A year later, Celeste phoned asking if she and her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Cherie, could come and stay with us for a week. I had room at my house and told her she was welcome. It had been four years since we had seen her last and I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was overjoyed. On the other, I was nervous wondering how we would get on.
I needn't have worried. Celeste had changed drastically. She was no longer the scared, guarded person I remembered. She opened up and told me more about her life and her recent visit to Uganda to see Dad and Juliana. For the first time, she criticized Dad and the way he was bringing up his new family.
She also told me we had a Greek sister named Davida. My joy turned to sorrow when she said Davida was deeply depressed and on heroin with a violent and controlling boyfriend. She told me that Dad and Julie planned to visit her. I asked for Davida's address, but Celeste did not have it.
The week flew by. We talked for hours, cooked together and enjoyed being with our children. Though we did not speak much about the cult, I left informative books strategically placed around the house in the hope she would pick them up.
The last night of Celeste's visit, David and I took her out to a club to "get her drunk" and let our hair down. We drank, we chatted, we laughed; we had fun! The three of us were the last 9n the dance floor. When the DJ dropped Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" on the turntable, we all joined in, singing at the top of our voices. We were jumping around to the beat, arms locked together and at the end of the tune we collapsed on the floor in hysterics. We did not want the night to end.
The next day, Celeste left for Hungary to work as a secretary in a Family home. We were sad to see her go, but she gave me her email address and promised to stay in touch. I started corresponding regularly with her and she would send pictures and cute stories about Cherie.
It was only a year later when Celeste called us to say she was leaving the Family. Mum, David and I could not believe the news! I had waited for so long, and had almost given up hope.
We picked her up at Victoria Station in London and brought her to the Midlands. Our first night together as a "free family" was wonderful. We talked a mile a minute—but I knew there would be plenty of time for us to recover those lost years and catch up. It was a luxurious feeling. Celeste decided to stay with us and I looked after Cherie full time for the first year while Celeste worked as a secretary for Office Angels. Cherie looked so much like her mother at that age that spending time with her felt almost like I was making up for our years apart as children.
I knew Dad would naturally hold me and Mum responsible for Celeste leaving the cult. It was inconceivable to him why anyone would want to leave and he wrote saying we "had got to her," which frustrated and pained me. As we filled in the missing parts of our lives with each other, I realized my childhood image of my father as a knight in shining armour was only a fantasy.
Dad was still under the impression that Celeste would soon repent and go crawling back to the Family. So I wasn't surprised when after a year he came for Christmas. It was important that he saw first hand how comfortable Celeste was with her family and the tight bond that had formed between us. We arranged to take him out for a medieval banquet on the last night, something we knew he would enjoy. I danced with my father for the first time and he told me I had his eyes.
When we said our goodbyes he told me he would keep in touch more often via email. And that be loved me. I could not believe it! I thought that maybe his perspective was finally shifting. I will always hold out that hope.
Chapter 25
Celeste
I hope I've made the right decision, I thought, as I arrived at the Budapest commune with Cherie in a pushchair and two suitcases. I was no longer a believer, but I was afraid of leaving the only life I knew. I was afraid of being cut off from my friends and, more importantly, I wasn't ready to face my dad's disappointment and rejection.
I had just come from visiting my mother and Kristina and David and a part of me wanted to stay and get to know them better. I had lived with so much fear for so long, but I began to realize it was all smoke and mirrors. After living with Queen Maria, I questioned everything I had been told—this opened up my mind to new possibilities and I was no longer afraid to push the boundaries. I stopped censoring myself and let down my guard. My mother and my sister weren't "my enemy" or out to hurt me. They were my family—my flesh and blood—and I enjoyed their company. I took with me Kristina's email address and promised to stay in touch. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life if I left the Family. With a young daughter to care for, I had to have a plan.
The view from the balcony of the house in Budapest was amazing. It overlooked the city and the Danube winding through the heart of it. At night the lights of the city flickered below, sparkling like little jewels in the darkness.
Joy greeted me. She was the Childcare Central Reporting Officer for Eastern Europe. She was also a second-generation adult—one of the first born into the Family—in her early thirties, with light hair and striking blue eyes.
"Here's your room." She showed me to a small box-room near the communal living room. My bed was built on stilts, like a loft, and underneath was a desk with a computer where I would work. A small couch bed was in the corner where Cherie would sleep.
The next morning Joy explained to me her unusual circumstances with her husband Ben.
"Ben's no longer in the Family," she said, "but we received special permission for him to stay in the Home."
Ben and Joy's youngest daughter had died of cancer the year before, and it had affected Ben deeply. He refused to be parted from his remaining three children. They were the world to him.
