Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult (36 page)

“I’m only in it because of Paolo,” I said. “I don’t have many choices in my life.”

“I feel sorry for you sometimes,“said Jerry, as he shook his head. “But don’t worry, Thor knows enough about the Family to never want to join it. Just keep him away from the leaders—okay?” Naomi had put Jerry’s faith in his son to the test by enticing him to join us, and Thor had passed with flying colors. I remember controlling my urge to tell Naomi to back off, and I watched to see what would happen.

Looking into my son’s bright eyes, I saw him weigh the lifestyles in his quick, observant young mind, and he decided the system had more to offer him. I was truly happy about his decision.

Maybe he could make it out in the world. Obviously I could not!

During the time that Naomi and Samson were in Pordenone with us, another couple, on their way to serve God in Eastern Europe, had stopped by our home for an extended stay. Paolo and I were away taking Thor back to his hometown. We stayed longer than planned, with the excuse that we were making money singing with my son along the coast.

When we returned, I discovered that the other couple’s four-month-old baby was terribly sick. The poor Italian mother was holding the baby, who looked like a limp rag doll, draped over her outstretched arms. In her pain and despair, the mother recognized that I could help her.

“Don’t let the children come in here,” I said to Paolo as he opened the kitchen door, having parked our RV in the field by the fountain.

“There’s a sick baby, and I want to find out what’s wrong. ” Fortunately, I had just been in Genoa, where the story of a small child in the Family who had died from meningitis a few months earlier was still the major topic of discussion and prayer. I had researched the symptoms, and this baby, Lying almost dead with an extreme fever, seemed to have the same condition.

“We’re taking care of this,” barked Naomi, who came in from the living room and ordered the mother to take the baby back upstairs to the cold and drafty second floor. “It’s none of your business, of course, but we have been praying about this situation with the baby’s father. The Lord has shown us that the mother has a spiritual sin which needs to be confessed, and then the baby will be healed.”

“Oh? What sin does she have?” I asked, curious as to what reasons they thought God would have to let a baby and mother suffer so.

“She is rebellious to her husband.”

“Well, I don’t believe it. I don’t think God is keeping that baby in pain because the mother has problems with her husband. I want that baby to see a doctor. Right now! Do you know what meningitis is? Do you have any idea how quickly a baby can die from it? And did you know that your own children, Naomi, might be exposed to this terrible disease right now?”

“My children are protected,” Naomi said rather weakly.

Just then her husband, Samson, came in. He spoke directly to Paolo.

“I think you need to take Jeshanah out of here. She is standing in the way of God’s work.”

“Oh, how ridiculous! How can anyone stand in the way of God’s work?” I was furious, and I was going to get that baby to a hospital if I had to drive it myself. But I had not driven a car for over twenty years, and I had no license. I would have to go for the jugular vein— the dreaded authorities.

“Paolo,” I cried, turning to my confused husband. “Do you realize that this house is legally in your name as the only Italian resident? These foreigners are your guests, and you are liable if this baby dies in this house and you did nothing about it.” I didn’t know if that was true or not, but it could have been.

Both Paolo and Samson had a shocked look on their faces.

“We’re going to pray with the father about this again,” said Samson, taking Naomi with him upstairs.

Paolo asked that I go out into the RV and stay with the children. In a few minutes I saw the baby, the mother, father, and Paolo get into the car and drive off. I went into the house.

“The Lord showed us it was time to take the baby to the hospital,” said Naomi without looking up at me.

Thankful, I went back to the RV and put my children to sleep without dinner, reading them a story and holding them close. Paolo returned hours later with the news that the baby did indeed have meningitis, but it was hopeful that the baby’s life could be saved.

Later, after the baby and his mother had spent two weeks in the hospital, a visiting sister told me that the doctor had looked at a picture of Jesus hanging up on the wall and pointed to it.

