Warning: This story contains graphic descriptions of ritual abuse. If you are likely to be triggered, please proceed with caution and ensure you have appropriate support.
PJ's story
For most of my life I thought I had a perfectly normal childhood. When I was little we lived at the very end of a little lane. There were two other families close by and then nobody else anywhere near in hollering range. My dad had a small farm and was an engineer and also was a carpenter. I had a brother 3 years older, a sister 1 ½ years older and a brother 3 years younger. When my youngest sister was born the story goes that Mom said she wasn't coming home from the hospital until Dad started the new house. We all lived in a small two-bedroom house. There was a basement dug the next day. Dad was also in land development and with our new house a new street went in and we ended up with a lot of new neighbors.
There was some of the usual sibling rivalry in our family but nothing that I remembered worse than that. We went to church almost every Sunday. Mom was a 4-H leader and both of my folks were involved in the church. We'd go camping in the summer on weekends and always took a 2-week summer vacation - hit most of the big national parks. We also had horses and that was the best part for me.
I don't ever remember Mom and Dad yelling or fighting. I don't know how decisions were made - they just were. All 5 of us kids went to college, married and got good jobs. Nobody was ever in trouble with the law or drank. I remember it as a pretty model family. I remember for years telling people my dad loved me just the way I was and I didn't have to do or be anything special. I got married when I was 22, two months after my dad died of cancer. We moved to St Louis for a couple of years and then back to my hometown. My husband and I got along pretty well but occasionally I'd flare up about some really weird things.
The summer I was 28 my mom remarried. That fall I had a lot of trouble eating - I'd have really bad stomach pains - lost 25 pounds and got down to less than I weighed when I was 12. I went to a string of doctors and no one could find anything wrong. We had tried to have kids and found out we had a fertility problem, so I decided to go to med school. I was teaching full-time, helping run an old apple orchard on our property and taking 12 hours of chemistry and physics classes to meet pre-med requirements. The last doctor I saw said I had a problem with depression. I just laughed - right - with all I was doing! Decided doctors weren't always right especially when I turned up pregnant. But I did have an increasingly severe problem with depression every fall for the next 5-6 years.
After my second daughter was born my mom's husband started coming over when he knew I'd be home alone and would sexually molest me - he'd grab me and kiss me and touch my body. I would freeze. It never occurred to me that I could say no or make him quit. It went on for 9 years. At one point I told my mom and she said it wasn't happening and if it was it was my fault. The fall when I was 41 I had such a severe depression I didn't get out of bed for 2 weeks. My husband called my doctor and she called me. I was furious at him for interfering and refused to take antidepressants. I did agree to see a counselor. I was about ready to quit after 3 months because it didn't seem to make any difference. I ended up going for a weekend to monastery that was set up for private retreats. I woke up in the middle of the second night with memories of sexual abuse. Over the next months I was flooded with flashbacks. I thought I was going crazy. I had a NORMAL CHILDHOOD. Didn't know what this shit was but it wasn't mine!
I have been seeing a counselor for 8 year now and I'm not "done" yet, whatever that is. The earliest abuse memories I have took place when I was 2. I have memories of incest with both my mother and father. I slept in bed between mom and dad. Dad would do sex stuff with me and mom would pretend to sleep. Mom made me pay for it. I was severely abused by the neighbors and a lot of abuse involved the Presbyterian Church my family belonged to. The neighbor started abusing me when I was 3 ½ and started training me for a child sex ring. When my mom needed money she would send me over there. When I was 4, I "graduated" to a child sex ring that was run out of the Presbyterian Church our family belonged to.
Child sex rings can be extremely profitable. There definitely are people out there with those appetites and they will pay big money to do what they want with a child that they know won't talk. There was a lot of training to obey automatically and to not talk. One way we were trained was by shocks. There was a small room in the basement of the church that had a narrow table in it. We would have to take our clothes off and do things. If one of us did not do what we were told to right or fast enough, one of us - not necessarily the one who was at "fault" - would be put on the table and electrodes would be attached to genitals and nipples. The shocks were strong enough that the body would arch completely off the table. I was lying in bed with my husband one night when that memory came back. My body exploded about a foot and a half out of the bed and it took 3-4 hours for my breathing and heart rate to return to normal- and that was "only" a body memory. If one of us did not do what we were supposed to with the men, someone would be shocked later. I could stand to be shocked if I refused to do something, but I couldn't tolerate watching another child be shocked for what I did. They knew that.
