Edgard Doulière was not a typical guru. He didn’t have the Hollywood allure of Peoples Temple’s Jim Jones, not the penetrating gaze of the Bhagwan, nor the wildfire of Charles Manson. Doulière was an unattractive balding man, with an unkempt mustache and a paralyzed left arm. But when he spoke, his female followers looked at him with the look Harry Styles and Justin Bieber get from young girls today. His charisma made the female members of his cult do everything for him—and with him.
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“I was summoned to him at full moon,” says Linda from Maaseik, today a middle-aged woman. “For a mystical encounter, so to speak. I had to put on a spacious robe, and was led into the room with a candle in my hands. There Edgard Doulière lay, naked, on a mattress on the floor. He didn’t do anything, he didn’t say anything, he just lay there. The mystical encounter turned out to be an arranged sexual rendezvous. I was lifted and put on Edgard, and I had to do my thing. There was no talking, no kissing – it didn’t take long. When he was done, I got my candle back, and I was allowed to leave.”
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