(Continued from) 

 

Charles Manson and Zeena have set their full attention on Anna now.  She was living within their reach, had nowhere to run, and was still standing between them and their unquestioning rule over Peter. 

They knew exactly what was going on in Peter’s house.  He had recently lost his and Anna’s business, as well as two businesses through undermining partners.  It cost him a vast amount of money, so that Anna had to work harder from home to patch their tattered finances.  Yet, the Mansons sick fixation on “the gift of the house” grew by the day. 

They knew Peter became a hopeless, gutless drunkard and weakling, who was carried by Anna’s strong character. 

Still, no one knew him as the secret aggressor and terrible wife beating abuser that he really was. 

Finally, Peter, “the house,” and the children too, were within their greedy grasp. 

 

Were it not for Anna’s steadfast resistance, those three tyrants would have murdered her and the boys’ characters just as the Mansons did with Peter since he was a child.  Yet, despite or maybe because of Peter’s lack of husbandry and fatherly interest and care, through the years, she disciplined her boys fairly, took them to pursue their interests such as swimming, boxing, wrestling, and athletics — and persistently taught them to be honest, fair, independent, and responsible.  She engaged them in gardening, gave them chores to keep, took them to museums, the zoo, and every other place of education.  She always bought them educational toys since they were little, and she taught them to earn their pocket money, as she decided she would mould them into accountable, level-headed young men, and give them every possible opportunity to make the most of their lives here on earth. 

ANNA RECEIVED JESUS AND THE WHOLE SCENE CHANGED 

It is said, if you put a frog in hot water, it would jump out immediately.  Then again, if you put it in cold water and heat the pot slowly, it would get used to the rising temperature and slowly cook to death without realizing its life is in danger.  This was happening to Anna.  After Peter, Charles, and Zeena had been cooking her for sixteen years like that unwary frog, Anna jumped out of the pot.  By the grace of God, she realized that although she did her best to keep soul and body together through the years, Someone had to be in control of this great mess.  She began to constantly call out to God.  She prayed, “If there is really a God, I want to know that I know that I know You are real.  Please reveal Yourself to me.  I am at the end of everything in this life...” 

She began to go to church where the boys have been attending Sunday School since they were mere toddlers.  Because she was yoked to so much impenetrable darkness, it didn’t better the circumstances of her life.  One Sunday afternoon, during one of his tyrannical rages, Peter forced her into the bedroom and locked the door.  As usual, the fight was about knowing what is going on in his life and quitting the booze.  Infuriated, she then took a chair and flung it through the window.  This alerted him to unlock the door — it also alerted the neighbors, who rushed to came and investigate. 

Shame engulfed Anna.  She decided this was enough.  One cannot cast out darkness with darkness.  Peter was accusing her of “jealousy” all the time, instead of turning from his destructive behavior. The Mansons were accusing her of “witchcraft and control” because she refused their abuse.  She was at her whit’s end for a long time, but this was the turning point.

 

She decided, as it proved impossible to change their demolition of her life in any way, she would work on herself.  She decided to begin by seeking help for her so-called “jealousy.”  In fact, they so treason and trauma bonded her, she completely overlooked the fact that, if she was really “jealous,” “controlling,” and “begrudged” Peter to work in the business, she would not have helped and supported him to set up and run their first business; tolerated any of their constant abuse; their violence and alcoholism, provocation and interference, false promises, and all Peter’s dreadful violations of her trust, help, and support. 

Thus on Monday, the next day, she made an appointment to visit a female psychologist.  She sobbed all the while through the session; asking help for her “jealousy that is driving Peter away.” 

The women leaned back in her chair once she understood the situation.  She had a faint frown on her face.  It was plain that she did not ‘diagnose’ the problem as “Anna’s jealousy.”  So, she answered with concern, “These are big problems both of you must work on.  You cannot be the only guilty party.  Your husband must join you for counseling so we can tackle these issues one by one and work through them.  Without his participation, we will accomplish nothing.” 

 

When she told Peter what the psychologist said, he smoothly replied without a flicker of emotion, “I cannot even talk to you.  How will I be able to talk to a stranger?” 

