Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult (43 page)

We are in the master bedroom now. I can’t even hear the baby cry anymore, and I am about to give up, when I hear the baby breathing. I can hear her better than I hear my own breath, in fact, it feels like it is my breath I hear.

“No, she’s in here,” I say excitedly. “I hear her breathing. She might be on her last breath and she doesn’t have the energy to cry anymore.” Athena cannot hear it, but she believes me. I get down on my hands and knees since I think the sound is coming from below a great oldfashioned wardrobe. I peer underneath it, and there in the back is a tiny fragile baby, covered only with a small blanket and Lying on her stomach. I gently pull her out. She is so small she fits in one of my hands. Her skin is translucent and she is glowing like a star or a crystal. She is breathing very faintly, and I am thinking how wonderful it is that I have found her. I will take her home and nurture her back to health. I am filled with an amazing love for this glowing baby.

Just then, a man comes in downstairs. I look over the stairway and he comes up the steps. He is a sophisticated-looking man in a nice gray suit, but his face is without emotion. He is accompanied by a little lady, and he tells her to go up to the attic and shut the trap door.

Then he looks at me with an evil smirk, as he takes the baby out of my hands and throws her disinterestedly over his shoulder.

“So you found her,” he sneers. “Well, she’s mine. And now you are going to suffer for finding her.” I remember thinking that I should not have brought Athena with me. This seemed to be my destiny, and I should not have brought Athena into it.

I am overcome with such a fear for Athena that I wake up.

I wrote the dream down right away, but even in my wakeful state, I was strangely afraid, especially for my children. I told Thor the dream, and he thought I should see a Jungian psychologist, trained to interpret dreams.

In wonderful synchronization, my friend Ruth told me about a Jungian psychologist whom she knew in Paris and who now lived in our city. I contacted her and made an appointment.

The psychologist, a woman, forced me to draw the explanation out of myself. The house is myself, my life, and the baby is my soul, who has been abused and neglected for many years. I was forced out of my house by this man, and perhaps kept out of it at different times, in different situations, by different men, but now I was ready to come back in and take possession of my house. My soul had always known its birthing place. Now I had found my soul, and my journey was just beginning!

Meaning, purpose, understanding—they were mental processes, paths through the head, and I felt I could now learn the way of the heart.

This is my continuing journey!

The Swan Symbol of Paramatman (Supreme SeIt)

The Family

The following statistics were taken from a 1987 Children of God publication:

Total membership, 12,162 Number of COG homes worldwide, 1,080 Number of children, 6,470 Number witnessed to, 910,080 Number saved, 92,750 Number loved [through fishing], 218,722 (to date)

According to a COG publication from April 1990 (Stats Analysis):

Total membership, 18,000 Average number of children per couple, 4. 5

In May 1996 the Family distributed a publication in which they claimed that there was nothing wrong with “flirty fishing” since the motivation was not money or power, however, the practice was discontinued in 1997 in order to “emphasize other means of ministering the Word of God to others” (“Women in the Family”, 10). Those who left the Family after 1997 claim that although its use was greatly reduced, it was not completely eliminated. The Family does not deny that sexual sharing is still allowed among consenting adults. “A married member is free, after receiving the agreement of their spouse, to have sex with another partner” (“Women in the Family” , 18). However, certain boundaries have been established, No sexual contact between adults and minors, No male-with-male sexual activity (female-with-female sexual activity is allowed with mutual consent) No sex with those outside the family Sexual activity between adults must be done with full consent and done in private (“Women in the Family” , 19. This information can also be found on the Family’s website at www.thefamily.org).

Moses David reportedly died in 1994. Maria and a group of elders were given his position of absolute authority. Meanwhile, Maria suffers from an eye illness, which causes her great pain if she opens her eyes in the light. Therefore, she sees only in the dark, but she continues to write letters to the worldwide Family. Due to reorganization of the group, membership rules and regulations were tightened, and in a publication of 1996, the group, now called simply the Family, claimed it had 3,000 full-time adult volunteer members, 6,000 children, and 20,000 associates working in over sixty countries. This implies that there were close to 30,000 people associated with the Children of God in some way at that time.

