JUDGEMENT OF LORD JUSTICE WARD CONCERNING THE FAMILY : PT 11
Click Here For A Warning Concerning This Judgment
THIS IS THE JUDGMENT OF LORD JUSTICE WARD IN THIS CASE WHICH
HE GAVE IN CHAMBERS ON THE 26TH MAY 1995 BUT WHICH IS BEING
HANDED DOWN IN OPEN COURT TODAY. IT CONSISTS OF 295 PAGES
AND HAS BEEN SIGNED AND DATED BY THE JUDGE.
THE JUDGE HEREBY DIRECTS THAT NO TRANSCRIPT OF THE JUDGMENT
NEED BE TAKEN AND THAT THE VERSION HANDED DOWN MAY BE
TREATED AS AUTHENTIC.
THE JUDGMENT IS BEING DISTRIBUTED ON THE STRICT
UNDERSTANDING THAT IN ANY REPORT OF IT NO PERSON (OTHER THAT
COUNSEL AND THEIR INSTRUCTING SOLICITORS AND THOSE PERSONS
IDENTIFIED BY NAME IN THE JUDGMENT ITSELF) MAY BE IDENTIFIED
BY NAME AND THAT IN PARTICULAR THE ANONYMITY OF THE CHILD, A
WARD OF COURT, AND THE MEMBERS OF HIS FAMILY MUST BE
STRICTLY PRESERVED.
SIGNED:
THE RT. HON. LORD JUSTICE WARD DATED 19TH OCTOBER 1995
W 42 1992 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION
PRINCIPAL REGISTRY IN THE MATTER OF ST (A MINOR)
AND IN THE MATTER OF THE SUPREME COURT ACT 1991h
Lord Justice Ward
Then follows this account of the exorcism and I will quote
the paragraph numbers to give some idea of its duration:-
"(29) MB comes in and Dad greets her with a loving kiss and
embrace. "Praise the Lord, Honey, How are you? Bless and
help her, Lord, as we talk to her about her problems, in
Jesus' name. TYL" (Then, in a very loud voice:) "Hallelujah!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" (Dad breaks into strong tongues for
one full minute as he grabs MB with both hands and violently
shakes her with every phrase that he shouts it!).
(30) Get out of here, Devil! Get out of her in Jesus' name!
Get out of here! In the name of Jesus, get out of her!
Hallelujah! In Jesus' name! I rebuke you, Satan! Look at me!
Get out of there! (Slaps her face) Get out of there!...
(31) Do you hear me? (slaps) (MB: Yes sir!) Do you hear me?
(MB: Yes sir!) Do you hear me? (MB: Yes sir!) Do you hear
me? (MB: Yes sir!) Do you understand what I am talking
about? (MB: Yes sir) That's what you're going to get if this
thing comes back again! (Dad pushes MB into her chair.)
(32) I have heard too much of this thing! (Dad is gasping
for breath with each phrase.)
(33) Do you know what they do with people in insane asylums
that have devils and demons? Of course they don't call it
that...
(35) God is angry! He is angry with you! I mean he is really
angry! The power of God's spirit curse that devil and curse
you for allowing him in...
(36) I've never put up with anything like this ever from the
very first beginning of this Family, from my own first
children, I have beaten them with the rod, I have beaten
them until they cry for mercy...
(37) From now on I'm going to knock the devil out of you if
I have to...
(38) How can you my own granddaughter suppose to be one of
my saved children, how could you invite Satan in and put
curses on others, send little devils to other people? I
don't ever want to hear about that again! (Slaps MB's face)
Is that clear? (MB: Yes sir!)...
(39) Tonight you're going to go without your supper and
you're going to fast and pray and pray with somebody every
hour of the day and night until you get delivered and you
don't let those god damn dirty slimy evil little things back
into your mind! Is that clear? (Face to face with MB) (MB:
Yes sir!) Or do I have to come over there and beat the devil
out of you? huh! (MB: No)...
