Only with the benefit of hindsight can Sarah Strutt now see that she missed a key warning sign of the horrors to come. She’d been invited to a final portrait sitting at her beautiful, artist-daughter’s studio, only to find that on arrival all she could talk about was her new therapist. “She told me she only took the really special people and that while she charged $200 for the hour, they would then chat for three hours non-stop,” Sarah recalls.
“And that’s when my red light should have come on.” Yet even if it had, what could she have done about it? Sarah did not know it, but her daughter, who was in her early 20s, was already in the grip of a self-styled ‘healer’ called Anne Craig who would, over a matter of months, separate her from everyone she loved in the world. Within two years of coming into Craig’s orbit, the young woman became convinced she had been sexually abused as a child and cut off all contact with her family and friends for six long years.
The portrait she had lovingly painted of her mother was burned at Craig’s suggestion. For much of that time, a despairing Sarah, now 69, together with her daughter’s father, stepfather and siblings, had no idea where she was, an experience she describes today as like “drowning in a vat of black oil”. It ultimately took the help of a private detective and even an expert in cults to get her back.
Although perhaps, most of all, it was the fierce love of a mother who would never give up on her child, .