Rita Reidel He was born in a closed, hermetic world, where reality was defined from within and any other version of life was considered a threat. He didn’t know it at first, of course. No one is born knowing that they live within a sect. For her, that huge house in Olivos, district of Vicente Lopezfull of families, strict rules and awkward silences, it was simply the life he had to live.
But today, at 27 years and with several years of therapy behind her, Rita is encouraged to put into words that the “apparent normality” in which she grew up, in reality, was not. With a mixture of rawness and lucidity that makes the skin crawl, he speaks of a childhood crossed by sexual abuse, constant fear, psychological manipulation and an escape from the sect that brought her face to face with the real world.
When Rita was born, her father was already the leader of an organization that called itself “Church of the Next Century”. It was not a temple in the traditional sense, but a network of communities that extended to different parts of the country – Bariloche, Carmen de Patagones, La Plata, the Buenos Aires suburbs – and even had a presence in Chile.
“The organization formally presented itself as an aid institution, but behind closed doors it functioned differently. The meetings, which they called ‘congregations’, were held three times a week. Either at my house or at the other members’,” Rita said. “My father, who was the leader, said that he was God’s chosen one. There were people who believed him by faith or out of love for God and lent their houses,” Rita explained. “That leader, whom they knew as “Mica”, was actually Miguel Reidel.”he pointed out.
Rita’s childhood was spent between trips, religious celebrations and shared encounters with other faithful. ““We all lived under the rules imposed by my father.”he related.
The internal logic of the sect was diffuse, but powerful. External links were practically prohibited. Rita’s maternal family, for example, was considered “demonic”: said that He could not see his grandmother or his uncles, nor accept the gifts they sent him. “Everything that came from outside was suspicious,” he said.
Although he attended school, his social world was restricted to church. “They didn’t explicitly prohibit us from having friends, but Our ties were all from within the sect.“, he explained. That limitation, added to a climate of constant control, shaped a childhood where fear was daily.
“I cried a lot at school, but no one ever intervened or cared,” she said. And she related a situation that marked her a lot in primary school: “My father didn’t want us to swear the flag and he sent my mother to talk to the directors so that we wouldn’t do it. He never told us why.”
Rita also remembered that They were forbidden to call him “dad” in front of everyone. “For us it was ‘Mica’. “I came to understand that over the years,” she said. That detail, which seemed like an eccentricity as a girl, would reveal its true meaning over the years: hide a double life, multiple wives and children, and a carefully constructed control system.
“No one knew we were his children.”he said, also referring to his four brothers. “In his speech, men could have many women, but not women. That was completely accepted within the community,” he explained.
Fear was the language of his childhood. “It wasn’t always about beatings, at least not systematically. It was more psychological violence. That fear settled in the body. “It was like a constant belly ache when he was at home,” described. For her, his presence, his words or the way he looked were enough to discipline her.
Everyday life was governed by strict rules, punishments and humiliations. “He woke us up at three in the morning, throwing things around, saying that we hadn’t cleaned well. The limits he set for us were extreme, and we were just children,” he said.
“If my brother cried, I would challenge him because that was faggot and I would leave him in the yard in his underwear,” he exemplified. This is how, from childhood, Rita learned to repress everything she felt: ““My dad taught me that crying is weak and today it is very difficult for me to show myself vulnerable.”.
Inside the house, there were lists of household chores that, on the surface, might have seemed normal. But the problem was not the organization, but the consequences of not complying. “My dad became very violent“she said. And as an example, she said that one night she took her and her siblings out of bed because there was a stain on the floor and a kitchen utensil had not been washed properly. “I was 8 years old and I remember that a roasting pan flipped me inside the bed when I was already lying down, as punishment,” she added.
The fear came not only from physical or psychological punishments, but also from speech. “It was scary. The babies saw him and cried. People laughed, but it wasn’t funny,” she said about the climate of permanent intimidation they lived in. “My mother, who was a sad and submissive woman, carried all the responsibilities of the home and the church. He tried to flee on several occasions, but he couldn’t because we moved frequently to attend congregations in different parts of the country. She was his slave”, he summarized.
The relationship between his parents was always marked by violence and dependency. His mother, who had had addiction problems, found initial containment in that environment that later turned into confinement. “It was a lethal combination,” Rita said.
“My dadwho was already an adult, He met her when she was just 15 years old. Only years later, when she was around 27, did they formally begin the relationship. This difference in age and experience marked from the beginning a bond crossed by asymmetry of power.”he explained.
But the darkest core of his story appears when he talks about the abuse. Rita affirms that they were constant since her childhood, both within the family environment and in the religious community itself. “There was hypersexualization all the time. Comments about our bodies, about how we had to see ourselves,” he said. And he added: “It wasn’t just my dad. There were other adults who abused children, even in meetings, in view of everyone.”
