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Kitabı oku: «Not Without My Sister: The True Story of Three Girls Violated and Betrayed by Those They Trusted», sayfa 6
Changing my attitude would not be enough though. I was also asked to change my name. Celeste was too spacey (because it meant ‘heavenly’ in Spanish). My head was too much in the clouds and I needed to choose a more down-to-earth name.
‘You have a few days to think and pray about it, and then you can get back to me on what the Lord shows you,’ she said.
For three days I could drink only soup and water. The hunger pains were my only company as I was confined in a small room apart from everyone else. At the end of the three days, Marianne asked,
‘Well, have you decided on your new name?’
I nodded. ‘Joan, after Joan of Arc. I want to be a fighter like her.’
Marianne was pleased with this. ‘Jesus needs fighters in his Endtime army,’ she said. ‘Good. I’ll let everyone know.’
During my month of isolation my mind and feelings went numb, almost as if I went into shutdown mode. I remember this time as a blur, where one day blended into another. At the end of the month, the commune gathered to say a prayer of deliverance over me. My head was anointed with oil and everyone laid hands on my head, speaking in tongues. The demons of pride, self-righteousness and rebellion were supposedly cast out of me.
I was confused. Was there really a struggle for my soul in Heaven between God and the Devil? Why didn’t I feel it then? I still had no idea what I had done wrong or what part of the Devil Marianne had seen in me, but I was just glad and relieved that it was over.
Later I found out that I was not the only one who had gone through a breaking when I was stunned to read two Letters of Confession, published for the whole Family, in which Dad confessed his sins as part of a public demotion and retraining at the Kings house. First, he admitted his fame with Music with Meaning had made him too proud. During his years in college he had dabbled in the occult. The demons must have latched on to him and he asked for cleansing prayer to rid him of their influence. I was hurt when he wrote that the women in his life were better off since he had left them for the Lord.
Did he really believe that? I wondered.
In a second Confession, he said that he had made an idol of his mother, Krystyna. Mo had said that demons could ‘hitchhike’ into your home, riding in on photographs. To break her hold and get rid of the evil spirits on her photographs, Dad had burned every picture of our grandmother. She was a Catholic and a loving mother before her death. How was anything about her demonic? I was heartbroken that he had destroyed these irreplaceable pictures that had been given to him by his father and relatives on his trip to Poland in search of his roots. The only photograph left of our grandmother is the one he gave me to keep on his return.
On the back of the Teen Training Camps, ‘retraining centres’ were being set up in key locations around the world for the Family’s teenagers and ‘rebel’ adults to be sent to for further training. At the same time, Mo went too far in his meddling with Filipino politics and the military, and the Family wore out their welcome. The media picked up the story and Mo declared the Philippines a ‘reaped field’. Marianne was ordered to move her entire Home to Tokyo. During this period of transition, Armi, Krys, my little sister Juliana and I were sent a nearby complex in Manila so huge it was known as the Jumbo. Krys still lived with us in the girls’ teen room even though she had just had a little baby girl. She had difficulty bonding with her child and didn’t take care of her properly because she wanted to share in the few fun things the rest of us teens were allowed, instead of staying back all the time, watching a baby she hadn’t wanted.
It was here I met Paul Peloquin again. He came to film another strip-dance video for Mo. He pulled me aside. ‘Sweetie, Grandpa has made a special request. He wants you to dance. We’re not really supposed to film underage girls dancing nude anymore, but this is just an exception.’
The new rules were supposed to stop all displays of child sexuality but the leaders wanted to make him happy.
‘He thought your dance for his birthday last year was very sexy.’ Paul winked at me. I didn’t want to do this dance – I felt used, put on display for some old man’s entertainment. But no one said ‘no’ to Grandpa without serious consequences so I agreed. And just as before, Paul coached me from behind the camera. When the song finished, I was applauded for my humility and yieldedness to the Lord. Everything was always about yieldedness and submission, but I was beginning to wonder if it was really God who we were submitting to, or the whims of our leaders.
The time had come for a team of us to move to a school being set up in Japan. When I was told that Juliana was to stay in the Philippines, I worried if she would be all right without Dad or me around. I had tried to look out for her as best I could over the years, but in reality there was little I could do.
