Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult (31 page)

Cal and Mara joined us in Lancaster, and we rented a house and lived together for a few months while trying to raise money and decide which mission field to go to. My mother was terribly upset that we were living together, imagining the most horrible sexual transactions taking place, but actually, we never shared at all. Every one had their individual problems to keep them preoccupied. Paolo had plenty of money from the sale of the shop, but Cal was dead broke. In COG philosophy, we should have shared our money with Cal, but Paolo was not ready for that. He still had a hard time sharing his money with me.

None of us were particularly good friends, but friendship was not valued in the Family. I don’t think that any of us would have even kept company had we known each other outside of the Family. Our interests, likes, and dislikes were so different. But in the COG, all that mattered was God’s work, according to Family doctrine. As for me, I would do anything to stay near my son.

It soon became evident that Cal, now almost thirty years old, was not happy with Family policy. He had stopped sending in his 10 percent, and had started drinking and smoking. One day I found out that he was also smoking marijuana. Like many people who control their own negative urges by condemning them in others, I confronted him about his vices during morning devotions. I wanted everything to be laid out in the open so I knew where we were going. Cal stormed out of the room, and Mara looked at me sheepishly.

“You guys aren’t in the Family anymore, are you?” I asked, dumbfounded by my lack of discernment.

“Cal’s just having a difficult time,” she replied. I thought as she said this that she must really love him. How strange to love someone in the Family enough to support their shortcomings.

“Mara, you need to let me know. I have a new disciple I am trying to train. He can’t be seeing Cal smoke dope. What is happening with you two?”

“Okay,” she confided. “We both have trouble believing Mo now.”

“We always had trouble believing Mo,” I answered. “But what about serving God? Do you think the Family is still a legitimate alternative to the system or not?” Having had a recent taste of the system life, both with Paolo in Italy and now back in America, I concluded that the Family was still a better way of living. I didn’t like the loneliness of living in the so called world. Of course, I hardly had time to make friends, but with work and children to take care of, I didn’t see how any mother could have time for a social life. However, most of all, I didn’t think I could live a life without a goal, and I saw my goal as living for the Lord one hundred percent. No Christian church would take me in now. There was basically nowhere for me to serve the Lord but in the Family.

“You know that Cal has not been happy in the Family for quite some time,” continued Mara.

“Is he in or out?” I demanded to know.

“He wants some time to think about his life, about what he’s going to do, now that we will have two children.”

“Cal has three children. What does he plan on doing with Thor?” My heart was racing frantically. Cal had legal custody of Thor, and now he was planning to leave the Family. What would he do with Thor? It was my worst nightmare come true. I had not counted on Cal becoming a heretic—and having custody of my son.

“I’m going back to France to have my baby,” she said, ignoring my question. “Cal is going to stay with friends in California and raise some money.”

“I want to know what he is going to do with Thor!” I said more emphatically.

“You’ll have to talk to Cal about that,” she said, even though I was sure she already had discussed the matter with him.

Cal informed me later, after he had calmed down, that he would let me take Thor until he situated himself and his family. I knew that could take months or years. As long as I had Thor, life made sense.

Thor was now eight years old and had been to four different schools in his life, not counting the Family schools he had attended as a toddler.

He had lived in four countries and in over a dozen different homes. It was a lot of moving, I had moved often as a child also, but I had thus far never analyzed the psychological implications of that factor on my life. Thor made friends wherever we went, however, he was not doing well in conduct at school, which I attributed to the system’s poor way of teaching and disciplining. I started to teach Thor again at home, and when we moved, I did not put him back in public school.

Paolo and I bought a small travel trailer and, together with Thor and Athena, we started down the East Coast on our way to South America. On the way, we were joined by a COG family from Italy with four little kids who lived in a tent.

By the time we arrived in Florida, it was hot, humid, and buggy. We found a home in Miami that processed COG missionaries on their way to South America. The Italian family separated from us there, and started working on raising more funds, while we ended up in a trailer park in Jacksonville. Paolo went to work as a waiter, not wanting to sell literature on the streets. I stayed home with Athena and taught Thor.

When Paolo complained about my not making any money, I sold the gifts I had collected in Monte Carlo. I eventually sold all the jewelry, including the Cartier gold chain, and Salim’s painting. They brought in a lot of money, but much less than they were worth.

Our trailer had no air-conditioning, and poor little Athena was covered with heat rash. In addition, since she had suffered a high fever after her first vaccination, Paolo insisted that she have no more shots, and I was always afraid she would come down with some childhood disease she had not been vaccinated against. Paolo had become very strict about our diets and medical needs, fanatically embracing the Family’s policies of avoiding doctors. Although all my children have been relatively healthy, they also all went through the childhood diseases that most children were vaccinated against, such as measles, chicken pox, and whooping cough. While in Florida, Athena acquired a red rash all over her body, accompanied by a fever for three days, but I never knew what it was. By the time I took her to a doctor, she was already better.

Also, during our stay at the trailer park in Jacksonville, Thor came running home one day from the pool with his hand covering a profusely bleeding forehead. It was the first time I had left him at the pool under the care of a neighbor, since I’d had to run home and change Athena’s diaper. Paolo was away, and I didn’t drive, so a lady from the nearby trailer park store came to my rescue and drove us to a clinic, where I was relieved to hear that Thor’s cut could be sewn up with a few stitches.

Finally, I received a letter from Sharon, who told me that a new music ministry was being started in Puerto Rico. It was easy to obtain clearance to go to Puerto Rico, also, Family members could still collect food stamps there from the government. We put in our application for Puerto Rico and received the okay immediately. After selling the car, and leaving the trailer with a dealer to sell for us, we arrived in Puerto Rico in time for the ovenlike August weather.