The system was designed to naturalize the unacceptable. “Everything was very manipulated for you to accept it,” he explained, referring to the fact that one of the members of the sect used to lift the boys in “koala-type” arms to rest them on their genitals and touch their tails. “It’s not that someone told you ‘this is wrong’. For us it was normal,” he lamented.
The exit from that world was not immediate or easy. When he was around 10 years old, his mother tried to separate and they moved south to El Bolsón. It was a period of extreme economic and emotional precariousness. “My brothers and I didn’t want to leave. Living in that house in Olivos was our life. But staying wasn’t an option either,” he recalled.
The instability continued for years. Comings and goings between their parents, constant moves, and decisions that fell on children and adolescents. “It was a here-and-there life. There was no home,” he said.
In the midst of that chaos, Rita made a decision that she still finds difficult to fully understand today: He chose to stay with his father. She was barely twelve years old and for the next two years, she lived alone with him. And that period, in his own words, “was hell.”
She stopped being a daughter to occupy an ambiguous role, loaded with responsibilities and a deeply disturbing closeness. I cooked, I cleaned, I shopped. But he also began to question. Something didn’t close. Something was wrong.
“My dad would come into my room at night while I was sleeping and stand next to me, crouching on my bed. I would wake up, see him there and start crying. I had no way to defend myself and what he told me to do was always unquestionable,” he said.
It was at that stage when he asked to see a psychologist for the first time. A huge gesture for a girl in that context. During one session, when her father left the office, Rita broke down in despair and He tried to explain that he was not who he appeared to be. But he didn’t come back. I was too young, too alone, too trapped.
At fifteen, Rita finally took courage and ran away from her father’s house.. He first took refuge with a sister – who had escaped with her mother to El Bolsón and started her own family – and then returned to her mother, who had moved to Trevelin, when the uprooting was already deep.
In that void, and upon entering adolescence, other forms of pain began to appear. Violent relationships, drug use, difficulties sustaining studies or jobs. “I only knew how to build toxic bonds. It was the only thing I knew,” he admitted. For years, his life revolved around survival: working to pay rent, eat, and sustain his consumption.
At 17 she went to live alone and prostitution was part of that journey. “It was the way I found to pay my expenses,” he said bluntly. Today, however, it makes a difference: “I no longer practice in person. I gave up that thanks to therapy. But I make a living selling content on Only Fans”he stated.
The therapeutic process was, in his words, a turning point. After intermittent attempts, he found a psychologist who asked for a commitment. “Told me: ‘I’ll take care of you if you’re not absent’”he recalled. Even without resources, he managed to sustain the treatment. “There I began to understand the level of sadness I lived in. It was constant. “I had no dreams, I had no direction.”
This internal work allowed him, little by little, to begin to rebuild himself. Also to make different decisions. Today he studies Dental Mechanics in La Plata, a technical career that he chose for its practical nature. “I want to finish it. It’s something I can sustain,” he said.
She lives alone, with her cat, in a rented apartment in the center of that city. For the first time he has his own furniture. “It may seem like nonsense, but for me it is a lot,” he said. It is a symbol of stability in a life that for years lacked it.
The bond with his family remains complex. He cut contact with his father two years ago. The last meeting, in 2024, was revealing: “He recognized some behaviors, although without assuming them as abuses. I don’t know if I was conscious or not. But it is no longer my job to understand it.” She said that the talk lasted around 15 minutes and that when her father saw her, he pretended, at first, not to recognize her.
He has a distant relationship with his mother. “I speak little because it makes me sick”he remarked. However, the bond is not completely broken. With his brothers, on the other hand, he maintains a strong connection, despite the distances and conflicts. “There is a loyalty that cannot be broken“he emphasized
At the same time, Rita decided to speak. “I reported my father for the abuse in 2023, in El Bolsón“, he said. However, that case was not successful: “The complaint was filed because they told me that I had to file it back in Buenos Aires, because half of the events had happened here… and I didn’t want to do anything else.”
The problem was not only jurisdictional. Years earlier, while still a teenager, he had tried to make progress against the organization he grew up in, but encountered another barrier. “I remember going with my mother and being told that it was difficult to report an institution,” he explained. And everything ended up getting complicated because they didn’t have enough money to pay a lawyer.
These complaints also brought consequences: legal threats, pressures and agreements that limit what he can say today. Still, continue. “My battle was to do something for myself, for the girl that no one protected,” he explained. “I don’t necessarily expect justice in judicial terms. My search is different: to repair, to the extent possible, what was broken.”he added.
Today, his life is far from perfect. He continues to deal with traumas, with bonding difficulties and with ghosts from the past that appear. But there is also something new: giving meaning to your life. “I’m trying to rearm myself,” he concluded.
