Photo: David Zaugh

Hello

Almost fifty years ago, a man put his towel down next to me while I was sitting on my favorite beach with my buddies in Nantucket. We were sixteen years old. From that moment forward my life took a path that I never could have imagined. Even though the journey presented me with heartbreak, confusion and trauma on a scale that I never thought I’d ever have to endure, it also gave me deep insights into myself and the world around us. In a remarkable way, the opportunity that a false prophet tempted me with on that innocent, sunny day has manifested itself into a body of information that I now share with others. My story is a cautionary tale but also one of redemption and awakening to the realization that ultimately the universe is friendly and tends to conspire in our favor.

A Story Worth Telling

Born and raised outside Philadelphia, Hoyt graduated from Princeton University with a BA in Economics, where he also competed as a scholar-athlete. In the mid 1980s, he was discovered by Ford Models and went on to a fifteen-year modeling career that made him one of the most recognizable faces in fashion, earning him the designation of the world's first male supermodel. He represented designer brands such as Versace, Ralph Lauren, Valentino and Donna Karan, to name a few, and worked alongside contemporaries including Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Fabio.

What no one knew during those years was that Hoyt had simultaneously been drawn into in a high-control religious group called Eternal Values, to which he surrendered the majority of his earnings. Hoyt's escape in 1999, and his subsequent recovery, led him to become one of the most articulate and accessible public voices on coercive control, cultic relationships and abuse.

In the wake of the years that he believed he was doing good for the world, Hoyt has gone on to deconstruct the nature of mind control and abuse and now specializes in "cultic" relationships of all kinds. He is a man who lived it, survived it, and developed a language to explain the importance of identity, how it is cultivated, but vulnerable, if someone wants to either own it or erase it.

Hoyt’s unique perspective has birthed a psychological architecture he has developed over years of public engagement with this material. He has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, Time, Forbes, Vanity Fair, CNN, Rolling Stone, Interview Magazine, The Daily Telegraph, and more.

Hoyt is one of six children and is married to the love he lost at the hands of the cult 30+ years ago.