The man who ran the sex ring out of the church was Tom MacGregor. When he did the shocks he would stand away from the table with his hand up to a switch - like a light switch. Then he would slowly press his finger down on the switch to set off the shock. The conditioning was so intense that years later all Mr. Tom would have to do was put his finger up and my body would react like it was going to be shocked.
We would usually be collected in the basement of the church during church service and walked to several other buildings within a three-block range of the church. We would be put in rooms with one or more men - sometimes women too - and would be expected to do whatever. I don't remember who the people were or what I did. There was additional conditioning not to remember.
This last year I have been doing marriage counseling with my husband. I though he would respond better to a male and I wanted someone who had experience with severe abuse, PTSD and DID and where I could actually use insurance. The first time I met him - went into his office and the door closed - I felt like I was supposed be on my knees with my head between his legs. I had never worked with a man before. When I left the anxiety level rocketed right off the scale. I had flashbacks of what happened one time when I refused. My husband and I did start working with him. My husband responded lots better to the male counselor that he had to a woman. But I had panic attacks almost every time. Sometimes I couldn't walk through the door. Other times the panic would hit when I sat down and the door closed. I would hyperventilate - had never done that before - and would end up rushing out of the room. I was just a little slow - I finally realized his office was within 2 blocks of the Presbyterian church I grew up in - it was triggering the sex ring memories. He had an office in another town 30 miles away so we switched to meeting there and most of the panic reactions stopped.
But another layer of memories came back. I remembered waking up in that small room in the church basement naked, strapped to the table with my feet in stirrups. There were 4 people there - the neighbor who ran the sex ring out of his house, Tom who ran the one out of the church, a man I called the trainer - he did a lot of the training for the child sex rings and a doctor who stood at the left of my head. There was an IV in my left arm. The electrodes were attached to my nipples and genitals. And the neighbor had something like a cattle prod. He would jam it up in my vagina or rectum and the pain would make my body try to constrict into a ball. Then Tom would set off a shock and it would feel like my body was exploding apart. They went back and forth between the two. I remember trying really hard to hang onto something so I would know there was still a me. They also had bright flashing lights like strobe lights. And then the doctor started using drugs and I got lost. The point was to push me into a part of my mind I didn't use and then to put messages or programs there. The messages were in the subconscious where the conscious mind could not reach. As long as the messages stayed subconscious, they controlled the body. The message was that I was never supposed to remember anything that happened in those rooms when the door closed within a three-block range of the church. No names, no faces, nothing that happened. Every time I went in that first office with the counselor that programming was getting triggered.
There was more than the sex ring that happened in that church. The minister was what I was later told was a dualist. He was from Scotland and he believed that God was both good and evil. He was the minister for this very large prestigious Presbyterian Church and he was also a priest for a satanic type religion. My parents belonged to both "congregations". I would see Reverend Woods hold the Christian services and perform the Christian ceremonies like baptisms and communion and I would also see him hold the other services and perform their variations. Often he wore the same robes for both - black robes with two rows of velvet-like trim at the bottom and on the edge of the sleeves and the robe would zip up the middle from just above his knees. Wearing the same robe would get me mixed up. Sometimes I would think it was going to be a satanic service and it would be Christian. I remember sitting in the pews frozen and terrified that I would be wrong and make mistakes and someone would be punished.
The early years were hell - between what happened at home and what happened at the neighbors and what happened in the church, I couldn't find any safe people. There was a little boy who had almost white hair. In the satanic congregation boys were more valued than girls and the fairer a child was the more it was valued. Racism was very strong. Anyone black had no value and could desecrate places just with their presence. At that age I could see people's auras. The white-haired boy had this beautiful white light around him. I thought he was safe. He held my hope. One night I was in the sanctuary with the white-haired boy and Woods and several other men. A black man walked into the sanctuary. They said it was my fault - I was supposed to be guarding the sanctuary. They said the sanctuary had been desecrated and needed to be cleansed. One man cut the white-haired boy's throat right in front of me - I could have touched him. They collected his blood to cleanse the sanctuary.
These people in the dark version believed that live things held energy with humans having the most energy. When they died the energy was released. They had ceremonies where they believed they could trap that released energy and use it for their own purposes. Woods and the other 2 men had formed a triangle and were planning on trapping the boy's energy. When he was killed I saw his beautiful white light go to them. I believed what they taught. When the white-haired boy died, almost all of my hope died. I decided it was not safe for me to look to the Light, to seek the peace and solace and the feeling that I was not alone I found there. They would only use it to make themselves stronger. So I cut myself off from the Light. I think there was a small part of me that held onto the Light, but it went deep inside to hide where it couldn't be found. That left the rest of me with no hope. I couldn't understand how God could allow that to happen in His house - I thought he must hate me - that I was really bad. When you are 5 you think that what happens in the world happens because of you. I couldn't understand how a whole churchful of people couldn't see that the minister had no Light - how no one could see - no one would stop it.