I was determined not to leave before seeing my father. Even though the location of World Services was supposed to be a secret, I knew he was still in the Philippines. The day before flying to Tokyo, I was given permission to spend two hours with him at a hotel. I was put in a van and blindfolded so I could not see where I was being taken. After driving around for an hour, the van came to a stop. When they took the blindfold off, I was greeted by my smiling dad. I was so happy to see him again, if only for a few hours.
‘You’ve got grey hair!’ I exclaimed. He had aged since I last saw him almost two years before. He kissed me on the forehead just as he did when I was a little girl. ‘How’s my baby?’
‘I’m not a baby anymore,’ I said, standing up tall.
“Well, no matter how old you are, I’ll always be that much older than you – so you’ll always be my baby,’ Dad teased. I smiled, half annoyed, and half enjoying his fussing. We went into the five-star hotel.
‘How did you know I was in the Philippines?’ He was curious to know.
‘I just did. It’s obvious.’ I didn’t say that Grandpa seemed to know everything that happened in our Home, and his Letters talked about the political situation in the Philippines. I’d just put two and two together. Dad was shocked. Mo moved in an aura of such tight control and secrecy that I could see he was worried that I might inadvertently let something slip and he’d be blamed.
‘Don’t breathe a word,’ he admonished.
‘Oh, Dad – I know the rules.’
We went into the restaurant and ate lunch together. ‘How’s Julie doing?’ he asked.
‘She’s okay, I guess. I don’t see her often, but she’s doing well in her school work.’
‘She’s a brain on a stick,’ Dad laughed. He seemed so glib about it. ‘You’re both true Family children. And look how good you both are doing.’
Well, I wasn’t so sure about that. I had had a terrible year, but I didn’t want to disappoint Dad or sound like I was murmuring or being negative. Our time went all too quickly, and I got teary-eyed when it was time to leave. Dad told me to be brave and that he would see me again soon, if not on this Earth then in the Millennium. He kissed me on the forehead and said goodbye. I was blindfolded again and spirited away.
CHAPTER SIX Torn
Early in December 1987, a group of about thirty of us arrived in Tokyo airport from the Philippines. As the plane came down, I saw the breathtaking view of Mount Fuji. Capped with snow, it was instantly recognizable. We crowded on to a hired bus and travelled to a small town called Tateyama, five hours south. It was in the mountains by the sea. Japan is a series of long islands and the seasons move slowly from one end to the other – it can be winter at one end and still summer at the other. We were on the middle island, where it was just at the end of autumn. Everything was miniature size – the roads, the shops, the houses and the Buddhist temples.
Our destination was the Heavenly City School. It was a large building that had been built for the Family by the Naritas, an elderly Japanese couple who supported the group financially. I learned that Mr Narita was the wealthy owner of a nightclub called Charivari in the Ginza district, a high-class and expensive shopping and entertainment section of Tokyo. He had been targeted by some Flirty Fishers and had quickly succumbed to their charms. Perhaps even he didn’t realize exactly how much he was going to spend in the years that followed.
As well as the school building, which was built in the shape of a cross, the Naritas – Mrs Narita had quickly been converted as well – also owned a number of smaller houses within walking distance of the main school building, where the leadership stayed. Naturally, in return for his financial support, Mr Narita enjoyed the sexual services of Family women. If the object of Flirty Fishing was to simply win souls to Christ, his soul was saved many times over. Flirty Fishing had by now been discontinued, mainly due to the AIDS scare, but there were exceptions for those whose support and protection the Family needed.
We arrived from the hot weather of Manila to a bitter cold winter. The abrupt change was a shock to my system. At night we slept on futons on the floor and took showers in true Japanese fashion in a large ofuro or communal bath. The school building was so large it was difficult to heat. Portable gas heaters were used sparingly to save on fuel and in the mornings we would all huddle around our one heater in the right wing of the building where we slept, to keep warm as we got dressed.
In January one morning, we woke to a dazzling view of snow. It was only the second time I had ever seen snow and I was captivated by the sparkling beauty of everything – trees, buildings and the ground were covered. We rushed outside, teenagers just bursting to break free and have fun. I had my first snowball fight since Greece. Ado, the head teen shepherd, took me aside.
