Not Without My Sister (25 page)

"We just brought you here so it's too soon to go back. When you came here, you knew it would be a commitment. Just hang on, okay?" Vicky told me.
I was not allowed to write to anyone to say that I was pregnant, as they said it would reflect badly on them. I felt totally isolated, There were times I wanted to die; nights when I cried for endless hours wishing this were all a bad dream. At nine weeks I was near death, and had to be taken to hospital and put on a drip for three days. I recovered enough for Terry and Vicky to take me home, but relapsed again and stayed bedridden for six months. I had low blood pressure, severe heartburn and anaemia. The doctor warned there was a high risk of severe blood loss during childbirth.
Finally, on August 9, 1998, Cherie was born. After eighteen hours of labor, I was exhausted but happy it was over. When I held her in my arms, she hummed sweetly. Cherie was my "little miracle." Despite everything, she was a healthy 4.1 kilos with the chubbiest cheeks I'd ever seen. The hospital staff nicknamed her "Gordo," which means "fat" in Portuguese.
I loved everything about being a parent, but my difficult pregnancy had left me traumatized. I didn't know at the time that I had the rare condition hyperemesis gravidarum, and that my mother and Auntie Caryn had suffered the same condition during their pregnancies. I could not bare the thought of ever going through another pregnancy again or being physically intimate with anyone. Vince shared the responsibility of caring for our child, but we were not a couple. At first I didn't want Vince to be part of her life as I feared he would expect too much of me, but I changed my mind when I thought about my childhood and how much I wanted a relationship with both my Mum and Dad. I resolved that no matter what differences we had between us, Cherie deserved to know her father.
I had come to World Services to work, so soon after Cherie's birth I went back to editing
Heaven's Library
stories, while a Brazilian woman named Tina baby-sat her, or Techi, Maria's daughter, who had a three-year-old son. But my resolve to leave World Services had not changed. There were people in World Services who triggered painful memories. Dan, whom I had lived with in the Philippines with his now ex-wife, Tina, worked for
Activated
, the Family's monthly magazine sold to the public. I was a firsthand witness to his cruelty in violently beating my little sister Juliana and his wife and children. Did he realize and was he sorry for the scars that he had left and the damage he had done?
Then there was John, the man who had impregnated Krys when she was only fourteen. His consistent pedophile behaviour over the years was well known and yet he was in a top position of leadership. He made decisions on who should be excommunicated for breaking the Love Charter rules—including sexual offences. What a complete farce!
Another man in the Home was three months into his partial excommunication for having sex with an underage girl. Partial excommunication meant no movies, no sex and no alcohol for six months, and spending long hours reading Mo Letters—missives from the pedophile prophet himself. The irony of it smacked me in the face. Partial excommunication was a meaningless slap on the hand.
More upsetting still, if a parent wanted to report sexual abuse of their child to the police or take the offender to court, the Love Charter stated they would have to "give up" their Family membership. I had seen more than once how "devoted disciples" chose to call their own child a liar, rather than give up their life in the Family.
Eman Artist, though "officially excommunicated," received a "salary" from World Services as he continued to do artwork for children's storybooks published by Aurora Productions, the Family's publishing front.
I told Terry and Vicky I wanted to leave World Services but they kept telling me to "stick it out." The rare times I heard from Queen Maria were when she would send me a prophecy that said I was making progress in the spirit, and great things were in store for me if I just "held on to my crown" and continued to fight the Devil.
We hardly ever saw Queen Maria in person. She communicated with her staff via an intercom system. She stayed in her room and had her meals made according to her specific requirements—no fat, just organic and whole grain foods, as well as an assortment of vitamins and supplements like Royal Jelly and calcium. Except for the occasional meeting, only a few saw her daily, like Misty and Rebecca and her personal assistant, Becky. Rebecca told me how she washed Mama's hair for her and clipped her toenails. Those she handpicked to serve her seemed eager to please and were willing to pay the price for their position of leadership.
