Escaping Utopia

by Lalich, Janja; McLaren, Karla;

  Iris married a young man from the TM community when she was eighteen and got pregnant by him. She eventually had three children who were raised inside and outside of TM communities as she and her husband tried to build a life for themselves in the outside world. Iris watched many of her friends struggle to leave and then return several times, or join another similarly closed religious group, as her brother had. She also kept an eye on younger TM community members, many of whom were getting into drug use, falling into depressions or psychoses, or attempting suicide. These troubled members struggled without the help of doctors, medications, or support because the TM community focused only on ancient Indian herbal medicines, vegetarianism, and meditation for their health care. Iris also watched older members, her father included, struggle through serious diseases without medical support. Iris began speaking out to leadership about the troubles she saw; as a result, she lost her elite status as a revered and enlightened child. She came to be seen as a troublemaker who was continually threatened with expulsion for speaking out.

  Iris finally left with her husband and three children when she was twenty-nine years old. She credits her husband for helping her get out and stay out, as so many of her friends had not been able to do on their own. However, both Iris and her husband had tremendous trouble fitting into the outside world, finding and keeping jobs, connecting with outsiders, or even engaging in small talk (which is built on everyday knowledge that they didn’t have). In their first year away from the cult, Iris and her husband mostly played video games all day while they figured out how to live in an alien world. Even today, she has trouble feeling part of everyday life and is often filled with anxiety about not being perfect enough, not fitting in, or possibly being expelled from wherever she happens to be. She and her fellow ex-TM friends also have a hard time connecting to people who don’t share a higher purpose or spiritual values. She still feels like an outsider in many social situations.

  Iris and her husband divorced a few years after they left TM, but they remain friends. They both visit the Fairfield compound with their children so that they can see their friends and visit with their parents, all of whom are still in the cult. While they enjoy those visits, they are all relieved to pack up and go home.

  Iris’s parents are not financially prepared for old age, and they have no retirement savings. Her invalid father lives with her brother, while her mother and other impoverished elders live in a kind of makeshift retirement community in Fairfield. All of the money and property they had when they joined—and all of the money they made as TM recruiters and teachers—went to tuition, tithing, and building the Maharishi’s empire.

  After she left TM, Iris put herself through community college and then university, and is now a licensed medical professional. In addition to her career, she regularly counsels and supports people who are trying to leave TM and other cultic groups. Though she tends to keep her cult upbringing to herself, she was also able to speak up in her new community and stop her children’s high school from buying a TM program developed for schools. Today, Iris still meditates, but only when she feels like it.

  Matthew O.

  The Outsider Who Got Out, Came Out, and Survived

  So I worked in the restaurant there and can you believe that many of these kids worked seventeen hours a day? I worked seventeen hours every day and I never earned any money for that work. We weren’t allowed to earn any money for our pockets. We just slaved away, day in and day out. We would wake up at four or five o’clock in the morning and we would go until we would close at midnight. We would go to bed at like two or three in the morning, you know, you only got two or three hours of sleep and that’s how the commune worked. Everyone experienced very limited sleep and it was just a real brainwashing experience with the sleep deprivation. You never had a good eight hours of sleep. If you had eight hours of sleep, they felt like you were spoiled and lazy when you should be preparing yourself to be in heaven with Jesus Christ.

  Matthew

  Matthew O.9 was born in Tennessee in the 1970s in a spiritual commune called the Twelve Tribes. The Twelve Tribes formed in the early 1970s and was a part of the “Jesus Movement” that arose within the American youth counterculture, in part as a response to the Vietnam War. In the Jesus Movement, many disaffected teens and adults wanted to live as they imagined Jesus had lived, so they focused their lives on spirituality, communal living, Bible study, and constant hard work to prepare themselves for a wonderful afterlife with Jesus. Many of the original Twelve Tribes members met each other in 1969 at the famous Woodstock Festival in upstate New York, and some of the early members were “Deadheads” who followed the Grateful Dead from concert to concert. Twelve Tribes communities are now located throughout the world, and several are still active in the Woodstock area.

  Twelve Tribes members engage in extensive Bible study and communitarian living, often with forty or fifty people in the same house. They isolate themselves from the evil “worldly” society so that they can focus on their spiritual lives and prepare for the end of the world. Members work constantly from the age of five or seven for no pay in order to support their community, and homeschool their children to protect them from outside influences—including television, toys, computers, music, dancing, politics, and public education. Members use prayer as their primary form of health care, avoiding dental care and vision care as well. Twelve Tribes members also maintain strictly old-fashioned gender roles, with women dressing modestly in long dresses with bloomers (never pants), never cutting their hair, speaking only through a man such as a husband or an elder, and giving birth to as many babies as they can.

  Matthew’s parents were dissatisfied Christians who were looking for a deeper form of religion. By chance, they met up with Twelve Tribes recruiters at a concert and were immediately drawn to the idea of living as Jesus had and separating themselves from the evils of the modern world. They sold their home and belongings and moved into a communal compound in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Matthew was the first midwife-birthed baby born in the Chattanooga commune. Sadly, he was born ill with spinal meningitis and a high fever that was not treated, and he lost his hearing. Sadder still, his parents didn’t realize that Matthew was deaf until he was three years old. Up until that time, they and other Tribe members spanked and punished Matthew constantly for not paying attention. Unfortunately, his eventual diagnosis of deafness did very little to improve Matthew’s early life.

