I’d heard a whisper that Davidito—the prince, the model disciple touted by Grandpa as one of the final prophets of the End Time, who, as described in the Book of Revelation, would call down fire on the Antichrist—had left the Family. But I’m not prepared for the email I receive from Aaron on January 16, 2005: “Check the news, Faith. It’s about Davidito.”
I do a quick search online and read that twenty-nine-year-old Davidito has fatally stabbed his former nanny before turning a gun on himself.
I can’t believe it. The Family has always boasted about how we had the best young people in the world—well-adjusted, mature, happy, and dedicated. “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit” Matthew 7:18. The violence seems too horrific to be true.
But the story is all over the news. According to the article in the New York Times, Davidito had invited his former nanny to dinner in Tucson, Arizona. After the meal, he asked her back to his apartment, where he stabbed her to death. He then drove his Chevy to the small desert town of Blythe, California, where he shot himself with a semiautomatic handgun, but not before making a video about it and calling his wife to explain what he had done.
To keep the Family from putting their own spin on events, he had released the video of himself loading the weapons and discussing why his mother, Mama Maria, had to be stopped. I would later learn that Davidito had apparently extended the dinner invitation to her, but she’d sent the nanny instead. He considered them all guilty, so he went ahead with the attack he’d planned.
It is unfathomable to me how anyone could do such a thing, much less Davidito, whose child-rearing years had been chronicled in The Story of Davidito and hundreds of Komics we’d all read growing up. How could this happen?
In an open letter to the Family, he accuses his mother and nannies of years of molestation. “Something has to be done about these child molesters,” he writes. “Because only then can we feel some semblance of justice.” Reading his words feels like a punch to my chest.
My entire life, I’d been trained to dismiss and excuse the things that people said and wrote about Grandpa as the bitter lies of Backsliders. And I’m horrified to realize I’d still been doing it. But when I read Davidito’s description of his life in Grandpa’s home, in his own words, I hear the ring of truth. His stories are impossible to deny, and I can feel the smoke screen of holiness clearing.
If the Family and Grandpa were right, this should not have been possible. I know what the Family will say as clearly as if someone were reading me the explanatory Mo Letter: “This shows the terrible things that can happen when someone leaves the Family and rebels against God. Goes to show that no one is safe, so don’t let the Devil cause you to doubt for even a minute.” But that sounds like so much hot air now.
For the first time, I’m able to consciously acknowledge that my grandfather was evil and perverted. How traumatized must Davidito have felt to think this was his only option? I can’t agree with the murder, but I mourn for the sad, trapped young man I’d tried to cheer up in a Moscow apartment a lifetime ago. I feel deeply sorry for Davidito, both for the little boy who was so traumatized by years of abuse and for the young man who believed the only way out of his ongoing nightmare was death. If only someone had been able to show him another way forward.
In light of this new and disturbing perspective, other life stories begin rearranging themselves in my mind with new meanings. I think back on my own early sexual experiences. Were they child abuse? According to society’s definition, certainly. But whose standard for morality is correct? Grandpa pointed to countries where the age of consent is twelve as justification for his views, but having lived the experiences, I couldn’t agree.
How did I feel when it happened to me? I examine my own experiences. I didn’t feel traumatized by my mother’s openness about sex, just embarrassed, though now, I certainly question whether it was age-appropriate. I can logically see that sex is a natural function of life and teaching children to accept it as such, without shame about their bodies, must be correct. But I recognize the sick feeling I had any time an adult touched me in a sexual way, when they pushed into my space, anytime I was pressured, at any age, to engage in sex, as trauma. I never felt that with the innocent sex games I played with Patrick at naptime when we were five. Why? Where is the line?
I think about my peers. All the girls I know who are my age and who were subjected to adult-child contact in the Family reported that they felt traumatized, while most of my brothers claimed they enjoyed their early sexual experiences. Do boys have such a different relationship with sex than girls? Is it the simple biological facts of intercourse that make a difference—penetrating or being penetrated? What about when there’s no penetration? I know boys raped by men experience the same trauma, but I’ve also met men who feel enormous shame from an adult woman engaging them in sexual acts at a young age. What is the thread that creates trauma? I realize trying to come up with a standard based on individual experiences is too vague.
But if we cannot find an accurate answer, how can we prevent more abuse?
Twenty-three years of indoctrination doesn’t disappear in an instant. In the few years since I’d left the Family, I had been unconsciously building an entirely new frame of reference for behavior, morality, and reality—a new mental model of the world. Davidito’s closing act allows me to finally put it all together, to understand that so much of what I was taught were lies. That my childhood was taken from me, that I was violated. The tightness in my chest travels down my arms; I want to punch something. Hard. I can’t understand how my parents could have done this to me when they both experienced another way growing up.
Hadn’t they been raised in a world where sexual relations with children were viewed with horror and aberration? How could they be complicit in this?
But my anger is tempered by my recognition that lies aren’t always intentional, and that you don’t have to be conscious that you’re doing something wrong to be wrong. A person can fully believe in the justice and Godliness of their cause and be horrifically, violently wrong. Abusers can believe they are acting out of “love.”
The guise of love and freedom and nature is a beautiful smoke screen that often masks violations and manipulation.
I have a new understanding of the world and a void in my stomach. How can I trust anyone, even myself, ever again?
I was taught that the System was the matrix and we, the Family, lived the reality; but the Family was just another matrix with its own myths.