I’ve got a pretty similar story to Christof’s, except I was never taken out of bed by gun point.

My parents never abused me, they took very good care of me, not only giving us all of our needs, but also making sure we had a lot of fun. I’ve traveled the world, spent time doing the things kids love doing, visited Disney World several times, etc…

I don’t agree with the beliefs of The Family Intl. But I can say that nothing that the family has done in the past 20 years or so, has been hurtful to anyone.

Keeping that in mind, if you’re thankful for your right to believe what you want to, and no one is forcing you to believe in any religion, then it’s the least you can do to allow others to do the same. You don’t have to like it or agree with it, but you have to be comfortable with it.

If you can’t be comfortable with others believing something that differs from your beliefs then you’re really the one to be feared.

It’s people who can’t accept others beliefs that end up pointlessly bombing schools or mowing down innocent Jewish children etc. And they’re the real monsters.

So, say what you will about cults, but when you start fighting one, you’re the one that’s being dogmatic and unreasonable. Try to imagine what it would be like if someone tried to force you to deny what you believe.

In history this has happened several times, and it’s never worked out good for anyone. In a word: pointless.

@Sandra: If you actually believe that someone paid him to write that, you’ve been watching too many movies and you need to come back to reality. I know of at least 100 other twentysomething year olds who have no affiliation to The Family anymore, but who will tell a very similar story.

I never experienced or saw any child abuse. I did (sadly) hear of cases of certain individuals who committed sexual offenses and were expelled from the group as a result.

The environment throughout my childhood was not overly sexual, (although I don’t know if this was the case everywhere)… there was more emphasis placed on memorizing Bible scripture, studying the Bible and “witnessing” than anything else. Sex was by no means the “driving force” or even much of an issue in my childhood. In fact my first sexual experience occurred later in life than what would probably be considered average.

Granted, the group was very closed and dogmatic in many ways and that’s something I was never particularly fond of… but hey, if I’d been born into a Muslim family my upbringing would likely have been even more restrictive. Does that make Muslims inherently bad? Can I blame my parents for teaching me what they believed? Isn’t that what all parents do?

Since you’re interested in studying The Family I would recommend a more in-depth reading of Berg’s writings; you’ll realize that there’s much much more to it than just sex. I won’t defend the man or what he taught… but I will say that to merely buy into the “drunk crazed pedophile” description is for third-graders.

You’re dealing with a much more complex phenomenon here and you’ll have to realize that you can’t just buy into anyone’s discourse wholesale. Anti-cult movements have also historically been dishonest, underhanded and even criminal in some of their activities and tactics. They’re by no means the impartial observer.

Again, my life experience may be different from that of others, but for what it’s worth the greatest trauma I experienced was being ripped out of bed in the middle of the night at gun-point and being violently separated from my parents (who had never harmed me) in one of those famous “raids”… thanks in great measure to a combination of anti-cult activism and religious xenophobia.

So you’ll notice I’m a bit more wary of religious intolerance than I am of religious cults.

The Stanley Milgram Experiment in 1953 where people administered electric shocks to innocent victims by orders from their authority, even though it went against their personal convictions, continued to give the electric shocks while their victims continued to scream in pain. While members of The Family Intl continue to defend their leaders, they simply are following orders. Even though King Peter and Queen Maria (these are the names they have chosen for themselves) have now announced in Jan. 2008 that they now admit to the abuse, but play it down by blaming their dead leader David Berg. Very cleaver. There is no end to exposing the lies the Family Intl has turned out to the media, but the biggest lie of all was Claire Borowick. While being interviewed on ABC NEWS “The Outsider” 08/29/06 by Jay Schadler when she bold face lied to the media by denying she ever ever of Paul Peloquin, who has been a big name leader in the Family Intl known by everyone in the group. Here Claire was given a chance to come clean, she got up to bat and struck out! Once a business, corporation, or church is caught in a lie publicly it is nearly impossible to regain their integrity. Even more so when the Family Intl continued to dodge its ex-members and call them apostates. They truly do have a dark past to hide, but instead will follow them into the next generation. What happened with Ricky Rodriguiz was the proverbial rug being pulled out from under their feet. And now they can run, try a new image but they can’t hide. Not until they come clean and ask forgiveness from the Lord first of all and from those they have offended.

