Judgment Of Lord Justice Ward Concerning The Family

JUDGEMENT OF LORD JUSTICE WARD CONCERNING THE FAMILY : PT 19

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THIS IS THE JUDGMENT OF LORD JUSTICE WARD IN THIS CASE WHICH
HE GAVE IN CHAMBERS ON THE 26TH MAY 1995 BUT WHICH IS BEING
HANDED DOWN IN OPEN COURT TODAY. IT CONSISTS OF 295 PAGES
AND HAS BEEN SIGNED AND DATED BY THE JUDGE.

THE JUDGE HEREBY DIRECTS THAT NO TRANSCRIPT OF THE JUDGMENT
NEED BE TAKEN AND THAT THE VERSION HANDED DOWN MAY BE
TREATED AS AUTHENTIC.

THE JUDGMENT IS BEING DISTRIBUTED ON THE STRICT
UNDERSTANDING THAT IN ANY REPORT OF IT NO PERSON (OTHER THAT
COUNSEL AND THEIR INSTRUCTING SOLICITORS AND THOSE PERSONS
IDENTIFIED BY NAME IN THE JUDGMENT ITSELF) MAY BE IDENTIFIED
BY NAME AND THAT IN PARTICULAR THE ANONYMITY OF THE CHILD, A
WARD OF COURT, AND THE MEMBERS OF HIS FAMILY MUST BE
STRICTLY PRESERVED.

SIGNED:

THE RT. HON. LORD JUSTICE WARD DATED 19TH OCTOBER 1995

W 42 1992 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

FAMILY DIVISION

PRINCIPAL REGISTRY IN THE MATTER OF ST (A MINOR)

AND IN THE MATTER OF THE SUPREME COURT ACT 1991h

Lord Justice Ward

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PSYCHIATRIC EVIDENCE

Dr Lawrence Lilliston

He is a clinical child psychologist with some 30 years
experience as a clinician. He has, however, had a long
standing interest in the psychology of religion and has made
a speciality of his study of the development of children in
religious families. He has seen about 200 to 225 children
from five homes in the United States and three in England.
He has however, only tested 34 out of about 8000! When
questioned about his own gullibility in accepting at face
value what he saw, he commented:-

"If The Family has a system for taking three to six year
children and training them in such a way that they are able
to maintain the deception over the time we were with them,
then that is beyond belief".

He held the view that silence restriction did not seem
excessively harmful nor was corporal punishment particularly
damaging. The use of open heart report was fairly benign but
in the wrong hands it could be abusive if activated by
personal malevolence.

He met Tony - Zack Attack and described him as a "nice
pleasant healthy guy with three kids who has his life
together." He admitted, however, that he would have liked to
have explored how his transformation happened and what
effect the threat to remove his child had upon him. Without
investigating those matters his observations of Tony seem to
me to be superficial and to lack academic credibility.
Likewise his conclusion about Davidito. This was an
opportunity to explore exactly what had taken place in
Berg's household. He merely touched upon these matters and
Davidito made it obvious he was not prepared to talk about
it. Nor did they talk about the reasons which impelled that
young man to make attempts on his life said by The Family to
have been caused by Satanic influences. Because I conclude
that Dr Lilliston was not too concerned critically to
examine The Family's past, I cannot be sure I get an
accurate picture from him.

The testing he carried out on his very small sample produced
these general results:-

Throughout the age range from pre-school through to late
adolescence cognitive development was age appropriate or
better, a level of development which would not typically be
found in environments that were unduly restrictive,
coercive, or punitive but were rather to be found in
supportive and facilitative environment. The children were
shown to be emotionally healthy and stable, characterised by
high self-esteem, optimism, and feelings of self-efficacy.
They felt empowered to control their behaviour and to
influence the world around them. It was highly unlikely that
those attributes could develop in an environment
characterised by hostility, manipulation and excessive
control. Rather the children had obviously received a great
deal of affection and positive reinforcement. He found no
evidence in any of the homes of sexual abuse or exploitation
and the children's sexual adjustment was age appropriate and
attitudes towards sex were healthy. The children showed
impressive social development in that they got along quite
well with each other and with people outside the homes. They
liked people and were very much oriented towards
establishing good and helpful social relations. He found no
evidence of psychological abuse and it was clear that the
children had not developed within an atmosphere that was
repressive or destructive.

