The computer Shyama Rose got for her 14th birthday was a boxy Macintosh Quadra 650. The year was 1994. People didn’t email; there was no Facebook; the founders of Google hadn’t even met. And news of the emerging World Wide Web hadn’t yet made its way inside the gates of Barsana Dham, the religious compound in Austin, Texas, where she lived.
The compound sat on a spectacular stretch of lush property and featured a castle-like temple adorned with gold-leaf-covered pillars, marble floors, sheepskin rugs, thrones, and shrines—all encircled by fences. Devotees there rejected mainstream society; they’d renounced their worldly possessions to come worship a spiritual leader named Swami Prakashanand Saraswati, who wore bright yellow and orange robes and garlands of flowers around his neck. Followers sat watching in silence as he ate his meals. They bowed at his feet and drank from his spit. Years later, Rose would come across a “cult checklist” and answer questions like: “Does the group display excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader?” Yes. “Are questioning, doubt, and dissent discouraged or even punished?” Yes. But when Rose first moved into the compound at age 11 with her mother and brother, life there seemed magical.
One night not long after getting her computer, Rose was in the bungalow she shared with seven adult women. Before the evening services she sat alone in her bedroom, tinkering with the machine. There was a cord that looked like a phone jack, so she dragged the Macintosh into her mom’s room and plugged it in. A strange dial-up sound hummed and beeped. A window popped open on the screen. “This is cool,” she thought.
Rose had just stumbled upon the Internet. And it would be her escape from Barsana Dham.
[For more of this story, written by Erika Hayasaki, go to http://www.glamour.com/story/h...acker-escaped-a-cult]
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