It was a warm summer evening, about 6:00pm, on July 9, 1986 when my police search warrant team rolled down a Pickering driveway in a dusty procession of two unmarked police cars and one marked police car. The team consisted of myself, several Detectives from the Durham Regional Police Service, a Children’s Aid Society worker from Durham Region and a uniformed officer from one of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force’s downtown divisions. The air was heavy and smelled of dry hay. Heat bugs welcomed our arrival with a chorus of chirps and buzzes. It had been one month to the day that I became immersed in the world of religious cults and it was an investigation that would stay with me forever. We were preparing to enter a century old stone house that we had come to know as the scene of horrendous child abuse and torture under the guise of a religious cult.
Upon our arrival we found a young boy out front tending to a garden. We asked if his name was Nathaniel? without a word, he dropped the hoe he was using and got into the back seat of the car. His life of neglect, abuse and torture had come to an end. The names of the suspects and the victims have been changed but the identities of the investigators are real.