When I was 15, I was more or less given to Woods. After catechism classes he would have sex with me. I was supposed to, it was my job, so it wasn't rape. He would wear his Christian robes and do it in the sanctuary, the most holy part of the church. He would make me lean over the sanctuary railing and have sex. I remember the railing cutting into my hipbones. In back of the pulpit were 3 big wooden chairs. The middle one was the biggest. It was supposed to be God's chair. The minister and assistant only sat in the side chairs during Christian services. Woods would wear his Christian robes and sit in the middle chair and I would have to kneel and put my head between his legs. I remember concentrating on the velvet stripes on his robes. I would touch them or look at them until it felt like I was part of them so I wouldn't be aware of what was happening to my body. I became pregnant. A baby girl was born on my birthday, July 1 when I turned 16. She was born at home and given to another family to raise. The everyday part of me didn't know I was pregnant - only inside parts. I didn't show during school. I don't think anyone knew.
Last year I was working part-time at an adult day care center. One day Reverend Woods turned up there as a client. I thought I was OK, but I guess I just shut down to get through. When I got home I had flashbacks and nightmares for weeks. It felt like being there all over again - like he was touching me and all the physical feelings were there. No one in my family would ever admit any of this happened. Tom MacGregor, the man who ran the sex ring out of the church was the man who married my mother after my father died - the one who would come over when I was alone and molest me.
I had everyday parts that didn't know any of this. They were the ones that believed I had a perfectly normal childhood. I was so successful at hiding what happened from the everyday girl that Woods was the minister that married us and baptized my second daughter. After the memories started coming back, there was so much of me that thought I was evil and bad - that was why God let that happen. A lot of me was very angry at God. And most of me was terrified of having anything to do with the Light.
I have worked very hard over the last 2-3 years to reclaim my spiritual connections. There was so much terror because of the white-haired boy, it was very hard. I went back to that memory and I went through it again and I watched farther this time. What I saw was that his Light went to Woods and the men but they could not hold it. His Light joined a greater Light and moved upwards. For years and years I have felt totally deserted and alone - felt like I was evil and unlovable for the things that had happened to me. If I wasn't so evil it wouldn't have happened. I have found a lot of memories where Light beings were with me. They had no power to stop what was happening but they wanted me to know I wasn't alone. As a child it was too dangerous for most of me to see that, to know that - someone else would have died.
I have been working hard on reclaiming my spirituality. As a child I wasn't totally alone. I didn't trust human beings. So trees and flowers were my friends. I never found any vindictiveness or treachery in trees. They just were with their roots deep in the ground and their branches reaching to the skies. I don't think the perpetrators ever knew how much solace I found in trees. Even today when I am scared and feeling threatened, I still feel much safer with trees than people. I have thrown out Christianity and organized religion. I don't think it is about spirituality. I think it is about power and control. I believe each one of us is part spirit and can connect to spirit on our own. We do not need someone else to tell us what to do or act as an intermediary.
In other memories, what I have seen is what in my words I call a parallel universe. There is this physical world with all its good and evil and just plain physicalness - flesh and blood bodies that are born and live and die and trees and flowers and rocks and rivers and earth and sky. And in each and every part of this physical world including what man has created there is a part that is spirit or sacred. Next to this physical world is a world of Light beings and unconditional love. Those beings are with us and care about us and will be with us if we open ourselves to them. If we close ourselves off they can't do anything. If we open ourselves to them they can surround us with Light and unconditional love. They cannot stop or change physical happenings but they can support us with Light and love and when we open to them it is easier for the spirit part of us to be strong and guide the physical, emotional and intellectual parts of us. That is what I have come to believe. I have seen that parallel "world" and have been with the Light beings. I have a very hard time with the word god - I don't know what that is - I don't have an experience of that unless it is that parallel "world" and all of those Light beings. I find it hard to abide churches and the words that are said there or to trust or find solace in those words. I have found a "truth" that feels like a truth to me. But I find it very hard to find anyone to share it with. And I do believe that when people truly unite together in spirit, amazing things can happen. I haven't found people I can do that with. I don't know how much of that is the horrendous fear, mistrust and rage around what happened in the church when I was a child. I don't know that there are many people who would understand or believe what I have seen and what is true for me.