svali

A painting by svali. A young woman is sitting on a rock looking out over the ocean. She has her back to the viewer, her shoulder length brown hair is being blown by the breeze. Smaller rocks are sticking up out of the water and the rock the woman is sitting on is on some reddish brown sand. There are small waves on the ocean, the water looks calm. Strips of white clouds gently stretch across the light blue sky. The woman is wearing a flowing blue, sleeveless top, black bottoms, and has what looks like a purple scarf draped over her lap. The painting has a contemplative feel to it.
Overcomer by svali.

Interview by Jen, Rivers, and Jean, December 2025

Trigger warning! This interview references programming and satanic ritual abuse (although not in graphic terms), and mentions Christian content (church, faith, deliverance/casting out demons).

Svali is a satanic ritual abuse survivor best known for her online videos and blog, Svali Speaks Again. Through these and other projects, she fulfils what she describes as her ministry – to educate people about ritual abuse and mind control, and to help other survivors heal and find their way to freedom.

What makes svali exceptional is that she openly shares her experiences as a head programmer for a high ranking Jesuit Order in her videos and writing, and from this perspective, talks about how programming works.

Although not discussed in this interview, svali credits her strong faith in God for helping her survive and ultimately escape the Order. Some of her answers here allude to her deep faith.

We had so much great content from this interview that we split it into two parts:

  • Part One – the main interview, below, profiling svali’s life and work.
  • Part Two – entitled Thoughts on Healing. It’s a more in depth look at svali’s inner world and healing. It includes suggestions for survivors who are working on their own healing and perhaps trying to escape from a cult themselves.

Svali has been healing and sharing her journey publicly for well over a decade. We at GrassRoots deeply appreciate her courage and the work she does on behalf of survivors. We hope you enjoy this interview as svali discusses everything from escaping from the cult/Order, through to what her life looks like today.

Svali’s blog:

Svali’s books on Amazon:

It can be a journey to escape from a cult and it often doesn’t happen on the first try. What was this process like for you and are you fully free now?

For me, it was a process that took many years. It included staying at women’s shelters, being homeless, and even running for a year (before I realized that I couldn’t outrun the cult tracking me). I was accessed and hurt three different times over a period of 30 years while I was working at healing.

Having two friends at different times in my life who were not dissociative, and who allowed me to stay with them while I worked on healing, made all the difference. This provided physical safety because the cult did not want to expose itself to these non-dissociative people. The accountability and friendship also helped me to resist the pull to go back, and so I was able to stay safe.

This physical safety allowed me to work for hours each day, journaling and talking to inner parts to discover what programming was inside, and what motivated the programming to run. I am fully free now. I do not return to the cult or allow them to access me.

In general, do you feel safe today, or do you still experience a lot of harassment?

I feel safe because I have worked through almost all of my programming (I am currently doing final core work).

I do get harassment in the form of people from my past showing up, making comments and using hand signals. I have also walked into setups. Once I visited an artist who invited me to see her paintings at her house. When I and a friend got there, the whole top floor of her house was filled with setups and triggers, including cult people. My friend and I left immediately. For this reason, I no longer go into the homes of people I don’t know extremely well, unless I have a non-dissociative friend with me. Cult people tend to avoid doing things like that in front of others who are not cult.

Two of my friends have been with me in public places and later asked me, “Why did that person keep wiggling their fingers the whole time they were talking to us?” (The person came up to pet my dog.) I then explained about signing (a subtle version of sign language used by the cult) and the impact it can have on a survivor.

Have the perpetrators ever interfered with your blog, videos, or books – all the information you put out into the world about cults and programming – and how have you navigated those challenges?

Yes. I have seen some of my books disappear for days at a time on Amazon. There are sites created to discredit me, and people who make very negative and hurtful comments and threats. The Wikipedia page about me was suddenly taken down one day, with no explanation. I have chosen to ignore the discreditors, and to heal from the hurtful experiences using my faith and self care.

What effect did being a programmer have on your internal system of parts?

My guilt over programming others made it more difficult for me to heal until I addressed it. Most adults in many groups (especially the 12 international groups, and the Brotherhood in the US, as examples) all know how to program others. It is one of the skills children are taught early, because they expect everyone to be able to program each other at some level, although not all people are equally skilled at it.

But even if someone is not a programmer, that person knows how their programming was put in, what they were told would happen if they ever stop the programming, etc. They know what was done to them, and why it hurt. So, I believe that everyone has enough information about their own programming to be able to heal from it, if parts will share this information with each other and cooperate.

Do you think being a skilled programmer made you skilled at deprogramming yourself and helping others undo their programming (does it automatically follow that if you’re skilled at one, you’ll be skilled at the other)?

In some ways it was helpful, once these programmer parts decided to leave the cult and change. They could share very helpful and useful information. But, while the cults value intelligence and skill, they also realize that people who are smart and creative may want to leave. So the cults very heavily program their programmers NOT to heal, to minimize the risk of programmers deprogramming themselves. I therefore had a lot of extra anti-healing and pain programming, at numerous levels. This is one reason, among others, my healing journey was so long.