I found an article on the Family’s website that stated,“Our present fellowship does not go by the Children of God name because that organization was literally dissolved…the Children of God movement represented a substantially different organization with a very different leadership” (1/9/98).

There are various websites that mention the Family. One of them, at www.religioustolerance.org, writes,“In 1987, incest and sexual abuse of children was specifically banned,” and “current membership estimates from non-COG sources vary from 9,000 to 12,000” (1/9/98).

This same site also states,“It is our assessment that accusations of criminal activities by the Family are unfounded…No evidence of sexual abuse of children was ever found…former members frequently refer to a book, the Story of Davidito, which was written by David, son of David Berg’s wife, Maria. Although the book does discuss his witnessing of sexual behavior within the group, and their encouragement of him to explore his own sexuality, there is nothing in the book related to adult molestation or abuse of children” (1/9/98).

I have access to the “Davidito” book, and have seen pictures of an adult child-care worker caressing Davidito’s private area when he was a child, and of Davidito, as a young boy, sucking on the breast of an adult woman. Perhaps this is not regarded as child molestation by the writers of the above-cited “objective” website on religious cults. As a social science student, I also try to be as objective as possible.

The following stories from young people are not an assessment but descriptions.

I cannot vouch for anything that happened in the Family after I left in 1988. Nor can I know what happened in homes other than where I lived.

However, I have heard hundreds of stories from adults and children who have left in the past ten years. Many talk of serious physical and sexual abuse. The evolutionary process of perversion in the Family is clearly established as people who won’t put up with sexual aberrations leave, and therefore only those who do remain. Many left with the first wave of sharing and “flirty fishing”, others, like myself, finally left when sexual abuse of children became an undeniable reality. I believe these reports are true since it would seem that those who remain have either denied the abuse consciously or unconsciously, or believe it is acceptable. As I hear the stories of children and parents separated indefinitely, corporal punishment in public of teenagers and adults, mind manipulation, sleep and food deprivation, and more, I wonder how a person can ever hope to live a sane life again. Then I remember—this is also my story and my hope!

Here, at the end of my story, I want to tell you what happened to the various players in this story, some who woke up to life and some who didn’t.

Later the Family Esther, the unknowingly wicked Queen in this tale, was reportedly excommunicated by Moses David, her father, in the late 1970s. According to her own account, she was ultimately expelled from the Family because she did not want to give in to his incestuous desires toward her. All of her children and the man considered her mate at the time left with her.

She wrote a book about her experiences as Mo’s daughter, The Children of God, The Inside Story (1984), which was published by a Christian publishing house. I read her book and realized that she too had been victimized, but I am disappointed that Esther did not acknowledge the extent of her own role as victimizer and abuser of the immense power entrusted to her as our “Queen.” Perhaps she had not yet found answers to her most tormenting questions at the time she wrote the book. Today she is associated with a strict fundamentalist group in California.

Rahab, who had married Esther’s brother, the one who “fell” off a mountain in Switzerland, left the Family and became a nurse. However, her oldest daughter, Hannah, who is Mo’s granddaughter and Esther’s niece, remained in the Family until a few years ago. This young woman, who was left without parents and raised in Mo’s house, wrote about her ordeals in an ex-cult newsletter, No Longer Children (November

1992).

Her sad testimony reveals that she endured dozens of intrusive sexual encounters with her grandfather, the first before she was twelve years old. She wrote that she was beaten with a rod, spanked in public at fourteen years of age, tied to her bed at night, and accused by Mo of being possessed by Satan himself. Hannah eventually wound up in a mental institution in Macao and was sent to California to live with her grandmother (Mother Eve), who no longer lived in the Family. Today she lives with her aunt Esther, for reasons I cannot fully explain, instead of with her birth mother, Rahab, who finally found her lost daughter.