The fact that Dr Lilliston seems to have viewed The Family
through his rose coloured spectacles, reduces the weight I
can place upon his opinions, but I do not discount them
entirely.

Dr Michael Heller

He is a Consultant Child Psychiatrist, an acknowledged
expert in his field and a frequent witness in The Family
Division. He was called by NT. His written report recorded:-

"Materially the standards (at the Ward's home) were good and
the rooms were well equipped. The "feel" of the place was
warm and the various adults to whom I spoke were friendly
and gave no sign of disturbance of any kind. My questions
were answered in a straight forward fashion. The numerous
children struck me as normal in all respects, polite to me
and their seniors but lively and not the least subdued. ...I
thought (S) to be a normal, bright toddler (then not yet 2
years old) who, it was clear, was closely attached to his
mother; she handled him well.

Opinion and Comment

(1) I neither saw nor heard anything concerning S which
raises doubts as to his normality and I am sure that the
Learned Judge can safely base his decision on an assumption
that he is normal in all respects.

(2) NT, too, gave me every reason to suppose she is
psychologically normal. Perhaps, she is not an especially
strong personality but I did not have the impression that
she was unduly influenced either by anyone at the house or,
"faith" excepted, by external forces of some kind.

(3) You will have appreciated that I came away from (the
Ward's home) without cause for significant concern. I would
feel able to dismiss any suggestion that I was gulled by
those I encountered there. If the issue before the Court was
simply whether or not this particular "community" was an
appropriate place in which a little boy should grow up, I
would hesitate only a little before endorsing placement.
Such doubts as I had would derive from a personal preference
for a "broader" environment for a child - any child.

(4) I see The Family as inbred. I think that those being
trained for missionary work would be better equipped for
that purpose by much more contact with the world outside the
houses. ...So far as I can tell at present those (basic
practices and standards) that characterise The Family are
acceptable.

(5) The point has, I understand, been made that Family
members who were abused within it during their former years,
ipso facto, present a threat to children in their general
care. I see this as a very dubious generalisation; one needs
to particularise."

When he gave evidence he expanded upon those views. He
repeated that he would have no fear for S provided that the
present and future arrangements for him would not bring him
into close contact with damaged personalities who would have
a significant influence on him. He was firmly of the view
that no child should partake of any sexual activity with
grown-ups nor should any child be exposed to adult sexual
behaviour. He said that if corporal punishment of a more or
less formalised kind was practised then he would be very
concerned for there are always better ways of discipline. He
said:-

"I hope those with executive power will take to heart that
this ought not to have happened and must not happen again."

It became plain as he was cross-examined just how deeply he
deplored the excesses of discipline used by The Family. He
would have no truck with the suggestion that it being done
in love was a sufficient excuse. He called that a medieval
approach like middle-age inquisitors inflicting torture to
force the victim to recant for the good of his soul. He
considered it degrading that VB should use the Law of Love
to justify her having done something which she knew in her
heart was wrong. It raised for Dr Heller the extent to which
people go to extremes in the name of faith.

Whilst acknowledging that a vast amount of material had
become relevant, he felt angry that more information had not
been vouchsafed to him when he was conducting his enquiries
because he considered important matters had been put in
issue in the case which he would have wished to have
explored.

He was cross-examined about the effects of child sexual
abuse. He made it plain that a general principle of
psychiatry is that past abusers should where possible have
treatment. If an abuser is without knowledge that his acts
were abusive, then he is all the more dangerous. If an
abuser thinks he can get away with it, he will do it. He was
not convinced that the distinction drawn between love and
lust was anything more than an exculpatory justification for
something that was known to be wrong. A therapist treating a
sexual abuser would look for a frank acknowledgement of the
abuse that had been committed, an acknowledgement of the
fact that it harmed the victim and a total renunciation of
any suggestion that the child asked for it. Accordingly he
denounced RF for exposing his penis - on his own admission -
in order to give some verisimilitude to a lesson on the
facts of life. Without those acknowledgements, risks would
be too unacceptably high for contact between a child and the
perpetrator of child sex abuse to take place unsupervised.
He said this:-

"I would expect that adult members and leaders would come to
a genuine and sincere acknowledgement that the earlier
teachings were:-

(1) In need of revision

(2) Were in fact wrong.