‘There’s a letter for you,’ he started. ‘It’s from England.’
I almost gasped with shock and felt faint. England! Was it from my mum? I was too scared to ask.
Ado handed me the letter. ‘Let’s pray together first to cleanse this letter from hitchhiking spirits.’
Obediently, my heart still jumping erratically, I closed my eyes as Ado prayed. The envelope was already opened and he watched while I carefully took out the letter. He already knew the contents – nothing we received was ever private and was always heavily censored. My eyes flew to the address, and then to the signature. It wasn’t from Mum.
It was from Mum’s sister, an aunt I didn’t know I possessed. Aunt Caryn wrote that Mum, Kristina and David would love me to come and visit them in England. She also mentioned that David was going to school and doing well in mathematics.
I reread those words, puzzled, because Family children did not attend System schools. I was riveted by shock at the idea of actually going for a visit. All my old dreams and hopes and yearnings – the constant weight of missing my mum that I had carried around with me for a decade – flooded back. I wondered why Mum hadn’t written herself, or Kristina.
‘I’d love to go and visit. Can I go to England?’ I asked, hopefully.
‘We’ll get back to you,’ Ado replied. I dared to hope that my dream of seeing my mother again would come true, but it wasn’t to be. The weeks slid away and I heard nothing more.
Tateyama was such a beautiful place that at times the problems and the threat of doom that always hung over our heads seemed very remote. But the Endtime was always there. Grandpa had predicted the Great Tribulation, the last three and a half years before Jesus’ return, would begin sometime in 1989. The call on the Naritas’ purse had been great. They had built the School as a refuge, with a bunker basement deep underground, equipped to survive an atomic war. An air vent in the bunker would, in theory, filter out the radiation. They also had a large stash of whisky and liquor stored. Based on his experiences from the Great Depression of the 1930s, Grandpa believed that these items would the best commodities to trade in the event of an economic crash.
Mo had also interpreted the measurements of the Heavenly City given in the biblical Book of Revelations, chapter 21, to be the description of a pyramid structure. Mo’s fervent disciples would live near the top of the apex while other Christians would be Heaven’s second-class citizens.
One afternoon, we all were gathered in the main dining room. I was flabbergasted to see Peter Amsterdam walk in. Everyone went quiet as he sat down on a chair placed on a raised platform at the front of the room. He had an important message to give us.
Inspired by Mo’s revelation, the Naritas had already built a pyramid structure at the top of a hill adjacent to the school building as a prayer room. Mo now decided to make it a tourist attraction, to spread the message.
‘Over the next few months, artists from World Services will be working on the pyramid’s interior, creating miniature models of the heavenly attractions inside,’ Peter Amsterdam explained. ‘You are not to go up to the pyramid under any circumstances, or even so much as look up at the hill during the work. Remember, the eyes of the Lord are in every place, so don’t think when no one is looking you can disobey,’ he warned.
He looked around the hall and his eyes seemed to bore into each one of us as we sat in awe at meeting the third most important person in the Family. ‘You do not need to know why you are not allowed to look. And if anyone is caught disobeying, the offender will be excommunicated.’
After he and the shepherds swept out and we dispersed, there was a soft, excited buzz, like a hive of bees. I was terrified of breaking the rules. I found out later that the real reason for the secrecy was that Mo and Maria were living at the Fountain House, ten minutes’ walk away. It did seem odd to me at the time that at certain times during the day a message would go round that we were not allowed outside, and we were forbidden to go to the White House across the street from the school building. This was a small house also owned by the Naritas where the leadership stayed, and Grandpa often visited, cloaked in secrecy, for meetings.
Peter Amsterdam led regular evening meetings with everyone – it was a time of retraining. He also instituted a Word Date schedule. We were supposed to share God’s love and read God’s Word. Four makeshift rooms were built in the bunker basement as love rooms. Each one had a bed, a little table stand with tissues and lubrication, and a painting with a Mo Quote on the wall for decoration. The only person I wanted to be with was Miguel. He was my first boyfriend. We were both thirteen years old, just a month apart, and he was a Sagittarius like my dad. He was fun loving and popular and I liked his jokes and laid-back style. But of course, only being with Miguel would be considered selfish and the teen shepherds arranged the schedule for us.
