The Family stand condemned by their own experts. Dr Melton agreed that there had been sexual abuse of children and teenagers by adults within The Family to a greater extent than outside it. Dr Millikan agreed. So do I. It is not necessary to burden this judgment with all the oral evidence that was led in this regard. This summary will have to suffice:
Her first encounter was with her step-father in Paris when she was 7. He made her masturbate him. She was sent to Greece to join "Music with Meaning" and from then on it was constant sexual activity. She said:
"Paul (now the European CRO) immediately started sexual interaction with us doing everything except penetration. I began to realise I was expected to be "revolutionary", that is to say sexually to service the different men aged 25 to 30 plus."
Among the men who abused her there was Jeremy S.. From the end of 1983 to August 1987 she was with Berg.
She was in South America. At 7 a man in his 30's asked her to touch him; she was revolted because "it was so horrible." By 12 she had grown so used to it that she thought nothing if someone touched her bottom or her breasts or masturbated her. At 13 the Shepherdess asked if she would share with her husband, a man in his 40's and that was her first full sexual intercourse. It continued thereafter. It was suggested to her that this evidence was untrue because she had been examined by a doctor during the investigation into The Family's activities in Argentina. She denied that she had in fact been examined and she insisted that The Family knew it. At that stage JN430 was not in evidence. It was produced later. That records "The testimony of an arrested teen" and AB says:
"(The doctor) was supposed to check me for signs of sexual abuse, but since I looked so healthy and normal he decided just to take my word for it. He asked me if I had ever had sex and I answered no."
She said she lied to save The Family. She deceived to be true.
The younger brother JG who has left the group, gave evidence for the Plaintiff that at 6, the childcare worker in her 20's performed oral sex on him and that mutual masturbation then occurred on a number of occasions thereafter. His elder brother EG who remains in The Family and who gave evidence for the defendant confirmed that had happened. He explained that at the age of about 10 he would go to her room to look at her body and ask questions about it.
"I would take my clothes off and show her my penis. I would say if I play with if it feels nice. She would play with it. We were kissing and fondling each other."
In his affidavit he described instances of oral sex and eventually full sexual intercourse. In his evidence, giving a clue to the sexual mores of that time in The Family, he said:
"She didn't think anything wrong with it, at the time there was nothing wrong or evil in it."
EG said in cross examination that his parents knew he was spending time in the child care worker's room and must have known sexual activities were taking place between them but they did nothing to stop it. It must not be forgotten that the boys' father was Apollos or Pathway, the editor of the Mo letters and the author of "Heaven's Girl." Their mother is a European CRO. For them the Davidito Book would have been common practice.
He is a respected member of the video ministry not far removed from the top leadership. He gave another account of sexual education by an adult of the young. He spoke in his affidavit of a childcare worker approaching him and RD-
"On the subject of sex education and told us the girls were curious to know about the male anatomy and if there was anything that we could do to help...I spent some time with and spoke to the two girls and talked to them about my body - no sexual activity occurred at all."
He made this affidavit in response to evidence RD had given. I have already observed that although I accepted the general purport of RD's evidence, much of which was confirmed by later events, the manner of his giving it was so emotive that I tended to look for corroboration of what he was saying. He is very hostile to The Family and a great publicist for their downfall. I do not, however, doubt his account of the events of November 1983 when they were in Dominica and the son and daughter of Peter Amsterdam and the daughter of the financial minister of the group visited with the child care couple in charge of them. This couple approached RD and RF and asked them to share with the girls who were only 10 and 11 years old. The little girl presented herself in a sarong with no panties. She masturbated him. He says that RF later told him that he (RF) had done likewise. In his oral testimony, RF went further than he did in his affidavit, admitting that at one point they asked to see his penis and he showed it to them. He denied his penis was erect. I regret that I did not believe him. He is a man consumed by terrible guilt over this incident and as RD says, he may have been "freaked out over it". He said he felt "peculiar" about it. He made the extraordinary admission of his having had a vision of his father coming into the room. It may well be, as Dr Cameron thinks, that this was his conscience. I am satisfied that as part of this extraordinary sex education lesson RF allowed if not encouraged these girls to masturbate him. In many other respects RF was a most engaging man. His enthusiasm for his work was catching. He forced me to watch one of the videos he made of the children singing and dancing and praising the Lord. I did not doubt his sincerity nor his belief that the way forward for The Family was to be more open and for the Teens to "be given more time and chance to express their desires of what they want out of life".
I have read Shuly's letter and her pointing to examples of lust and not love. It seems to be accepted now by those who knew the P family that their childcare worker, a man in his 20's, was an abuser. VP told me that at the age of 7 she was sitting on her bed when the baby sitter started masturbating her. He also abused DP. When, much later, this abuse was disclosed, the man concerned was removed from their home but later was admitted back because DP felt she was then old enough to escape his attentions. MP did in fact avoid his advances. She became sexually active of her own choosing at a young age. She very readily had a long and clandestine full sexual relationship with a shepherd of about 38 when she was back in Mexico aged 15. That was at a time when such contact had been prohibited.
DK filed an affidavit on the defendant's behalf. He did not give evidence. VP said that he told her that a woman had "jumped into bed with him". In his affidavit he testified of the time when aged 13 he had a sexual experience with a 20 year old woman. "I was a young teenage boy, she was a pretty 20 year old, I was shy but I felt like, "Wow, I scored".
