The day my only daughter, Juliet, got married was always going to be emotional.
As a proud mother I’d imagined the months of excited preparations, the elation of seeing my little girl as a radiant bride, the happy tears I’d shed.
And yes, I did weep, but they were not tears of joy but of horror and sadness.
It was February 2021 and I only discovered Juliet was getting married the morning of the ceremony. I didn’t find out from her – or any member of my family. Instead, it was a friend who broke the news by phone.
By this point I’d been estranged from Juliet, 21, and my five sons for five years.
However, my despair went beyond the inevitable sorrow that I was no longer in contact with my beautiful children. What I feared was that Juliet’s marriage would see her further tied to a strict and secretive religious community – the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church – that had all but destroyed me.
For some women, marriage in this church could be like a living death. In my case, it meant 26 years of marital rape and coercive control, before I finally left, in my mid-40s, in 2013.
For those who have never heard of it, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church (PBCC) is a Christian sect established in England in the early 19th century.
Sometimes known as the Exclusive Brethren, believers emphasise the importance of living according to the doctrines of the bible. There are more than 50,000 members worldwide, with around 18,000 living in the UK.
The PBCC doesn’t recruit followers, rather families are encouraged to have large numbers of children to carry it on. I was a fourth-generation member.
It’s not a closed-off community, in the sense that followers live in a compound. PBCC live in cities and villages, they may have jobs, run businesses and their children may attend mainstream schools.
In practice, however, there is little freedom.
I grew up in the north of England being told I must accept God’s will – as communicated by the Brethren rulers, respected male elders.
I only discovered my daughter Juliet was getting married the morning of the ceremony (Picture posed by a model)
I feared that Juliet’s marriage would see her further tied to a strict and secretive religious community – the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church – that had all but destroyed me
God’s will included no trousers for women, and that it was sinful to cut off your hair. Contraception was only allowed in special circumstances.
We were not allowed to own pets, read novels, go to the cinema, watch television or listen to the radio. These were banned for being tools of the devil, although more likely because they’d have perhaps opened our eyes to the normal world.
Similarly, we were not allowed to mix with those outside the Church – known as ‘worldlies’ – who we were brought up to believe were ruled by Satan.
A key PBCC tenet is to be ready at all times for the Rapture – the moment when Jesus comes to collect the Brethren and take them up to heaven.
The worldlies, meanwhile, would be left behind to drown, burn or suffocate.
It wasn’t all gloom. I look back at my childhood and remember happy times: family picnics, days on the beach in our pretty seaside town, playing with other Brethren children. My parents loved us and each other.
But there was a great deal of confusion. At school, to avoid the worldlies we had to sit separately at snack time. We had to go home for our lunch. We didn’t attend assembly. We stood out for our old-fashioned clothes.
But worst of all, we were not allowed to mix with those who had been expelled from the church.
When I was growing up, the Brethren practised an extreme kind of separation. That meant anyone who didn’t comply with the rules had to be cut off in order to maintain the purity of the fellowship.
People you loved could disappear at any moment, never to be seen again.
When my aunt and her family were cast out – after they went against Brethren rules by buying a camper van – I found my grandmother had cut her own daughter out of every family photo.
To leave was to lose everyone you loved and to break the hearts of those you left behind. While as a teenager, I might sometimes daydream about a different future, I felt there was no option but to embrace the life that had been mapped out for me as an obedient wife and mother.
I met my husband at a three-day Brethren gathering in the south of England. I was 17 and working in my dad’s photocopying business.
Kevin was a year older than me. Over the weekend we kept on making eye contact. Daringly, he even winked at me. Just before I left, we managed to get a few minutes alone. We vowed to write to each other and he gave me a £10 note on which he wrote: ‘Love You, Always and Forever! Kevin xx.’ I thought this was love.
The following year, we married in a simple ceremony at the Brethren meeting room. Because of strict rules around relationships, we had only met in person six times.
While I was impatient to kiss my husband for the first time, I hoped we would take sex slowly.
Instead, when we went to my childhood bedroom to change into our going away clothes, he tore at my wedding gown, groping my breast so hard it hurt. I was shocked and frightened – but it was also my duty to obey my husband.
Then he picked me up and almost threw me on to my single bed. I pleaded with him to stop. But in that almost animal-like state, he seemed to see and feel nothing but his own pent-up desires.