Our teen shepherd, Ricky, was our daily ‘inspirationalist’ and he got a kick out of ‘breaking our bottles’ by getting the girls to take their tops off while playing the guitar and singing, ‘Come on Ma, Burn Your Bra’. For his birthday, his partner Elaine got the teen girls to take their tops off and he went down the line feeling them up. That was our ‘birthday present’ to him. I was the only one who refused to take part. Afterwards, Ricky had it in for me.
‘You’re just an old bottle.’ He would single me out in front of everyone. It made me more embarrassed and stubborn. The group pressure to conform was intense, but I refused to take my top off no matter what. Finally, I relented. For Peter Amsterdam’s birthday in April, Elaine suggested the girls do a repeat performance like they had done for Ricky. I refused at first but decided last minute to do a topless dance with Armi. My true motive was to impress Miguel who was sitting with the teen boys on the side watching, but the shepherds saw my change of heart as a sign of spiritual growth.
Peter had told us there would be people from World Services around, and that if we bumped into them we were not to talk to them. They always travelled in pairs and I soon noticed a teen boy doing fix-it jobs around the school building with a Scandinavian-looking man who accompanied him. I had only seen pictures of Davidito when he was a toddler, but though he was much older now, the teen boy looked uncannily similar. His tanned skin and distinct Spanish features gave him away. I wanted to talk to him, but he kept his eyes downward most of the time, and I sensed his uneasiness at this constant supervision. Nonetheless, I continued to look at him curiously whenever I saw him.
After the pyramid project was completed, we were finally allowed to go up and see it. The inside was transformed into a showcase of Mo’s idea of a Heavenly City theme park. We also started to see more of Davidito, or Pete, as he introduced himself, and Davida, the daughter of Sarah Davidito. They had been given permission to attend some of our teen activities and classes. They both were incredibly timid which surprised me. I had expected Davidito to be confident, a leader, a role model of everything we were supposed to strive for. But given his background – which we all knew about – his timidity was understandable. The children at Grandpa’s Home lived in a glass bowl like Big Brother, where everything was reported. Over the years we had read every detail of his life, his first steps, every spanking, every reward. We knew everything about Davidito, Davida and Techi, even though we never met them face-to-face. They had grown up knowing no other children but each other.
When I met him, Davidito was thirteen. It was the first time he had met a large number of teens and I could see that he desperately wanted to join in, but he found it very hard to talk to us after years of isolation and repression. One afternoon I got a chance to chat with him alone. He was sitting in the teen room and I sat next to him. I was a little nervous, not knowing what I could ask him and what he was allowed to say. But as we started chatting, I felt instant affection for him. He was just like any one of us, not the idol that had been built up in the Letters and Life with Grandpa.
‘What’s it like meeting so many young people for the first time?’ I asked.
‘It’s good,’ he replied a little hesitantly. ‘I’ve made some friends. It’s difficult, though. I’m expected to be an example all the time. I just want to be like everyone else.’
We all knew that he was destined to become one of the last two Endtime Witnesses along with his mother, Maria, who had been elevated to the status of prophetess. Grandpa had prophesied that together they would fulfil this role talked about in the Book of Revelations, and that Davidito would die as a martyr at the hands of the Antichrist soldiers before Jesus’ return. While I had nightmares that maybe one day I would be killed as a martyr, I could not imagine what it was like knowing your fate was to die on the streets of Jerusalem. I wanted to ask him how he felt about this horrible fate, but thought it might be cruel to remind him. It was a tall order having to be the perfect reflection of his parents all the time when all he wanted was to hang out with us and enjoy life.
One afternoon we were gathered together for Correction, under strict silence. I lay on a futon at the back of the room, as I had been sick for a month with swollen glands and a temperature. That summer almost the entire teen group had come down with kissing fever, or mononucleosis. But sick or not, a Correction had to include everyone. Peter Amsterdam walked in, flanked by our teen shepherds. They sat facing us.
After a prayer, Peter Amsterdam thundered sternly, ‘The sins of your foolishness and worldliness have come to the attention of Grandpa himself.’
