Faithful Disciple – Freedom to Leave

Our parents did not join the community, they were recruited. Neville Cooper targeted a demographic that was vulnerable to his charms. They were young, many of them teenagers but usually between the ages of 15 – 25. Some were far from home, wandering the world, disillusioned and lonely. Others were drawn in by his lively boisterous charisma that made their parents look weak and apathetic. He drew them in with promises of marriage and a life filled with purpose and meaning. He used his children to befriend them and in marriage to control them.

These early recruits were subjected to a brutal process, of eliminating anyone who would question his authority. Manipulation, bullying and coercion were his tools, but he always managed to play the part of the victim while portraying their parents and relatives as the selfish aggressors.
Then as his chosen ones began to have children he entered a new phase. In the 1980s as the number of us children began to grow the ultimate pragmatist in him really kicked in. We were born into a strictly regimented, authoritarian society.

Our parents were encouraged and even commanded to meet out heavy handed punishment to us for every offense and misdemeanour. Not only our parents but any adult in the community could “discipline” us. And for any “major crime” that we committed our parents would be publicly humiliated, as well as us. He taught our parents to remove all choices from our lives as much as possible, so that we would be happy with what we were given. He taught them to initiate power struggles with with their children at a very early age when they could be brutally overpowered, so that we learned the futility of resisting the will of our elders.

We were taught in these experiences that you must always say yes to authority or suffer dire consequences.

He taught that if something felt good then it is “of the flesh” and we should be denied it. Our feelings were invalidated and our natural talents were buried and denied. There is little wonder that bedwetting is a major issue in the community to this day, with chronic bedwetting carrying on into the early teens for some.

As soon as we turned 6 years old we began to be integrated into the community workforce. It did not take many years for us to figure out that working hard and long was pretty much the only thing you were ever going to be praised for. So you put your head down and worked longer and harder in the hopes of building up respect from on high.

However no matter how hard you worked if you challenged any authority within the community, your “rebellion” would be instantly ruthlessly and publicly crushed. And there were always those who would seek profit from another’s downfall. In this way anyone with leadership skills in this 2nd generation were weeded out, leaving only those who would never challenge Nevilles’ authority.

And so in our teenage years having been bullied and beaten into submission and having been indoctrinated to believe that, in leaving the community we would lose our soul.

Knowing that we did not have the money, the connections or the skills to strike out on our own with any confidence. Unwilling also to be cut off from the only friends and family that we had ever known. We took what we saw as the only option and “freely and willingly” committed ourselves to forever submit to the leaders of the community.