According to researchers at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, those that lose their virginity at a later age are more likely to experience sexual dysfunction. Those who wait till 21 or later to loose their virginity face a high likelihood of experiencing sexual problems. This study appeared in the American Journal of Public Health (January 2008 issue).

http://www.harpercollins.com.au/books/Jesus-Freaks-Don-Lattin/

Book Description

In the tradition of Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, Don Lattin’s Jesus Freaks is the story of a shocking pilgrimage of revenge that left two people dead and shed new light on The Family International, one of the most controversial religious movements to emerge from the spiritual turmoil of the sixties and seventies.

Some say The Family International—previously known as the Children of God—began with the best intentions. But their sexual and spiritual excesses soon forced them to go underground and follow a dark and dangerous path. Their charismatic leader, David “Moses” Berg, preached a radical critique of the piety and hypocrisy of mainstream Christianity. But Berg’s message quickly devolved into its own web of lies. He lusted for power and unlimited access to female members of his flock—including young girls and teenagers—and became a drunken tyrant, setting up re-indoctrination camps around the world for rebellious teenagers under his control.

Thousands of children raised in The Family would defect and try to live normal lives, but the prophet’s heir apparent, Ricky “Davidito” Rodriguez, was unable to either bear the excesses of the cult or fit into normal society. Sexually and emotionally abused as a child, Ricky left the fold and began a crusade to destroy the only family he ever knew, including a plot to kill his own mother.

Veteran journalist Don Lattin has written a powerful, engrossing book about this uniquely American tragedy. Jesus Freaks is a cautionary tale for those who fail to question the prophesies and proclamations of anyone who claims to speak for God.

Title: Jesus Freaks
Author: Don Lattin
Published 2007.

I’m trying to be as objective as possible here and avoiding any sort of exagerration.

From its earliest days the cult practiced a sort of imposed conformity that gradually erased members individuality.

There was no room for dissent, or even debate about beliefs. They were entirely dictated and to even quention the most minute detail of doctrine was not only discouraged, it was severely punished.

One could lose his position, his posessions, his liberty, his wife and children, anything and everything… for the least hint of reluctance or opposition to the imposed beliefs and practices.

Of course new members were not aware of this sort of totalitarianism until they had already cut all ties outside the group. It was very subtle. You had no way of knowing what you were getting into until you had nothing and nowhere else to go.

In the early days, far from being over-sexed, most members had no sex at all for years. In the late teens and early 2Os this is hard to support, especially when the lifestyle was very hard and the opposite sex was right there in the same house, but untouchable. Even kissing or touching was forbidden without leader’s permission.

I think it was intentional on the part of the leader. He wanted to maximize the sense of sexual frustration because he intended to push the group into prostitution for his own personal enrichment.

In 1976 he began to methodically lay the groundwork for that plan. It was initially presented as a way to attract people to Christ, dancing with them and attracting them with sexual charm.

But this sort of talk only increased the frustration of all the single members who themselves had not had any sexual liberty at all for years. It was planned that way.

Finally, Berg announced the “RNR” which liberated all members sexually, but, at the same time, imposed the practice of using sex as a means to attract others to the cult.

Over the course of a few months Berg morphed that “witnessing technique” into an international prostitution network with cult women going to bars to meet men and then asking them for money after having sex with them. It was still presented as a means to win them to Christ, and psychologically that was a lot easier to swallow, both for the women doing it and for their husbands who had to allow it.

There was a period from the late 70s to the early 80s in which the adult members were totally promiscuous. It was the closest thing the modern world has ever seen to Sodom and Gemmorah.

