‘You’re in need of salvation!’
I nodded again. Why not?
‘We here – the Jesus People – we offer salvation. But are you prepared to live the word of Christ?’
I had no other plan, and no better idea, so I told him I was, and Brother Ruhamah fell upon me, and then so did everyone else. It felt pretty good, being at the centre of a hugging circle. If I had a complaint, it was that the Jesus People didn’t smell all that good – and, sadly for a teenage boy normally delighted to have any contact with the opposite sex, that included the women.
‘Are you ready now to repent your sin and abandon your past, to serve the Lord, now and forever, AMEN?’
Once again, I nodded.
Now I’m sure there are people who are going to say, ‘Well, you must have been off your rocker, Paul. What kind of dope would fall for that kind of thing?’ All I can say is this: the Longhouse was warm; I was an unsophisticated and therefore somewhat malleable adolescent; and the people around me, in their simple tunics, with their faces naked of cynicism and guile, had about them a pure kind of happiness that was terrifically appealing to a young man whose family life had been ruptured, and who was still struggling to find his feet.
I slept that night in a room with two new friends – Brother Dawid was in the wooden bunk above me, while Brother Yoav was in the bottom bunk, opposite. When I woke, it was to the sound of a rooster. It was barely dawn, and yet I was sent to work in the vegetable patch, pulling up weeds from around the radishes. Two hours into our labours, breakfast was served. There were eggs from the henhouse, and warm rolls. I was desperate for coffee, but was told that coffee – not to mention tea, tobacco, sugar and alcohol – was not permitted anywhere on the property.
‘You need to break the hold those artificial stimulants have on you,’ Brother Dawid said.
I agreed, but would have killed for a cigarette.
From breakfast I went to morning prayers and then to work in the paddocks. When I asked what it was we were supposed to do, I was told that we’d be putting rocks into wheelbarrows and moving them into a heap.
(I did that for many months, actually. Nobody ever said why.)
With noon came Sisters in bonnets. They hand-delivered lunch from woven baskets: rolls and sandwiches made from stale bread, some of it green and furry.
‘Where do you get your bread?’ I asked.
Brother Dawid said, ‘So much in our society is wasted’, and I guess that meant ‘from the rubbish bin’.
Evening came and with it more lectures, not by Brother Ruhamah this time but by one of the band of Elder Brothers. Then it was bed, and the sleep of the dead, and waking at dawn to pull weeds from the garden again.
I had a constant companion in the form of Brother Dawid. From day one, he was also appointed to assist in my early study of the Bible.
The first passage I learned, which I still know by heart, was this one: ‘Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him … sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and though shalt have treasure in heaven.’
‘You are tethered to things in the material world,’ said Brother Dawid. ‘If you are going to stay here you need to rid yourself of everything.’
‘I don’t actually have anything,’ I said, although it wasn’t quite true. I had a two-door Datsun, worth maybe $1500, plus other bits and pieces: a little cassette player, a two-man tent and a few camping supplies.
‘You need to get rid of all that, but especially the car,’ Brother Dawid said on hearing this. ‘There isn’t a way to keep it and truly be at peace.’
He accompanied me off the property to a small shop with a petrol bowser in a township outside Euroa (I know that now; at the time, I was told only that we were cycling back into the Outside World). Brother Dawid suggested that I call Mum from the phone box. As a parent myself, it’s with great shame that I admit that this was the first contact I’d made with home in three days. (Yes, Mum had called the police, who told her, rightly as it turned out, that I’d probably just wandered off and would return of my own accord. I don’t suppose that either of us imagined it would take seven years.)
In any case, my step-father, Gary, answered. I told him what I’d done – renounced my name, taken a new one (Brother Zephaniah, if you must know) and given myself to Christ. As such, I needed him to sell the Datsun and send the money to my new friends.
‘These Jesus People,’ said Gary, ‘do they take cheques, or only cash?’
I gave him the number of a post-office box in Euroa. He took it down and then said, ‘Your mother’s been worried, by the way.’
I couldn’t think what to say about that, so I put the handset back on the hook and left the phone box.
Two weeks later, Brother Dawid came with new verses from the Bible, this time about the difficulty of getting camels through the eyes of needles, and rich men into heaven.
‘How did you live when you were a student?’ he said. ‘Did you have a part-time job, or any kind of allowance?’
I’d been getting what was then called child endowment – a small payment from the government that used to be given directly to mothers, some of whom passed it on to their children instead of giving them pocket money.
‘You need to arrange things so that allowance gets sent here,’ said Brother Dawid.
‘But what if I need that money when I go home?’ I said.
‘You are home,’ he said. ‘Everything you need is right here.’
I arranged to have the money sent to the commune, and when I got too old for child endowment, I went on unemployment benefits and had them sent to the commune, too. All such money was pooled, and kept in what we called the Red Tin, the keys to which were held by Elder Brothers who also kept an accountant’s Red Book.
‘But what were you doing all day?’ That’s also of interest to people who know I spent time in a commune. ‘It can’t have been all prayers and chores’ – but it was, in fact, all prayers and chores.
