Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult (8 page)

I found it humorous that he talked about food. Maybe he was always hungry like most of the boys here.

“Do you want my food?” I said. “I’m not hungry.” He took it and ate while telling me more of his past life as a sinner.

“Do you have a mother?” I asked, tears again forming in my eyes.

“Sure I do.”

“Do you ever get to talk to her?”

“Yeah. I write to her, and I call when I go to New York.”

“Well, I haven’t talked to my mother since I came here,” I cried. “And I don’t even know what day it is. Has Christmas passed yet?”

“You mean you haven’t called your mother for Christmas and you’re a babe? Babes are supposed to call their parents. Who is your tribe leader anyway? She’s supposed to take care of that.” He got up and walked down the hall and up those forbidden steps to the second floor. In about ten minutes a leader whom I knew as Hosea came down and talked with me. He and his wife were about my age, but they dressed and looked like corporate managers. I learned later that they did our public relations work. He told me that his wife was coming down so I could call my mother, and if I wanted to, we could go visit her. It turned out that Christmas had passed two days earlier.

This calculated act of apparent kindness probably kept me in the Children of God. I was ready to leave and forget about serving the Lord, even if I was a “chosen one,” as they said. At that time, I did not realize they were allowing me to do something that was my right to do all along, and pathe ically, I was touched by their love and concern for me. In addition, I ashamedly felt that this longing to return to my “flesh family,” as they called it, was really a selfish desire for clean sheets, healthy food, and more sleep. The lessons they had been teaching me, such as to beware of natural inclinations, to rebuke the devil, and to seek godly counsel, became clearer.

Hosea and his wife drove me home the next day as promised. My mother had been terribly worried about me, but fortunately, Daisy had called her mother, so she knew that I was living somewhere in upstate New York.

My whole family was amazed that I was quitting college to join a commune, since I had been talking about school as long as they could remember. However, as usual, my mother let me do what I wanted, even though she tried to discourage me. She really didn’t know what this group was about, but she seemed relieved that they were at least “Christian.” My father was not around at that time, and I never knew what he thought since I had absolutely no communication with him.

My older brother, Steve, was home when we arrived in Lancaster. Hosea witnessed to him about Jesus, and when we left the next day, Steve decided to come with us. I also packed up everything from my personal possessions that Hosea thought the Family could use.

When we stopped for gas on the way up, Steve got out of the car to smoke a cigarette. Hosea stopped him.

“If you want to come with us, Steve, you need to stop smoking, drinking, and drugs, right now.” I watched the interaction intensely.

I knew Steve had been smoking for years, and he probably was hooked on a few drugs.

“Okay,” he said, and threw the pack of cigarettes into the trash.

Steve was separated into the boys’ area when we got to the camp, and I hardly spoke with him after that. I heard that he was “growing in the Spirit” and had already memorized about half of the set card. By New Year’s Eve, he was chosen, along with me, to go on a trip to New York City to witness and recruit new disciples.

We were taught witnessing tips on the way down by one of the leaders at the camp. James looked to be in his late twenties, a handsome man who was originally from New York. While he instructed us on the best places to witness and what areas to stay away from, he opened a gallon bottle of wine, and we all received about half a cup to warm us up. I learned that there is nothing wrong with drinking wine, as long as you don’t drink too much. After all, Jesus’ first miracle was to turn water into wine. I didn’t have to worry about getting too much. This was my first and last half-cup until I got married, six months later.

I liked James. He was not as strict as the other leaders, and he did not praise the Lord as long as everyone else did, going on and on indefinitely. When we said our prayers before leaving the bus, he said a short prayer and let us out.

I was paired with an older sister while Steve went with an older brother. This was my first time outside the camp other than the trip home. My older sister was relatively lenient, and she did not want to stand out in the cold as much as I did not want to, so we spent a lot of time walking in the hotels. I went to the bathroom once and stuffed a half-used roll of tissue into my bag. It would be used later to supplement the three sheets of toilet paper we were allowed to have when we went to the bathroom at the colony. All the time I was out, I wondered if my brother would come back to the bus.