(42) From now on you're going to suffer corporal punishment!
...
(47) Your grandmother was insane, did you know that? I have
just been giving them a long history of your background so
they could have a little more sympathy and mercy on you and
understand you came from a very seriously bad background.
(Clears throat and spits.) Same to you, devil! Spit in his
face! Do you want me to spit in your face? If you manifest
any more of these signs of devilry, I'm not only going to
spit in your face, I'm going to hit you in your face!
(48) Has anybody ever punished you like that before? (MB:
Yes) Who? (MB: "Uncle Peter".) (Peter Amsterdam: I spanked
her once real hard.) Well, she undoubtedly needed it!
(Maria: It wasn't anything like what you just gave her
though.) When was this? (Peter: When we had prayer for her a
while back.)
(49) I have a rod here, will you please bring it to me.. You
see this? Pass it to her, let her feel it. I want you to
feel this, how heavy it is. (Face to face with MB again.)
That is a rod!
(50) I am going to take this rod to you and I am going to
beat you with it the next time any of this stuff comes up.
(52) Do you want me to help you know what you're going to
get? Come here, I'll let you feel it just one time. Bend
over. (Spanks her!) Did you feel that? Well next time your
buttocks are going to be bare and you're going to really
feel it!
(53) You're dangerous you're going to go stark raving mad
and do something terrible if you keep playing around with
those devils.
(55) Your mother Shula's insane... Your father Aaron was
insane! If it hadn't been for the Lord, he would have jumped
off the cliff a long time before that...
(58) Do you want to be sane? (MB: Yes!)
(64) If you can't resist (the devil) then get rid of him
yourself, wake up somebody that's with you and tell them to
pray with you. And if they have to use a rod to beat him out
of you, fine, you've got my permission. (Sara: Yes sir I'll
do it!) If you've got to slap her to wake her up and get her
out of that kind of spirit, slap her! Slap her good! Knock
her around! Let her have it! ...
(74) Now get out, you damn devil, and leave her alone, or
I'm going to whack the daylights out of her! (She cries.)
Thank God that's the first time I think I've seen tears! Are
you sorry? (MB: Yes sir!) But if you're not sorry, I'm going
to make you sorry!...
(81) You think you're going to make it up there (in the
system) somehow? The only way you could make it is to be a
whore, that's all! You wouldn't even be an FFer, you
wouldn't even be doing it for God, you'd just be doing it
for a living. You'd probably end up on drugs - a drug demon
possessed, alcoholic, diseased whore and soon dead! Now is
that what you want? (MB: No sir!)...
(88) I don't know whether these here have ever seen me this
angry before, and I'm sure you've never seen me this angry
before, but there are some others who have! There are some
others I have knocked around and slapped down for being so
full of the devil and playing around with Satan and toying
with demons! I kicked some of them out of The Family...
(90) You're dirty, you're filthy, you stink! Your self
righteousness pride stinks worst of all, like stinking dirty
menstruous rags! ... And we're not going to stand the stench
of it any more, is that clear?
(93) We have spent too many hours putting up with this
problem, too many days, too many weeks, too many months.
(106) As far as I'm concerned your father Aaron died failing
God. ... Do you want to die like that knowing you failed God
and you disobeyed and hurt your family, your grandfather
your father your foster father all of us? (MB: No sir!).
(113) I was practically screaming in tongues, I think I'm
hoarse from it now.
(114) The Lord took hold of her head" (referring to the
events set out in para. 29) "and yanked it around and back
and forth and side ways to side ways by my hands until I was
afraid I was going to yank her head off or break her neck!
God was so angry... And then I hauled off and slapped her I
don't know how many times tonight, hard, right? (MB: Yes
sir!) And hit you....
(145) If you go back into that foolishness again, these
folks have got my permission to slap you around and knock
you around, if they have to knock you out to get rid of
that! Because you have got to want to get rid of it, and if
it takes a good beating up to make you want to get rid of
it, then we're going to beat you up!...
