There’s a sign at the city limits to the small town of Clayton, New Mexico, that reads “Do not pick up hitchhikers in this area: Northeast New Mexico Detention Facility”. The truth is, they wouldn’t get very far in this remote part of the United States without a lift.

Bored high-school kids gather outside one of the town’s three petrol stations — the one that serves sandwiches and stays open late — and when they graduate, it’s tradition to paint graffiti on rocks at the top of the cliff overlooking Highway 370. Near the intersection, there’s a nondescript mobile home set 50ft back from the main road. You wouldn’t give it a second glance, but this small trailer, with tumble-weeds blowing across its yard, is home to a couple at the heart of a drama that has played out over the past nine years here. It involves a religious sect, its 68-year-old leader who claims to be the Messiah, accusations of brainwashing and planned mass suicide and, most recently, child molestation.

John and Elsa Sayer were members of The Lord Our Righteousness (LOR) church, an apocalyptic cult that arrived in Clayton in 2000 and settled 40 miles north of town on a few thousand acres of ranch land they called Strong City. But in 2007, having spent 16 years in the group, the Sayers left suddenly after discovering that their two underage daughters, Lakeisha and Ashleey, had “laid naked” with its ageing leader, Wayne Bent, in what he said was an act of “healing”.

By all accounts, Bent’s arrest was fairly dramatic, considering LOR says it doesn’t possess weapons. A police helicopter hovered over Strong City while armed officers cut the lock on the gate to gain entry. Last May, a grand jury indicted Bent on charges of criminal sexual contact with, and contributing to the delinquency of, a minor, and in December he was sen-tenced to 18 years. In January this year, one of his young followers almost died after fasting for 30 days in protest.

John and Elsa Sayer say their family has been torn apart by the LOR church. While they and their eldest daughter, Ashleey, have left, their youngest, Lakeisha, is still a member, estranged from her parents and determined to return to Strong City when she turns 18 this August. She also says she’s in love with Michael Travesser, the name by which Wayne Bent is known to his followers.

Elsa Sayer is a pretty woman in her mid-thirties with long, dark-brown hair. She was just 16 when she married John, 2Å years her senior. Today they both work at a local motel, she as a receptionist, he as the caretaker. John’s mother, Shirley, who now goes by the name Aliah, joined the church in 1989, and John and Elsa followed shortly after.

Bent was a pastor with the Seventh Day Adventist Church in California before leaving to form his own denomination in the mid-1980s. LOR became more and more detached from the outside world and in 1990 settled on a 320-acre parcel of land in Idaho. Ten years later, Bent received a “message” that the group should relocate to New Mexico.

In the beginning, Elsa says everybody was like family. There was talk of putting all the money into one pot so that they could live communally. They collected rainwater and dug their own sewage system. They grew their own vegetables and the children were home-schooled. But the Sayers say things changed fairly quickly. Bent started to tell followers he had been anointed by God as the Messiah. Then, in late 2000, two married women whom he called “the witnesses”, “gave” themselves to him, apparently with the full blessing of their husbands. Bent told the group this was a test of their faith. “It took me a month before I realised he was saying he was literally the Second Coming of Christ,” Elsa says. “I couldn’t accept it at first. But what really got to me was when he slept with the two witnesses. I couldn’t see how it was right or godly.”

Over the years, Elsa says most of the marriages between Bent’s followers fell apart because they were told they were only supposed to be married to God. But she refused to give up her own. Then came the incident that, for the Sayers, was the final straw. Elsa says Ashleey took part in a “prophecy” that involved seven virgins laying naked with Bent on a bed. Two of them were Lakeisha and Ashleey, then 14 and 16. Another was a girl called Willow, who was just 12. Bent says this was spiritual healing and he had told his followers before it took place; the state said it was sexual molestation.

At the time, Elsa and John had moved off the property to find work in Clayton, but they were still active members of the church. They didn’t want their daughters to play any part in the ritual. “I told him [Bent] I had prayed hard and it was not on my heart for my girls to sleep with him,” Elsa says. “But he said it was because I was demonic, that if I was godly I could have given it up. John and I refused and threw a major wrench in his plans.” But Lakeisha and Ashleey did it anyway. “They went behind our backs,” Elsa says.

John says he felt angry but he knew Bent would pay the price. “I didn’t have to blow his head off. God would do it his way. It sounds like I didn’t care, but that’s not it.”

John’s mother, Shirley, and his sister, Misty (known as Liberty), still live at Strong City. He hasn’t spoken to either for eight months. Today, Ashleey is 18 and lives in Oklahoma with her boyfriend, Sean. She works at a branch of Subway and is trying to finish high school. She hardly speaks to her younger sister any more, which Elsa says has been one of the hardest things for her. The pair were inseparable. Lakeisha was put into foster care, though eventually John and Elsa regained custody. Desperate to return to her “family” at Strong City, Lakeisha fasted for 10 days. She was hospitalised and fed with an IV drip until she agreed to eat. She now lives in a ranch house a few miles from Clayton, looking after an old woman with dementia. She’s been away from Strong City almost a year, but still goes by her “spiritual” name, Healed, and is still devoted to the old man she calls Michael.