We had very little time off and the only recreation we had was the occasional dance night. One particular dance night the living room was set up like a nightclub, with a booth in the middle of the room with peeping holes. The women did strip dances, and people made out in the booth. I quickly excused myself to my room where my three-month-old daughter was sleeping. "I don't want to leave her alone," I said, but the truth was there were too many flashback memories to deal with. I had to constantly struggle and fight against the pressure to conform and I was tired of it.
I was the oddball—the one that didn't fit in—as was Davidito and his girlfriend, Elixcia. Davidito was still called Pete in his mother's Home, and straight away I noticed the sadness in his eyes. He was depressed and restless, living under his mother's shadow. After his short time at the Heavenly City School when he was thirteen, we all discovered a few months later what had happened to him when he "disappeared." In a letter we read Mo's stern "correction" for hanging around the "bad crowd" and getting into worldliness. Mo threatened him with physical violence and he was punished severely. I felt terrible for Davidito, because he was a normal teenager who just wanted to have fun. The next time we heard of him was when he was twenty years old and, accompanied by an adult minder from World Services, he was allowed to visit normal communes once again in Eastern Europe, where he met Elixcia.
He finally had been let out of his cage, but even away from the watchful eye of his mother, he was constantly monitored and the shepherds were instructed to write her reports on his actions. Inevitably, he began talking about his life in Mo's household, and of his resentment of a childhood shut away like a prisoner. His mother had to do some major dam-age control. He was publicly corrected and made to write a Letter of Confession and Apology for "spreading doubts" and murmuring.
Reluctantly, he returned to his mother's Home at her request, bringing with him Elixcia. One evening Terry and Vicky announced that for an activity, we would have dinner in pairs to "get to know each other better." The girls picked a name out of a hat, and I got Davidito. He set up a small table in his room and lit a candle, and we brought up our plates. We spent the next hour and a half chatting. I had remembered him from Japan as a thin and slightly built teenager with acne, but he was now well toned and had obviously worked hard on building up his physique. He was still timid and quiet, and like me he hated confrontation.
We got on to the subject of leadership, and Davidito told me he had made a deliberate decision not to be a "leader." He despised the way Grandpa and his mother operated, control-
ling their flock and demanding money, loyalty, and unquestioning obedience.
"If I wanted that, I could have it," he said, "but there is no way I could live with myself."
I agreed that I, too, had been given many opportunities to rise within the ranks, but was not willing to pay the price of my conscience.
"And the whole 'Loving Jesus' thing, it's wrong. I don't agree with all these weird new 'revelations.' The Bible should be enough," he said.
I never accepted "Loving Jesus" either, and found a kindred spirit in him.
It was not long after that Davidito and Elixcia were finally given Queen Maria's permission to leave Portugal, the same month I did in January 2000. Terry and Vicky realized I was not going to change my mind about leaving. As the Home was leaving to a new location, I would no longer be a "security risk" to them.
A few days before my departure, I was invited to have dinner with Queen Maria herself, in her new Motor Home she traveled in with Peter Amsterdam that was parked on our property. Six months earlier we had moved from Porto to the sunny Algarve, in the south of Portugal. Besides the main villa, our extensive property had three other bungalows, a swimming pool, sauna house, basketball court, and further down a two-story house next to a football field where the Motor Home was. In the two and a half years I had worked for her, I had never been invited to her personal quarters. The only time she had come to see me was a few days after my baby was born—for ten minutes. Now that I was leaving, I was to receive the special honor of her attention.
I was escorted by Becky, her personal assistant, who knocked on the door to the Motor Home.
"Come in." I heard a voice say.
Maria greeted me and invited me to sit at the table. I nervously sat down on the sofa couch.
"I thought I could share my dinner with you," Maria said. The specially prepared organic food had already been brought in by Becky and Maria heated it up in the microwave in the small kitchen area.
The portions were small. "I hope you don't mind," Maria said, "I can't eat very much at a time, so I just have little meals every few hours."
"No, that's fine," I replied. I wasn't that hungry anyway.