  Illness and disability were looked upon by the Twelve Tribes as punishments from God that required diligent and continuous prayer (and little to no medical care). Matthew’s grief-stricken parents prayed for him and felt tremendous shame for whatever they had done to cause Matthew’s deafness. Matthew was worried about and punished, but he was not given language support or special education until he was seven. Only one person in the commune knew American Sign Language, and he had to work for years to get the elders to understand the value of teaching Matthew a language. Though this man helped Matthew learn and catch up, no one else learned to sign—so Matthew got by through close observation of others and a gestural language of homemade signs that helped him communicate and follow orders.

  Even without a dependable way to communicate and understand, Matthew was expected to follow all the rules of the commune, which included waking at four or five each morning to begin work. Matthew reports that he saw children as young as three working in the communal kitchens, and that many of the girls in the cult provided communal childcare when they themselves were just five years old. By the age of eighteen, Matthew and his teenaged friends and siblings were expected to work unpaid seventeen-hour shifts in one of the many Twelve Tribes’ farms, shops, bakeries, industries, restaurants, or construction firms.

  Life in the commune was filled with hard work, minimal sleep, and scant food, and Matthew remembers having to confess on several occasions after he had eaten toothpaste because he was so hungry. The punishments for this and other transgressions (which could be meted out by any adult) were
a form of caning with oiled switches, rods, or paddles. Public nude canings were a regular occurrence for many of the children, who were expected to be perfect children of God. Play and toys were forbidden, and trips to nearby towns were strictly monitored so that evil worldly influences couldn’t affect the children. Matthew remembers being forced to close his eyes as the group walked past worldly toy stores or magazine racks, though he always peeked through his eyelashes.

  Matthew struggled throughout his life to fit into the commune, yet he was never happily a part of the community—or of his family of eight siblings. He was ostracized and treated as a second-class citizen because of his deafness, which was seen as constant proof of God’s displeasure, and he endured endless rounds of forced prayer to atone for the alleged sins that had made him deaf. Matthew endured a great deal of physical and emotional abuse, and his linguistic seclusion added to his struggles. For instance, one of the Twelve Tribes’ beliefs was that their true homeland was in Israel, so children were taught Hebrew in preparation for the eventual move to their imagined home. Many of the children then used Hebrew as a secret language among themselves so that they could bond and share their concerns and troubles, but Matthew was never taught to speak or sign in Hebrew, which further isolated him.

  Matthew’s mother, who had a history of depression and migraines before she joined the cult, found herself falling into regular depressions and excruciating migraine episodes. Medication was not allowed, so her only treatment was forced prayer and confessions. As a result, she became less and less functional as she aged, and so was not able to support or protect Matthew. Matthew’s father, burdened by endless hard work and the notion that he had two sinful and imperfect family members, was not able to provide support either. Matthew attempted to leave the commune—and he attempted suicide—numerous times before he finally escaped at the age of twenty-one. The Twelve Tribes elders prohibited contact between Matthew and his family. They told Matthew that he was now evil and worldly, and that God would kill him and send him to Hell. Matthew told them in return that God would judge them for their actions, and for allowing so many children and adults to be abused.

  On the outside, Matthew struggled to learn how to live in an alien world where he didn’t understand even the basics of how to take care of himself, manage money, rent an apartment, apply for a job, do math, drive, or vote. He struggled to shake off the Tribe’s toxic belief that the outside world was evil. In fact, many Twelve Tribes escapees eventually return to the cult because they can’t tolerate the supposed evils of the outside world. Luckily, Matthew found a good social service agency that helped him study for his GED, apply for disability support, and learn about Gallaudet University for the Deaf, where he was accepted as a full-time college student. Matthew studied and mastered American Sign Language in his twenties at Gallaudet, and experienced yet another culture shock as he learned about his deafness and Deaf culture—not as a sign of failure or evil, but as a valuable cultural identity with a rich linguistic tradition.

  Matthew saw a counselor at Gallaudet who helped him work through many of the issues of abuse and loss that haunted him. He also realized that he was gay (which was also considered evil in the Twelve Tribes) and he was grateful that he had the freedom to learn about gay culture and be himself away from the cult’s influence. Matthew is now an out and proud gay man who provides online support and counseling to other cult survivors (including some of his siblings, who have since escaped from the Twelve Tribes), and he works as a social services case manager.

  Jessica A.

  The Magical Jesus Baby

  We were called The Family because we were supposedly one big, happy family. All husbands were everybody’s husbands, all wives were everybody’s wives, and all the children were everybody’s children. And our Law of Love said that anything done in love was fine. Any form of discipline was fine, as long as it was done in love, you know? That really included some very over-the-top things, like kids getting beaten black and blue, nude public spankings, or putting kids in tiny little closet rooms, and fasting for, like, a month.

