# Not Without My Sister: The True Story of Three Girls Violated and Betrayed by Those They Trusted

Kristina Jones, Celeste Jones, Juliana Buhring

The bestselling, devastating account of three sisters torn apart, abused and exploited at the hands of a community that robbed them of their childhood. It reveals three lives, separate but entwined, that have experienced unspeakable horror, unrelenting loyalty and unforgettable courage.From as early as three years old, Juliana, Celeste and Kristina were treated as sexual beings by their 'guardians' in the infamous religious cult known as the Children of God. They were made to watch and mimic orgies, received love letters and sexual advances from men old enough to be their grandfather, and were forced into abusive relationships. They were denied access to formal schooling, had to wander the streets begging for money, and were mercilessly beaten for 'crimes' as unpredictable as reading an encyclopaedia.Finally, unable to live with the guilt of what had happened to her children, their mother escaped with Kristina, cutting herself off from her remaining children in a bid to save at least one child. Desperate to save her sisters, Kristina eventually returned to the place of her torture to free Celeste. Years later, Juliana found the courage to escape, knowing that the child she was carrying would be subjected to the same fate if she did not.Now the three sisters have finally come together to reveal in full and horrific detail their existence within the Children of God cult. Their stories reveal a community spread throughout the world and its legacy of anorexia, depression, drug abuse, suicide and even murder. Lives are ripped apart and painstakingly mended with a shared strength that finally enabled the sisters to free themselves from the shadows of their past.

## Not Without. My Sister

The True Story of Three Girls Violated and

Betrayed by Those They Trusted

Celeste Jones, Kristina Jones

and Juliana Buhring


## Copyright

Harper Element

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

The web address is www.thorsonselement.com


and HarperElement are trademarks of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

This edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008

Copyright © 2007 Green Shirt Limited

The Author asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007369829

Version: 2014-08-18

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

## Dedication

To our sister, Davida

To my sister in sorrow: Too well did I understand The look in your haunted eyes; Pain and disillusionment. You fought a losing battle, And lost. And died. I will shed for you the tears Of a lifetime you will never live. The tears you will never more shed. Madonna of suffering, Wrapped in the cold shroud of death. I wept with you. I weep for you. For I still can. The tide of tears has turned. Sleep, my sister, And weep no more.

(Written on Davida’s tombstone, Juliana 2005)

## Epigraph

Lies written in ink cannot disguise

facts written in blood.

– Lu Xun (1881–1936)

## Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

Prologue

Part One: Celeste’s Story

Chapter One: Daddy’s Little Girl

Chapter Two: Loveville

Chapter Three: Come Union

Chapter Four: Behind Four Walls

Chapter Five: Indoctrination

Chapter Six: Torn

Part Two: Juliana’s Story

Chapter Seven: A Broken Family

Chapter Eight: The Odd One Out

Chapter Nine: The Rod of Correction

Chapter Ten: Adopt Me, Please

Part Three: Kristina’s Story

Chapter Eleven: Living a Double Life

Chapter Twelve: A Gypsy Missionary

Chapter Thirteen: Abusive Love

Chapter Fourteen: Escape

Part Four: Journey to Freedom

Chapter Fifteen: Hide and Seek

Chapter Sixteen: Searching for Celeste

Chapter Seventeen: On Opposite Sides

Chapter Eighteen: Bittersweet Reunion

Chapter Nineteen: A ‘Deceiver Yet True’

Chapter Twenty: A Tale of Two Fathers

Chapter Twenty-One: Rehabilitation

Chapter Twenty-Two: House of the Open Pussy

Chapter Twenty-Three: Anorexia

Chapter Twenty-Four: A Dream Come True

Chapter Twenty-Five: Is Justice a Dream?

Chapter Twenty-Six: Pearl of Africa

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Breaking Free

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Chained Eagle

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Power of Love

Epilogue

Exclusive sample chapter

About the Author

About the Publisher

## Introduction

The Children of God started in Southern California in the late 1960s, among the hippies and dropouts of Huntington Beach. The founder, David Berg, was born in 1919, in Oakland, California. His mother, Virginia Lee Brandt Berg, was a celebrated evangelist with the Christian Missionary Alliance. In 1944 Berg married Jane Miller, a young Baptist youth worker. After the birth of their second child, Berg became the pastor of a Christian Missionary Alliance Church in Arizona. However, after only three years he was expelled, reputedly for a sex scandal. His expulsion began his life-long bitterness and disillusionment with organized religion.