As we sat at the table, I could tell she was making an effort to be personable. But to me it felt awkward and contrived.
"My son Pete and Elixcia are leaving too," she told me. "We got some prophecies for them. I'll ask my secretary to give you some of them, as they were really important messages from the Lord and Grandpa to prepare you for all the new things you'll be faced with after you leave."
I didn't really know what to say. I had so much on my heart, overflowing with questions, but I was riveted by fear and uncertainty. What do you say to the woman who has affected your life so profoundly? I wish I could have asked her why.
Why were we experimented with as children? Why did she allow Mo to abuse his own granddaughter, Mene? And why did she cover up for him? Why the Detention Camps, and why was our father taken from us when we were just children? Did she care? Did she even remember?
Some part of me already knew what she would say if I did confront her on these painful issues and it would only hurt to hear it again: "All things work together for good to them that love God"—that was the verse used to excuse everything. Don't question your leaders, just put up with abuse, violence and intimidation because, well, God has a plan and it's for your good in the end.
"You have a pioneer spirit like your Dad," Maria told me, interrupting my thoughts. "He wasn't good at being behind the scenes. Just be yielded and willing to the Lord's will and everything will fall into place."
That really irked me and I couldn't let it slip by. I summoned up the courage to ask her something that had played on my mind for a long time.
"But how do you know what God's will is? I've always been told to be yielded to the Lord's will, but what does that mean? I've never heard God's voice booming out of the sky telling me, 'This is my will!"
I figured if anyone should know it would be the prophetess of the Endtime. Maria looked a little baffled at this question, though.
"Well, sweetie." She smiled and paused for a moment. "The Lord usually leads us through his shepherds. Just be yielded to the Lord's will and you'll be fine." She smiled even more.
She didn't answer my question at all, but like a light bulb it became clear as day for me—it was not yieldedness to God she wanted, nor was I "following God" as I had been told all my life; I was following the whims of a leader who played with her devoted followers like pawns on a chessboard. I saw how she had completely detached herself from reality and lived in a protective bubble that shielded her from the consequences of her decisions.
I didn't feel any real concern for myself and my daughter. I felt the leaders were trying to appease me, to keep me on their good side. But it was superficial. As I was driven away in the car to the airport, there was a part of me that grieved as I waved goodbye to Cherie's father Vince, and the few friends I had made, knowing I might never see them again. The other part of me was happy—happy that I was finally being released at last. It was the first step of many to my final free-dom.
The Central Reporting Office for Europe was located in the little village of Fluelen in Switzerland. Galileo was there to greet me—he held the same position of leadership as when he had met me at the age of eighteen and accompanied me to the Media Home in Finchley Road with Dawn. The next day he was off on assignment to England. The Office Home was small, just fifteen people, and the jealousy and rivalry in that house with double the ratio of women to men was com-pounded by the fact that you could hear every noise in that three-storey creaky wooden house. I had many sleepless nights, tossing and turning.
I felt alone—completely alone. The beauty of the rugged mountain peaks that surrounded us, and the tranquil lake of Lucerne, was lost to me. I was cut off from the friends I had just left behind in World Services, and I could not be in contact with my family and friends in normal Family Homes.
I might as well have been stranded on an island in the middle of the ocean, completely cut off from the outside world. This was not how I was going to raise my child. Cherie had such a bright, inquisitive mind and raising her in the Family would crush the unique, independent personality I so loved in her. I had only agreed to go to Switzerland temporarily—though it wasn't really a choice—but after six months I finally caught on that Queen Maria seemed keen to keep me locked away and within her reach.
I was through with being polite and "yielded," and finally, I snapped. Galileo had returned from a trip and I approached him. "I need to leave now," I told him. "I'm not staying here another week."
"Where do you want to go?" he asked me, concerned at the sound of urgency in my voice. I felt comfortable talking with Galileo even though he was a CR0. He was different from many of the men I knew, a gentle spirit and respectful. If he hadn't have been caught up in the cult, or in a position of leadership to enforce cult doctrine, he would have been a decent man.