TO his devoted followers he is a messenger from the “true creators” of humankind, the alien race of Elohim, who was sent as a prophet after being abducted by a UFO in the mountains of France in 1973.
But to others Claude Vorilhon - who calls himself Raël - is a and “sex maniac” who uses his power to bed women and claims to be behind the world’s first cloned baby.
In mass “sensual meditation” sessions the followers of Raelism, which was set up in 1974, are encouraged to strip naked and pleasure themselves and men persuade female partners to have sex with other group members, in order to become more ‘fulfilled’.
The French group has also been accused of encouraging child sexual abuse through its doctrines, after two Raelians raped an 11-year-old girl in Avignon, allegedly with her mother’s permission.
At its height, the religious sect claimed to have 60,000 members and there are still thriving factions in Canada, Africa and Japan, where the 78-year-old leader currently lives.
Now many who still follow Rael - who claims to have dined with Jesus, Moses and Mohammed during a second abduction - have defended his teachings in a new Netflix documentary, available from today.
But Rael: The Alien Prophet also hears from disillusioned former members who say that the ‘religion’ ruined their lives and from an undercover journalist who claims the leader made women his “sex slaves” and was “addicted to female submission”.
“Rael seemed almost proud of the number of his conquests,” recalls former disciple Dominic Marson.
“He would often talk about sleeping with hundreds, even thousands of women, as if he was really proud. It was strange to be around that. He would openly brag about sleeping with this or that person.”
Former believer Dominique Saint-Hilaire says she was manipulated by Rael, adding: “I had never realised the cult could be dangerous. But when you're inside it, you don't know you're being manipulated.
“You don't really think for yourself. Even if you're told you have free will, ultimately you think as a group. You don't have free will.”
Stories of UFO sightings in rural France were at an all-time high in the early 1970s, with over 10,000 reports, when Claude Vorilhon began to appear on French television with tall tales of a close encounter near his home in Clermont-Ferrand.
Vorilhon - who had short-lived careers as a singer and a test driver for a racing car magazine - claimed that in December 1973, he had been walking in the region's volcanoes when he saw “something shining in the sky.
“It was unnerving, I was getting worried because I was expecting it to leave, to disappear, and then I’d go home and say I saw a UFO and they’d all laugh,” he says in a clip from 1974.
“A stair came down and two legs appeared and they were very small, like a child’s, green.
“He spoke to me in near-perfect French and said he had an important message for humanity and was desperate to connect.”
Vorilhon claimed humans had not evolved from earlier species or been created by “a god with a white beard sitting on a cloud” but that the aliens, the Elohim, had “created us” in a lab.
The same year he began calling himself Rael - which he claimed was the Elohim word for messenger - and published his own ‘bible’, named The Book That Tells the Truth, and the movement began to gain momentum.
Jean-Pierre Saulnier, who says he saw an alien craft hovering 40 yards above his car in a similar encounter, was an early disciple.
“I bought the book and thought, ‘This is it. This book contains the whole revelation,” he says.
“What we thought was God was actually aliens.”
To find myself in a group unashamedly naked. It wasn’t easy but we did it
Ex-follower Jean-Paul
A year later, Rael regaled his followers with tales of a new encounter, when the Elohim took him back to their planet, which he described in fantastical terms in clips in the documentary.
He revealed in order to make life as perfect as possible, it only rained at night and there was background music which faded when people spoke and got louder when they stopped.
“It was a heavenly landscape,” he said. “I saw many small squirrels with teddy bear heads. They were pink and blue, just breathtaking, so beautiful.”
The Elohim, he said, invited him to a dinner with the great prophets - Moses, Mohammed, Elijah and Buddha - who were kept alive by DNA regeneration and he was introduced to Jesus who he felt a strong bond with and was later told “he is my brother".
“I was unable to shake the belief that Rael was the Messiah,” says Damian, who was a Raelian for 33 years. “That’s the power of faith.”
In the early 1980s, the movement bought a campsite in Southern France, which they named Eden, and began to host gatherings there.
Dominique Saint-Hilaire remembers her first trip to the site, in 1988, as “paradise".
She added: "I met people who were full of love. I realised that love still existed.
“It was a place that was outside of time, outside of society and the weight of everyday life. Everyone was happy, everyone was smiling all the time. There was a lot of harmony.
“A Belgian couple were making love in the open air, with all the accompanying sounds.
I thought there was no way I could ever do something like that, but…”
It was at Eden that Rael introduced ‘sensual meditation’ where members stripped naked and lay together with their palms facing to the sky, to ‘welcome the Elohim’ while Rael told them to “feel a wave of warmth rising slowly up to your genitals”.
“He had a key phrase, ‘If you want to remove the pants from your head, you must first remove the pants from your ass,’ says Jean-Paul, who admits he was shy about stripping.
“To find myself in a group unashamedly naked. It wasn’t easy but we did it.”
I put my wife in other men’s arms to climb the hierarchy. I accepted it. But then you wake up
Ex-follower
Another key part of teaching was that there should be no sexual boundaries and men shouldn’t expect women to be monogamous.