“Well,” she said, straightening her shoulders, “your abuse cannot continue for just one more day.  You seem to derive pleasure from my defiance of your destruction on our lives and I am only harming myself and the boys by fighting you.  At least, I now understand that it would be useless for me to take the blame for everything.  Now, if you do not join me for counseling that can bring lasting peace to our home, I am surely going to divorce you.” 

He suddenly leaned forward in his chair.  “I am not harming or destroying you; I love you,” he whispered.  But she gave him a look of unbelief and clenched her jaw in determination. “Okay,” he then relented, “but I cannot go for counseling.  I will turn around and make it all right.  Give me another chance and you will see, this time, I mean what I say.” 

She suspected that he was simply manipulating her again.  She folded her arms gently and said quietly, “You have broken nearly all your promises until now.  I cannot trust you anymore.” 

He kept his cool; looking at her intensely.  “That was then.  This is now.  Come on, I will work with you on this one.” 

When she still did not fall for his promises, he got a pathetic look in his eyes; something unusual for Peter.  She did not recognize it as just another neat piece of exploitation because he now found himself between the proverbial rock and a hard place.  So, after a few moments of deliberation, she shrugged her shoulders.  She really could not face the fighting anymore.  She accepted his proposal. 

Without any confessions; any explanations or apologies, Peter turned on the brakes. He still boozed, but less than before.  He came home on time in the afternoons.  He began to treat her and the boys with “compassion.”  He seemed so sincere she could not believe that this was just another control trick to get her down and trample her underfoot.

 

Anna began to believe God heard and finally answered her.  She eventually got the opportunity to hear the True Gospel and to accept the Lord Jesus Christ into her heart, soul (or mind,) and life, (1 Ths. 5:23.) She was Scripturally born again and baptized in water, (Jn. 1:12-14; 3:3-5.)  She now had only one goal: to live her entire life for Christ. 

However, Peter made no attempt to seek God.  He kept quiet about everything and stayed content in his comfort zone. 

From that moment when she realized she needed to sincerely accept Jesus to turn it all around, Anna changed. 

Instead of warring in the physical and emotional realms, she turned her full attention to Jesus and His Word, the Bible.  She took on the battle for the salvation of Peter’s soul by praying ceaselessly for him and all her other loved ones.  On every occasion, she began to tell everyone that God had delivered her from darkness. 

Anna also took an immovable stand against Peter’s alcohol and other abuse. 

She made it plain that Jesus Is the Only Answer to their problems.  He would soon have to make a decision to turn from all his sin, smoking and the abuse of alcohol too, and serve the Lord Jesus Christ with her, or she would really and unalterably file for divorce.  Light and darkness cannot share a home.  He was remained quiet but immovable. 

She knew she could lose him permanently if he did not take her seriously this time, but she counted freedom from filth, violence, lies, and oppression above her co-dependent love for Peter. 

Her decision stood like a lighthouse in this lifelong storm: Peter could not have her and the children, and his bottle and secret life, filled with all sorts of vulgarity, any longer. 

Very soon, he would have to make a choice. 

She was now squarely at the crossroad of her life with Peter. 

 

Additionally, Anna rebuked Zeena when she incessantly took the Lord’s Name in vain.  When Manson boasted how he stole stuff at work, and harassed people by letting down their tires, or damaging their vehicles when they irritated him, [which is a character trait of a “malignant narcissist,”] Anna deemed such talk in front of the boys and in her home harmful and told him as gently as possible what she thought about such sin and childishness. 

As Anna learnt God’s Moral commandments in the Bible, she realized how serious God deemed theft and those who participate in crime.  Unceremonially, she gave everything Manson had stolen and brought into her home back to him.  She could never anticipate how much that angered her in-laws, and how much they hated her for her righteousness in Christ. 

Then, only one year after Anna gave her life to the Lord, it happened. 

Charles, with the help of Zeena, created an opportunity to set in motion his long-planned revenge for taking Zeena with them on holiday without him knowing where they went and how long they would be gone.  

THE TWO BOYS WERE THE CATALYST, WHICH LED TO THEIR FULL-OUT INFANTICIDE 

Nine years after Peter and Anna moved into “the house,” another argument ensued over another of the boys’ ‘gross violations’ of their grandparents’ “property” and privacy.  The children actually had the ‘audacity’ to play with a new ball on their grandparent’s perfect lawn while the grandparents were having supper. 

