Q: When did you join the family and why?
A: I joined October 1971. I was saved in elementary school. I went to private Christian schools and an evangelist came through and I knew in fifth grade that I wanted to receive Jesus. I was confused and thought I had to ask Jesus in my heart everyday. Over the years I used to think how wonderful it would be to be one of Jesus' disciples and live by faith like in the Bible. An old boyfriend met the Family when I was living in Houston and was 21 and asked me to go with him to check the COG out. I said yes. I walked in and saw so many happy people, bout 100 all living together and singing and hugging and saying, "I love you" to each other. I was so unhappy at the time. I had dropped out of the University of Houston, had a job with an insurance company and hated it, my boyfriend had broken up with me and my roommate wanted another roommate with a house instead of an apt. I had to move home and felt like a failure. My cousin had joined the COG a few months before and when I realized these were the same people Ricky had joined it gave them validation. By that time I didn't realize he had run away from them with not even a dollar in his pocket since we would hardly see each other him living in Dallas and me in Houston.
I asked someone about their finances, how they survived. Everything they told me sounded practical and wonderful and I asked to join. She brought out a leader to talk to me. The next morning they came to my house and picked me up with a truck to get all of my things and took me to my job to clean out my desk. This was the first time my boss showed any concern about me at all...when I told him I was going to live with these new friends.
Q: Where did you join?
A: I joined in Houston at the huge mansion near the University of Houston.
Q: Did you meet Ron in the group?
A: Yes, I went with the provisioner, Joseph, to Crockett, Texas one night when I was staying at the Rock House in Dallas. We had to take some supplies out to the work crew. I had been in the Family 6 months at that point. Ron was heading up the work crew and the moment I laid eyes on him I felt like he was the guy I was going to marry. Joseph introduced us and he gave me a strong "brotherly" hug. We were only there a few minutes. I went back to Dallas and was going through some old photos in the office where I was a secretary and found a picture of Ron with long hair taken the day he joined. I kept that photo. All of the secretaries moved out to the Crockett School. There was a big celebration to re-bury Abner and Ron was speaking and saying he was going to Africa with a team of several brothers and his whole family except his dad had joined the Family so he was being honored as a guest speaker that day. I realized that he was the same guy I'd met that night. I overheard him say something about going to Africa when he was back in the school and I suddenly popped in the room and said, "I want to go to Africa, too!" I shocked myself by saying this but he said that we should spend some time together getting to know each other if I was going to Africa. We began talking here and there and we were gradually getting to know each other. I had the hugest crush on him. One night at the school in Texas there was a wedding and I was so excited to see it but a leader asked me to go to her trailer and watch her baby. I was really bummed because I wanted to see Ron. There were quite a few "sisters" that had their eye on him and I wanted him to notice me. I listened to the merriment inside while I sat on the trailer steps. The baby was asleep and I prayed for Ron to come outside. He walked outside and saw me there and rebuked me for dissembling! I explained I was babysitting and he walked away. I said, "Lord! That is not what I meant.
I pray you stop him in his tracks and tell him to come share a Bible study with me!" Ron (Jorim) came walking out immediately and he said, "The Lord told me to come out here and share with you." We studied a class on faith.
The next morning I woke up at the crack of dawn with a cramp in my leg and the Lord said, "Get up and go share with the guard." I was sleepy and laid back down. The cramp was even worse. I woke up and got dressed and went to share with the guard. It was Ron! He said, "What took you so long? I prayed 15 minutes ago for the Lord to wake you up!" We began sharing the Bible a lot and taking long walks together. Rachel hauled us in and said get betrothed or stop seeing each other alone. He was only 19 and was not prepared to get married so we said we'd stop seeing each other. But, we began sneaking off to the woods to hold hands and read the Bible. That is all we did. He was leaving for New York in an hour, as he was one of the first teams to go over to London to do the construction work at Bromley. I went up to him and said if he didn't ask me to marry him he'd never see me again as I would probably end up marrying someone else. He said he had to pray about it and came back to me an hour later with a 14 page letter telling me he loved me and wanted to marry me.
That was the last time I saw him for 7 months but we wrote every day. When I finally made it to London, Deborah was now the coronated Queen and was not performing marriages but she offered to perform ours and gave us a talk which became known as the "Pyramid of Love" letter. We were married in Hollingbourne Manor November 22, 1972. We were legally married November 6 at a Justice of the Peace but we still celebrate Nov. 22 as the real wedding.
Q: Why did you leave or were asked to leave?
A: Ron was the Bishop in Northern Italy in 1978 and the FFing with fish was picking up pace and also the sharing with the other brothers. We were a happily married couple that had no intention of ff'ing or sharing but Ron felt like a hypocrite counselling the married brothers going through trials. Ron and I would go to piano bars in Italy and have a drink and sit for hours and then come back and make up ffing stories. We had a sweet American guy in the military we were friends with and we were witnessing to him the old fashioned way just fine and led him to the Lord but were pressured to ff him...so I started to lightly flirt with him and he never saw us again and told Ron that he thought I was acting inappropriately. We went out one night to a club where we were with other higher up leadership and were pushed into picking up a guy and a girl. Ron picked up a girl and was dancing with her. I picked up a guy and was dancing with him.