In December 1967, Berg moved his family – his wife Jane (later known as Mother Eve) and their four children, Deborah, Faithy, Aaron and Hosea – to Huntington Beach, California, where they stayed with his eighty-year-old mother. She had started a small ministry from a coffee shop called the Light Club, distributing sandwiches to the hippies, surfers and dropouts who congregated on the pier. But when the Light Club’s clean-cut image failed to attract the longhaired hippies, Mrs Berg saw the opportunity for her son and grandchildren to minister to the youngsters with the music and fervour of their own generation. In a short time, David Berg and his family began attracting the youth in droves with the free food and anti-system, anti-war message they endorsed.

The group travelled across the United States gathering more young disciples as they went, and soon opened communities across the country. They attracted a substantial amount of media coverage, and in some articles the writers referred to them as the ‘Children of God’, a name that the fledgling group subsequently adopted.

After a string of illicit affairs with some of his young female members, Berg found a devoted companion in his young and ambitious secretary, Karen Zerby, aka ‘Maria’. Publicly branding his estranged wife Jane and late mother the ‘Old Church’, Berg endorsed Maria and the Children of God as the ‘New Church’, and himself the last prophet of the Endtime. He also started using the pseudonym ‘Moses David’, identifying himself with King David of the Bible and the prophet Moses, who had led the Children of Israel out of captivity in Egypt (the ‘System’) to the Promised Land. Berg decided to start a royal dynasty. His series of residences were designated ‘The King’s House’ and he crowned himself and Maria, the King and the Queen.

For many years a council of ministers ran the cult, mostly members of Berg’s extended family, referred to as the Royal Family. He expected Family members to obey him and the other leaders without question. The only contact between Berg and his members came through his many writings, detailing policies, beliefs and instruction on how the communes were to be run, as well as prophecies and revelations he claimed proceeded directly from God.

In the early 1970s, the Children of God fell under the close scrutiny of the media and law-enforcement agencies, as parents of recruited children witnessed complete personality changes in their offspring after they joined the cult. More worrying was the fact that all contact between them was severed, some of their children disappearing in the night not to be seen again for years.

Evading negative publicity and a court summons, Berg fled to Europe, advising his followers to get out of America. The group left the USA in 1972 in a mass exodus to evangelize and recruit in other countries, beginning with Europe. Berg and Maria arrived in England in 1972.

Increasingly paranoid for his personal safety, he gradually withdrew from his followers, keeping his whereabouts secret. While in seclusion, Berg and Maria experimented with a new controversial method of using sex to win converts and supporters, infamously known as ‘Flirty Fishing’. Berg gradually introduced the idea of Flirty Fishing to his members through a series of letters documenting their own encounters. He also promulgated a new revelation called the ‘Law of Love’. Berg told his followers that the Ten Commandments were now obsolete. Everything done in love (including sex) was sanctioned in the eyes of God. Adultery, incest, extramarital and adult – child sex were no longer sins, as long as they were done ‘in love’. He demanded loyalty to his radical message of the Law of Love and Flirty Fishing and every member was required to actively put them into practice or leave. Consequently, two-thirds of the group left, marking the end of the Children of God era and the beginning of the Family of Love.

In 1979 Berg wrote a letter called ‘My Childhood Sex’ in which he revealed that a nanny had performed oral sex on him as a young toddler, which he said he had enjoyed. He said that it was normal, natural and healthy and that there was nothing wrong with it, which gave anyone so inclined carte blanche to follow suit. In the following years other Mo Letters and Family publications reinforced the idea that children should be allowed to enjoy sexual contact among themselves as well as with adults – and many adults in the Family embraced and carried out these suggestions.

Christopher Jones was born in December 1951 in a town near Hamelin, Germany, to Glen, a British military officer and Krystyna, a young Polish woman he had met while stationed in Palestine. He was educated at a public school in Cheltenham, and studied drama at Rose Bruford College. He dropped out after the second year and joined the Children of God in 1973. He has fathered fifteen children, including Celeste, Kristina and Juliana, by seven different women and remains a member of the cult.

Rebecca Jones was born in March 1957 and had a secure middle-class upbringing in the south of England. Her father, Bill, was a civil engineer and her mother, Margaret, a devoted housewife. Her parents were not religious, but they sent her to the local Sunday school at the age of five. She became a Sunday-school teacher when she was twelve and two years later she was baptized. Rebecca was recruited from her school by the Children of God at the young age of sixteen, and met and married our father in 1974. They had three children together, including Celeste and Kristina, before they were separated. Rebecca left the cult in 1987.

