Читать книгу Call Me Evil, Let Me Go: A mother’s struggle to save her children from a brutal religious cult - Sarah Jones - Страница 8

I felt totally felt bereft as I watched my parents drive off. My bolshie, know-it-all attitude disappeared and I yearned for Mummy and Daddy to stay with me. I didn’t feel nearly ready to stand on my own two feet and worried that the strange, restricted new world I suddenly found myself in would prove a very lonely place. It didn’t help that after my parents left I discovered that I was one of only two boarders. My heart sank. I couldn’t believe it. I thought that at least there might be the possibility of some late-night fun with other girls in a dormitory. Instead I was told I was going to live in Ian Black’s house with his family.

Ian Callum Fitzroy Black was born in 1939, the son of a prosperous Scottish banker. His father died in the North African campaign fighting for Monty and the Eighth Army when he was 3 and, after being looked after by his mother until he was 8, he was sent off to a private school in the Scottish Highlands, where his father had been a pupil. After leaving school he worked on a large Highland estate as a trainee forester, but, finding that he was less than keen on such a solitary life in the wet wilderness of the Scottish mountains, he soon moved to England in search of work.

For a while he found employment selling agricultural machinery to farmers in Lincolnshire, but, again dissatisfied with his lot, he eventually ended up as a Gas Board employee, becoming a regional sales manager within a couple of years. A dramatic change occurred in his life at his mother’s funeral. Black, who previously had not given much thought to religion or to God, was devastated by his mother’s death and at her funeral, wracked with grief, suddenly understood the meaning behind the arcane symbols and rituals of the Church.

Shortly after this epiphany, Black met Heather, a librarian from Stamford, at a party thrown by one of his colleagues. Initially, the two were friends, but their relationship soon developed and they were married in Lincoln a year after they first met. They moved to a small town nearby, where Black became involved with the local church, taking on the role of lay preacher. Several years later they moved south, where he was able to take up another position with the Gas Board, and bought a rambling six-bedroom house with a large garden.

During this period he started prayer meetings with Heather and another couple, David and Charlotte Snelling, whom they met at church. Others gradually joined them and when there were about seventy regulars they decided to formalize the group. They called themselves the Church of Christ’s Compassion. Shortly afterwards, Black met the Canadian evangelist preacher Troy Tyson, who took him under his wing.

Black and his wife had five children – Ione, Callum, Lucy, Helen and James – and one boarder, a girl some years younger than me called Angie, who was also a pupil at Tadford. I was told that I had to share a room with her. She was sweet and bubbly and had a good sense of humour, but although the difference in our ages was not that big, the difference in our likes and dislikes was enormous. Angie’s bedroom was decorated in pink and very girly, but from the start I could tell she didn’t want to share it with me and I didn’t blame her. Who would want a stranger suddenly turning up without warning who took up space in a room you’d previously had to yourself? But that’s what happened. Black and his wife, together with Angie, had driven to Greece ‘on business’ the day before my parents left, and Alex and Siobhan Scott, a newly married couple who were also founder members of the Church, moved in to look after us. Siobhan taught in the Church school, while Alex was a manager at the local printer’s.

I felt terribly homesick and totally traumatized by what had happened. From being the baby of the family and secure in my parents’ unconditional love, I had been dramatically uprooted and deposited in what felt like an alien land. And I’d had no time to prepare myself either psychologically or physically. I hadn’t said goodbye to any of my many friends. I felt like an amputee who had not only lost all her limbs but had had her heart torn out as well. I had no coping mechanism. I was no longer a child and not yet a woman. Not surprisingly, at first I cried a huge amount. I also wrote to some of my friends telling them I was trapped and asking if they could smuggle me some cigarettes. I didn’t really want the cigarettes: it was just my way of connecting with my friends without losing face. They posted several packets to me but I didn’t smoke them. You weren’t allowed to and I was frightened of getting caught and what the punishment might be.