An old time Italian friend of the COG, an older man took us aside and said what were we doing...my guy was a hit man for the Mafia and Ron's girl was a call girl for the Mafia. We got out of there "pronto"! Anyway, we came home that night to step over couples, unmarried in every room, even the hallway "sharing". It was sickening. I had shared one time and it didn't help anyone. Then the girl I thought was my best friend and married in the home who had a perfectly good, sweet, handsome husband said she wanted to share with my husband. I was furious. I made Ron do this against his will. So, we each had one sharing experience and hated it and felt awful about ourselves afterwards. The RNR was going on and there was mass confusion and people doing their own thing. We wrote Deborah and asked if we could come to her in South America. She wrote back and said yes. We went out and witnessed for our airfare plus the home there gave us a goodbye gift to help us on our way to S. America. We thought maybe another field would be better than the morality decline of the Italian homes. We got to Houston and found out Deb and family had left the COG. We ran into Singing Sam who hated S. America and wanted to go to a better field in Europe. We compared notes and decided to just leave.
Q: Did you go through any emotional trauma?
A: Yes, we felt guilty and struggled if we had done the right thing and if we were selfish in leaving. Very soon, though, we worked for place called Christian Farms where we were with two other backslidden COG couples and we were very useful and fruitful in this new ministry and saw again that all we needed to lead a person to the Lord was the Word of God and that no one needed to strip! This doubting we had about leaving las0ted about a year and once we started reading the Bible and witnessing straight from God's Word and saw we could be a loving sample without trapping people by making them think sex was part of God's plan for salvation and actually went against
God's Word then we were able to get on with living a rich spiritual life. Ron is now the Vice Chairman of the Deacons for a 5,000 member established, soul winning church.
Q: Some kids said they were abused. Who you think has the main fault? The parents or the group, The local home Shepherds.
A: When my daughter was 14 months old a childcare worker in PoggioSecco named Sherah inappropriately spanked my daughter very hard for pushing another child. She was a baby. I took her out of her cruel arms and said no one would ever touch my daughter again but me or someone I trusted. I was a secretary for David Z. and he allowed me to take my daughter with me to work every day. When we moved to another home in Italy we were reunited with Claire, a 16 year old we'd known in the States and she became our childcare helper for years with the understanding she was never to spank my children and if they needed a spanking it would come from me or Ron.
This is a complicated question. The directives on discipline came down from the top leadership and a faithful under shepherd had to make sure these things were followed thorough. There was a discrepancy because I would see the top leadership have their own childcare helpers and they were directed the same...no spanking...not all, but some. All it took was an underling questioning a policy and the couple would be deemed un-revolutionary and not given responsibility. There were a lot of politics at work...but bottom line for me...and I cannot and would never speak for anyone else because we were not there during the worst of the child abuse and probably would have killed anyone that touched our kids...but for me I felt like the responsibility lay with me to stop the abuse, even if it meant I weren't promoted or "used" in leadership. I talked to several young twenties people that have left and they have all maintained the abuse they suffered happened because their parents were away and didn't protect them from people that were assigned to oversee them and who didn't really love them.
Many people were just witnessed to on the street and then were allowed to join if they wanted to. There were no background checks and no knowledge if they were child molesters, wife batterers, druggies, whatever, before joining and to some of these people the kids were given to them with a free reign. I think the whole mentality was at fault where people were afraid to act upon their natural protective instincts and felt like following the status quo was normal and what they were supposed to do and we were taught to deny our feelings.
Q: What’s one of the things you are most thankful for the COG and one of the things you were not so thankful for.
A: I learned how to be patient and tolerant and to memorize scripture. I learned how to be a leader and how to direct others spiritually in our church and everyday life. I learned how to run a childcare business and have done so 20 years. I learned how to enjoy living with others and have always had extra people here and it is normal to us and we prefer it. I learned how to have great faith and how to expect a miracle. I was not thankful for the leadership that abused their positions and who hurt us when we were in the COG and how we felt powerless to do anything but think and pray and plot how we would escape from some of these unbearable situations. I was sorry that there were those who would so disrespect the spirit of God in their fellow brothers and sisters that they could be so demeaning and cruel in the actions and words and that they chose to play God with people lives and did things that could never have been God's will but were reactions to how they chose to operate under their titles. Some were horrible hatchet men who followed the orders of upper leadership and regret now how they treated others but at the time were afraid for their own standing. This was a case of fearing man more than God and choosing to be answerable to leadership rather than God. Ron was not like that. He was ordered once to have sex with a 12-year-old girl in Italy to humble her. Ron never had sex with a child and told that leader straight in the face that if he wanted this done then he could do it himself but that it wasn't right and he refused him. Ron wasn't demoted for this amazingly enough and I think
God blessed him for standing his ground morally as best he could
.