During this time some of the top leadership homes such as Berg’s own home and the “Music with Meaning” home began to abuse underage girls living there. I was in Asia at the time and the first thing I ever witnessed along that line was the 14 year old daughter of my home shepherd who was making the rounds of local homes and sleeping with many of the men. Her parents allowed this to happen and I equated it to similar situations I had seen of early emancipation in the normal world. My own sister ran away and got married at 14 so, although I thought it was abnormal, I didn’t see it as extremely shocking.

But then I found out that a top leader in the country was “teaching” a 13 year old girl how to have sex. And then I learned that a certain mother was teaching her own son.
(and I don’t mean they were giving lectures).

I moved to another country and in the course of a simple conversation with a 12 year old girl from a neighboring home she casually told me that she had recently had a miscarriage and that the father was her own stepfather.

Yes such things happen in the general population too, perhaps just as much and perhaps even more. But in the cult, increasingly such abuses involved leaders and the practice was being banalized as though adult-child sex was a normal natural phenomenon.

About that time I began to hear that at several big encampments where teens had been gathered from many homes, there had been systematic sexual abuse between leaders and children.

Soon thereafter Berg began ordering young girls from around the world to come to his home for “training” and it later turned out he was compelling them to have sex with him.

Concurrent with all this there was the rise of a general totalitarianism within the cult. All the earlier liberty disappeared and members were in total fear of displeasing their leaders. There were horrible cases of physical and psychological torture of any who questioned authority.

I myself challenged leader’s policies and was punished to a degree. But my wife and I were both very good at selling the cults music tapes. And the local leaders’ own heads could roll if they didn’t send enough money up the heirarchial chain. So that protected me to a large degree.

I witnessed the results of severe physical child abues at the hands of a local leader.
He was beating kids black and blue. I reported him to leadership and he was demoted and sent to another area. But then I was punished for reporting him.

I had been looking for a way to take myself and my family out of the cult for a couple of years already. But it’s very hard to leave when you have no money and you are in a foreign country where life is very expensive.

One day, by a string of miracles, suddenly a job, a house, and the opportunity to leave the cult home all came together for me at the same time and from one day to the next my family and I left the cult with not a penny to our name but everything we needed ot make a totally new start. That was 1988.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the cult had set up several gulag type homes in different locations where rebellious adults and/or teens were sent for “retraining” (torture).

A number of teen suicides and a teen who suffered a severe psychological breakdown due to physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Berg himself (his own granddaughter) and then a highly publicized child custody case that exposed many cases of sexual and physical abuse eventully served to compel the family to (reluctantly) tone down its policies of physical and sexual abuse.

With the death of Berg in 1995 and the departure of the majority of second generation embers as soon as they came of age, the cult went into steady decline.

I doubt if there will be any members left at all in another 5 years.

Good riddance.

He told me he was one of ten kids raised in this cult called “The children of God” that is now known as “The family international”.

He said he was “brainwashed” (his word) into believing that he should never be part of the “system”. As a result of this whenever he worked he felt unhappy and guilty. So he said he was happy doing what he was doing and traveling around hopping trains.

He said he had no clue where his parents and 3 younger siblings were, that they do not let him know since he got out.

I had never heard of or knew anything about this cult so I started doing some research. I was appalled at what I was learning. In my search I came upon this blog. Thank you for the information you are getting out there.

What I saw is that the psychological effects of this cult do stay with them unless they get some kind of help.

Oplexicon, thank you that you are willing to answer questions. How do you deal with the psychological aspects of this?

First, let me state that Josh is correct in saying that sexual abuse does not currently occur within the group and is no longer promoted. Sadly, this has not always been the case.