When Black returned from his trip, Angie insisted she wanted her room back. Black told me he would get the builders in to alter his house to accommodate me in another room and that in the meantime I would be living with Alex and Siobhan in their home. It seemed rather odd to alter his house for one pupil but he seemed determined to have me live there. I had no idea why. Alex and Siobhan lived in a ground-floor flat in the town where the Church had originally started, several miles from Tadford and Black’s house. It was another upheaval for me, especially as there was no one to help smooth my way. I felt totally lost and abandoned.

Siobhan was strict, which was fair enough. She probably found it just as difficult living with a young teenager as I did living with a new family. She often became quiet and distant, and it was difficult to know where I stood with her. Alex, on the other hand, was funny and cracked jokes to ease any tension in the home. He also cooked fantastic pizzas and regularly bought us samples of the comics that his company printed. Between them, it seemed to me, they controlled everything in my life and never allowed me to be on my own. I felt as if I were in a prison and was so unhappy that I refused to unpack for a long time after I moved in.

Inevitably the atmosphere in the flat was tense as every day I’d tell Alex and Siobhan that I wanted to go home. I’d tell my parents the same thing every time they rang me. I was allowed to call them every other day but I noticed that either Alex or Siobhan would hover in the background while I was on the phone, perhaps to hear what I was saying. My phone calls were always the same. I’d plead with them to come and get me, and tell them how much I hated Tadford. Mum and Dad would then both say they wouldn’t come, that I was there for my own good and that everything would be fine because there were so many people at the Church who loved me. Then I’d cry, ‘Please, please, let me come home,’ and even though I could tell Mum was upset hearing me cry, she kept saying, ‘No, you can’t.’ The phrase ‘hitting your head against a brick wall’ kept coming to mind. The more I tried to convince my parents I was in a place that was nothing like the caring community they imagined, the less they seemed to listen. I felt instinctively that it all had dark undertones but I somehow couldn’t put it into words. I certainly didn’t tell them that during Church assemblies we were encouraged to forget our past and think of the Church as our family, even though to my young ears it sounded totally disloyal.

Mum would say things like boarding school is always very difficult for a child during the first few weeks and homesickness is very common. She told me she thought I’d soon get used to it once I made friends. Her responses sounded rather prepared and it crossed my mind whether this was what she had been told to tell me. But I knew it wouldn’t be fine and my fear was confirmed when I went to school for the first time a week after I arrived. It had been hard enough for me to conform to the comparatively free-and-easy school routine at my local comprehensive, but the narrow, restricted and unimaginative curriculum at Tadford School was mind-blowingly boring.

The school day started with religious assembly at 8.15 a.m., followed by lessons. I had been used to a large, open classroom full of children of my own age, all chatting and working together. Now, because there were so few of us, most of the time we were lumped together in one classroom. The younger children sat down one side of the room and older ones like me down the other, and woe betide any child who even tried to look at another. We were so repressed we weren’t allowed to speak during lessons, during meal breaks, or even when we were changing for games.

Despite being deeply shocked, I tried to analyse my situation. On the one hand, I felt it was far too cruel a punishment for someone whose only wrongdoing was to be a rather boisterous teenager. On the other hand, I never doubted that my parents loved me and wanted the best for me. It was all too confusing and I didn’t know where to turn.

Initially the school followed a Christian method of home teaching that basically meant self-learning. This was totally new for me and I missed the stimulation of having other children around me with whom I could share thoughts and ideas. Instead, each of us had our own individual work to do. I was given a work book which set questions, exercises and essays, and when I had finished one set I had to go to a table in the middle of the room, find the book of answers and mark my own work. I then went back and did the next exercise. If any of us needed help from the teacher we had to hold our hand up, and when, eventually, the teacher saw it she would come to help us.