I was pregnant often during my marriage, the first time within weeks of the wedding, becoming a mother when I was just 19 (Picture posed by a model)
To leave the Brethren was to lose everyone you loved and to break the hearts of those you left behind (Picture posed by a model)
He only stopped when my mother knocked on the door, wondering why we were taking so long. I was left wondering: who was this man? Who have I married?
It quickly became clear his obsession with sex went beyond the libido of a normal young man. He could never seem to get enough; first thing in the morning, at lunchtime, as soon as he came home from work and then last thing at night. Nothing seemed to satisfy him.
Soon, I no longer felt like a person. I felt like an object to be used for my husband’s pleasure. I was sore and bruised. I was also utterly miserable.
Even when I was pregnant, he wanted sex until the day I gave birth. And I was pregnant often, the first time within weeks of getting married, becoming a mother when I was just 19.
My children – first Oliver, then Bradley and Kyle within the space of four years – brought much-needed joy into my life.
But even family days out could be marred by Kevin’s obsession with sex. One Saturday afternoon, he drove us to a deserted playground.
As the boys played on the swings, Kevin ordered me to bend over a picnic table.
When I refused he snarled, calling me a bitch.
To punish me, he drove us home dangerously fast, knowing the fact the children were in the car would add to my terror. He liked scaring me; showing me who was in control. I learned not to deny him.
People often ask me why I didn’t confide in anyone about the abuse I suffered. But there was no one I could tell. The Brethren discouraged close friendships, perhaps because they were afraid it would undermine their power. Parents were also discouraged from interfering in their children’s marriages and girls were brought up not to question their husbands.
I learnt to smile and nod and be compliant, to keep my tears private. Now I wonder how many Brethren wives had to tolerate husbands like Kevin.
The constant pregnancies are difficult enough – the isolation, the subjugation – but now I can see how cruel the whole system was: the lack of sex education, a ban on masturbation that made boys feel guilty about normal urges, the apparently Biblically-sanctioned control husbands had over their wives, and the culture of silence over what happened in the marital bedroom.
All these things were cruel and mentally destructive for both men and women, and disastrous for the health of many marriages, but divorce was not permitted in the Brethren at that time.
My family grew. Lincoln was followed by Juliet two years later. But soon after her birth, I began to break. I struggled to get out of bed, to look after the children and spent hours crying.
When I went to the doctor I had to be careful not to mention my unhappy marriage or Brethren life, as it would be considered a betrayal.
Diagnosed with depression, I was prescribed antidepressants, but just as I was beginning to feel I could cope, I became pregnant again. The medication had to stop. Nine months later my sixth child, Aaron, was born.
There were brief periods of calm between Kevin and me, but his sexual demands never stopped.
One night in 2006, I woke to find him holding one hand tightly over my nose and mouth, while he tried to have sex with me.
I was terrified; was he trying to kill me?
I tried to push him off but it was impossible. Kevin didn’t even seem to see me. Eventually he let me breathe. Closing my eyes tight I just waited for it all to stop.
The next morning he apologised as if it had been nothing: ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’
But he had. After dropping the children at school I went to my parents’ house.
In their kitchen, I could hear someone screaming – it was only as my dad pleaded with me to stop that I realised it was me.
When I told them what Kevin had done, Mum held me as I wept and promised my father would use his authority to make things right.
Dad summoned Kevin and a ‘priestly meeting’ was set up with two Brethren elders. For the next six weeks, Kevin met with them twice a week while I stayed with my parents.
I wasn’t party to the meetings, but from my knowledge of how these things worked they would have interrogated him about his sexual habits. And when they were satisfied Kevin was sorry and full of shame, they would have told him he had received the Lord’s forgiveness.
The priests did not speak to me. It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to involve the police. I returned home – and Kevin returned to the marital bed.
Unsurprisingly, things didn’t get better. Kevin seemed constantly angry and would even lash out at the children with his fists.
In 2012, I broke down again. I couldn’t move or speak and was rushed to hospital with a suspected stroke. It turned out to be psychological and I was referred to a psychiatrist who, as part of my treatment, sent me to self-esteem classes.
Learning how to have the strength to walk away from unhealthy situations, I came to see it was not only my marriage that was crushing me, but also the Brethren way of life.