Were I a member, I would want regular group meetings where
these things were brought into the open. If people won't
look facts in the face, if people are able to persuade
themselves black was white, they must be seen as imperfect
protectors of children. The leadership would need to
undertake a lot of new writing to explain how the situation
has changed."

He was cross-examined about GN 555, "Our beliefs concerning
the Lord's Law of Love" written by Peter Amsterdam and
Apollos. He condemned that letter for failing emphatically
to assert that any sexualised contact with a child was not
just inexpedient but plainly and unutterably wrong because
it caused psychological and emotional harm to the child. He
said,

"If these adults from mother upwards fail to recognise that
this is a doctrine which cannot be accepted, then this would
cause me great concern. It they accept this teaching, they
will have no reason to suppose that they will have
misconducted themselves. They should recognise this is a
doctrine which is pernicious."

He felt that paragraphs 51 to 53 were a backhanded apology
and he found it dismaying that charismatic figures were so
arrogant as to be able to persuade others that they knew
what was God's will. He said,

"Whatever motivated David Berg, those who are adherents need
to look at the world in which they are now living and have
regard to the views of the system. I would want them to be
able to recognise within themselves that it was wrong and
had bad affects and that he had responsibility for it. I
would like them to acknowledge he was wrong. It is important
from a child protective point of view to say he led us
astray."

He was scathing in his criticism of paragraphs 60 and 61 of
that letter which refused to lay the blame at the door of
David Berg. That he said is the opposite of what had to
happen.

"I would want who ever is responsible for S to reject the
false doctrines. I would certainly want the leaders to come
to a quite different view of these matters and say this is
no longer a tenable reaction."

He was dismissive of the "Good Thots" selection of
psychiatric advice which he condemned as wrong and very
misleading and not based on principles which have any
validity at all. He said it ought to be withdrawn with an
explanation that research showed that any sexual contact
between adult and child was harmful. His conclusion was:-

"If the leadership continued to broadcast mixed messages and
those receiving them fail to recognise the risks, then it is
difficult to be protective."

Dr. Hamish Cameron

He is another well known and respected Consultant Child
Psychiatrist. He was called by the Official Solicitor.

He expressed these conclusions in his first report dated

17th October 1993:

"1. S is a delightful normal 20 month old little boy, a
credit to his upbringing thus far.

2. (Mother), a devout believer in The Family, has given S
an excellent start in life. She recognises her tendency to
ignore disagreeable matters, and says she will be vigilant
in looking after S. However, at least partially, she accepts
S as being a child of The Family.

3. (Grandmother) is genuinely concerned about (a) child
sexual abuse risks and (b) educational and social isolation
and (c) likely to be untrained for independent living, all
affecting S. She feels her daughter's blind faith will
prevent her giving adequate protective care to her son.

At present it seems unlikely that S will be exposed to a
degree of future significant harm, sufficient to justify
removing him from The Family."

He made his second report on 13th May 1994. He said:-

"Recent direct observation of S with his mother...revealed
an intelligent lively and happy little boy, who is
developing satisfactorily. He shows no evidence of being
harmed, nor does he appear to be at risk of significant harm
currently. The present child care he receives from (mother),
from SB, and from the other adult members of The Family at
the Ward's home is of a high quality. As often happens when
a child is brought up within a large extended Family, or in
a community setting, S's emotional attachment is less
intense to his mother then would be the case in a typical
family and is spread apparently among the group who care for
him. It does seem likely that S still regards (mother) as
his primary psychological parent, but SB is probably a close
second, with other members of the Ward's household also
enjoying S's secure trust. ...S's upbringing thus far cannot
be faulted and his present and immediate future best
interests are likely to be protected by his continuing to be
brought up in The Family in the short term future. ...Any
serious circumstances putting S's wellbeing at risk could
justify separation now.

NT's failure to protect S could take one of two forms:-

- either she would be physically separated from him, living
in another house, perhaps in another country,

- or, although physically present, her trusting mind would
not be acutely alert to threats to his welfare."

