MODEL’S TORMENT
Top model Ruslana Korshunova, 20, who took own life after Epstein island visit joined ‘dehumanising cult’ before death
The cult would encourage members to take the blame for all the negative aspects of their lives
TOP model Ruslana Korshunova who committed suicide after visiting Epstein island joined a "dehumanising" cult before her death.
Ruslana, 20, jumped off a New York building in 2008 just three months after becoming a member of the elite Rose of the World cult.
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The Kazakhstani-Russian model, who was known as the British Vogue cover girl during her short but successful career, would be found "wandering round town" prior to taking her own life.
The Rose of the World cult, which was formed in the US in the 1970s but shutdown by the 1980s, would offer three-day courses at $1,200 (£943) for members to undergo "dehumanising" treatments.
Despite the cult's abrupt end, several branches were still operating around the world, including Russia, where Ruslana signed up alongside friend and fellow Russian model Anastasia Drozdova.
That's according to Peter Pomerantsev, who joined a group during his research for his book about Russia's post-Soviet oligarchs, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible.
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Pomerantsev claims that a male leader of the group spoke about Ruslana's death.
"Ruslana was [a] typical victim. Sometimes it's better to commit suicide than not to change," he was quoted as saying.
Ruslana signed up to the cult after things dried up on the international modelling circuit and her tycoon boyfriend broke up with her.
She was a member for three months, while Anastasia attended meetings for a year, prior to their suicides.
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The training sessions offered by the cult reportedly involved coaches asking participants to share their worst experiences and encourage them to take the blame for all the negative aspects of their lives.
When Ruslana died, there were no traces of drugs or alcohol in her body - and she had no history of mental illness.
And after Anastasia jumped to her death from the top of an apartment building a year later in Kyiv in 2009, she left a note for her family which said: "Forgive me for everything. Cremate me".
Other members of the cult who spoke to Pomersantsev denied either model's death was caused by suicide, however.
"Korshunova had what we call a 'rollback'. She felt a little strange," a cult member told Pomersantsev. "You'd find her wandering round town, unsure what she was doing there.
"Maybe she'd cry at night. But she couldn't have killed herself. We cured her of any problems she might have.
"And Drozdova? She was messed up already. We tried to help her, we really tried. But she refused transformation. Blame modelling, maybe drugs, not us."
The man who led the Moscow-based cult later claimed that it had gone out of business as a direct result of Ruslana and Anastasia's deaths.
Speaking to newspaper Izvestia in 2011, he said: "I had to shut down my business because all the clients abandoned me.
"And why did it happen? We were doing good things and some supermodels committed suicide because of their troubled way of life."
According to police, Ruslana had ended her own life after she had become depressed with money problems and a failed affair with a man from Moscow.
The media reported that Ruslana had allegedly confided in a “life coach” that she had been depressed and had considered suicide beforehand.
The life coach, Vladislav Novgorodtsev, said: “I saw her and heard her stories, stories that no one else has heard.
"The most important thing about her and her internal world was that she was lonely. There was no one who was really dear to her, except her mother.”
Ruslana’s family still believe that she didn’t end her life and instead, had been the victim of foul play.
Nonetheless, her death still remains ruled as suicide.
It's also been revealed that Ruslana travelled to Epstein's Little St James island on his private Boeing 727 aircraft - dubbed the Lolita Express - shortly before her tragic death.
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It is not clear how she met Epstein but his wife, Ghislaine Maxwell, was known to recruit glamorous young women to his entourage.
Two years after that Lolita Express flight, however, Ruslana would be dead.
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