I was disgusted. John did not own up to his responsibilities as a father-to-be and it was obvious that Krys was being thrown to the wolves as the scapegoat. In his Letters Mo often referred to the Muslim and Indian cultures of times past, where young girls were married, as an example of how sex with children was legitimate.
He wrote:
In India they often had child brides at seven years of age! They can get married at that age! Then they could do all the fucking they want without having to worry about any kids until they are 12 years old! We’re getting young teenagers in the Family right now who are old enough to get married and have children. Why can’t they have it, huh? Oh she might get pregnant! So what?
I wanted to throw these letters in the rubbish bin, but instead, we had to sit for hours reading them without question. The reality was that in our world the young girls were used to satisfy the lusts of the men without any thought for the long-term consequences of their actions. Krys would become a single mother before she had a chance to live her own childhood. I was determined not to suffer a similar fate.
It was now 1987, and Teen Training Camps were being held on every continent, following the blueprint given in The Basic Training Handbook. Some two hundred young members from all over South East Asia attended a camp in Manila for two weeks. Maria and Sarah Davidito orchestrated the camps for the teens and pre-teens, as it became apparent that the children were in need of indoctrination into the beliefs of the Family. Brazenly, we were told, ‘Yes, we’re brainwashing you – washing your brain clean of the Devil’s influences and replacing it with the Word.’
When I arrived at the camp, I was shown to a ‘girls’ room’ of ten other girls in my little group. We were called the ‘Lovelights’. Each team had their own shepherd, whose job it was to monitor the teens twenty-four hours a day. I was excited to meet so many other young people, but we had little time to talk. In the morning we lined up single file and marched to the dining hall for breakfast. Our days were filled with classes, inspirations and memorization. Loyalty to the Family and ‘David our King’ was emphasized in skits and songs, and we all had to memorize and sign a pledge of dedication to our prophet and Maria. Every night before bed we wrote reactions and confessions in an Open Heart Report. Willingness, humility and submission to leadership and God were the qualities we were supposed to strive for, in preparation for our calling to become future leaders of the world. It all seemed so surreal.
We had it drummed into us that we were ‘It’ – the best place on earth to be. I had never known what the alternative was, but the adults told us horror stories of tragedy, pain and emptiness before joining the Family and I concluded that no matter how bad I had it, it must be ten times worse in the System.
Before we left, we all filled in a lengthy questionnaire that asked intimate details about every aspect of our lives. ‘We want you to be completely honest because these questionnaires will be sent to Grandpa and Maria to read,’ our teen shepherd told us. This was our chance to say what we felt and to be heard. I dutifully and trustingly wrote down my inner thoughts, as well as the traumatic sexual experiences I had suffered, including names and when it had happened.
Shortly after we returned from camp, Marianne read everyone a memorandum from Maria and Sarah Davidito. I had not been the only girl to report bad sexual experiences, and this, together with a number of teen pregnancies, alarmed the leaders. However, they were careful not to blame Mo, the prophet.
We were told, ‘There is nothing wrong with the Law of Love, but sexual contact between adults and children is now discouraged’ – not banned, but ‘discouraged’. I sighed with relief. I did not care about the doctrine, I was just glad that we did not have to practise it anymore.
But I was wrong. The new laws were meaningless, as I was shortly to find out.
I had first been molested as a child of six by Peruvian Manuel in Greece, on the back double bed of Silas and Endureth’s caravan. He and his wife Maria had gone with us to Sri Lanka during the big exodus. Now, they were living in our sister Home, run by Silas and Endureth. We would go over every week for Sunday fellowship, and I often went to visit Renee and Daniella and we went out busking together. Peruvian Manuel was always flirtatious and eyeing me up while I was there which made me very uncomfortable. He came over to our house one day and stayed the night. He was given the bottom bunk in my room because Armi had gone on a trip for a few days. I was extremely nervous. Childhood memories flooded back to haunt me as I clambered on to the top bunk and closed my eyes.
A few minutes later, he came into the room and started stroking my back. I kept my eyes shut and pretended to be asleep. He did not get the hint, and reached down to my vagina and pushed his finger inside.
‘You’re so sexy, you know that?’ he whispered in my ear.
I lay there rigid and opened my eyes. ‘Leave me alone. You can’t do this,’ I said, referring to the new memorandum.
He placed his mouth on mine and forced his tongue in, while still pushing his finger up me more ardently. I was scared and hated confrontation, but I refused to be bullied into this. ‘No! No! No!’ I hissed through gritted teeth. ‘You know it’s against the rules.’ I pulled away from him and closed my mouth tight. After a moment or two he backed off.
‘Okay…,’ he said, but lingered. I stiffened my body. He let out a sigh and went down to the bottom bunk. I lay awake for the longest time, my heart beating hard as I heard him masturbating. When I was sure he was asleep, I closed my eyes but had a fitful night’s sleep.
In the morning, I got up, grabbed my clothes and went to the bathroom to get dressed. Later that day, I found Marianne sitting by the pool, and asked if I could speak with her. I naively believed that if I reported it, he would be dealt with. Marianne showed no sign of shock, or even disapproval. All she said was, ‘I’ll speak to him about it.’ She never mentioned the incident to me again, and I was left to wonder why or what happened. I concluded that these new rules were meaningless because the leaders were not going to enforce them.
Indeed, the one who would be corrected was me. Soon afterwards, Marianne called me to her room and sat me down on a chair in the corner of the room. She and another leader, Zadok, sat opposite me.
‘You have some deep, spiritual problems,’ Marianne started. ‘We are very concerned about you and you need to be honest. You have a problem with spacing out a lot and daydreaming. Idleness is the Devil’s workshop.’
I never quite figured out what ‘spacing out’ actually meant, but it was borrowed from hippie lingo when someone was on drugs and had a blanked-out look on their face. If I didn’t hear what someone said, or if I was not busy doing something, or simply looking out the window, an adult would snap, ‘Celeste! Stop spacing out.’
‘What are you thinking about when you daydream?’ Marianne asked.
I was at a loss as how to reply to her question. ‘Nothing. I don’t think about anything really.’
She looked puzzled, then asked me again what thoughts I had been thinking. She warned me how serious a crime daydreaming was, and reminded me of ‘The Last State’ Letter about Mene. We had read the Letter at the Teen Training Camp. She had been a ‘daydreamer’ and this led to her thinking evil things about her Grandfather, the letter said. The violence in the letter scared the living daylights out me. It described how Mene had come into his room and Grandpa had greeted her with a kiss and then had suddenly grabbed her and shook her violently while speaking in tongues. He’d beaten her with a rod and rebuked the devils and demons out of her. I was even more shocked when he accused her of betrayal, saying he had taken her into his bed and yet she had the gall to criticize him and refuse him.
She was his flesh and blood, and he had sex with her? Even though we were told that ‘all things were lawful unto us’ incest was a step too far for me to accept.
In ‘The Last State’, Grandpa also accused Mene of being insane and gave Sarah Davidito and Peter Amsterdam, his third in command, permission to beat her whenever she had bad thoughts and to tie her to her bed at night. I could not understand how the perfect girl