Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult (33 page)

In a state of near hysteria, I was taken by Paolo back to the Family in San Juan.

Paolo took me inside the home and I sat down while he talked to the leaders, handing them an envelope Cal had given him. They called the camp and then explained to me what had happened.

“Jeshanah, listen! He took Thor for good. He’s not bringing him back.”

“He can’t do that! I have Thor’s passport, he can’t get out of here without it.” The home leaders came back into the room and opened the envelope. It was a letter from Cal.

“He has been to the police already,” they explained,“and he is threatening to give away our locations and everything he knows about the Family if you don’t give him Thor’s passport.”

“But he doesn’t know where the camp is,” I protested. Athena was crying now, and I tried to nurse her but no milk came. The leader’s wife took her.

“He knows enough,” he said. “You guys should stay here tonight. They will call in the morning.” I looked around in bewilderment. Were they going to let Thor be taken from me? Forever, like Cal said?

Wasn’t Thor worth saving?

What’s wrong with these people? This is my son! I looked to Paolo for help, but he didn’t respond. I didn’t know what he was thinking— I never did! Was he going to help me or not? Could I count on him when my emotional energy was depleted?

“No! No! You can’t make me do it,” I screamed hysterically.

“You need to get a good night’s sleep,” said the leader’s wife, who had already laid Athena down in a baby cot. We were given a space in a spare room.

I couldn’t close my eyes. Athena and Paolo slept all night, but I stayed awake, rocking myself as tears flowed down my cheeks. Maybe in the morning, I would hear that Cal had changed his mind. Maybe Thor would refuse to go with him. Maybe the leaders would force Cal to make concessions to me. All I wanted was a promise that Thor could see me.

I would go back to Italy. I would not go to South America, not if Thor was on another continent. There would be a change in the morning, I was sure of that. “Sorrow lasts for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” That’s what the Bible said. Still, I stayed awake all night praying and weeping.

We heard the next day that all the top leaders had fled the island during the night. There was too much bad publicity about the Children of God and many angry people in America were looking for the leaders, many of whom were right here in our camp. Groups like the one called Free COG, standing for “Free our children from the Children of God,” and deprogrammers, who kidnapped adult COG members and tried to un-brainwash them, were becoming more powerful. In addition, individual Family members were now embattled by lawsuits from mothers or fathers who had left the COG but whose spouse and children were still in. Cal had a lot of information about us— leaders’ legal names and addresses and what they looked like—and they were afraid. They suggested that I give Cal whatever he wanted. Hopie, who had also left the island, sent a special message saying that it was all in God’s hands, and if I trusted Him, He would give me the desires of my heart.

At that time, I did not mind that they left. I knew that the top leaders always protected their identity and location, but I couldn’t believe what they were asking me to do. Paolo drove up to the camp to get the passport and some of Thor’s clothes. Meanwhile, Cal called and talked to the leader at the home. Cal had been in San Juan about a week, studying the movement in and out of the San Juan house, which he found by following a brother home from the post office. He had called to make sure we would be there with Thor that night, then he and his brother had planned the kidnapping. He wasn’t about to make any deals, and all the chips were stacked on his side of the table. I was in a state of shock when Paolo took me to the airport to meet with Cal. I still hoped that I could persuade him to change his mind.

Cal met me alone at the planned location, without Thor. He said he thought it would not be good for Thor to see me in this state. I was a wreck from being up all night and day crying.

“Cal, you can’t do this to me,” I pleaded.

“You were going to do it to me,” he responded spitefully. He was a different person from the one I had left a year ago. He was tough and much more sure of himself.

“No, I wasn’t going to keep Thor away. I wanted to work something out with you.”

“What could we work out? You are in the Family, and I am not. You want to live in South America, and I live in France.”

“I would not have gone to South America.”

“That’s what you say now. But you would have taken him and disappeared. Why didn’t you send him back with the ticket I sent you?”

“I know it looks bad, but I was afraid to send him. I didn’t have any proof that you would let me see him again.”

