Roch Thériault
 |
This article's content is marked as Mature The page Roch Thériault contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
|
Roch Thériault (16 May 1947 - 26 February 2011) was a Canadian cult leader, polygamist and convicted murderer who founded the Ant Hill Kids doomsday cult. The Ant Hill Kids were under regular scrutiny from Canadian authorities due to poor living conditions, reports of abuse and the deaths of several cult members following medical treatment administered by Thériault. Thériault was eventually convicted of the murder of one of his followers, Solange Boilard, in 1993.
Biography edit
Thériault was born in Quebec in 1947. He dropped out of school to study the Old Testament of the Bible and joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Thériault believed that the end of the world was near and would be brought about by the war between good and evil.
In the 1970s Thériault left the Adventist Church and successfully used his motivational skills to convince several other Adventists to leave their homes and join him in a cult. All followers of the cult were banned from remaining in contact with their families or the Adventist Church. Thériault taught that God had told him the world would end in February 1979, and moved the cult commune to a mountain he named as "Eternal Mountain" in preparation. Upon arriving the cult were made to construct their own town while Thériault watched, leading him to name them the Ant Hill Kids. Every female cult member was married to, and impregnated by, Thériault in order to expand cult membership. When February 1979 came and went without the world ending, Thériault declared that time in Heaven and Earth were not parallel, which had caused him to miscalculate.
Following the relocation, Thériault became increasingly controlling and totalitarian; members of the Ant Hill commune were not permitted to speak when he was not present or have sex without his permission. In order to ensure that his rules were followed, Thériault spied on his followers and punished rule-breaking by beating disobedient followers with belts and hammers, plucking out hairs or defecating on them. Over time punishments became more violent, including forcing members to burn themselves against lit stoves, eat dead mice and excrement, shoot each other in the shoulders or break their own legs with sledgehammers. The abuse extended to the cult's children, who were regularly raped by Thériault and disciplined by being held over fires or nailed to trees and pelted with rocks. One of his wives left her newborn son outside in freezing temperatures to die in order to save him from Thériault.
Thériault, believing himself to be a holy being and terming himself "Moïse", declared that his followers needed to be "purified" in order to get into Heaven, subjecting them to unnecessary medical procedures in order to demonstrate his healing powers. These included forcible circumcision and injecting ethanol solutions into his follower's stomachs. A 1987 investigation by social services after two of his followers died following homeopathic treatment by Thériault revealed poor living conditions at the commune but the wider abuses were not exposed because the Ant Hill Kids had church status and could not be further investigated. However, 17 children were taken into care due to the poor living conditions.
In 1989, follower Solange Boilard complained of an upset stomach. Thériault decided to perform surgery without anaesthetic. He forced her to lie down on a table while naked, punched her in the stomach and forced a plastic tube up her anus in order to perform an enema. He then cut open her stomach with a knife and manually removed her intestines. When Boilard died, Thériault, claiming to have the power of resurrection, forced follower Gabrielle Lavallée to stich up her stomach, insert a tube in her throat and blow down it. He then drilled a hole in Boilard's skull and masturbated into it. Unsurprisingly this did not resurrect Boilard, who was buried a few miles away.
Gabrielle Lavallée attempted to flee the commune after Thériault pulled out eight of her teeth, burned her genitals with a welding torch, beat her with the blunt side of an axe and cut off part of her breast. Upon her return to the commune Thériault cut off one of her fingers, pinned her hand to a table with a knife and amputated her arm with a chainsaw. Afterwards Lavallée fled again and reported the incident to the police, who arrested Thériault for assault. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison, after which the Ant Hill Kids disbanded. This allowed a further investigation which uncovered the various abuses within the cult, including the death of Boilard. In 1993 Thériault pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Boilard's death and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
On 26 February 2011, Thériault was found dead in his prison cell. He had been stabbed in the neck with a shiv during an altercation with another inmate. His cellmate was sentenced to life imprisonment for Thériault's murder.