It was all so excruciatingly dull that I used to keep falling asleep. The only thing that slightly cheered me up – proof that I desperately needed even the smallest crumb of comfort that could link me with my family – was the small Tony the Tiger I put on my desk, which I’d bought with my mother just before she left.

One of my worst tasks was to learn ‘memory verses’. This required pupils to learn a different set of twelve verses from the Bible every week. I’d never done anything like it before and was so hopeless at it that sometimes Black rebuked me in front of the whole school, telling everyone that I hadn’t made an effort and I should try harder. He turned up at school assembly about once a month and usually called someone up on to the stage for an alleged misdemeanour. Sometimes it would be a pupil who had showed what he called ‘an improper attitude’. At other times it was someone like me who didn’t do well with the memory verses. Although many of us cried, I didn’t dare discuss his behaviour with anyone else, and if it was an attempt to humiliate me, it worked every time. I felt useless and stupid, and this only served to highlight my chronic loneliness.

At lunchtime the older ones like me had to turn into dinner ladies and help dish up the meal to the other pupils, then wash up all the plates and cutlery by hand afterwards. Although there was a dishwasher in the kitchen, it was never used. I’d had to help out at home, but it had been a family thing, and we’d chat and laugh as we did the washing up or laid the table. Now I resented it, especially as everything had to be cleared up before I could go out to play. At my previous school I always had loads of girls to play with, but at Tadford there were only two other girls of my own age. Luckily I did enjoy the interaction between children of different ages and often played skipping games with the little ones.

There was always plenty of food to eat, but there was no choice and this led to my first confrontation with Black, shortly after he returned from Greece. The meal was Lancashire hotpot and the last time I’d had it – well before I was at Tadford – I was violently sick. There had obviously been something wrong with the meat but I’d decided I didn’t want to eat Lancashire hotpot ever again. Unluckily it was on the school menu on a day he came round to check that we were all eating – in fact he always seemed to be everywhere I went – and he asked me why I was leaving it. I explained what had happened and he replied that it was compulsory at Tadford to eat everything that was put in front of me. I refused and he told me I couldn’t leave the dining room until I had. I showed my fighting spirit by arguing with him for two solid hours until he instructed me to leave the meal on the table and come to his house. We went to the lounge, where Black, plus the head of the school, his secretary Charlotte Snelling, his spokesperson Siobhan Scott and his wife Heather, all key members of the Church, had already gathered. I don’t know if he had summoned them, but the argument was quickly established as five of them against one of me. I kept saying, ‘I am not eating it.’ They kept telling me, ‘Yes you are.’ It continued for another hour until finally I suddenly felt so worn down I burst into tears and agreed to go back and eat the hotpot. It was stone-cold and, in its puddle of congealed grease, tasted disgusting. I wasn’t physically sick but the damage that being forced to eat it did to my spirit was substantial.

Black and the others had won the battle and perhaps felt triumphant that my will had been broken. It was clearly something they considered much more important than my missing an afternoon of school. I, on the other hand, was left feeling emotionally battered, alone and trapped in a place where I didn’t want to be. I did, though, win another confrontation. When the builders finished partitioning Angie’s room at Black’s house and he told me that the new room was now going to be mine, I dug my heels in and absolutely refused to move in. Nothing would budge me and in the end I was allowed to remain with Siobhan and Alex. It was a massive relief, because he still terrified me.

On Wednesdays I had only morning school because I had to help cook, serve and wash up for the weekly group lunch of teachers and other Church staff. One adult and I were involved in catering for about ten of them, including Black, and I absolutely hated doing it. All the other children went home and after the elected adult had cooked everything, she went home too, leaving me on my own to serve, clear up, and wash and dry everything. Perhaps I was chosen because, apart from Angie – who was considered too young – I was the only boarder and didn’t have a real home to go to, which in itself made me feel very bad. I used to find it exhausting and didn’t finish until about 4 p.m. I had school on Saturdays, too. Mornings consisted of classes in dressmaking, which I was useless at, typing and cooking. Black had the idealistic, old-fashioned attitude that women were at their best in the home catering for a man’s every need and believed they should be taught the necessary skills from a young age. In the afternoon I had to play table football. I also learnt badminton and netball.

