When I left Thessaloniki airport in a rented car, I only had a dot on the map. I hoped this would lead me to what I was looking for in Melissochori: a house where members of a secret Danish sect lived. A Danish woman who wished to remain anonymous, let’s call her Marie, lived there for a year and, upon returning to her country, decided to talk to two journalists from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten about her difficult experience there. They asked her to find this house on the map. And she did. A point on a street that has neither a name nor a number.

According to the navigation system, I was supposed to get there early in the morning. But he took me to a country road, it was raining and the car got stuck in the mud. It was already three in the morning when I finally got out of the parking lot. Two large gray single-family houses, almost joined together, seemed inhabited, but there was silence. I rang the bell, waiting for them to open, but nothing. I decided to go to the settlement in Melissochori. If Danes really lived in this house, then surely someone would know them. On my way to the village square, I stopped at Mike’s Grill. While I was waiting for them to cook me something to eat, I asked about the Danes. “They are good clients. Is something going on? Mike answered. Those at the adjacent tables were waiting for what I was going to say. Everyone, they told me later, knew them. I decided not to tell them about the complaints against them for the time being. Exorcism ceremonies and child abuse.

They told me that they first appeared in Melissochori in January 2019. The family that owns the grill met them on the first day. It was snowing and they were looking for firewood. They were taken to a gas station and they struck up a conversation. They had just moved in and there was not even electricity in the house. Since then, they often came to eat. “They were always kind, smiling and generous,” Mike, the grill owner, told us, referring to the couple who had four children. Other clients, however, remembered a different pair. They concluded that at least four families lived there permanently and that others came from time to time. Some for a few weeks, some for months. On September 19, more than fifty people came. They booked a whole campsite in Katerini for two weeks. “Now, how many families are left?” I asked them. “They left in October 2020. But a few months ago, some reappeared in the area,” I was told.

Former members report “exorcism” ceremonies and child abuse.

When they moved in, the house was in a terrible state. Trucks with furniture from Denmark arrived there (they even brought a swimming pool) and began repairs without outside help. “We were impressed that even the children worked. They were walking past the slate slabs, painting the house, and everyone was smiling.” None of the children went to school, they were told they were homeschooled. When they tell me the stories, we realize that the Danes have told many different stories about how they ended up in Greece, as well as about their past. Others were told that the child had a serious problem with bullying at school and wanted to stay abroad for a while. Others knew that they would open a business, others that they were renovating a house in order to resell it. When asked what they do for a living, some claimed to own the hotel, but did not give any information about its location. One woman said that he was a cosmetologist – he even had clients from the village – to others that he worked as a teacher in a children’s institution. One man claimed to be a copper and cocoa merchant, and to another he called himself a sommelier. Of course, from the first months, some began to notice behavior and details that aroused their suspicions. All children had Christian names. Young and old covered their bodies even when swimming in the pool. And during the day they heard them singing religious songs loudly. Some children confessed to their Greek friends that it was predetermined who they would marry. They did not watch TV or use the Internet. And there was one unbreakable rule: no one was allowed to photograph them. Most of the villagers considered the possibility that they belonged to some sect, but did not dare to ask them openly. Although it is probably impossible to tell them the truth. And that was because the reason they were there was because the sect leadership ordered them to hide.

Father’s House, the sect to which everyone who lived in this house belongs, was for many years an officially registered Christian organization with strict rules and dozens of members. It was founded in 1990 by Ruth Evans and her first husband, but they became famous when they bought a building in the center of Copenhagen, which had been occupied by young anarchists for many years. When police vacated the building in 2006 to hand it over to its new owners, protests ensued, which escalated into violent clashes that lasted several weeks. Ruth then spoke of “the battle between Satan and God” and how “God had great plans for their heresy.” Journalists began to closely follow the organization, and when various strange stories began to surface, Ruth announced that the organization would be disbanded. However, in 2016, it became known that the sect had continued its activities as usual all these years. Leadership was irritated. “We’re at war,” Ruth shouted at meetings. Marie participated in some of them and remembers that everyone left their cell phones outside the meeting places. They imposed on everyone the secrecy and discipline of orders. Some were ordered to leave Denmark and move to another country, in particular to the Czech Republic and Germany, and later to Greece.

Marie was one of those who were ordered to move to Greece. She was never told why this particular country was chosen. She had to go there by road, and at the border they would send her an address. And so it happened, but the address corresponded to the camp. It was hot, and having two children with her – the youngest was a few months old at the time – had a hard time. She was told to be patient because the leaders in Greece had not yet found a suitable home. The search took months and finally Marie moved to Melissochori at the beginning of 2019. There their life seemed idyllic. They walked in nature, cultivated the estate, played paintball together, her boys went to play football every day on a small field. However, this image, according to her, had nothing to do with what was happening behind closed doors.

“They locked my children and beat them”

The president of the community, Thanasis Moskopoulos, met with the children of the sect for the first time on the small football field of Melissochori. He caught up with them and soon met his parents. He remembers that he invited them to the party, they sat down at the same table and after they tried to dance the butcher, they talked a little about their plans. They wanted, they told him, to learn Greek because they intended to stay in Greece forever. They really started classes. At some point, Moskopoulos received an invitation to attend a reception at their home. She arrived with two other guests and they were celebrating her son’s graduation from the university. They had wine (only for guests) and various snacks they brought from Denmark. He didn’t notice anything strange. “It was a beautiful and well-maintained house,” he recalls. A few months later I learned that it was sold. They left without telling anyone.

Armed with new information that the house was their property, I reviewed the contracts. Two new elements appeared in them: the address of the permanent residence indicated by the Danish owner (a hotel in Bandholm, Denmark, which until 2019 belonged to Ruth’s new husband and was considered the base of the sect), as well as the name of the Greek lawyer who dealt with sales contracts: Giorgos Petrakis . I met him in the hope that he might know something else. “Although I do many foreign contracts, I remember this particular family well. They were friendly, had just returned from Africa, where they worked, and were looking for a big house somewhere outside the city to live with other families of friends. I was told that this is common in Denmark.” They looked at several houses until they settled on this one in Melissochori, but after a year and a half they contacted him again asking him to sell it. He urged them to wait because prices would probably go up, but they were in a hurry. Sold in October 2020. As it turned out later, there were already cracks inside the sect.

At least Marie made the decision to leave the sect while still in Greece. Years later, she began to see clearly that the leadership had absolute control over her life. When she arrived in Melissochori, she was informed that another family would take over the upbringing of her children. When they cried, he was not allowed to hug them, and many times he saw them isolated in a room. He heard them being beaten there, but did not react. Other former members complained that they also handcuffed adults if they felt they were “not walking the path of Christ.” If that didn’t work, they proceeded to the ceremony. One immobilized them, and the other screamed in their faces until the demon left their body. When Marie returned to Denmark, she again enrolled her child in school, but there the teacher noticed that he was behaving strangely. He was afraid of the slightest and did not adapt. The psychologists who conducted the examination realized that the child had been subjected to psychological and physical abuse, and Marie lost custody for some time. Now that the children have returned to her, she is considering legal action. He is already in contact with some of the 13 people – former members and relatives of members who have lost all contact with their own – who filed a formal complaint with the police at the end of February about the actions of the organization. Their lawyer, Erbil Kaya, told K that the authorities were only days away from launching an official investigation. Among the things that will now be investigated is what happened in the two gray mansions in Melissochori.