In 1999, Sarah Green escaped her mother’s cult, the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps. She still thinks about those she left behind. 1harrisonhill reports
Photo: Courtesy of the subject At around midnight, Sarah Green got out of bed and crept from the house. A full moon illuminated her path to the wood stack, where she’d hidden a backpack in preparation for her escape. The air was cold and smelled of the piñon pines that stretched in every direction. Rushing past the flower beds, Sarah glanced back at the shacks and scattered trailers on the compound she’d called home for the last year.
Soon he appeared. They walked quietly to a stone wall at the edge of the compound. They threw their bags over and climbed to the other side, gathering themselves among the chaparral and mesquite.Before Sarah’s mother was the General, she was Lila Carter, herself a young woman on the run. The Greens pursued their new faith with the same intensity they’d brought to the Bear Tribe. Following Sarah’s birth in 1972 and the birth of her younger brother, Josh, the family went on a series of harrowing mission trips to far-flung locations: Panama, Aruba, Nicaragua.
Clockwise from upper left: Jim, Josh, Lila, and Sarah Green, circa 1976. Photo: Courtesy of the subject. The Greens relocated to an old single-family house off a noisy freeway in downtown Sacramento. They bought three adjacent homes, or “barracks,” that shared a backyard. About 50 followers ultimately moved to “Fort Freedom,” as Lila called the compound. Sarah lived with her parents in the main house, or “the Citadel.” In sixth grade, Lila pulled her from school.
When we think of cult leaders, we almost always think of men — and for good reason: Of the most notorious cults in American history, almost none have been run by women. From Charles Manson to Jim Jones, it is male fanatics who usually run the show. For Christian groups, the Bible has served as a helpful justification for these patriarchal structures. As 1 Timothy 2:12 commands, “I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
Sarah wasn’t the only member to anger Deborah. Maura Schmierer, an early convert in her mid-30s, found herself a frequent object of the General’s wrath. “I was always in trouble because my demons wouldn’t come out,” she told me. Other members screamed, vomited, and writhed on the floor when Deborah exorcised them, but Maura could never summon such a vigorous response.
Deborah was furious. Rather than allow such blasphemy, she called for the compound’s destruction. According to several former followers, Sarah and other members sneaked back on Deborah’s orders, climbing over the chain-link fence near the old pomegranate tree. They mauled the house with sledgehammers, tearing up floors, severing beams, and punching through Sheetrock.In June 1989, the group fled Sacramento, eventually settling in Klamath Falls, Oregon.
Another three years would pass before Sarah finally got pregnant. By then, the group had relocated to Berino, New Mexico, a small farming town just north of the Mexico border. Sarah gave birth in an old brick schoolhouse that ACMTC called home. The child, a boy, arrived early; to Sarah, he looked like a baby born in famine. In a rare visit to the hospital, medical staff insisted the infant was too small to leave.
At the time, Sarah thought she was doing the right thing. The birth mother wanted to give up the child, didn’t she? But Sarah also felt she had no choice, and that she and her boys would be punished if she disobeyed Deborah. “I was sent on a mission,” she recalls. “You do it, you do it right, or you’re fucked for life.”
What would it mean to leave the group behind? The question had preoccupied Sarah for years, but now it took on new urgency. The most difficult consideration was the children. Sarah loved being a mom and wanted desperately to give her kids a better life. Outside of ACMTC, she figured, she could get them proper health care and an education. But she was also terrified of subjecting them to the kind of insecurity that would inevitably come with escape.
That night, she read her kids stories and squeezed them tight. She wrote them each a letter, telling them she loved them and would return to them soon. Then she got in bed herself. She felt overcome with dread and anticipation, fear and excitement. Though she worked constantly, Sarah was enjoying her freedom. She ate whatever she wanted. She wore whatever she wanted. She went to art galleries, and to the park, and to the library. At the grocery store, she bought processed foods like cup ramen, almond Hershey’s bars, and powdered mini-doughnuts. She saw a play called Metamorphoses.
The story we like to tell about transformation is one of easy binaries. I once was lost but now am found / was blind but now I see. But change is more frequently a disorienting and even painful process. Though Sarah was glad to have left ACMTC, her mother’s teachings were still within her. Sometimes Deborah mailed her religious tracts to distribute, and though Sarah discarded most of them, she also left a few around town, thinking perhaps they could help someone.
According to claims later made in court, in the years following Sarah’s departure, Deborah tortured the girl physically, emotionally, and sexually. She forced her to perform hard labor and beat her with a whip that a detective compared to a cat-o’-nine-tails. Denied sufficient nutrition, the girl developed rickets. Her softening bones grew visibly misshapen.
In 2003, Sarah had another baby. She moved to New York; her relationship with the children’s father ended soon after. She worked at an engineering firm, at a café, and as a movie extra while also helping with friends’ births. Years went by. When she heard from her mother, the messages scorched with judgment. “STOP BEHAVING AS A SPOILED CHILD BEFORE GOD,” Deborah wrote in a 2012 email. “REALIZE YOU ARE A SINNER AND REPENT BEFORE YOU SPEND ETERNITY IN HELL.
In August 2017, Deborah was arrested in the middle of a Sunday-morning service. She was charged with a horror show of crimes: two counts of kidnapping, eight counts of child abuse, three counts of evidence tampering, and four counts of criminal sexual penetration of a child under 13.
Walking into the courtroom on the day of her testimony, Sarah thought she might vomit. When she came to the witness stand, it took her a moment to recognize the skeletal woman before her. Deborah’s hair, once thick and vibrant brown, had turned gray and stringy. Her cat-green eyes were now vacant. She looked not at Sarah but just beyond her. She’s gone, Sarah thought. The realization steeled her.
Sarah was overwhelmed. She’d wondered about the girl’s involvement in the trial, but because she had been told to remain isolated from other witnesses, she’d assumed she wouldn’t see her. Now, however, they were finally going to meet. Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes, Sarah responded. Give her my number. She and the girl hadn’t had any communication in 16 years.
For weeks prior, Sarah had had terrible nightmares about ACMTC. Now, at last, the dreams stopped. “I slept for the first time in years,” she told me. As for the girl, now 23, she and Sarah have stayed in touch since the trial. Sarah helped her reconnect with her birth mother. The girl and her mother are now in frequent contact. “All my family did was try to destroy her soul, break her down, give her nothing but scars, destroy her as a human,” says Sarah. “And all these years later, it took one little email to find her mom. It’s fucking awesome.
When I ask Sarah if the past feels alive to her, she offers an emphatic “no.” Nevertheless, she mentions the lingering shame she feels at having failed not just to retrieve her children but also, surprisingly, in her conduct as a daughter. “Everything I did to get away, I did to save my own soul,” she says. “But you still have this” — and here she pauses, as if struggling to articulate a lifetime of longing — “Oh man.
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