  Jessica

  Jessica A. was born in Southeast Asia in the 1970s. She was one of the first “Jesus babies” born into the large, multinational group called The Children of God10 (now called The Family International, or simply The Family). Jessica and her fellow Jesus babies were the offspring of a practice (which has since been terminated) called “Flirty Fishing,” where young women from the group were told to have sex with men in order to bring them into the group and produce a generation of children created especially for and by The Family. As a result, many women in The Family have no idea who the fathers of their children are.

  The Family is a fundamentalist Christian group that focuses on Bible studies and prepares for the prophesied end of days with the help of the Sixties-era free-love teachings of their prophet, the late David “Moses” Berg. As part of the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, The Family gathered many converts among the disillusioned hippies of the era; in the 1970s, The Family was believed to have over 30,000 members in fifteen countries. Today, The Family International claims to have thousands of members in more than ninety countries. If this is true, they may be one of the largest cults in the world.

  In the early days, as The Family was growing by leaps and bounds, the group achieved cohesion and unity through strong devotion to their leader, who followers called “Dad.” Berg’s teachings were often contradictory and based on his whims, or focused on creating a sexually open, free-love atmosphere that included scheduling required daily sexual contact between group members of all ages, known as the “sharing schedule.” Money was very tight in the early days, and all members (including children) worked ten to twelve hours a day and often busked, danced, and sang on the streets for money, sold booklets of Berg’s teachings, and begged for donations of clothing and food.

  As the group expanded and more children were born into or brought into The Family, schooling was added to the work and busking schedules. However, the only books allowed were the rambling tracts written by Berg, which were studied on no particular schedule, given that the main focus for everyone, young and old, was to build and support the cult. Jessica remembers being taken away from her work and being rushed with other children into a classroom when visitors or local officials would come to check on them. Jessica and the other children would sit at desks and raise their hands as if they were in school, but this classroom was only for show: the central work of Family members was to acquire donations, keep the group going, and bring in more converts.

  Jessica’s life in The Family was harrowing. She had asthma, which was considered a sign of satanic possession. From her earliest years, her asthma was treated with exorcisms, solitary confinement (often in dark closets), or extended rounds of enforced fasting. At the age of seven, Jessica was included in the enforced sexual sharing schedule, and along with the other children in the group, she was the victim of constant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse at the hands of Family members and their potential recruits. Jessica’s parents weren’t able to protect her; they worked long hours to support the cult, and family closeness was not encouraged. Childcare was performed communally and at the whim of whichever adult was nearby, and the Law of Love was used to excuse nearly any form of punishment or abuse. Jessica fought against this abuse, but her defiance only brought more stringent punishments upon her, including an enforced nine-month silence fast when she was eleven years old.

  In numerous attempts to discipline and retrain Jessica, The Family moved her between the cult’s compounds in Holland, France, and Belgium—and away from her parents and her siblings. Jessica tried very hard to be an obedient member of the group, but she failed over and over again—and was disciplined, silenced, hit, punished, isolated, forced to fast, and moved around constantly.

  As Jessica neared adolescence, Berg (who had many teen wives) decreed that girls could be married at the age of twelve so that they could start producing babies as soon as th
ey were able to. However, Jessica’s defiance and multiple punishments kept her out of the cult’s marriage market. Jessica slit her wrists at the age of twelve and was sent to a Family compound for troubled children, at which time the sexual sharing schedule was thankfully stopped because the cult was being scrutinized in many countries for child abuse.

  For the next few years, Jessica was bounced from country to country, sometimes living near her mother and sometimes being forcibly separated from her. In one of the retraining compounds, Jessica was violently raped by a peer; yet, instead of punishing him, the compound leaders bizarrely—and cruelly—had her feed and tend to her rapist so that she could learn forgiveness. Jessica escaped from The Family at the age of fifteen, with no skills, education, money, or contacts. Jessica slept on couches, panhandled, sang in bars, and moved from place to place to keep herself going, but before long she returned to The Family out of sheer exhaustion and desperation.

  Jessica stayed in the cult for about eighteen months after her first escape, but she left for good at seventeen and spent many years homeless and in chaos until she put herself through school and started building a life for herself from scratch. Today, Jessica has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and was an advocate with the group Safe Passages, which acts as an underground railroad and provides support, housing, and counseling to people who were raised in and escaped from The Family and other cults.

  Joseph L.

  The Excluded Member of the Exclusive Brethren

  There was some fairly genuine friendship and a sense of community in the early days before 1960, and the way of life that they encouraged was in some ways admirable. The negatives were mostly after 1960: genuine friendships became strained by internal political conflict; learning and scholarship were discouraged and ridiculed; hypocrisy became almost essential for survival; and the organization became one that seemed to exist purely to deceive, control, and exploit its members. The atmosphere became harsh and demanding. The worst of the negatives was being separated from loved ones, and I was. Many people suffered more than I by being separated even from their spouses. The worst emotional stress was suffered by members who were excommunicated and who were denied any social contact with their friends and family who were still in the sect. Excommunication usually meant losing all of your friends and family. Often it meant losing your home, too, and sometimes your job.