“You can thank Him that this baby lived,” he said dramatically, “because this was a miracle.” The baby’s parents never came back to our home. The father implied at other homes that I had interrupted God’s work of making his wife submissive, and that it might take years before she learned that lesson again. Clearly, here was a father willing to sacrifice his son. I wondered if he too had been quoted the story of Abraham? Did he imagine that God was going to stop this baby from dying at the last minute because he would obey God’s voice and give him up willingly? What would that prove? But the mother of the baby sent me a message, through a sister, saying that she was grateful that I’d saved her baby’s life.

This experience not only had given me further insight about my own strength—which Salim had seen but I never did—it also prepared me to stand up to any leader who came our way. This fearlessness in the face of leaders was not enough, however. There were more lessons for me to learn. There was still the struggle between God’s Will and free will to be resolved. Before Thor had been kidnapped, I had not believed I possessed any free will once I submitted my own will to God’s. Now I fluctuated between what I was told was God’s Will and what I felt was my own free will, however, as long as I continued to think in terms of this dichotomy, of only two polar opposites from which to choose, that fence-sitting vision that disturbed my thoughts at inopportune times would always bother me.

After Naomi and Samson left for Yugoslavia, we were graced with the presence of Emma, the former wife of Jeremy Spencer, who had now become an artist in the Family and was living underground somewhere in the world. Emma was the mother of five or six children with Jeremy and another three with her new mate, Giacomo. I was curious to find out about her oldest children and how they had fared being raised in the Family.

“Where is Teddy now?” I asked when she first arrived, wondering about her oldest son, whom I had watched as a child and who was now about eighteen years old. I had read nothing about him for a long time in Family News letters.

“Oh, Teddy has forsaken God and the Family,” she replied coldly. “He backslid in the Philippines, and I don’t know where he is now.” Emma, who had once been a top adviser on motherhood in the Family, with responsibilities for organizing our best schools and nurseries, now seemed tragically unconcerned about her own offspring.

“Don’t you have any contact with him at all?” I asked, projecting the pain I felt about my own son onto the concern I felt for poor little Teddy.

“No. He has chosen his path. No child has had as much opportunity for spiritual growth in the Family as Teddy has had, besides Davidito of course. And if he has rejected the Lord’s work to follow in the steps of Satan, he’ll have to make it on his own. Of course, I pray for him, but really, it’s in the Lord’s hands now.” The fact that Emma could talk so objectively about the loss of her firstborn gave me chills that penetrated deeply into my heart. I remembered how devoted she was to Teddy and her little girl when I lived with her years ago in Ellenville. I never trusted her again, and I tried to keep my own children as close to me as possible. Such a cold, hard attitude was certainly not conducive to raising healthy kids. Her “good” children received special attention and had become quite snobby. The little girl who was about Athena’s age bragged about her singing exploits in India, and showed off her beautiful In than said. When we visited the nursing homes, however, the little girl was either too shy, or too aloof, to hold the feeble, wrinkled hands of the old people, as Athena did naturally.

Later, I discovered that Emma’s oldest daughter, now in her late teens, already had two children, no husband, and was living somewhere in the Far East. Her fourteen-year-old, Andrew, whom they had brought with them to our home, was under constant condemnation because he had not been accepted into the coveted Family teen camp in Hong Kong, where his younger brother now lived. Emma let us all know that Andrew had some serious spiritual problems, but that with God’s help, he might work on them and be accepted next year.

The teen camps were just starting up, and so far were only in the countries in the Far East, where we had many disciples and where most of our leaders were. Mo’s own son, Joshua, who had a few teens himself, headed the huge teen home in Hong Kong, which we read about in our Family News. There the teens, most of whom had been raised in the Family and never attended system schools, were taught skills like carpentry, had computer training, and learned to play musical instruments. There was little emphasis on academic education.

Evidently, there was some kind of admission procedure to go to teen camps, which I was not interested in since I never planned to send my kids to any of them.

I took Andrew out witnessing and provisioning with me whenever I could.

He seemed to enjoy my freedom and spoke openly with me.

