Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult (22 page)

Although I knew from the Mo letters that sharing sexually was established as a general routine between brothers and sisters in most homes, we did not share here with Abe and Breeze, who had their own bedroom. That was not because we had qualms about adultery. Mo had told us that “the Mosaic Law has been done away with. Whatsoever is in Love, against such there is no Law” (“How to Answer Our Enemies—Preach Sex” 2475, 28). I think I was too busy watching Thor, singing and witnessing,“fishing” at the clubs, and sleeping with other men to have time to share.

Abe sometimes went singing with his wife, Breeze, in Nice, but it was apparent that our most lucrative arrangement was for Breeze and me to sing in the elite cafes along the CBte d’Azur between Nice and Italy.

Breeze had a wonderful voice and was an accomplished musician. I had natural, spontaneous energy and a childlike “anything is possible” faith. Together we covered the restaurants and cafes with liar money and love and left with enough funds to meet all our humble expenses.

When we went out fishing for lost souls, the men were invited to the house to meet the family. Even though pregnant women in the Family still went out, and there were many testimonies in our Family News about women sharing sexually while pregnant, as Mara’s pregnancy proceeded, she often stayed home due to fatigue.

Men were legitimately allowed to sexually recruit women into the Family, and although this happened sometimes, it seemed to be much more time-consuming, and became a rare event. We began calling the babies who resulted from sex with men who never joined the Family “Jesus babies.” Ideally, those children were to be loved and treated like all our children, but in reality, they were not, and many Jesus babies grew up to be psychologically disturbed teenagers. As for myself, even though I never practiced birth control, I did not become pregnant again for seven years.

One day traveling on the train, we met a young British student, whom I witnessed to but thought did not need sex. Cal felt otherwise. Our new friend came to our house, and after receiving Bible classes from Cal, and asking Jesus into his heart, decided to stop his travels and stay with us. I knew that he was a virgin, and he was younger than I.

I saw no reason why he needed sex, after all, he had already decided to stay.

But both Cal and Mara thought he needed physical love, and they thought I should give it to him.

Instinctively, I felt I was violating some natural trust this poor young boy had for me as an older and wiser sister. I knew that I would never marry him, or even become a steady sex partner for him, and I felt that, as the innocent virgin he was, sex would mean something a lot deeper than just “supplying his needs.” Reluctantly, I did as I was told. The student seemed infatuated with me, and we had to spend hours teaching him that I was only an expression of God’s Love, not his “soul mate.” Eventually, he accepted the lesson, and he stayed with us, going on to become one of the leaders in Switzerland. From the perspective of one inside the group, this seemed to prove that the “method” worked.

Meanwhile, I began having open and heated disagreements with Cal. He felt I was pulling away from him more, and I felt he was using me.

Mara wanted peace, and when I suggested that I go to Paris for a month or two, she convinced Cal it was a good idea.

I remember well the sad day when I had to leave Thor on the quay of the Nice train station. Cal would absolutely not let me take him, but I was sure that Mara would send him to me after a few weeks. In her frail state, she could never keep up with my energetic boy. So even though I thought I would be separated only for a short time, it was a heart-wrenching good-bye.

“Where are you going with a suitcase, Mommy?” he asked in a tiny, almost fearful voice.

“I’m going to stay in Paris a little while, honey.”

“I want to go with you.”

“Not this time, sweetheart. Maybe soon,” I murmured as my voice cracked, and I kissed him tenderly on his cheeks.

My precarious psychological state left my emotional resources depleted, and I was hoping that in Paris I would have time to think things through. Not only was I painfully aware that I had married a man I did not love, but I also had been giving my body to numerous men whom I did not choose. Living in Ere, as the almost sole provider of the home, yet with the least personal choice, I saw no change in my situation. I had recently received a sweet letter from James, one of the brothers whom I was close to in Paris, and he suggested a little vacation for me. I thought that odd. No one in the Family took vacations, but something about his letter made me feel that he was more liberated from Family rules than anyone else I knew. He now wrote that they had room for me in their small home in Paris. If nothing else, I could have a little reflection time. I had always thought that God would give me Thor—after all, I had done all this for Him! —but I needed to figure out a way to have him for myself.

