Editing Ant Hill Kids (section)

== History ==

=== Foundation of the cult ===
In 1977, [[Roch Thériault|Thériault]] formed the cult in Sainte-Marie, Quebec with the help with the help of old members of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh-day_Adventist_Church Seventh-day Adventist Church] with goal to form a commune where people could freely listen to his motivational speeches, live in unity and equality, and be free of sin.

=== First activities ===
In 1978, [[Roch Thériault|Thériault]] moved his commune by hiking to a mountainside in Saint-Jogues, in the sparsely populated Gaspé Peninsula, where he claimed they could all be saved.There, [[Roch Thériault|Thériault]] made the commune build their town. In February 1979, [[Roch Thériault|Thériault]]'s fear of the end of the world grew, claiming that God had warned him that the Apocalypse would come and used the commune to prepare for it. To expand the community as well as keep the members devoted, [[Roch Thériault|Thériault]] married and impregnated all of the women, fathering over 20 children with 9 female members of the group, and by the 1980s there were nearly 40 members. In 1984, the group relocated from Quebec to a new site near Burnt River, a hamlet in Central Ontario now part of the city of Kawartha Lakes.

=== Abuses in the community ===
[[Roch Thériault]] began to become more and more totalitarian towards his acolytes and became more and more violent, mainly due to his alcoholism.  And he used his charisma to hide these traits, making sure that none of his acolytes would question him. Various examples of his barbarism committed can be that when a person wished to leave the commune, [[Roch Thériault|Thériault]] would hit them with either a belt or hammer, suspend them from the ceiling, pluck each of their body hairs individually, or even defecate on them or members who did not bring in enough money to the community were also punished. Another example: in 1989, when follower Solange Boilard complained of an upset stomach, [[Roch Thériault|Thériault]] performed another amateur surgery without anaesthesia. He laid her naked on a table, and punched her in the stomach, then forced a plastic tube into her rectum to perform a crude enema with molasses and olive oil. He cut open her abdomen with a knife and ripped off part of her intestines with his bare hands. Boilard died the next day from the damage inflicted by the procedures. Claiming to have the power of resurrection, [[Roch Thériault|Thériault]] bored a hole into Boilard's skull with a drill and then had other male members (along with himself) ejaculate into the cavity. When Boilard did not return to life, her corpse was buried a short distance from the Ant Hill Kids' commune.   

=== Dissolution of the cult ===
The cult was dissolved in 1989, when [[Roch Thériault]] was convicted for assaulting Lavallée, a member of the group.