Forsaking all has been a recurrent theme. One of the earliest letters is the "One Wife" letter telling The Family:
"God's in the business of breaking up little selfish private worldly families to make of their yielded broken pieces a larger unit - one Family. He's in the business of destroying the relationships of many wives in order to make them one wife - God's wife - the bride of Christ."
The letter is making another point that:
"Partiality towards your own wife or husband or children strikes at the very foundation of communal living - against the unity and supremacy of God's Family and its oneness and wholeness ... Are you really sure that the other children in the nursery have just as comfortable a bed and just as good food and just as good training as your own? - I don't like that expression! - they're all our children! ... If your spirit was perfect before God, everybody in the Revolution would be your brother and your sister just as much as your flesh and blood, and every child you would feel just as responsible for and loved just as much as God loves."
He returned to that theme in 1978 in the letter, "The Advantages of Having Children", where he said:-
"We ought to treat every child as our child ... They are the children of The Family and therefore the entire Family is responsible for them, not just those that happen to be their physical parents."
This philosophy has come under some attack during the course of this hearing for the understandable reason, which I endorse, that it is clearly better that children grow up in and with the stability and security of their own home, cared for by both parents wherever possible. I must, however, take a broader view and acknowledge that The Family live a communal life, for the order and good government of which it is necessary that there be equality of treatment. Insofar as these letters seek to achieve that, they cannot be fairly critisised. There is no public outcry against the practice among some of the kibbutzim where children are separated from parents and where their upbringing is largely delegated to others.
What causes me more anxiety is the huge pressure which has been placed upon parents and which can, therefore, as EM made clear, be placed upon NT to forsake all. An extreme example was contained in the letter "God's vomit" in September 1983. In this letter Berg raged against "backsliders, God's vomit." It was a letter referred to by SPM in his affidavit but the Official Solicitor's request for the production of it was rebuffed. It came to light very late in the day when MS produced it from her personal case of Family literature. For this purpose it is sufficient to describe her as a teenager who had grown unhappy with The Family but, knowing no other life, was apprehensive about leaving. Her distress in that dilemma was reinforced by the threatening tone of this Letter. It is directed at a young man who rejected Berg's offer of a World Service job in favour of going back to his wife and children. It was:
"A ridiculous decision ... to choose his family over the Lord and God's work when he knows all about forsaking all and forsaking wife and children and home and all these things for the Lord."
Of such a person, Berg wrote:
"God can't stomach you, he can't swallow you, he can't use you so he spits you out! So you've become nothing but God's vomit."
I find that to be very heavy pressure indeed.
There are other letters where Berg dealt with murmurers. For example, "God Hates Murmuring" written in November 1984, another letter produced by MS. Murmurers were some of the worst bad apples and bad apples had to be removed. Consequently, Berg made his antagonism towards them plain and said explicitly,
"If you don't like it here, for God's sake, get out and go some place else where you like it better."
It is obviously right for the maintenance of good communal spirit that any who foment insurrection should be expelled. My concern is for the children, especially those who have been born into The Family and who have no contact with their natural family outside it. I am troubled that there seems a woeful lack of appreciation just how terrifying it must be for the young teenager, perhaps in a foreign field, to "go some place else where you like it better" when he has nowhere else to go. This is the grandmother's concern for S. It is my concern accordingly. Without his maintaining good contact with his grandmother, his natural escape route is blocked.
It is not a surprise to me nor is it a surprise to the leadership that joining The Family is invariably greeted by the forsaken parents with nothing short of horror. Many an appalled parent would find it impossible to come to terms with such a decision; but others might subjugate their distaste in the interest of preserving family contact. Many of the witnesses told me convincingly of their having close loving contact with their family outside. Whilst it might be invidious to pick but one name from the many who gave evidence to me, I could point to CO, father of JL as example of the latter. To give another example closer to home, SB at one point entertained some hope of marrying NT. He was educated at Winchester and has a similarly conventional English background to NT. Unlike the Plaintiff, his mother seemed able, perhaps uneasily, to extend hospitality to SB and NT and S without tension rendering the visits uncomfortable. In fact, witness after witness produced bundles of photographs to convince me of the good relationship maintained with their system families. It all depends on the level of acceptance, resignation or hostility between the members and the outside families. The position was stated in this way in The Jumbo Story part 5 written in June 1988:
"Mama sent us some very good counsel on the danger of keeping up close communication with relatives that are not favourable:
"If our parents and relatives are favourable it's a different story, as it's a opportunity for us to not only lead them to the Lord, but feed them, etc. Other than that, we have so little in common with our flesh family, that it's really a waste of time to keep in close contact with them if they're totally unreceptive."
