelley [03:21:01] Finding connection and community is like a global issue. You know, it's like a society wide thing. So much bigger than all of us.

John Dehlin [03:21:08] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [03:21:08] And I think you do more than you know and I think like the more people, the more people heal personally, like actually heal. Not till Swanhill. And the more they, the better they can relate to themselves then I think the better they can relate to others and the easier it is for them to find community. Though we do live in a world that makes it hard to find community. But I just think like people who leave Mormonism might be drawn to another cult because they're primed for psychological dependency on an organization. That's what makes them feel safest. And if you're trying to do an organization that doesn't encourage psychological dependency, it's not going to have the same sexy appeal, you know?

John Dehlin [03:21:42] Right.

Samantha Shelley [03:21:43] If you can those techniques work. That's why I feel like it is all kind of ultimately about personal healing, like through community too. But yeah, maybe something like Oasis doesn't take off that much because it is a bit too healthy and it feels a bit like school and I don't know, it's like people say that they really enjoyed like the weekly commitment to church, but it's like once you remove the us versus them, remove the fear, remove the spiritual brownie points you think you're getting. Like remove all the things that religions like Mormonism actually run on. Because we know it's not really about the doctrine. It's about like the psychological principles.

John Dehlin [03:22:16] Sexual shame, fear of hell.

Samantha Shelley [03:22:18] Yeah, yeah. So I don't know, I think you're. And I think you talking about like the phenomenon of, you know, like we need to be talking about memory and how like memory is not just like this perfectly preserved box that you can just like tap into and heal your trauma. Like Till Swan is teaching. Like I think teaching those kinds of concepts is all helping people heal on a personal level or helping them avoid further trauma. I'm just rambling, but like, I think you're doing great work and I think it's not hopeless.

John Dehlin [03:22:45] And I'm not, I'm literally not trying to either make this about me or like turn the direction off your story. But I am trying to talk about the greater context that allows someone like Teal to thrive. And we do live in an age weirdly where prosperity, literally global prosperity, has never been greater. Pick any major indicator of well being for the human race. Hunger, famine, poverty, illness, whatever. We're better. Like the world is better. Less war, less murder, doesn't matter the indicator.

John Dehlin [03:23:21] And there's more anxiety, more depression, more feelings of loneliness and more suicide than I think that's ever happened before. So there is a real mental health, loneliness, isolate. And I think Social media has exacerbated that. Right. There's a real global mental health problem that is what allows Teal to thrive. Because there's something we're not doing as a society that, that, that is allowing Deal to swoop in and provide herself as the answer for. Right.

Samantha Shelley [03:23:56] And like, one need that she is fulfilling for people is like, because, I mean, trauma, sexual abuse of children, that stuff has been going on for ages, maybe even more as you go back in time, I don't know. But like she's, she is giving people a space where they can talk openly about their trauma. And I do think people sharing their stories publicly like that is, that's like a healthy community people can find through social media is listening to other people's stories and relating to them. Okay, so that's, you know, it's like pros and cons of social media, isn't it?

John Dehlin [03:24:29] Sure. There's good too.

Samantha Shelley [03:24:31] Yeah, but.

John Dehlin [03:24:32] But you see what I'm saying, Diana, about the bigger problem.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:24:35] Oh, for sure. That we're all really.

John Dehlin [03:24:36] You were talking about just trying to raise your kids not lds.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:24:40] I don't know how to find that connection outside of it. And I miss it. Like, I miss having a way to like find my neighbors, to have my kids do activities with people in their community. And that's why I really, I felt like Thrive was really pushing towards that. When you created Thrive, that, that sense of community that we lose from church, we can still have it, but it, it's hard. There's not the neon flashing lights. It's like, look how fun and dramatic this is. It's like a reality show. It's normal, boring, everyday things that we need. But I don't know why we're attracted. Kind of like a moth to a flame, to the dangerous side. I don't know if that says something about human nature. So why the things that are healthy and good for us do we not go to off the bat?

John Dehlin [03:25:35] And Thrive isn't dead. Like, Thrive's still breathing and there's still some Thrive events happening. We just had an amazing one in the uk. We just, you know, I mean, there's still groups meeting, support groups are still a website and we're still trying to make it go, but it didn't take off like I thought it would.

Samantha Shelley [03:25:52] Thrive is surviving.

John Dehlin [03:25:54] Thrive is not thriving, but it's alive.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:25:56] I mean, if you upped the drama, put a few little.

John Dehlin [03:25:59] Yeah, well, that's the piece. Oh, so. So this is. We're totally off the rails now, but like, we're thinking okay, how do we. How do we stage a big event that a lot of people come to? Oh, get big names. I'll speak. John, you got to speak. I don't want to speak. John, you got to speak because you'll, you'll draw people. Well, you're just getting into a cult of personality again. Once you are getting big, it's like Glennon Doyle, like, how is that different? Like, it's cult of personality. But then if you don't get big names, then nobody comes because it's like, why would I come to some weird meeting where I don't know any of the people who are speaking? So, like even that. How do you prevent abuse from happening? Right? Or. Or cult of personalities from developing it?

