Living in a ‘cult’ was all she knew — until a traumatic birth pushed her to escape

By the age of 30, Tabitha Haugh still hadn’t been to the movies, had a first date, gotten a haircut or graduated from high school.

Most of her very sheltered existence had been spent in Homestead Heritage, a religious community in Waco, Texas, which she left last year.

“I just can’t stress enough how bleak life was there,” she told The Independent.

Around 1,200 people make up the conservative Christian group, some of whom live on a 500-acre compound of crop fields and small homesteads near the Brazos River, surrounded by other farmland. Women have long hair and wear modest ankle-length dresses. Tourists visit Homestead Heritage’s handicraft shops and farm-to-table restaurant, and school children come by on field trips for horse drawn hayrides.

But those who’ve exiled themselves from the community say life inside is far more sinister, with a lack of education, adequate medical care and life options leaving them traumatized.The Independent spoke to six former members, four women and two men, who were born into Homestead Heritage and left the church as adults. Two of the women later filed a complaint with the state against the community’s midwife, who they say is unlicensed, practicing medicine illegally and left one of them with long term debilitating birth injuries.

The community midwife, Amanda Lancaster, told The Independent: “I am deeply sorry that these individuals feel this way and that they’ve chosen to involve the media without ever raising their concerns and grievances to me or others involved in their care.”

The former Homestead Heritage members described the church as a “cult” that limits people’s autonomy and controls nearly every aspect of their lives under the threat of salvation. The former members say questioning the leaders’ authority would’ve been equivalent to questioning God.

“The fact that you would even think of having autonomy means that you are in direct rebellion against God,” said Tabitha.

When asked about the claims in this story, Josiah Wheeler, a spokesperson with Homestead Heritage, said in a statement that: “There is absolutely no truth to these allegations, and the assertion that we are anything other than an open, thriving church family is false.”

As a child, Tabitha dreamed of becoming a doctor. Instead, her mother homeschooled her.

“I learned the ABCs but that was pretty much it,” Tabitha said during a recent phone call. “There was no history, math, science, nothing.”

At Homestead Heritage, women are expected to get married and reproduce. Instead of a high school education, former members say they were instructed to read thousands of pages of the church’s literature and write essays on it.

“While we have found homeschooling to be very effective, each family is free to choose its own curriculum and teaching,” Wheeler, the community spokesperson, said in a statement.

At 13, Tabitha had two jobs: as a dishwasher at Cafe Homestead and working at the organization’s bakery. She worked four days a week, but claims she didn’t get paid until she turned 19, as children in the community do not receive an income.

Her brother began working in a mechanic shop at age 12.

After seven years of washing dishes, Tabitha was promoted to server, a highly-regarded position for women. She kept the job for around a decade before she left the church last year.

Another was working with the midwifery team. Former Homestead members say the team delivered babies, looked after postpartum women, and also cared for older and dying members of the community.

Tabitha’s sister-in-law, Noa Haugh, 32, gave birth to her son at home with the group’s midwives — just as her mother and sisters had done before her. Noa had never been to a doctor when she got pregnant at 25 in 2017. Noa was curious about the process and met with the church’s lead midwife, Amanda Lancaster, to discuss the upcoming birth.

Noa says she asked Lancaster if she was licensed to practice midwifery. According to Noa, Lancaster replied that she was not, but reassured her that what she was doing was legal. Throughout Noa’s pregnancy, Lancaster performed cervical exams, used an ultrasound machine and provided prenatal care, Noa says.

Midwifery is an important part of Texas’s cultural heritage, and the regulation of midwifery, to ensure better oversight and continuing education, began in the state in 1983. Practicing midwifery without a license is prohibited in Texas. Anyone found to be practicing midwifery without a license can be charged with the unlicensed practice of medicine.

“All mothers in my care sign informed consent forms, clearly acknowledging that I am not a state licensed midwife and that they are seeking personal support, not professional medical care,” Lancaster told The Independent.

Lancaster says she is a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) through the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM). NARM certification does not require a college degree but involves training, clinical practice and an exam. Lancaster says she is also a licensed paramedic, and online Texas records confirm that.