(170) My God, MB, how could you think you could get way with
it? How could you not fear God? How did you think you could
get away from the wrath of God? I represent God to you... He
nearly yanked your head off here! That was the Lord! I
didn't plan that, I had no idea. I'm almost horrified to
think back at what happened, but it was God! You heard the
voice of the Lord bawling you and those dirty little demons
out and threatening to take your head off if you didn't stop
it!
(183) The last resort we now have is to beat you with the
rod until it really hurts and you don't want it any more!
Right? (MB: Yes sir!) But if that doesn't work then what can
we do? We can't kill you, that's God's business. We'll have
to get rid of you. Now that's the facts.
(185) Nobody want's to sleep with you, they're actually
afraid of you because you've been under the control of the
Devil...
(186) So we can't trust you any more not even after all this
tonight...
(188) Now that's the picture I got while we were praying,
that they're going to restrain you. We're going to punish
you! You're not going to get away with this. God has put us
here as parents to punish you when you do evil and you've
been doing the vilest kind of evil, the worst kind of sin.
(189) I suggest you tie her to the bed.
(190) Make sure she goes to the toilet the very last thing.
I don't care if you wet the bed, dear, your hands are going
to be tied to the sides of that bed at night when the others
are trying to sleep. Are you willing to submit to that? (MB:
Yes!) If you have cotton or cloth ropes, that's the best
thing.
(191) Think of it, you've gotten to the state where nobody
can trust you and they're afraid you might do them or
yourself harm! You the great MB who was a great singer and
so vaunted in her pride, in her talent, her singing and
world famous has gotten so full of the Devil we have to tie
her down at night and threaten to beat her up in the daytime
if she doesn't behave.
(194) If beating doesn't get the hell out of you, you're
going to get the hell out of here: I want you to memorise
that. (MB: If beating you doesn't get the hell out of you,
you're going to get the hell out of here!)
(196) So for a peaceful night's rest I suggest you tie her
hands to the bed... Don't tie it so tight she can't move,
just tight enough that she can't reach herself and she can't
squirm out of it.
(197) This is the first time we've ever done that that I
know of, but that's the picture God gave me, and if I follow
God's pictures, ..., it never fails.
(198) So your first punishment was what God gave you
tonight, and what I gave you, a good slapping around to
knock that hell out of you, and just gave you one lick and
felt like giving you more with this stick! And if we have
any more trouble, you're going to get more of it, from
anyone of these here that are authorised to do it.
(197) She's not to be alone at any time from now on. Someone
is to be with her at all times who is big and strong and
spiritual enough that you just absolutely knock it out of
her.
(206) My God help her to realise how awful and how horrible
this is, that she can never ever again claim any kind of
righteousness of herself. She has been one of the most
wicked persons we have ever had in this Family, one of the
most evil one of the most dangerous so that we have to tie
her up at night to make sure she doesn't do anybody any
damage. We have to divorce her from our quarters, from our
arms, from our children, and put her in virtual
incarceration at least at night. She has to have a guard
with her all day long to make sure that she behaves until we
are sure she is cured.
(215) If you don't get rid of those demons ...... you may
have to get whipped in bed caned in bed.
(243) I love you sweetheart. Goodnight."
I regard this as vicious treatment of a vulnerable child.
Saying, "I love you sweetheart", does not redress the wrong
done to her. She was physically ill-treated; and she was
emotionally ill-treated; she was put in fear; she was
humiliated; her self-esteem was denigrated. Maria and Peter
stood by and watched it happen and approved of what was
happening. They showed little more sensitivity and insight
than their at times demented leader. I cannot accept that
this was, in any sense at all, a cure for the emotional
problems from which the child was undoubtedly suffering. The
Traumatic Testimony letter gave The Family's diagnosis of
her problem:-
"You're going to go completely nuts. In fact they say you've
already gone completely nuts, you're already insane, totally
non compos mentis! Totally incapacitated and mentally not
sane at all."
