Seeking Truth

Telling Stories

Finding Beauty

Welcome.

I'm Rachel, a writer from New Zealand who is endlessly curious about people and the stories they carry.

I am an award-winning writer, social scientist, criminologist and survivor of Bill Gothard's cult. I write essays on cults, human behaviour, leaving organised religion, spirituality, and the stories that shape our lives. I don't focus on the wrongs within cults or the evangelical church, rather I focus on personal growth and how those experiences can help us find our higher self and create a spirituality beyond the restraints and rules of organised religion.

I'm also the author of the popular New Zealand children's book A Day on Grandad's Boat.

I write weekly on substack and have a monthly newsletter. I'd love to have you join me there. Sign up below.

Literature that Influenced Me

From as early as I learned to read, books have been a big part of my life and my inner world. They allowed me to escape to places unseen and formed my own imagination. With a tendency to believe everything I ever read the characters and places became real to me influencing not just my growing imagination and ideas, but influencing how i interacted with the world around me.

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White was the first chapter book I ever read and the first book I cried over! I grew up on Enid Blyton's Famous Five and the Magic Faraway Tree, Nancy Drew, Roald Dahl, Beatrix Potter, Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables and so many other well-loved classic children's literature. Children's literature is still a great love and I have acquired an extensive personal collection of all these 'friends'. As I grew older I fell in love with the classics of Jane Austen, the Brontes, Daphne du Maurier, Gerald Durrell and my personal favourite, Charles Dickens. Extensive reading makes a great writer and I love to think how all those hours curled up in a chair or under the blankets of my bed at night with a flashlight have helped me become the writer I am today with my own style and point of view.

I had an idyllic childhood growing up in smalltown New Zealand with the Marlborough Sounds as our backyard. The 1970s and the 1980s in New Zealand was a wonderful period to grow up in. Much of my writing stems from this happy, trouble-free time in my life.

My life took a turn when I met Bill Gothard of the Institute in Basic Life Principles, USA. I went to work for him as his secretary in Chicago, during which time he befriended me and groomed me. Many years later I was a plaintiff in the 2015 lawsuit against him, highlighting his abusive and predatory behaviour.

I am writing a memoir of how I was conditioned and primed through the christian evangelical church to accept and be ignorant of his advances towards me; how it happened, how a cult leaves an indelible mark on you and how I left it with my soul intact and began rebuilding my life.

Critical Acclaim

Voices on her work

Lees writes with a rare, quiet resilience that makes her survival story both devastating and deeply hopeful.

The Literary Review

A Day on Grandad's Boat captures the pure, innocent whimsy of childhood with masterfully steady prose.

Children's Book Council Award

Get in touch

Inquiries & speaking

Rachel is available for literary panels, speaking engagements on high-control group survival, and freelance editorial commissions.