I just wanted to revisit this and mention that I've come to learn that a common practice of cults is to get it's members to confess to "sins" and then to use those confessions against the members, and as a coercion, as it is implied that if anyone leaves or does anything that the leadership might not like, those confessions would be made public.

It was definitely going on in our group. There were times when what I confessed was used against me in a manipulative way.