Stealing Flowers (25 page)

My cheeks flushed and I had a sudden
irrational hatred of them. Stan had returned my book about them and
so I gave it to Mary. That weekend, Peter Burgess came to supper,
with, of all people, Rick Edwards, the author of The Family of Lies
and other books on American cults. He looked about fifty years of
age. He was short, black, wore a moustache and outdated sideburns,
and worse still, antiquated horn-rimmed glasses, and his clothes
looked laughable, as though secondhand, but though his attire
appeared transparently unimaginative, I saw that his bold dark eyes
focused on everyone with intelligence.

“Why has it taken so long to meet with you?”
Mary asked.

I had no idea that they’d been trying. “On
the contrary,” he said in a rather defensive and charged voice,
“most people wait a month, one week is nothing. I’m very busy.”

Una served drinks, Rick Edwards took ice
water and everyone followed suit, and returned to the kitchen, and
perhaps only a minute later, sat with us; when the five of us were
all set, Rick open up his briefcase. “I read the letter you
received from your daughter. It’s pretty typical of a letter from
kids in this situation, at least from the Jesus Cults.”

The hopefulness left Mary and Stan’s faces,
dashed perhaps by his business like manner and his tone of voice.
“Mr. Burgess says that you are a deprogrammer?” Stan said. “We’ve
read The Family of Lies. What are the dangers to our daughter?”

His hand scratched his chin as though he
considered the two questions separately. “You’re jumping ahead of
yourself.” He looked into our eyes with little sympathy.

Mary opened her purse, brought out several
photographs of Sally and passed them to Rick. He studied the
pictures and sighed. “Your daughter is truly beautiful. You have a
right to be nervous, Mrs. Tappet. I don’t mean to alarm you more
than you already are, but your daughter’s greatest danger is being
used for sex, raped, and reduced to sell her body. With The Family
of Truth, beautiful women are often reduced to the lowest of the
low.”

Stan sat on the edge of the luxurious sofa
chair. “Mr. Edwards, don’t you see that you’re upsetting my
wife?”

Mary looked at Stan and frowned. “What can
we do to get her out?” she said. “We’re not here to have a
discussion on the philosophic wisdom of your methods. We know our
daughter better than anybody and we realize she’s in danger. Tell
us about deprogramming!”

“That I know of, there are no dangers with
deprogramming. Of not doing it, there are many: Malnutrition,
severe poverty, insanity, violence, rape, the list of problems is
long. The Family of Truth pretty much operates illegally under
legal sanctions of religious freedom in America. Their victims are
completely brainwashed.”

Mary breathed in and for a second turned
ashen. She leaned forward and sipped her ice water. I must say, she
looked as pale as I ever had seen her. “There’s no question here of
them using what could be any reasonable version of what you mean by
free will,” Rick continued, “the kids stay in cults because of
programming. That’s where I come in. I boldly go and abduct the
children, accompanied by parents and other family members and
rescue them. For this, I charge no fee, but I ask for contributions
to continue my fight against the cults.”

“We’ll drive straight up to that farm in
Denver and abduct her?” Una asked with what I interpreted to be a
little alarm.

“You could never get in there at Woodlands
without permission. Vicious guard dogs, eight-feet high wire fences
and armed security stand in your way. What we’d have to do is
arrange a meeting with Sally, hopefully away from Woodlands, but if
necessary, there. Stan or Mary would have to write a letter which I
would help them create. You’d tell your daughter that you wish only
to see her to assure yourself that she’s safe, and if you would be
permitted by the Family, to contribute financially towards their
welfare. It’s the offer of money which will tempt the Elders to
risk her release so as to meet you.”

I knew if I didn’t judge him by looks, he
seemed to be a true-life modern-day hero. I desperately wanted to
believe it, but he certainly didn’t look or dress the part. “Isn’t
it possible to simply buy her back?” Stan asked.

Rick passed both Mary and Stan a collection
of pages printed on both sides. “That wouldn’t be possible,
although they would certainly take your money. These pages will
explain what will be required of you if you wish to go ahead with
deprogramming your children. It’ll take some time and money. You
must cover all my costs. There are two days for the abduction
itself, three or four days for the deprogramming, and then, I
strongly suggest a holiday for the family somewhere without
churches, bibles, telephones and escape routes. Backsliding is
sometimes a big problem.” He paused, looking up at us. I saw that
he made sure that we all knew he meant business. “I’m born and bred
Baptist myself,” he continued, “Most of the kids that fall to the
Jesus Cults, come from a religious background.”