“You’re probably right. I don’t want Thor having any contact whatsoever with this perverted cult you’re in. You guys are nuts. Your leaders are all f ing perverts. Where are your leaders now, huh? They’ve all left you by yourself, haven’t they?” I couldn’t listen anymore. I knew he was right, but what could I do?

Agree with him? It wouldn’t get me Thor back. And what about Paolo and Athena? I held my head together as if to stop it from exploding.

Like Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, I seemed to have been left without a choice.

There was no road open to take. I would have to forge one for myself, but not now. I was too weak, too confused, too close to the edge!

Knowing he was taking Thor for good, right now, this very instant was all that mattered. I turned to Paolo for help.

“Paolo, do something!” I cried. “Find out where he’s going. Please don’t let him take Thor without knowing where he’s going?”

I sat on the nearest bench and buried my face into my hands while Paolo gave Cal the passport and suitcase. Paolo had let me down. He did nothing at all. Maybe he liked his position in the Family now, near top leadership. Maybe he just never liked having Thor around, a bothersome, constant reminder that I had been married to someone else.

But I had helped Paolo in his darkest hour. Now, I wanted and needed his help in my darkest minute, and he did nothing! I would have to take care of myself! They were gone! My beloved had been yanked out of my heart and it was bleeding profusely. Would I become a zombie like Sharon? Was that how God did it? After all, the Family did not plan this one. Lifeless, I let Paolo take me back to the San Juan home.

I didn’t want to see anyone. I stayed in the little room they had given us for two days and two nights. Not even Athena could make me come out.

I nursed her and handed her back to Paolo to take away.

After crying all the tears I had left, I lay folded up in the fetal position, praying to die. Then I stopped praying, and anger took the place of any false hope I had stored for God to do something. I was given messages from the leaders that God wanted me to sacrifice Thor as a test, and He would give him back. However, not one of my friends from the camp came to comfort me. During those tortured, guilt-ridden days of passing judgment on myself, the Family, and the world, I finally came to a verdict.

This was not between me and the Family, I told myself. It was between me and God. What kind of God would ask Abraham to sacrifice his only son? Why put a man to a test like that? I had tried to understand the reasoning, and as long as I had not been so intimately touched, I could.

But no longer. I had found at least one truth in my heart. I could not trust a God who would ask this of me!

I went to my knees and raised my clenched fists upward.

“I am not a man!” I cried. “I am a mother! And I won’t pass that test. I won’t even take it! I will not sacrifice my son!” I dropped to the floor, and while a coat of scales fell from my soul like a snake’s skin being discarded, I closed my eyes and slept for the first time in three days.

Living in the LookingGlass Mirror

After Thor had been kidnapped in Puerto Rico, I told Paolo that with or without him, I was going back to France to look for my son. At first he tried to convince me to stay, but when he saw that I actually meant it—that I would leave without him—he said he wanted us to stay together.

We sold our trailer to some Family members, who I think gave us money for it because they were glad to see me leave, and together with Paolo’s leftover funds we had enough to buy standby tickets back to Italy.

It was February 1982, and I was almost thirty. In a French village above Monte Carlo, we stayed in the converted garage of a lady friend I had known before we left. While Paolo scouted around for business opportunities, I rested at home and watched Athena. In the evening he drove me to the Loew’s Hotel, where I landed a job as a cocktail waitress.

Our plan was to save some money, borrow some more, and open a health food store in Italy. Paolo had become interested in health food nutrition while in the Family, and there was a trend toward healthy living under way in Italy. Meanwhile, I wrote a letter to Salim, explaining that my son had been kidnapped by my ex-husband, and asking for his help.

His lawyer called me within a few days and told me they had hired a private detective to locate Thor. I knew only that he probably lived in France. They had moved from the place where I had sent mail and left no forwarding address. I did not know Mara’s legal name, or the name of her parents, but I did know Cal’s legal name. While I waited to hear again from Salim’s lawyer, I lived an anxious, limbolike existence between the piano bar in Loew’s and the garage-home outside of Monte Carlo. One night a man, who had appeared two evenings in a row, stayed late, following me with his eyes.

