Site Map

HEAVEN'S HARLOTS:  MY FIFTEEN YEARS AS A SACRED PROSTITUTE IN THE CHILDREN OF GOD CULT

10.  Living in the Looking-Glass 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, limbo-like 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 loose-leaf 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. His dad must have also talked to him about not displaying too much emotion, because it wasn't until I put him to bed that night that I saw tears in his eyes. He quickly brushed them away and turned over saying, "I'm happy you're here, Mommy." He had called me Mommy, and he would continue to call me Mommy until he was well over twenty years old.

Late that night, after the children had gone to bed, I talked with Jerry and Mara, who was now called Mona, her real name.

"Thor seems genuinely happy and content here, " I said wistfully.

"Yes. In the beginning he was telling us all these things we should not be doing -- like eating white sugar, or watching TV, or me smoking cigarettes," said Jerry with a laugh. "But he soon started to like the system way of life much better, and now he doesn't even want to talk about the time he had in the Family."

"Has he mentioned me often?" I asked, getting to my main concern quickly.

"No. Only the first few weeks," replied Mona in her usual truth-be-told manner. I usually admired her Libra-ish balance on life's most emotional issues, but this time it hurt too deeply. However, I knew better than to cry in front of them. I had promised no emotional displays.

"Well, I suppose that is better for Thor. How is he in school?"

"He had to be put back because he forgot most of his French. But he does very well now, especially in math," said Jerry. "Of course, he's had a few run-ins with other kids. One in particular was a bit messy when he broke the nose of a policeman's son."

"Oh, no!" I cried. "We have always taught Thor antiviolence!"

"Oh, don't give me that peace bullshit. You know Mo talked about killing every Antichrist Israeli, and every non-Christian goes to the fires of hell. Real peaceful stuff!"

"That was just a madman's ravings. I never believed that either, and I certainly never told Thor that."

"Well, don't worry. Thor is a good boy. And his fight was really to protect his sister. Seems this boy pushed his sister off a swing, so he punched his nose."

I knew that Jerry had been quite a fighter, growing up on Long Island, but I made no mention of this. He seemed almost proud of his son.

I went to bed late, and the next morning, I took Thor to the beach, despite freezing weather. We played among the sand dunes all day, and that evening I felt a chill. I ignored it. For three days, I spent all day with him, exploring the surroundings of Perpignan with my son. I wanted to be able to imagine every minute of his day. How could I leave him? Of course, I would have liked to stay there and never leave. But life was not so easy. I had another child in Italy, and I had promised Paolo I would be back by a certain date. He had work to do and could not watch Athena indefinitely. Also, I promised Jerry I would not make a scene and beg for Thor to come back with me. This was a beginning in reestablishing my connection with Thor. I told myself that I would work things out. However, leaving Thor was an emotional wrench on my spirit that I was not acknowledging, though my body did. When I left on the train to return home, I had a high fever. Eight hours later, when Paolo picked me up at the station in Italy, I was almost delirious.

My fever raged for three days, and then a doctor was called. He diagnosed me as having pneumonia, and given my pregnant condition, he suggested I be kept in bed and taken care of. I was moved to Paolo's aunt's house, and for days I was oblivious to this world.

"You must think of Athena, and the new baby," I remember Paolo's aunt telling me every time she tried to spoon some homemade broth into my mouth and I refused. I think I again wanted to die. It seemed such a good idea.

After seeing Thor so happy and content in his new surroundings, I thought to myself that I had been a very bad mother. I was now a very unhappy wife, and although I loved my daughter, Athena, I would probably not be a good mother to her either. Why should I go on having children? Why not just die now? I had no will to be healed. I seemed to have made a mess of what was most precious in life to me -- motherhood. Thor now had a new mother, and for Athena -- better no mother than a bad mother, I thought. I wanted to die, and I was not afraid of death.

Then I remembered that I had rebelled against God. "Curse God and die," Job's wife had told him in his darkest hour. Good old patient Job had not cursed God, however. He said, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him."

Job was another story I did not like. It was a man's story. Who would want to live after all his children had been killed, just to learn a lesson? So what that Job got more children back? They weren't the same ones. How could God imagine that one set of children could replace another?

