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AnotherName - Thursday, August 08, 2002

reading this string brought back alot of memories, it's funny how we start thinking that it's okay if there arent any cuts, saw alot of that, my sis was raped IE virginity gone at age 11, I wish I had been able to be with a girl the first time. And Erin, of course Lonnie Davis would try to cover, he's Marc from PI -- synonymous w/ Child Abuse, he shoudv'e been gang-raped up the ass years ago.
Does anyone want to join me and, to be fair, just get him and put him in solitary for as long as Marc's put all the teens in in the Jumbo? (I guess that'll be about 2 years), and smash in his kneecaps, once for every time he beat someone at the Jumbo?

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Aita - Wednesday, August 07, 2002

Yes, this things are definetly true. I remember one of my brothers getting beaten over & over for wanting to be with his mom. He was only 2 yrs. at the time. He always was, & still is a very stubborn person so this was viewed as rebelliousness & he was severly punished for it. He used to get locked in the attic for hours, missing dinner, parent time, etc. until he apologized for whatever it was he did. During winter that attic was freezing but nobody said anything about a 2 yr. old alone in there. That attic was also full with rats. One time he just wouldn't "yield" so he got left there to spend the night. I remember him barely able to speak but he told my mom once after an specially hard beating, "Mommy, I want to die, I don't like it here." Can you imagine a 2 yr. old looking into your eyes & telling you he wants to die! If that doesn't break your heart & tell you that something is totally wrong with this picture, then I don't know what does.
My Mom finally got fed up & took us away from that home, but not before we went through some pretty awful stuff. My brother is now a 9 yr. old boy, but he still has the scars of what he went through there. He still remembers being stuck in the attic, he remembers the rats moving around him in the dark, he remembers the spankings he got, & he remembers feeling so bad that he wanted to die.
We are 12 brothers & sisters......this is just the story of one of them.

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Jules - Tuesday, August 06, 2002

jpmagero, I'm glad you never had to experience anything like this, no one should ever have to. However the horrific reality is that this level of brutality did occur. I experienced it myself first hand from my parents. I'm at work right now, and it's a little too intense to be able to sit here at my desk and give you very many details, but the coat hangers, the severe bruising, the hours of beatings are things I personally can attest to. My father would hold us against a wall and hit us in the face with his fist. I saw a two year old boy held upside down naked and beaten with a guitar wire by his father. A father plunged his 12 year old son's hand into boiling water because he wanted him "to know what it felt like". Anyways, I have to stop, but I wanted to let you know, Erin, that I have so much respect for you and what you have overcome.

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Erin - Tuesday, August 06, 2002

I don’t know who you are, but every bit of this is true. The first incident went on from about noon to five in the afternoon. The second incident also occurred in the afternoon, until it was dark outside.

It is simply animalistic to fight for your life. You probably don’t know anything about that because you grew up after things got less abusive. You’re probably in your early twenties and never experienced such things, so therefore in your small mind, if you didn’t see it, it didn’t exist. But, let me make it very, very clear, it happened, exactly as I said it did. Just because you may never have been to China, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

There were witnesses. I still have scars. I could easily name names and those that either knew these people or witnessed what I went through could confirm this.

There is no exaggeration in what I posted. In fact, I left out several things. My siblings experienced it, too. I remember after a few years of living on the mission field a teenage boy and his sister arrived from the U.S. They seemed kind of morbidly surprised when they discovered I was the girl who was beaten that day in the room of their “home.” It had become common knowledge and gossip. My step-father boasted about it to people I never met.

So, please, don’t make comments on things of which you are ignorant. You belittle the suffering of innocent children. I saw the marks on babies as young as nine months old, one of them was my brother. I saw them inflicted. I remember practically breaking down a door to get to my little brother who was being beaten by our mother’s husband. I got into the room, stood between my ten year old brother and this man and said “If you come near him, I’ll kill you.” It did save him from further abuse that night. Unfortunately, he later suffered such severe abuse from the same man, after I left, that he has two nearly 12 inch long scars down his back. It’s not necessary to exaggerate such horror. Scars speak for themselves.

Rather, we keep it quite and live in pain because as children we think it was out fault. But, only silence keeps us living in pain. It’s time to expose it, it in all its graphic truth, write about it, talk about, name names and stop it once and for all.

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Erin - Tuesday, August 06, 2002

Joe, I could easily go into more detail. I could tell you times, places, people’s names, where they live now, etc. But, now is not the time for that. Doing such over the internet, does no good, except to put the guilty on notice.

