The Mysterious ‘Sisterhood’ Tearing Families Apart

Jason and Jennifer Veras had been together since high school. “We were a loving family. We were a happy family. We barely had any issues throughout our 23 years in a relationship,” Jason said. “Until she brought Liana Shanti into our family.”

Everything changed soon after Jennifer started following a mysterious online guru who has built a following of women around the world, teaching them to cut ties with their “family cult” and to save their children from a ruling class of evil reptilian creatures who created the COVID-19 “scamdemic”—a Luciferian plot to harvest innocent souls.

First, Jason said, Jennifer changed her diet—raw vegan and juice cleanses. Then she started spending hours every day meditating alone in the backyard and listening to her spiritual teacher’s audio classes.

Over the next few months, he claimed, Jennifer became increasingly paranoid and started espousing conspiracy theories. The COVID vaccine changes people’s DNA, she told him. And people who got the shot could shed the vaccine on others. She insisted they had to cut ties with anyone who had been vaccinated. Jason said she kept telling him they needed to leave California; soon the government would force every unvaccinated adult and child into concentration camps; they had to move to Florida where they would be safe.

At Jason’s birthday dinner in May 2021, his mother shared that she’d been vaccinated. His wife was furious. Jason, 41, said Jennifer, 41, accused him of knowingly exposing their children to vaccine “shedding.”

A week later Jason returned to their home in Modesto, California, to find their sons, ages 7 and 10, alone. According to Jason, the boys said they were hungry and that their mom had gone with their 15-year-old sister to the family lake house, a 45-minute drive away. Jason called and texted Jennifer several times. He accused her of neglecting and endangering the kids and questioned her mental state, based on what he believed to be strange changes in her behavior.

Jennifer came home, took the boys, and left. Jason said Jennifer didn’t tell him where they were going or how long they would be gone. He soon found out that Jennifer had sent a letter to her mother saying she no longer wanted a relationship, and that she had filed a restraining order against Jason—citing his angry text messages—and obtained full custody of their children.

After three weeks, Jason said, Jennifer finally let him FaceTime his kids—as long as he didn’t ask them any questions about their location or plans. He could see they were in a barn, wrapped in blankets. He tried to engage with them but they barely spoke. “They kept looking around at other people behind the camera,” Jason told The Daily Beast. “They looked very, very scared… It looked like they were being held hostage.”

When Jason tried to ask them questions, the call ended abruptly. He couldn’t reach them again for weeks.

Jason was shocked by how quickly his family had imploded. His sister, Beverly Veras, suggested it may have something to do with the online spiritual community Jennifer had told her about months earlier. Beverly told him to look up Liana Shanti.

Jason started researching Liana online. He read her websites and looked up her Instagram account and Facebook group. He saw Liana had thousands of followers, and many of those women were posting about the same spiritual and health beliefs that his wife had recently adopted. As Jason learned more about Liana, he grew more worried about his kids.

“I was like, man, this doesn’t look good. This doesn’t look good at all. This seems like some hypnotized, brainwashing, manipulation website,” he said. “That’s when I got really scared because she has our children.”

Eventually, Jason would connect with other parents like him who were trying to save their children from Liana’s group.

“These women were taking their children from their fathers and leaving—across state lines, border lines, from Canada, from Mexico, from other countries—and all going to Florida,” Jason said. “Liana Shanti’s cult has convinced my wife to kidnap my kids and keep them away from me.”

The myth of Liana Shanti

On Instagram, where Liana Shanti has 22,400 followers, her avatar and selfies present her as an ageless, airbrushed nymph-like model. Click the stories and you’ll see a barrage of posts often covering QAnon-adjacent beliefs like satanic child sex trafficking, the Luciferian agenda, aliens, reptilian overlords; advice on how to detach from your “family cult;” and vile accusations against her perceived enemies—all mixed in with uplifting self-help memes and advice on juice cleanses and coffee enemas. Zipping through her stories is a dizzying carousel of wellness, fantasy, bigotry, and horror.

A typical Instagram story goes something like this:

Sometimes she weaves self-mythology into the threads. “I get asked ALL. THE. TIME: Liana: why the F do you do what you do? You made millions on Wall Street, and again in sales, and AGAIN with your nutrition biz. Everything you touch turns to gold.”

