My only real distraction is Rob, a military man who is attending law school while working for the Justice Department. I meet him one night on my way to a formal dinner for the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. Though our initial conversation is brief, he is so impressed that I can speak with him in both Mandarin and Russian that he tracks down my email address on the campus system. After he makes several attempts, I finally agree to a date at the Sequoia, a fancy restaurant on the Potomac River. During the meal, I learn he is a bit of a prodigy, with a résumé of impressive accomplishments at a young age. Though only in his twenties, Rob has already written a book. He speaks with authority on a wide range of topics and has a job, a red Corvette, and his own apartment. We couldn’t be more different, but we also discover unexpected similarities. We both had outsized responsibilities as children, grew up with horses, had missionary experience, and understand the value of hard work. He’s cute—not exactly my type physically, but intellectually, I’ve found my match.
After a month and a half of dedicated pursuit on his part, and decorous evasion on mine, we begin to sleep together, but every time we have intercourse, I experience intense pain. When I flinch, Rob doesn’t push through, like I’m used to guys doing; he stops and asks what’s wrong. I tell him it’s fine, that I always have pain during intercourse, but Rob refuses to accept this rationalization. This isn’t okay, he tells me. This isn’t normal.
With his patience and care, I begin to understand my body. Slowly, I feel myself responding in new ways. He shows me the wonderful world of cunnilingus, which Grandpa had decried as dirty. I learn my body needs this to lubricate properly, so I don’t experience pain. Eventually, sex becomes truly enjoyable.
Rob becomes my companion, friend, and lover, but still I’m holding back. About six months into our relationship, he begins asking more pointed, persistent questions about my background. His parents, Seventh-Day Adventists, want more information about the woman he’s dating. I hate to lie directly; most people are satisfied with my canned response of “My parents were nondenominational Christian missionaries and volunteer workers.” But from things I’ve let slip, he knows there’s more. He’s my boyfriend. I’m closer to him than anyone I’ve met since leaving the Family. Perhaps I can trust him with the truth and reveal the secret I’ve kept for the last three years.
After I finally tell him, Rob looks up the Children of God and finds a thick government file, complete with various conspiracy theories I’ve never even heard of. As an employee of the Justice Department, he is freaked out. He has a temper, and he loses it, yelling at me, accusing me of compromising his security clearance. He wonders if he needs to contact the government to report himself and me. I’m crying, trying to calm him down, but he won’t stop yelling. I assure him I’m not in the Family anymore. I left three years ago. I have no designs on infiltrating the government for the Family, or any other conspiracy theory. The more he shouts, the more I shut down. The end of the relationship seems imminent, and I crumple up on my bed, scared and angry.
The next time we speak, I’m prepared for Rob to say goodbye, but he does something entirely unexpected: he pulls me closer to him. Part bully, part confidant, he pushes and pulls, dragging things out of me like the military-trained interrogator he is. I’d been taught to keep anything about the Family’s nonconformist beliefs and sexual practices secret on pain of death. I was taught that if I talked, the Antichrist forces would kill me or the government would throw me in jail. Even though I now know this is not true, speaking still feels like a betrayal. My ingrained childhood training and fear are hard to overcome. But Rob pulls the stories out of me, slowly, one at a time. I begin small, revealing my childhood encounters with Uncle T and Uncle Steven, and then I go deeper, into Benji and Uncle John. I cry, which is horribly embarrassing, and compensate with jokes, trying to make light of it all.
Rob is furious on my behalf. Seeing how upset my stories make him helps me understand just how bad it was. I knew there were things that happened to me that gave me a terrible feeling in my gut, but I thought the problem was with me, that I wasn’t yielded enough to God or sacrificial enough. He tells me that it wasn’t my fault, that I don’t need to carry that shame.
Rob is pushing me to see things through a new lens. Seventh-Day Adventists believe that you must keep the Ten Commandments to be saved, as well as believe in Jesus. This doesn’t make sense to me; no one is perfect.
I speak with conviction as I show Rob verse after verse about the Law of Love and the end of the Ten Commandments. He counters with other verses about the endurance of the law of Moses. My mind spins. Perhaps what Jesus meant when He said “the end of law” meant the end of the hundreds of Old Testament Jewish laws, but not the Ten Commandments that were given to Moses on the mountain? I didn’t know.
To see if this theory could be right, I use the summer break before my senior year to research every verse that talks about “the law” in the Bible. Did the original biblical verses use a different Hebrew or Greek word for “law” when referring to the Ten Commandments than to the extended Torah law by the Pharisees? How could I tell if one law had passed away and another endured? There were so many contradictions. I spend days with an online Bible CD, searching terms and translations. I also look at all the verses that the Family used to justify the Law of Love. When I reread the various translations complete with the historical context, I must admit they mean something completely different. But then what did I experience in the Family?
Rob explains that being told to have sex with men I didn’t want to was not love; it was rape. In criminal law, you don’t have to physically hold someone down for it to be rape. Compelling someone to have sex when they don’t want to through coercion and fear of punishment is also rape.
I think back to the Family. I was never afraid that a Family guy would rape me by force. He would be excommunicated. All sex was supposed to be consensual and loving. But of course, no man in the Family would need to use force, because a woman would be obligated to agree to have sex if he asked her. And even without physical force, it was incredibly painful to have to “willingly” have sex with a man, because I was afraid of punishment.
But—was I ever coerced? The Shepherds never said, “Have sex when you are asked, or you’ll be punished.” The pressure was more subtle, like what I experienced in Kazakhstan. If I was unwilling to sacrifice my body and have sex with someone I disliked, it was a “symptom” of my lack of dedication to Jesus and my unyieldedness. Technically, I was never punished for not having sex; I was punished for being unyielded when I refused sex. So, wasn’t that the same thing?
I think back to that horrible night with Uncle John and realize the word “rape” never crossed my mind. Now I recognize it for what it was. Even though he didn’t hold me down, he was still psychologically forcing me to have sex when I didn’t want to, after I’d declined, so it was rape. Even if I had to pretend to be willing, it was rape. Even if I was frozen and unable to think of a way to escape, it was rape. I didn’t shout, “No!” and fight back with force, because like many women, I was conditioned from birth to be submissive, obedient, and pleasing.