Delores’ Story

The following comes from Delores M. An old friend of mine who lived with and was part of RJ Testerman’s cult for seven years. Delores was introduced to the group by Bill, just like many other women.  She was Bill’s second wife after Susan. Bill now lives in the communal house in San Francisco and is still actively recruiting for the group on social media. I have been told by a recent ex-member that he brings in more women to recruiting events than anyone else. Sometimes as many as three a week.

It is RJ Testerman’s cult who make it possible for Bill to get away with having hurt so many women. Every woman I met who has dated Bill for any extended time has suffered some sort of violence at his hands. In the group these women are told that Bill was responding to their “call for heavy pressure.” Everyone living there supports this viewpoint and will push out and shut down anyone who disagrees.

Rachel, RJ, Susan, Wendy, Francoise and Sheri. The Welcomed Consensus left to right starting in the back row. These are RJ’s women.

The women of the Welcomed Consensus are Bill’s advocates and protectors, Sheri is his handler, the one who calls and gives him direction on how to “play” the women he is courting. Of course they all the women of the Welcomed Consensus must make Bill’s behavior okay or they couldn’t justify RJ’s treatment of them. I myself advocated for this viewpoint, even with Delores. I never knew the extent of the abuse, though this no excuse.

Before you continue please be warned the following could be triggering. Delores is just one of many who have stories of RJ Testerman’s group, but she is the first to offer her story here. Please understand that this kind of thing is extremely difficult to write. The very action makes you relive those moments and stirs the mind to remember long-forgotten emotions. We all take our difficulties and let time and distance do its magic, smooth it over so we can continue to function day-to-day. It is a human survival technique, but don’t be fooled. Every suppressed emotion will be felt eventually, whether you want it or not.

Bill and I

Bill lived in San Francisco and would take the train to see me in Sacramento. I thought this was totally romantic and I took it as a sign of real love. Our first date consisted of 2 six-packs of beer and a bottle of Jim Beam. These weekends of drunken sex lasted for six weeks and I considered this a serious relationship by now. But then he called me from the airport in Portland, Oregon, to tell me that he was choosing me as the one because he had just spent the weekend fucking some woman he had met online and he knew it was not what he wanted.

I was repulsed and thrilled at the same time. Even though I was deeply hurt by his actions and his unashamed honesty about it, I told him that I was so happy to be chosen by him because I really liked him. I had been treated like shit by many men before but Bill`s treatment was an all-time low for me. That was when I really had the psychic break from reality; not like I’d ever had a firm grip. I was brought up in a magic cloud of my mother’s delusions. I was constantly adjusting my boundaries of acceptability to stay in my relationship with Bill. It was easier than breaking it off because I did not know that I had a choice.

I started to introduce Bill to my friends. It felt like everything that came out of his mouth had a sexual slant to it, but I thought that I was just being jealous. This was new behavior I was internalizing, ignoring my own intuition.  I thought “maybe this is what all guys are like” and I had just never noticed it before. It was like I had been asleep my whole life. I did not mention any of this to Bill, of course, because I had learned to appear unaffected by life. I never let it show when I was hurt, scared, in need, or confused. 

So, after the online sex debacle, I believed we would settle down into a functional relationship. By now it was March and we were making plans to move in together. I would move back to San Francisco and we would find a place together. Bill slept on the office floor of the machine shop where he worked. I did all the looking and found us a sublet on Mission Street.

The plan was that I would  move to SF on June 1^st under his one condition: that I would take a course taught by an organization called the Welcomed Consensus. Bill said that if we were to live together he wanted us to have an elevated form of communication which he believed was only available by taking this introductory course called “Common Sensuality.”  I had no idea what I was supposed to learn at the 2-day course. 

They started by describing their philosophy of living, none of which seemed to be original concepts. It was all borrowed information. The information given in the course basically boils down to explain all about female resistance to pleasure. It is a two-day course held in someone’s house in San Francisco. I felt like a fish that just got dumped out of its bowl. The Welcomed Consensus and their community knew that I was Bill’s new woman. I felt scrutinized throughout the weekend (a feeling that never really stopped until I left).