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:26:42] So I mean, it's a kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't. Like, I mean, that's, it's a big question. That's like almost like a universal question.

Samantha Shelley [03:26:52] Because you can look at someone like Teal Swan and see how she actively encourages that. Whereas, like, someone like you, I mean, you're in such a tough spot because your whole thing is like cults, right? And you know, undue influence and not wanting to be that. But then also there are going to be people that like, put you in on a more of a pedestal than they should, which you hate, which then makes you not want to speak at events. But then it's like, I don't know. I don't know if like not speaking at the events is doing any good. It's just kind of like let the accusations fly and let the content speak for itself.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:27:24] I would say the difference is, is anyone being hurt by coming to listen to you? Is there any. Anything that's gonna hurt anyone? No. So it's also, maybe I challenge you. It's not necessarily a bad thing to be well known and to have influence. It's. What do you want to do with that influence? So there's a huge night and day difference between Teals organization and your organization. So yes, there's parallels, but then there's a huge.

Samantha Shelley [03:27:58] So many ways you can do things. And it's like we will have brain DNA from 200,000 years ago and we're wired to be in these tribes. But like, the reason to keep the tribe together was like, you will die if you get kicked out of the tribe or if this tribe breaks up. Now we're not. We don't. I mean, it is still a threat to our survival to not have community, but it's like, it's different also. We're all used to like just constant stimulation and like we can get our needs met on an artificial level in so many different ways. And our attention span suck and we're fraying our brains. There's so much going into it. We can get into capitalism. Like there's no end to this conversation.

John Dehlin [03:28:38] We've just kind of hit the end of this conversation because we're now, we're now we're at kind of democracy now we're at capitalism. Human nature and capitalism them and. Yeah, well, it's just, it's, it's almost like we need a divine, like a heavenly father or some sort of like supreme being to send to speak to a prophet to tell us what we all need to follow. I mean, it's a dark joke, but like this is why Joe, this is, this is how churches start. This is how cults start with people asking these questions.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:29:10] But it takes away our inner power and realizing we have these things within ourselves, we start thinking we need someone else to get this and kind of we lose sight of. We're very powerful on our own. We have our own strengths. We don't need someone else to do that. Even the dangers with Teal, the church, you need the church to be whole. You need Teal to fix what's not whole in you. Yeah, we have that in ourselves already. And we just need to see that and I think not have to need other people, but want that connection with them. Not that we need it to be fixed that we're already. Now I'm starting to sound churchy. We're already whole and perfect.

Samantha Shelley [03:29:54] And I think all the good answers and all the healthy answers are boring and people are attracted to extremes and like, you know, no one wants to

John Dehlin [03:30:02] like or magical thinking, right?

Samantha Shelley [03:30:04] Yeah, we love magical thinking. We love quick fixes, we love magical pills. No one wants to just like sit down and just like be alone with their thoughts for 10 minutes a day sitting down in a chair. Like a lot of the stuff that I feel like would help us always just quite boring. And it's like, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:30:19] But Diana's message is the message to end with which is that the guru is within you. You have the power within you. You don't need a human, a guru, an organization, you know, develop inner resilience, inner strength, inner wisdom, inner critical thinking skills. Develop inner skepticism and inner power. Get, get well, get treatment for your trauma. See a mental health professional who's licensed and uses evidence based practices. And then find good friends and community that support the same healthy values that you have and maybe, maybe you'll be okay.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:30:59] You took the words right out of my mouth. So, so glad someone did because you said it much more eloquently than I ever could. But it's really just going back to the basics and that we don't need to have someone lord over us or tell us what's wrong or what's right. Just we have that intuition. It's, yes, it's good to learn some of these things, but we. There's so many better ways to learn these things and have your life destroyed so someone else can come in and save you and put it back together.

Reflections, Closing Thoughts, and Call for Voices

John Dehlin [03:31:33] Yeah. Well, Diana Ribera, what a wonderful interview. It's about three and a half hours.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:31:40] Oh my gosh.

John Dehlin [03:31:41] I mean that's short by Mormon story standards, but that's still a substantive meaty, powerful. This is one of my favorite interviews of all time.

Samantha Shelley [03:31:50] Yeah, I thought this was amazing.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:31:52] I'm amazed. I never could do more than like, I did a two minute talk in church once and I had it done in 30 seconds and I think that's the last time I remember speaking in front of people.

John Dehlin [03:32:01] You just broke your amazing. Yeah, no, you're super smart and articulate and big hearted and courageous, Diana. And I'm inspired and this is like my 1605 interview.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:32:17] So like look, you're, you're very kind. I just really wanted to get the message out that just this causing harm to make someone better and that what's going on isn't harmless. It's very, very damaging on a bigger level than people realize. And really something has to be done about this. So I hope me kind of coming out trying to explain such a complex matter gives people a little bit more of an insight of my, my fear with these things going on. So.

