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Chapter 5
Terror in the Shed

‘Shut up, you wicked little beast.’

An uncle grabbed the back of Simon’s T-shirt, yanking him up off the ground. Simon kicked out furiously with his legs and arms. I knew what they were going to do. Another uncle took a roll of masking tape and tore off a long strip. Simon screamed as he clenched his fists and began pummelling at his aggressor, who brushed his blows aside. Simon took his chance, biting milk teeth into fleshy forearm.

‘You little shit. Hurry up, Matthew. The little bastard just bit me.’

‘Yeah? He’s a devil child all right,’ said the second uncle, laughing. He stuck the masking tape over Simon’s mouth, then added another two strips on top before patting it all down and standing back as if surveying his handiwork. Simon went completely quiet for a few seconds before making snuffled, panicked breaths through his nose. The uncle put him down and slapped him hard in the small of the back, causing his legs to buckle. ‘Now get to class. Spare the rod, spoil the child. You will thank me for this when you grow up to be a better man. Praise the Lord.’

I was trying not to cry and they knew it; both of them were looking straight at me with a questioning expression. I pulled what I thought was a cute face. It worked – the second uncle ruffled my hair and walked on ahead. I could hear Simon whimpering through the tape. I took his hand and squeezed it tight.

Simon was considered a naughty child. He had tantrums where he threw himself on the floor and made his body go limp so no one could pick him up. He cried constantly for no reason. The adults didn’t have any patience for it. Someone had the idea of taping his mouth up, and quickly that became the routine way of dealing with him. I heard my brother Matt say he wished Simon would just learn to stop crying so they wouldn’t have to hurt him.

At lunchtime Simon yelled out loud as they yanked the duct tape off. The skin on his upper lip was red and broken. He refused to eat his rice and eggs and started to make a whiny sound. After five minutes of the noise, Aunty Joy was instructed to hold him down while a different uncle taped him up again. I don’t know where his mother was or if she saw any of this happen.

The first time it happened I screamed with fear and got a big stinging slap around my face. I hated seeing pain inflicted on another child. For me, those hurting him were the naughty ones, not Simon. I tried to stay as close to him as I could because I knew it made him feel better.

A few days later I was just on my way to bed when I heard a loud commotion. Simon had fallen from a window and was lying on the ground. I wanted to check he was OK but a firm hand on my shoulder stopped me. All the children were ordered to our rooms and told to stay silent. Soon after I was told that his family had left.

There was only one main bathroom for children’s use in Phuket, so several of us had to queue for the same single sink. We never jostled or fought openly because we knew that would get us into trouble. To the eyes of the various aunties and uncles who stood guard over us, we each waited patiently, politely and in silence. But in the secret world of children it was a different story. You’d inevitably hear hurtful names under someone’s breath, or feel a sharp elbow in the ribs, a Chinese burn or a vicious nip by another kid who had perfected the art of hidden violence without an adult noticing. You had to take it without fuss because shouting out or complaining would surely end with a spanking.

Once a day children had to ‘report’ on each other when our teachers asked us to say out loud who had been naughty and why. The fear at reporting sessions was palpable because you never knew who would say what about you. Some kids blatantly made up lies about others, but stories were never challenged, just accepted as truth and the alleged perpetrator punished. Even if you knew the kid hadn’t done anything you couldn’t speak up and defend them because then you’d get a beating too. When another child was disciplined with the fly-swat, or as Simon was with the tape, we were forced to watch. All this was supposed to be for our spiritual benefit and to make us better Christians. But really all it did was turn us into nasty little snitches.

On this evening I had been at the back of the queue and was the last child to reach the sink. My roommates had all gone back into the dorm and were getting into bed. A few days earlier Aunty Joy had been replaced by a male teacher. His name was Uncle Clay. That wasn’t his real name but his cult baptised name. Clay proudly explained it came from one of Grandpa’s letters in which Grandpa explained that, to truly serve God, members had to be like clay on a potter’s wheel – mouldable, willing to change and adapt to the moves of the spirit world.