Dr Cameron then identified the groups of future risks. The
first were acts of commission being sexual abuse and
emotional and physical abuse. The second were acts of
omission, i.e. neglect. These included the dereliction of
duty to higher education, the neglect of social education,
the neglect of medical provision and neglect of the child's
attachment to mother. Dr Cameron concluded:-

"With such a recent history of misdeeds there must be a risk
on commonsense grounds of S suffering, either from one or
more of these recognised abuses, or from some new yet to be
introduced experiment, at some time in the future as he
grows up."

Nevertheless Dr Cameron seemed willing to adopt a "wait and
see" approach. He said:-

"While (that) appears a reasonable way to proceed,
over-optimism would be out of place. The Family senior
members need to correct two major areas of child-rearing
practice by written and verbal orders from the leadership

(1) First of all all physical and emotional abuse and
neglectful practices must cease with the leadership formerly
banning and outlawing paddling, compulsory silence,
isolation, dire emotional threats, abuse of the open heart
report system and premature separation of children from
their parents.

(2) Education at GCSE level and A level as a preparation for
University must be drastically improved. It is unlikely that
this can be achieved in-house, and therefore The Family must
reconsider its position about encouraging children and
adolescents of a certain age to go to outside schools.
Perhaps The Family may draw comfort from the Jesuits who are
said to feel confident in children brought up in the faith
until they are seven, and the experience of The Brethren who
allow their children to attend ordinary schools."

Dr Cameron also emphasised S's right to have full and
generous contact with all the extended natural family of the
Ward.

Of NT he said,

"She needs to show genuine appreciation that the worrying
evidence before the Court demands that an outside authority
should keep a watchful eye on S's wellbeing over the coming
years."

Of the possibility of removing S to his maternal
grandmother's home, Dr Cameron said:-

"The major disadvantage is that S is still a very little boy
to take away from his primary parent and caring home. S is
just at that delicate stage of development where he is
growing an inner sense of security, and this would be
jeopardised if he were to be removed now from his present
home."

Of the "wait and see policy with oversight", Dr Cameron
said:-

"Planned and purposeful delay has the merit of allowing S to
continue to grow up in the environment where he has
developed very well thus far. The Family may be improving
its child-care practices and there is a possibility that
further child centred goals will be achieved in the coming
years."

So he concluded:-

"While not seeking to diminish the risks, this child
psychiatric report favours the wait and see option. None of
the adults in S's immediate environment wishes to see any
harm come to him. All are conscious and acutely aware of the
need to bring him up well. The past malpractices of The
Family are closely associated with some of those who may
currently look after S. It is concluded that although there
is a risk of something adverse occurring to S it may be
balanced by the benefit to him of continuing his early
childhood experience uninterruptedly in the care of his own
mother."

He wrote a very important letter dated 14th May 1994 in
order that it be drawn to the mother's attention before she
gave evidence. He said this:-

"There are three hurdles to be surmounted by this little
boy's mother:-

(1) Although her spiritual/emotional attachment is both to
The Family and to S, does she place her son's interest
first, and will she continue to do? If not, she is (like a
private fostering arrangement) transferring her day to day
parental responsibility for S to The Family, and it is The
Family's parenting that will then have to be judged.

(2) Does S's mother accept that some of The Family's
practices have corrupted and psychologically damaged a
number of the children/ adolescents in its care? And because
of this history the authorities are obliged to monitor S's
welfare and are justified in doing so? If she cannot
recognise and accept this, how can she protect S?

(3) Does she accept that constricting the breadth and
limiting the duration of education will seriously
disadvantage any young person who chooses to leave The
Family and go and live in the outside world? If she cannot
see this, how can she be trusted to nurture S's educational
potential?

Failure at any of these hurdles would raise reasonable
doubts about S's continuing welfare in her care."

When he gave evidence Dr Cameron addressed those three
questions. As to mother putting S first, he said that what
concerned him was that whereas the intuitive feeling of most
mothers would be to be with her child, NT had put her
intuitive feelings aside and relied on the pressure from The
Family to leave S at the Ward's home while she came to
London for the purpose of this long hearing. She had a trust
in The Family which most mothers would not have. This seemed
to indicate to Dr Cameron that instinct had been overridden
by some other belief system.

