JUDGEMENT OF LORD JUSTICE WARD CONCERNING THE FAMILY : PT 14
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
SILENCE RESTRICTION.
DR told me that the policy "to stop us chatting" was in
force most of the time she was in Macau. She wished to make
the point, which was a good point, that this should not be
blown out of proportion. I agree and I do not find these
children were on permanent silence every minute of the day
or every day of the week or anything like that. DR describes
it herself in this way: "Chatter was normal, but we weren't
normal because I had problems, serious problems especially
when I had thoughts of going insane. Michael and Crystal
wouldn't let us carrying on talking about bombs, stealing,
naughty things we had done in the past." She also said,
"After one and a half years of my time in Macau, they
realised silence didn't work so they lifted it."
I am totally satisfied that putting the children on silence
was used as a means of punishment, and even after making all
due allowances, I am still satisfied that they were kept on
periods of silence which were both prolonged and abusive.
ISOLATION
This was another technique used to dominate the children and
to punish them. MB was put in isolation and was locked in
her room. At the beginning of his stay in Macau, JG was
locked up alone in the attic, given a bucket to use as a
toilet and left without food for 3 or 4 days in order to
fast. They needed to fast in order that their mind and
spirit might be made receptive to the heavy dose of the Word
which was to be their spiritual food. It was administered
excessively.
HARD LABOUR
I am totally satisfied that children in the camp at Macau
were put to hard labour. Sometimes this took the totally
punitive form of digging trenches, filling them in again and
digging them out once more. At other times the labour would
have been more purposeful and would have improved the
amenities of the camp. The children knew that they were
being punished by being put to work and the punishment was
excessive.
CONCLUSIONS
The Macau experience is a shameful example of putting into
practice the belief that the end justifies the means. The
end was, as the Teen Special letter describes it, to bring
about changes in the habits and attitudes of the teens who
had reacted against The Family way of life. The means was a
form of physical and mental atrocity mercilessly dished out
to young, often already emotionally damaged children. There
seems little acknowledgement from the leadership of the
abusive nature of that regime. In my judgment, the
leadership must stand condemned. That this went on and they
did not know it is a conclusion which I cannot accept. Jose
and Faithy were in charge. Faithy was Berg's daughter. MB
was his granddaughter. I simply cannot accept that he and
World Service did not know what was being done. The fact is
that knowing that the treatment meted out to those
difficult, damaged teenagers would never stand the test of
any reasonable scrutiny, The Family now try to rewrite the
truth not just to the outside world but more importantly to
their own members to whom in the Teen Special letter Macau
is now presented as a rural idyll. What nonsense!
THE VICTOR PROGRAMMES
This was how World Services described the Victor programme
in answer to the Official Solicitor's interrogatories:
"As is the case in nearly any large group of teenagers, some
of ours are naturally more positively motivated than others.
School and teen homes, in particular, found negative peer
pressure to be very disruptive and detrimental to the other
teens' training. In efforts to nip any "teen terror"
situations in the bud, some schools deemed this problem
serious enough to warrant a separate programme for
particularly problematic students."
EM was an architect of the Victor programme and she
explained its inception in this way:
"By 1988 there was so much concern about the difficulties in
various field homes being experienced with the Jett age (11
to 13 years), that a council of people was called. It had
become apparent that some of the teenagers did not have the
same commitment to the way of life of The Family as their
parents (it wasn't so much that they didn't have the same
beliefs as their parents, they probably did, but they didn't
share the same enthusiasm and commitment and many of them
bored and felt there was no challenge in their life and
nothing to do.) We felt that the solution lay in providing
for the teenagers the sense of enthusiasm that we had had
when we first joined the Children of God in the early 70's
to bring them a sense of excitement and adventure and to
enlarge their vision and the goals of what it means to be in
the family, and that is basically what we try to do with the
Victor programme."
After an initial programme for the Jetts, it was increased
to include the teens in the 14 to 17 year age group. The
Teen Victor programme ran for about a year and a half during
about 1989 through to 1990. Her experiences were written up
in January 1991 in the "Case Histories of Jett Victors."
Maria said of them:-
"I think these, along with the Techi GNs are going to be an
absolute goldmine of material! They really go together! So
many of the ways the Lord has shown me to handle Techi, he
shown them also. Together they are going to be wonderful!"
In her affidavit EM acknowledged that her methods were
copied throughout the family. She sought to exculpate The
Family by the assertion that her suggestions were:
"Copied or applied too literally and the spirit or what we
were recommending or suggesting appears to have been lost.
This is particularly the case with silence restrictions. We
had pioneered having periods of silence as a method of
enabling each of us to commune with the Lord. It was
intended that we would have half an hour of silence in the
morning right after getting up, the one hour rest period
during the day and then 30 minutes in the evening. It was
never intended as a method of punishment."