We looked at each other. What was this about?
He continued, ‘Some of you were caught listening to a compilation of System music! Sad to say, Pete was part of this. It doesn’t excuse him but you all have had a part in being terrible influences, and allowing the Devil to get in.’
I had no idea what Peter Amsterdam was talking about but again we were all in trouble for the actions of some. The list of our supposed sins was long. We had indulged in foolish talking and idleness instead of memorizing Bible scripture. We dressed worldly or cool. The girls flaunted long earrings and short tank tops.
At the end, the ringleaders were singled out and marched to the front. Peter Amsterdam produced a leather strap, and the guilty boys were given a belting in front of us as an example to all. We were all crying and shaking. When the punishment was over, he bawled, ‘Get down on your hands and knees and pray for mercy!’
It wasn’t the end of it – a long list of punishments was devised for everyone for the backsliding and relaxed attitude that had led to this crime. Four of us teens who were not yet well were moved that night to the sick house, glad that we would escape at least some of the months of punishments the rest of the group would suffer. A few weeks later, I caught whooping cough. After two terrible months, and just as I was about to be released from quarantine, I was exposed to chickenpox. The shepherds told me that this meant I had to remain in quarantine for another month. It came to mid-November and I had been five months in confinement. I was going stir crazy, bored, cut off from my friends, and I was desperate to do some work, anything to keep me occupied. I hit a low of deep depression.
Then, unexpectedly, Dad arrived at the School from the Philippines. ‘Dad!’ I hugged him. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’ I expected sympathy from him, but for the first time in my life, he lost his temper. I didn’t feel he had the right to scold me. He hadn’t lived with me for years. Raising his voice, he launched in with an attack.
‘I heard you’ve been sick for months. You’ve been disobedient! You haven’t taken your Get Out time faithfully like Grandpa ordered!’ A Mo Letter called ‘Get Out’ had been written about my dad, when he got deathly sick with hepatitis at Loveville in Greece. Mo wrote, ‘We can’t have a show depending on a sick man’, and ordered a regime of daily exercise to make sure that he stayed healthy. Since that day, Dad had always been faithful with his daily exercise, jogging or doing yoga exercises.
I was shocked and the tears were brimming. He must have received a bad report from the teen shepherds, I thought. For me to be sick for so long reflected badly on him.
Facing this angry man, in an instant the image I had of my perfect father was shattered. I thought he loved me; he had never lost his temper before, he’d always been fair. But I did not recognize the man in front of me now. What had happened to him the years that we were apart? Was he really just like the rest of them, irrational and temperamental?
As he continued ranting, I shut down, blocking him out. Throughout my months of illness I’d hated feeling helpless; but I hated even more everyone’s judgemental attitude towards me, like it was something I had done wrong. Now even my own dad had turned against me. I couldn’t believe it.
Unfortunately, I became ill again. Two days later I came down with another temperature and broke out in hives. My body swelled up with bright red bumps all over and my lips and eyes puffed up to three times their normal size. I didn’t recognize my own reflection in the mirror. On the third day, Dad came to see me at the Blue House. He told me he had been praying desperately about the reason why I had been afflicted for so long.
‘The Lord showed me that you have been put under a curse,’ he said. ‘Your mother is a backslider. She has left the Family.’
I struggled to take it in. Mum had left the Family! It was devastating and shocking news. For the past year, ever since that letter, I had hung on to the hope that I would be allowed to visit her. I didn’t even know if she was still in England. I had no idea where she was, or what she was doing.
‘Yes, she has gone back to the System, to the pit, to wallow in the mire,’ he said disdainfully. ‘She has asked for you and wants to take you out of the Family –’
My mouth dropped open with shock as wild thoughts and emotions surged through me. She had asked for me! She wanted me! But did she even remember me? It had been so long.
‘The Lord showed me that you need to pray against her and rebuke her spirit. Grandpa wrote a Mo Letter about this, called, “God’s Curses”. You should read it.’
A silent tear ran down my cheek. I still felt a bond of love and loyalty to my mother that no one had replaced. Pray against her? It was unthinkable.
Dad was on a roll. ‘She’s not your mother any more. You need to renounce any thoughts of her and pray against her influence in your life. This is serious spiritual warfare!’