KJ spoke of remembering very clearly of the first occasion, aged 3, in London, when her step father "touched me up, playing with me, my vagina, I remember him licking me out, fingers inside me". She spoke of this through her tears. This sort abuse happened often. She felt "quite scared" by it. She knew it was sex but thought he was showing her love. He would grab her head and force fellatio on her. He tried to penetrate her when she was only 7 or 8 and it hurt. He was a crude man who would boast openly about his daughter being "a good fuck". That all of this abuse occurred seems to be accepted by The Family but they accepted no responsibility of it regarding step father as not one of their own. What is totally extraordinary about this sustained abuse is that KJ's mother was told about it. She said that at the time:
"I went into a state of shock but because of the indoctrination in the Mo letters I came to accept it. If Mo said it was OK, it must be OK. In "My Childhood Sex" he says his nanny was giving him oral sex and that it was acceptable so I accepted it. It is something I very much regret, I am ashamed by it, I am horrified to think I had such a belief in David Berg that I bowed to his teaching against my own conscience. I assumed him to be a man of God, a good man, it was incomprehensible he would be evil or use the Bible for evil, he talked with such authority. I am now deeply horrified and regret these things. He had no right to do these things to people who were vulnerable. I am very angry."
She is very angry. She now conducts a campaign against The Family to salve her conscience. I do not doubt that she paints the picture as black as she can but even stripping away layers of blackness, the picture still remains black.
KJ told me she "had sex" with 6 adults. It was clear from her descriptions, vibrant with detail that she used the words loosely to connote some form of sexual encounter usually of masturbation or simulated sexual intercourse. She complained that only Paul had full sexual intercourse with her, and that without her consent. She was on a road team from Pondacherry with two adults, Paul and Rose (not SF) and with 16 year old S3. She was 9 or 10. Paul knew she was sharing with S3. He wanted his share but KJ was unwilling. She was being selfish. So he raped her. Her screams woke Rose who did nothing to help. She was bleeding. She was very upset and withdrawn on return to the home. Eventually she explained what had happened to her in her Open Heart Report. That resulted in the shepherd giving her a reading assignment including "The Girl who Wouldn't" which conveyed the message that she, the victim, was in the wrong and that was out of spirit. In effect she, the child, was punished. He went scot free. There can be no greater indictment of Family practice than this. Here was an adult man whose sexual urges were not regarded depraved, but God given. Here was a child who did not have enough "love" to recognise his need or to sacrifice herself to meet it. Here was an evil corruption of the true notion of the noble ideal of love. KJ gave explicit detail of other encounters e.g. with Jeduthan, who was fat, old, bald and with glasses, with a fake laugh and "Jesus talk" such as "You're doing good work for the Lord, honey, Jesus loves you" but who would then "wank himself off through my legs and make me lick the sperm off his penis." And an the army officer-type Apollos (not Apollos of World Service) who her "shoved" against a banana tree until her back really hurt as he attempted to penetrate her. And Uria who was fat and bald like Jeduthan, who was sharing with her mother and who called her into his room. He made her sit naked on top of him, his penis between her legs. It was early morning and a man walked in to ask whether Uria wanted coffee of tea in bed. It was apparently unremarkable that KJ should be there. And Paulo who pulled the ribbon off her "sexy" nickers which came off during a gypsy evening so that she was naked. He put his hand "on my crutch and put my hand on his hard-on. There was no intercourse but he ejaculated on her. He was 30 and had a strange accent. Or the man in Bangalore who had a moustache which was prickly. KJ was showering in the garden when she was frightened by a snake and as she ran away, she fell over in the mud. He took her into the bathroom to clean her, but got undressed and made her rub him all over. She said "it was quite fun - he was kissing my vagina and his moustache tickled and I was laughing."
Her father is Jeremy S. of Music with Meaning. Her mother is Dawn, a European Shepherd. She is a true child of The Family. She is quite a pert little madam who learnt to strip at the age of 4 and the irony is that her current occupation is that of an "exotic dancer." In fact she would prefer to read law. Her evidence was heavily attacked by Mr Barton. It was suggested that the Plaintiff had bribed her with promises of holidays in Kenya to come and tell lies to me. I am satisfied that her evidence was not improperly procured and that she was broadly telling me the truth. She said in her affidavit:
"From my earliest memories until my time in India, sexual activity pervaded The Family. Instances that stand out in my mind are as follows:-
"My mother and my father frequently had sexual intercourse and performed oral sex with each other and with other people in the same room as us children, regardless of whether we were awake or asleep. I distinctly remember my father having sexual intercourse with Faithy Berg when we lived in a caravan in Greece. I was around four years old at the time."
At the age of 6 she had to use both hands to masturbate Timothy in his 20's or 30's, ex-Vietnam veteran. At the same age she had to "help her father out" which meant caressing him and mutual masturbation. From the age of 7 her step father made her masturbate him. She later told Mary Malay about her step father but not about her father because she liked him: "at least," she said, "he did not beat me". She watched her brother aged about 12 having sexual intercourse with older women and her sister H2 having sexual intercourse with Solomon Touchstone whom she had seen on another occasion in the swimming pool having sexual intercourse with her mother. She saw her mother having sexual intercourse with a 16 year old called J1 whom she believed to be the same child J1 who was described as sharing with his English step-mother Sally in Australia as shown in Video number 5 produced by the Plaintiff. MS spoke of being in Italy when she was 11 when one of the men publicly put his hands in her shirt to feel her "barely budding breast." She always felt:
"A bit funny when old men used to come and touch me and I feel he is an ugly old man I don't want him touching me. I didn't complain because I didn't feel I'd get a good response because my mother thought it was ok, and would think I should think it was ok and that there was something wrong with me that I didn't like it."
She chose to have sexual intercourse with a 19 year old called C1 in the Finchley Road home 3 days before her 14th birthday. She was probably quite brazen about her having sexual intercourse at Rugby with DM, who was 16. She was by then well aware that it was against the rules.