In her podcast Deep Throat: And by that I mean Throat Chakra, and on her social media, Liana boasts that before she was a spiritual leader she made millions of dollars as a corporate lawyer at the biggest firm in New York. She claims she has been talking to Jesus since she was 2 years old and is the primary vessel for his teachings, that she survived two near-death experiences including being struck by lightning, that she is a descendent of the ancient civilization of Lemuria, and that she can access the Akashic records—which some new-agers believe is a metaphysical database of all the information in the universe. According to Liana, these records are stored inside whales.

“I have been referred to as a spiritual teacher, visionary, psychic, shaman, business coach, abundance motivator, medicine woman, teacher, mentor, energy worker, artist, nutritionist, wellness expert, lawyer, mother, wife, friend,” Liana says on her website. “In terms of what I ‘do,’ there are many things, all of which circle back to the ONE true thing, providing a path for you to Awaken to the Divine Within You, and reclaim personal sovereignty and live with FREEDOM for the first time in your life.”

Liana offers several online programs focused on nutrition, business, healing, and spiritual awakening—with downloadable audio courses that cost anywhere from $199 to $3,900. These classes encourage people to uncover “repressed memories” of abuse and make radical changes in their life, from restricting their diets to cutting off family. For instance, in one course Liana tells her followers to “have conversations with your inner children, uncover the traumas of your inner children… cut cords and disengage from people that are toxic, disengage from family members that are dysfunctional, step away from anything that is 3D.”

As these programs encourage followers to isolate themselves, some members find a new family in Liana’s private women-only online community known as the Lemurian Mystery School. Entering this group, which costs $69 a month, provides access to Liana’s core of devoted followers, who call themselves “Lemurian Sisters.” Liana gives some of them new Hawaiian-sounding names, like Mālie, Cahira, Amaraja, Kaia, Kalea, Kiana, Keilani; some even changed their names legally. Lemurian Sisters can ask Liana their most personal questions, and she answers, claiming she uses her shamanic powers to read the Akashic records.

Leaked conversations from Liana’s private Facebook and Signal groups show Lemurian Sisters often ask about past trauma, or if their children have been abused, and Liana almost always provides definitive clarity and affirmation about the alleged abuse.

Some Lemurian Sisters said they have paid tens of thousands of dollars for Liana’s courses, psychic readings, and artwork. “I have personally spent over $150,000, probably more than that now, on all of [L]iana’s programs, consults, this group,” one posted in Liana’s Lemurian Facebook group. “I was 50-60k in credit card debt for a majority of that time.”

Leaked conversations show members posting in the Facebook group about their financial struggles and Liana encouraging them to take her “12D Business” programs ($3,900) and start their own entrepreneurial wellness endeavors—in which they can sell Liana’s courses and recruit new followers.

Since the pandemic began, Liana’s teachings have grown increasingly chaotic and conspiratorial. She said the act of vaccinating children is a form of satanic ritual because those parents are committing their children’s souls to hell. She’s warned of concentration camps where people will be forcibly vaccinated. She urged Lemurian Sisters to take their kids and flee to “safe” states and countries. According to Liana, Florida is one of the safest places in the world. Texas and Montana are also safe.

Heeding her warnings, numerous Lemurian Sisters upended their lives and fled, according to multiple ex-members.

The Daily Beast contacted Liana by phone and email, and through her lawyer, to request comment on the allegations against her. The email was opened several times soon after a text message was sent to her, but she never responded.

Lessons of the Lemurian Mystery School

Trying to understand what had happened to his family, Jason said he accessed his wife’s Facebook account through a shared computer with automatic login. Messages, which Jason shared with The Daily Beast, show Liana and members of the Lemurian Mystery School advising his wife and other followers on how to cut ties with their family and obtain custody of their kids. “And at that time, I knew that my wife was under the control of these women,” Jason said.

Jason saw a Facebook conversation in which Jennifer asked Liana when she should tell Jason about their separation. “Full moon day is perfect,” Liana advised.

Liana suggested that Jason was hiding money from her, and Jennifer withdrew most of the money from their joint account, he said.

After a few weeks away with the kids, Jennifer briefly moved back into the family home. In a desperate effort to save the marriage, Jason said, he began listening to Liana’s courses. His relationship with his wife temporarily improved a little, but his relationship with his mother suffered.

“It made me become very upset with my mother for the way that she raised me. And then also my father too,” Jason said. “The way the program has brainwashed me to think about my mother. It put a hardship on the relationship with my mom. Me and my mom, I didn’t talk to her for about four months.”

Jason said he eventually saw these courses were the reason his wife alienated herself from him and her mom—a realization that helped him snap out of the trance.