For Lancaster to deliver the baby, Noa says, the couple had to agree not to sue the midwife if something went wrong.

“In the event that mother, baby, or both should die or suffer permanent injury, the husband must ensure that it is clearly understood that he and his wife stood solely responsible for this birth and for all decisions and that the sisters attending were there as nothing more than family or friends,” a copy of the church’s birth form given out when women fall pregnant, excerpts of which were reviewed by The Independent, said at the time.

“We respect every woman’s right to give birth in the place and manner of her choosing, and there is no requirement for any particular healthcare choice,” Wheeler, the spokesperson, said in a statement.

On the day she gave birth, Noa labored for seven hours, pushing for three of them. She says she did not receive pain medication, nor did she ask for it, because it went against church policy. As she struggled to push out her baby, Noa and two others in the room with her say that Lancaster considered performing an episiotomy, a surgical incision in the perineum and vaginal wall to make the opening larger for childbirth.

But then Noa gave birth to her son, and for a minute, everything was fine.

“He was beautiful,” she said. “I had this amazing moment. And then I started hemorrhaging.”

Noa had suffered at least a third-degree tear during the birth. Lancaster administered local anesthesia and sewed the area back together.

“In cases of hemorrhage, my paramedic training allows me to handle these emergencies,” Lancaster told The Independent. “Suturing is included in our training, and we refer mothers to specialists for postpartum complications such as incontinence or prolapse.”

Noa says she did not see any other medical professionals in the days and months following her birth and says the procedure left her with permanent injuries to her pelvic floor.

Noa and her husband left the church nearly a year later.

When she became pregnant with her second child in 2021, she scheduled an appointment with a midwife at a birth center in their new home of San Antonio.

During the exam, Noa says the midwife told her that she had been improperly sewn up during her first birth, which led to her tissue not healing correctly. The midwife encouraged her to file a complaint with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR), the agency that enforces administrative rules and laws, and wrote a statement to accompany the complaint.

TDLR responded in September 2021 that since the incidents had occurred outside the department’s two year statute of limitations, the complaint against Lancaster could not be investigated.

According to Noa’s medical records, her injuries were serious — they suggest she had suffered a rectocele, meaning a vaginal prolapse where the rectum bulges into the vaginal wall. “Her rectocele results in an inability to move her bowels without placing digits in the vagina,” the midwife wrote in a 2021 statement submitted to the TDLR. “Had the repair following …birth been done correctly, the pelvic floor muscles would have been joined together preventing the rectocele and resulting in a stronger pelvic floor.”

Noa says as a result of her first birth, she spent her second pregnancy in significant pain. “Every movement caused shooting pain down the inside of my thighs,” Noa wrote in her own statement as part of the complaint. “Intercourse became increasingly painful and then impossible.”

A second woman, Morning Alexander, 32, joined the complaint against Lancaster filed in July 2021. She had two children while in the church and Lancaster served as her midwife both times.

Morning was just 20 when she fell pregnant for the first time in 2012. About 30 weeks in, she says she woke up in a pool of blood. Terrified, Morning called Lancaster.

When Lancaster arrived, she rang the group’s medical doctor — a physician who joined the church as an adult — and asked if Morning should go to the hospital.

He said yes, but Morning says he suggested church leaders pray about the matter first. After praying, the leaders gave their permission.

Morning says she went to a hospital in Temple, a 45-minute drive away, rather than the Waco hospital down the road because Heritage leaders told her the “head of the NICU was a former abortion doctor.” Weeks later, she returned to the same hospital to deliver her son.

Two years later, Morning went into labor at just 35 weeks pregnant with her daughter. Her baby was breech. She says that Lancaster manually turned her daughter out of the breech position and then broke her water using an amnicot, a medical glove with a pricked fingertip.

Shortly afterwards, the umbilical cord prolapsed, restricting oxygen to the baby. Morning pushed her daughter out quickly, and says Lancaster administered life-saving oxygen to the baby.

“Afterward, she would not stop crowing about how she had always wanted to deliver a premature baby and this was her first time to do it,” Morning said.