Jacob, Esther’s first husband, a top leader of the group, and the one who “helped” me by committing adultery with me, left the group with his second wife, the wealthy former socialite, Pearl. They are now divorced, and Jacob runs a prosperous business in America.

Coincidentally, many of his early employees were teenagers who had recently left the Family.

When Jacob attended the 1994 reunion for ex-COG members, I heard from others present that he had apologized for his shortcomings as a leader in the Family. I was not in the room when this was said to have happened, however, I talked with him for a short period in private, and he never said he was sorry for what he did to me. I did not mention it to him.

Ruth, the young southern belle whom I first met in Ellenville and who worked with me in Paris, had also been separated by Jacob from her first husband, the father of Thor’s childhood friend Chiara. Jacob had attempted to include her in his growing harem in Italy, but instead she was sent to Paris to be part of the Show Group, and was one of our first women given in marriage to a “king,” in this case to our music producer.

She eventually left the Family due to what she calls a moral decision—the Family no longer needed her husband, but they expected her to leave him and return to become one of the flirty recruiters. She broke contact with the group and stayed with the French producer, who was now the father of two of her children. After what she calls “one of the longest-lasting flirty-fishing’ experiences in the Family (eighteen years),” she, too, following years of emotional, psychological, and even physical abuse while trying to be a “good Christian wife,” decided to leave her husband. With three children she made her way back to her hometown in America, arriving from France about a year after I did.

Ruth has recently returned to college, pursuing degrees in foreign languages and psychology, and she is very interested in trying to understand the disparate reactions of ex-members upon leaving the Family. From her own experience, she has become aware that there are many women like herself who leave the Family and fall into similarly controlling and abusive situations, which tend to perpetuate the experiences that they had while in the cult. Ruth, like myself, is seeking a way to use her own cult experience and subsequent journey to self-awareness as a source of help to the many who leave and who find themselves totally lost in a world they have not been prepared to live in, especially those who were born and raised in the group.

Jon, my former dance partner who traveled with me to Nice and Rome, left the group and started a new life with his family in California.

He returned unabashedly to a gay lifestyle, but he kept up a warm and loving relationship with his wife and children. They eventually divorced amicably. When he read an article I wrote for a reunion newsletter, he called me and said he was hurt that I did not say hello to him in my regards to various former members.

James, the most lenient leader I ever met in the Family, and whose home I stayed at while in Paris, left COG and returned to his hometown in Canada. His wife remained in the cult, but he took his two oldest children with him and raised them for many years as a single father.

Today he owns his own music video production company, and he sends me original compilations of music tapes for inspiration. James understood that I am soothed and nourished by music, and thanks to his concern, I now listen to more than Bob Dylan.

Abraham, the unfortunate former husband of Breeze (who as far as I know is still in the Family), left with a Frenchwoman he recruited into the group. They had two children and lived in Texas until she divorced him and married a wealthy Texan. Abe became a “Dead Head” and followed the Grateful Dead around America while selling tie-dyed T-shirts. He visited my home when the Dead played where I lived in 1992.

Gabriel, the multitalented musician who was recruited back into the Family in Puerto Rico, stayed with the cult until 1992. His wife was mated to another brother and lived in a separate home so that Gabriel could be free to use his business and technical talents for the group around the world. Living with top leaders, Gabriel became one of the first victims of the “victor camps,” which were set up in the early 1990s to break anyone who still had a strong-willed spirit. After what he described as “incredibly harsh methods of mental, psychological, emotional, and even physical abuse,” the leaders in Japan finally gave him a ticket to return to his parents, since they suspected he was about to become a serious mental problem. After months of therapy, Gabriel spent a few years attacking the Family publicly in television interviews in the United States and in countries where he had lived, but his emotional state and mental condition by this time were so strained that he gave up his fight. After he admitted on national television to engaging in pedophilia, in the hopes that his confession would convince the authorities that the Family should be investigated, his plan backfired and he was depicted as a pervert by the cool, calm, and well-trained Family public relations men. Gabriel spent the rest of his life on prescription drugs and committed suicide in June of