Our first week in San Juan was spent in a tiny rented room with no air-conditioning. I lay on the bed in the shaded room with the fan blowing on me during the heat of the day, while Thor and Athena played in the wading pool we bought and put right outside the open door so I could watch them. I had to bring them in every twenty minutes so they would not get heat stroke. In the evening, I took the children for a walk on the beautiful beaches. Meanwhile, Paolo scouted San Juan for housing and work. Unless we lived in a home, Paolo would never understand how to live by faith. COG members did not work for money at that time, they sold literature on the streets or sang in restaurants and cafes. Since I could not speak Spanish, and I had to watch the children, I did not see how I could do either in this heat. Finally, I hit on an idea.

Paolo had always wanted to learn to play the guitar, and the Italian brothers we visited had started to show him a few chords. He had bought a guitar in Italy and brought it with him through all our travels. I convinced him to play a few chords while I sang—on the buses. The buses were air-conditioned, or had a good ventilation system, so it was better than keeping the children in the hot motel room. I took Athena in a stroller, and Thor collected up and down the bus aisle while Paolo played the guitar and I sang. After a few weeks, Thor started to sing with Paolo and they went out alone, since Athena often slowed us down.

I was worried about Paolo taking Thor out alone. There had been a few incidents when Paolo had hit Thor harder than I thought was necessary.

Thor had been his usual rambunctious self while we were on a long driving trip, and Paolo had reached the end of his patience and slapped Thor hard across the face. His mouth was bleeding, and I yelled at Paolo for hitting him so forcefully. Even though corporal punishment was condoned in the Family, we were supposed to talk to the children first, and let them know how they would be punished. In addition, I wasn’t sure if Paolo would watch my eight-year-old son well enough in the crowded San Juan streets. I never had the feeling that Paolo was as concerned about Thor as a father should be. He was not mean to him, but he was not sensitive to a young boy’s needs, such as when to take a break and when to buy him an ice cream.

During our first month in San Juan, we visited other colonies searching for a place to live. One evening we visited a large home outside San Juan where they were having a get-together for the members in the area.

I had not been in a regular Family home for years, and I was shocked at the filth and disarray of the house. The brothers and sisters were sweet, but somehow different from the Family I knew in Europe. I felt extremely uncomfortable, and I later learned that these were all people who had not received clearance to undertake a mission, so they congregated in Puerto Rico. Most of the members who could not obtain clearance were actually incompetent. Our socialist philosophy was to take anyone into the Family who believed in Jesus, wanted to forsake all and live communally, and would obey the Mo letters and leadership, but I now began to realize what difficulties that entailed. Some of our members had come from very poor, undereducated backgrounds, and we were not properly trained in social reeducation. Although some of these people eventually learned to clean up their houses, teach their children to read and write, and earn enough money to support the colony, many of them stayed in pretty much the same condition as when they joined—abject poverty. It was the first time I was aware of a huge class difference existing within the Family, and I was not sure of the causes or implications. After dinner, the leader of the home, a huge brother from Chicago, suggested we all put our names in a hat and pick a partner for the night. I declined, saying that we were not spending the night here, but he insisted that I at least share before going home. Paolo also was not interested in having sex with a name he picked out of a hat. We left before the names were chosen.

Within a few weeks, we found a couple to live with. They were clean, well-mannered people who had already received clearance to Argentina and were just staying to raise more funds. We moved to a small village called Humacao, rented a large, airy villa, and went singing in San Juan. This couple stayed pretty much to themselves in the second-floor apartment of the villa, and we never shared sexually.

Sexual policies, I learned, varied greatly from one Family home to the next, as well as at different time periods in the COG.

One day I got a call from the leader of a house that was underground.

“Hopie heard that you are in Puerto Rico,” the brother said. “She wants you to come up and visit us.” Once again, Hopie, Mo’s daughter, was my savior. A car was sent down for Paolo and me, and brought us to a campground situated on a beautiful mountain about an hour’s drive from San Juan. There were roughly twenty trailers and large living tents pitched under the trees, with a kitchen and a huge covered patio by a pool. It was a picture of heaven-on-earth, and seeing old friends just made it more celestial. There were a number of musicians from our Paris days, all of whom I knew well. Most were married now and had children. There were also singers and musicians from Italy whom I had met in my travels. Then there were the big leaders, whom everyone knew. It was definitely the place to be in the Family at this time.

The latest push in the Family was to recruit members back into the group. Flirting had been toned down now, we were giving sex only to men who were very influential or wealthy. The new, elite ministry in the Family was making videotapes of Family songs. This camp in the mountains of Puerto Rico was a gathering of our best talent, and more was on the way.

One of the significant “backsliders,” as we called them, who had been brought back to the Family by Hopie’s personal initiative was an extremely talented young man named Gabriel. He, along with all the other “prodigal sons,” were treated royally. They were given the best houses, the nicest clothes, use of the cars, and were instantly made leaders. Mo said we were to reach the world through music, radio, and television, and we needed good musicians, technicians, and others with entertainment-industry skills to do it. Gabriel was multitalented, and besides writing scripts, performing, and directing the shows, he was one of our most successful public relations men, opening doors in the South American music world that would have taken us years to even find.

For a short while in Puerto Rico, he was treated like a king. Many years later, he was to become one of the first victims of the “victor camps,” where rebels or leaders who had disobeyed Mo in some way were humiliated by verbal lashings and public spankings, forced to confess before the colony every “sin” they had ever committed, subjected to sleep deprivation and exorcism, and separated from any source of help.

However, that would come years later. In the camp near San Juan, our little paradise, it seemed like no harm could touch us!

With intelligent and capable people like Gabriel around, I began to have more faith in the Family again, and the depression and horrific conditions of the San Juan homes that I had recently witnessed were soon forgotten.