Bill had previously gotten kicked out of the commune run by the Welcomed Consensus for being an egotistical asshole. His wife Susan stayed. He was now trying desperately to crawl back into the good graces of RJ who seemed to be the Guru of the bunch. RJ is very charming and has an answer for everything. Bill’s now ex-wife Susan was pregnant with RJ’s baby at the time and I felt the need to impress these people for Bill’s sake.

In the Common Sensuality Course they talked to us about sensuality vs. sexuality, resistance, personal responsibility, telling the truth without anger, call & response, group living, deliberate orgasm, and jealousy. They said a woman gets jealous when she is holding out and knows she could be more fun and that jealousy is ultimately a turn-on, which I totally disagreed with. They also claim that anger is being unwilling to let go of resentment or find your partner “right.”

At the end of the first day, we were given homework. I returned the next morning and was glad it was going to be over that day, but when I realized that we had to read the homework out loud, I almost left. I ended up not leaving because my relationship with Bill was riding on the assimilation of this information. 

The homework was masturbation for pleasurable effect, but is it not always pleasurable to masturbate? They explained that our current orgasms were crotch sneezes compared to what they were offering. They explained the bell-shaped curve orgasm in comparison to the up and over type.  I was mortified to talk about what I had done in front of total strangers and it went against every fiber in my being, but I just wanted Bill to love me. Not only was I embarrassed, I thought that I was not deserving of sexual pleasure. 

After the course was over, I went home to Bill who was completely drunk already. He wanted to hear everything that RJ had said to me. What I did not know then but do now, is that Bill spent most of our relationship trying to get “back into” the cult leaders’ good graces. 

So now we were living together in a sublet at 18^th & Mission. It was the beginning of June, 2001. We had been living together for less than two weeks when the physical abuse started. We had gone to a party at his shop and a girl named Megan was there.  Bill had been telling me about Megan and how he had this huge crush on her, and they always met in the morning at coffee. He was always coming on to women at the coffee spot. 

We came  home from the party and were pretty much totally wasted. Bill started  to go on about how Megan was the perfect woman with blond hair and blue eyes, and how badly he wanted to fuck her. I got pissed. There I was just having moved in with this person and he is talking about how he wants to fuck this woman Megan.  He was angry that I was angry. He said, “Didn’t you learn in the Common Sense course that jealousy was a turn on?” He slapped me and threw me down on the bed then started to pinch my nipples so hard that I started screaming. Then he left and I did not see him for two days. 

We lived in the Mission street apartment for three months.  It was almost like an initiation phase of the relationship and I got worn out. All my instincts were turned upside down and I forgot what appropriate was. Then we moved to the outer Sunset District, only eight blocks from the beach. It was quieter and I thought things would change since it was our first “real place,” but all Bill could do was talk about how it reminded him of when he and Susan, his ex-wife, first moved in together. Instead of this being a fun time for us to build a life together, it became just another situation that reminded him of what he had lost. The abuse was really starting to ramp up now: physical, emotional and verbal. 

Everyone remembers September 11, 2001, for the Twin Tower attacks, but it was also the first time Bill had ever punched me.  In fact, he broke my nose. I had continued to take courses with the Welcomed Consensus, participated in and ran Benchmarks, and volunteered with Free the Need. All the information I was learning from Welcomed Consensus seemed good, but Bill would use this information to punish me and to tell me how I was not doing it right and that I just wanted to be a fucking hold-out bitch. All of our social time was spent with the cult. I got a job but spent every waking moment wondering what Bill was doing (what woman he was doing god knows what with, really) and living like it would be different the next time, that he would treat me better. 