It seemed to me that God was still on my case. He wasn't going to let me live happily and He wasn't going to let me die. One thing was sure though. When I finally did die, I would have a whole lot of questions to ask.

Paolo kept bringing Athena in, saying she needed me and was crying for me. Athena was like a doll. She had the beautiful Italian features of her father, and the defiant fire of her mother. She had always been a handful. When she was a newborn, screaming her lungs out with colic, even the nurses in the hospital said they never saw a baby cry so long and so hard. She wasn't going to sit back and take anything she didn't want to. I thought Athena would do all right in this hard, tough world, but she probably needed a mother's love as much as Thor did. I decided to get well for her. 

We wanted to have our next baby at home. When the midwife arrived at our old stone house in the tiny village, I was already quite far along in my labor.

"This bed is too low! Put her on the kitchen table!" she commanded. She was a big, heavy Italian momma, and she was uncomfortable stooping to our low bed as she prepared me for delivery. My baby was born on the kitchen table on a tiny lane called Canevai, meaning the dog's way, in an old, picturesque Italian village by the sea. The small stone house she was born in has since become a national monument because it was built in the year A.D. 500. It had probably been the birthplace of many babies, and she was the last!

When they brought her to me, wrapped in a rough blanket, she was sucking on two fingers. We had chosen the name Genvieve, after the patron saint of Paris. As much as Athena was noisy and lively as a baby, Genvieve was quiet and calm. I often checked her crib to make sure she was still alive.

I spent most of my time writing, crocheting, and raising the children. I started to teach Athena to read when she was three years old. She was bright and eager to learn. I taught her in English, and spoke English to the children all the time since their relatives spoke only Italian.

One day, Paolo came in with a man who looked vaguely familiar.

"Hi, Jeshanah," he said with a huge smile that I had almost forgotten. "You remember me, don't you?"

He had an Asian face, but an American accent. Holding a guitar in his hands, and carrying the trademark lit -- bag that all good Family members have, I knew he was a COG.

"Well, I see you don't remember my name. I'm Sojourn. And this is my daughter, Crystal," said the stranger as he held out his hand.

I looked down and saw the little girl for the first time. She also looked Asian, and had a warm, friendly smile. I offered her some candy, which she refused sweetly. Then I remembered that Family children don't eat candy.

I had met Sojourn in Paris, but having met hundreds of people briefly at that time, I hardly remembered him. He remembered me of course, since I was in the Show Group. He could not believe Paolo when he told him I had left the Family. Sojourn and his wife, Maggie, along with their two little children, spent the next few months parked outside our house, eating in our home and staying inside with us most of the time. They both tried to persuade us that the Family had changed.

"You are so talented, Jeshanah. You must come back and use your talents for the Lord," Sojourn told me one evening. "We need more leaders who are concerned about children."

"I don't want to be a leader. I never did. Listen, I love the way you guys are, and how you live so freely. But the leaders are not like that. People change when they get power, in the Family as much as in the world."

"That's why we need people like you, Jeshanah. You have the power and the heart to be a good leader."

"But she doesn't want to, Sojourn. She just told you," interrupted Maggie. "She has three children now, and I am sure that keeps her busy enough."

I was thankful that Maggie included Thor as one of my children. Even though I saw him only twice a year, at Christmas and in the summer, he was always on my mind, and I guess Maggie realized that, being such a loving mother and a caring person.

Separation from Thor was still a source of grief for me. Although Jerry said I was allowed to visit him whenever I wanted, Paolo did not give me much free time. Now that we had two children, Paolo did not want to take care of the little girls while I was gone, and the train trip was too long to take two small children alone. I had visited Thor only one more time in the next year, when we all took a vacation there in the summer.

"If nothing else, you should stay with the Family to be an example to Thor," said Sojourn, seeming to read my thoughts. "He has no spiritual training with Cal."

"I don't think you should be prying into Jeshanah's life," said Maggie.

