As a member of a secretive religious sect, Christine Wallach lived in a protected, insular world - until she and her family were cast out. She tells Lindsay Jennings how living on the 'outside' tore her family apart... and how she finally found peace.

CHRISTINE Wallach stared at her reflection in disbelief. For the first time in 44 years, the long greying hair which had hung limply to her waist had been cut, transformed into a glossy shoulder-length bob.

Her eyes shone with a mixture of rebellion and spiritual awakening.

The woman in the mirror was confident, the image of a successful businesswoman. She was far removed from the wife and mother who had spent most of her life in the arms of a religious sect, where haircuts and make-up were banned.

"When I saw all my hair on the floor, I thought 'what have I done'? My heart turned over," says Christine, who lives near Bedale, North Yorkshire. "But I knew I wanted a complete transformation. I needed to feel as if I was in control of my life."

Christine and husband Andrew were born into the Exclusive Brethren, a Christian group founded in the 19th century which follows a strict code of conduct based on the Bible.

The group, which has 15,000 members in Britain, considers radios, televisions, fictional books and the Internet to be evil communications.

All women wear headscarves and ribbons as a symbol of their subservience to men. Members are banned from eating with people from the outside, dubbed "worldly people".

But, for all its rigidity, it is a life where members feel protected. Although the Brethren live in the wider community, they employ each other in family businesses and marry within their circle.

Christine's great-grandparents had been members of the Brethren and she grew up in North London, where she had a happy childhood. She met Andrew through the Brethren and the pair were married in 1967 and had seven children - including Gail, 31, Neil, 30, Rob, 28, Marianne, 27, and Lucy, 25.

They enjoyed their family-centred way of life, until Neil and Rob hit their late teens. The pair had already had their knuckles rapped once, having sneaked off to the cinema, which was banned, but one Saturday night in July 1994, Christine found they had crept out of the house again.

"They came in at 4am and they were very drunk. They'd been at the snooker club, and I knew there was no way I could get them to a 6am meeting," she says. "We felt so ashamed that we kept them in and none of us went."

Questions were asked as to why the family had not attended the meeting and word soon got round. But if Christine thought she could write the incident off, she was mistaken.

"On the Tuesday we were told we were to be 'shut up', which meant we were suspended until they investigated matters," she says. "The girls left the house and went to live with family and friends. It was their own decision, but one based on Brethren teaching, that you leave a house where there is sin.

"Rob desperately wanted to go back and kept apologising, but they were absolutely brutal to him. He thought he was going to go to hell. The boys just cracked and went completely to pieces."

Eventually, the boys and Andrew were ex-communicated, although the Brethren hoped to persuade Christine to return and kept her on a temporary suspension.

Once cast out, Andrew lost his job in the Brethren family medical supplies business and the couple found themselves with no money, and plunged into a world without friends or family. When Christine saw her former 'sisters' in their headscarves at her local supermarket, they looked straight through her.

"I used to go up to them and say hello," she says, defiantly. "But they would just blank me, which hurt terribly."

Neil, who blamed himself for the family's situation, turned to drugs and became hooked on heroin, spending the next three years in and out of prison.

The two eldest girls, who Christine does not want to name for fear of harming relations with them, opted to stay with the Brethren. Although her other girls came back to her, they went out of control, drinking and staying out late as they relished their new-found freedom.

"It was like being taken from Iceland and dropped in the Sahara," says Christine. "Life was very, very difficult. I went from extreme naivety to being more streetwise than most people ever get."

Her lowest point came just before Neil sought help for his drug addiction.

The couple had been driving him around London to buy his drugs, so he would not have to steal to feed his habit, but it had left them in dire financial straits.

"I found myself in my bedroom packing my bags when Andrew found me and he was devastated," she says. "I don't know if I would have gone back to them... I probably would have gone round the block a few times."

Another painful occasion was when an elder called to say that if she wanted to see her mother again, she should go to hospital immediately.

"My father said to me 'this is your fault, she's dying of a broken heart'," she says, her eyes filling with tears. "I think it was a bit of knee-jerk reaction really... I just thanked her for being my mum."

At that, Christine reaches for an album containing photographs of Brethren members and of their meeting houses. The families are pictured standing together, unsmiling, the men in open-necked shirts, the women with their long hair and long skirts.

Christine is standing with her family and is wearing a tartan dress, her collar buttoned up to her neck and the hem skimming her ankles. It is 12 years since the photograph was taken, but today she looks ten years younger, a warm, homely figure, in a red jumper and knee-length navy blue skirt. "I look totally different now, don't I?" she smiles.

The family finally turned a corner with Christine's success in her business selling books for a publishing group. Andrew, 59, found supervisory work with a timber firm in North Yorkshire and the couple moved to Newton-le-Willows, near Bedale, in 2001, a place they had always loved. Christine, 61, now works for a company marketing kitchen tools and the couple have recently started their own business making home-cooked frozen meals, supplying holiday lets and local residents.

Neil is free from drugs and the couple's daughter, Gail, has recently had a baby girl, Erin.

Christine has even started going to church. Ironically, she says she never felt close to God when she was with the Brethren. "I have a relationship with God now, whereas I probably didn't before, because the international leader was God," she says.

It took a while before the family finally brought a television into their house, but they now have three. They like watching Emmerdale and Heartbeat.

Christine is writing a book about her experiences and is looking for an agent. Like many with painful pasts, writing has been a kind of catharsis for her.

But her two eldest girls, who live in Kent, are still with the Brethren, married and with children of their own. They have given her nine grandchildren, but she has only seen them a handful of times over the past few years.

The couple had had no contact with them at all for eight years after they left until a BBC documentary on the Brethren, which the Wallachs contributed to, was broadcast in 2003. Following the broadcast, the elders allowed the girls to have contact with the family.

But relations are still strained. Conversations are understandably stilted.

The last time Christine saw them was a year ago, with an accompanying elder in the room, although she phones them every three months or so.

"It's like drawing teeth," she admits. "They'll just answer our questions and if the husbands ar e around, you don't even get to speak to them. You just ask how the children are and how they're coping.

"It's very sad. I miss them terribly, not just as my daughters, but as my friends - we would go shopping together, things like that - and I worry that our grandchildren won't know who we are if they ever need us."

Does she think they will ever leave?

"I'd like to think so... one day," she says, quietly. But she concedes it may never happen.

"You can spend the rest of your lives tearing yourselves apart and being angry about what people have done to you or you can move on. We have decided to put the past behind us," she says.

Her greatest wish is to be able to leave her children with some financial security.

"You might think my greatest wish would be to have the two girls come home, but they're adults now and they have to make their own decisions," she says.

"I would love to travel the world, and learn to sail. I want to do all kinds of things I never would have been allowed to do. There are still so many things I've never done."

* For more information about Granary Foods, the Wallachs' new business selling home-cooked products, contact (01677) 450430 or log onto www.granaryfoods.co.uk