I wept when Joy told us she was leaving. I loved her so much and I saw more of her than I did my own mother. She didn’t hug us goodbye, she just told us one night at bedtime that Jesus was sending us a new teacher. In the morning she wasn’t there. I ran around all the rooms in the house calling her name and looking for her, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. I don’t think I really accepted she was never coming back.

Clay was from the Philippines, short and plump with greasy black hair, a potbelly and acne-cratered skin. His breath was rank and sometimes he spat when he talked. It made me feel ill just to look at him. Within the Family hierarchy looking after children or cooking was considered a lowly role. Witnessing, fundraising and public relations were the cushy ‘status’ jobs all the adults wanted. Clay was openly bitter and resentful at his lowly position.

I was brushing my teeth when he walked in. He had known I was alone. He shut the door and came and stood right behind me – too close – towering over me with his adult presence. He was naked bar a small towel around his waist. It barely covered his bulging stomach. I could smell his unwashed body.

‘Have you had a shower, Natacha?’ he asked in a creepy voice.

I spat out the toothpaste before I choked on it. ‘Yes, Uncle Clay,’ I answered politely as I tried to dart past him.

He grabbed me by the arm. ‘You need another one.’

He lifted my nightie over my head, folded it neatly and placed it on the towel rack. Then he led me to the shower, roughly pushed me in and turned it on. He removed his towel. As he turned to put it on the rack I shrank at the thick black hair that covered his shoulders. I dared not move. He got in with me. Then he took my hand and placed it on his penis. I froze. I had a sense this was wrong, very wrong. He put his hand over mine and slid it up and down over him. I screwed my eyes tightly shut as he began praising God over and over again. ‘Hallelujah, praise the Lord, hallelujah!’

When it was finished he washed himself thoroughly while I stood there numbly. Then he took the soap and lathered me with intrusive hands. I shifted and tried to wriggle away but he just laughed. His acne-pocked face broke into a toothy smile and I noticed his skin seemed to shine with grease. As he rubbed me with a flannel he told me I had been a very good girl. He didn’t need to ask me not to tell anyone.

He dried me methodically with the towel. He took a long time, almost deliberately as if to remind me how powerful and in control he was. Then he placed my nightie back over my head before patting me on the bottom and ordering me to get myself to bed. Without a word I did as he asked, climbing silently into my bunk. The other children were all asleep. I was too shocked to cry. Despite the wash I felt dirty and I could still smell him on my hands. I lay there staring at the dark wall for a long time.

It happened again about a week later. During nap time I felt a hand touch my stomach. I tensed, not sure what to expect. The hand slid into my pants. I felt like I needed to vomit but I held still, too scared to be spanked if I moved. His fingers moved, pawing at me. I kept my eyes firmly shut. I could smell his rotten breath as he moaned: ‘Thank you, Jesus, oh God, hallelujah,’ over and over. His fingers moved harder until the friction began to hurt. He continued to praise God but his breathing became heavier. A few minutes later I felt a shudder of movement as he gave one big groan. I heard him pick up the bottle of diluted Dettol that was on his bedside table. As he sprayed his hands with it the smell floated towards me. I desperately tried to hold back the waves of nausea that rose in my throat. I still didn’t open my eyes.

The following day I was able to snatch a few minutes alone with my mother. During break time she was sitting in the garden feeding one of the babies. She had been given a job, or ‘ministry’ as it was termed, in the nursery. I ran over to her and burst into tears. She hugged me and whispered: ‘Natacha, why do you cry? What’s wrong, ma chérie?’

I pressed my face against hers, comforted by the scent of her long blonde hair. I wanted so badly to communicate to her what had happened. But at four years old I couldn’t find the language or words to describe it. I so badly wanted her maternal instinct to understand, to look at me and somehow know.

Instead she wiped my tears and smiled: ‘Ah, chérie. Get the victory. Shall we pray together and ask Jesus to make it better for you?’

I hated that phrase. If we fell over and grazed a knee we were not comforted but urged to ‘get the victory’. If we struggled with memorising our Bibles we were told to ‘get the victory’. It never made anything better.

