The Bangkok Training Center seemed a likely next tar-get. The school underwent a facelift. All the rooms and class-rooms were redecorated, and we received new uniforms, books, and school equipment.
We were inundated with letters and comics on the subject of religious persecution. A series for children called "Deceivers Yet True" gave examples of famous people in his- tory and the Bible who had to lie to protect those they loved. We were told that sometimes it was necessary to lie in order to preserve the truth. Because the System was of the Devil and not of God, outsiders would never understand. Sys-temites looked on sex as something evil and wrong, whereas we all knew it was beautiful and good. And what the System might call abuse was not really abuse at all because it was all done in love.
The next few months we read, studied, ate, and breathed Persecution Preparation. World Services released statements on all the Family's beliefs and doctrines, which we had to learn by heart. Our teachers held mock court trials and grilled us with questions the Enemy might fire at us on sexual abuse, Family life, and our controversial doctrines. We memorized the correct answers to shoot back to the authorities.
A giant purge of all Family publications was ordered across the world. Any Mo Letters that condoned sex with minors, or of an extreme sexual nature like Flirty Fishing,
were torn out and burned. Any sexual content was removed from our True Komix, books, and publications like Life with Grandpa. Anyone with the least talent had to draw bras, underpants, and negligees to cover naked private parts. The Heaven's Girl book was burned and all evidence of its existence expunged completely.
History was being re-written.
Then, suddenly, I was recalled to the Service Center. I had just turned eleven and did not fancy being stuck there again. To my pleasant surprise, three other girls my age had joined while I was away. Celeste taught us Maths and English. She encouraged me in my artistic endeavours. I discovered I could draw and became quite accomplished with oil pastels.
By this time, I had accepted that Dad was never coming back. I put him as far from my thoughts as I could. He was now just a cherished idol in my temple of memories.
One day, Celeste found a pair of his underpants tucked into one of her suitcase pockets. Dad had left them behind three years before and had forgotten them. Little bits of his cast-offs were precious souvenirs to us. One of her other treasures was a pair of Dad's holey socks.
"Hey, look what I found." She held them up for me to see. This was as sacred an item as the Shroud of Turin and I grabbed the worn red underpants from her hand.
"Dad's underwear!" I shouted in glee. Celeste deftly snatched them back.
"They're mine! I had them in my suitcase."
"I want them! Please, I'm the youngest and you already have his socks! It's not fair!" I caught one side of the underpants and a relentless tug-o-war ensued. In the end, she got the underwear and I had to settle for the holey socks.
Not long after returning to the Service Center, the entire Home packed up and moved. They were concerned that somebody might have discovered their whereabouts, so in true Family fashion, they did the little disappearance act. The new house was much smaller, and had no garden. From this time on, Celeste and I were barred from going outside, and I found the constant indoor confinement unbearable. For exercise, we would run up and down the staircase one hundred times, or do a Jane Fonda workout video. Celeste tried to keep us girls entertained by teaching us dance routines, but we were bored brainless.
A few months later, the worldwide media frenzy seemed to subside and the leadership deemed it safe enough for me to return to the Training Center.
The night I was scheduled to leave, my departure was suddenly delayed. The Home shepherds were rushing about frantically. At 10 p.m., I was called downstairs, and my flee bag was loaded into the jeep together with some suitcases and mattresses. To my surprise, Celeste got in the back of the jeep with me.
"Are you coming back to the Training Center with me?" I asked Celeste.
Celeste looked nervously to Auntie Ami sitting in the jeep with us, as if she wasn't sure what to say.
Auntie Ami spoke up. "Anna, there's been a change of plan. Something very serious has come up. You won't be going to the Training Center yet. We're going to go some-where else for a while first."
"Oh, where?" I asked. I had no idea what was going on.
"Well, you don't really need to know yet. Why don't you just trust the Lord, okay? Now, I know the windows are black tinted, but just as an extra precaution I'm going to have to ask that you and Claire lie down on these mattresses on the floor."
The mattresses felt and smelt damp. "What's happening?" I whispered to Celeste.
"I don't really know," she said.
My bones collided painfully with the hard metal floor as the jeep (which had no shock absorbers) hit one pothole after another. We must have driven beyond the city perimeter. It was now 2 a.m., and we had been driving in dizzying circles for the past four hours. Staring at the fleeting shadows thrown across the roof by passing lights, it seemed we had been driving forever, and would continue to drive ... forever.
I could hear Celeste, Joan, Claire—my sister—breathing beside me. I often forgot what I was supposed to call her. After some time, we were finally told that bad people were trying to find us and take Celeste away. I was not being looked for, but they packed me in for the ride anyway, assuming that if I were recognized they would guess Celeste was nearby. I wondered whether I was so much a threat to her security as someone to keep her company. Finally the jeep stopped. I was relieved; the need to pee had passed beyond urgent. The jolting of the vehicle made the waiting particularly uncomfortable. But I held it another half hour as we continued to lie down, waiting for permission to sit up and tried to make out what was happening by the sounds around us.
