Tiverton Has A Cult Problem

King Road in Tiverton stretches through the backwoods of Tiverton, past an odd assortment of ranch homes with well-manicured lawns, junkyards and farms. It’s also home to a cult. It’s not a large cult, consisting of just two families, but one that involves all the same brainwashing, abuse, violence, exploitation and, of course, a prerequisite malignant narcissist presiding over it for his own glorification.

Everyone knows that cults exist. Most of the world is familiar with Jonestown and its notoriety for adding “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid” to the popular lexicon. More recently, there’s been NXIVM led by Keith Raniere, who is currently serving a 120 year sentence for sex trafficking and other charges and just this March in Georgia, Eligio Bishop, leader of a group called Carbon Nation was sentenced to life for rape, false imprisonment, and charges related to revenge porn.

Jason Durand

I don’t know what combination of childhood trauma and genetic predisposition came together to create the massive insecurity that drives Jason Durand to prey on vulnerable women and children. Like almost everyone, I know very little about the actual man.

He was born April 28, 1974. Got married to a very unfortunate soul in 2003. They quickly had three children. In 2013, his wife filed for a divorce, which was granted in 2014. She got the kids and he got the 1969 Plymouth Road Runner. Unfortunately, she was unable to reach escape velocity and found herself “hoovered” back into his clutches by the end of that year.

Given Durand’s paranoid nature, this story would likely have ended with him just abusing and domineering over his family, his true nature concealed from the rest of the world. Unfortunately, he was going to be presented with an opportunity that he found far too tempting.

A New Supply

His next door neighbor Jeff Mello brought home a divorced mother (who I’ll refer to as M) and her two young sons. M was getting out of messy alcohol-fueled marriage and was desperate to find somewhere to live that wasn’t her mother’s house. Then, as so often happens in these kinds of situations, a kind offer of generosity was soon to reveal a darker side as Jeff started doing what he could to isolate M and her kids from friends and family and grew more controlling, eg. forbidding her from drinking.

Jason Durand was “friends” with Jeff (as much as these types of people can be friends with anyone). He’s come over regularly enough that M’s young children took to calling him “Mister Jay”. From this vantage point, Durand witnessed M’s particular vulnerability to Jeff Mello’s narcissistic abuse.

With a tactic similar to that used by pedophiles (or serial killers), he took the opportunity to start building trust with M. The two would sneak out for “quickies” where they’d share a quick beer while Jeff was off the property or distracted.

Then, in 2022, for reasons that are still unknown to me, Jeff decided to move to Arizona to live with some friends out there. He convinced M to buy the property from him and continue running his honey business. Included with the sale was an agreement to allow Jeff to store his property in the garage for the next year.

Out from under Jeff’s thumb but reeling from the loss of this codependent relationship while also coming to recognize how abusive it had been, M chose to exercise her newfound freedom by drinking heavily.

From “Quickies” to Quickies

At some point in May/June 2023, Jason Durand started a physical relationship with M. Again, like a pedo, he swore her to secrecy. The last thing he wanted was someone to recognize how predatory his behavior would become or to point out the stream of red flags he displayed. I don’t know exactly what technique Durand used, but something like “If you tell anyone, my wife will find out and this will all be over” repeated enough times would probably do it, given M’s vulnerability to codependency.

This little “fling” continued through the summer, but Jason wanted more…NEEDED more. A narcissist needs a way to draw their victim in. They do this by creating a shared fantasy. They present a “deal with the Devil”. That initial offer was to renovate the second floor of M’s garage into a den for her boys. Even though she was starting to have some serious concerns about where this ride was going to take her, M didn’t have the will to say “No.”. In reality, it was a way to leverage something she loves (her kids) into a way to keep her isolated, alone with him for months on end, dependent on him to complete a project that seemed to keep growing in scale.

By this point, I’m pretty sure that Jason’s wife probably noticed that she was no longer the focus of his abuse. Instead she’d find herself alone in their house while Jay had their adult children over at M’s for dinner. But after 20+ years of abuse destroying her self-esteem, where was she going to go?

And then, as these things do, things took a much darker turn. Jason Durand started making strange demands of M, which she did her best to meet, but it was never enough. At the beginning of October, M woke up to discover she had a black eye. Her performance at work was starting to suffer. Her memory was failing as an already strained connection with reality loosened. M’s life was turning into a confusing nightmare.

What terrified M even more than that, however, was that one of her friends was starting to overcome their denial and figure out her secret.

That friend is me and what follows is the most bizarre, tragic and frustrating situation I’ve ever encountered and one that two families are experiencing in Tiverton right now.