"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." - Edmund Burke.
Sad to say many are waking up way too late in life and realizing their mistakes when there is no way back. There are many that are staying in because they have effectively been robbed from their livelihoods and the only thing keeping them alive is the goodwill of (believing and unbelieving) family members.
Like when we used to go door to door and after “proving” some point about their religion, people said I was born Catholic and I’ll die Catholic, this is that but a thousand times worse.
How hard must it be for some to have their children died without saying goodbye because they were shunning them and now the org basically says “we never actually said that”.