Exactly three years later, after his flight from the farm in Ruinerwold, where he was imprisoned for years with his brother and four sisters, he tells his story. He was twenty-five when he finally dared to take the leap to freedom. The hell he went through before that time, under the strong spiritual hand of father Gerrit Jan, he tells in the book We were, I am. Get out of Ruinerwold.
after the book haunted farm and the documentary series The Children of Ruinerwold, this is the third document about the Ruinerwold family, which became world news.
On Sunday evening, October 13, 2019, Israel van Dorsten will definitely jump over the ditch of the farm, never to return. Since August 2010, he and the five other children have been kept hidden by father, also known as Prime Father.
That night, three years ago, Israel is determined to seek real help this time. He wants an end to the situation. Shortly before, he’d managed to mentally pry himself out of his father’s oppressive, stifling world of faith with all its exhausting ghosts, good and bad. Something Israel had never dared before.
After all, rebellion against father was always punished immediately. Not only with hard blows, but also with three days outside, in the garden, not eating, and only praying and walking in circles. The evil spirit must be cleansed. But Dad is ill, due to a stroke in 2016, and is getting sicker. So he just turns out to be ‘a helpless man of flesh and blood’, Israel describes his disenchantment. No Messiah, no fighting for a better world, and defeating evil, evil spirits. Father’s spirit world turns out to be one big play, a fairy tale, he discovers.
And so that evening, three years ago, Israel crosses the ditch behind the farm again, towards the cafe in Ruinerwold, where he had been before. The bar owner calls in the police, a day later the police raid follows, and another day later the family is world news.
Israel van Dorsten describes in 300 pages how he grows up as a boy in a real hell, where father’s faith is preached from early in the morning until late at night. Sometimes there is no sleep for days. He is locked up in the house, whether in Hasselt, Zwartsluis, Meppel or Ruinerwold. He is unregistered as a child, is not allowed to go to school, remains without friends and no other family exists, except for the eight other children that make up the Van Dorsten family.
Father Gerrit Jan was God’s son on Earth, he had thought to himself, the great savior who will again provide for a new Garden of Eden. And praying is just as important as breathing. The outside world should above all be avoided. It mainly causes misery, because only bad energies come from there. This is how the children are impressed.