Serena Buhring was born near Hanover, Germany in October 1956. Her father was an architect and her mother an accomplished musician, playing the piano, violin and the cello. Serena travelled as a hippie in India where she joined the Children of God. She met our father after he separated from Rebecca and had three children by him, including Juliana. Serena is still an associate member of the cult.

## Prologue

In January 2005, our sister Davida died from a drug overdose. She was twenty-three. The shock of Davida’s death affected us deeply though we understood her pain and despair. Each of us in our own way has struggled with painful memories of abandonment, neglect and abuse as children born and raised under the malign influence of a religious cult, the Children of God.

We were systematically abused, physically, mentally, emotionally and sexually, from the earliest age. We were separated from each other and our parents and raised communally in this organization, which was also known as the ‘Family’.

Unlike our parents who had burned their bridges and left their former lives, we were never given a choice over the paths our lives would follow. Isolated from society, we were controlled by fear – fear of the government, police, doctors and social workers, and the even greater fear of God’s wrath if we ever left the protection of the Family.

Our childhood was dominated by one man: David Berg – a man we never met, but who was like an invisible ghost that was with us at all times. He was the warped and manipulative force behind the Children of God. David Berg liked to see himself as a benevolent parental figure, and called us, his followers, the ‘Children of David’. He saw himself as the successor of King David and the Prophet Moses – calling himself Moses David, or Mo for short. The children were taught to call him ‘Grandpa’. He was the head of our family, the prophet, the leader, our ‘light in the midst of darkness’. The rules we followed were dictated by his words. We read about every detail of his life, his dreams, his likes and dislikes, and the women he slept with and the children he abused. From a very young age we memorized his words and hours of every day were dedicated to studying his writings, called Mo Letters. ‘Word Time’ – which was the time spent reading these letters and studying the Bible – was an important part of daily life. It would be difficult if not impossible to write about our life without acknowledging the dominating influence of David Berg on our lives.

From birth, we were conditioned to obey and follow the way of the cult. We had no choice, and knew no other way. We never heard our father express an opinion that was his own; it was always, ‘Grandpa said…’ If we were punished it was because we had disobeyed Mo’s rules; if we were rewarded it was because we were ‘faithful followers’. Our father’s devotion to Berg and faith in his prophecies and predictions was unwavering. If he questioned if any of it was real, or if it was a chimera – smoke and mirrors – he never showed it, not even behind closed doors.

Berg taught that birth control was rebellion against God, so within a few years there were thousands of children born into the group. He boasted that we were the ‘hope of the future’ – a pure second generation untainted by the outside world. We were told it was the highest privilege to be born and raised in the Family, free from the shackles of the ‘System’, as the outside world was called. It was our destiny to become God’s Endtime soldiers, and to give our lives for the cause. Berg predicted the world would end in 1993, and we would become the leaders of the New Millennium. As our lives on earth would be short, we were never allowed to just be children. Our individuality was suppressed, and we were simply commodities used to further the collective goals of the group.

The belief that damaged us the most was Berg’s ‘Law of Love’. God was love, and love equalled sex. Sharing your body with someone else was considered the highest expression of love. Age was not a barrier in Berg’s Law of Love and Family children were made to participate in his warped, paedophilic philosophy. His own children and grandchildren suffered from his incestuous predilections.

In this book we describe the emotional journey we undertook from our earliest years, through to our teens when we secretly, then more openly questioned it – and finally, when we struggled to break free, like butterflies caught in a spider’s sticky web. This is a story of darkness and light, of imprisonment of the soul, of redemption and freedom. We survived – many didn’t. Thousands of the Family’s second generation have had to deal with the devastating consequences of their parents’ blind faith in a leader who claimed he was the voice of God on earth. Those who have bravely spoken out about their suffering have been vilified and slandered by their former abusers. Our hope is that in telling our story, you will hear the voices of the children they tried to silence.

Celeste Jones, Kristina Jones, Juliana Buhring

England 2007

Part One

Celeste’s Story

## CHAPTER ONE Daddy’s Little Girl

I was playing alone in the front garden of a white house near the small fishing village of Rafina, in Greece. Our garden had three olive trees, as well as an apricot, fig and peach, all ripe with fruit. I sat under a large, old pine tree that cast deep pools of shade. The ground was bleached and bone dry from the sun, and I amused myself by drawing pictures on the parched earth with a white rock. I was five years old.

