Israel van Dorsten entered the village pub in the Dutch hamlet of Ruinerwold three years ago, wearing soaked and torn clothes. He told the suspicious café owner an unbelievable story: he had run away from his father’s farm, who held his children hostage in a self-made world of faith. In the book We were, I am Israel now describes in detail how he managed to free himself from his father’s mental stranglehold.
You know part of the crazy history from the documentary series The children of Ruinerwold, which aired on Canvas last year. Father Gerrit-Jan van Dorsten, who saw himself as a messiah and himself Prime Father had never registered his youngest six children, so they officially did not exist, and involved them in his fiery battle once morest “evil spirits.” In We were, I am Israel testifies how he often had to act as a medium for spirits. In the role of such a ghost, he had endless conversations with his father and sometimes mightn’t be himself for months. He also describes how one day he discovers that there is such a thing as WiFi, and then that he can connect his e-reader to the internet.
Israel Van Dorsten: “My father was a little slower with new technologies, something you often see in older people. That allowed me to outsmart him and secretly go online without him noticing. First I downloaded e-books, which allowed me to read other things than the books my father prescribed for us. Then I looked up all sorts of new information. Later I was able to make my first contacts with the outside world online.”
The internet was a life preserver in a way?
Van Dorsten: “I have often thought: if this had happened to me thirty years earlier, I probably would have come out of it very differently.
“I am regularly asked whether, when I explored the outside world, I often bumped into things that I did not know, but nothing was really new to me: I had already seen everything digitally or read regarding it. But of course it is a completely different experience to experience something in real life.”
Your father used to spend a lot of time at his computer. He spread his faith via MySpace, built his own version of Wikipedia and gave lectures via Facebook.
Van Dorsten: “He always proclaimed that computers and the internet were instruments of evil spirits, intended to ruin the world. At the same time, he himself used the internet to achieve his goal, which was to captivate the whole world. Ironically, because of this, his plan fell apart, and he slowly lost his influence and control over me. In that sense, he was right that the internet is an instrument of evil spirits (laughs).”
Speaking of evil spirits: at one point your father allowed the spirit of American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to enter your body.
Van Dorsten: “It sounds so unbelievable that it’s almost funny. It wasn’t just a joke: reality and fantasy started to mix completely in our house. My father lived in that crazy mix and he dragged us into it.”
You yourself gained a lot of knowledge online, but what your father taught you was also very varied: you had to be able to maintain the vegetable garden and take care of the animals, but also be able to program and even renovate the house.
Van Dorsten: “He lived under the delusion that he would one day rule the world, so he believed that we should know and be able to do as much as possible. Moreover, he firmly believed that society would one day collapse and all services would disappear, so he wanted to make us self-sufficient. His great imagination had the advantage that we might learn a lot.
“The periods in which we worked together on the farm were great moments. For a moment we were distracted from all the misery in our daily lives. I think it is important to also reflect on the positive things, and to appreciate those periods.”
So that you don’t have to see your youth as wasted time?
Van Dorsten: “Exactly. I also think that nothing in life really has to be a waste. In retrospect, you can regard everything as a valuable and instructive experience.”
I was shocked by the many nasty passages in your book. For example, you had to pull yourself a tooth to end the pain. After all, you mightn’t go to the dentist, because you didn’t officially exist.
Van Dorsten: “We were lucky that none of us ever became seriously ill, because I don’t think my father would have gone to the hospital in that case. He had probably thought that with God’s help everything might be solved. When he became seriously ill himself, he never sought a doctor.”
Due to his poor medical condition, he might not be sentenced in the end. Josef, his faithful disciple and handyman who supported you financially, has been sentenced to three years in prison.
Van Dorsten: “It feels unfair that Josef was sentenced to prison and my father was not, but everyone is responsible for their own behaviour.
“Josef is quite a nice man, and he practiced his craft as a furniture maker with great love, but he has been sucked into my father’s crazy world of ideas. He still stands behind him and is convinced that his prison sentence is the result of a conspiracy by senior government officials. If he had expressed remorse and admitted that he had been manipulated by my father, I might have judged him differently, but now I’m fine with him being incarcerated.”
In your book you describe how your father sometimes forced you to get angry with Josef, and how incredibly difficult that was for you.
Van Dorsten: “At those moments I look back with mixed feelings. It is very annoying that I have done things that I did not support, but at the same time they have been turning points. Because I had to do things that went once morest what I wanted, I experienced a conflict within myself. Those conflicting feelings were eye openers. I thought: this can’t last, something has to change here. It also shows how great my father’s mental influence was on me at those moments.”
Physically you might leave the farm, but mentally you were imprisoned.
Van Dorsten: “Yes, and that was sometimes difficult to explain in my first digital contacts with the social workers and police officers. Mental imprisonment is not so well recognized.
“It is a theme that continues to fascinate me: how can someone get such a grip on someone else mentally? With us, the situation was of course extreme, but mental imprisonment is a widespread phenomenon in society.”
I now understand why you chose to study sociology.
Van Dorsten: “Yes, it is a very interesting study. I can find out how social phenomena arise, why some people isolate themselves from society, and how cults see the light of day.
“I also really like student life.”
After 25 years of captivity you now experience great freedom. Isn’t it overwhelming at times?
Van Dorsten: “Absolutely, there is so much I want to do, but I can only tackle one thing at a time. I have already experienced a lot of beautiful things in the past three years, and soon I will be going on holiday outside Europe for the first time.
“In any case, it is very nice that I can now make my own choices and find out for myself which things I like. It also gradually helps me to find out who I am and who I actually want to be.”
Did you go back to Ruinerwold?
Van Dorsten: “Coincidentally, I gave a lecture there last month. The room was packed and everyone present was a bit tense, but it turned out to be a beautiful evening and I’m glad I was able to tell my story to the villagers.
“I also received an invitation from the new owner of the farm. Maybe I will visit him sometime, that would actually be good for my processing process.”
Hearing you talk so candidly, I get the impression that it’s pretty smooth.
Van Dorsten: “Writing my book gave me the feeling that I might control my past, and that I am getting a better grip on my youth. And talking a lot also helps: there were the conversations with the counselors, the interviews for the documentary and also the renewed contact with my brothers and sisters, who went through the same mental processes and had doubts. That is why I give everyone the message: be open and keep talking to others.”
Israel van Dorsten, ‘We were, I am’, Pluim Publishers
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