So on the day I woke up with a fever I didn’t expect much sympathy from the grown-ups. All night I had shivered and sweated, freezing cold one minute and boiling hot the next. I could barely touch my cereal at breakfast. Aunty Salome, who was supervising, put her hand to my forehead and frowned. ‘You are very hot, aren’t you?’

I looked at her expectantly, half hoping she’d tell me to go back to bed. But she didn’t and instead I was ordered to go straight to class. Sitting at my desk was agony. I was beginning to feel delirious, and when I was asked a question I could barely register the words I was hearing. I failed to answer correctly and was told to hold my hands out while they were rapped with a ruler for lack of concentration. My shirt was soaked with sweat, which made me feel cold and clammy.

No one considered taking me to a doctor because Grandpa said faith alone would heal illness. Going to a doctor showed a lack of trust in God and his power to heal. The only exceptions were when someone’s life was clearly at risk or for mothers-to-be, who were allowed to give birth in a hospital if they wished. I knew I had been born in a run-down local hospital because my dad had told me the story. He proudly told me he had insisted on it because he wanted to be sure his precious little girl was born safely, but he also said system people were so silly because they took pills when they had something as basic as a headache. They didn’t know the devil made the pills and used it to control their minds. He told me when he was younger and before he joined the group, he too had been controlled this way, so he knew from personal experience how evil medicine could be.

Personal computers, which were just beginning to enter the mainstream, were viewed with equal suspicion. In a Mo letter Grandpa had told us that using one would also result in the Antichrist putting a chip in your head to control you. In Word Time we read a storybook about a man this actually happened to. The devil made him do all sorts of bad things. In the end he had to have lots of sex with different women to get cured. One lady was able to take the chip out during a love-up session when he was distracted. Afterwards he was really grateful to her and fell in love with her.

Even the songs churned out by cult production teams added to the fear of outside control. There was one called ‘Cathy Don’t Go (to the Supermarket Today)’. The song was about a woman called Cathy who wanted to buy discounted bags of rice at the supermarket. The chorus, which had sinister vibrating guitar sounds, warned her not to go because a strange man would use the till’s scanning machine to put a chip into her hand so he could control and capture her.

By mid-afternoon I was seriously ill and unable to stand. Eventually I was carried to my room by an uncle and placed on the bed. I was left alone for several hours, crying for my mother and drifting in and out of sleep, when I became aware of Clay and two other adults standing over me. ‘She’s probably contagious. We need to be careful or they will all get it.’

Clay put his hand on my forehead and stroked my cheek. The next thing I was aware of was him lifting me up and carrying me out the back door of the house. Another uncle walked behind him carrying food supplies and bottles of water. Behind the house there was a wooden shed with a small double bed, which I knew was used by visiting Shepherds for sharing because my brothers had seen people having sex in there. The other uncle unlatched the door as Clay carried me inside and placed me on the bed. The room smelt like the bedrooms did during the grown-ups’ love-up times – a mixture of sweat and disinfectant. It was also so hot it was like being in a greenhouse. I could barely breathe.

The uncle turned to Clay. ‘She doesn’t look good. Should I go find Patience?’

I tried to move and nod my head yes. Clay saw me and told me to lie still. ‘No, she’ll be good,’ he replied. ‘The important thing is she doesn’t infect the other kids. I’ll stay with her until the fever breaks.’

‘You’re a good man, Clay,’ said the uncle, patting him on the back before leaving me to Clay’s mercy.

I was almost asleep when I became aware of Clay rubbing his hand up and down my leg. I tried to clamp my knees together. He forced them apart and continued.

I was kept in the shed with just Clay for company, drifting in and out of consciousness. I don’t know how long I was there, but it seemed endless. At times Clay did behave like a care giver, urging me to eat oatmeal as he held out a spoon. I tried to swallow but I was too weak to control my bodily functions and couldn’t even lift my head off the pillow or open my mouth. Occasionally he spoke soothing words of comfort, telling me I would feel better soon. But mostly he used me to pleasure himself, taking full advantage of a sick four-year-old child for his own twisted perversions.