However, as I entered the train and looked back, I had a premonition that I was leaving Thor for a long time. Cal had his hands tightly on his son’s shoulder, but Thor’s eyes were with me. I brushed the tears and thoughts away and boarded the train.

James was the same sweet and capable brother I remembered from the Show Group days. He knew a few very rich men in Paris who had already been given numerous women from the Family. When I arrived in Paris, these men wanted me too. Unfortunately, I slept with one of them before we found out that there was a venereal disease going around. When one of the women in our home got it, James took me to a private doctor in one of the fanciest areas of Paris.

I knew this must cost a fortune, and I imagined that one of our clients was paying. When I worked in the Show Group, the family members who were foreigners were issued the carte de sejour, which entitled us to free medical and social services. But my carte de sejour had not been renewed after the Show Group split up. Many of our foreign members received the carte de sejour by marrying French nationals, and all children born in France were given free medical services.

James noticed that I was a little apprehensive. I had not been to a doctor since Thor was born and I had needed stitches. He tried to put me at ease.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You can witness to the doctor, you know. He might be a sheep.” The doctor interviewed me extensively. He had already seen a number of us, and he was curious as to what was going on. I explained it all to him.

“You see, we believe that God supplies all the needs a man has. And if we say we love someone, then why should we not give that person sex as an expression of God’s Love?”

“But how do you choose to whom to give this sex?”

That was a tricky question for me, since of course, my leaders always chose for me, but I knew I should not reveal this to a stranger.

“Any one interested in knowing more about God’s Love can be shown love through sex,” I answered demurely.

“Do you get paid for this?” he asked.

“Oh, no, we never take money.”

“But some of the men I treated were obviously very rich men,” he said, realizing that he could be honest with me. “Surely, your group must target rich men.”

“Not really,” I replied, recalling my recent experience with the poor young student. “But often, it is the rich men who are most needy for God’s real love. Like the Bible says, it is harder for a rich man to go to heaven than for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle.” For some reason he seemed to accept this as a reasonable answer and nodded in agreement.

“Yes. You are in good health. Continue to take these pills, and see my secretary about getting the last appointment next Friday. I will have the rest of the lab reports in by then.” Friday I came after a full day of witnessing on the street selling literature. The lights were low in the waiting room, and there was no secretary. The doctor came out of his office in the back.

“Hello, Jeshanah. My secretary had to go somewhere tonight, so I let her off early. But this should not take long. Come back here.” I followed him to his formal office in the back.

“Well, you don’t seem to have anything. You are lucky.”

“Thank the Lord,” I said automatically.

“I was thinking, though. I am very interested in God, and would like to know more about His Love, as you explained it.” I looked at him for a second with distrust. He was a doctor. Why would he want to have sex with someone who had been to bed recently with men who had VD?

“Oh, who cares,” I thought. I had explained to him why we were doing this, and he didn’t seem interested in being witnessed to. He was a nice-looking man, and I wondered if he was married. Well, it didn’t hurt me to do this. I had recently been with men twice his age and size, and after those experiences, his trim, healthy body was a welcome sight.

However, it was my first experience with a “short version” of sexual witnessing. I thought it would be easier to give him oral sex, since we were in the office, and it was over in a few minutes. I left and never saw him again. If nothing else, my trip to Paris had shown me that I could make some of my own decisions.

After eight weeks in Paris, all I could think about was getting back to Thor. I decided to go back to southern France by train. Having become very independent living in James’s home, I knew I could make some decisions on my own. I tried calling Cal, but the phone had been disconnected. Thinking they did not have enough money to pay the phone bill, I wrote a letter saying when I would arrive. But when I arrived at the station in Nice, there was no one waiting for me. I tried Cal’s number again, but it was still disconnected. I knew he must have received my letter by this time, so I could not imagine why no one would be there to meet me. Finally, I decided to call our leaders in that area, Peter and Sheila.