They had a strange relationship. I knew that Sojourn, who was a mixture of Hawaiian and black American, used to be homosexual. Although homosexuality was subtly allowed in the Family at one time, the goal for men was to be able to have sex with women also in order to produce babies. All former homosexuals were encouraged to find mates of the opposite sex, and Maggie seemed to be one of the few women willing to accept a man who liked men. In return, Maggie, a quiet, usually unobtrusive person, had an adoring husband who was gentle and mutually submissive in his marriage relationship, a real rarity among Family men. They talked to each other with equal respect, and I never saw Sojourn openly disagree with his wife, or use his God -- given power as "head of the household" over her. On the contrary, he usually asked her what to do, and obeyed her slightest hints of disapproval, as he did now.

"I'm sorry. You're right, Maggie. Jeshanah is really probably in the Lord's Will. I should not meddle."

I could not help but notice his humble reaction to Maggie's suggestion, and how different it was from how Paolo and I related to each other. Unfortunately, Maggie was not around to stop Sojourn from talking to Paolo about joining.

Paolo was not doing well with our health food business. We had borrowed heavily to open the shop, and there was no more money to borrow. He eventually sold the shop to a rich banker's daughter from Torino. After paying off our debts, we had enough money to buy a mobile home and set it up on a piece of land owned by Paolo's aunt. Paolo began selling health food in the Italian markets, and encouraged by Sojourn, I began going out singing. Together with Sojourn and his daughter, I took Athena and a guitar, and we hit the open cafes up and down the Italian Riviera. Maggie stayed home to watch her little boy and Genvieve. We were living a communal life again. It had all the benefits and none of the disadvantages caused by leadership. Finally, Paolo told me he wanted to rejoin the Family.

I had mixed feelings. Ever since Thor had been taken from me, I had lived life with half a heart and half a will. I was not at all happy with my marriage or my situation, but as a mother, there was no alternative for the time being. Joining the Family at that time gave me hope that Paolo would have other sources to fulfill his emotional needs. I didn't think I could ever fulfill them. I had married him to bring him into the Family, and I had expected help with his spiritual growth. If he wanted to join again, perhaps that would be the best course of action for him and for our marriage. When Paolo had "joined" the Family the first time, he did it only to stay with me. This time it was a decision he was making, and I probably went back into the Family because of him. It seemed to be the lesser of two evils, as the saying goes. Without Thor, I wasn't completely happy anywhere, so if Paolo felt better living in a community, I did not have any strong opposition to it.

Of course, I did feel that the leaders in Puerto Rico had let me down, but maybe that was my own fault in a spiritual way. I felt that I had been wrong to associate myself with the elite of the Family. Maybe they were the only ones who were corrupt. Perhaps these kind, humble members were different. Also, the Family had recently experienced another "revolution" within their group, and all leaders were demoted. From what Sojourn told me, most members were living quite independently  of leadership and rules.

I told Paolo that I didn't care one way or the other, that it was his decision. I didn't want to get the blame for this one, as I had gotten for everything else we'd done up to then. And I didn't want it to interfere with my visits to Thor.

It was the year 1985. The Family had changed in many ways.  Joining simply meant that we sent in 10 percent of our income, and they sent us the Mo letters and supported some of the poorer missionary fields, "Missionary work" was now the volunteer work we did in retirement and nursing homes, hospitals, and orphanages.

This was the part of the work that I enjoyed. With Sojourn's talent as a musician, I taught the children a small dance routine, and we put on performances at social institutions across northern Italy. The children liked performing, and after every show we talked with the old people, the sick, or the poor, holding their hand and telling them about Jesus. We often received a free dinner from the Catholic sisters or social workers who ran the place, and we took pictures to use in the brochures we carried around. Eventually, we traveled for days in our trailers like Gypsies, from one town to the next, performing with the kids. I was pleased to be bringing light and happiness into the lives of those who were institutionalized, but I had a few worries. What if Jerry found out? And what if I got pregnant again?

I talked to Paolo about using birth control, but he would not hear of it. He warned me that God was against birth control, and dire things could happen to me if I went against God's Word. He had internalized Family and fundamentalist Christian doctrine much better than I ever did. In addition, since he was the head of the family, and he did not want me using birth control, it was forbidden. I wanted to obey my husband this time, but I secretly tried the rhythm method, counting my days carefully, and avoided having sex on the days that I would be most fertile. 