I believe my mind is unable to deal with the horror and has blocked out some of the worst of what happened. I couldn’t say just how far the abuse went or whether Clay had full sex with me. It is a dark place I do not want to return to. But the sensory images are always with me, playing out in nightmarish flashbacks: his unwashed skin, hairy armpits and sweat dripping on my face as he leaned over me, the smell of dettol, his fingernails grabbing at my skin and his thick Filipino accent as he gave thanks to the Lord for delivering me to him. I have visions of him rubbing my body up and down over himself and arched against me, rocking.

Whenever I came round I cried and cried for my mother, but I am certain she had no idea how ill I was or where I had been taken, or she would have come for me. I suppose it is possible that she visited while I was asleep or delirious and thought I was being looked after. She would never have imagined what Clay was doing to me in the darkness of that shed; that a man she trusted to take care of her child had committed the very worst of sins.

She had no idea that her little girl would never be the same again.

Chapter 6
Candles and Confessions

In the days and weeks that followed I became even more fidgety, constantly scratching myself or twitching my legs. I had trouble sleeping, not least because Clay was so often in the room at night with us. I was constantly on edge, wondering if and when he might hurt me again.

My dad was still away most of the time and I saw less and less of my mom and Leah. I still missed Joy and began to lose interest in lessons. At least Joy tried to make them fun. Clay had zero interest in teaching kids and didn’t care if we understood anything or not. I was so scared of him now that even the sound of his voice made my hands start to tremble and my legs involuntarily go into spasm.

I didn’t have the words to articulate to anyone what had happened to me. I didn’t even know for sure it was wrong. I only knew I had hated it, it hurt me and that it made me feel dirty. Worse, I had a strong sense that it was definitely something I would be in big trouble for if I ever told.

So I kept quiet.

Each morning when I woke up my first action was to look over to the single bed in our room and see if he was in it. If he was I stayed silent and still as a church mouse. If the bed was empty I could relax a little and chat to my friends.

One morning, a little after dawn, I got a surprise.

Someone switched the light on. ‘Up time, children. We are going out to sing the praises of the Lord.’

It was my mother! Rarely did she come into our room. I was delighted. ‘Mommy! Good morning.’

‘And good morning to you, my darling. Good morning to all you lovely children. Good morning, Jesus. Good morning, love. Good morning, good morning, good morning.’

She was laughing and doing little twirls around the room. We were delighted. ‘More. More, Mommy, please.’ She beamed her radiant smile towards me and winked. ‘Okay, Natacha, just for you.’

Then she rose up and up, arching her feet until she was standing on the very tops of her tiptoes, her arms up high above her head in a perfect arc.

‘Wow,’ said one of the other girls.

I beamed with pride. To me, my mommy was one of the most beautiful ladies in the world and I was intensely proud of her past as a ballerina. This was something I regularly boasted about to the other girls. As they all gawped in wonder at her moves I thought I might burst with pride. At that precise moment I don’t think I could have loved her more.

She was as giddy and excited as a little girl herself as she hurried us along to get up and ready. We were going out into the city to take the love of Jesus to the needy, she explained to us. And this meant another bonus – we got to dress up.

Material possessions, including clothes, were generally frowned upon. That was convenient because we didn’t have enough money to buy new clothes anyway. The women wore long skirts and T-shirts (no bra or underwear), men tended to wear shorts or jeans with a T-shirt, and we kids wore whatever could be reused, handed down or had been donated by well-wishers. I had only two sets of clothes for everyday use – a frayed pair of old jeans that had been my brother’s, some shorts and two tops. But when we were sent out witnessing, like we were today, we got dressed in our special clothes. Cute white kids performing songs and dances in frilly dresses, ankle socks and bonnets pretty much guaranteed bigger donations.

My best witnessing dress was made of pale yellow satin with a ruffled skirt and a matching hat. I hated the sensation of it on my head, especially in the boiling hot sun. It made my head itch. But I loved the dress and the lacy hemline on the skirt.

We ate breakfast – blackened, mushy bananas that had been sitting out for too long. Then we were ordered into the battered commune minivan. The van rarely got used because petrol was considered a luxury and a system thing. It was usually left parked out on the driveway in the sun. As we got in I was hit by a wave of intense sauna-like heat that made it hard to breathe. One little girl started to cry and Clay tried to calm her down by shouting at her. I shrank back into my seat. Sitting next to Clay was Ezekiel. I glared at his back, hoping a thunderbolt would follow. I hated his guts.