Jason’s sister Beverly also joined Liana’s online community, so that she could understand what was happening with her sister-in-law. Within months, Beverly told The Daily Beast, she became a true believer. Beverly said she listened to the courses and sought advice from Liana, who told Beverly if she wanted to heal her inner child she needed to liberate herself from her husband and parents.

Beverly cut ties with her mom, started to disconnect from her husband, and told her kids to stop talking to their dad. She became increasingly apocalyptic and started researching Pizzagate, the One World Order, and reptilian overlords. She grew fearful of being around vaccinated people and started planning to take the kids and escape to Florida.

“I was afraid that me and my kids would go to concentration camps because we were not vaccinated. I was afraid that they were going to force the vaccine on me and my kids,” she said. “I started seeing all these women [in the Lemurian Facebook group] just going crazy and saying they’re doing whatever it takes to get to Florida.”

Beverly said she started to break out of the Lemurian groupthink once she realized how cruel some of Liana’s followers were to their families. She saw two sisters posting about sneaking into their parents’ house and tearing all the family photos into pieces. One follower posted pictures of her wedding dress on fire. Another Lemurian Sister gloated that her husband had no idea that she was about to take their children and cross the Canadian border.

After Beverly and her brother Jason cut ties with Liana they began connecting with others who were caught up in the frenzy. “When I talk to these other fathers, it’s amazing and mind-boggling that they’re all going through the same thing. It’s a blueprint, what Liana is doing,” Jason said.

A trail of family wreckage

Over the last nine months, six former Liana followers and 19 people who say their families were destroyed after their wife or daughter started following Liana have shared their stories with The Daily Beast.

Many of these concerned ex-spouses and parents describe a similar pattern: A woman starts following Liana, their diet changes drastically, they begin giving themselves coffee enemas, and they go through a physical transformation. They become increasingly conspiratorial and isolated; they begin uncovering new memories of past abuse; they cut off their parents and separate from their husbands; they try to gain sole custody of their children and leave town.

Jack van Dongon said he spent about $26,000 in legal fees to get his granddaughter back into Canada. Van Dongon’s stepson had been in a relationship with Tanya Zakall for about 15 years when she started following Liana Shanti and the two began having issues that ended their relationship.

According to van Dongon in December 2021, Zakall took her 12-year-old daughter, packed everything she could fit into her car, and crossed the Canada-U.S. border into Montana, eventually settling in Florida. For a child to get a passport, both parents have to sign an application, but the father of the child, van Dongon’s stepson, refused to sign because he was suspicious. After Zakall left, the girl’s father alerted police, who determined that she had crossed the border with their child. A couple of weeks after crossing, she posted in the Lemurian Facebook group: “I admit I had to do what I could to get her to the States and took the only path I could see,” she wrote.

One mother told The Daily Beast that her daughter discovered Liana in 2022 at the age of 22, a few months after she graduated at the top of her class at a prestigious U.K. university and landed a job at a major bank.

“And then along came Liana and destroyed everything,” the woman’s mother said. She said Liana caught her daughter at a weak moment when she was transitioning from college to work life, had gone through a breakup, and was self-conscious about acne caused by polycystic ovary syndrome. She found Liana online, went on her juice cleanse, then joined the Lemurian Mystery School.

Within months, the young woman became morbidly malnourished and depressed, according to her mother, who flew from India to the U.K. and took her daughter to a hospital for medical tests that showed she had lost 30 pounds and was deficient in iron and B12. She told doctors she was having thoughts of self-harm, said her mother, who staged an intervention with the help of cult expert and counselor Joseph Szimhart and a nutritionist.

The young woman is on the road to recovery, but still has an eating disorder and struggles with suicidal ideation. “The seeds that have been sown are so deep that it’s going to take, I think, a couple of years before they can be really healed,” the mother said.

After working with that survivor and doing his own research on the Lemurian Mystery School, Szimhart told The Daily Beast that Liana fits the “description of a cult leader.”

Janja Lalich, professor emerita of sociology at California State University, Chico, and CEO of the Lalich Center on Cults and Coercion, agreed. “It’s got all the hallmarks of a cult group, in my opinion,” Lalich told The Daily Beast. “You’ve got this one person who is the end-all-be-all, who offers this all-inclusive belief system where the ends justify the means.”

Cult expert and licensed therapist Steve Hassan said that when applying his BITE model for authoritarian control, “Liana Shanti fits the definition of an authoritarian destructive cult.”