Do know that these events occurred over a seventeen year period. In some “homes,” you would see the abuse nearly everyday. In others, it would happen less often, thank God! In a few, there was little or no physical abuse, but sexual and, the ever present, child labor and exploitation and deprivation of education.

I do not have a mother I claim. The woman who gave birth to me is still in the COG. My step-father who beat me so brutally is out. He admits to what he did. Your mother, Joe, knew mine and me, when I was just a child. If you’d like to hear stories of gory abuse, ask you mother about what she observed over twenty-five years in various countries.

There were various levels of abuse in every “home,” but the things I describe were not “spankings.” Those incidents which were mild “spankings” were too numerous for which to account. I described rather two incidents of physical abuse which left me scarred and bleeding. I can also tell you about having my shoulder dislocated, if you like. It still gives me trouble because I was never taken to the doctor after it happened. It never healed properly I was later told by my doctor after I left. I was twelve when it happened.

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dave - Tuesday, August 06, 2002

Sorry dude, such events sadly DID occur. Erin's story is true, even though it’s disturbing.

I've lived many years in Europeans "schools" and "Combos" run mainly by people who lived for years and who were trained in the East. These sick individuals mastered the 'Art of Discipline'. They exerted their force and power and preyed on the weak and the helpless. True, these things never happened to me, I was lucky, mainly because I kept my mouth shut. Did these types of events happen to people I know or lived with? YES. Sadly some of my own flesh brothers and sister were subjected to the unusually harsh, cruel and unjust punishment for what now seems like trivial things. But more often, for nothing. For asking questions. For being silly. For making “bad looks” and not being “cheerful. For sometimes wetting their beds, like kids sometimes do.

Let me tell you another story: I was visiting the U.K. in the fall of '93. I had just turned 18. I was traveling with Ricky of Elaine and a few other SGAs. This was immediately following the first meeting (held in Switzerland) reading the unedited, uncut version of "Mama's Letter to Europe". I met this 11-year-old kid (to protect his privacy, I will omit his name) who told me he was beat with a horsewhip by Malaysian Mary (who was notorious in the East from what I've discovered) for being silly, “talking back” or stealing or something like that. I honestly cannot remember what the beating was for. What 11-year-old boy do you know that is not silly, nerdy and stupid? I was not the first one this kid told about this, “leadership” knew of this too I was told. So I assumed the leadership was handling the situation. Well, they 'handled' the situation alright. Sometime later I heard the kid was whisked off the live with his biological dad in Taiwan. By doing this, the cult’s top brass ensured the kid would not be around to testify in court. Keep in mind this was during the intense Pearl Case child custody case. Malaysian Mary… well, I heard she was demoted by EUROCRO because of what she did to this boy and she was to never work with teens or children again. I saw her last in Belgium in the summer of ’95 doing ‘Outreach’ and provisioning. Did she go to jail for what she did? NO. Did she have to pay compensation for her crime(s)? NO.

I don’t want to defend Ricky of Elaine because from what we know, he was to blame for many Victor situations in the East. BUT, if this means anything, even he was shocked to hear of the brutally in some of the European Combos. These “shepherds” in Europe took what happened in the East, places like Japan, the P.I., and Thailand to completely new and violent levels.

About toddlers screaming… I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the lambs screaming. In ’89 our family moved to the south of France to join our first ever “Combo”. Up until that time, most of the Family who lived in Europe lived either alone or with another small family. The Combo “vision” was just starting to get in full swing. If people did not want to join a Combo, they were immediately reclassified and basically out of the Family. Imagine a Combo with 7 or 8 families all thrown together in one place. It was new for everyone, especially the toddlers. They now would only spend one hour of parent time every night (sometimes some kids would even miss that special one hour of “parent time” for ‘being bad’.) Apart from that, they would spend their days, eat, and sleep with their “groups”.
A common problem: meal times. When the toddlers saw their moms and dads or older siblings during meal times (remember, groups ate meals together too) they would want to be with them and would cry. This resulted in them being spanked (sometimes in front of everyone), and a considerable amount of time in the bathroom being disciplined for “throwing a fit”. Some of the kids were more ‘hard headed’ than others. So their time in the bathroom sometimes did go on for hours.

My dear friend, although shocking, traumatic, disturbing and hard to digest, these tragedies did take place. Although we have the right to question and state our views openly, it makes me mad to hear people like you diminish and belittle the horrors and personal trauma people have suffered. I am of the opinion that people who experience such violent and degrading levels of abuse never FULLY recover.

