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News of the church leader’s Friday night arrest came as vindication for Ms. Christie, who says she grew up under the impression that mainstream society “was evil and if you left the church the world would eat you up.”

“This has proven it all wrong to me. Everything I was taught was all wrong,” said Ms. Christie, who last year published a book on her experiences, Property: The True Story of a Polygamous Church Wife.

A total of seven former parishioners participated in the investigation

Before she left in 2008, she says she was held under “house arrest” as one of seven in Mr. King’s alleged harem, frequently warned that anyone who defected from the church would be captured and killed. One of her two sons refused to leave the church with her, for fear of eternal damnation, Ms. Christie says.

“You would be constantly looking over your shoulder for fear that he would be there or send someone,” she recalled of the days following her “escape” from the church.

In these cults the people will do anything to serve and protect the prophet. That’s the kind of brainwashing that goes on

“But it didn’t last for very long, after I got it into my head that he wasn’t coming. He doesn’t have that control over me any more.”

Ms. Christie’s husband, John, says he takes minor security precautions at their Owen Sound, Ont., home, but is not “unduly paranoid” about retribution from any church members.

“In these cults,” he said, “the people will do anything to serve and protect the prophet. That’s the kind of brainwashing that goes on.”

After joining the church in the late ’60s, Ms. Christie says she was 18 when her mother forced her to marry the church’s patriarch and self-dubbed prophet, Stanley King. Marrying the church’s founder — who was twice her age — was the “will of God,” Ms. Christie recalled being told.