Normally school finished at 3.45 p.m. and I didn’t do much afterwards, apart from going food shopping with Siobhan and doing my homework. I thought longingly of my gang of friends and how we used to run off laughing together into the woods, or just chill out somewhere and chat non-stop. Now I had nothing to do, no one to do it with and no one to talk to. I felt bereft. I used to talk about anything and everything to my friends, but now my life both in and out of school was largely lived in silence. Although my parents paid full fees for my education, I had to do all the chores for nothing. As well as the Wednesday lunch, after table football on Saturday afternoon I had to help clean the entire school and before Church services I had to clean the toilets, vacuum the enormous church hall and set up the chairs. I thought of it all as slave labour.

Soon after I started at the school, Black instigated a 7 a.m. prayer meeting. It was way too early. I didn’t want to go but I had to, so I dozed throughout. Luckily these sessions were stopped after a few months, I imagine partly because of the ridiculous hour and partly because Black didn’t like small or private gatherings as he wasn’t in control of them.

Right from the start the thing I dreaded most about Tadford was being summoned into Black’s private office. It was called ‘the private haven’ and I feared it because he repeatedly made me feel useless, unworthy and full of despair. My first visit came shortly after the Lancashire hotpot episode. His manner was almost immediately intrusive and within minutes he asked me if I had had sex and if I was pregnant. I was shocked by such crude and personal questions and didn’t want to answer him, but he kept asking me, and in the end I didn’t have the maturity or confidence to tell him it was a private matter and found myself confessing instead. I told him that I had had sex, but that I always used protection and wasn’t pregnant. He then asked me lots of questions about my social life, about what I did and where I went. By the end of it all I felt thoroughly dirty, exposed and humiliated, that what I had done was terribly wrong and that there was no hope for me at all. This one dressing-down also had a long-term effect. It made me feel sex was wrong even if it had been sanctioned by a wedding and I don’t think Peter and I ever experienced true physical intimacy. Despite my huge embarrassment, somewhere at the back of my brain I noted that Black seemed to almost relish the process of breaking me down and extracting my confession.

He then insisted I write to my parents telling them when I had lost my virginity and that I had lied to them about going to a party. I did what I was told without thinking too much about how my unnecessary letter would upset them. That hit me when my father replied. He wrote:

I feel very hurt that you should find it necessary to lie and deceive me … You should know by now that you only get away with a lie for so long then it catches up on you. As I said I feel terribly hurt. I don’t know what else will be revealed, however because we love you so much we forgive you for everything that has happened in the past.

There is one thing for certain you could not come back and carry on as you were, it is with this in mind that I must insist that you stay at Tadford as far as we are concerned from now on the past should be forgotten. If you feel you would like to make amends for what has happened the best way you can do it is by really working hard and build a good future for yourself so that in the future you too will have the choice of going to university the same as Kerry if you want to …

The letter was a crushing blow. Dad was such a gentle man and the harsh, unbending tone was so unlike him that I immediately wrote him another letter of apology. At the end of October I received his reply:

Your first letter took a lot of courage to write and tells me that I now have a daughter who has matured and is now going the right way in life, with regards to its contents of course we forgive you because we love you so much.

Our love is even stronger now because you have been so honest with us. As regards to anything else we may find out, these too will be forgiven.

If you remember some time back I had a talk with you and I said there was a battle going on inside you with two people, one was the Devil himself and the other was that loving person with that lovely personality.

The battle is now over and I thank God for my lovely loving daughter has won. You can now look forward to a future full of happiness and love, as for ourselves our prayers have been answered in full. I agree with you that it is a lousy world for teenagers to grow up in.

God bless you my darling and here are lots of sloppy kisses.