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justagirl - Monday, June 24, 2002

Ricky- Thank you for posting this article. I just read through it while at work and I felt like puking. I'm so sorry for what you went through. My sister is still in the family...I just wish she'd come to her senses! It's horrible that people can be so brainwashed to revere people guilty of such abuse and soooooo sick and perverted! I am ashamed of my past, I've only told one person since leaving that I grew up in a cult. All I wish for now is that if I ever have kids of my own, they could have the childhood I never had...and you never had...a normal healthy childhood. I do think that family kids are resilient though, I know many of us have overcome huge odds to make some sort of success of ourselves...I still can't believe that I'm a senior soon to graduate from college after being deprived an education while growing up. I suffered a lot of psychological abuse, though minimal sexual abuse, but abuse is abuse! The day I left the family I never felt more free, I felt as if huge chains had been lifted. Leaving the cult was the BEST decision I ever made and one that I will NEVER regret despite the difficulties I've faced since leaving.

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MeccaM74 - Friday, June 21, 2002

What the fuck "Cutterback" and "Magic Green Pants" were you eve raped? Was your virginity taken from you whe you were 14 years of age by your step father? Were you ever spanked with a fly swater or a belt on your bare skin? did you ever have to hitch hike when you were age 6 or under on by semi trailers after getting left off at a highway somewhere in the middle of nowhere? Did you ever have to raise your money singing in the streets in order to get your next morsel of bread?
You are one son of a bitch, if we want to gripe and moan, that is our fucking problem, what are you concerning yourself with this? This is our life, it is therapudic for some of us to "air out" are we forsing you to come in here? then what the fuck are you doing in here, you are entitled to your opinion as much as we are entitled to ours, so leave us the fuck alone!

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Xeena - Friday, June 21, 2002

I don't know what to say, coming from someone who knows nothing of what we went through as children & young adults I don't think cutterback has any right to assume anything about us. Majic, I'm sorry, but you are just wrong. I don't consider my life to have been "GOOD", naturally there was the element of good at times in my life, but watching my mother die when "The Family" could have done something to stop it was not one of them. Having a close friend raped so sevierly that she can no longer have children was also not "GOOD". And the list goes on.
I will not make asumptions on your life since I don't know you. Grant us the same respect, avoid asumptions about our lives considering it was we who lived them & not you.

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C - Thursday, June 20, 2002

I am here to say that you can shake the Family. You do finally come to a point when it no longer effects you. It takes time, but it does happen.

I experienced all the same physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse. I left when I was 17, no education, nothing to my name. Now twelve years later, I have a career, a son and a life, which is in no way effected by my past.

It doesn’t haunt me anymore. It doesn’t control my thoughts. I don’t dream about it any longer. I don’t have to watch what I say to avoid the strange phrases we were taught as children. I can honestly say I am happy. I don’t fear never finding a husband who will understand me. I have been in love. I have been loved. I have friends who would lie down in traffic for me, whom were never in the Family. Some know about my childhood. They accept my stories and give me support and understanding.

I have hopes and dreams for my life, some which have been fulfilled. I look forward to the future with a sense of hope. I have reconciled my struggles with my faith in God. I have been able to severe the evil doctrines that I was taught as a child from my faith in God. I pray. I attend church on holidays. I feel blessed.

Yes, I cry at times. Yes, I’ve known heart break. I’m a single parent to a little son. I struggle with my bills, although I’m a licensed attorney at a good firm. I’ve been dumped by men I loved. I’ve also returned a diamond engagement ring to a man in law school who I couldn’t honestly marry because I didn’t love him like I should the man I will marry. I’ve been betrayed. I’ve also been blessed to have wonderful people in my life that make me laugh and smile and feel glad to be alive.

That’s not to say I haven’t felt desperate or hopeless. But, it passes. I feel awkward talking about my faith because it is personal, but I have felt as though I was being carried at the lowest times in my life. I’ve also had wonderful times as well.

My life is for all respects what I would consider normal. I may not have had the little white house with the picket fence lifestyle growing, but that has not precluded me from having it in the future. And on really good days, when I do ordinary things like go to the office, have lunch with a friend, come home and pick up my little one from his nanny’s house and fall asleep on the sofa watching tv, I can honestly say that I think I have that lifestyle.

So, don’t give up. Don’t give in and go back to what hurt us as children because swim to shore seems so long. It’s there! That tropical island we all seek. It’s there. It’s not always a paradise, but it sure beats the destitute castaway life we grew up knowing. And after time passes, lots of time, you do forget the struggle to shore! But, even if you don’t forget the struggle, it doesn’t hurt anymore. And that is a wonderful thing…not to hurt anymore!