For the Love of My Children

A tale of survival and endurance, For The Love Of My Children is the account of Caroline Green's struggle to escape from a sinister and oppressive Christian church. Believing they were acting in her best interests, when Caroline was 14, her parents enrolled her in a small and isolated church school that was run by a Christian sect many miles from her home in the heart of Pembrokeshire. For the next four years Caroline remained at this school, and for the fourteen after that she remained -- effectively imprisoned -- as part of the church. Over these formative years she was continually brainwashed. A strong and feisty character, for many years Caroline refused to be cowed, but whenever she disobeyed -- even in the smallest way -- she was humiliated and ostracised by the rest of the group. Told what to do, what to think, where she could go, what she could wear and, as the years passed, how to raise her children, her spirit was gradually crushed. At the age of eighteen she was married to the son of one of the church's founders. In the years that followed she had three children in quick succession.
She watched in increasing maternal agony as each of her children were beaten and force-fed by leaders in attempts to smash their will and instil early obedience. Torn between her fear of what God would do to her and her family if they left and her desperate attempts to protect her children, Caroline wanted to leave on many occasions. Her growing sense of outrage reached its peak when in 1997 she witnessed her nine-year-old son Andrew being brutally beaten with a piece of wood, as punishment for a schoolboy prank. After this she knew she had to get out. Later that year, with just GBP5 in her pocket, she fled with her children -- leaving her husband who refused to join them behind. The after effects, both financial and emotional, have been tough, but Caroline's defiant spirit is helping her through. Now, in this incredible memoir, Caroline gives the full and devastating account of what she and her children endured, how they escaped and how they rebuilt their lives.