About a year later MB was sent to the detention camp in
Macau. It is not now disputed that she did there suffer a
complete mental breakdown and that she required but did not
at first receive appropriate psychiatric help. Eventually
after tribulations which I shall later set out, she was
finally sent for proper treatment. From there she was sent
back to the United States in America. She again broke down
and underwent more psychiatric treatment. Unfortunately I do
not have full medical reports on her condition.
Doctor Cameron, a Consultant Child Psychiatrist, gave
evidence to me. He told me, and I accept, that the treatment
meted out to MB was totally unacceptable. This was a child
caught in the conflict between what she saw and what had
happened to her, which she knew to be wrong but which she
had been taught to accept as right. Disillusioned and
depressed, she doubted. If, as happened to MB, a significant
cause of a mental or nervous breakdown is the feeling that
one is lacking in trust or faith, and the treatment
prescribed is to hammer home what a worthless sinner one is,
then the treatment enhances the self- doubt, and the very
treatment itself becomes damaging and psychologically
disabling. This is an extract from MB's own evidence as I
noted it:-
"I upset them when 13/14 because I began to realise
grandfather was a hypocrite who made rules for people which
were not necessary for him. He would write one thing one day
the opposite the next because God was changing. He was very
contradictory. He was a chronic alcoholic. It was very
confusing. When he was sick he would drink and call
different women in for sexual relations or sexual comfort.
It was very difficult to respect this man when he was so
drunk. I now look back at his writings as the ravings of a
drunk madman. Another thing that upset me at 14 was that I
was losing my faith in the group and in the prophet - all
the things I believed in. I had violent pictures and images
and they said that showed I was listening to Satan. They
would say that Satan and demons were attacking me. I do not
know if it was my imagination but I was seeing demons. In
bed I would get out terrified because I thought the spirits
would attack me sexually. I would try to cover myself up. I
would confess to Sara, my stepfather, Faithy and others
because I was afraid of Satan and wanted to be right with
God and wanted the group's approval. They would slap me.
Later they gathered the leadership together, pulled my pants
down and spanked me publicly which was humiliating because
these people were important to me. Six months later when my
grandfather was told, he commanded them to beat me with his
rod whenever I had violent thoughts or saw monsters.... Many
times they would beat me, they took my head and beat it
against the wall and bruised me. I was helpless and knew
nothing else. My stepfather spanked me with his hands. It
all felt like torture and once I fainted, throwing up. They
said I was throwing up demons. The exorcising terrified me".
Later I was able to compare that description with The
Family's description of MB in Macau taken from her Traumatic
Testimony:-
"This is the story of MB, who made a conscious effort to
entertain the Devil and his lies and whose former
fascination for evil has now left her spiritually and
mentally handicapped. Of course, Dad and others warned her
time and time again that the Devil was going to drive her
insane if she didn't make a positive stand against the lies
of the enemy and stop yielding to the devilry she was so
fascinated with as you can read in the letters the "Last
State" and "Its up to You". The prophetic warnings of those
letters have been fulfilled as is proven in the following
pitiful and revealing report written by MB's present
shepherds" (in December 1989). "What started out as a little
mind-game developed into absolute obsession and eventually
resulted in a very unstable, feeble and virtually insane
mind. ... She cannot take any kind of stressful situation
and is very easily scared and affected by any attacks of the
Enemy. ... She is definitely feeble-minded as Grandpa said.
It's hard for her to concentrate, and she has a hard time
making sense when she talks and often is unable to finish a
sentence that she has started. She cannot take care of
herself like a normal person, spiritually or even in many
ways physically. ... She still gets seriously attacked with
bad violent pictures sometimes... May this be a warning to
others who feel they can dabble with the Enemy! MB thought
it was just a little disobedience and that she was only
being a little bit rebellious and only wanted to do that for
a little while. But the effects in her life are long lasting
and so extensive that it will probably take a lifetime to
undo the damage and for her to gain lasting victories over
the things that hinder and negatively affect her. MB can
still work, she does her daily jobs but she is not normal.
