Cult Trip

At a new age festival in Byron Bay, Australia, German journalist Anke Richter is finding her spiritual awakening when she meets a woman – a survivor of the Centrepoint cult – who will change the course of her life and career.

Over the next ten years, Anke pursued a labyrinthine investigation into how and why cults attract, entrap and destroy otherwise ordinary people, asking what the line is between tribe and cult, participant and perpetrator, seduction and sexual abuse.

From the emotional and criminal carnage of Centrepoint in Auckland, New Zealand, to an anti-cult conference in Manchester, the infamous Osho’s ashram in India, the tantric Agama Yoga school in remote Thailand and culminating in a visit to Gloriavale on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island, Anke uncovers a disturbing pattern of violence and suffering.

Cult Trip is a powerful exploration of what really goes on inside the groups we call cults, and how to reckon with their aftermath.

Author Biography

Anke Richter is a columnist and reporter who has worked in newsrooms and on TV productions in Hamburg and Cologne. Her investigative and personal features have been published in Die Zeit, Spiegel, FAZ, taz, New Zealand Geographic, North & South, The Spinoff, Canvas and others. She has written three previous books that were published in Germany. She now lives in New Zealand.