The real Liana unmasked

As Jason Veras met victims and learned more about Liana, he began to fear her and wonder if she actually did have powers to predict the future and read minds. “I never believed in that stuff before,” Jason said. “But then when I got involved with this crap, I don’t know who I’m dealing with. Is my life in danger? Like, is somebody going to come kill me? I was really afraid of what was going on, because of some of the stuff I was reading inside the group.”

But that all changed when he learned Liana’s true identity. Another detractor discovered her real name and found a photo of her from a local publication and posted it online.

“After I figured out who this beast was, all of that [fear] was over,” Jason said. “I knew this whole thing was fake.”

“When I saw that picture of her,” said Beverly, Jason’s sister. “I was like, this bitch—total catfish.”

Liane Wilson—a 51-year-old mother of two who lives in a Hawaii suburb—started posting online as Liana Shanti in 2012, a few months after she filed a class-action lawsuit against her previous employer, Wyndham hotels and resorts.

According to her lawsuit, Wilson was an outstanding timeshare saleswoman who faced rampant sexual discrimination and harassment. She alleges that when she reported workplace misconduct, the HR director suggested she wear turtlenecks, and her boss told her she could either “party with the boys,” or stay quiet and keep getting a big paycheck. The lawsuit claims Wilson was wrongfully terminated after she complained about discrimination to a company vice president.

As Liana Shanti, Wilson didn’t face the same misogyny. She was a women’s empowerment health coach, building a female following with uplifting advice. She inspired followers to take control of their lives and their bodies. Over the years, her students became more devoted and some insisted she cured them of illnesses. As the praise grew, so did her embellishments. In 2018, she decided to give Liana a face–what appears to be a heavily filtered mystical version of herself. And just like her powers, her face seemed to evolve over time.

Liana has never posted videos of herself, though she used to post videos from her world travels—including Paris, London, and Bali. But she recently had to stop globetrotting. In November 2019, she was arrested for a felony—concealing assets in a bankruptcy filing. (The Hawaii District court filings list the plaintiff as “Liane Wilson aka Liana Shanti.”) She spent a night in jail and later pleaded guilty. As a part of her five-year probation, she was ordered to hand over her passport, and can only leave Hawaii with permission from the federal court.

The world was shutting down for the pandemic, and Liana’s own existence was sharply restricted. Fortunately for her, she had already created a twisted fantasy world where she could do and be whatever she wanted—almost like a video game. But to sustain it, she had to keep all the players trapped inside.

The Shanti trance

“When we all first met her, she was basically running the health program,” said Julie, an early follower who did not want her real name used. “At the time, she was our friend. It’s not like how now she charges $300 to be able to speak with her for 15 minutes.”

Liana began by posting advice on her Facebook page called Rawganic Vegan. Some of her first posts were recipes for kale salad, “morning brain boost” juice, and raw vegan banana pudding parfait.

Over time, Liana started adding spiritual advice into the mix. “She was peppering in things about how our relationship with food was related to our mother. And, oh, we had an attachment to milk… maybe we should look at our relationship with our father,” Julie said. “She did have a really large community of followers. But there was this core group of people who were asking the deeper questions, who wanted to know—not just about, ‘How can I lose 10 pounds?’–but we wanted to know what did this mean about my relationship to my mom? And what can I do in a conversation with my mother in order to heal my relationship to binge-eating.”

Responding to this interest in deeper healing, Liana started releasing spiritual courses in 2015. One of the first was “Mother Wounds Healing,” followed by “Father Wounds Healing,” and “Healing From the Pain of Narcissistic Relationships.” The classes cost $495 each and consist of several hours of downloadable audio lessons. Each course begins with New Age-y meditation music before Liana launches into a stream-of-consciousness lecture, delivered with the confidence of a therapist and the tone of a hypnotist.

Former Lemurian Sisters told The Daily Beast that these recordings put them in a trance-like state and changed the way they viewed their family.

“It’s like the minor things that happen, like a parent yells at you. That’s not something that’s very traumatic, but in Liana’s eyes, she makes it to be something that’s highly traumatic and something that you’d be so hurt over and so damaged by,” said Amber, a former Lemurian Sister who asked that her real name not be used.

“She’s planting the seed for you to isolate yourself from your family,” Amber added. “I started hating my family.”