“He preached that jealousy is love’s opposite and a jealous person is an unfulfilled person,” says Damian.
“I have seen many Raelians ask their partners to have sex with someone else to help them control their feelings of jealousy and because they thought it was for a noble cause, they did it.
“But what’s interesting is that Rael himself is extremely jealous. He just doesn’t show it. I couldn’t imagine someone being so conflicted in himself then lying and manipulating others.”
In the early 1990s, Rael was challenged on TV over an internal document in which a member encouraged others to “caress their children”, which he refused to condemn because he supported freedom of expression.
On the same show, a former follower accused him of “stealing six years of my life” and added: “There are things going on in this cult which are unbelievable.
"I myself talked about making love to my children who are six and eight. I wonder how I had the strength to even talk about this.
“I put my wife in other men’s arms to climb the hierarchy. I accepted it. But then you wake up.”
Shortly afterwards, two Raelian men were accused of raping an 11-year-old girl in her family flat, with reports claiming that Rael preached “a child’s education doesn’t have to come from the parents” and suggesting the monsters were following his teaching.
The group was dubbed a “dangerous cult” in France and in 1995, Rael and his close disciples fled the country to live in Quebec, Canada.
In Canada, Rael’s hold over his female followers took a new twist, when he created the Order of Angels - a group of young attractive women who were chosen to ‘welcome’ the Elohim when they chose to arrive on Earth.
“It's an order of women within the Rael alien movement,” says Nadine Gary, who was recruited at 18 by her mother.
“They are at the service of the Elohim and to honour and to serve Rael, of course. So I thought, ‘You must be part of this order’ and when I became an angel, it was moving. I felt immense love.”
The angels were divided into the White Feathers - who could have “sexual relations with the Elohim, their representative on Earth, the Prophet”, but were also free to have sex with others - and the Pink Feathers, who “were reserved exclusively for the Elohim”.
According to Damian, they “signed a contract where they committed themselves to be sexually exclusive with Rael and they also promised never to refuse him”.
Brigitte McCann, a Calgary journalist who infiltrated the group and witnessed ceremonies where naked ‘Angels’ tended to the Prophet, adds: “Ultimately, they were sex slaves.
"If he wanted to have sex with them, they were not allowed to refuse him. He was always surrounded by a group of female attendants.”
At that time, Rael was married to a follower named Sophie, who he wed when she was 16 with the permission of her mother, a believer.
“Rael made it clear to Sophie that she was born to serve,” says Dominique, adding that he used her to promote the cause of nakedness, even getting her to pose nude in Playboy, in front of a fake UFO.
“After I read the article in Playboy, I basically saw Rael as a sex maniac and I thought if I want to welcome the Elohim, I don't want to welcome them like a high class prostitute,” she adds.
"I want to welcome them as a guide. I don't want to be at someone's beck and call. I couldn't handle it anymore.”
Dominique broke free and began to talk about the cult, saying she was disgusted by Rael having sex with young girls.
“I saw him with girls who were 16, 17 or 18. My daughter who was under 18 when she was in the movement was summoned by him.
"So I felt like I had to say something to warn Raelians and possibly warn other people.”
With the assertion that humans were created by alien ‘scientists’ came a commitment to create cloned babies on Earth, to achieve eternal life.
After cloned ewe Dolly the Sheep was born in the UK, in 1997, Rael set up the company Clonaid and put chemist and mum-of-two Brigitte Boisselier, who joined the movement in 1993, in charge of operations.
Promising to produce the first cloned human by Christmas 2001, at a cost of $200,000 a baby, Brigitte was approached by a childless American couple who offered to fund the operation in return for a “duplicate” of their son, who had tragically died at ten months.
A US lab was built and Damian, a biotech scientist, was brought in to help Brigitte but when the operation was shut down by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), they moved to a secret location.
In 2001, they announced they had recruited 50 surrogate mothers from their own ranks - including Brigitte’s 22-year-old daughter Marina - and a year later they claimed the first baby, dubbed Eve, had been born in a secret location.
The international outcry spawned a US court case brought by a lawyer arguing for the child’s human rights, where Brigitte was forced to say the baby had been born in Israel, but no proof has ever been produced that ‘Eve’ exists.
It's hard to admit but it feels a bit like at the age of 51 I've woken up from 33 years of hypnosis
Ex-believer Damian
While Brigitte stands by her story in the documentary, Damian slams the whole thing as a hoax and says that announcement of the ‘birth’ plunged him into "13 years of hell".
In 2016, he finally left and is now working in China, and recently celebrated the birth of a daughter.
“It's hard to admit but it feels a bit like at the age of 51 I've woken up from 33 years of hypnosis,” he says.
“I was experiencing a sudden existential crisis because I feel like such a fool to have been so gullible to have taken it so seriously, when in fact it's so obvious that it's completely idiotic and ridiculous.”
Rael, now living in Japan, continues to nurture his global ‘religion’ - while living with his latest young paramours, Hani and Sky.
Rael: The Alien Prophet is on Netflix now.
