Escaping the Cult: One cult, two stories of survival

Once again rules made by leaders far away tore apart my family. Now aged 12, my eldest brother, Joe, was sent to a TTC. My dad promised him that it would be great fun and that he’d get to do lots of activities and sports to help him grow strong. The look of dread on his face as he kissed my parents goodbye told me he didn’t believe a word of it.

Less than a week after Joe was sent away my father announced we were moving to a different commune. I couldn’t wait.

Chapter 9

From Russia with Love (#u7e83eae7-0420-56e3-a892-eb831942ed33)

I climbed up onto the closed toilet seat. I knew if I leaned forward onto the windowsill and stretched up onto my toes I could see out to the gate. I stared longingly – praying, willing the gate to open and for my mother to walk through it.

‘Natacha. Natacha, where are you, naughty girl?’

At the sound of Aunty Esther’s voice I jumped off the toilet and ran to take my seat in class.

As I slid into my chair Esther’s fist rapped into the side of my temple. ‘Wicked girl.’

Four months earlier we’d moved communes. Initially I had thought the move might make my life easier, but as it turned out I was sadly mistaken. This house was even bigger than the last, with between 150 and 200 permanent residents. On the surface it appeared to be a lot more comfortable than the previous one, with a pretty garden laid to lawn and planted with coconut trees. There was a square-shaped outdoor swimming pool, which I had been thrilled to discover we were allowed to use once a week for physical education lessons. But if the previous commune had been a madhouse of weird regulations, this one was like a military prison camp. Children wore uniforms depending on their age; all the outfits had been donated from various sources and were a funny hotchpotch of styles. I was seven now and the girls in my age group wore a uniform of a short skirt with a drawstring blouse, which was made of a horrible synthetic nylon that felt either cold or clammy on my skin depending on whether I was standing under a fan or outside in the heat.

As in the home before, we walked everywhere in silence, but if anything the school routine was even more rigid. Classes were held in a separate annex with different teachers for different subjects. For Word Time I had two teachers, Esther and Jeremiah, an African-American married couple from New York.

They were as different as chalk and cheese. Jeremiah loved children. He was a gentle giant with a shaved head who made up silly poems to make us laugh and always seemed to know if one of us was feeling down or poorly. He was the first adult I had trusted since Joy had left me and I absolutely adored him. Esther was rotund, as short as he was tall, and with a huge Afro that was almost as wide as her. Her favoured method of communication was a hit around the back of the head with knuckles as hard as steel. I hated her.

My father had been far less happy since the move, having now been officially demoted. The management backbiting against him that had been brewing since Leah’s departure had got gradually worse, until eventually he was told his services as a Shepherd were no longer required. He was utterly dejected, having worked hard to climb the internal hierarchy since joining. To be removed from his post so casually was like a slap in the face. The few freedoms his seniority had allowed him, such as travel to other homes or having a say in the work my mother did, disappeared overnight.

But for the five children remaining at home, Matt, Marc, Vincent, Guy and me, this meant we saw much more of him. I missed Joe but I had seen so little of him in the previous commune anyway that his absence didn’t seem so strange. His removal to the Victor Camp had been much harder on my mother, who was wracked with guilt, not that she had much choice in the matter.

Two months after we moved he had been allowed a long-weekend visit home. On the Sunday, family day, we spent it as always in my parents’ bedroom, but instead of jabbering and organising noisy games of marbles as normal he sat on the end of the bed looking subdued and rigid. We asked questions about the camp and the things they did there. He answered politely but briefly.

‘Do you like it there?’ my dad asked. ‘I mean, it is fun like I said it would be? Right?’

Joe was staring at the floor. ‘Yes, Dad. Sure. We have fun.’ He didn’t look up.

It was hard to put a finger on it. He just seemed – different.

After dinner the bus came to pick him up. It had done the rounds of the other nearby communes first so it was already crammed full with miserable-looking teenagers when it got to us. Without a word Joe got on and took a seat.

As my mother waved goodbye the kindly Jeremiah noticed she was upset. He patted her on the shoulder. ‘Are you OK, Patience? It must be a challenge to say goodbye.’

She glanced around. Jeremiah’s concern was genuine. The other eyes watching her were not. Her every gesture was being assessed for a negative reaction.

She gave a brittle little smile. ‘No, no, it’s a blessing. Truly. I am so thankful for it.’ She turned to go back inside, trying not to let them see her cry.

Vincent, now four, was growing into a naughtier child by the day. The commune aunties and uncles had little patience for what they saw as his spoilt, whining ways. He was smacked and hit often. One uncle hit him so hard with the back of his shoe that he was left badly bruised, and he cried non-stop for three days.

Perhaps the pain of Joe’s absence was still raw, or maybe it was the fact that she was hormonal, having recently learned she was pregnant again, but something made my usually submissive mother snap as her maternal instinct kicked in. She demanded to speak to a senior Shepherd and put in a formal complaint about the man.

Instead of supporting a woman, quite rightfully angry at the unacceptable levels of violence meted out to her small son, the Shepherd backed the uncle’s version of events. Mom was labelled a troublemaker and a potential doubter.

To prevent her ‘backsliding’ even further she was ordered to join a team of pioneers on a mission to Siberia in the Soviet Union. The team was to assess whether the Soviet Union, which was in political turmoil at the end of the Cold War, was ‘sheepy’ – believing – enough for The Family to set up bases there. Their mission was to try to win over new recruits, hold Bible classes and see if they could find wealthy patrons who would help support a commune financially.

