Well, where to start? Last night’s Cutting Edge followed a group of fathers and daughters – as well as their families as a whole – as they prepared for and attended a Purity Ball hosted by Lisa and Randy Wilson; an unfortunate first name in the circumstances. The mission of the purity movement is pretty much what it says on the tin; women should be unkissed virgins when they marry. The documentary attempted to discover whether this lifestyle was something the girls themselves chose or if it was imposed by their fathers. Randy Wilson was at the heart of the entire film and is a major player in the movement, in Colorado anyway.

Randy is a self-appointed minister of the ‘New Life’ church in Colorado Springs and in my opinion, has narcissistic personality disorder. He’s given himself a disturbing God-like persona and on a weekly basis, his large brood of children queue – yes, queue – to be ‘blessed’ by him. His household struck me as being not so much a family as a cult.

He and his wife started the Purity Ball ten years ago and it’s considered the most grandiose and theatrical of the many others that take place across the country. Their aim is to create a “spectacular” event with “elegance and romance”… and a great big wooden cross smack bang in the middle of it around which the famed virgin daughters dance. The words pagan and ritual occurred to me.

One of Randy’s major beliefs is that all young women need to know the answer to the question, “Am I beautiful, am I worthy of being pursued?” He believes that if girls get this assurance from their father they won’t need to go outside the home to find it from other men. The father, he is convinced, is everything to a young girl. Now this is where I have one of several major problems with Randy and his ideas.

For one, does this mean that girls raised in single-parent homes by women are automatically precluded from being ‘pure’? Secondly, most of us don’t go around telling our daughters that they’ve got a face like a smacked-in bus, but nonetheless, they still want boyfriends; thirdly, what motivates a man to want his daughter to, in effect, be faithful to only him until he chooses to pass her on? And finally, what happens if his daughters want careers or are lesbian? He seems to believe that a woman’s raison d’être is to be married and to be a mother, end of.

Randy and other fathers interviewed were quick to deny any hint of incestuous behaviour or motivation to what they’re doing but I have to say, I have my doubts, especially about Randy. There was one father featured, Kevin Moore, who I do think truly believes what he’s doing is protecting his daughters and steering them towards a good way of life for the best of motivations but even this very pleasant man is at best misguided. He feels our culture is ’sick’ and wants more for his girls than “someone messing up their minds for the rest of their lives, getting cervical cancer, divorce, VD…” But what he failed to include in that list of ‘wants’ for his children is freedom of choice and autonomy.

We also met Hannah, an 11 year old girl who, like most of the other daughters interviewed last night, had a weird Stepford Wives thing about her. They were mechanical in their clearly well coached answers, they hesitated and looked to their parents when asked a question outside of their scripted answers and all seemed to be brainwashed for want of a better word. Many of them had an odd vacancy in their eyes and if all this weren’t happening in respectable and wealthy US suburbs, it would be branded a cult and Randy would be considered as deluded and dangerous as David Koresh and his Waco commune was.

During her interview, Hannah said, “I think it’s very important for girls to have a relationship with their father, it mirrors how the heavenly father cares about us. Those who aren’t close to their father will often turn to other males and that will often end in heartbreak and anguish.” This from an 11 year old?! Obviously that was a well rehearsed little speech and came just after Hannah’s mother revealed how she’d ‘given pieces of her heart away’ to other men before she met Ken, Hannah’s father. I also found it interesting to note that very few of the girls were interviewed alone; most had a chaperone of some kind, usually a parent.

We also met a ‘failed’ Purity movement member, Jessica, who was brought up according to the purity principles in Colorado Springs. She remembers her childhood as happy but closeted; her family, the church and their church friends were her whole world. Boys were a taboo subject but she was finally given permission to date when she was 19. Despite the guilt they both felt, she and her boyfriend embarked on a sexual relationship and she became pregnant. Her parents were distraught and Jessica said that her mother still holds it over her. “Ever since then she treats me as a lesser person” says Jessica.

She’s now in a relationship with a man called Steve who she lives with and because the relationship wasn’t sanctioned by her father and because they aren’t married, Jessica’s family will have nothing to do with them. How very sad. But Jessica has no regrets and said, “Giving my purity to my father is very weird to me. I am so glad I didn’t marry that guy my parents picked for me when I was 21. I am happy I was able to start my own business and I went back to college. I am glad I have a great career now and man in my life who is my best friend”.

We also met Randy’s daughter Lauren who met and married a young man she’d known of for some months but due to his being posted overseas with the military and other constraints on their budding relationship, she’d only spent what amounted to a matter of hours with him before they were married. Her husband was selected for her by her father and although they’ve now been married for eighteen months, just how stable can that marriage actually be? Nobody spoke the words ‘arranged marriage’ but if it’s not that, then what is it? Pot luck possibly.

At best, these parents are playing real-life Barbies with these girls and at worst, are exerting their will on the threat of familial exclusion if the girls deviate from the path set for them by obsessive parents. The words Christianity and Scriptures and Will of God were bandied around a good deal last night and were always the classic ‘if you don’t know the answer, bring God into it’ line.

These parents are trying to re-create the modest and strait-laced Victorian times to some degree and there are some Quaker principles thrown in for good measure too. Actually, there are elements of many religious orders involved but what worried me most is the element of paternal governance over all things.

So is this a good way to live? Is it right that young girls grow up in a home where the father means everything and where their own natural desires and indeed their own will is ignored? I guess it’s a matter of opinion but I suspect that in ten years time, we’re going to see a similar documentary made about the misery that’s in store for these girls who are entering into marriages with no real life experience and without the opportunity to truly get to know their intended spouse. I suspect there will also be a good many more Jessica-like stories of accidental pregnancies and subsequent ‘shame’.

As the programme maker, Jane Treays noted, the purity movement hasn’t been around long enough to assess the long-term divorce rate among its followers but I’d have money on it that it’s going to be high. I’d also be willing to bet that the psychological ill-effects of this extremely odd way of living will be numerous too and furthermore, as the years go by, I won’t be a bit surprised if stories of sexual abuse begin to emerge.

In conclusion, this was a first rate documentary from Cutting Edge and Jane Treays managed to offer a balanced view of the movement while subtly trying to introduce the potential perils for these young girls.