The back door was thrown open. The bulky outline of Uncle Philip, a towering German, loomed over us and behind him I could see the night sky, lit dimly by Bangkok's polluted smog. He was joined by Uncle Paul, a stocky Filipino, Auntie Ami, and one of the head area shepherds, Auntie Christina.
"So girls, isn't this exciting?" Auntie Christina gushed. "It's almost like it will be in the Tribulation when we have to hide from Antichrist forces."
Ever since I could remember, we had been living in the Endtime, with the Great Tribulation just around the corner. Sometimes it got tiring to always be living under the shadow of the Endtime. I wished it could just be over with, one way or another, like my spankings. After a round of desperate prayer, we were informed of the plan. Quick and casually, we were to enter the motel about fifty meters away. The six of us were split into groups of two and we slunk in, a pair at a time, through the lobby. Uncle Philip and Uncle Paul were to remain with us as bodyguards. As Uncle Paul was Asian, he was the only one who was allowed to leave the room to buy our meals and pass on any messages to couriers.
There was only one double bed in the room, which we shared with Auntie Christina and Auntie Ami. The two mattresses from the car were snuck up to the room, and our bodyguards slept on the floor, one in front of the door, and one at the foot of the bed. The novelty of playing "hide and seek" faded quickly. With six of us holed up in a twelve-by-sixteen-foot room for six weeks, never seeing daylight, my eleven-year-old energy was very soon screaming for release.
I vented my raging frustrations to my sister during our daily shower time. She bore it all calmly, the level-headed per-son she was. I did not care anymore if they did find us; I rather
wished they would. I began to imagine running on to the balcony, hoping someone would spot me and perhaps become suspicious. One day, when everyone was napping, I plunged out on to the balcony and looked down over the side, on to a courtyard surrounded by apartments, everywhere as empty as a ghost town. I slowly returned inside, nursing my disappointment.
We tried to find ways to amuse ourselves. Celeste would roll up a sock into a ball, and we'd play Toss the Sock. I cut out our milk cartons and fashioned them in
to a pop-up manger scene. Six weeks passed like this, before Auntie Ami informed us that we would be moving to a slightly bigger place. The night we moved had its comical moments. That morning, Auntie Ami had plaited my hair into many tight little braids, so that when they were taken out that night, my naturally wispy hair was transformed into a frizzy Afro. I was dressed in a florescent orange and white-striped Mickey Mouse shirt and fluorescent orange tennis shoes. My sister was similarly costumed. Never mind that it was ten at night, our Systemite disguise was rounded off with massive pairs of dark sun-glasses that covered our entire faces. We strutted through the hotel lobby, ignoring every turned head with the confidence only such a disguise could inspire.
After a three-hour drive, that would usually take half an hour, we arrived at the tiny flat where we would live for the next six weeks. We found out that the telephone number and address of nearly every Family home in Thailand had been compromised, which was why the Service Center was no longer a safe hiding place. A couple of ex-members had succeeded in infiltrating a Family Home in the Philippines. They had gained entry by imitating Mo's voice over the phone. Once inside, they persuaded the Home shepherds to leave for important leadership meetings in the US. With the shepherds gone, these two men, who had once worked in top positions in World Services, began a daring attempt to "exit counsel" the Home members by teaching them classes debunking Mo. Sixteen trunks of Music with Meaning archives, and un-purged group publications were stored in Manila. These two men took it all as evidence to expose the Family. It emerged just in time for the British custody case that was still going on in the UK.
The night we were spirited away, one of these men had called the Service Center in Bangkok, again imitating Mo's voice as he had done in the Philippines. Since the infiltration in the Philippines had gone so well, they thought to infiltrate Thailand next. Only this time the Home shepherd who picked up the phone became suspicious. The two impostors fled the scene, but they managed to take with them trunks of compromising material, including video footage the Family had overlooked and failed to destroy; this is the only video evidence that now remains connecting the Family to the abuses of their past.
In early December, we received the good news that an ideal house had been secured. We had the job of cleaning and setting it up before the entire Service Center moved in. Nothing prepared me for the appalling state of that property. Dirt, slime, rat and lizard droppings, spider webs, and bird feathers had combined into a hardened crust that coated every bare space of wall, roof, and floor. The smell was horrible. We got down on our hands and knees and scrubbed into the wee hours of the morning, to clear a clean space to sleep that night.
The next few weeks Celeste and I worked till our fingers were wrinkled and red. We scrubbed methodically, cleaning one room at a time. They were so filthy that it took the both of us over two days to complete one room. We wanted to have the house ready for the Service Center to move in by Christmas. We made it too, on December 23. We spent Christmas surrounded by people for the first time in four months.
