Best friend since childhood. We joined a church about the same time which turned out to be an sect it was awefull. After getting out myself he didnt wanted to talk to me anymore because the leaders told him i was extremely dangerous. He lived at a sect members house at the time because his moms house was not safe anymore because his mom would not convert. i finally got back in contact again with him and we spoke for a little while and he agreed to meet me (he had this moment that he would be somewhere else and if we would meet then the leaders would not find out). So i went over and we talked and he agreed this 'church' was teaching some strange things. We had some contact after and he told me he wanted out so we basically planned his escape. We got someone to drive a car. We both rang the bell of the house he was living at at the moment and the moment this person saw us standing there together she panicked and ran into the living room to call the leaders of the cult that my friend was having contact with me. So we ran up to the attic where my friends room was with large boxes and within minutes we threw everything he owned into those boxes and threw them into the car he quickly said goodby to this lady, which by now was screaming that people where on the way, thanked her for her care and payed her 2 months of rent extra for leaving in this way. We then jumped into the car and drove away as quickly as we could. about two months later i get married to my wife and he is there. It was awesome, we talked a lot and he told me that he would not ever let anything come between us ever again, especially a church or cult he jokingly said. Well you can probably guess what happened... my wife and i joined this church on the other side of the country (we moved out of the city we lived in because of the cult) and about a year and a half later this friend joins this church as well and gets married there as well. But soon things start getting weird in this 'church' as well. At this point i am working for the leader of this group which is giving seminars all in different churches accros europe. We traveled quite a bit at that time with a small team. This (married) leader seems to grow much closer to this woman which is not his wife but also worked for his 'ministry'. Since i am traveling with then quite a lot i am seeing lot of stuff happening and changing in this 'church' which i know is not right but because i was pretty involved i guess didnt want to see. Finally things get very very weird and i decide its time to go talk to the leadership about maybe moving back to the city we moved away from 5 years before which would mean my involvement with the ministry would be less then before. This leader (the group really had this one man as leader). he told us he respected our decision and asked us not to share this yet with the rest of the church. We left that day but still kept coming to the 'church' (by then a full blown cult, every action of every church member was controlled by this one man. If he didnt agree with a decision it simply would not happen or you were kicked out of the church and were not allowed to have any contact with members anymore). At the time we left this 'church' we had made a huge debt because we had to buy a car for all the traveling we had to do and other demands that were made. they kept promising me a salary which never came. We still havr almost 25000 euros in debt. My best friend was already 'informed' by the leadership a couple of days after we had our talk to the leadership. he visited our house once after telling us that this leader was helping him move house because he needed to live closer to this church. He also cautioned us to not make any hasty decisions concerning leaving this group because bad thing would happen if we removed ourselves from under this mans spiritual protection. He said goodbye and we never saw eachother again. I just didnt have the energy anymore after leaving this sect to pursue him again. He promised me before he would never let a church or anything else get between us, we even talked about that multiple times.

Didnt mean to write this much...

tl; dr: joined a sect together, got out, helped my best friend escape months later. Then got involved in another sect and he broke of contact again didnt pursue a second time.