Due to the extreme confusion caused by the celebrating crowds around Times Square that night, it was ridiculous to try to witness, which consisted of talking to isolated people about Jesus. Returning to the bus early, I waited anxiously for Steve to come back. Finally, he got on the bus, wearing a Cheshire cat grin.

“Hey, man, this stuff is real.” he said. “Man, I was tempted at every corner to split. I mean, I know plenty of places in New York to score drugs, but, man, I couldn’t do it.” I was so happy. Seeing my brother free of drugs was worth any sacrifice on my part.

Living in the COG during those early days was like learning a whole new way of life. I was eventually told the story of how Moses David formed the group from a band of Jesus People in California in 1968. By the time I joined in 1971, there were COG communities all over the United States, the largest ones being the Texas Soul Clinic, which I had seen on the documentary film, and the one in Ellenville where I was now living. A few months before, Moses’ natural children had taken over a large Jesus People commune in Georgia, called the House of Judah. Most of the people who joined with that community were now leaders at different colonies.

We had a few of them in New York, but most of our leaders were the original members, who had now been with the Family, as it was called by initiates, for three or four years. Therefore, I was able to meet many of the top leaders when I was still a babe, although the value of this privilege escaped me at that time.

Sometime in January 1972 a group of the most dedicated babes were chosen to go to a special training camp in Montreal. My brother, Steve, Berea (old Daisy), and I were among those chosen. Steve had already memorized the whole set card of about a hundred verses, which took most babes at least six months, therefore, the leaders thought he was destined to be a great teacher. We crossed the Canadian border by pretending we were a church group on a day visit to a Canadian youth meeting. One of our leaders even dressed in the traditional Episcopalian black with white collar. This ruse enabled us to slip across the border without everyone on the bus being checked.

Steve felt obliged to inform the leader that he was actually on probation in the state of Pennsylvania, having just come out of prison.

Fearing any legal repercussions, they promptly sent him back. I learned months later that he had returned to Lancaster to start a new colony, but he eventually slipped back to his old ways with his criminal friends. It would be ten years before I saw him again.

Meanwhile, Berea, my only other contact from the outside world, was having problems. She thought she might be pregnant from her old boyfriend back home, and whether it was an excuse or not, she slipped away one night into the cold Canadian winter, and never returned. I stayed through babes’ training camp, during an intensely cold winter in Montreal, and then returned to Ellenville in the spring.

By now I was an older sister, having been in the group for six months.

Since I had no inclination or desire to be a tribe leader, or to do anything in a leadership capacity, I volunteered to work in the nursery.

Ellenville now had a population of nearly three hundred disciples and had become the home for quite a few mothers and children, now that spring had warmed the old camp to a tolerable degree. The camp now made use of all five buildings, the main house where meetings were held, food was served, and leaders lived, the boys’ dorm, the girls’ dorm, and a couple of small bungalows for married couples. A nursery was established in the main building and soon expanded out into the girls’ dorm.

Regardless of how crowded or uncomfortable the other rooms were, the nursery was always clean and well furnished. I liked being in a place that felt more like a “home.” Leaders and their wives were coming through on their way to Europe, following Moses David’s directives to go into all the world and witness. With all these leaders and wannabe leaders around, I felt nice and safe in the nursery where I knew what to expect—doo-doofilled diapers and babies burping and drooling. Since I had helped to raise four younger sisters, I seemed to have more experience and general know-how concerning babies than most of the newer sisters. Leaders did not work in the nursery. In fact, I was not sure what work they did, other than read the Bible and lead inspiration. By now I was aware that not everyone in this group was idealistic or selfsacrificial, but I wasn’t going to let this affect my own spiritual condition. I remained faithful to the ideal of community as set down in the Bible.

Working in the nursery, I became friends with another Family misfit named Salome, a young woman of Jewish heritage. Salome, who was witty and bright, revealed her secret rebelliousness to me as we would sit in the nursery and make fun of the leaders, which was almost blasphemous for mere disciples.