Then an unexpected visitor got in the front seat. My dad.

He turned to face us with a grin. ‘Well, bonjour. I got back home late last night so I decided to come with you all today. I hope that is OK with everyone?’

The men nodded deferentially. My dad was a leader so of course it had to be OK.

We drove for about three hours. The sun was reaching its midday peak by the time we found a parking spot on the edge of the city. We could never afford to pay for car parks so we often drove around a city for ages, trying to find a free spot. I don’t know which city we went to because no one bothered to tell us. It didn’t really matter anyway. All of the places we visited for witnessing were system cities with system names. They were inhabited by systemite people who in our eyes were foolish and lost. Our job was to warn them of the End Time and urge them to save their souls by joining us or, better still, giving us some money. We usually formed into little groups of two adults and a couple of kids before splitting up and taking different sections of a neighbourhood. Some went into shops, other knocked on doors of houses. The day was turning out better than I had hoped when my father picked me up and whispered that he, Mom and I were going to form our own little group for the day. ‘And we are going to come back with the most money, aren’t we, Natacha? Do you think you can do that? Can you help Mommy and Daddy do this?’

I was grinning my face off, too happy to speak.

Three hours of door knocking later and the novelty factor of spending time with my parents had well and truly worn off. We were walking around tree-lined streets with rows of green-roofed villas set behind lush gardens. Dogs barked and voices rang out from behind the walls. I was hungry, dehydrated and exhausted. Hours of selling the End Time in the middle of a tropical afternoon began to play with my mind, and I was half expecting a red demon with horns and a tail to come rushing out and eat me. My satin dress was so hot and stifling, I longed to tear it off and go naked – anything to feel cooler for even a second. I kept pulling my hat off but my mother kept putting it back on my head, telling me it looked nice. She may have been right about the hat but my scowl certainly wasn’t sweet.

At each house my dad did the knocking and the talking while my mom stood there beaming, either holding onto my hand or carrying me so the occupants could get a better look. Old ladies cooed over me and little children laughed and pointed. I was like an animal in a zoo. Women insisted on touching my strawberry-blonde locks to see if they were real; they stroked my cheeks and kissed my head. I hated it. I hated being touched at the best of times, but the constant physical attention by systemites, whom I knew to be bad people, was completely traumatic.

I was really struggling not to cry by this point. Fortunately for me a French woman lived in the next house we knocked at. She recognised my parents’ accents and started talking to them in French. They were delighted and began jabbering back. The woman was pleased but a little bemused to find two of her countrymen selling Christian literature in a Buddhist country and was curious to find out more. Where had they come from? How long had they been here? She invited us in. I could have wept with joy when we walked into her hallway with its cool marble floor. She ushered us into the living room. I had never seen anything so beautiful in all my life.

There was a big sofa with fat velvet cushions, long flowery curtains and bookshelves lined with hundreds and hundreds of pretty candles in all sorts of different colours and patterns. My eyes roamed wildly, trying to take it all in. She saw me and smiled. ‘I see you like the candles? I make them. That’s my hobby.’

The house was so clean and tidy, nothing like the overcrowded, worn-out living spaces in the commune. I wanted to touch everything.

The lady had a son a couple of years older than me. While she sat and talked to my parents she instructed her son to take me into his bedroom and show me some of his toys. He opened a huge box stuffed full of teddy bears, cars and figurines. He was generous, letting me touch any toy I liked. At one point the lady came up to check on us and brought us an ice lolly each. I began to think this place might even be heaven.

All too soon I heard Mom shouting up the stairs. ‘Natacha, ma chérie, we must leave now. Say thank you to the lady.’

I didn’t move. I think I hoped if I said nothing they might forget I was there or go without me. Not to be. A few minutes later my father came bounding up, looking cross. He reached down to pick me up. I clung onto a small fluffy bear that I had fallen in love with. The little boy looked at me, then at the bear, then back at me.

‘She can keep it,’ he said to my dad firmly.