It takes MB a lot longer to do things than normal people.
She is making progress but we have to work with her daily on
this because she isn't "all there" sometimes, when we give
her instructions, we have to repeat them over and over
again. How different from the very clever, sharp and quick
witted girl she once was. She now does not really understand
the first time or the second time or in many cases the third
time. It is very sad! She isn't sharp, she is very dull and
doesn't have all her wits about her. She spaces out often in
classes, it's very difficult for her to tune in. MB is still
sick, she is still recovering from the extensive damage that
the Enemy has done to her. She has developed some strange
mannerisms. For example when she is nervous or begins to get
negative thoughts from the Enemy, she starts picking her
hair out, to the point that she even has a bald spot! She
scrapes her lip with her fingernail in a weird nervous
fashion and other times begins to uncontrollably scratch
herself almost like a monkey. She often has black bags under
her eyes from worry. So much worrying causes her to have
stomach problems which in turn cause her to have very bad
breath. She doesn't sleep well, her sleep is often
interrupted because she is unable to relax ... So as you can
see from this report, MB still has very serious problems,
and in the system's eyes she would be considered insane and
without a doubt she would be locked up in a mental
institution. Thank the Lord for the love and mercy of God
and Grandpa who have allowed her to be in one of our Family
homes where she can partake of God's spirit which has been
slowly cleansing her from these inroads of the enemy which
she brought upon herself."
There is an affidavit from KG, who did not attend for cross
examination, who takes up the sad story.
"After our daily taking care of the said MB for 31ò2 years,
rather than improving and normalising as we had so hoped,
regrettably she regressed into a sad state of hysteria, and
frenzy, to the point that she had to be daily spoon-fed her
meals - only to have her wilfully regurgitate her food after
hours of struggling to help her eat. She began to have no
control over her bladder and bowel movements and became
incontinent. She was pulling her hair out by the handful,
laying all over the house, on tables etc. and would
frequently disrobe in public. She began running around the
house threatening to harm myself or my husband if we failed
to control her in any way, throwing articles of clothing out
of the window and screaming profanities at the top of her
lungs. This extreme display of insanity was causing hours
and hours of our time and care to the point that we finally
had make a decision to have her committed into the care of
the Macau Government Centro Mental Hospital. This was on or
about September or October 1990."
I have perhaps dealt with MB at inordinate length. I do so
because of the central role she plays not only in The
Family's past but in its present. For The Family to gain the
respectability which they now appear to seek, they must
acknowledge that what David Berg did to his granddaughter
was wrong, not just a mistake, but inexcusably wrong. They
must atone for their treatment of her which I find to have
been barbaric and cruel.
My duty now is to set aside that sense of revulsion and
concentrate on S and his medical care. I am totally
satisfied that in the care of his mother he has received all
appropriate medical attention. He was born in hospital and
his mother duly registered him with general practitioners
both in London and in the country. The health visitors
visit. He has been immunised. When he needs medical care, he
gets it. Mother herself took ill during the course of the
trial and immediately sought medical help for herself. None
of the members of The Family who are close to S gave any
hint of their unwillingness to seek proper medical
attention. There was no evidence of any extreme belief in
illness being God's punishment. There was no evidence of any
extreme belief that prayer was the only relief against being
ill. S has been properly cared for, and I have total
confidence in this mother to continue properly to care for
him and I fear no medical neglect at her hands.
Mother and the community at the Ward's home may receive a
clean bill of health but The Family's history leaves me with
festering doubts about the organisation and its order of
medical priorities and accordingly I must take into account
some risk to S if he were to be separated from his mother
and fall into the wrong hands.