As for Jerry finding out, he was too far away from us to know what we were doing. He had agreed that Thor could come visit us in the summer, so I planned on spending that summer at our trailer in Paolo's hometown. This time while we were in the Family, we were on the bottom rung, but we had no leaders over us. We could pretty much do as we pleased as long as we witnessed and sent in our tithe. Living on the Italian Costa Azzurra, we were close enough to the tourist beach towns to sing at cafes and restaurants, which provided us with funds.

When Thor came to visit us on vacations, we discovered that he was a talented musician, having studied music and theory in the French Conservatoire. He became the star of our show. Whenever I took him to sing in restaurants along the beach, we made twice the money. I played guitar and sang, while Thor played the accordion or tambourine, and then collected the money. He was a natural -- born showman, having been raised in the Show Group, and no one could resist him. He was eleven years old when he started singing with us and virtually never stopped until he struck out on his own. Sometimes he wore odd -- looking hats for emphasis and used them to collect the money. We gave him a small percentage of the money to take home, but I was worried about his father finding out. I preempted this by calling Jerry. My ex -- husband was a typical musician who would be thrilled to hear that his son had inherited his performing genes. I didn't think this would risk my seeing Thor, and I was right.

"I wanted to know if you mind if Thor goes out with us?" I asked  him on the phone.

"What does he think of it?"

"Well, I took him out a few times, and he likes it."

"Does he collect?"

"Yes."

"Well, what do you know. I guess if he doesn't mind, it's okay with me. How much do you give him?"

"Ten percent."

"Ha! I doubt if that will keep him content for long. But if he's happy with that, it's okay with me."

Thor played and sang with us for the next couple of years, and each year as he progressed, he was given a bigger cut. He went from playing tambourine to playing guitar. By the time he was fourteen, he was singing and playing guitar, and I was collecting, giving him 50 percent. But it was worth it. By then we were making two hundred dollars a night. Jerry moved his family back to Nice when Thor was fourteen, less than an hour from us by car, so my son came to our house almost every weekend as well as all summer. I thought that I must be doing something right now  -- and oddly enough, I was in the Family. Singing with my teenage son gave me some of the happiest moments of my life. The fabulous weather allowed tourists to sit in the open cafes by the beach and enjoy the lovely Italian seaside. Thor and I had our regular restaurants and cafes in every town along the coast. We planned our work systematically, making sure we kept good relationships with the restaurant owners by not coming too often, and we hit a different town every night. The more popular resorts, such as San Remo and Diano Marina, were saved for the big nights of Friday and Saturday.

Living a gypsy lifestyle brought us into contact with other Family gypsies. What I liked best about that time during the early 1980s was that all the ambitious leaders had gone to the "mission fields" such as India, South America, and the Far East. Remaining in Europe was the equivalent of staying in the United States, which meant you couldn't make it as a missionary. No one in Europe bothered us about our spiritual state, and as long as we sent in a decent 10 percent, we were left alone. However, many of the struggling Family homes wanted us to join up with them. As I traveled from home to home, I realized that not only had I previously lived a privileged life in the Family, but I also had a strength that made others want me near them.

Without birth control, I conceived again while Genvieve was still a baby. I felt sorry she would have to grow up so quickly now. when my third daughter, Jordan, was born, eighteen-month-old Genvieve stood next to the two-day-old baby lying on my bed with her eyes wide open, with her two front fingers stuck in her mouth as usual.

After receiving invitations to live in various homes, we chose to stay in a new home opening in Nice because it was closer to Thor. Around this time, the publications from the Family, which I usually never had time to read, talked about the life and teaching of Davidito, the little boy Mo's lover had with a fish. The Davidito Series, as these letters were called, explained how the parents themselves, or the nursery workers, should teach the children about sex. One Family publication included a picture of the nursery worker putting Davidito to sleep by fondling him. Later, Mo issued a statement that he did not approve of sex with minors and renounced any writings saying that he did, claiming that someone else had written that. It was difficult to know what Mo actually did write since he renounced anything that caused trouble.

By this time the Family homes were spread all around the world, and the Mo letters, especially in the area of sex, were followed in varying degrees. Some women in the Family never shared sexually with anyone but their husbands, while some husbands forced their women to do so. I heard stories of wives being physically punished for disobedience, but I never saw this with my own eyes.