A representative for the TDLR told The Independent that unlicensed midwives cannot perform cervical exams, provide prenatal care, perform an episiotomy, administer anesthesia, suture third or fourth-degree tearing, manually turn a breech baby or break a pregnant person’s water.

“The allegations you sent me appear to stem from a misunderstanding and/or misrepresentation of the roles and practices within our community and its standard of care regarding childbirth and healthcare,” Lancaster told The Independent. “These allegations have only surfaced years after the births in question, after these individuals left our community.”

She also shared a wider letter to The Independent about her experience which can be read in full below.

But the women involved say that they felt unable to speak up earlier.

“The mindset that you’re under is she knows what’s best,” Morning said. “And you’re so terrified of her…You’re so scared of stepping outside of the covering of God. Like if you step out of that covering, he could kill your child just to teach you a lesson.”

Occasionally family members or friends would leave Homestead Heritage and guide others on how to do it. The former members say it felt like giving up their entire lives, both Noa and Tabitha lost their homes.

“For a while, it’s hard to deal with the ostracization,” Morning said. “You go to town and you see someone in the store and you want to just make a beeline for a different aisle…Most of these people truly believe that you are the devil.”

Morning left Homestead Heritage in 2018, a decision she made as her son became a toddler and she disagreed with the church’s use of corporal punishment. She then started questioning the groups’ theology.

“Once you start to pull on the thread, the whole thing comes out,” she said.

Morning used the trauma she says she suffered during her pregnancies to propel her into becoming a doula and getting a nursing degree. She had gotten her GED when she turned 17 because her parents, who had previously left the church, wanted her to have some level of education, making it easier for her to go to nursing school once she left the church.

She’s about to graduate from university and recently landed her dream job as a labor and delivery nurse, at the hospital in Waco where she wanted to deliver her son.

About a week after Noa’s son was born, she held him and realized she could not bring him up in the church. “I cannot do what was done to me to him,” she said.

They left October 2018, before his first birthday.

“It was the most painful experience of my life,” Noa said. “I couldn’t get out of bed for three days.”

The couple managed to scrape together the funds needed for a deposit on an apartment in Waco, encouraged by friends who had already left the church.

Neither Noa nor her husband had high school diplomas, although he eventually found work at a  damage restoration company in Austin. They put practically everything on credit cards at first.

Their new life came with a lot of firsts for Noa: her first haircut, lipstick, manicure, and pair of jeans.

“The first time I went into Ulta Beauty I almost had a panic attack,” she recalled.

Noa felt like Homestead Heritage had stolen her life. “I had no idea who I was or what I wanted,” she said. “They didn’t prepare me for the world so that if I wanted to do something — anything — I could have. And I don’t really have that option anymore.”

“We recognize the value of higher education and have doctors, lawyers, engineers, and a significant number of executive professionals, some in Fortune 500 companies,” said spokesperson Wheeler in a statement.

For now, Noa is content raising her two young children, who are six and three, and seizing new opportunities, like when she saw Christian pop star Amy Grant in concert.

Tabitha stayed for another five years.

When she turned 30, she started questioning her life. She says church leaders hadn’t allowed her to get married, with one telling her, as she explained, “I was not worthy of being a wife at the moment because I was not showing wife character traits.”

She drove to an overlook on the church’s property on a cold February night in 2023 and broke down crying. She remembers looking up at the stars and asking herself why everything felt so vast, yet her life felt shrunk down to nothing.

The next day, she went to work and told her boss she needed to take a step back from the church. Her manager fired her.

Tabitha spent the next several months couch surfing or sleeping in her car. She moved to Dallas in June 2023, picking up a job at a steakhouse after she pretended she was there for an interview.

She graduated as valedictorian of her EMT certification class and is now studying to become a paramedic firefighter.

She’s also fallen in love, which she said is the best thing she’s accomplished so far. “I’m so freaking happy,” she said.

Last year, she tried skydiving.

After she jumped out of a plane for the first time, she felt the wind whipping her face. The parachute deployed and as she floated in the sky, hovering over Texas, she thought: “I’m in heaven.”