“Stan says that he’s a Frisbeeterian,” Mary
said. “I guess that means he’s a nonbeliever for the most part. I’m
a Catholic. Sally was raised as such, although, she has never shown
an inclination to become religious before and I’ve never pushed it.
She went to church with her schoolmates sometimes. Christian is
adopted. His mother we think may have been Jewish, but we’re not
really sure.”

“I’m a Frisbeeterian too,” I added, I had
become an unbeliever in Jesus since the abduction, but received no
laughs, only a smile from Peter and a frown from Una.

“Rick writes that atheists and Black people
are immune,” Peter interjected.

Rick looked over. “I’m sure that’s not a
direct quote. They take few Blacks and I’ve never heard of a case
of an articulate atheist joining a cult. Most cult members are
white, middle class, have a religious background, especially
Catholic, and are between twelve and thirty. They do steal minors
if they can, but the under aged are easier to retrieve. The law, in
that case, is on our side.”

“What does that mean?” Mary asked.

“Mrs. Tappet, deprogramming borders on the
illegal. The police will sometimes look the other way if the
abduction is being done by the parents, but it carries that problem
with it–”

“You mean we could be–”

“Arrested? Not likely.”

“So, some of your assistants and associates
are former cult members,” Stan asked. I knew he was changing the
topic because Mary wouldn’t broach anything even a slightest bit
illegal.

“Most of them were members of cults; Hare
Krishna, Sun Mying Moon, the Unification Church and others. I don’t
know if you’ve heard of these. They are the worst offenders in
brainwashing, but I have removed cult members from all sorts of
cults and many other organizations use brainwashing techniques: The
Scientologists, Transcendental Meditation, Divine Light Mission and
the Brotherhood, to name just a few. You could meet with some of
them if you wanted. Several who help us, were former members of The
Children of Moses before the cult changed their name to The Family
of Truth.” Mary had an expression of growing concern. “I know what
you are thinking. You’re saying to yourself that your daughter is
an adult of legal age and abducting her seems like such a
transgression against democratic sensibilities.”

I saw that his big brown eyes were now
sympathetic but that he wasn’t going to soften it up for Mary. “The
Family of Truth has no such democratic sensibility,” he continued
forcefully.

“How can all of this be true?” Mary asked.
“How can they be operating legally in United States?”

“Who is to say what is religious and what is
a sham? No laws exist on any of this and they may never. The ones
which do exist are in our way, not behind our efforts. Like I’ve
said, law-enforcement-agencies feel reluctant to interfere when it
is a parent abducting their own teenage child out of a cult. This
is our only single ally.”

“Sally went of her own free-will on that
bus,” Mary said. “Is that what you are saying? And that she was not
really abducted, but was brainwashed? Furthermore, that against her
will, we should abduct and forcibly deprogram her.”

Rick Edwards looked over at Peter for a
second and returned his focus to Mary with a half-frown. “Your
daughter got on that bus willingly, but if she’d been told that she
would be harangued, would have no food, little to drink and hardly
any sleep for the next thirty to forty-eight hours, would she have
gone?”

Mary and Stan again exchanged glances. “It
sounds so sinister. You think she’s weak willed.”

Rick laughed. “I don’t know her, but that
has nothing to do with it. If she’d been told she was going to be
inundated with hateful messages from constantly screaming
loudspeakers and programmed with individual, experienced
councilors, who are well fed and rested, just as they are exhausted
and hungry, would she have gotten on that bus? If she had been
forewarned that she’d be indoctrinated with long public lectures
and forced to fill out applications in the wee hours of the
morning, would she have gone? If she had been told she was going to
be made to hate her parents, to feel inadequate and to feel numb to
pain and love, I’ll guarantee she’d not have gotten on that bus. I
believe in God, and after I spent two days at a property in Santee,
San Diego with The Children of Moses, I came to believe in Satan
too. Imagine answering some mundane question hundreds of times in
one day. A question like, ‘Don’t you want to serve the Lord?’”