By the following year, suicide felt like the only way out.
Standing on the pier one morning, I stared into the water below and wondered how long it would take me to drown. But then, a voice inside my head told me I could choose a different life.
I realised I had to leave – even if it meant never seeing my family again.
When I told Kevin, my parents and my children what I had decided they all begged me not to go. The Brethren elders ordered Kevin to leave the house, to give me space until I came to my senses.
I didn’t want to come to my senses, however. I was ready to take my first steps into the outside world.
I stayed at home with the children, but swapped my long, dowdy skirts for trendy jeans and pretty tops. I bought make-up, jewellery, an iPhone and a television.
Yet it was an untenable situation. First Kyle, then aged 21, moved out. ‘I can’t live here any more,’ he told me when I found him packing his belongings, his face red. ‘I can’t bear to watch my mum give herself to the world and the Devil. It just hurts too much.’
I hadn’t expected my three eldest sons to accept my decision, but for those first days and weeks I had held on to a hope – a naive hope – that all my children would somehow stay with me.
I pleaded with him not to go, but I knew then there was nothing I could do. Bradley left three weeks later, followed by Oliver.
As part of divorce proceedings I was granted full custody of Lincoln, 15, Juliet, 13, and Aaron, 11, until they reached 16. But I had to let them remain in the Brethren – and the following year I was formally cast out. While the children would continue living with me, they would have to live as separately as possible.
As part of divorce proceedings I was granted full custody of Lincoln, 15, Juliet, 13, and Aaron, 11, until they reached 16. But I had to let them remain in the Brethren (Picture posed by a model)
They weren’t even allowed to eat with me. The first time it happened, I refused to leave the kitchen table; they picked up their plates and went to sit in the living room, leaving me alone with hot tears rolling down my cheeks.
Soon after Juliet turned 16, she and Lincoln went to live with my parents. When she came to get her things, I begged her to stay. She said she was sorry but it was too hard trying to live two lives. For weeks afterwards I slept in her bedroom every night, hugging her pillow and drinking in the fading scent of her. It was like she had died.
The only time I’ve seen her since was in a chemist’s six years ago. I went to hug her, but she recoiled and ran out of the shop.
By then I’d heard three of my sons were married and I had grandchildren that I would never meet. My parents don’t speak to me either – not even my mum, who I know loves and misses me but dares not go against her beliefs.
When Aaron said, aged 15, he wanted to go and live with relatives too, knowing how hard it must be for him to live with an outcast, I let him go.
Yet I was filled with grief; I’d finally lost the battle to save any of my children from the Brethren. Since 2017, none of them have answered my emails, calls or letters.
It’s been a hard journey since then, but I chose this life knowing what the cost would be and the price has been too high to give up now.
Today, I’m having therapy, I’m in a relationship with a man who treats me with respect, I work as a housekeeper for a lovely family and I enjoy the freedom I imagined for myself as a teenager.
I continue to send my children birthday cards every year; I will never give up hope that at least one of them will come back to me – my door will always be open.
For now, I can only hope that my sons will be good to their wives, and that the man Juliet married is a far better husband to her than her father ever was to me.
Maria Compton is a pseudonym. All names have been changed.
Adapted from Out of Faith: A Mother, A Sect, And a Journey to Freedom by Maria Compton (£20, Blink Publishing) © Maria Compton 2024. To order a copy for £18 (Offer valid to 28/08/24; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
The cover of Out of Faith: A Mother, A Sect, And a Journey to Freedom by Maria Compton
The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church says that its members work and live with people from all walks of life, that it does not limit communication between families and ex-members, and that husbands do not have control over their wives.
A PBCC spokesperson said: ‘Our Church is driven by care and compassion. The upsetting experiences described do not reflect the beliefs or practices of our Church, nor the experiences of our 18,000 independent members across the UK.
‘We treat the safety and wellbeing of our members with the utmost importance and have robust safeguarding policies and practices in place to protect our community. We see any form of abuse as utterly abhorrent and strongly encourage anyone to report any allegations to the police.
‘In line with our Christian beliefs, we are also committed to playing an active role in the communities where our members live and work. Indicative of this commitment, many members actively support a wealth of charitable activities to help those in need.
‘As a Church guided by Christian faith, we extend an enduring offer of care and support.’
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