There was no electricity on the property, except in those houses occupied by the Leader, who wasn’t always there. As such, much energy was spent keeping warm in winter, collecting wood, collecting eggs from the hens, washing clothes in the river, and cooking food over open fires.
I pottered around in a brown tunic and grew a beard (and my toenails).
I didn’t question any part of the routine for several years. I suppose that was because my new life suited me. I hadn’t been able to decide on a path – now I was upon one and the need for decision making had been taken from me. I wouldn’t have to worry about finding a job and keeping it, or borrowing money to buy a house, or meeting a woman who would want to be my wife. I need only follow the Leader – Brother Ruhamah – who made all the rules and would take care of everyone, forever.
As a Young Brother, I was warned that my faith would be tested, not only by my own thoughts – Can we leave yet, Paul? Because sitting around eating garbage and talking jibberish all day is getting a bit boring – but by crude tests the Elders would set for me.
I failed the first one. Brother Yoav got sick – or at least I thought he did. He was coughing up what looked like blood. I knew from Bible studies that I was supposed to sit with him and pray, but I sought out Brother Dawid instead, and asked whether I could walk across the paddock to the phone box to call a local doctor.
Brother Dawid avoided my eyes but agreed, and so I set off, making my way gingerly across the potholes, feeling a little spooked – it was the first time in some weeks I’d spent any time alone – until I was stopped, part way to the highway, by two Elder Brothers, who castigated me.
‘How little faith you have!’ they said, chasing me back towards the commune where Brother Yoav was sitting upright and apparently well, and ready to join in my scolding.
Brother Ruhamah, I was told, would not be pleased to learn of my transgression, but Brother Ruhamah was less of a presence at the commune than I’d been led to expect. It’s true what people say: he didn’t often sleep in wooden bunks with
his followers; he had a penthouse apartment on the Gold Coast, where he spent a significant amount of his time. Leaving the commune was, it seemed, no big deal for Brother Ruhamah.
It is well known that he forbids his followers from having any contact with their families, including their own parents. He justifies this cruelty by linking his teaching, wrongly, to a passage in the Bible: ‘If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.’
He also knows the ways of cult busters.
From time to time, letters from agonised parents would come into the commune. Brother Ruhamah would occasionally read those letters aloud and the desperation of those parents is seared into my memory:
‘To the dear Leader of the Jesus People, true messenger of Christ! We write to you on behalf of our dearest Beth (known to you as the blessed Sister Rebecca). She has told us that she has found happiness with you, living for Christ. We are writing to say it is by her example that we now live! We, too, are studying His Word and yet it has been five years now since we’ve seen her … how wonderful it would be to celebrate our love of Christ with her. We understand that she cannot be allowed into the Outside World, but won’t you, in the name of God, permit a visit?’
Depending on his mood, Brother Ruhamah might scrunch the letters into a ball, but other times – there was no pattern to it, or none that I could divine – he would say, ‘All right, invite your family here. See for yourself what you have lost, which is nothing but gossip and material things.’
There was a catch, of course. Reunions between parents and children weren’t to take place at the commune, but in a paddock across the river from where we bathed. There were no facilities in that paddock and yet reunions had to be conducted not over hours, but days. The ploy is obvious to me now: the joy that people experienced when coming together after years apart soon gave way to tension, and then exasperation.
Brothers and Sisters – ours, I mean – would soon want to go home, back to the commune. Once, I saw a mother fall to her knees and grasp her daughter, saying, ‘But don’t you know how much this hurts us, not to see you for years on end?’ Her daughter – our Sister – said nothing, but peeled her mother’s hands off her tunic. The girl’s father said, ‘Get up, Pat. This is ridiculous! Can’t you see she’s brainwashed?’
I understand the concern in the community regarding sexual matters in the commune. Is it a free-love cult, or does some kind of polygamy reign? The truth is more mundane.
During my time there, simple rules governed conduct between the sexes. There were men’s and women’s quarters, meaning we never slept together.
Like any young man, I found celibacy difficult but, over time, the fierce desire for sex – any sex, with any woman – was felled by the certain knowledge that I’d be castigated, and ostracised, if I ever approached a Sister.
An exception to the no-sex rule was, of course, exercised by Brother Ruhamah, who annually required all unmarried women in the commune to bathe in the river, decorate their hair, and assemble before him. He would walk along – first in front, then behind these young girls – before placing his hand upon the head of the prettiest saying, ‘This will be a bride of mine.’
The girl was not permitted to refuse, and if she cried Brother Ruhamah would take her by the hair and pull her face back, and scream into it.
It follows that many of the children – perhaps as many as seventy of the hundred that lived in the commune when I was there – were born of Brother Ruhamah’s relationships, but there were other, arranged marriages between Elder Brothers and young Sisters.
As to the other allegations that have been made, I want to be clear: in every ceremony of this type that I witnessed, the women – the girls – were over the age of sixteen. That some were barely sixteen may be distasteful to some, but it is not a crime.