It sickened me to read anything that seemed to condone any type of sex with children. In all my travels, I never met a family that actually did this, and I inquired everywhere I went to see what the others thought about the Family's child-sex education. No one ever admitted to pedophilia. Nevertheless, years later, I heard tearful confessions from ex-Family members who said they or someone they knew molested children under pressure from their leaders. I am thankful that I was not in a home with leaders -- not until the very end of my time in the Family. 

The brothers and sisters at the Nice home felt the same way I did about teaching children how to engage in sex -- that is it was a sick thing to do. When he was younger, Thor had been with children who had been encouraged to explore each other's bodies, and he did not retain happy memories of this. The idea of showing young children adult sexual organs, and actually teaching them how to use their immature sexual parts in an adult way, was even more perverted. But I could not face this issue at that time. Unfortunately, Paolo and I didn't talk about it; we avoided the subject altogether. When letters arrived that discussed childhood sex, no one in the home mentioned them. I hardly read any letters now anyway, but lived only to raise my children. We were not even sharing among the adults here in Nice, and I believed that no one made sexual advances toward the children.

Around this time I called Salim to thank him for helping me find my son. I had sent him a thank-you card years earlier, but I had never thanked him in person for his help. I told him I was living in Nice and he immediately made an appointment with me to meet in the Hotel de Paris.

I was extremely nervous. Not only was I five years older, but I had borne three more children since I had last seen Salim, and there was nothing new I had to offer but the same old message. I was surprised when he wanted to make love to this thirty-one-year-old mother of four, who had done little to keep her youth or beauty intact.

"Why do you like being with me?" I asked after a most mundane exchange. Despite my numerous sexual experiences I had not learned any of the special tricks or unusually stimulating procedures that are rumored to keep men interested. Why did Salim want to see me when he could pay for the best and most beautiful of the elite's high-class call girls?

"You have a strength that no other woman I know has," he responded, as if the answer had always been on his tongue ready to fall out.

"What do you mean? You know so many women; some are much stronger and much more sophisticated and experienced than me."

"That is all outward strength. It is not the same. You can uncover secrets of life. And although it seems like you are weak and submissive, it is only because you choose to be at this time. When I make love to you, I feel strength within me. You are strong!"

This was the longest and most revealing piece of personal information that Salim ever gave me. Salim had always kept a very powerful image before me, and anyone else I saw him with. I was surprised that he had let his guard down, even for a few minutes. I looked at him carefully. He still had the same iron-clad expression, but his eyes had become softer. He withdrew back into his powerful-man mode, and I did not see him again for years. But the insight that he had shared with me, whether it was true or not, stayed with me forever.

The Nice home, like all pleasant situations in the Family, did not last long. We found ourselves on the road again, this time traveling with our family in an old R V to one of my favorite cities, Venice, There we found a deserted farmhouse in the milk-producing region of Pordenone. I was sent to the owner of the house, a wealthy industrialist who had bought the property on a whim and later decided that raising cows was not his cup of tea. He flatly refused to even rent the house to us, although we had suggested he give it to us free in order to keep it from being vandalized and lie in disrepair. We had been taught never to take no for an answer, and I went back to him about half a dozen times. Each time he became more friendly, and as I showed him our photo album full of pictures of the children and me singing in nursing homes and hospitals, he softened a bit. After more than a month of persuading and bargaining, he agreed to let us live in the house rent-free, and we agreed to refurbish the old place and bring it back to life.

"I don't really care if the house tumbles to the ground," he said. "I don't need the income from it, and I don't ever plan to sell it either. But I don't want you guys causing any trouble out there." 

Paolo and I invited another couple and their children to help us fix up the grand old stone farmhouse. We quickly learned that this area of Italy was a provisioner's paradise. There were factories of every kind all over the place, and we established regular contacts with Benetton clothes; Parmalat milk, cheese, and yogurt; and many others. We literally remodeled the house with supplies we got for free, but it was labor-intensive work. I spent most of my waking hours, when not physically involved with the children, scraping, cleaning, and painting the old walls and beamed ceilings.