I had little recollection of my mother, only a brief memory of her playing guitar and singing, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so’, as I played with my little sister Kristina on a bunk bed in a small room in another land. But I was fiercely loyal to Mum and talked about her every day, even though I had not seen her for two years. I still missed her and my sister, and barely remembered my baby brother David. I clung desperately to the hope that Mum would come back. Like a record that never stopped spinning, I’d repeatedly ask my dad, ‘Why did she leave us?’

Dad would hug me and explain. ‘Mum decided to be with someone else, and I couldn’t let you go. You were the oldest, and we’ve always been close, haven’t we?’

I nodded. I loved Dad just as much as my mum, but I thought it was unfair to have to make a choice between them.

‘What about Kristina and David?’ I asked.

‘They were too young. They still needed to be with their mother.’

Dad worked long hours in a makeshift recording studio set up in the basement of our house, producing and acting as DJ on a radio show, Music with Meaning. Because of this I had a nanny, Serena, a young German woman. I resented her, and made life as difficult as I could for her by not cooperating or even acknowledging her. Serena had long, straight dark hair and brown eyes magnified by a pair of thick glasses. Poor Serena. Whatever she did to try to win me round, I was determined not to like her. I thought her German accent sounded funny, and she was constantly trying to give me wheatgerm with unsweetened yoghurt and spoonfuls of cod liver oil, which I hated the smell and taste of.

We belonged to the Children of God, a deeply secretive and religious organization with tentacles that spread across the world. The leader and prophet was named David Berg. We knew him as Moses David; my Dad called him Mo, and I knew him as our ‘Grandpa’. He ordained everything we said, did, thought and even dreamed. Everything in our lives, even the smallest and most insignificant detail – including the food we ate – was regulated by Mo. He had said that our diet should consist of healthy food and no white sugar, and Serena enthusiastically embraced Mo’s healthy eating policy. ‘It will give you strong bones and teeth,’ she would tell me – but it didn’t make it taste any better. She was never cruel, but she was strict, and I saw her as an unwelcome intrusion into my life. Originally, Dad had told me she would be staying for three months, and I had been counting the days until she left.

That sunny day as I played under the pine tree, I glanced up to see Dad and Serena walk out on to the front veranda. They were standing very close together and, instantly, I sensed a kind of electricity between them.

‘Honey, I have something exciting to tell you,’ my father called to me. As he spoke, my tall, handsome Dad, whom I adored more than anybody in the world, turned and embraced Serena.

As I walked towards them, I noticed their faces were lit up with beaming smiles. Oh no, I groaned. This did not look good.

‘We’ve decided to get together, sweetheart,’ Dad pronounced, in a far too happy tone of voice for my liking. ‘Serena is going to be your new mother.’

‘Not her!’ I shouted. ‘I hate her!’ I could not even bear to speak her name. ‘I want my mother. Why can’t she come back to live with us? It’s not fair!’ I sobbed. I turned and ran off to a corner of the garden and stood with my back to them.

Dad followed me and bent towards me, concerned. He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Sweetie, you know your mother has gone for good. She’s not coming back.’

‘But I want my sister and brother here. It’s not fair.’ I stuck out my bottom lip in a pout.

‘But you have so many brothers and sisters here you can play with,’ Dad said.

‘It’s not the same,’ I complained.

‘Honey, we’re all one family. Now watch that lower lip…or you’ll trip over it if you’re not careful.’

I half smiled, if only to make Dad feel better.

Mo said that we weren’t supposed to have individual families. Our brothers and sisters in the Children of God were our true family. We even referred to ourselves as the ‘Family’. But I refused to forget my mother or Kristina and baby David, though I was scared I was beginning to forget what they looked like.

The only photograph Dad had of Mum was of her standing behind a double buggy, with me sitting in one side and my baby sister next to me. I studied the photograph carefully. Mum had long, sandy blonde hair down to her waist, blue eyes and a wide smile.

‘She’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘And that’s my sister?’ I couldn’t see her face clearly because of the picture’s poor quality. Kristina was just a toddler, aged about a year old, with two little pigtails. I was eighteen months older and very like her. We were both dressed in pretty cotton frocks and had sun hats on. As hard as I stared, I couldn’t summon up the slightest memory of them and mourned, feeling a gaping hole in my being.