Brother Ruhamah was manipulative, insincere, intensely promiscuous … but he was not, as far as I witnessed or on the basis of any information I’ve ever received, a paedophile.
The Victorian police have conducted two investigations into precisely that issue – one in 1999 and one again last year – and they agree.
I have heard it said, as recently as last Sunday on 60 Minutes, that it’s impossible for anyone to leave the Jesus People, and that it is therefore a mind-control cult. That I stand here today suggests otherwise.
I understand that people want to know how I got out. Some are expecting me to tell a tale that involves a struggle of some kind. But my own experience was quite sedate: when the time came for me to leave, nobody tried to stop me.
I was in my seventh year with the Jesus People – a bit bored, I suppose, but no more than usual – when two Elder Brothers bustled us from the rock fields into the central quadrangle, to hear them read out a special message from Brother Ruhamah. And what a message it was.
‘I have received word from the Lord concerning a matter of great importance,’ he said.
‘A military build-up is underway. A flotilla of warships is positioned off the Australian coast, and there are American and Australian troops on board. These troops plan an invasion of our commune. Among their number will be bankers, lawyers, military officers and veterinarians, who have access to green dream sleep medicine, to silence those who seek to resist.
‘We have some protection from mind control because we have consumed no poisons from the town water supply, but we need to show our strength.
‘Gird yourselves for battle! Be ready to resist!’
A day or so later, we were given both the date and the time – midnight – that the invasion would begin. We began storing food and sharpening sticks to use as weapons. We danced in circles and sang and prayed. One of the Sisters – she had long braids curled around her ears, like Princess Leia – smiled at me and said, ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it? I suspect we’re actually going to see the end of the world, and we will be the only survivors.’
On the evening of the planned invasion we wrapped material around the tops of branches, soaked them in petrol, and set them on fire. We held hands, and set forth upon the cattle track that had brought me here seven years earlier, determined to do whatever was necessary to protect our way of life.
It wasn’t a particularly long walk out to the gate. We reached it in less than half an hour, meaning well ahead of midnight. Not sure what to do, we grinned, waved our fire sticks and waited for the lawyers, the bankers and the invading horde of veterinarians.
Midnight came and went, and still we stood there, grinning towards the silent horizon. Nothing at all was happening, as had happened on the six or seven previous occasions on which we’d been told to expect an invasion of some sort.
At some point, the Elder Brothers – not Brother Ruhamah, who had apparently decided to sit out the battle at his Gold Coast penthouse – smiled at each other and, without explanation or apparent disappointment, wandered back to the commune to prepare for a new day.
As for me … I stood for a while at the gate. Beyond it was the paddock I’d crossed all those years earlier, and beyond that was the old highway into town. I took one step, and then another, over potholes and rocks, stumbling until I reached the familiar corner store. I lay down on the step, and slept until dawn. The shopkeeper, when she arrived, was unsurprised to find me curled up, bearded and shivering in my tunic. She put a warm mug of tea between my cold hands and said, ‘Have you called your mother?’
Three decades have since gone by. I’m happily married to Ruth. We have three wonderful children. I have enjoyed some success in business, and now I’ve been elected to parliament.
I accept that I now live a public life.
I understand that some in the community – parents of children who live with the Jesus People, for example – are wondering whether I’ll use whatever power comes with my new position to investigate, and perhaps smash open, the cult of the Jesus People.
What I have to say today will disa
ppoint them.
Unless and until there is evidence of a crime, we’ve no business interfering with the lives of those in communes.
To be clear: the cult of the Jesus People is not for everyone – their way of life may not be yours, and it’s no longer mine – but the way in which they live is entirely legal, and therefore no business of ours.
To me, it further seems that there is no logic in trying to spring people from that way of life before they are ready to leave it.
Of all the questions I’ve been asked about the Jesus People since being appointed to this new role, the one that’s interested me most came from a reporter at The Age: ‘You lived there a long time, Paul. Do you miss it?’
Nobody had ever asked me that before!
I can’t remember what I told the journalist. Whatever I said, he didn’t use it. But I’ve been thinking about the question, and I’d now like to answer it this way …
Have you ever yearned for a life that’s quieter, less complicated, with a gentler routine, than the one you live every day?
Have you longed for a country getaway, eating eggs hatched in a local chicken coop and bread baked in a camp oven?
Have you dreamed of freedom from financial burdens; from your frantic schedule; from the huge number of unanswered messages in your email account?
I suspect the answer for many of you is ‘yes’. But would you trade your free will for those things?
There was a time when the answer to that question, for me, was demonstrably ‘yes’. But I was then childlike, and now I am a man.
Bonus Sample Chapter
Sisters of Mercy by Caroline Overington
Sisters of Mercy
Chapter One
I’ll be honest and say I got a bit of a shock when I started getting letters from Snow Delaney.
The first of them arrived in April 2011, by which time she was already in prison.
Apparently Snow decided to write to me after her lawyer – or, more accurately, her old lawyer, the one she’s now sacked – gave her copies of some of the articles I’d written about her case.
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