‘No, she cannot,’ said my dad, more for my benefit than the little boy’s.

‘It’s OK,’ the boy replied. ‘I have lots of them and I think she really likes him.’

My father didn’t reply. Instead he grabbed the bear out of my vice-like grip and put it down on the bed. ‘No.’

We were barely a few feet away from the gate when I started to yell – great big gulping sobs of anger and hurt. By the time we caught up with the other teams I was sobbing so much my breathing was erratic. My parents studiously ignored me, presumably thinking I’d stop when I got bored. Usually my occasional temper tantrums didn’t last long, but this time I just couldn’t stop crying.

Everyone was hungry, having not eaten all day. The mission now was to find a restaurant that was willing to feed us for free. We hadn’t raised enough to be able to buy dinner for the ten adults and children that formed our total party. As we paced a nearby market, the adults asking stallholders to donate some food, my father had to tow me behind him, my feet dragging in the dust, snot dribbling down my filthy cheeks. I looked like a sad ragamuffin clown, such a pathetic sight that eventually a food vendor took pity.

‘Little girl is sad. Poor girl. Come inside,’ she said, ushering us towards the wooden bench seats outside her little restaurant.

She bent down so she was at my height and looked at me with kindly brown eyes. ‘No cry, little girl. Be happy. Always be happy.’

I know she was trying to be nice but her kindness just made it worse. I paused for a split second before letting out another series of great gasping sobs.

I don’t think I was crying because my father wouldn’t let me keep the little boy’s teddy bear. I was crying for the life I had glimpsed. I was crying for the kindly candle-maker and her neat house. I was crying for a normal family like theirs.

However, compared to my brother Vincent I was a blissfully happy child. From the day he was born Vincent was different. He was sensitive, quiet, teary and thoughtful. He was also always in trouble.

Within The Family, parenting was a shared responsibility. If an adult saw you do something wrong they didn’t have to tell your parents about it, they just went ahead and sorted you out themselves. For the aunts and uncles, themselves often hungry, tired and under stress, the burden of dealing with other people’s children was often a pure annoyance. Of course there were exceptions like Joy who genuinely loved kids, but most adults I came across, even those with their own children, seemed to treat us as an irritation at best, devil spawn at worst. And Vincent had an innate ability to bring out the worst in them.

When he was 11 months old he was caught sucking the sugar coating off a packet of tablets. He didn’t know what they were and, of course, if he’d eaten them it could have been dangerous. They shouldn’t even have been left within a small child’s reach. But fortunately he licked them and then put them back in the packet after reaching the bitter centre. Ezekiel found him. He picked him up by his skinny little arms and screamed that he was going to thrash him. Vincent yelled at the top of his lungs, and my eldest brother, Joe, ran in. When he saw what was happening he begged Ezekiel not to hurt little Vincent but to thrash him instead. The monster took him outside into the garden and beat him black and blue with a plank.

Getting hit – be it with fists, fly-swats, poles and planks – was all part of the cult children’s daily routine. On one occasion an uncle, I don’t know who because they were too scared to say, threw all of my brothers into an empty bathtub naked and hit them with a wooden paddle as they dived under each other to shield themselves from the blows.

I don’t think my parents ever really knew just how much the other adults meted out violence to their children. Dad was so rarely there and my mother didn’t seem to notice how unhappy we were. Perhaps that’s because in the few moments of quality time we did get to spend with her, we were so delighted by it we never stopped smiling.

The closest they got to understanding came about four months after Clay had abused me in the shed. One of the bigger girls told me in hushed tones that two senior Shepherds were here and they wanted to see each kid individually. I didn’t believe her until we were all called into the dining hall and told to sit in silence and wait our turns. We were not given the chance to ask what was going on and were expressly forbidden from talking to each other. When it was my turn to go in the room I was shaking with nerves. Why would Shepherds want to talk to me? Had I done something bad?

I walked into the room where an aunty and uncle I didn’t know were sitting on two chairs with another facing them. They gestured me to sit down.

‘Now, Natacha,’ said the uncle, ‘I am going to ask you a question and I want you to tell me the truth. Don’t be frightened.’