“I can verify, every word he says,” Peter
said. “It’s all true.”

“What they really intend to say when they
ask it, is, ‘Don’t you want to serve our leader, Moses Truth?’ Your
daughter was abducted into a cult of hate. You shouldn’t forget
that. I have a deprogramming to do this week, you are all welcome
to observe. The moment that the poor victim looks into their
parents eyes with true recognition and begins to cry, professing
their apologies and love, that’s the most beautiful moment of my
work. If there are doubts about the evil of this cult, then I
suggest you read these.” He passed us two more books and assorted
documents. “If we do anything together, you must both be behind it.
So think it over carefully and let me know.”

“In your deprogramming,” Stan asked. “Do you
always succeed?”

“Many things can and have happened, but
backsliding is most often the case in the failures. There’s what I
call a floating time immediately following a deprogramming, but
there were a few times when we were unsuccessful in the abductions
themselves. The cults know me now and do everything in their power
to prevent abduction. A parent therefore almost never sees his or
her son or daughter alone. Usually, four or five of the cult
members are close by, even when they are off their property, but
I’ve become good at abductions and if everybody follows my
instructions, things usually go without a hitch. Have Sally’s
friends come around to the house when you bring her home, if you
decide to go ahead. This helps. The cult has snapped your
daughter’s personality and grafted on a new, shallow,
bible-spouting, impersonal one. So shallow in fact that some of
these children go insane. Snapping them back for me is easy. I’m
almost always successful in this. The parents are the ones who fail
by underestimating what has occurred. They are assured by the
tearful ‘thank yous,’ the genuine sorrow for what their children
have done and the ‘I love yous,’ that their kids are safely out of
the woods. In part, after deprogramming, it is initially like
withdrawing from a drug addiction. A brainwashed person divorces
the feeling-self from the reasoning, thinking-self, and the new
uncritical, unquestioning, ‘cult’-self, spouts what it’s
programmed. The new logic is circular. There’s an answer to
everything as long as they stay inside the loop. It is a horrible
thing to loose one’s mind, but it is also sort of like a holiday of
bliss: Free from all turmoil and worry that thinking brings about.
For most of these kids, it takes about a year after deprogramming
to be completely safe from the allure of the cult that they were
in.”

I fell in love with his authoritative voice
and often locked into his dark bold eyes. He was like Stan, but
instead of doing a market thing, he was doing a spiritual thing. In
the next few days, I spent many hours with Isaac at the office.
Stan was in Europe and Mary and Una had gone to Jamaica to pick up
Una’s mother. The Sunday after Clara returned, the whole mansion
had been recently made wheelchair-accessible, Una served a special
supper for us, that is, Isaac, Andy, Stan, Mary, Clara and me. She
prepared three of her most famous Jamaican dishes, Dolphin Fish
Pepper Surprise, Island Veggie with Rice and Fresh Pineapple, and
Stinging Star-fruit Sherbet. Even Clara ate some solid food,
although she was very frail and I felt exceedingly sorry for
her.

“I’ve been planning this dish all week,” Una
said as she sat to the table with us. “Wait until you taste it,
you’ll join Una’s cult.” We laughed. “How many parents can say
they’ve lived long enough to abduct their own children?” She rose
to toast. “To a successful abduction.”

We laughed again, especially Andy who
thought she was a better comedian than even a cook. “I’m forever
grateful to see that our housekeeper is still insane,” Stan said.
“It bodes as well for our future as it has for our past.”

All day Mary and he had been working on a
letter to Sally which they hoped would give us access to her.

“It’s bad to be done by such a thing,” Una
said, serving us and pouring the wine, “I wonder if a person is
free to give up his freedom . . . no, I wouldn’t say that. Would
anyone willingly do that? I’m certain my Sally wouldn’t, but I’ve
heard about it before. Young people hate their life and break off,
and they’ve no grasp of the ill they’ll face. We’ve all been
reading about cults. At Jonestown, over nine hundred people died. I
bet that many parents and relatives of those people, are kicking
themselves for not fighting many years before and going and
dragging them out. Mary and Stan, you are right in this; let’s go
get our Sally back!”