New Year 1993 passed, and I was informed that I would be leaving with two of the girls to a home opened for JETTs, or Junior Endtime Teens. Within a week, we were packed off to a military-style JETT training camp. Our shepherd was a huge, ex-special forces African American named Uncle Steven. He carried a whistle around his neck and put us through military exercise drills. I came down with whooping cough and was quarantined. During this time, I received a phone call. To my surprise it was Celeste, who said she was calling to say goodbye. Now that she was eighteen, she had to go to England to confront her backslidden mother. She had asked the shepherds to be allowed to spend a day with me before she left. The request was denied because I had two days left to go before my quarantine period was over. She insisted on phoning instead.
I was too stunned to speak. It was all so sudden, so unexpected. There had been no warning of her departure, nothing to prepare me.
"Are ... are you coming back?" I finally managed to ask. "I don't know," she answered truthfully. I sat in shocked silence. "Hello? Are you there?"
"Yes." A lump was rising in my throat. I found it impossible to speak.
She tried to make small talk, but my tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth and my brain turned to mush. I could think of nothing to say. But I did not want her to hang up, knowing once she did, she'd be gone, for all I knew, forever.
"Julie? Julie? Talk to me." I wanted to tell her not to go, that I did not want to be alone, but all that came out was hot tears running down my cheeks.
"Okay, if you have nothing else to say, I have to hang up, all right? Goodbye ... I love you ... Bye."
When the line went dead, I held the phone to my ear, listening to the high-pitched hum. Somewhere in the distance I heard someone telling me to put it back in its cradle.
I crawled into bed, and prayed for the very first time that I would not wake up.
Chapter 16
Kristina
In December 1990, Mum was contacted by Social Services. A fourteen-year-old Swiss boy named Sammy Markos had been caught at Ramsgate, trying to stow away on a ferry to France to get back to his mother. He had no passport, but he was carrying The Emergency Survival Handbook, a Family publication. Immigration officers detained him and he was taken into protective custody. Sammy was terrified of getting the Family and his mother into trouble and refused to acknowledge anyone or answer any questions. He denied he was a member of the group.
Social Services thought Mum would have a better chance of getting him to open up. She took me with her, as I was the same age as Sammy. As soon as we introduced our-selves as former members of the Children of God, he ran into the living room and slammed the door.
Mum asked me to talk to him and I followed him into the games room, picked up the pool cue and said, "Come on! Let the adults talk. Let's have a game!" As we played, his body
language relaxed and a rapport developed between us. I told him the story of my aborted escape when I was ten and showed him the article I wrote for No Longer Children, a magazine for former cult members. I could see in his eyes that he understood me: I spoke the cult jargon and this was a surprise to him.
But once his mother turned up, she called us "devils." She was behaving hysterically and Sammy became frightened. He withdrew again, refused to speak to me and we left. Mum left behind many of our writings and the Deborah Davis book in case he got a chance to read them. By the time the police found the training school he had been living in, everyone had already fled.
Exhausted, Mum and I dozed in the taxi home late that night. We were jolted awake by a loud bang. Wide-eyed and in shock, I realized our car had hit a bollard and spun out of control into a ditch, shattering the windscreen. The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and apologized profusely. I was just relieved that no one had been hurt. But the scare stories I was told as a child were still fresh in my mind. The immediate question that came to me was, Is God punishing us for persecuting the Family? Or is it the devil attacking us for exposing them? By asking these questions, I began to understand what freedom and true choice really mean.
It was all very well for me to put my past behind me, but I believed it was also important to break the cycle of abuse. Bullies only have power through fear, and by calling them up and speaking out, they would lose their hold. The cult I had been brought up in still existed, with the same teachings and environment that had harmed thousands of families and torn mine apart. It disturbed me to know that emotional andsexual abuse was still happening every day to my friends, my sister and my family left in the group. Evil can only prevail when good people do nothing.
I sincerely believed that it could not just be left to other members of our society, like the parents and ex-members. It had to come from me, and others like me, who had first-hand knowledge as part of the second generation.
Remembering the pain of being parted from Celeste led Mum to make contact with other parents whose children had disappeared. One contact, a Mrs.
Willie, invited us to visit her in Switzerland. When we arrived she explained, "My daughter—she's only nineteen—has recently joined the Family."
Mum nodded understandingly. "Her personality has changed drastically?"
Mrs. Willie seemed relieved that we understood. "Yes it has—but even more alarming, she's grown secretive and distant. I'm so worried." She hesitated and looked fraught. "I think she's pregnant. I just don't know what to do."
The only way to find out, I thought, is to get inside.
I said tiffs, and Mrs. Willie looked doubtful. "How will you do that? Will it be dangerous?"
I shook my head. "They won't suspect."
Mrs. Willie had friends who lived a couple of streets away from the large commune just outside Berne and took me there. Peering through the hedge of the compound I saw telltale signs of a Family home. An inordinate amount of laundry hung from the lines and endless rows of children's tricycles were parked in the driveway. I made a plan, and walked back to where Mum and Mrs. Willie were waiting.
"I'll get into the home," I told them.
Not Without My Sister Page 20