Dad described how he and Mum used to take us with them when they went out witnessing in the streets. ‘I’d manoeuvre the pushchair in the way of someone walking the opposite direction and then hand them a leaflet and witness to them, telling them about Jesus and how they could be saved. Indian people love children and you were so cute and pretty. They’d pinch your cheeks and chat to you. They felt they couldn’t be rude with you two sitting there gazing up at them like two little angels.’

‘Do you have a picture of David?’ I asked.

‘This is when he was just three months old,’ Dad replied, producing a small black and white photograph.

‘He’s so cute. Look at those cheeks!’ I said proudly. He was lying on his tummy lifting up his head with his chubby arms, and had a big grin on his face.

My own early memories were brief, seen in a series of quick little snapshots, like windows opening in my mind’s eye. Much of what I gleaned, Dad told me in our rare quiet times alone. I’d cuddle up on his lap and he’d tell me selective vignettes that gradually built into a bigger picture. But it was always half a picture; he never told me much about Mum.

Perhaps as a way of keeping her alive, and forlornly holding on to the remnants of a family life, I often asked Dad to tell me the story of how he and Mum had first met and then married, and my birth. He didn’t tell me a lot about it; it wasn’t until I had grown up that I heard the full story.

‘Your mum was young and beautiful – just seventeen years old when we married. I was twenty-two.’

I was always full of questions. ‘And what about your dad?’

Dad told me his father was a lawyer and military judge in the British army. He had no recollection of his mother, as she had died when he was four and his father had remarried soon after. He and his half-brother were sent to a boarding school in Cheltenham.

‘I was a rebel at school. I was even expelled after I led a protest where a group of us locked ourselves in the main hall.’

‘Why – what did you protest about?’ I asked.

‘The school prefects used to beat us for almost anything, no matter what. They’d come in at night with their flashlights and shine them in our faces to wake us up. We got fed up with the injustice and stood up against it.’

Thrown out, he enrolled at a drama school in London and in his holidays travelled throughout Europe. ‘I was searching for the meaning to life,’ he explained.

I listened earnestly as he described how, in pursuit of life’s meaning, he read many spiritual books and dabbled in the occult and meditation.

I shivered. It had been relentlessly drummed into us by Mo that drugs and Ouija boards were dangerous, because they could open the door of your mind to the Devil.

When he was telling me about those years, Dad said, ‘I ended up deeply depressed and disillusioned with life.’

‘Wasn’t drama school what you wanted?’

‘It was empty. Without the Lord, it’s meaningless. Just husks, sweetie.’

It was at this low point that one day he received a call from one of his mates who had just returned from Istanbul. This friend had planned to walk on foot to India, but instead had been converted by the Children of God en route, and had returned to England to spread the word.

Dad was taken aback by the dramatic change in his previously disturbed and doped-up friend. He now seemed confident, with purpose and direction. ‘He told me it was all thanks to the Children of God. I was curious.’

In the hippie era of peace and love, the message proclaimed by the Children of God seemed exciting: find a new life in Christ, drop out, live communally, forsake materialism and share all things, just like the early disciples. But this was not just another zealous evangelical group from America – it was God’s Endtime Army, the elite, who would lead a lost world in need of salvation during its darkest hour.

The Children of God believed that with the end of the world looming near, pursuing anything else in life seemed pointless. Dad was convinced. He gave away most of his possessions and turned up at the doorstep of a commune in Hollingbourne in Kent with just a small suitcase, ready for his new life as a disciple.

His eyes lighting up at the memory, Dad told me, ‘It was amazing. Everyone lived under the same roof and shared all things just like the Early Christians in the Book of Acts. It was the family I had been searching for.’

New members were told to choose a Bible name to reflect their new life. Dad chose Simon Peter. His full-time job was now to go out on to the streets and witness – the name they used for trying to win converts. Handing out literature for a donation was called ‘litnessing’.

Always full of new ideas, Dad came up with a novel way to litness. He laughed as he described it. ‘I dressed up as a clown, with a bright red nose and a funny hat that had a bouncing little plastic birdie on top.’

He wiggled his fingers on top of his head and made a face. I giggled. ‘I bet you looked silly!’

‘Oh, I did – but I was a clown. Clowns are allowed to look silly. I’d jump in front of passers-by and make them laugh before handing them a tract and asking for a donation. I became a star litnesser and fundraiser – I made hundreds of pounds a week for the Family.’

I laughed as I tried to imagine my dad clowning it up in London, a city I didn’t remember, although I’d been born there. Street solicitation was against the law, however, and Dad had run-ins with the police. Of course, he didn’t see anything wrong in what he was doing. He was obeying God.

