Before going further in my explanations, I will try to make you a personal biography so that you understand my context of life and how the violence that I suffered in my childhood and adolescence could have taken place.

 

I am a woman, I am in my thirties, and a mother, I have two daughters.

I was born in France and raised in a new Catholic community.

The new Catholic communities appeared in France in the 1960s, they came from the "charismatic renewal".

 

Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renouveau_charismatique_catholique

"The Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR), or Catholic Charismatic Movement, is a Catholic revival movement that emerged in the United States in the mid -1960s . It is geared towards personal experience with God , particularly through the Holy Spirit and their gifts to charisms (Greek word for gifts) This movement seeks to give a new approach to forms of evangelization and to renew traditional practices of rites and Catholic mysticism .

The movement is received rather favorably by the Catholic hierarchy, interested in its dynamism. "

 

"The European charismatic renewal is characterized in particular by the creation of communities, called" new communities "and prayer groups which allow to live both fraternal life and" Life in the Spirit ".

The charismatic renewal (catholic or not, moreover) is characterized by the regular holding (generally weekly) of charismatic prayer assemblies. These are separate from the liturgical celebration, and, mainly for this reason, never take place on Sunday.

The prayer assembly is the place par excellence for the expression of charisms ( glossolalia , healing , prophecy ).

In France, there has been since 1988 a federation of “1,200 prayer groups”, independent of the Communities, grouped together within the Pentecostal Fraternity. There were still 1,800 prayer groups in the late 1990s. "

 

A film on new communities was produced by Sarah Suco: " the dazzled "

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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In these communities, the principle is simple: to live the gospel like the first Christians, to gather in the same place of life priests, sisters, monks, families, singles ... and to live together, in community its " faith in God.

Some communities specialize in welcoming the disadvantaged, others in welcoming the disabled, others in prayer ... Each member shares his income, his daily life, the children are raised by the community, the times prayers are mainly done together in places of worship belonging to this community, evangelism outside, holiday camps organized by the community and to promote the image outside and thus bring new members ...

The meals are made in common, little time only reserved for the family circle, each member contributes either by working inside the community or outside (but it is minimal).

Each community has its own liturgical songs, its own speech, its rituals ... which strengthen the group spirit and cohesion.

At the head of these communities, there is the founder, the "shepherd" who directs everything and everyone and a hierarchical system of authority based on the reward for obedience or banishment if the member criticizes.

Each member makes vows before god and the founder, a bit like a church wedding, and as do monks or nuns in monasteries. He promises obedience (to God and the founder), poverty (he shares all his goods and income) and chastity (for a consecrated monk or sister) ...

The distant family, grandparents, cousins ​​... is kept apart unless they adhere to the precept and little contact and visits are allowed.

The involvement of members is daily, night and day, weekends and holidays included and few vacations are allowed.

Each community recognizes itself externally by a specific clothing (all in blue, or all in brown, all in white, the wearing of a specific cross, sandals ... the wearing of certain colors is prohibited) and wears an outfit of " ceremony "during masses or prayers and during celebrations and vows (white veil for women, shawl for men with distinctive signs depending on the rank occupied ...).

 

So I grew up in an environment like this, it's the only one I knew until adulthood, no adult around me questioning the precepts, I believed for a long time that this lifestyle was normal.

 

The omnipresent discourse was that we were right to live like this, society is bad, we have to be wary of it, people who refuse our lifestyle are bad ... We alone could save the world and we did good. Anyone saying the opposite came from the evil one, from the devil. Even the other communities were criticized, ours was the best.

 

I grew up with the precepts of the Catholic faith but our spiritual training was very specific based only on the personal teachings of the founder and his vision of things.

 

The adults around me blindly obeyed all of the founder's directives. The place of life, the moves to other houses in the community, our schooling, our health care, the readings to give us, our activities, our spiritual commitments, our choices of study, the use of money , the slightest ownership of an object, food, rest, family visits ... Almost every minute of our parents' life and our life was at the whim of the founder and every "misconduct or thought "was reported to him.

 

This community where I grew up had houses around the world, so I moved a lot. This helped prevent us from creating lasting ties with other people and played a large part in my isolation.

 

In this community, I was raped from the age of 2 to adulthood. These rapes were committed by the founder and his wife, other members, priests, my father and people outside our community to whom I was sold.

 

This succession of violence and rape is the cause of the creation of my dissociative disorder of complex identity.

To survive in this environment where I received no help and no protection, I had to "divide my being" into different parts to survive. Some parties confronting and enduring the violence, some parties having a "normal life" and "pretending that such violence did not exist".