“Hi, Jeshanah. Praise the Lord! It is good to hear from you. Where are you?” said a sweet voice on the phone.

“Well, I’m at the train station in Nice. I thought Cal would meet me, but no one is here. I guess I’ll take a bus to Ere.”

“Oh, no, honey,” said Peter, who had picked up another phone. “Haven’t you heard that they moved?” I felt like I had just taken a dagger in my heart.

“What do you mean moved? Where is Thor? Why wasn’t I told?”

“You wait right there and we will come get you,” said Sheila. She sounded truly concerned.

They arrived within half an hour. I then learned that Cal and the whole home had moved to a house in the mountains “somewhere,” and he did not want me to know where he was.

“I don’t care about Cal,” I cried anxiously. “I want to see my son. I haven’t been with him for over two months. I want to see him now!”

“Jeshanah, we are going to talk to Cal about this. You can stay with us for now. And we will try to work this out.”

“What do you mean try? You are the leaders here. If you say Thor should see me, than Cal has to obey.”

“Well, Mo is telling the leaders to try to persuade the disciples now, and not to command them. We are your servants, after all,” he replied, repeating by rote the words we had all read in the letters, but which I knew were lies. No leader had ever served me.

Being on my own in Paris, with James never telling me what to do, I had regained some of my former independent nature. This is one reason I never thought I was brainwashed. At some points of my life in the Family, I thought clearly, like the autonomous person I had always been. But I know I was manipulated, and these leaders knew exactly how to manipulate me right now through Thor.

“Jeshanah, honey, the Lord will take care of everything in His time,” said Sheila in a voice coated with honey. “Let’s pray about this together and find out what God’s Will is.” I didn’t need to find out what His Will was. I wanted to see Thor. It was never part of the agreement that Cal disappear with our son. That was unfair. The Family needed to help me. But I soon understood that they had their own agenda. Like so many times in my life, when I saw my walls of idealism crumbling before my eyes, I bent over to pick up the pieces.

There were still the ideals to be upheld, and even if Cal and the leaders were playing against me, I knew in my heart that what I did was for God. Surely, He would not let me down. This was a time to be “wise as a serpent, but harmless as a dove” (Matthew 10, 16), so I listened passively while my leaders talked to me. Rather than dealing with my heightened state of desperation to see my son, Peter told me I had been destined for a special mission to head up a home in Monaco.

I was biting my lip not to ask about Thor.

“Peter and I have access to a flat in Monaco for a few days. We thought you could come with us and we can go out together,” piped up Sheila excitedly. “Of course, eventually we will try to get visitation privileges for you to see Thor,” she said, as if she had read my mind, or maybe she was sensitive enough to see the pain written in my eyes.

“Jeshanah, I want you to realize that God is in control here,” added Peter. “This might be a hard saying, but I believe it is the Lord’s Will that Thor is away from you right now. This will give you more time for God’s work, and at least at the very beginning of this effort, we need you free from child-care responsibilities.” Peter had no idea how many times I had heard that same spiel while I was a dancer. How often had every leader who came through the Show Group in the three years of our heyday told me that I needed to forsake Thor for the work?

I had been accused of loving my son more than God many times, and despite my best efforts to do both God’s work and be a mother, it seemed that God was still jealous. Like the Bible said,“I, the Lord your God am a jealous God…and I will have no other Gods before me.” Did He really mean that my son could be a god?

“Remember how the Lord tested Abraham,” said Sheila. “He had to forsake Isaac, but he was given back.” I knew that Old Testament story. It was one of the stories I had the most trouble with. Why would a loving God want to test someone to that extent? Should I believe it? What choices do I have?

“I know, Sheila. I am repeatedly put to this test with my son,” I responded sadly.

“Well, maybe you haven’t gotten the victory yet,” replied Peter in his harsh leader-knows-all voice. “Maybe this will keep coming up until you finally forsake him in your heart.” His comment prompted me to see a vision of myself sitting on top of a spiked fence. Sitting on fences was a recurrent vision, since I had so much difficulty choosing.