Dad told me he met my mum in Hollingbourne, as they both joined the same commune as new disciples on the same day. She was just sixteen and had been recruited straight from school. Young and idealistic, she thought the Children of God was a bona fide missionary society. My parents were ‘married’ by the group, before being legally married in church. After a three-day honeymoon in the Lake District, they squatted in a large house in Hampstead that the Children of God had taken over.

Dad used his training as an actor to do stage performances, dramatically reciting whole portions of the Mo Letters – missives from the prophet that were mailed regularly to every commune as a guide for us disciples to follow and live by. He loved the thrill of acting, and his talent soon set him apart as a sort of celebrity within the group. Spurred on by his success, he recorded more of these Mo Letters in a series of cassette tapes called Wild Wind, which were distributed across the communes for disciples to listen to. While Dad was busy and fulfilled, Mum, who was pregnant, was terribly ill, and it must have been a great relief when, on 29 January 1975, after three days of difficult labour, I was born in the small attic room on the third floor of the Hampstead Home.

Becoming new parents did not stop Mum and Dad from pursuing their new-found mission to save the world. Missionary teams were being set out and my parents received a ‘prophecy’ to go to India. A disciple was not supposed to have a will of his own, but had to follow God’s will by praying and hearing from Him in a prophecy. These prophecies gave the stamp of Divine approval on any plans or decisions that needed to be made.

In reality, the British authorities had begun to investigate the Family’s activities, especially their aggressive proselytizing and soliciting of donations, and Mo told everyone to move from the UK and go on to greener pastures, such as India, South America and the Far East – places where the authorities would be far less likely to care about what a group of Western dropouts did.

When our little family first arrived in India we went to an apartment in a block in Bombay designed for the middle classes, although it was about the size of an English council flat. It had three bedrooms, which we shared with two other couples and two single brothers. After a few weeks my parents found a two-bedroom ground floor flat in Khar, a subdivision of Bombay. There were so many people staying there, disciples coming and going from other parts of India, it was always crowded. They had very little furniture except two single beds and a table and chairs in the living room.

Mum was heavily pregnant again, but right up to the birth she and Dad slept on a sheet on the floor of our small communal apartment, because the mattresses were infested with bedbugs. There were often up to twenty people in the flat, and Mum would try to hide them from the landlord. My baby sister was born in June 1976 in a private nursing home nearby and named Kristina after Dad’s mother. I was only eighteen months old, but I adored her from the moment I saw her. I would lie next to her on Mum’s sheet on the floor and put an arm around her, smothering her with damp kisses. I became the doting older sister, and loved to hug her and watch Mum change her nappies and nurse her. We were so close in age our bond was unbreakable. I called her Nina.

To Dad, many things about India were a huge culture shock. Despite the fact that he had been a hippie and had travelled to Cyprus and Israel and throughout Europe, he hated the heat, the dirt and the disease he found in Bombay. He also contracted a bad case of hepatitis and was in hospital for a few weeks after Kristina was born.

‘The water and the food made me ill, I had diarrhoea so badly I lost tons of weight. And I felt humiliated as a foreigner having to sell tracts on the street, like a beggar, when there were so many beggars around me and children without a roof over their heads or food to eat,’ he said.

Dad’s diet and that of the commune was a constant source of distress. They had little money at first since everything they earned had to come from selling tracts in the street for minuscule sums. At times, they could only afford to buy rice and lentils day after day.

Stoically soldiering on in the steaming heat of Bombay, Dad struggled to make more sense of his personal role. He was intelligent and had been well educated and got a job at the local radio station writing jingles. According to Mo the Final Battle of Armageddon was only a short time away, and Dad tried to come to terms with the teeming masses in just India alone that wouldn’t be saved.

He suddenly remembered the old Wild Wind cassettes that had won him so much praise in London. There had also been talk of the potential of radio as a medium to spread the message. He came up with the idea of recording a series of half-hour programmes that he would call Music with Meaning. This show could be played on local radio stations. He could do it all practically on his own, scripting it, acting as host and DJ.

From the very beginning, the Children of God used music as bait to attract interest and attention. Group singing to worship Jesus was called ‘inspirations’ and was a daily part of the disciple’s life. The Family attracted many talented artists and musicians, including ex-Fleetwood Mac guitarist Jeremy Spencer – who literally had been converted in the street one day and walked out on a concert tour to join a local commune in San Francisco. Instead of rock and roll, they wrote songs based on the Bible and Mo Letters. Dad decided that he would use this talent on his show to help spread the word. Working on something that fulfilled him gave him the impetus to remain in India.

