(From a second-generation member of the Family International)

By Jude Osborn, 31 (a.k.a Kevin Kanwayte)

There’s no doubt that I had a good, positive upbringing as a young child. I had regular school, lots (and lots) of friends, went witnessing, sang on television utterly off key, played with toys, completely unraveled entire rolls of toilet paper with my friends. You know, just normal kid’s stuff.

Then between the age of 7 and 8 my immediate family left The Family to pursue a secular life. As ironic as it may seem to some people, I suddenly found myself surrounded by abusive situations. Having the best parents in the world, I was personally never subject to anything remotely abusive as a child, but my heart goes out to these childhood friends of mine. For example:

My best friend was thrown around the room and punched by his father three or four times a week.

Another one of my friends was regularly sexually abused by his stepfather, who also seemed to beat his wife on the weekends.

Another one of my friends was probably the most depressed looking 8-year-old I’ve ever met, because his father had pretty much abandoned him and his mother, and his mother hardly gave him the time of day.

Yet another one of my friends was severely disciplined by his parents for the smallest wrong-doings. For example, he once missed getting any Christmas presents and was grounded in his room for a month for doing poorly on a single school subject. We hardly ever saw the kid, but I guess he was my friend when he was doing well at school.

Those are just the situations I was personally aware of as a kid. I have no idea how many others were hurt and abused, but I’m sure there were more.

So let’s say I’m feeling all crusader-like and want to bring justice upon the heads of the perpetrators of these terrible abuses. What do I do? I know! Maybe I’ll start a witch hunt and have their families thrown into prison, including the abused kids themselves and their own children. Or maybe I’ll sit on my ass complaining about it on web sites until I convince the abused kids to leave their current lives and move to the Island of Phuket (pronounced…oh, never mind). Or here’s a good one: Maybe I’ll get a gun and a bunch of scary knives and go kill some random person from my childhood. That’ll teach’em!

Or maybe it would be really difficult to enact any plan at all, because I don’t even know where these people are these days, and honestly, it’s none of my business. I’ve never seen such abuses in the Family, and the abuses I mentioned took place outside the Family in an average, secular, middle-class neighborhood somewhere in Southern Texas. Is the entire US state of Texas a deviant, ritualistic cult? Was George W. Bush their cult leader? Do I need to bring down the financial system of the state of Texas in order to put a stop to abuse? Do I have a friggen cactus growing out of my friggen ear? Let’s be real here.

After a few years we returned to the Family, where we rediscovered a haven of love, security, and education. So I think you can understand why I’m so happy my children will grow up in this exemplary environment. I’ve never seen anything in the Family that comes close to the abuse I saw in that one small, almost random neighborhood. If I thought my son was ever in danger I’d leave the Family quicker than you can say “bungling apostate.”

But, nope, I’m not going anywhere, and I have no time for complaining about someone else’s childhood. Why? Because tonight my son and I are going to take a big bucket of Lego and build the biggest alien robot in the galaxy. Maybe we’ll call it “The Bungling Crusader.”

Jude is a second generation member of the Family International.