Maybe the Family's being more flexible, I thought, as such an arrangement had been previously unheard of. I knew Ben from the Heavenly City School in Japan when we were teenagers. He had drunk all the alcohol for the School's Christmas party once, and was found in the pantry inebriated—of course he got into big trouble. This incident imprinted him on my memory.
"Well, I'm not so sure of the Family myself at the moment." I wanted to be up front with Joy about where I stood from the beginning. "The reason I'm here is to help change things for the children. I want them to have a better education, more socialization, and access to schooling materials."
Joy agreed with me. Joy had not received adequate education in even the basic 3Rs. Although she was intelligent with good organizational skills, she could not spell or write structured sentences; so I was there to be her secretary.
Ben was an amazing father and his children adored him. Despite his differences, Ben worked hard to raise money for not just his own family, but for the commune. He was a self-less person and I admired him. He was the only person I could talk to freely without fear of reprisal. We became friends, and I started to voice my feelings that I had kept bottled up inside for so long. By this time it was clear to me that Queen
Maria was no more a prophetess than any other cult leader who claimed a title they did not deserve.
My mind was opened even further when two visitors passed through the Home. The first was Amana, who had known me as a child in India and Dubai.
"How's your mum?" she asked. "I used to live with her in India. Where is she?" She had been living on far-flung mission fields and had not heard that my mum had left the group so many years ago. I told her she was no longer in the Family.
"I have such fond memories of your mother. She was so ill in her pregnancies and I remember she struggled with all her kids, but she was very cheerful. Your dad was such an air-head—he was never around to help her."
A week later an Italian man visited who had known my mother in India. He, too, had no idea she was no longer in the group. He raved about what a good woman my mother was. "But that horrible man, Joshua," he told me, "he was always angry and so harsh on the children. I never liked him."
This was the first time I was hearing the other side of the story. I had always known deep down that the stories told about m
y mum were slanderous lies, but this was the confirmation I needed. I had also found out that Joshua was living as a full-time member in a commune in Kenya and had got a young Romanian woman pregnant. Her best friend, a Bulgarian national, was in our Home—they had only been in the Family a few years—and I told her that I knew who Joshua was, my sister Kristina's abuser. At the very least, her friend had a right to know this man's past history.
I was livid. I felt betrayed. His excommunication during the court case had just been for show. I wrote two letters to Dad telling him that Kristina and David longed for a relationship with their father and how much it hurt them that he appeared not to care. "It's not right that you abandoned them all those years," I told him. Dad did not seem that bothered. I decided I would try to bridge the gap that had stood between us all those years. We were family and we deserved to be together.
The final straw came when the Home was directed by World Services to uphold the rules—non-members could not live in Family houses. Ben had to move out and get a flat in town. He was heartbroken and his children were devastated. I was not going to be a part of something I did not agree with any longer. I realized that I could never fully care
for and protect my daughter or make decisions that were in her best interests as long as I was bound to obey a self-appointed Queen and a set of arbitrary rules decided for me. I told Joy I was leaving and I wrote Kristina an email saying I wanted to leave the Family. She gave me their phone number and I called a couple of days later. Mum answered the phone.
"I am so happy!" she said. "Can I ask you why you want to leave the Family?"
"Well, I no longer agree with it any more. The Family has done nothing but split up families. I have been unhappy for a long time and my daughter deserves a better life than I had."
It took me three months to raise the money for my coach fare to England. Joy slipped me $300 and although I appreciated the gesture, the sum was hardly enough to get me on my feet.
When at last I arrived with Cherie at Victoria Station, Dad's last words in an email to me still rang in my ears. "I pity you. What are you going to do as a single mother with a daughter? You'll end up on the streets with nothing." His heartless words left me enraged. 'After you've wallowed in the mire of the System, you'll see how good you had it in the Family." He did not offer help or support; it was almost as if he hoped to see me fail. Dad's condescending attitude made me all the more determined to prove him wrong. Where once those words would have crushed me, I no longer looked for or needed Dad's approval anymore. I was a parent responsible for my own child now
Dad was pushed from my mind completely when I saw Kristina, David and Mum waiting at the station to greet me.
It was the strangest feeling being reunited with them. Although we hardly knew each other, we hugged and kissed like long-lost friends. The final piece of the puzzle that was missing in my heart had finally been put into place. For the first time I knew I was going in the right direction, and the feeling was incomparable. It was the best decision I ever made.
Mum did not have much—she had a small three-bedroom house in the Midlands, but she let me have her spare room until I got a place of my own. It may not have been much of a start, but I had my freedom and I was on top of the world!