During my time in The Family, I too, defended the group in the same naive way that Josh does now. I was convinced that it was not sexual abuse when I at the age of 8 I had sexual contact with an adult woman. I was convinced that the weekly “sharing nights” during which our adult supervisor had children aged 5 through 10 pair up for sex were not abusive. I was convinced that the fact that I only had a 6th grade education at the age of 18 was not educational neglect. I was convinced that the harsh beatings I received during the “Victor Camp” (http://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Swiss_Victor_Camp) were not physical abuse.

I, like Josh, was adamant that no abuse had occurred despite the fact that I had experienced it. I have come to learn that I was not alone in my experiences, and that many of my friends and peers–particularly the girls–experienced much worse abuse than I.

Furthermore, the fact that the abuse was widespread is clearly documented in the group’s own (now expunged) publications. For one example, see http://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Story_of_Davidito#Page_scans. I challenge anyone to say that what is being done to Davidito (Rick Rodriguez) in these images is not sexual abuse and is not a crime. These images were taken by his caregivers and their publication to Family members sanctioned by his own mother who remains a leader of the group to this day. The Family’s leadership has never publicly denounced those images as sexual abuse.

Another point on which I must agree with Josh is about “escaping” the cult. In most cases, it is not a matter of escaping physically. It is, however, indisputably, nearly always a matter of escaping psychologically.

I find it disheartening that those of us who were victims of such abuse are now being called liars and are accused of twisting the truth by our own peers. One would hope that an organization that is truly interested in “making a difference” would show more compassion and attempt to make amends with those they have hurt.

Maybe there’s still hope for that.

There are so many insinuations, half-truths, misrepresentations, and lies written about the Family International, some of the same are regurgitated and written in this post, that to go into detail necessary to clarify, refute and set the record straight, I’d have to spend time you & I just don’t have. –hey did I mention I have 5 kids?

But I’ll refute a few of them; there is NO SEXUAL ABUSE (or other abuse) in the Family International communities I have lived in! -and if you want to see how other hundreds of SGA (Second Generation Adults) refute these (and other) allegations, go to this site http://www.myconclusion.com

Noah Thompson, one of those who created the documentary referred to here, and who I knew for a couple years, did not ‘escape’ he simply did want many other thousands did when they decided to leave our church —they left freely, of their own volition, and without constraint, in fact most were encouraged to move on if/when it became clear they no longer wished to remain part of our church, to say he ‘escaped’ is absurd.

To see what we actually believe and practice, regarding Children you can click here and read part of our statement of faith http://www.thefamily.org/about/beliefs.php#26, and as the post preceding mine states, we’ve won every court case, and have even counter sued and won. Remember the words ‘If they persecuted Me they will also persecute you’ John.15:20, and ‘all that live Godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution’ 2.Timothy 3:12, much (if not most sad to say) of what you’ll hear and read today about the Family International is just plain and old fashioned religious persecution, it’s been around for millenniums and will be around for millennia to come.

Fortunately enough evidence is still available to demonstrate that The Family is a sex cult. Its values then and now have nothing to do with Biblical Christianity:
The Family / Children of God examined.

All you need to know about the Jehovah’s Witnesses is that they say “Jesus had his return to power” aka his second coming in the year 1914.

What do you think?

Debunking the Jehovah’s Witnesses propaganda:
A) They are at your door to recruit you for enslavement to their watchtower corporation,they will say that “we are just here to share a message from the Bible” this is deception right off.

B) The ‘message’ is their false Gospel that Jesus had his second coming already in 1914.The problem with this,is it’s not just a cute fairy tale,Jesus warned of the false prophets who would claim “..look he is here in the wilderness,or see here he is at the temple”

C) Their anti-blood transfusion ban has killed hundreds if not thousands

D) once they recruit you they will “love bomb” you in cult fashion to also recruit your family & friends or cut them off. There are many more dangers,Jehovah’s Witnesses got a bad rap for good and valid reasons.
—-
Danny Haszard Jehovah’s Witness X 33 years and 3rd generation
http://www.freeminds.org