7M Films / Shekinah Church (Robert Shinn)

Robert Shinn founded Shekinah Church in Los Angeles in 1994, building a congregation that over subsequent decades developed a network of member-connected businesses. In 2021, Shinn and associates launched 7M Films, a talent management company aimed at TikTok and other social-media dancers and influencers, several of whom were recruited into both the business and the church simultaneously, often after already building substantial independent followings on TikTok before signing with 7M.

Families of young dancers and several former 7M-managed performers began speaking publicly from 2022 onward, describing a pattern in which new signees under 7M management contracts were encouraged or required to move into housing controlled by Shinn or church-linked landlords, cut off contact with parents and friends outside the group, and turn over a substantial share of their earnings to the church or affiliated entities. Parents, most visibly the Wilking family, mounted a sustained public campaign, including media appearances and a civil lawsuit, alleging that their adult children had been isolated from them under Shinn's direction; one of the family's daughters, Miranda Wilking (now known as Miranda Derrick), has publicly and repeatedly denied being coerced and disputed the 'cult' framing. The Los Angeles Times published an investigation into the allegations in 2022, and further civil suits followed from other former members and families.

Netflix's 2024 documentary 'Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult' compiled testimony from several of the affected families and former dancers alongside the surrounding litigation, bringing the case to a much wider audience. Shinn and 7M have denied that the church or the company operate coercively, framing the arrangements as standard talent-management and religious-community practice, and Shinn has in turn pursued defamation and other counter-litigation against some of the parents and journalists involved. As of the documentary's release the underlying civil cases remained in progress rather than concluded.

The 7M/Shekinah case is one of the most recent in this catalogue and illustrates how the mechanics long documented in older communal and campus-based high-control groups — a leader's personal authority, control of housing and finances, and severance from outside family — can recur inside a modern commercial structure built around influencer talent management and social media fame, with litigation and documentary journalism, rather than criminal prosecution, currently serving as the primary public accountability mechanism.