Two and a half years later, on January 11, 2005, I logged on to a web site (www.movingon.org) where second-generation ex-Family can share memories and experiences of their childhoods in the Family. I had reconnected with friends I thought I had lost contact with forever via the site. But this time I read the shocking bulletin—Davidito had committed murder-suicide. I was stunned. I had just spoken to him for an hour on the phone the previous Friday. My hands started shaking and I burst into tears.
The las time I had seen him was in Portugal, at Mama Maria's Home, with his girlfriend, Elixcia. Apart from a few emails back and forth the call that Friday was our first conversation since that time.
At first, we caught up. I told him I was studying Psychology and Education at university, a subject I found helpful in understanding cult dynamics.
"I found the module on social psychology very interesting in explaining the powerful influence of group conformity and pressure to alter behaviour," I said.
I told him I had my own flat—my first—with my daughter, and that she was enjoying school. "It's strange living on my own, but I love just being able to shop for myself and decide how to decorate my home."
He was glad to hear I was doing well. He told me that since he left he had worked on a fishing trawler and then as an electrician. He wanted to go to college but it was too expensive. He went on to say that no matter how hard he tried to fit in, he could not forget his past.
"If I make friends, they ask about my family and who my parents are. What do I say?"
I understood what he meant. I faced the same difficult questions.
As our conversation continued, it was clear to me that Davidito was in anguish. He talked about the abuse he had witnessed with Mene when he was only ten. "I would go down to the basement and see her there tied up spread-eagled on a bed. She would beg me for help, but there was nothing I could do. Berg would come down and molest her right there." The anger rose in his voice.
"You know, I feel so bad for Techi," I told him. "When I was there in Mama's Home she lacked any desire or ambition. She didn't take care of her appearance, her room was in an appalling state, and she always seemed so depressed."
Davidito choked up. "But you should have seen her before they broke her. She was so full of life and was a completely different person."
He talked about the Techi Series and blamed his mother for destroying her mind. He also told me something even more shocking. The father of Techi's son was unknown and she had said officially that it was between two older teen boys, but Davidito told me he believed that the father was most likely Frank, an older man in his late thirties. I had met Frank in Mama's Home when I first arrived, but he left shortly after.
"What makes me the most angry is that it was our own mother who tried to entrap and control her. Techi wanted to leave the Home because there were no other young people, so our mother arranged for Frank to have dates with her. She was barely sixteen. And you know what the hardest thing about it is? Frank was my friend. It's just so fucked up."
"Well, people were pushed into doing things that they would have never done otherwise," I said.
Davidito agreed. He wanted to help Techi and her son get out from under the control of his mother—but all communication between them had been severed when he left the Family. He was not a helpless child anymore and he felt it was his responsibility to right the wrongs, and avenge the physical and mental abuse that thousands of children had suffered because of his parents' insanity.
I told him how I had written affidavits, which had been submitted to the FBI and the police in the UK. I gave explicit accounts of the violence and abuse I had seen and suffered in person. I wanted to support the effort for justice. He was despondent. The difficulties we faced bringing abusers to court and getting convictions seemed insurmountable.
Cult members used Bible names, making it difficult to identify them.
Many crimes took place in countries like the Philippines, India, and Thailand, where the police have few resources to pursue complicated abuse cases. We moved often, and rarely knew the addresses of the homes we lived in. In many countries, like the USA, there is a statute of limitations for sexual crimes, and the cult had destroyed almost all incriminating evidence—we were made to burn our photographs and personal letters during the court cases.
Despite these obstacles, I told him, I remained optimistic that if we stood together and told the truth, our voices would be heard. Davidito wasn't convinced.
"Really? Do you think so?" He sighed. "I just don't have the strength in me. I can't make it another day. I've tried, I've tried so hard but I can't...I just want to end it."
I struggled with what to say; I was desperate to help him see that life was worth living, an
d I wasn't sure how serious his intentions were to kill himself.
But he did make one thing clear—he was looking for his mother. She was just as guilty as Mo; he had seen her bring in girls to his bedroom. She had masterminded the Detention Teen programs, including Mene's torture. He wanted to con-front her. If the justice system was not going to do anything about her, then he would.
"But it would take so long, and I just don't have the energy to live another day," he added.
"But your testimony and what you know is vital to get-ting justice. Would you write it down?" I asked him. "I'm sure that we'll find a way and that the authorities will take notice."
He hesitated. "I don't know. What about a video? I'll make a video, okay?"
"Please," I begged him. "Will you think about speaking to the police? Please call me again, will you?"
Not Without My Sister Page 30