Surprisingly, it wasn’t Manson but Zeena herself, who chased the boys away unceremonially. 

Anna, not allowing anyone to mess with her boys, once again ‘dared’ to confront the issue with the children.  She went to the cottage where they were still at the table and asked decently, “What is the problem with the kids this time?”

Mad Manson literally spat food in her face as he shouted with unrestrained anger, “If I had my way, I would be out of here tomorrow before I murdered someone!” He pointed accusingly at his wife, “But she doesn’t want to!” 

“That’s just sickening!” Anna reacted angrily. “We are talking about your only two grandkids playing on a silly old lawn!”  [Later, Manson and Zeena twisted Anna’s shock and dismay into an “unprovoked attack,” while they “were quietly having supper, screaming and swearing at them at the top of their voice and chasing them violently off the property!”] 

Without realizing what lay beneath Charles’ life-threatening screams, a few days later, Anna went over to the cottage when he came home from work.  The kitchen door was open, but she stood outside and asked to settle the matter in a peaceful manner.  Without a single word, true to his gospel, “God forgives, I don’t,” he grabbed a cup of water that was sitting on the sink, flung the water forcibly in her face, and slammed the door between them. 

This rude man’s extreme insult and humiliation again constituted contempt and disregard for Anna’s personhood, her earnest attempt to make peace with him for the ‘millionth’ time, and her protective love for her children. 

As Peter was never there to defend her and the children, or to try to resolve conflict between them and his parents, the next day as Charles arrived home, she reacted by flinging a cup of water in his face while he was getting out his vehicle. 

This pushed Manson beyond murder-mode. 

No one on earth, and to his mind, in heaven either, dared to defy and reprimand him this way.

He would surely “have murdered someone,” (meaning her,) if she did not escape into the house on time and kept the children as far away from them as possible, while praying behind closed doors. 

THEY INTENTIONALLY ABANDONED THEIR RIGHT OF HABITATIO, PETER, AND THEIR GRANDCHILDREN 

It soon became apparent that Charles Manson had convinced Zeena to move out “before he murdered someone.”  They immediately proceeded by buying a double story house in cash.  They began to pack up everything they could find — even goods that belonged to Peter and Anna. 

Three months later, still refusing to speak a single word to Peter or Anna, they moved out. 

They did not say goodbye, told Peter, Anna, or the boys where they were going, (Anna had to follow their furniture truck to find out,) or attempted to pay their one-third share of the water and electricity bill for the month. 

Peter and Anna firmly believed his parents had ‘abandoned their cottage.’  The couple was still entrenched in the notion that Manson and his wife ‘bought’ the cottage by ‘giving Peter the house.’ 

Just as importantly, Charles and Zeena never tried to tell Peter what they intended to do with ‘the cottage.’  They never spoke to Peter to disclose any intention to return to ‘the cottage’ some day, whether they wanted Peter to ‘buy the cottage’ from them, or whether they planned to supposedly “give” ‘the cottage’ to him ‘as well.’ 

Bizarrely, Charles and Zeena moved just around the corner. 

Still, they stubbornly refused to speak a word to the couple — or to move a finger to find a solution to, (as Anna and the boys experienced it,) this heartbreaking and humiliating saga.  Peter again supposedly had no opinion about it all. 

Then, surprisingly, Peter, who usually remained passive about his parents’ mindless fits of rage, called his mother at work on his cell phone, as he knew Charles would refuse to speak to him.  He said he spent all his airtime trying to talk sense to her, but to no avail.  Without a slither of leniency, Charles and Zeena rejected Peter and made him and Anna believe that they had dumped ‘the cottage’ and ‘their lifelong servitude’ on his shoulders.  And so, they were their captives for the rest of their lives, as they would never be able to sell the property without their consent. 

The thought of the parents abandoning “the cottage” did not enter Peter and Anna’s minds before it happened, as they did not know that such a nasty thing was possible! 

During this entire agony, Peter and Anna could honestly say, they never asked the parents to either ‘give’ them ‘the house,’ or to sell them ‘the house’ in exchange for ‘the cottage.’  Neither was it their idea to burden the property with a servitude.  Nothing of this rotten situation was their idea. 

Anna could sincerely declare, she never looked for trouble with Charles and Zeena.  However, as the parents never stopped picking on her and the children, she had to defend her boys, herself, and her and Peter’s life in general. 