She acknowledged that the children were subject to corporal
punishment but asserted it was never harsh nor cruel. She
said that she was:
"Familiar with some of the accusations that have been made
concerning Victor programmes, that they are chilling
examples of doctrination and brainwashing. ... What we have
tried to do was give them inspiration and direction, not
take over their minds."
To assess that, it is necessary to look at the case
histories. That defined the Victor programme in these
terms:-
"The Victor programme is an intense shepherding and training
programme that is The Family's physical and spiritual
counterpart to the system's many rehabilitation programmes.
You will note that the Victor shepherds use some of the
disciplinary measures such as silence restriction, isolation
and occasional swats. It's good to keep in mind that our
Victor programmes are extremely mild compared with system
delinquent teen rehabilitation programmes. The system
programmes are much stricter and more severe, even cruel but
they are much less effective".
These are some of the examples of the successes claimed by
The Family and the methods of obtaining them.
T an 11 year old boy had been on intensive care status which
means that he was with an adult 24 hours a day separated
from the other Victors to receive "lots of personal
counselling and spoon-fed Word." He was taken off i.c.
status but returned to it after 3 days.
"This meant he was on silence restriction - he wore
headphones with word tapes while he was working and he was
not allowed to talk to the other Jetts at all. ... He seemed
to have a very hard time making it through the day without
getting a spanking. The policy in the beginning was that as
soon as they got 16 merits, they would get 6 swats. Some
kids might stack up 16 merits in a week, where as T found it
quite easy to stack up 6 in a day, so he would get swats
almost every day. ... When he'd have to get a spanking,
afterwards Ricky would hug him and say, "Look in my eyes.
Let me see you smile. Do you still love me?" Ricky would
make sure he was really receiving it before he would let him
go on his way again. ... After being in the Victor programme
for 4 or 5 months T graduated. During this time he lost
about 30 kilos (66 pounds). He was down to about 45 kilos
which was is a good weight for his height. He is probably
the most changed person I have ever seen since working with
Jett teens and Jetts."
R was also 11 years old. He had:
"Got into stealing and covering up. He lacked a real
connection with the Lord. He seemed to have a fascination
for encyclopaedias and any time he could get away with it he
would read an encyclopedia. The real problem is that he
would then basically use his newly found knowledge and
wilfully put others down for their lack of knowledge. He
went on i.c. status with T. These two boys spent the first 6
weeks together doing extra labour. R has been on the Jett
Victor programme now for over a year. Although he is subdued
in a way he has by no means graduated or been able to go on
to something else."
Dealing with the case of F, EM acknowledged that:
"When we initially began the programme it was tough! It was
boot camp, military style. ... What happened in F's story
was that the regimentation and strictness carried through
into the second session of the programme and because F was
at a real discouraged point in his life when he came back
into the Victor programme, feeling that he had completely
failed, this approach didn't bear good fruit. He sunk lower
and lower and lower until when Ricky and I visited the Jett
Victor programme 6 months later, he was on i.c. status and
in pretty bad shape..... So we took F off i.c. status and he
pretty much sky rocketed back to a positive level again. So
now we are a little cautious and much more aware that as you
have the kids with you a longer time you have to adapt the
situation. There is no set pattern or set rules for the
programme. ... The correction and discipline have to be
tailored personally for each child. The kids are not in the
Victor programme to be punished for their sins. They're in
the programme to get training."
D1 is Ricky's son who was brought into the programme to:
"Humble him a little but and help him overcome his problem
of having such a high opinion of himself. He is not really
committed to the Lord. He was infesting and infecting others
with serious bad attitudes - especially along the lines of
spiritual lethargy.
H was 11 and had an "emotionless" attitude:
"where it is very difficult for them to give or receive love
or show any sign of expression, of joy or sadness or
gladness or whatever. We have a lot of emotion in the Victor
programme and each class will either make them mad, sad or
glad. Also the teachers are usually on fire and stirred up
so we zero in on anybody who has this emotionless attitude
right away to find out why and usually there are all kinds
of reasons. The solutions usually take desperate prayer and
digging in the word to find similar situations so we can try
to apply the word to their lives and get them to respond. I
think that's a key in the Victor programme: we expect
response! We expect change and we're not satisfied if we
don't get it!"
K was aged 11.
"Her NWO' (needs work on) were being unable to communicate
with others (other than her mom), not respecting the Lord in
others, not knowing why she was in The Family and not
believing in The Family. She basically seemed to lack a
connection with the Lord. Those who had shepherded her in
her previous home had resorted to giving her quite a lot of
discipline for her rebellious stubborn behaviour but were
frustrated with the lack of fruit from the correction given.