How did you come to discover and work with your inner system?

I spent several hours each day, journaling, collaging, using dolls, making a sand tray that I used at home, to talk to parts and get to know them, and invite them to share their experiences with me.

I first discovered I was dissociative during a deliverance session, when parts came out. The session was in a church with a deliverance minister, and I had gone for deliverance, to cast out any internal demons. Within two days after this, I realized that there was trauma and fragmentation inside, and memories of rituals started coming forward almost immediately.

At that time, I began reading about dissociation (two books), and seeing a psychiatrist who insisted I was not “multiple”- he insisted I was too functional. But I knew there was something going on inside, and so I saw other therapists, started journaling and collaging, and more information began coming out.

The intensive work began when I was staying with a friend who is non-dissociative, ten years later; that is when parts really started opening up. They wanted OUT – and so they started talking in spite of the internal punishments they experienced at first for communicating with the “fronter” or “presenter.” After I had been staying with my friend for a year, I created an internal healing team from former system controllers and internal programmers, and any other parts that wanted to help, to find, talk with, and nurture parts inside.

You grew up in the underground world of the cult and that was all you knew. How have you found adjusting to the “normal” world?

It was very hard at first, but it got easier with time. The longer I have been out, the more I realize that I have an identity outside of who I was in the cult. My friends now are not dissociative.

I have recently (after many years of saying nothing) shared a bit about my past at church – and to my great surprise, have been accepted. It helped that I first had years of normal relationships with these individuals. I shared about my past not to get support, but because everyone in a Bible study I attended for two years was asked to share their testimony – a different person each week. Mine was the last one. I warned the Bible study leader that my testimony would be intense for some, and she okayed my sharing. I edited my testimony heavily so it wasn’t at all graphic. Other than one older lady gasping at my introduction (“I was raised in an intergenerational satanic cult”), and another lady asking afterwards if my “mental illness” was better now, the others all heard it and have treated me with acceptance.

In 2006 you disappeared. Later you shared in your blog that you went to live at a safe friend’s, gave up your cell phone, and lived in relative invisibility for five years. In thinking about this time, what caused you to disappear? How was that time away for you, and what inspired you to re-emerge and start posting online again?

I disappeared because I did not want to be online. Any time I was online, I saw terrible subliminals and videos that played in the corner of my computer screen to trigger my programming. It was the same with my cell phone.

I knew that to heal, for me, I needed time away from the constant triggering of my recontact and other programs. Going online and using my cell phone would continue the triggering, and make me vulnerable to recontact. For example, I was programmed to believe that if I did not send a code by text on my cell phone every 24 hours, then my twin sister and my son would both be tortured terribly. At the time, I realized I was not strong enough to resist this program yet, so I gave my cell phone and laptop to my non-dissociative friend to keep.

After 11 years and lot of work on healing, I felt it was time to share what I was remembering to help others, and started my new blog. I write my blogposts offline to minimize being online, then upload them later.

At this time, I still only go online once or twice a week for an hour or two at a time, because I do not enjoy seeing the unpleasant videos that play in the corner of my computer or phone screen when I do. While they cannot trigger me the way they once did, they are graphic and I choose not to expose myself to this type of thing.

How do you decide what to share publicly, including when and how to share it?

I pray about what I should share and when to share it. I will admit, however, that there has been a mix of different reasons and motivations for sharing publicly.

I wanted others to know these things, and I want to help those working with survivors to realize some of the issues that survivors can face, including deep attachment (in some groups) to the abusers. At the same time, I was very, very angry at the Jesuit fathers for what I had endured, so it was also part of my undoing my non-disclosure programming, and a middle finger at them (e.g., “You don’t control me anymore, I will expose you.”). Not the best motivation; I have worked hard at forgiveness which has been a process.

What is your life like now? What brings you joy, and what are your goals and aspirations?

I currently do anti-trafficking research. I do the bulk of the work offline, using a laptop in which I took out the wireless connector. With my friends, I have already published one paper in a professional journal, and I am currently working on a scoping review (a review of peer-reviewed journal articles and dissertations published in the last 70 years) on the topic of ritual abuse. I am also a co-researcher for an upcoming study of healing from ritual abuse. I love advocating, educating others, and helping others when possible.

I also love painting, and have my paintings (of nature, landscapes, and wildlife) in four galleries at this time. I am always uplifted and inspired by how beautiful the outdoors is. Goals? To continue to advocate for survivors in meaningful ways.

Do you have an ending message you’d like to share?

That healing is really possible. It took me time, but it is worth it, knowing that now I can pray for my loved ones still in the cult, and not be hurting them. And knowing the real story of my life, instead of the programmed, false version I had been handed.

It was hard learning what my life really was, but I am glad I know, because now I can speak out about how programming was done in the groups I was in, how the culture of the cults affect the people raised in them, and so hopefully help others.

Thank you for this opportunity to share a little with others!

Part 2 of svali’s interview, “Thoughts on Healing”