To the outside world, they appeared as nothing more than an eccentric group peddling baked goods for their church. Yet behind their gaunt appearances and ragged clothes lay a hidden nightmare of unimaginable cruelty, orchestrated by one of Canada's most sadistic cult leaders.
The Rise of a False Prophet
Roch Thériault founded his commune, the Ant Hill Kids, in Sainte-Marie, Quebec, in 1977. His own origins were troubled; born in 1947 from an incestuous rape, he was shunned by his family, left school early, and drifted through homeless shelters before finding a semblance of structure with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. He later started a woodworking business, all the while immersing himself in biblical study.
Thériault adopted and twisted Adventist tenets, preaching a life free from sin, tobacco, alcohol, and drugs. He poached members from the church, convincing them to abandon their families and jobs for a promised life of unity and peace. Quickly, he severed all their outside ties and reinvented himself as 'Moses', claiming direct divine authority.
He prophesied that Armageddon would arrive in February 1979, moving his followers to a remote area dubbed 'Eternal Mountain' the year before to prepare. When the predicted apocalypse failed to materialise, he blamed a celestial timekeeping error, but his grip on the group began to weaken.
A Descent into Torture and Control
Fearing dissent, Thériault embarked on horrific acts of control. He married and impregnated all nine female followers, fathering nearly two dozen children to bind them to the commune. He forbade private conversations and consensual sex, spying on members and claiming God revealed their transgressions to him.
The punishments he devised were barbaric. Followers were beaten with hammers and belts, suspended from ceilings, and had their hair plucked out strand by strand. In acts of twisted devotion, they were forced to break their own legs with sledgehammers, shoot each other, sit on lit stoves, and consume dead mice and human waste.
Children were not spared, suffering sexual abuse, being held over fires, and nailed to trees for other children to stone. The torment drove one concubine, Gabrielle Lavallée, to leave her newborn, Eleazar, outside to freeze to death, preferring that fate to a life within the cult.
Amateur Surgeries and a Grisly Murder
Hypocritically, Thériault developed a severe drinking problem while enforcing his strict rules. His delusions of grandeur led him to perform crude, often fatal, surgeries to 'heal' his followers. He injected toxic solutions into their stomachs and performed unnecessary circumcisions.
The horror peaked in 1989 when follower Solange Boilard complained of a stomach ache. Thériault's 'cure' was monstrous: he beat her abdomen, forced a tube into her rectum, then cut her open and tore out her intestines with his bare hands. After Gabrielle stitched the wound, Boilard died the next day. In a final act of desecration, Thériault had her skull sawn open and performed a sexual act on her corpse in a failed attempt at 'resurrection'.
Despite social workers removing 17 children in 1987, authorities were slow to act, citing the group's status as a church. It was Gabrielle Lavallée's successful escape and subsequent assault charges that finally broke the cult open. Thériault received a 12-year sentence for assault, which enabled a full investigation, leading to a life sentence for the murder of Solange Boilard.
A Violent End and Lasting Trauma
Even imprisonment did not end his influence; during conjugal visits, he fathered four more children with former members. His reign of terror finally concluded in 2011, not by divine judgement, but by a shiv wielded by his cellmate, convicted murderer Matthew Gerrard MacDonald, who proudly announced he had 'sliced him up'.
The legacy of the Ant Hill Kids remains a stark testament to the depths of human manipulation and suffering, a chilling chapter in the history of destructive cults where blind faith was met with unspeakable brutality.