Other than Salome, only Ben, who did night guard duty at the camp, talked with me on a regular basis. Also of Jewish descent, Ben was a tall, dark, and intelligent person who had been in the Family a short enough time to still know how to indulge in interesting conversation.

Since I had to bring babies to nurse with their mothers in the middle of the night, I would often stop and talk with Ben while waiting for the mothers to finish nursing. I liked Ben quite a lot, and I entertained the idea of one day marrying him. I had heard that marriages in the group were usually arranged by leaders, and I thought I could jump the gun by picking a husband first. It was a futile idea, since Ben was soon moved to another colony.

Marriage was a big concern for everyone, since no physical contact was allowed between boys and girls unless they were married to each other.

As far as I knew, no one was allowed to even kiss before marriage.

What made this situation even worse was that, after the leader, your husband was the unquestioned head of the union, and he usually spoke on your behalf to the leaders, who I guess spoke to God. I couldn’t imagine having to spend the rest of my life with someone who acted like a lord over me, so I didn’t think about it. I trusted in the Lord, as I had learned to do in response to every other fear that had arisen since I had joined this group. Surely if I was making all this sacrifice for God, He would not lead me astray.

Courtship was a quick affair. Many of the couples who had been married recently had been told the night before whom they would be marrying the next day. Ruth was one of them. She had joined at the Jesus People house in Georgia, and she was a typical southern belle.

Soft-spoken, petite, and beautiful, Ruth seemed terribly mismatched with a loud and boisterous Italian American. Sometimes when I used to go into the kitchen for baby supplies, I would find them arguing in a corner of the kitchen where they thought no one could see or hear them.

Ruth appeared to be very unhappy, and I hoped that my marriage would not be so badly arranged.

There was never a dull moment in the camp, although sometimes I wished there would be. Whenever a new leader came through, we would have all-night inspiration. Now we had a whole band playing every night, and often the best teachers in the Family would lead us through amazing interpretations of the endtime prophecies in Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelations. We thought we were privy to information no one else in the whole world knew. The most direct revelations from God, however, came through our own endtime prophet, the leader himself, Moses David.

His words, through the Mo letters, were distributed to all the colonies and were soon on equal authority to the Bible.

By now, reading Mo letters was a daily requirement, along with reading the Bible and memorizing verses. The letters contained mainly simple, sermonlike platitudes, but sometimes they were more radical. According to the letters, the United States was headed for an Armageddon, therefore, all the Children of God were told to gather funds from various sources and go overseas. The Family spoke often of the endtime prophecy, and whether you believed it or not, speaking about the soon-to-be end of the world became a habit. It seemed to me that we might have only a few years left, and actually, I was rather relieved.

I did not know how long I could last with this sacrificial lifestyle.

Although we did not work at “system” jobs, most of us worked very hard just to keep the camp going. We had what we called “provisioners,” who were teams of beggars going out every day to grocery stores, food markets, and fast-food chains to scrounge for any food that they would give us. We had witnessers taking weekly trips to New York and surrounding cities, telling about Jesus and trying to recruit new disciples. As far as I knew, our only income came from the “forsake all” of the new disciples, and since most of them were like me, poor college students or travelers, I did not think we had much money.

Personally, I never saw any money for years, since regular disciples never handled finances.

Toward the summer of 1972, the Family band led by Jeremy Spencer had come to Ellenville. Jeremy had been the slide guitar player for Fleetwood Mac, the popular rock band from England, and when he joined our group, it made the national papers. Now he had started his own band in the COG, and they had received a contract from a major recording company to make an album. The band enjoyed more privacy and freedom within the Family than even the big leaders did. They all lived in one of the bungalows that was set off by itself. All of the band members except for the drummer were already married. Word had spread that the band would be renting an apartment in Boston in order to work at a professional studio there. With the Spartan conditions we were living in at the camp, an apartment away from the constant surveillance of leaders and older brothers seemed like a mansion in heaven to me.