K really fell apart when she realised she wasn't going to be
seeing or spending any time with her mom during her stay at
the Victors. (She is very close to her mother.) She was a
bucket of tears and very emotional for the first few days.
In these difficult initial days when she was having such a
hard time forsaking her mom, the Lord gave her, for the very
first time in her life, some direct word from the Good Thots
on forsaking your parents. She was in tears, she was
overjoyed. It was very beautiful to see her so overjoyed in
knowing she had made a connection with the Lord."
EM's general advice with dealing with typical Jett girl
problems of "self righteousness, criticalness, great
difficulty getting along with peers and lack of respect for
teens and adults", was to make the girls "learn to confess
and be open and honest about their mistakes and to learn to
connect with Jesus."
"We found that the Jetts eventually saw the benefits of
being honest and learnt to openly share their hearts. We
feel sure that the Jetts are well aware of the seriousness
of what they are saying by the time they pour out their
heaviest confession. Honesty and honest confession is a real
key to the Jetts gaining victories in the Victor programme
and they all know this so they don't take it lightly."
It is likely that Victor programmes were run throughout the
world. I know of them in the United Kingdom, Switzerland,
Italy, Denmark, Thailand and Mexico.
It is quite apparent that there was considerable cross-
fertilisation about childcare. Ideas were communicated to
and from World Services. Common patterns had already emerged
and become quite well established. They included features
such as:-
1. Paddlings
2. Isolation - the physical separation of troublesome
children from their friends leaving them either alone or
cloistered with an adult whose function it was to feed them
the Word.
3. Silence restriction - this was widely practised as a
form of punishment, not as an opportunity for contemplation
as EM sought unsuccessfully to persuade me.
4. OHRs - open heart reports - were widely used as a
means of forcing confession with the result that the
children were made to feel guilty if they did not confess.
If they had no NWO (Needs Work On) they were said to be self
righteous and proud: if they expressed their doubts and
their antipathies, then they were murmuring. Either way they
could not win.
In February 1991, Maria wrote "Jett/Teen Discipleship
Revolution Needed Now" (the DTR):
"We've got to institute a new kind of intensified Jett
training programme not in every major area, but in each
individual home throughout The Family. ... They have
highlighted the fact that we have a big worldwide emergency
with all our Jetts and there is no way one little Victor
home in each area is going to be able to cope with that
need! We've got to somehow institute a Victor programme in
all of our homes if we're going to truly reach and win our
Jetts and Teens and turn them into the dedicated disciples
the Lord wants them to be. ... We may not necessarily have
the constant high excitement level of a TTC where
everybody's weeping and crying and praying and rah - rahing
and shouting and everything. I'm not saying that they have
to maintain that kind of emotional high. ... If our kids are
capable of that level of commitment at 11, 12 and 13 years
of age at a TTC, why can't they be capable of that kind of
commitment when they get home too? What I'm beginning to
realise is that too when our own Jetts and Teens to the
Lord's cause, to get them really sold on the family and on
fire for the Lord, we've got to go overboard. ... We need to
somehow reach our kids and really get through to their
heart. ... That's why they've had such success in the
Victor's programme: they bring those Jetts and Teens in and
they show them what the revolution for Jesus really is. They
have on-fire word classes and bible studies, they have
moving inspirations where they sing and cry out to the Lord
with all their hearts praying in tongues and weeping and
prophesying and really being moved and ignited by the spirit
of God! The kids really see and experience the moving of the
spirit and they go through the same sort of things that our
new babes used to go through. ... So this is the challenge
before us. Unless we touch them and reach them emotionally
and really win their hearts to the Lord and to the family
and get them turned on and on fire about it, we're not going
to save them."
It is apparent from this excerpt that the children, and
especially the doubting Thomases, were placed under intense
emotional pressure to conform.
Maria was no stranger to the problems of dealing with
unhappy children. Davidito had at the age of about 12 or 13
on several occasions contemplated suicide. He was a
disturbed child. Then Techi her daughter began to manifest
difficulties symptomatic of some emotional breakdown - she
was having nightmares and crying every half an hour. That
led to the Techi series on her battles and victories. The
letter set out the confessions that were taped.
"She discovered the truth of the scripture, "He that
covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whosoever
confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy" - Pro. 28,
13."
I emphasise these words in hope that Maria and the
leadership ill remember those words when they come to read
this judgment and will then practice what they preached. The
series recorded Techi's problems of lying, unyieldedness,
being fascinated with evil, having bad thoughts, being
resentful and daydreaming. Coping with these problems seemed
to have caused such difficulty that Amy who was in charge
seemed as close to a nervous breakdown as Sara had been
dealing with MB. Maria commented on the comparison between
her sweet and loving talks she held with Techi and the stern
dealings that Dad had with her. She said:-
"When a child is having serious problems and is fighting
heavy spiritual battles, the key question is not so much
which method to use but when to use which method."