By no means did Peter or Anna choose any of the constant fighting, or this sadistic rejection.  They certainly did not choose their own endless humiliation, the emotional and physical disruption of the two boys especially, or the parents’ persistent enmity.  They never wanted “the cottage,” and it was never their desire to see it stand empty. 

While Peter did not express his feelings, Anna was devastated.  She never realized she loved those two abusers so much.  No matter what they did, she was still willing to forgive them.  For a long time, she could not stop crying.  What they did and were still doing was all so unnecessary.  She could not understand how any parent could do such terrible things to their children and grandchildren.  She wanted them to love her in return.  To be honest and sincere with her was she was with them.  She always wanted to be their daughter.  Instead, they always hated her and merely tolerated her for Peter’s sake.  No amount of doing good to them could change any of that. 

LIFE-WRECKING SLANDER SURFACED EVERYWHERE! 

Shortly afterwards, disturbing reports began to reach Peter and Anna from far and wide.  Charles and Zeena were bringing them in disrepute to separate them from everyone they knew and loved.  Everyone who knew Charles and Zeena either told Peter and Anna what his parents were saying behind their backs, or they joined Charles and Zeena in shouting abuse at them; believing Charles and Zeena’s incredible lies and twisting of the truth! 

Even the sales representative, who did Anna and the parents’ window blinds a few years earlier, became so infuriated by Charles and Zeena’s sad stories, she came to reprimand Peter and Anna because Peter “assaulted his father,” “stole their ‘house,’ and chased them away!”  Besides the outright lies they told, in reality, “the cottage” was simply never mentioned.  They made it sound as if Peter and Anna “stole” the parents’ “house” by chucking them out, chasing them away, and taking over their ‘house’ or the only dwelling place they had.  Strangely, nobody asked were did Peter and his family live on the property for the past nine years if the parents lived in “the house?”  Apparently, the cottage that Charles and Zeena exchanged for “the house,” simply disappeared.

However, it would have been impossible to either ‘steal the house’ or ‘the cottage,’ as at that stage, Peter and Anna legally owned the property and the house for the past nine years.  Concerning the “chasing away,” Peter and Anna then still firmly believed that the parents’ legal right of habitatio was completely inalienable except by death!  So, if those mind-blowing lies could have been true, why did the parents not go to the police for protection?  Amazingly, this was another question no one thought to ask! 

Peter’s blonde cousin, (whom Charles called “The White Rat,”) visited Anna during the first few months after Charles and Zeena abandoned the cottage.  She had been Anna’s friend for a long time, (or so Anna thought,) shared membership of the same church as Anna, and knew the truth about everything.  She came to relate all the slanderous lies against them personally.  She said she “felt it her duty to tell Anna everything,” as she “could not stand visiting Anna, knowing what her in-laws were saying behind her back.” 

Weirdly, “The White Rat” then suddenly turned her back on Peter and Anna to become the parents’ greatest ally.  Through all the years that followed, Charles’ “The White Rat” and her family remained the chief supporters of the parents’ fanatical abuse, though they were all very familiar with the truth of the situation.  The rat even incited her son, daughter-in-law, daughters, and all the other family to reject Peter and Anna, actually swearing at them and accusing them of “persecuting and rejecting his loving parents to steal their house, while owing everything Peter and Anna have, even ‘their lavish lifestyle,’ to them, those poor rejected parents!” 

 

The only motive Peter and Anna could find for his family’s devilish attacks and accusations that assisted Charles and Zeena in isolating them from everyone, was that they were supporting them to get rid of Peter and his sons, the heirs of everything else his parents possessed!  According to Peter’s cousin Leon and his ex wife Thea, Zeena had so many investments and funds that paid out on her retirement, they did not know what to do with all that money! 

Apparently, in later years, Charles and Zeena - and the rat and all their other accomplices, also had the ability to make themselves forget that Peter, although he blundered three businesses, with the help and support of Anna, had been directing his own company for years.  By the grace of God, and through hard work and personal skills, Peter and Anna had enough of their own, hard-earned money to buy everything they needed.  Additionally, Anna had been saving and investing their well-deserved money to build their finances in investments Charles, Zeena, Charles’ White Rat and her clan, as well as all their other co-conspirators, could never imagine. 

