Call Me Evil, Let Me Go. Sarah Jones

and I knew Mum and Dad were worried about their influence on me. They were right, but the small voice inside me was always aware of what was right and wrong. It was just that at the time it was outweighed by my longing for fun. I started lying to them. I’d say I was staying overnight with a friend and instead went with a gang of about four or five to the woods and stayed up all night drinking and smoking. At about 6 a.m. the next morning we’d all return home bleary-eyed, smelling of fags and cider.

      One day as we lay in a clearing in the woods, we made a pact to steal trinkets from the gift shop in the village. It was a ridiculous and horribly dishonest thing to do, not least because the community was very small and everyone knew everyone else. I wanted to back out, but as none of us dared make the first move, I went along too and we all lifted some jewellery. Not surprisingly, a day later a policeman turned up at my home and demanded I hand back what I had taken. I went to my bedroom where I had hidden it all but cheekily decided to give him only half of my haul. Two days later he returned and asked for the rest. This time I handed everything over. My parents were mortified and I was lucky the shop didn’t press charges. Instead, Dad took me down to the police station and made me stand in front of the local senior officer, who gave me a severe talking-to. I was very submissive, felt thoroughly ashamed and said I would never do it again.

      Even at the time I could tell that my bad behaviour was a reaction to both what had happened at home with Roy and mixing with the wrong crowd. I felt awful about letting Dad down, as he was such a loving father and worked so hard for us. Because of all of this I never shoplifted again. Instead I started playing truant, which I am not proud of either. Mum didn’t notice anything when I went out in the morning at the right time in my school uniform but with a pair of jeans or a long skirt stuffed into my satchel. Once I was out of sight I changed direction and met some friends who were also skipping school and we would go off for the day. I even had the cheek to phone the school secretary and, pretending to be my mother, said I had a bad cold and managed to stay away for a week.

      Eventually Mum noticed that my school uniform wasn’t getting dirty and that I never had any homework. When she challenged me I admitted I had been skipping school. She was so worried about me that she gave up her part-time secretarial job so she could be at home to keep an eye on me. The problem was, I didn’t have either the incentive or the discipline to work, as I felt I could never perform as well as my high-achieving sister.

      Around this time I started having boyfriends and pretty soon I lost my virginity. I even tried sniffing glue. With a group of friends I went to our woodland haunt where I poured some Tippex correction fluid into a plastic bag and breathed in the fumes. Fortunately, I quickly realized it was a very dangerous thing to do and stopped immediately, although I experienced a brief ‘high’ followed by a crashing headache. I never tried it again nor touched any other drug, despite my attempt to look and behave like a hippie.

      I further disgraced myself when I was invited to a birthday party in a local hall by one of the sixth-form girls at school. I was much younger than nearly everyone else there and when the other guests started dancing I went round sipping their alcoholic drinks. It was a mad thing to do and I ended up being terribly sick in the ladies’ loo. My timing was terrible because there was a police raid just as I was throwing up. They were obviously looking for drugs and under-age drinkers, and when they found me in the toilets they rang my father. He came to pick me up but refused to say one word to me during the half-hour drive home. He didn’t have to. His look of disapproval was enough. Once we were home he said curtly, ‘I will speak to you in the morning, young lady.’ I went to bed feeling ill and stupid. Next morning Dad gave me a thorough telling-off. I knew my behaviour had been wrong and I felt ashamed that I had embarrassed my parents.

      Mum and Dad remained very worried about me, and although it was obvious that I was not mentally ill, after all they had gone through with Roy they couldn’t face another spell of adolescent bad behaviour and the resulting tension at home.

      Meanwhile Black’s Society of Christ’s Compassion was going from strength to strength and had grown to approximately 250 members. He wanted to expand further and so opened a new church building in the south of England, together with a school, in a derelict warehouse on the edge of town. The warehouse was bought with a combination of a large inheritance that Black had recently come into by way of a childless Scottish uncle and donations from nearly all of the church members (Black told his congregation that their gift was a way of thanking God for the blessing of faith). The school was called Tadford School, to tally with the new name that Black had chosen for the church – Tadford Charismatic Church.

      That July Mum and Dad decided to go to the church’s weekend conference. I didn’t want to go as it sounded much too boring but they refused to let me stay at home on my own, or go to a friend. They didn’t trust me. I made such a fuss that Mum asked Pastor Collins what she should do. He told her firmly to insist I come too and she told me I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I was so furious and upset that I cried throughout the five-hour drive down south to the church. We arrived late on Friday afternoon and pitched our tent in a temporary campsite in an area of wasteland near to the church, which Black used whenever there was a large weekend meeting. It was a grim place and I was still sulky, telling my parents I didn’t want to go to any of the Church meetings. Mum said that was OK.

      So the next morning I wondered off on my own and had a sneaky cigarette while they were praying. Later that day Mum said Ian Black insisted I come to the evening meeting in the church. I tried arguing but it was hopeless. I trailed along with them to the redeveloped warehouse dressed completely inappropriately. I had put my hippie period behind me and now sported a skimpy black top and very short miniskirt that just about covered my Union Jack knickers, which I had made myself. Inside the warehouse there was a garish floral carpet and row upon row of orange plastic chairs, which were filling up rapidly. There must have been at least three hundred people present. At one end there was a stage and I felt that perhaps we were all going to watch a performance. I was not far wrong.

      It was very hot and stuffy in the warehouse-cum-church and I felt very bored. I made the point, as young teenagers do, of making sure my parents knew I didn’t want to be there. I refused to stand up when everyone else did to pray loudly or sing. Nor did I join in. Instead I looked around and recognized a few faces from my visit to the Black’s previous church with Mum when I was much younger, but I didn’t acknowledge anyone. In total contrast to me, my parents were obviously captivated, as were most of the congregation. I must have stuck out like a sore thumb.

      We had to go through the same routine on Sunday evening, by which time I was so hot and uncomfortable that I suddenly decided I couldn’t take any more. Despite the fact that I was sitting in the middle of a long row and being stared at by Black I got up, squeezed my way through to the end and ran out towards our tent in the temporary campsite. Olivia, who was the wife of the senior pastor, Hugh Porter, ran after me and asked in a doom-laden, intimidating way whether I realized that if I didn’t return I would go to Hell. I was so shocked by her words that I started crying and then let her march me straight back into the church again. The entire congregation had seen how I behaved and my parents were obviously very embarrassed.

      Black then seized the moment by asking the congregation to pray for me and led the prayers himself. They were all about saving me, not letting me go to Hell and trying to cast out my ‘rebellious spirit’, which according to 1 Samuel 15:23 is called the sin of witchcraft. I had never been involved in any sort of witchcraft and found the whole thing terrifying. My parents were traumatized too. They knew that to have a daughter labelled as rebellious was a very serious stigma within the Church and kept their heads bowed in shame. I sat quietly next to them, hoping desperately that Black would focus on someone or something else, but when he finished the prayers he said there was someone in the congregation who should go to the new Church school and called out my name.

      I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and felt a mixture of shock, fury and embarrassment. Black then called me to the front and, with three hundred people’s eyes fixed on me, prayed over me yet again. He reeked of Brut aftershave and I really didn’t like him. The prayer meeting finished shortly afterwards and I asked my parents what was going on.

      Unbeknown to me, my fate had already been sealed the previous day. Mum and Dad had been taken to one side on Saturday