Lindy Jacomb was a 20-year-old member living at home with her family when she wrote to the church's global leader, Bruce Hales, in 2008 asking why she should stay in a faith she had begun doubting. Her letter asked why the group was so extreme in shunning others, why it insisted it was the one divinely accredited church, why Hales was considered infallible, why members must work for Brethren-owned companies and why pets were banned.
Jacomb received no answers, left the church and was later excommunicated. Under orders from Hales, she says her parents cut off all contact with her, her five siblings became strangers, she lost her job and her friends spurned her. "It's like jumping out of a plane into a pitch-black hole," she says. "You're going into a terrifying and different world ... a world you've been taught since birth to fear and hate."
Six years later, Jacomb's brother, Braden Simmons, emailed her with doubts of his own. His messages were surveilled by his Brethren boss. Hales later preached to his global flock that Simmons should kill himself with poison. The church, now known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, or PBCC, excommunicated Simmons.