'RHOBH's Amanda Frances Has Always Been Candid About Her Past Experiences With a "Cult"

For some, being a fan of a Bravo show feels like being in a cult itself, with blind loyalty and the way they urge their friends to also become obsessed with the Bravo-verse. But when it comes to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, one of the cast members, Amanda Frances, was actually in a cult years before she joined the show.

Dorit Kemsley outs Amanda during a Season 15 episode of RHOBH, and Amanda doesn't deny that she "ran away" from a cult. She even wrote about it in a book and plans to include more details in another one. But fans who aren't aware of what happened want to know when Amanda was in a cult before RHOBH and how she got out.

When Dorit calls out Amanda for being part of a cult in her past, it's not exactly news to fans, or to most of the ladies on RHOBH. But when Dorit says Amanda "ran away from a cult," it strikes a nerve with Amanda. In 2011, Amanda shared details of her past in a blog post that's still on her website today. The post is what Dorit references when she mentions the cult, and Amanda has owned her past.

She wrote about a period of two years that she spent in what she referred to as a cult between her time in ministry school and college. According to Amanda's blog post, she wrote that she was not allowed to date, drink alcohol, talk to most of her friends outside of the group, or associate with people who did any of the things she was forbidden from doing. She also wrote that she wasn't permitted to attend "another church," which makes it sound like the cult she was part of was based on religion in some way.

"Things got crazier and crazier, and I stayed," Amanda wrote. "Crazy starts to seem normal when you've been cut off from society for long enough. And when the 200 people around you think the crazy is holy and the rest of humanity is just 'in-sin' or has 'an unrenewed mind' and is basically just a group of unworthy outsiders, you want to stay in the group, because the group is all you have."

Amanda also wrote that she studies cults, and every time she reads details and descriptions about them, she hopes the group she ran away from doesn't fit into those molds. But it does, according to her, each time. Amanda also feels guilt for the people she left behind when she ran away from the cult, but she knows she couldn't do anything to help them when she made the decision to leave.

Another part of Amanda's past that she has had to deal with on and off RHOBH is the loss of her infant son, Zion. She explains on the show that he and his twin, Canaan, were born in 2022, 11 weeks early, and that Zion's placenta was "faulty." Five days after Amanda delivered Zion and his brother via a C-section, Zion died.

During the anniversary of Zion's death on RHOBH, Amanda admits that it's hard to celebrate one child while mourning another.

"I can't think of everything Canaan overcame to be a 3-year-old, without thinking of Zion not making it," she says in an episode. "It's just all in the week."