IMPAIRMENT OF EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Berg's early aspirations for the movement were set out in
his letter "New Bottles" in June 1973. He remarked:-
"Do you realise we are now producing another generation. A
new more revolutionary generation? They are going to be I
hope the purest generation of all, totally revolutionary
from the very beginning. The little ones being born will
never have known anything but our kind of life! I'm hoping
that these little children are going to be really pure
revolutionaries from birth, and so far it looks like they
are! Your children will be totally revolutionary, never
knowing what churchianity and system jobs and education are
like!"
To achieve that ideal it was, of course, necessary carefully
to control what was poured into these new bottles. That
degree of control was imposed, for example, by the letter
"You are what you read" in August 1978. The text books Berg
"had to wade through" in college were denounced as
"ridiculous", "full of the lies and distortions of men":-
"Those books are written with the demonic satanic wisdom of
the Devil himself! Cunningly devised to deceive you and lead
you astray and twist you spiritually to where you don't know
what is true. ... Nearly everything you have to know is in
the Bible, except perhaps current events, recent revelations
and a few other things."
In August 1978 he returned to the theme in "Book Burning -
You are What You Read" and informed the members that:-
"I don't want to hear that anybody in this outfit is reading
anything but your Bible or the Letters or some books that
you have been assigned to read for a good purpose."
By 1985, The Family were having to get to know the fruits of
their education policies. In the "History of The Family"
produced by SPM, WS wrote:
"Many of the couples who had married during the early years
of the Children of God era had adolescent children and, as
is natural at that age, those young teenagers were
encountering serious questions about life and the world
around them as they searched for their identities and that,
of course, held new challenges for Family parents."
The Searcher's mission discovered a large number of
disillusioned teenagers for whom the Teen Training Camp was
held in Mexico in 1986 when:
"These young people were challenged to renew their
relationship with the Lord, and to give their lives to him
again. ... Many of them chose to become teen missionaries
and obtain permission from their parents to move on to the
mission fields of Latin America after the TTC".
Following the Mexico TTC, similar teen training camps were
held in other major mission fields, primarily in South
America and the Far East. At the Japan TTC they had
"desperate prayer and laying on of hands for deliverance and
prayed individually" for each of a number specific requests
including:-
"Against system influenced through books,
Against the influence of system schools"
In August 1988 Berg had "the School Vision" which was "God's
answer to our child crisis." By then the Heavenly City
School had begun to operate from Tateyama in Japan. This
example of a large school for the education of the children
was attractive. As Berg acknowledged:-
"The education of our children is already getting to be a
monumental thing, a desperate need, really, because most of
our parents don't feel very qualified to teach their
children. They never had much education or any degrees or
any of that sort of thing, and they don't really feel
qualified. I guess that most of them feel like they really
haven't done too good a job on their kids when they've had
to be so busy doing other things, the Lord's work, therefore
their kids haven't really gotten a very good education... So
I think a lot of parents, although they'd miss them, would
really feel relieved that their kids were at least going to
get a thorough education in the subjects that we consider
important - not a broad public school type of education, but
a really serious Family education in the 3 R's, plus Bible.
... Just educating our children for the Lord's work has
become one of our major ministries. We're not just educating
them for the sake of education. We simply want to give them
enough education so they'll be able to face without fear any
worldling, and have sufficient knowledge not to be ashamed
of their ignorance, and to at least a better comprehension
of the world than most of the systemites have now. As I've
often said, they certainly need to know how to read and
write and figure, and then have a general grasp of world
history. I think we've given them a pretty good grasp of
world history just from Bible history and prophecy.
Education of our children for the Lord's service is becoming
a serious emergency. ... Remember, we are not training just
for now till the Lord comes, what little time we have left
here, we're training for the future. ... We have had so many
children now, they've almost become our biggest job! And
properly to take care of them and train them - the best and
most potential disciples we could possibly have - is a very
important job and ministry... They could, in time, win a lot
more souls and train a lot more workers than if we just kept
on winning disciples."
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