 

¨ Still, according to ‘The White Rat’ and her family, and their other ‘flying monkeys’ or character murderers, who went about recklessly spreading Charles and Zeena’s slander against Peter and Anna as if they were immune to law suits, said they have had not only stolen ‘the house,’ but he had also stolen money for “three businesses” from his parents. 

(As far as Anna knew, Peter never asked or received a sent from them to invest in their original business in which they worked together, his two separate partnerships that he bungled, or in the fourth business that they now manage and which supports them very well.  In fact, it would have been impossible to steal money from Charles and Zeena, as they always boasted how they invested all their money on fixed deposit to accumulate as much interest as possible.) 

¨ Even business associates turned away from Peter for “attacking his father and breaking his toes.” 

(A few years before the Mansons began this slanderous crusade, Charles broke his toes by walking into the bathroom’s doorframe while the couple was at a school fete one Saturday morning.  That Peter was attending a school function was an extremely rare occasion and a marvel for the children.  Yet, although Zeena could have taken Charles to hospital all by herself, she manipulated Peter away from his family that day to sit hours at the hospital caring for Charles!) 

¨ Charles spread the old-old news that “Peter was not his son.” 

(At last, Anna realized why his mother never called Charles “Peter’s father,” or taught Peter to call him “dad.”  Charles had been abusing and rejecting Peter since he was a baby.  Peter remained silent, but Anna now suspected the reason was probably his mother’s unfaithfulness with Charles’ brother Dirk, whom she allegedly dated before she married Charles.  Anna took Charles’ cruel declaration that “Peter was not his child” as confirmation that Zeena really “knew what it was like to be not wanted” by her parents-in-law, as Charles’ sister, aunt Hannah, said that day when Peter announced their marriage plans to them.  Charles was actually abusing Peter to ‘get back’ at his unfaithful wife, and Zeena never defended her son for fear of being exposed.  When Anna, during the early years in this family, confronted Charles by telling him how deeply his sadistic name-calling and filthy phrases humiliated and hurt ‘his son,’ he callously laughed, “Don’t kid yourself.  Where there’s no sense there’s no feeling!”  At a later time, when Anna got the opportunity to speak to Zeena about it, she declared, “J***s man, how can you lie like that? You made up this story against us.  Charles said, ‘Peter is not my son as long as you sit on his head!’” 

However, after the couple’s crucifixion “because they stole the house” had been raging ceaselessly for 23 years, one of Peter’s elder cousins, Hannah, (named after Aunt Hannah,) eventually displayed some backbone.  She secretly told Peter and Anna to their faces that Charles “always denied that Peter was his child,” but intensified this allegation during their full-blown slander-campaign against Peter and Anna.  Cousin Hannah alleged, “Peter was only a few months old when a huge argument erupted in the family.”  She was twelve years old at the time, and allegedly, she “distinctly heard Peter’s aunt Hannah tell Charles’ mother (Peter’s granny) that Charles denied fathering Zeena’s child.” 

For all intended purposes, Peter and Anna had no alternative but to accept this declaration from the mouth of that very bad man himself, which was also confirmed by Peter’s cousin, as truth. 

By his own unrelenting words, Charles was really not Peter’s biological father.  This awful realization finally gave Peter the opportunity to make some sense of the lifelong abuse, which he had to endure under the control of this cruel person.  All this murderous persecution was never about Peter, Anna, or the children playing ball on the lawn.  The fact that Zeena allegedly gave birth to an illegitimate child, clarified the motive behind the man’s insane abuse of Peter in childhood and in adulthood, as well as his abuse of Peter’s defying wife and their growing children.  The core of the quarrel was not really the straightforward Anna, the so-called ‘passive’ Peter, or the boys.  It had always been a smoldering feud between Peter’s mother and her husband, which they projected onto Peter and his family — a terrible secret, which Zeena would cover at any cost, and most probably will take with her to the grave! 

¨ Furthermore, Charles’ “White Rat” told her uncle Charles and aunty Zeena, “Anna is such a troublemaker, our pastor chased Anna away and forbade her to come back to church.”  “How wonderful,” Charles and Zeena told everyone else, “even the pastor knows what a trouble-making witch that evil woman is!” 

(Continue)

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