There was no central heat or indoor toilets. The large kitchen had a huge wooden stove, and the enormous living room, covering half the downstairs, had a fireplace with seats on the side, so you felt as if you were sitting inside the fire. However, it did little to heat up the rest of the house. There was one other room downstairs, which had a private entrance and no heat at all. Upstairs were four large bedrooms and a center hallway large enough to serve as a den. There we placed an oil heater that we had procured from a factory in the area. Walking out on the back patio from any of the downstairs rooms, one was greeted with the beautiful Friulian pastureland. A cement sink with a water pump constantly gave us fresh springwater that had a sulfurous taste, but was sanitary and healthy. My daughter Jordan spent hours at this pump, drinking and playing in the water. The barn, which was in terrible disrepair, housed old machinery, and eventually we filled it with chickens. It was a pastoral dream come true for an old nature lover like myself, but unfortunately, I could never be completely happy. Thor was farther away from me now, which meant he could only come for the summer, and I was still not happily married. Knowing that bad marriages happen to the best of people, I consoled myself by raising my children with all the energy and love I found available.

All my children started learning to recognize letters from the time they could talk. Athena was already a proficient reader at the age of four, and she often helped me to teach phonics to her sisters. I also taught them to dance and sing, and we performed at hospitals, schools, and nursing homes regularly. Different Family members visited us periodically, and some stayed on indefinitely. The house was big, and extra Family members usually meant more hands to do the work, and more income. That was until we were graced by the presence of "leaders."

One day they finally arrived -- my old nemesis from Germany, Naomi, and her husband, Samson.

As I suspected, Naomi and Samson stayed only a few months before moving on to their mission field, but not before they almost ruined the open access I had with my son. As usual, Thor came to visit me in the summer. Although Naomi had suggested that the presence of a "systemite" kid might be a bad influence on their sheltered children, I insisted on this one, and they eventually acted as if they had heard from the Lord to allow him to come. When they saw how much income he generated through singing with me in Venice, they quickly changed their minds about him being a systemite and tried to recruit him back into the Family. Of course, Thor, at thirteen, was much too smart, and had been too indoctrinated by his father on the evils of cults, to even consider this invitation. But the strange behavior of his mother, who lived with people in her own house who told her literally what to do every minute, was confusing to him. I tried to explain that I believed in communal living, and one took the evil with the good, until the evil became too much. At his young and tender age, he was forced to struggle with the dissonance of the moral dilemma between idealism and the corruption of absolute power. Even though Jerry eventually realized that I was back in the Family, he believed that Thor was mature enough for exposure to a radical ideology he once believed in himself. I had talked with Jerry back in Nice, before I left for Venice and Pordenone, and wanted to bring Thor with me. He agreed, but told me that he knew we were back in the Family.

"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 R V 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 Indian sari. 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 end-time 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 I 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 End-time?" asked Anna, completely avoiding the question.

"Actually, I have serious doubts about that, yes. But whether Mo is a Prophet or not doesn't bother me at all. What bothers me is people taking Mo's letters as if they were God's Word. And if you really want to know, I don't even believe everything in the Bible is God's Word either. A lot has been tampered with through the ages."

"Why are you in the Family then?" asked Judah suspiciously.

I'm in the Family for the community. I'm in here because I still think it's better than the system. And right this minute, I'm in here because this is where the father of my children is. I lost one child, and I don't want to lose any more."

"No wonder you guys are doing so badly. And we were told it was Paolo," replied Judah, rubbing his chin as if that discovery took a lot of mental effort.

"Well, it's me. But I'm also the one who got us this house you are living in. And if you want to stay here, I want to know what you think about sex with children."

"You have no right to come in here and demand us to answer your questions," shouted Judah.  "You made your point.  Don't worry. I won't touch your precious little girls."

The Family was not free of the bureaucratic problems found in the system. I wasn't in this hierarchy, but I still had minimal power in my own house. I spoke to Paolo about my conversation with Judah, but he thought I was imagining things. Since our children slept with us, in our own bedroom, he said we had nothing to worry about. The letters about sex and children did not seem to bother him so much. He said that it wasn't really having sex. Mo never said to have actual intercourse with children! Like most of us, he probably did not read these perverse letters, but they were there, like a cancer eating any ideals we had left.