Amber discovered Liana when she was suffering from post-partum health issues in 2015. She was having panic attacks and couldn’t sleep. Her body seemed to be revolting against her, and she felt that doctors weren’t taking her seriously. “One doctor told me that I was a hypochondriac,” she said. “And, I said, I don’t—I don’t want to feel these ways. I’m feeling these things, and I don’t—I can’t accept that.”

She went searching for answers online and found Liana’s health programs. She connected with the other followers and found the validation and support she wasn’t getting from health-care professionals. These new online friends encouraged Amber to dive deeper into Liana’s teachings.

“I could tell off the bat that if you didn’t get involved in the spiritual stuff, you were kind of looked down upon,” Amber said.

Amber joined the Lemurian Mystery School and started taking courses, which cast a dark cloud over her memories of her family. As Amber was processing those memories, she sought clarity directly from Liana, at a cost of $69 a month for access to a private chat. Amber asked if her father had sexually abused her. Liana said that he had.

Liana told her that a relative sexually abused her daughter.

And when Amber asked Liana if her husband was cheating on her, Liana confirmed her fears.

“I was so brainwashed at this point. I was in so deep that I believed her,” Amber said. “It just turned to anger and hate.”

She was mad that her husband didn’t believe their daughter had been abused. She grew angrier as she became convinced he was cheating on her and that he was hurting their son. Amber’s husband suggested they try couples counseling, but she refused because Liana said therapy was evil. “I never even gave him a chance,” she said.

After the divorce, Amber tried to get proof that her ex was harming their kids. “I would start asking the kids questions like, ‘Did Daddy yell at you?’—stuff that [Liana] would put in my head,” Amber said.

When the children didn’t give her the answer she was looking for, she coached them. “I did the coaching thing,” she said. “I wasn’t intentionally doing it. Like, I started to believe it myself.”

Amber reported her ex to child protective services. They found no evidence he was harming the children.

“Looking at it now, he’s a great father,” Amber said. “I could not have asked for a better person to be the father of our kids. But [Liana] does what she does so well that I turned around and made him out to be this horrific person for doing absolutely nothing.”

Amber said these false beliefs and her life transformation caused extreme psychological distress. She also thinks her restrictive juicing diet affected her—she wasn’t getting enough calories and she was extremely anxious about eating anything that could be toxic to her body. “I spiraled,” she said. “I started having these panic attacks. I just felt this intense fear and terror to the point where I was suicidal.”

She checked herself into a psychiatric hospital and believes that months of psychiatric care saved her, in large part, because it cut her off from the internet. From Liana.

“I was healing from being in a cult,” Amber said. “This woman is dangerous.”

The ‘Great Migration’

By the time the pandemic lockdowns began, Liana had a core group of about 40 Lemurian Sisters; during a time of panic and chaos, her message was comforting. One former Lemurian Sister who joined in 2019 said Liana gave a message of hope: “‘This [pandemic] is not going to kill everyone in the world. Take your vitamin C, take your vitamin D, don’t get stressed,’” she recalled Liana saying. “And that very much gave me a sense of peace in those moments of fear, and what a fuck—the world’s gone crazy.”

As the rest of the world was finding new ways to connect and escape, Liana made rules that restricted her followers. She warned that video calls could open you up to possessions by evil entities. Even watching videos could be dangerous. She cautioned against going to certain places, like national parks, because she couldn’t protect her followers from alien abductions there.

“Things started to get a little crazy with the ‘vaccine agenda,’ and how everybody who gets the vaccine is now a demon, and the Luciferian agenda. And I believed it. She was just like, anybody who got the vaccine, you needed to completely disconnect,” said Julie. “COVID and the vax was perfect timing for her. It was like, you wouldn’t even be able to create something so perfect for her. Because not only do you have an ‘us versus them’ sort of scenario that is tangible, but then you have a scenario where these women are then stuck at home with their partners for 12 hours a day. And every single fucking thing gets on your last nerve.”

When Julie and her husband started having marital issues, Liana encouraged her to leave him. “She kept on pushing, if I let my husband see my daughters then I’m abusing my kids,” Julie said. “Her pressure point was the kids. You do this, you’re abusing your kids; you stay in a job you don’t like, you’re abusing your kids; you get the vaccine, you’re abusing your kids; you still have a relationship with your father, you’re abusing your kids.

“I disconnected from almost everyone,” Julie said. “It’s just me and my kids. And that’s what she was hoping for with everyone.”

Liana teaches that the best way to save your children is to cut the cords with all the dark influences in your family. “And conveniently, she has a $600 program that will help you cut the cord,” Julie said.

