7. Then, this painful ceremony took place

Edmondson found herself naked in Mack’s home with four other women when the tattoo ceremony was ready to take place, she recounts to Vice. She then said the women took turns holding each other down as Dr. Danielle Roberts branded them on the hip area. “With the first cut of her flesh — they burned her flesh — we were crying, we were shaking, we were holding one another. It was horrific,” Edmondson said.

Though she knew the branding was wrong and she didn’t want to go through with it, she did. “I wasn’t present mentally. I went somewhere else,” she explained.

Next: Here’s why Edmondson didn’t just leave.