Proudly, Dad described his enterprise to me. ‘We offered Music with Meaning free of charge to radio stations. I knew that a lively music show would spread the message in a cool format and attract young listeners. At a fell swoop, instead of struggling in the heat to witness to a handful of people a day, and perhaps winning only one or two souls a week, I could reach millions!’

‘That was so brilliant, Dad,’ I exclaimed, thinking that he was wonderful.

When Mo heard about the show, he commended Dad for his pioneer spirit, and helped to finance the project. Dad hadn’t met our prophet – very few of his followers had – but his instructions and messages were dictated in Mo Letters and passed down via leaders who were known as shepherds. Dad worked all hours of the day and night on the show, while Mum was left to care for my baby sister and me. By this time, Mum was pregnant for the third time, and fell terribly sick again. But, sick or not, she still had to earn money by going out selling tracts in the heat, walking miles every day, wheeling us in a pushchair.

Many of Mo’s followers – like my parents – had been faithful to each other and lived as a family unit, albeit in crowded communes with very little privacy. In 1978 ‘one wife’, which was writen in 1974, reached down to the communes, making it crystal clear that family women should be providing for the sexual needs of the men, especially the single ones. We were all married to each other and there was no such thing as adultery in God’s Family. Sex was the highest expression of love and giving and was called ‘sharing’. The Children of God was now a Family of Love, in every sense of the word.

Some disciples found it hard to adjust to the new freedoms, while others jumped at the chance to have sex with multiple partners. Both my parents started sharing with others – though I think Dad was keener on it than Mum. With two children close together and another on the way, sex was not high on her agenda. But Mum was a sincere believer and faithfully obeyed the prophet even though she struggled with feelings of jealousy at having to share Dad. However, she felt alone and unloved and fell further into depression after the birth of my brother David in April 1978. The district shepherdess noticed that Mum was quiet and sad-looking and asked what was wrong out of concern. Mum confided in her that she was becoming unhappy with the marriage. Without her knowledge the shepherdess reported the conversation to a higher up and was told to send Mum away for a break and to think about whether she wanted to continue in the marriage. One moment Mum was there, and the next, she had gone, taking David with her to a commune in Madras.

When Mum returned from her break in Madras six weeks later, a young man came with her. His name was Joshua, a brother from Australia, and he was infatuated with her. This only led to further complications in my parents’ relationship and to their eventual separation.

Then, unexpectedly one morning, the Bombay police showed up at the door of the commune and told all the foreigners they had to leave the country immediately. It seemed that some of the nationals who had been won to the cause had been shocked and alarmed by the promiscuity they had witnessed. Some of the new converts were beautiful Indian women and this was simply not in their culture and their families reported it. Interpol was also involved, at the behest of parents in the West who were trying to trace their missing children. There was a frenzy of packing as our shepherds closed down the commune.

Mum and Joshua decided to return to England with Kristina and David. ‘But I insisted on keeping you,’ Dad said. ‘You’re my girl.’

My young dad was so handsome I couldn’t imagine anyone leaving him. But even though he had chosen me, I was devastated that I had lost my mum.

Dad hugged me and said, ‘You were such a miserable, sad little thing. You pined so hard that nothing would make you happy. In the end, I promised you that I’d wait before taking a new partner just in case Mum changed her mind.’

I believed his assurances whether they were true or not, and his words gave me hope that our broken family was only temporary, a poignant hope I carried in my heart for the next two years, over two continents.

Two weeks later, Dad and I and flew out to Dubai. Dad was devastated because he had learned to love India and the future before him was uncertain. In Dubai, Dad received an unexpected phone call from Faithy, Mo’s youngest daughter. She had been scouting in Greece, looking for a new location in which to begin a new project. Faithy had flair and charisma and a way with words that could convince just about anybody. She set out to gather together the most talented musicians, singers, songwriters and artists to use them as an attraction to advance the cause to the outside world and gain them more followers.

‘Simon Peter,’ she started, ‘Mo is very pleased with all that you have achieved. He has decided to support the production and distribution of the Music with Meaning show worldwide.’

The show was to be bigger and far more commercial than before. It would be a hook to catch listeners, who would write in. They would be invited to come along to local Music with Meaning ‘clubs’ in their area. There would be regular mailings, a magazine and friendly conventions. Being telephoned personally by Faithy was a great honour. Dad was thrilled that he was receiving full support and backing for his programme. His goal was always to win souls and he was very passionate about it. Not being a very practical person, he was happy to allow the leadership to take over all the organization of it so he could just concentrate on the show.

