I ESCAPED FROM A CULT

Erika Bornman has written a book about how she finally broke free after 13 years of alleged abuse at a Christian mission in KwaZulu-Natal

- PIETER VAN ZYL

SHE’LL never forget it: that pervasive feeling of anxiety as she lay in the dormitory late at night, too scared to get up to go to the toilet in case she got into trouble. And then the shame of waking up to discover she’d wet her bed again. What if the other girls saw?

At age 10, Erika Bornman lived in a constant state of terror.

By day she had to watch helplessly as her friends were beaten by their “spiritual leaders”.

Then at night there were the compulsory movie screenings where they were subjected to horrifying scenes of sinners suffering in hell.

This was Erika’s life for 13 years as a resident at KwaSizabantu (KSB), a mission school and settlement in rural KwaZulu-Natal.

She and her family moved there in the ’80s after her mother, Esther, fell under the spell of the mission’s charismatic leader, Erlo Stegen.

And that was the moment her life changed forever. In her new book, Mission of Malice: My Exodus from KwaSizabantu, Erika opens up about the hell she had to endure – the brainwashing, the beatings she witnessed and how she was sexually molested and then branded “a slut”.

“It haunted me for years,” Erika (50) writes in her book. “I felt I was constantly in trouble over something. They convinced me that I’m worthless; that there’s no good in me; that, like all women, I’m a seductress who leads men into temptation.”

She gestures toward the yellow daisies she planted at the front door of her cottage in Milnerton, Cape Town. Her beloved father, Daniel, a maths and science teacher, used to plant yellow daisies wherever they stayed.