One cannot have listened, as I have listened to over 30 members of The Family without being impressed by and in many ways filled with admiration for their total dedication to their discipleship, to their belief in the teachings of their master, Jesus Christ, and to their spreading of His Gospel. Believing, as they do, in an active Satan, their inclination is, as Berg expresses it: "for God's sake, speak the truth". They are, however, a beleaguered group facing what they consider to be persecution by this litigation. Consequently, they permit an exception to telling the truth when doing so will result in tragic consequences to The Family. In his letter to me, Peter Amsterdam defines that as "being injury, loss of life, severe loss of freedom, or permanent cessation of one's ability to preach the Gospel." that is not necessarily a complete list of occasions when deception is permitted. In "Deceivers yet True", June 1979, Berg seemed to countenance deceit and sometimes outright lies to accomplish God's purpose. In an undated "Deceivers yet True" comic for children, the stories depicted:
"show that the Lord allowed His people to deceive their enemies - and even tell them outright lies - when it was necessary to save His work or the lives of His people."
Caution is urged before doing so. In "More Examples of Deceivers Who were True" The Family were told:-
"We're in a dangerous war and when it is necessary to protect the security of the Lord's work and his children, you may have to lead people to believe that something is a certain way when it's really not that way."
There are, therefore, words of much wider application than Peter Amsterdam suggested and they are certainly wide enough to cover The Family's approach to this litigation.
That is made clear from a letter from Creations to those then involved in the Australian litigation. The Creation team were then in April 1992 creating valuable guide lines on how to tackle tricky questions and answer the accusations that were being made against The Family. In separate publications, one for adults and early adults only and the other as required reading for teens aged 14 and up, "False Accusers in the Last Days" The Family were prepared for having to make the choice between believing God's word or man's word. They were warned of the enemy's dirty tactics and his goal of trying to discredit Dad, the Word and The Family. Advice on how to handle accusations, controversies and concerns was set out in a 48 page document for the adults, "Contending for the Faith" and in 56 pages of "Wise Witnessing Replies", required reading for all over 11 years of age. I find that a huge effort has been made to prepare The Family generally and to prepare the witnesses specifically in how to deal with the challenges to their way of life. The fact that they have been prepared does not, of course, mean that they have been prepared to lie and Peter Amsterdam wrote that as yet unpublished remarks from Maria were passed on to those involved in this litigation to this effect:-
"The Court is a place where they must be honest no matter how embarrassing or threatening to The Family they feel their answers are going to be ..... I would rather have then saying something that would supposedly "hurt" The Family than to ever perjure themselves and destroy their credibility."
Nonetheless, I regret to find that in many instances there has been a lack of frankness and a failure to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. By way of example:-
1. Answers to the Official Solicitor's interrogatories were less than full and frank in material respects which I will deal with later.
2. EM who has important child care responsibilities, was frank enough to admit that she would lie to protect the children and I regret to find that is at times exactly what she did.
3. The Family's Australian lawyer considered it appropriate to make a video recording of conditions in various homes in various countries to place before the Australian Court as evidence of what life was like in a typical home. MA was recorded saying that "The barrister has asked me to describe the surroundings of the 27½ acre plot that we live on." He continued, "We live in a very productive part of England ... When we first moved in, this place was completely overgrown and unusable ... We have managed to clear it and make it a place for the children .... In the back garden over here we have our fourth daughter KAS playing with the ferrets." No one listening to that recording could think otherwise than that that was MA's home. It was not. His wife LA told the listener that "in all my experience all these years in The Family, I have found the children to be happy well adjusted children." She said the same to me in her affidavit sworn in these proceedings and repeated that all children she has met were happy and well adjusted. There was no mention of the Victor programmes to deal with difficult children that had been running in her homes as well she knew.
4. In another video prepared for the Australian Court, film was made of a home in Denmark and the children were asked, more than once, whether they had heard of silence restrictions. No one raised a hand. SC remained mute. He knew about silence restriction. He had been on silence restriction himself. I had been impressed by his evidence until that point and there was much about him which was likeable. When pressed about this discrepancy, he tried at first to shrug it off as not being a "life or death situation." When pressed he explained that he had not told the truth because of his embarrassment for he had no wish to explain why he had been placed on silence restriction and that he was "a rotten apple." What is disturbing, therefore, about this evidence is not only the lack of frankness in presenting material to another Court but also the psychological pressure that had been put upon the boy by the experience of being put on silence.
5. Another transcript prepared for Australia included an apparently enthusiastic JG telling the Australian Court how happy he was. He was not happy. He lied because he could not stand up to the shepherd and tell them that in fact he wished to leave The Family. It is again an example of a lack of candour together with emotional pressure being put upon the young members of the group.
6. In September 1990 a boy SM ran away from a Family home, Burnt Farm in Hertfordshire. He was apprehended at Ramsgate trying to cross the Channel. When the Social Services Department investigated the matter, and called Burnt Farm, a shepherd, RM, denied that he had anything to do with the Children of God, It was a blatant lie. Significantly, also, the home was closed in a hurry and the members dispersed. Could there be a clearer example of Deceivers yet True? From the children comic I quote:-
"If you knew that enemies would persecute you and your Family and all your brothers and sisters and chase you out of their city, if you didn't have to, would you tell them who you are?" (Their emphasis.)
It is an example of a practice I find to have been widespread. "Selah" is a word known to all members of The Family. It means secret. The system must not know it. It is an attitude of mind which prepares them to hide, run away, remove the trunk with The Family literature, take their packed "flee-bag" containing a minimum of essential personal possessions and escape.
Things have probably changed over the past 4 years. The Family are more open. The best evidence of that is their willingness to contest this litigation. It was a matter which was the subject of the Summit 93. But even now, The Family still cannot be fully frank, even with their own lawyers. They write:
"We have given some of our legal counsellors nearly full sets of Mo letters so they can properly prepare our defence." (The added emphasis is mine.)
They do not trust even their own lawyers. They do not fully trust their own experts and I gained the impression that Doctor Millikan was less than pleased and Doctor Heller was certainly deeply dismayed because be felt he had been misled by The Family.
These are worrying examples and they are not the only ones of the ingrained habit of lying if they have to and of telling half the truth if they can get away with it. I shall in due time have to give careful consideration to the extent of change within The Family and to the crucial question of whether I am able to trust them.
As I begin the process of evaluating the evidence and arriving at decisions on the disputed matters of fact, I remind myself again not only to be on guard that pressures from the anti-cult movements may have caused distortion of the Plaintiff's evidence but also that the examples I have set out above demonstrate to me quite clearly a pervasive tendency on the part of The Family to be economical with the truth. I turn, at last, to deal with the disputed matters of fact.
I shall judge the oral evidence I have received against the background of Family literature.