Another form of tension, perhaps more acute, arises when a person defects from The Family leaving close relatives in the group. Berg's relationship with his daughter Deborah and hers with him could scarcely be described as anything other than poisonous. The J family are deeply split between the anti-cult faction of mother and one daughter on one hand and father Simon Peter, a powerful figure still in World Services and daughter C2 on the other hand. When he separated from his wife VJ, C2 went with him and KJ stayed with mother. The girls had renewed some contact recently but KJ's participation in these proceedings brought that to an abrupt end. Father telephoned to berate her angrily about the evidence she had filed. "What I really wanted to hear from him," she told me sadly, "Was, "Hi daughter, how are you?"" Although I quote him slightly out of context, I cannot help but note the terrible irony between his rebuff of his daughter in that conversation and words he wrote in the Beauty and the Beast series where a child in the cartoon says:-
"Thank you Jesus for real fathers! .. Have you got a real father?"
KJ's answer to his question would be, "No!"
A surprising feature of the many months of evidence was the lack of deep emotion shown by almost everybody. One exception was AB. She broke down in cross-examination and became very distressed because her mother had failed to make contact with her. This was a family who had lived their life on the run because stepfather was wanted by the American authorities for breach of custody orders relating to his children.
Another feature of the evidence was the uncontradicted fact that many, many young children were separated from their parents, and were moved from one foreign field to another. That this was Family policy is made manifest by the letter, "A Teen Challenge" written by Apollos from his eyrie within World Services to his sons EG and JG both of whom gave evidence to me, for defendant and plaintiff respectively. He wrote:-
"As I am sure you know, we both love you very much and would love to be with you, to fight by your side on the fields of the world, winning souls, witnessing His word and preaching the Gospel to all whom we could, and also to be there with you to help bear your burdens, share lessons with you and do all that we could to help you do your best for Jesus! But as you also well know the Lord had a special job that he wanted us to do, something that required me to make a choice: to stick with and tend to you, my precious personal family, and therefore be able to minister to you, enjoy your fellowship, feed you what I could from the Word etc. etc. or be willing to commit you all to Him in order to spend most of my time down in the mines of the Word, digging up the gold and the precious metals and jewels which can be a blessing and a help and a strength not just to you all, but to the entire Family. ... Of course it has cost us something to give up you, our own dear children, and it has no doubt cost you something to give us up, but like David said, "I will not give unto the Lord that which hath cost me nothing!" and he also has promised you "a hundred-fold in this life, and in the world to come, life eternal"!!
EG's response was:-
"I don't feel in any way that you've forsaken me. But I have to admit that sometimes, although my mind can figure out completely why you're not here and I'm not there, I've course miss you and there are times when I feel how much better off I'd be living with you. Of course I miss you both very much and the devil even uses this sometimes to try to come in and get me discouraged. But I know the Lord has and is getting greater victories out of it all. ... As the evacuation of The Family in this country is well under way, it seems a lot of other teens will be forsaking their parents and not living in the same country as them any more, just how I have had to do with you. So that's nice to know that I'm not alone."
EG had just turned 14 at that time, JG was a year younger. They were shipped off to Macau where the conditions were as I have described and there they were left. I have seen both boys now going their separate ways. By your fruits shall ye know them. The fruit I saw was emotionally bruised. It would be utterly idle to pretend otherwise.
This was a time where the "forsake all" message was being heavily promulgated. "The Heavenly City School Training Seminar Notes TSN No. 2" had Sara saying:-
"We are all parents these days and most of us have had to forsake our own kids to be in a school or position. It really costs us everything ... there is no more holding back. If the Lord is expecting you to care for someone else's kids and if you can love them as your own, you will really appreciate that when the same is required of you! Forsaking all is not exactly easy for our kids but the Lord is even requiring it now of many of our children, even toddlers and babies."
I must not forget that that was written at the time of the "School Vision" and that things have moved away from that since then.
These conclusions can be safely drawn:-
1. In the nature of their missionary endeavours, separations are more likely within The Family than outside it.
2. The heavy compulsion of the forsake all doctrine makes separations in fact even more likely to occur.
3. Long separations and/or frequent separations are a threat to childrens' security and stability and therefore harmful.
4. The Family's position at or near (some would say beyond) the extremity of conventional religious practice renders it more likely that family relationships between those within and without the movement will be fractured, often seriously so.
5. Children who do not have a satisfactory relationship with their wider "system" family may suffer.
6. These factors pose risks of harm to S.