As to her acceptance of corruption, Dr Cameron found it
significant that NT could say that the treatment of Davidito
was wrong but she could not say that it was wrong to have
happened in Berg's household. If her loyalty to Berg was
blind, then she was not able to use her own judgment as to
whether something was reasonable or not. If only a general
"mistake" was acknowledged, but no blame attached to the
leaders, then Dr Cameron remained worried. He was very
firmly of the view that it made no difference to the child
if done in love because the child instinctively knows that
an action is wrong and that brings the child into conflict
between what the adult was encouraging him to do and what he
subconsciously felt to be wrong. It produced a psychological
strain and groomed the child for promiscuous sexual activity
which would not be in his best interest when he grew older.
The use of young children in the strip dancing videos
crossed a taboo and was part of a process of adults'
grooming children for sexual exploitation. As for the
videos, it was self-deceit to think that they were not made
for sexual gratification. The fact that "babes" were not
exposed to "strong meat" was an implicit acknowledgement
that the meat was too strong. When finally exposed to it,
there was almost a right of initiation that the newcomer
must comply with the group's conduct in order truly to
belong to the group. His view of the RF exposing himself in
the course of the sex education lesson, so called, was that
it was an outrageous thing to do which was clearly wrong and
damaging to the children concerned. In Dr Cameron's opinion
RF's sense that his father was present was his conscience
working upon him knowing intuitively that what he was doing
was wrong.

His evidence about MB was significant. She was a
conscientious child who became disillusioned and depressed
because of her doubts. She was in conflict between what she
saw and disapproved of and what she was being taught to
accept. Her treatment was a form of physcological
punishment. If the cause of the breakdown was the feeling
that MB did not have enough trust and faith and the
treatment was to emphasise that she was a back-sliding
sinner, then the treatment re-inforced the doubts and made
the condition worse.

Dr Cameron condemned the use of Open Heart Reports.
Adolescents must be allowed their own privacy and allowed
their own doubts about the adult world they were entering.
It was an intrusion into the mind of a teenager and totally
wrong. The wilful might play the game and lie but the
conscientious suffered.

What he knew of DR suggested that she was in need of
professional help to come to terms with what had happened to
her. Techi's crying every half hour was evidence of her
being extremely emotionally overwrought and instead of
proper support, she was punished.

He cited the failure of The Family to alert the police when
SM ran away as an example of wrong priorities - the safety
of the group had been judged to be more important than the
safety of the child.

As for MS, Dr Cameron said that it was baffling how The
Family could teach sexual freedom and then punish her for
it, even if she was then acting in breach of the rules. Her
rebellion manifested an underlying problem which her
shepherds failed to examine and, when a substantial cause of
her waywardness was declared to Mary Malaysia she ignored it
probably because, like so many, she refused to believe there
was a problem with child sex abuse in The Family. He
disapproved strongly of her isolation. He condemned the use
of silence restriction as outlandish and damaging through
its humiliation and its destruction of self-esteem. It
mattered not that it was carried out with love.

Of EG, Dr Cameron expressed concern were he to be in charge
because if he could not see anything wrong in his own early
sexual initiation, he could hardly give moral guidance to
the children who might be in his care.

The Tony Series were alarming for the form of public group
pressure that was being applied with the message that that
was what happened if one did not conform. The example of
having to choose between The Family and his child was
condemned as a misuse of faith and loyalty.

When cross-examined, Dr Cameron has spoke in terms similar
to Dr Heller about the mixed messages given in GN555. He put
it this way: the difficulty is that one gets a double
message from the letter which says in effect, "You can't go
around abusing children because it gets us into trouble but
we still believe in the Law of Love" The message is, "Don't
do it because it will get us into trouble but we know what
we said previously was perfectly OK." In other words it was
a pragmatic amendment not a fundamental one. He repeated
that it was not enough to say it was a mistake; it was
necessary to say it was fundamentally wrong.

He explained that the use of Open Heart Reports was not that
they were wrong in themselves but that it was an abuse of
the power and an abuse of the confessional.

It is important that I stress that the evidence of Dr Heller
and Dr Cameron was given before NT had completed her
evidence. She must have been aware of what was expected of
her.

Go To Part 18 . . .

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