Mum and Dad xxxxxxxxxxx

I felt very mixed emotions when I received this letter. I was pleased Dad seemed to have forgiven me, but it made me realize that my life at Tadford was a done deal and that there would be no reprieve. It was a long time before it dawned on me that my parents had absolutely no need to hear explicit details about my sex life. Children don’t tell their parents what they get up to. It is totally inappropriate and unnecessary, and the pressure on me to confess all was, I came to believe, more about driving a wedge between us than setting any sort of record straight.

Shortly after my problems with the hotpot I had another run-in with the teachers. I was supposed to go swimming in the town swimming baths, but my period, which had previously stopped for about a year – I’m not sure why – started again. I was in a lot of pain and absolutely didn’t want to swim. I felt too embarrassed to explain the real reason and instead just kept refusing to go. Siobhan Scott, who was with me in the corridor of the new school building, got very cross and eventually Heather Black was asked to come over. Even though she was quite a tall woman of substantial build, it seemed to me she did everything her much smaller husband told her to do.

She was furious at my refusal and started to try to drag me to Black’s office, but I broke away and ran out of the school, my only thought being that I had to get away. It was totally impulsive. I had no specific place to go to or any sort of plan. Tears streamed down my face and even though I didn’t have any money on me, I stopped at the nearest bus stop hoping a bus might come that I could jump on to and escape. A woman was waiting for the bus and must have wondered what on earth was going on. Heather caught me before a bus arrived and marched me straight to the house where she and her husband lived. We went into Black’s study, where a number of important Church members, including Charlotte Snelling and Olivia Porter, were waiting.

The room was dark and had a distinct smell of leather. There were two red leather sofas, a big brown leather chair and lots of books lining the walls. I was told to sit on one of the sofas and Siobhan sat next to me. I was then bombarded with accusations of how rebellious and terrible I was, and each person told me in turn that I had to do what I was told. The telling-off lasted about two hours, most of which I spent in tears. I finally confessed that I had my period and that was why I couldn’t swim. They all looked at me incredulously and started laughing. Black asked if that was all and hadn’t I ever heard of a Tampax? I thought it was an awful thing to say to a young teenage girl who had just arrived in a completely new place. I didn’t know how to reply or why a group of adults would want to gang up on a young person. So I just sat speechless, feeling a mind-numbing embarrassment that stayed with me for weeks. As did my hatred of Black and how wretched he made me feel.

When they finally let me go, I went straight to Siobhan’s house, phoned my parents and pleaded with them once again to take me away. I was too inhibited to tell them about the Tampax incident and only spoke in general terms, saying yet again how much I hated the place. Not surprisingly they said I should stay and they would see me soon. I felt crushed and hurt. I had to do everything in my power to escape its grip. Quickly, before it was too late. I had never felt so alone, so unloved and so full of emotional pain. But no matter how loudly I shouted for help, no one, not even my parents, listened. Mum and Dad seemed united in taking the same hard line. There was no give and take. I couldn’t negotiate with them an inch. The bald reality was that I was imprisoned in a place I loathed. Was this what I deserved? Was I so awful? Yet even in the depths of my pain I managed to separate the knowledge that my parents wanted me from the fact that they couldn’t cope with a feisty teenager.

When I put the phone down I thought, ‘I just can’t feel any worse’, and as the days went by I simply couldn’t settle. I felt desperate and scared. I had to escape, so a few days later I tried to run away again. I had no particular plan. All I could focus on was escaping. My parents had regularly sent me pocket money for toiletries and snacks, none of which I had been allowed to spend. When I counted it all up I realized I had £16. It was enough, I decided, to catch the bus at the end of the street and get away. I packed a small bag, slipped out of the house in the early afternoon and started walking down the street. A little old lady, a member of the Church, stopped me and started talking. It seemed rude not to listen and she chatted for so long that by the time we went our separate ways, I chickened out and went back.