“Using children in order to influence mothers into taking their children away from their fathers is unconscionable,” Julie said. “Fathers are being denied access to their children, or even worse, children are being told that their fathers are the devils, and demons, and so these children are afraid of getting close to their fathers. It’s awful.”

When the COVID vaccines arrived, Liana’s worldview became even darker. She advised her followers to cut off anyone who was vaccinated and to avoid going anywhere they might encounter the vaccinated, including hospitals, pharmacies, and funerals.

“You’re telling me I’m putting myself spiritually and physically in jeopardy where I can never be in the same room as my daughter? I can never hug her,” said Dawn, another Liana follower who asked not to use her real name.

Liana said mandates would get stricter and claimed the governments of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand would take the unvaccinated to camps and encouraged her followers to seek “safe” haven.

“There was a sense of urgency and a fanaticism—that my children, their souls are at risk. So I have to find a way to get them out of here,” Dawn said.

Dawn calls this period “the Great Migration.” She said that at the time, Liana had about 180 followers, and about 38 of them moved to places she deemed safe.

In December 2021, one Lemurian Sister wrote in Liana’s private chat, “You guys wanna know what is really funny not funny? We leave Canada with like three changes if [sic] clothes each and nothing else because we didn’t want the border thinking we were long staying it… Literally left everything. I wasn’t joking.”

Liana responded, “You were on a mission. You accomplished it. 🙏”

Another Lemurian sister commented, “I am ready to completely let go of everything too. It has taken me a couple months to get to this point, but I am there now. 🙏🙏🙏”

The woman who fled Canada with her children eventually bought a $1.4 million McMansion in Jacksonville, Florida. Four other Liana followers who also left Canada moved into the house with their children. They dubbed the house Destiny Manor.

That’s when one ex-member realized she needed to get out of the Lemurian Mystery School. “They posted the picture of the house in Florida,” she recalls. “I was just like, if something goes down at that house—some sort of Heaven’s Gate scenario—am I responsible? And that’s what got me out.”

Looking back at the time she spent in the Lemurian Mystery School, it’s clear to Julie how much Liana mutated over the years.

“The Liana today is not the Liana I knew when I joined,” said Julie. “Liana back then was warm, she was compassionate. She was kind. She was firm, but she was also gentle. Liana now is like your abusive mother. She will give you love when you do a great job, but she will beat your ass when you do something that she doesn’t believe is in line with what she tells you to do.”

Lemurian Sisters who challenged Liana’s teachings have been kicked out. The exiles were deemed dark energy, demon-possessed. Some who were kicked out or who left were severely punished: Liana posted their most intimate confessions on her public Instagram account, information they shared because they thought the Lemurian Mystery School was a safe space. Sometimes Liana tags an exiled member’s employers.

When one Lemurian Sister’s pregnancy ended prematurely, she turned to Liana for comfort, explaining doctors advised her to compassionately let the child go. Years later, when the woman left the group, Liana made several posts about her, using her and her husband’s names and calling her a satanic child murderer. Liana called the woman “morphine mom”—a reference to the comfort measures that doctors take during the procedure.

The healing begins

Jason Veras doesn’t blame his ex-wife for what’s happened to his family. “For someone to control the minds of these innocent women out there. It’s mind-boggling,” he said. “To cut these women away from their families is disgusting.”

For several months, Veras rarely saw his kids. Each time he did, he grew more concerned. In August 2022, he told The Daily Beast, his children looked skinny and malnourished due to their strict vegan diet. “They seem sucked-up, pale. They look depressed,” he said. “My son’s teeth aren’t growing. One of my kids can’t read because they’re not in school.”

But in December 2022, Veras gained joint custody. He said his boys, now ages 9 and 13, are eating more, look healthier and happier, are enrolled in a state-regulated homeschooling program with a curriculum, and are catching up to their grade level. They’re in fourth and sixth grade, but Jason said their reading levels were at kindergarten and first-grade levels.

He said his boys are learning to trust him again. “I’m getting closer with my kids,” he said “It’s the greatest feeling in the world when it’s my week with the boys.”

Things have not gone as well with his daughter, who is now 17. “It’s very tough,” Jason said. “She’s following Liana Shanti on Instagram. And she was taught Liana Shanti. So it’s very hard when your brain has been influenced by the teachings of Liana Shanti.”

Jason understands this firsthand because he’s still affected by the Liana courses he took last summer. “It takes time,” he said. “Myself, I still have to train my brain not to think negative about my mom and dad.”