Not Without My Sister: The True Story of Three Girls Violated and Betrayed by Those They Trusted
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.
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Not Without
My Sister
The True Story of Three Girls Violated and
Betrayed by Those They Trusted
Celeste Jones, Kristina Jones
and Juliana Buhring
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
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Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007369829
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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)
Contents
Chapter One: Daddy’s Little Girl
Chapter Four: Behind Four Walls
Chapter Seven: A Broken Family
Chapter Eight: The Odd One Out
Chapter Nine: The Rod of Correction
Chapter Eleven: Living a Double Life
Chapter Twelve: A Gypsy Missionary
Chapter Thirteen: Abusive Love
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
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.
