Little Girl, Interrupted

WARNING: Religions use the threat and practice of social isolation to maintain control and loyalty in followers. Leaving religion means risking social isolation and all the physical and mental consequences that may follow.*

This is Christine’s story:

I prayed to God to make me think it was real again. 

I realized everything was fake. 

my marriage and kids were all based on that. 

I was in a marriage with someone I cared for, but I was young and unready.

Had kids at 19. 

We were pastors over the young adult group - everyone was questioning authority and I wondered why we weren't allowed to question authority - I went to the pastors with a list of 80 questions that young adults came to me with:  I barely got through a few questions and I remember that one of the pastor’s faces got red and told me that I would be removed from ministry if I couldn't be part of the solution and not the problem.  I couldn't shut up, couldn't stop, I thought we couldn't be silent and I encouraged people to keep talking and questioning authority.  I was emotionally falling apart.  I cried for days and weeks on end.

The lights were on and I knew I was in a cult. 

I hated that day. 

We never knew anything outside that church. 

My whole world was in there.  All my friends, everything. 

Like myself and so many of us, Christine was born into our church. She was very young when the senior pastor recognized the gift of prophecy in her and took on nurturing her special gift by meeting with her every Tuesday. During church services, Christine was made to sit at the front of the church and often from the pulpit, the pastor would ask her

Chris, do you have anything to say?

Half the time she would make something up. She hated sitting at the front of the church, and she hated the pressure of being the pastor’s pet prophet. She wanted to sit at the back of the church with all her friends, so she asked the pastor if she could sit with her friends, but he wouldn’t allow it.

For a fourteen-year-old girl to swallow a handful of pills in an attempt to end her life speaks to the magnitude of social pressure and control cults have over their members. Christine didn’t want to be used anymore, but instead of listening to her, the pastors removed her from her parents and siblings so they could protect her from her family’s influence, and keep an even closer eye on her. She had a special gift they wanted to protect, and also, the pastors didn’t like her dad. He was a rebel and difficult to control. On the heels of her suicide attempt, the senior pastor “Spiritually Adopted” her.

I was taught to hate my parents.  I was told that they were rebellious and bad.

From that point until adulthood, Christine was raised by the pastors collectively. Like a foster child, she bounced from home to home, living with every single one of them.

In one home, other girls were living with the pastor’s family too. There wasn’t a bed for her, so she slept on the floor.

I was lying on the floor, and I remember him lying down on the floor, he rubbed my shoulders and back. I remember thinking what am I doing here? 

I can't tell you how many uncomfortable times he touched me.  you know how he had that big couch, his arm would be around me and he'd rub my inner thigh so close to my vagina.  One time he was praying for me and he put his hands on my boob.  His hands were always weird and uncomfortable. 

I feel like other girls probably had that happen to them too.  I remember feeling jealous that he touched them that way.

The pastors made Christine feel special. She got special attention with touch, she was closely watched, and she always had the pastors’ ear. Every time she had something to say, she felt like they listened to her. She was given responsibilities other young people in the church vied for. Just after her suicide attempt, an important role in the big church musical production was granted especially to her.

In Battlezones I had to keep playing the part of the girl who committed suicide and then had to talk about it.  (They were) exploiting our pain.

By the time she was a young adult, she had completed the discipleship program and stayed on as an intern. She was a finely tuned cog in the highly functioning church machine. She performed her duties, reported to the pastors, and could envision her life nowhere else but working in church leadership.

And then one summer, an event shook her so hard as to shatter the facade she’d always believed in, and what it revealed was the repulsive truth about how leaders treated people. One of her dearest friends received the kind of severe mistreatment and cruel shaming that only the leaders of a cult are prone to mete out when they perceive a human behavior as evil.

The stuff that happened with him, it broke my heart…their unkindness made me realize how awful they were. I realized that they (the pastors) were fake. 

By the time Christine was married, had her first baby at 19, and was leading the young adult group, she was disgruntled. Her disillusionment only worsened after her daughter was molested by a church member.

The church told me they were going to handle it.  The way they handled it was by praying for my daughter.  So much happened in there that should have been reported to the police. 

All of them were responsible. 

Christine’s ignorance fell away and she became a threat. The only way for the pastors to protect themselves was to remove her and her family. During a church service, the senior pastor blindsided Christine with an announcement carefully crafted to sound like a promotion to another ministry.

I remember the senior pastor came up and acknowledged me and my husband and thanked us for all our work and sent us to Colville, basically sending us away in front of everyone - everyone cheered for us because they sincerely believed that it was a promotion, but we were betrayed in every form. 