That was how we arrived in Athens in late 1979. The scenic view of high, pale mountains, soaring into a bright blue sky was breathtaking, as we crossed the ancient peninsular to reach the coast on the opposite side, a couple of hours away. As we drove down, between stands of dark pine trees, I could see the sparkle on the sea and fishing boats bobbing in the harbour of the old port in Rafina.

Our house was a typical modern Greek villa, painted white and with a red tiled roof. The surrounding garden contained fruit trees, some scratchy lawn grass, yellow mimosa and olive trees. We were within walking distance of a large campsite by the sea called Coco Camp. Half was for regular holidaymakers; the other half was block booked for us, the Family. Families began arriving in their caravans and trailers until about two hundred new people had joined us. All of them were either musicians or technicians who had been specially chosen to work on Dad’s show.

During the day I would run free, playing with the children within the camp’s grounds and along the beach. There were big coloured pebbles to collect, and dead starfish, shells and sea urchins. There was so much to see and do I never stopped playing from dawn to dusk. My hair would go unbrushed for days. I remember an American woman called Windy, a singer/songwriter for the show, sitting me down with a comb and laboriously untangling my thick mop of curls.

Sometimes in the evening I would lie on my bed for hours, bored while Dad recorded late into the night in the studio with Faithy Berg and Jeremy Spencer, whose fame had followed him here. Faithy had decided to use him as a selling point to pitch the show to broadcasters.

To solve the problem of the little wild mustang I was becoming, Faithy sent a succession of nannies to take care of me. First it was a married woman named Rosa. Then Crystal, a hot-tempered American woman, replaced her. Crystal was a petite woman with pursed lips and a mane of shoulder-length light-brown hair. She didn’t have a motherly bone in her body and cussed like a trooper, not the sort of language that good Christians should use, and was always getting into trouble for drinking too much. Crystal often referred to me as the ‘girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid.’ I admit I did have a stubborn streak, especially with her. I hated her because I knew she had set her sights on snatching up Dad for a husband and I was determined to do all I could to scotch any romance between them. I wasn’t successful. Dad did have a fling with her, but their love affair was to be short-lived.

The only one I would listen to was Dad. I loved him more than anybody in the world and did my best to please him. I took no notice of anyone else, expecting my mother to come back at any time, even though we had said goodbye and she had been gone for what seemed aeons of time.

But why, why, couldn’t I remember her? Why couldn’t I even remember that dreadful final moment of our parting in Bombay?

I pined so much that finally Dad arranged for me to speak with Mum on the phone, long distance to London.

I felt weak with shock and took the phone, hardly able to believe that I was hearing her voice again. ‘When are you coming, Mummy?’ I asked anxiously, the years of yearning filling my voice.

‘I love you, Celeste. I’ll try to come soon.’ I heard a voice I didn’t recognize say on the other end of the line. ‘Your sister Kristina and brother David love you and want to see you too.’

She had said that she was going to come back to live with us again! I was so excited.

‘It’s all worked out,’ Dad told me after the phone call. ‘The tickets are booked and everything. It won’t be long now, darling.’

I looked over at Crystal, who was sitting nearby, and pronounced triumphantly, ‘You don’t need to be here anymore. My mummy’s coming back.’

Crystal glowered. A few weeks later the leaders – who had the final say in everything, even love – broke up their relationship, thinking she was not good enough for my father, their new media star. I certainly didn’t think so. All I knew was that my mum would be there soon and I would be reunited with her and my sister and brother. I longed to have her there, cuddling me, brushing my hair, and being my mum again. But time passed and I heard nothing. I waited in a frenzy of impatience. Every day I talked – and thought – about my mother. When, when, when?

One day, when I asked Dad for the umpteenth time, ‘When’s Mummy coming back?’ he could not put off telling me any longer what he knew would shatter my world. ‘She’s changed her mind. She decided to stay with Joshua.’

I stared at him, shocked, feeling my heart jump and beat in panic like a fluttering bird. I did not understand. Why had she changed her mind? Who was this man Joshua, who had taken her away from us? It did not make sense to me and I could not accept that it was final. My memories of her had faded by this time, and I did not even remember what she looked like anymore – but she was my mother and it was the idea that I had clung to for half my life. I remained fiercely determined that no matter what, no one would take her place.