Everyone I talked to convinced me that I was taking these letters too seriously. I began to think that I really had a problem after all. But what problem was it? I thought about it for hours as I lay awake in bed at night. I recalled an incident that had happened about a year before, when my mother and sister Karen were visiting me in Italy while we were alone at Paolo's hometown. Karen mentioned that it was terrible how we let the children run around naked on the beach. Actually, most of the Europeans do that also. We got into a heated discussion about nudity, and finally she said what was on her mind.

"I read that the adults in your group show their naked body parts to their children, as a way of sex education. Is that true?"

Suddenly, as if a window of my past life had been opened, I saw my father showing me his penis.

"Well, what's so bad about that? Dad used to do it," I answered.

"Oh, you're disgusting! Dad never did that! You're just making that up because you're in this group! You're sick!"

She talked to my mother about this, since my mom and dad had already been separated when she was still a little girl. My mother assured her that it was not true. Coincidentally, my mother also had a severe epileptic attack while she was visiting at this time. I don't remember if it was before or after this conversation. It bothered me so much that I closed that window to the deep past.

As I lay in bed and recalled this event, I thought perhaps I was afraid of something in my past. Not one of the other adults living with us seemed as concerned about sex and children as I was. I did seem to have a problem with sex. Maybe it was I who was perverted by an evil and sick mind. On the other hand, those who did not like the Mo letters left the Family. What was I doing here anyway?

I had a lot of time to think about it. Soon after my outburst with our new leaders, I was restricted to my room for two hours of extra word time and prayer a day. I welcomed this restriction since I used it to get much needed sleep. But I also did a lot more thinking than praying, and I didn't read the Bible or Mo letters. Why did I still let leaders tell me what to do? Because I had grown accustomed to it maybe? It was a habit -- part of living communally. But why did I live this way? My ideals were gone. My curiosity about a different lifestyle had long been satiated. Like Alice in Wonderland, I had seen enough. My dream was over. I came to the conclusion that I was only in the Family now because Paolo wanted to stay. I had to convince Paolo to leave.

However, Paolo seemed to find life in the Family easier than life in the Italian system. Although he worked hard, he had no rigid work hours, and all responsibilities were shared by a group of adults. If money ran low, we had a choice of going out as witnessing teams to sell tapes or singing in restaurants. Paolo was also convinced that the system was a bad place to raise children. Because of his own traumatic experiences as a child, which had left him and his brother with forms of depression, he did not want his children to have the same condition. Two of his cousins had died drug-induced deaths. He saw the Family as a haven from a cruel world. He appeared to like having rules and regulations to guide his every act so that he didn't have to think, make decisions, or take the blame for anything. Even though I know he did not agree with the letters either, he truly believed that his children were safe here.

Unlike Alice, I could not seize the tablecloth in my hands and shake everybody off. This was real life -- not a dream! I spent a few months vacillating in my ruminations about who was crazy, I or they. In my weakened state, I was reproached by Judah and his wife for making Paolo use condoms, which I had recently insisted upon, so he stopped using them and I became pregnant immediately.

When I was about three months pregnant, Judah and his family moved to another home. We were expecting a new family soon, and I started cleaning out the bedrooms upstairs in preparation. As I went through the drawers in the children's rooms, where Judah's girls had slept, I came across a spiral notebook. I thought I could reuse it for school if there were enough empty pages, so I leafed through it. The name of his oldest girl, who was about eight, was written on the first page. I turned another page, and the drawing leaped up at me as if I had been grabbed around the throat and choked.

There, drawn in pencil, was the replication of a fully erect penis.

I gasped. I shut the book and breathed deeply, trying not to scream. What had gotten into me? I had seen drawings of penises in Mo letters before. But this was a child's book. And it appeared to be drawn from looking at a live model. The detail was too precise. I opened the book and frantically searched through the other pages. It was full of penis drawings, at different stages of erection.

"Oh my God!" I thought to myself. "Did this happen in my house?  Was a little innocent girl taught to draw her daddy's penis while I was sleeping in the next room? What a horrible person I am. And how much have my own daughters been exposed to? Athena was seven years old. Was she included in these lessons?

