On Netflix, the three-part docuseries Dancing for the Satan: The 7M TikTok Cult aired on the finish of Might. However in the true world, the sequence simply retains going.
Within the newest instalment, Miranda Wilking Derrick, its apparently unwitting topic who might or will not be in a cult, took to Instagram Monday to blast these behind the sequence. In a video message delivered from the sting of her mattress, Derrick pleads with the general public to depart her and her husband, fellow perhaps cult member James “B-Sprint” Derrick, alone.
“Since this documentary got here out, we really feel like our lives have been put in peril,” she mentioned.
Derrick’s message was the second time she has addressed the sequence, which Netflix launched on Might 29. The sequence alleges, amongst different issues, that Derrick and her husband, skilled dancers who moved to Los Angeles to attempt to make it massive within the trade, fell below the spell of Robert Shinn and his controversial Shekinah Church, the place he serves as pastor. Shinn, with the assistance of his son, Isaiah, met the Derricks and lots of different LA-area-dancers-slash-TikTok influencers and created a administration firm, 7M, to assist them generate profits from their content material creation.
However Derrick’s dad and mom and sister, fellow dancer-slash-influencer Melanie Wilking, allege that Shinn is as a substitute operating a secretive cult, brainwashing their daughter and others into his warped model of Christianity and retaining them in his management by managing their careers. The story first broke on social media in 2022, when the Wilkings launched an emotional video on Instagram alleging that ever since Derrick met her husband and signed with Shinn, she had reduce herself off from them and from everybody else in her former life.
The documentary goes deeper than simply the story of the dancers. Former members of Shinn’s church allege that he engaged in intimidation and isolation techniques. A lawsuit filed by former members accuses him of sexual battery, fraud, pressured labor, and human trafficking. However it’s the Wilking sisters who’ve captured the general public’s creativeness, and whose story has change into like one endless actuality present.