It was almost closing time, and I brought him his check. Without taking his eyes off my face, he reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a badge. I looked at it briefly and then looked at the silly, I’m-in-control expression he wore.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “That you don’t have to pay?” The grin fell quickly from his face.

“I think you know what this means,” he replied in a thick French accent. “We don’t want you in Monaco. I think I’ve made my point. ” I left my station and clocked out, deciding to leave by the underground employees’ entrance and call Paolo from another location. As I walked through the well-lit streets of Monte Carlo, I recalled the many nights I had walked those same streets with Sharon and Breeze. It seemed like another world ago. It was.

Paolo had found a suitable location for a store near the popular seaside town of San Remo. He borrowed money from relatives to open the store on a shoestring budget, and we lived in a small room in the back.

I spent the next few months helping Paolo set up an herb and natural food store. While waiting for customers, I wrote, scribbling in pen and ink on looseleaf paper reams of fictional stories. They were all eventually put in the trash, having been written more as a kind of personal therapy than for anyone to read.

Finally, I heard from the lawyer. They had located Cal, who now went by his legal name, Jerry. He lived and worked in Canet Plage, near Perpignan, which was on the other side of France, by the Spanish border.

“He says you can never see your son again,” the lawyer told me matter-of-factly. “He tells me that you are in a strange cult that abuses children, and that your son was abused by you and others in this cult. Is that true?”

“He was in the same cult as I was,” I replied. “But I am not in it anymore.”

“Does he know this?”

“No. I can’t write to him to let him know. I don’t have any way to communicate with him.”

“I will let him know. I will see what we can work out. But you must be telling me the truth. Are you out of this cult?”

“Yes,” I replied truthfully. We had not written to the Family or heard from them since we had left Puerto Rico almost a year ago.

I waited anxiously for weeks. Finally, I received a call from the lawyer. She said that Jerry had agreed to talk with me, and if it was all right, she would give him my phone number.

Jerry called about a week later. After discussions back and forth, which lasted for over a month, he said I could come and visit Thor.

But he included a long list of do’s and don’ts. I agreed to anything he said.

We planned for me to take the trip during the Christmas season.

Paolo’s shop would be less busy during the quiet time after the holidays when everyone had already spent their money. Since I was now eight months pregnant, Paolo thought Athena should stay with him. I took the long train trip by myself, hardly seeing the beautiful French scenery as I envisioned my first encounter with Thor in over a year.

Jerry met me at the train by himself. He wanted to talk with me awhile to be sure how I was doing and that I would not cause any emotional scenes. I assured him that I would do exactly as he told me, and I would not weep in front of Thor. When I entered the small town house they had rented, I saw Thor playing with his half sister in the yard.

He had grown tall and thin, but he still had his distinctive red hair.

All his babyness was completely gone, and he portrayed a maturity that I had never recognized before. I felt as if I had lost my little boy forever.

But when he turned around and looked at me, all his childlike innocence came rushing back into him, as if a floodgate had been opened. With love in his eyes that only I could recognize, as his natural mother, he came running to me and jumped into my arms. My big stomach was in the way, but that didn’t stop him.

“Whoa. Your mother’s pregnant, son.” said Jerry firmly. “Calm down and act like a man.” Thor disregarded what his dad said, as he told me excitedly of things he had done since moving to France. He took me to his room, where he had a set of mechanical toys, which he had made into some sort of flying vehicle. He pulled out a game board that could be converted into about twelve different games, and after explaining how each one was played, he asked me which I wanted to start with. I played with him for hours, as I observed his happy face and remembered that he had never been allowed to play with toys in the Family. Toys were something systemites gave their children to hook them on material things. It was a ploy of the devil. If so, the devil knew how to make children happy. Thor’s face was radiant, and I hoped that some of it was because he was glad to see me.