So by now, Bill had moved onto his next “crush” and wanted to fix this woman’s scooter. I went out and had drinks with her while he worked on it (keep your enemies closer, right?). She and I got  drunk and then went back for the scooter, and Bill and I drove home. He was mad and started in on me about what a jealous bitch I was again. We had driven to the front of our apartment building when he stopped the car suddenly. We sat for a moment as he berated me, “You’re a jealous hold-out bitch, you’re angry because you aren’t being as much fun as her.” Then he punched me in the side of the face so hard that my immediate response was to punch him back. Bad idea. He then grabbed me by the back of my head and started smashing my face into the dashboard until the blood was running down my face into my clothes and down my chest. I was screaming stop for what seemed like hours. I ran into the apartment and he drove off and I did not see him for five days. 

Once I realized that he was not going to come home, it became the most horrifying, confusing, and terrifying time of my life. My first thought was not to call  the police, but how to make it better with Bill. The abuse escalated and continued for the next six years, but instead of leaving I could only think about how I would act differently the next time. How I could be prettier, sexier, smarter, funnier, less angry, less jealous…I would be anything but who I was.

The Welcomed Consensus claims everything they do is for a higher purpose. Sex, specifically DOing is an answer to all your problems.

All this happened, and then I married him. I believed all the Welcomed Consensus’ rhetoric about how he was just responding to my anger and that I knew I could be more fun. Basically, I took all the responsibility for the abuse. 

In 2003, Bill and I started running BenchMarks, which is the Welcomed Consensus’ way to lure people into their community.  They do this by lavishing them with affection and promising a superior sex life. It is just manipulation, but people are so hungry for attention that they will believe anything. I wanted Bill’s approval so badly that I was willing to go along with everything the WC was telling us to do every step of the way. I took courses with the WC, giving them all my extra money, and then lying to people about what a superior sex life I was having because of our elevated communication. All the while getting reamed (AKA hexed) by RJ when he felt like being mean. I lived with the Welcomed Consensus for four years and took courses and was a part of their community for seven. I even made a DVD that they still sell.

The Welcomed Consensus is still selling Delores’ video

You may be asking yourself why I did not leave. Good question. I may not have a satisfactory answer for you.

At the time, I did not call the Welcomed Consensus a cult for the same reason I did not call Bill`s abuse Domestic Violence. I could not see clearly. I thought they were not a cult because I seemed to be free to leave whenever I wanted. They would tell me I could go whenever I wanted, in fact they would “push” me away whenever I disagreed with anything. They had a way of digging into my self-doubt and I would stay and work to get their approval, much like Bill. 

By  the time I moved away and left Bill, I had so much self-doubt that I had almost forgotten how to care for myself. When I was indoctrinated, I believed that I had life all wrong, in fact I was all wrong (unless I was doing what they wanted me to do) or how else could they have sold me and countless others their courses? So, I had it wrong, but they were making me right, but then I moved out and I was right again, or wait was I wrong again, and they were right? etc.

It has taken me years to get their words out of my head. Still, to this day when I hear the word “agreement”, I tense up because it was usually in reference to some way I am acting which makes me out of agreement which make me that hold-out bitch that Bill always accused me of being.

I am still working on recovering from this time of my life. Truthfully, before I decided to write this I thought I was more recovered. I found in the writing that there is still a lot of confusion and pain about what happened back then with the Welcomed Consensus and Bill. When I read Christine’s post about the language and how it is used to control people, I realized that I am still being triggered by these words. When I hear them, I am back trying to figure out what I’ve done wrong and what punishment awaits me.

Writing this was hard but I am glad wrote this because this experience will always be a part of me. I want you to understand that I have overcome the crippling doubt that comes with domestic abuse through the support of professionals and the love of good friends who helped me back into the land of the living. I hope if you have been touched by group that this helps you to heal.

Delores M.

Finally…

Take care of yourselves and if you are interested in posting your story or just would like support finishing it for yourself, please reach out and I will help however I can. If you have ever, or are now, suffering from any kind of abuse, emotional or physical, here is a resource. Check it out, you deserve better.

TheHotline.org

Thank for reading!

Christine