It is quite clear that enormous pressure was put on Techi,
however lovingly it was imposed.
Fear, not love, was another powerful weapon in the armoury
of control. The first issue of the new "Teen Special" for
teens aged 12 and over was the story of MB as a warning to
those who might feel they could dabble with the Enemy. Then
Singing Sam made his confessions and so did Crystal of lives
filled with sex, alcohol, drugs and trouble. Later in
November 1992, the "sad story of a delinquent teen," namely
Ben, the boy from Macau who committed suicide, was told to
the teens. All of these "traumatic testimonies" were
accompanied by questions for the teens to "pow-wow". It was
all pressure to conform, to obey, to remain faithful to The
Family, indeed, and in truth, to remain in The Family.
It was not uncommon for individuals to be singled out and
publicly humiliated in the Letters. Such a one was Tony Zack
Attack. This series began in August 1991. He was apparently
quite "famous" when he was a teen, having appeared in many
Family circuit videos as a gifted musician and song-writer.
He was then aged 24, married to Claire with a 2 year child.
They were shepherds but had problems with criticism, doubt,
murmuring and unyieldedness and they were eventually placed
on a Victor programme. Tony felt dissatisfied and upset with
the way things were going for him in The Family and had been
tempted with thoughts of going to the system. EM was his
Victor shepherdess. Tony and Claire were separated "in order
to concentrate on the lessons they were learning." For this
same reason their 2 year old son went to live at the school
nearby, rather than living in the Victor house. Tony was put
in intensive care. His OHR was published. He had there
confessed:
"Being under constant supervision and authority is one of my
main battles. I feel I have very little freedom and I can't
do anything without permission - unless it's on the
schedule. I can't even ride a skateboard or a horse or go
ice-skating or roller-skating or even climb a tree."
Maria wrote to him and giving him his "last chance:"
"You also have to be able to take the humiliation of public
exposure or public correction for your mistakes because if
you're not corrected, just as with any leader, their
mistakes and wrong attitudes and NWOs easily filter down to
and affect others."
Eventually Berg delivered his letter "Grumblers Get Out" in
August 1991. The message was "Repent or perish in the
system":
"He needs to get up and confess with strong crying and tears
and real show of repentance and confession and humbling. He
oughta grovel on the floor with strong crying and tears and
ask everybody to forgive him and saying he's never going to
do it again, and show it, or out he goes right now."
The Teens had to pow-wow Grandpa's instruction to Tony's
shepherds to take away his responsibility and make him "a
flunky - mopping the floors and cleaning toilets."
"When people see Tony mopping floors or cleaning toilets
instead of being a Jett shepherd or playing the guitar in
inspiration or leading teen witnessing excursions etc., it
will serve as a reminder to all that he is being punished
and humiliated because of his wrong-doing."
The letter ended "Murmurers beware! Are you?"
Faced with this flurry of letters it is hardly a surprise
that Tony made his confession. He wrote:-
"I realised that I was more broken about my son than about
offending the Lord. I've been making a god out of my son.
The sin of putting my son before the Lord in my heart has
been a weak chink in my armour that the enemy has been able
to use. So now I feel I have to forsake him and really prove
to the Lord that I am willing to put God first and bring
forth fruits needed for repentance."
The recording of his confession to his home is punctuated by
his tears. His letter to Grandpa and Maria begs them to let
him stay as "a hired servant because if I go to the system I
fear it will be "going after her straight away as an ox
goeth to the slaughter."
Three matters in particular trouble me about this series:-
1. The public humiliation to which this young man was
exposed and with which he was threatened.
2. The starkness of the choice offered which virtually
amounted to a denial of choice - grovel on the floor in
confession and slop out the lavatories or get out back to
the system where, according to Faithy, "the other kids who
backslid, are either in prison or in serious trouble with
drugs or homosexuality or prostitution or like Dicken, in
trouble with Maria and things like that." (I am,
incidentally, totally satisfied that Dicken is in no such
trouble. He is a happily married undergraduate at
University.)
3. EM remains a powerful voice in child care matters. It
was she who removed this 2 year old boy from his murmuring
parents. She said that if need be she would separate S from
his mother in order to bring her to heel. It was an answer
now imprinted on my memory. An attitude of that kind held by
a responsible member in some position of authority within
the movement constitutes a risk to the well-being of my
ward.
SEPARATION OF CHILDREN FROM THEIR PARENTS AND THEIR WIDER
FAMILY
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.
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