At the next family day she and my dad announced the bad news.

‘It’s a great honour for her to have been asked,’ said my dad, somewhat unconvincingly.

‘But why does Mommy have to go away?’ Vincent was sitting on her lap, his tearful face buried in her chest. ‘Don’t you love us, Mommy?’

‘Oh, my little one. Of course I do. I love you so, so, so much. But Jesus has asked me to do this special favour for him. The people there need his love and I have to go share it with them. If Jesus needs this from me, then we all have to make a little sacrifice, don’t we?’

She cupped his face in her hands to make him look at her. ‘Jesus needs me, Vincent. For him, who gives us so much love, we have to give ourselves. It won’t be for long, little one.’

She and Dad exchanged another of their secret looks.

Later I heard them arguing. It sounded as though Mom was finding this easier than Dad. ‘You are pregnant. I have got to find a way to prevent this.’

She hissed at him: ‘Marcel, shush. Keep your voice down. If someone overhears you’ll be reported too. And then what? I need you here to take care of the children. I will manage. If it’s Jesus’s will to keep me safe then I will fine.’

‘How in Jesus’s name can a pregnant woman be sent to such a godforsaken place? This is not about Jesus. It’s about punishing us both. I won’t have it.’

She went over and put her arms around him. ‘If this is God’s will then we will survive this test. It’s only for 12 weeks. It will fly by. And when I come back Jesus will reward us with another baby.’

He nodded at her wanly.

What my father knew but we children didn’t was that she was being sent close to the city of Chelyabinsk, the site of a former Soviet plutonium production site and one of the most polluted places on earth.

My father was beside himself with worry. He also felt incredibly guilty. He had fully supported her complaint and encouraged her to do it. So he felt that if anyone should be have been punished it should be him. He pleaded with the Shepherds to reconsider, but to no avail. This plummeted him into a severe depression.

My youngest brother, Guy, wasn’t yet two years old. He had never been separated from my mom for more than a day, having always slept in the nursery where she worked. The day she left his heart-rending cries of ‘Mommy, Mommy, wan’ my mommy’ rang out through the corridors. I watched as an aunty picked him up to cuddle him, but instead of calming or reassuring him that his mother was coming back she repeated over and over the same old motivational mantra that was supposed to cure everything: ‘Get the victory, get the victory.’

How was that supposed to comfort a two year old whose mother has been ripped away from him? I decided I would look after him and take my mom’s place until she came back.

That was easier said than done because usually I only got to see him on family day. Every chance I got I invented an excuse to sneak out of class and dash into the nursery to pick him up for a cuddle or sing him a little song. The aunties who made up the nursery staff were generally sympathetic and didn’t tell tales on me, but I rarely got away with it and usually received one of Esther’s knuckle punches when I got back to class.

I didn’t care how much she hurt me. Guy was all that mattered. On family days I did my best to cheer up my dad, telling silly jokes to try to make him laugh. I tried my best to hold my own unhappiness in, saving it for those secret moments in the bathroom when I climbed onto the toilet and said a little prayer for the gate to open and for her to walk in.

Increasingly, performing troupes were seen as a really effective way to bring in funds. This was especially true in Thailand where a troupe of Western performers had big novelty value. The commune had a professional-sounding troupe who were booked up weeks in advance to perform at office parties, in shopping malls, orphanages and even adult prisons. The troupe played a mixed set of songs, dance routines and funny sketches. Both my parents were extremely musical and had passed on the love of performing to me and my brothers.

My singing voice was very pretty but I wasn’t a brilliant dancer. However, I was determined to land myself a starring role in the upcoming Christmas show. The troupe had been booked by a big shopping mall to perform for a full two weeks in the run up to the holidays. The mall was popular with tourists so the thought of playing to such a large audience was thrilling.

I wanted to make my mom proud of me when she came back. I also badly needed something to distract me from missing her so much.

Part of the show involved a nativity. I was desperate to be cast as Mary or an angel, the plum roles all the little girls wanted. I auditioned but of course those parts went to the prettiest girls. Instead I got cast as a villager. I was disappointed but consoled that I got to be part of a big group dance scene. I spent every moment I could rehearsing my steps. Everyone took it very seriously and I was determined to do a good job.

In early December, just a week before the show was due to start, I was pulled aside for a ‘quiet chat’ at rehearsal by Uncle Matthew, the director. I knew I’d messed up a few steps and braced myself for an angry dressing down.

Matthew didn’t mince his words. ‘You are out of the troupe. You need to join the Minnies programme. Succeed and there might be a place for you next year.’

The Minnies was a fattening-up programme for too-skinny kids. The Family didn’t want hungry or sick-looking children being seen in public for fear the authorities might get concerned and investigate conditions. It seems I had fallen below the acceptable weight. It wasn’t surprising considering the poor-quality food and tiny portions we were dished out. And it wasn’t my fault I was so thin. But being kicked out of the show felt like the hardest punishment of all. I was shattered, crying myself to sleep every night. To make it worse the other girls teased me, showing off their costumes and never missing an opportunity to tell me how excited they were about being in the show.

To fatten me up I was placed on a regime of two daily portions of stodgy rice porridge with sugar and milk powder, in addition to my normal meals. It was so thick a spoon would stand up in it. At first the sugar rush felt like quite a treat and I enjoyed it. But after weeks of eating it every day I only had to look at a bowl and I would want to throw up.