The Ant Hill Kids

• Roch Thériault forced his followers to break their legs with sledgehammers to prove loyalty (source)

• Thériault forced the Ant Hill Kids to sit on lit stoves, shoot each other in the shoulders, eat their own feces, and smear feces on each other (source)

• Follower Gabrielle Lavallée suffered welding torch burns to her genitals, had a hypodermic needle break off in her back,  a finger amputated with wire cutters, parts of her breast cut off, and her head smashed in with the blunt side of an axe (source)

• Thériault told the Ant Hill Kids to cut off each other's toes to show loyalty (source)

• Members were forced to participate in purification rituals, in which they were hit and whipped by Thériault while they were nude (source)

• Thériault injected ethanol into the stomachs of his followers and performed circumcisions on adults and children (source)

• Pregnant cult member Maryse Grenier had her ribs broken for eating two extra pancakes (source)

Additional examples of abuse are listed below

• Roch Thériault pulled out eight teeth of a follower to treat a toothache (source)

• To cure stiffness in a finger, Thériault used a hunting knife to pin follower Gabrielle Lavallée's hand to the table for an hour, then hacked off her arm with a dull meat cleaver and cauterized the wound days later with a drive shaft from a truck heated with an acetylene torch (source)

• Thériault performed surgeries on the Ant Hill Kids with kitchen utensils, pliers, or a blowtorch, while they were fully conscious. Most followers lost limbs, teeth, fingers, and toes from this practice (source)

• Two followers that relied on Thériault's medical treatment died in his care (source)

• The Ant Hill Kids believed the world would end in 1979 and used the commune to prepare for this event (source)

• Children in the Ant Hill Kids cult were sexually abused, held over fires, and nailed to trees while other children stoned them (source)

• 14 children were removed from the commune by authorities in 1985 (source)

• 21 children were removed from the commune in 1987 by authorities (source)

• A follower gave her child over to the state so she could stay in the commune (source)

• From 1986 to 1988, nine children were taken away within days of their birth (source)

• Roch Thériault was seen as a prophet and worshipped as "Moses" by the Ant Hill Kids (source)

• Thériault embraced the title "King of the Israelites," which was given by the leader of another polygamist commune (source)

• Thériault believed God sent him to save the world from evil and an upcoming apocalypse (source)

• When Ant Hill Kids member Solange Boilard complained of abdominal pain, Roch Thériault "forced her to undress, laid her on the kitchen table, punched her in the stomach, performed an enema by shoving a tube up her rectum and filled her up with olive oil. Then he cut her stomach open, ripped out parts of her intestines with his bare hands, and forced another member to stitch her up. Then, he shoved a tube down her throat and made the other women blow air into it." The woman died as a result, and her body was desecrated. Afterward, Thériault put one of her ribs in a leather case and wore it around his neck (source, source)

• In 1985, newborn baby Eleazar Lavallée died after being left outside in a blizzard by the mother, allegedly to save the child from Thériault (source)

• Two-year-old Samuel Giguère stopped passing urine after he was harshly beaten, so Thériault "operated" on his genitals with scissors. The child died of blood loss the next day. (source, source)

• If a member wanted to leave the Ant Hill Kids, Roch Thériault would suspend them from the ceiling, pluck each of their body hairs individually, then defecate on them (source)

• After follower Maryse Grenier talked about leaving the Ant Hill Kids,  her toe was hacked off with an axe (source)

• Since the commune was a registered church, authorities were unable to investigate the adults that were getting abused (source)