We moved to Colville within a week.  It was fast and hap-hazard.  When you leave the church you lose everything.  Can't talk to anyone.  I layed in a fetal position for 6 months.  The devastation was as hard for him (her husband) as it was for me.  We went to Colville and I was incredibly depressed and sad. 

I think that's why I was so broken.  They (the pastors) listened to me all the time, and for me to question them, they finally threw me out the door.  

I took my kids and husband out of the church and thought I was going to hell and that I'd messed up.  I knew in my heart it was right. 

The social isolation and removal from the only family and home she knew ruined her. She tried to function in her new town but didn’t know how to communicate with people outside her church. She got a job as a waitress and was afraid to talk to people. One day, one of the restaurant’s elderly regulars asked her why she never said one word to him. She took up his challenge and discovered through engaging conversations that he wasn’t dangerous at all. He was nice. Contrary to what she’d been taught, she learned that people can be good outside the church.

I was afraid of the outside world.  When I saw The Truman Show, I cried and that moment where he tried to get out, I remember feeling that fear of not knowing what the outside world was.  I balled when Truman walked through the door. 

Christine and her kids and husband moved back to Spokane, their home town, but it would prove impossible for her to reintegrate.

We came back to Spokane and the cult was in your face and it was hard to deal with.  I became an alcoholic and my husband and I separated. 

I partied hard with my sister.  I didn't want to go down like that.  (My) kids were a mess because I was a mess.  That's when a friend got ahold of me and got me out to Colorado.  I needed to run.  I needed to get away.  I didn't know anyone.  But I wasn't close to this friend and wanted nothing to do with God. 

I discovered meth.  It was the greatest thing I found because it was so numbing.  I was hooked and got crazy on that and it went on for a couple years, but I was shooting up and lost my mind and got involved in some crimes with a girl, became crazy. 

I didn't defend myself.  They sentenced me to eight years in a half-way house, but I ran for about another year and when I got caught it automatically turned into a prison sentence.  For two years in prison was the changing point in my life.  It's like living on the streets - you could get any stuff you wanted. I had two years of silence where I thought about the cult and realized it took my whole life - 35 years. 

When I was in prison, realizing how much time they stole from me, I sat in a bathrooom stall, pretended to put on my boots, and that I was pulling myself up. 

I decided in there that the church couldn’t take the rest of my life.

I asked Christine where her children were the entire time she was drinking, partying, doing drugs, and in jail. She gives all the credit to her ex-husband. He’s remarried to someone she deeply admires. She knows she’s lucky he’s such a good man and that his wife was willing to take on her children who were suffering.

I'm so grateful to their dad - he could have taken my kids from me.  I got my kids back.  It's been eleven years since I got out. He is remarried to a wonderful lady.  She stepped in and was amazing.  My kids are not messed up because of their dad.  He always knew that I didn't do well after the church I couldn't get it right.  

I'm so glad my girls weren't raised that way (in the church cult).  I didn't save myself, but I saved my kids…It was hard for my kids when I moved to Vancouver (where she is now) because they had abandonment issues…It's so hard with my kids when they're mad at me because they'll never have any idea how hard it was to get myself together after all that abuse. 

I spent so many years wanting them (the pastors) to say they're sorry.  If one of the pastors would have said they're sorry, I could have just pulled it together.  We're never going to hear sorry.  I have to accept that.

 I think so many people are forever crushed. 

Christine is right. So many people are forever crushed. And some of us, like her, have rebuilt our lives. She’s getting it right like myself and others, as we work out how to be a whole person in a world we were not taught to live in.

I went to counseling in 2003 There was a guy I was seeing that made me go into counseling and it was good at the moment.  I've never got counseling for the things that happened to me after.

When the subject of relationships came up, she said things similar to what I’ve heard from others. It’s complicated. Even though she loves her single life, she did admit to wondering if it wouldn’t sometimes be nice to share life with someone.

Control versus care is so hard for me to figure out.  Normal people can tell when they're being cared for, not controlled.

I can't have a relationship because I'm so afraid of control.  I don't know if that's something I'll ever be able to get over. 

I love being single. 

I love life and it is such a great adventure.  I love my life now.  I think I'm in the best position I could be in in my life. 

Christine’s life finally suits her now. She’d just returned from a run when I spoke with her and she told me how beautiful Vancouver weather is, much kinder than the harsh cold and snow of Colorado that she is so happy to get away from. She’s done being unhappy. Christine’s life is hers and no one will ever tell her how to live it again.

*Excerpt from Sex and God by Dr. Darrel Ray