I was torn between my love for him, my need for his approval, and my instinctive repugnance over what he was asking me to do. Had Mum really put a curse on me? Dad knew how much I loved her. Now he had the leverage he needed to totally destroy my memory of her for good.
I felt a wave of black despair sweep over me. I was still sick, run down and depressed. I felt beaten. I gave in. ‘Okay,’ I said, but I had no intention of praying against her myself.
Dad laid his hands on me and prayed fervently. ‘May the Lord destroy your mother and take her out of the way. She’s better off dead then being a tool in the hands of the Devil.’ The prayer went on a while, and finally he concluded with, ‘May the Lord to cleanse your daughter, Celeste, completely from her rebellious spirit.’
It almost destroyed me to hear my Dad pray to God to kill someone, backslider or not. Grandpa had often prayed such venomous prayers against his enemies, but now my own mother? That day I shut her away and made a conscious effort not to think about her anymore. It was too painful to go there.
The next morning I woke up and the swelling had gone down. By the end of the day the hives had disappeared completely. My ‘miraculous’ recovery made me wonder if what Dad had said was true. He certainly took it as a sign that I had been delivered.
I was finally released from the sick house, and like any released prisoner I was ecstatic to be back in normal life. I started a Family apprenticeship programme in photography, which I loved. It was also Christmas; I joined up with the singing team again and performed at the Christmas show that was held at a fancy hotel for all our Japanese friends, over a hundred and fifty people. It boosted my self-confidence and esteem and I started to feel better after so many months of illness and isolation.
But just a month later, my tourist visa expired and I had to go to Korea for what was called a visa trip. This was common – members were often coming and going in such a way to renew their visas. It had never been a problem. I left the day before my fourteenth birthday with an adult partner, Sue, the cheerful, auburn-haired former club secretary of Music with Meaning back in the Loveville era. However, when we tried to re-enter Japan, immigration stopped Sue and we were both refused entry. After a night in detention we were put on a plane to Hong Kong. I was devastated and cried the entire flight.
‘I can’t believe this has happened,’ I sobbed. ‘I was going to out for dinner with Dad for my birthday when I got back.’ Sue was upset herself. She had left her lover and job in Tokyo and her future was just as uncertain. There was terrible turbulence on the flight, and this added to my anxiety. I thought for sure we were going to crash into the ocean.
At Hong Kong airport, we were greeted by Zadok and a World Services man named Isaac. Sue disappeared with the World Services leader to a Home in Hong Kong and Zadok told me I was headed to Macau.
I burst into tears again. Not the farm! I would have to start all over again, away from my dad and my friends. The unfairness of it made me angry. ‘Don’t worry,’ Zadok tried to comfort me. ‘Hosea isn’t there anymore. There’re a lot of teens. It’s different.’ But his words were not reassuring. For days I cried and cried. Zadok and the teen shepherds there became concerned about my emotional state and did their best to try and lift my spirits, but it was no good. I was a physical and emotional wreck.
Finally, I pulled myself together and started to make friends with the teen girls. The farm had been turned into a training centre similar to ours in Japan – but part of it was like a prison camp for wayward teens. For the first time since she was twelve and had modelled for Heaven’s Girl in the Philippines, I saw Mene. She had been sent away from the King’s House to Macau in disgrace and was a Detention Teen now, kept apart from the main group. The number one crime that could land you in the Detention Teens was spreading doubts, showing a critical and analytical spirit, and questioning the words of the prophet, as Mene had done. She was the first DT placed under the charge of Crystal and her husband, Michael. They were brutally harsh.
I saw Mene with the other DTs carrying out heavy manual labour around the farm – mostly meaningless work, such as digging ditches and then filling them up again, or painting and then repainting the old barn, first brown and then green, and then back to brown again. The aim was to exhaust them to break their spirits. My childhood friend looked pale and gaunt but we were forbidden to talk to her or even make eye contact. She was under permanent silence restriction. Sometimes she would disappear for weeks at a time. I learned from the teens that were with her in the DT programme that she had been put in solitary confinement in a small attic room, beaten and tied naked spread-eagled to the bed, with a bucket for a toilet, and fed only bread and water.
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