John Dehlin [03:32:50] Yeah, well, the documentary is the deep end on Hulu. It's a four part series. You can also check out the Gateway, right?

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:33:00] Yeah, the Gateway podcast.

John Dehlin [03:33:02] Podcast. The book is Remembering Satan by Lawrence Wright, who is also the author of Going Clear, which is the expose on Scientology and. Yeah. Any other resources? You know, watch Going Watch Wild Wild Country. Netflix on Netflix Documentary Watch. Watch the vow about Nexium and Keith Ranieri. There's so many good documentaries you can watch. I mean, I guess you could watch under the Banner of Heaven. I don't know. Some people like that. Some people don't. But get educated and don't let Teal Swan wreck your life. And please spread the word, everybody. Samantha, any final thoughts or things you want to share?

Samantha Shelley [03:33:48] No. This has been great. Thank you for having me.

John Dehlin [03:33:50] Yeah, thank you for being a part of this. You made this a way better interview than if you hadn't been here.

Samantha Shelley [03:33:56] I'm hoping that some Teal Swan followers will listen to this and really get a sense for, like, the pattern of lying that she's had throughout her life. Yeah, we'll see.

John Dehlin [03:34:07] Yeah. And I just, I'll shamelessly plug you. Samantha runs a YouTube channel called Zelf on the Shelf where she and her friend Tanner and sometimes other guests talk about deconstructing Mormonism. And she deserves to do that because from her perspective, she was recruited into a cult as a teenager and she's not happy about it. So she's trying to help other people

Samantha Shelley [03:34:32] out for revenge in her own way.

John Dehlin [03:34:35] But also, you occasionally do non culty life coaching, right?

Samantha Shelley [03:34:39] I do do non culty life coaching and I actually like that as a tagline, you know, very much. Be your own guru. Life coaching.

John Dehlin [03:34:46] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [03:34:46] I don't know.

John Dehlin [03:34:48] How do people reach out to you?

Samantha Shelley [03:34:50] Samanthashelleycoaching.com okay, all right.

John Dehlin [03:34:54] So please support Samantha and Zelf on the shelf. There's a Patreon and Yeah. And if you're comfortable, if you value this type of programming, this is more of a stories podcast. You can become a monthly donor@mormonstories.org we're always losing donors and we're every month, every year, it's like, are we going to be able to continue? So we live on your support. So if you value this type of programming, if you want to see it continue, if you want to pay it forward, you can go to mormorestories.org, click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor and we're tax deductible in the U.S. we're transparent in our finances and 100 of your donations go towards this cause, which is educating people about undue influence and coercion and, and high demand religions and or cults, encouraging informed consent within Mormonism and without, and then supporting people in faith transition, whether they stay in the church but in a nuanced way or feel like they need to leave, helping them find healing and growth when they're all done.

John Dehlin [03:35:54] That's what we're all about. Thanks for your support. If you support us and if you want to support us, that'd be great. You can email us@mormonstoriesmail.com you can find us on YouTube and Facebook. You can also support us by giving us positive reviews on Facebook or on Spotify or on the itunes app or on Instagram, wherever You can give us positive reviews and you can like us and subscribe to us and follow us in any of those places as well. That helps with the algorithms and give us your ideas. We love your emails or comments. Mormonstories gmail.com if you've got other ideas for cool episodes.

John Dehlin [03:36:34] If you've been a victim of Teal Swan and you want to add to Diana's wonderful story, we'll entertain your suggestions or ideas. So please reach out. We love it. Take care. Be good to each other. Be your own guru. The kingdom of God is within, if there's a God at all. And Diana, thanks again. You're. You're amazing.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:36:54] Oh, thank you.

John Dehlin [03:36:55] Any final words?

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:36:56] Oh, no. Now that I'm on the spot. No, no. I just really appreciate you spreading awareness. And I. I hope some people can maybe that have seen themselves in this situation, can see there's a path out of it and just not be stuck. That there's. There's a way and there's help. There's actually legitimate ways to get help.

John Dehlin [03:37:17] Oh, and if people want to email you, how do they email you? You.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:37:21] So my email is. I forgot. Speaking of being on the spot, Diana. It is. Diana tells her truth gmail.com.

John Dehlin [03:37:32] all right. And we'll make sure and include that in the show notes as well. Dianatelshirtruth gmail.com.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:37:38] yes.

John Dehlin [03:37:39] All right. Thanks, Diana.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:37:40] All right. Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:37:41] Go. Stay well. Keep up the good work. Stay in touch. Let's hang out.

Diana Hansen Ribera [03:37:46] I will. You too, John.

John Dehlin [03:37:47] All right.

Samantha Shelley [03:37:47] You're the longest outros.

John Dehlin [03:37:50] All right, we'll see you guys soon. Be good to each other. Take care.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.