I took the book as evidence and went to the window to check on the kids. Athena was playing on the swing we had hung under a spreading oak tree. Genvieve was dressed up in her long princess dress, playing at some fantasy about being married to a prince. She had long, curly blond hair, and whenever a small boy visited our home, my four-year-old would make him be a prince. She lived in a fantasy world. Jordan was by the fountain, throwing flowers, leaves, and bugs she found into the pool that had formed from the running fountain water. I couldn't believe that my precious little ones had been touched by this evil. From a deep recess in my soul, the part that I had shut off because of a long-ago pain, I had a premonition of repeated history. I did not know what it meant, but I knew I had to protect my children. Michelangelo was asleep in his cot. At barely a year old, he had been touched by none of this. And I was never going to let that chance come. I gathered up the children's passports and hid them in the pages of one of my books. I took the book outside and hid it again in the barn. That evening I confronted Paolo, showing him the horrible notebook drawings.

"We don't know that these were drawn by her, or that they were even drawn here, he said, pushing the notebook aside as if to take it out of his sight and so out of his mind.

"Of course, they were drawn by her," I protested.  "And so what if they were not drawn here in this house.  This is pornography.  What if Athena saw this?"

"You don't think Athena has seen the Mo letters?"

I realized with a gasp how foolish and blinded I had been.  What was to stop the children from looking at the Mo books with fully detailed sex organs drawn for the adult readers, or so I wanted to believe.  And even the children's newest comic books from the Family, the much-read Heaven's Girl series, included the naked man's body.  He was right.  Athena had seen pictures like this.

"But this has been drawn by a little girl!  Don't you see the difference?"

"What are you worried about?  They're gone now!"

"But they'll send more leaders to us.  Paolo, I don't want my children exposed to this.  I'm leaving."

"Where are you going?  And how are you getting there?" Paolo laughed, knowing I could not drive.

"I'm writing my mother.  She will send me money to leave Italy.  I have the children's passports, Paolo.  I'm leaving."

Paolo's face dropped.  He looked in the drawer and saw that our passports were gone.

"I'll find them," he said weakly.

"No, you won't.  And what can you do?  I have proof, just like Jerry did.  I can get the kids if we go to court.  But I know what it's like to have a child taken from me, and I won't put you through that pain, Paolo.  I'm leaving, but you can come if you want to."

Paolo softened drastically before my eyes.  I knew I would make it out.

"What will I do for work?" asked Paolo.  "We've been in the Family for years now.  I can't borrow money again from my family.   How will we live?"

I felt truly sorry for Paolo, especially since I had introduced him to the Family to begin with.  But I knew it was Paolo who had decided to go back, so now I would make this decision without my ever-imposing guilt feelings.

"Are you saying you will leave the Family for good?" I asked.

"I'll follow you and the kids, not because I want to but because you are making me."

It took a few more weeks to encourage Paolo to do this.  A new family had come to the farmhouse, and it seemed like everything would be fine again.  Paolo tried to convince me that Judah was a special case, but now that my eyes were opened to the reality of the Mo letters, I saw sexual innuendos everywhere.  I was insistent.  Many years later, when we had been out of the Family for years, I asked Paolo why he had wanted to stay in a group where there might have been child abuse.

"I did like everyone else," he answered without hesitation.  "I put it out of my mind.  I thought this would never happen to us.  We all thought, well, it didn't happen to us.  And living in a community gave me security.  I didn't know how I would get a job if I left or how to support my family.  The community gives you security."

Finally, we left in our RV.  Paolo was still complaining about how he was going to support us all.  He told the new people that we were only going on a faith trip and we would be back.  Everyone knew I was having problems.  I was also pregnant, and pregnant women, everyone knew, sometimes act funny.

I didn't care what they thought of me.  I had enough thoughts of my own.  Should I stay with Paolo?  He was the father of the kids, after all.  And he was so weak.  Maybe I would stay with him until the kids were a little older.  At least I would stay until the baby was born.  I couldn't make any decisions now.  All I wanted to do was get away.

There were about eighteen thousand members in the Family at that time.  There were now six fewer.

Go to Next Page