“I want to be a truck driver when I grow up,” he told me one day.

“But we don’t have truck drivers in the Family,” I replied.

“I know,” he answered, looking at me with hurt, inquisitive eyes. He was a tall, handsome boy who probably had superior intellectual abilities that had never been stimulated. “It’s the only thing I’ve been taught to do, though, since I am not a musician. I drove a truck when we lived in the Philippines.” I realized that he meant he would leave the Family, just like his older brother, Teddy. We were told not to talk about Teddy around the children, and since I didn’t want to bring up painful memories I changed the subject.

We talked at length about the possibilities “out in the world,” and I was pleased that my own son had all those opportunities to choose from as well. Sooner or later, I would have to come to terms with choices in my other children’s lives, but for now, they were safely innocent and ignorant of adult decisions and mistakes. Much later, I found out that Andrew had indeed left the Family and enrolled in college to study theater. Truck driving is a legitimate career path, of course, but I felt that the quiet, sensitive Andrew had other talents to offer the world.

With so many children already in our home, I was anxious about not becoming pregnant again. The Family policy was still “no birth control” of any kind, and my husband Paolo was strictly adhering to that rule.

Since we rarely went to doctors, I did not know what was available in the social health system in Italy, so I tried the rhythm method again, and again, I became pregnant.

It was September 1986. I was thirty-three years old, giving birth to my fifth child in a hospital in Pordenone. The nurses were excited, since I had agreed to use a new birthing chair they had bought and none of the local Italian women would try it out. I told them I would much rather sit during birth than lie down. When the contractions came hard and strong, they put me in the chair, only no one had taken the time to figure out the complicated stirrup and strap system. The cold metal felt icy next to my hot, sweaty skin, and while they tried adjusting the stirrups up and down and over again, I held my legs open, pressed tightly to the sides of my bloated stomach, and pushed and pushed. Out came my second son.

Paolo wanted to give him an Italian name, so we called him Michelangelo, after the great Florentine painter.

After Emma’s departure, we enjoyed a few months of raising our children with a few lowly but sweet family members. Our peace was short-lived, with the unfortunate arrival of two new leaders. Judah was an American who claimed to have a degree in journalism. He was a cynical man and his large, bearded face showed little sign of empathy or compassion.

His wife, Anna, a thick-skinned Italian beauty, had not borne children gracefully. Thankfully, we never shared with any of these Family members since we were supposedly not engaging in any sexual sharing between couples due to the venereal diseases that were spreading around the Family. Adults entering Europe from Eastern countries were particularly told not to share at all. On the other hand, the letters about having sex with underage teens were explicit. A series of letters supposedly written by Mo about a fictional future endtime supergirl named Heaven’s Girl was circulating among our teens.

In these illustrated letters the young teen has multiple sexual relationships with men of all ages. With each new letter that arrived, I became more worried. Heaven’s Girl became a sex fanatic. Then a new series titled Heaven’s Girl was sent out with an artist’s depiction of Mo in bed with a teenager. I confronted our new leaders immediately on their opinions of these letters. They were conveniently vague.

“What do you think?” asked Judah, without batting an eyelid.

It was a moment of truth and I failed miserably. If I confessed that didn’t approve of Mo or any adult man sleeping with teenagers, I might as well leave the Family, which was an option I had not yet discussed with my husband. Paolo and I never talked about the implications of these letters. Parents in the Family had become like the people we had despised when we were young revolutionaries—those who “turn their head, pretending they just don’t hear,” as Bob Dylan says in “Blowing in the Wind.” I wanted to make sure my own children were safe now, and later I would address the issue of what was going on in other homes. At the same time, by accepting a deviant collective conscience, I was beginning to doubt my own virtue.

“I think it’s Dad and Mamma’s business what they do in their household. He is supposed to be the Prophet. But I don’t want my girls exposed to adult sex. Is that clear?” I answered.

“Don’t you think that Mo is God’s Prophet for the Endtime?” asked Anna, completely avoiding the question.