THE KIDS AREN’T ALRIGHT

BY: Michael Arkin

In 1968, David Berg, a former Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor, shed his clerical collar and donned a tattered jacket, beat-up tennis shoes, and sunglasses and began preaching to a small group of runaways and hippies. Stationed outside a coffee shop in Huntington Beach, California, Berg launched a religious movement that morphed into a cult – The Children of God. His rhetoric, which he called the Law of Love, was a mix of Christian doctrine and the free-love philosophy that was sweeping the nation, peppered with the threat of an imminent apocalypse, which he predicted would occur in 1993.

 

Not your usual catechism, by early 1969 Teens for Christ (the group’s original name) had 50 converts. Berg preached that salvation would come as the result of simple living and doing good deeds. He directed followers to sell their possessions, eschew conventional norms, and move into communal homes, forming new families consisting of 12-15 adults and their children. Any money that was raised by selling their personal belongings was given to the group and since the end of days was just years away, there was no need to have savings, find traditional employment or set long term goals. The only job his followers had was soliciting donations and converting people to join the group. No small task given Berg rigorously dictated every aspect of his followers lives down to how many sheets of toilet paper should be used after defecating. Apparently, believers could get the job done with just three.  

 

A born salesman, Berg changed the group’s name to Children of God, appealing to a wider audience. Then, as the number of members grew, Berg, perhaps inspired by another deliverer, began to call himself Moses. With a long white beard, he resembled his biblical namesake, but unlike Moses’ commandments, which were inscribed on stone tablets, Berg’s manifesto was a pamphlet called Mo’s Letters, often illustrated with R. Crumb-like drawings. 

 

Children of God members included John and Arlyn Bottom, later and better known as John and Heart Phoenix who raised their young children River, Rain, Joaquin and Liberty in the cult. As missionaries for the church, they were so successful, they were named “Archbishops of Venezuela and Trinidad.”  Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a young Rose McGowan’s father, Daniel was running Children of God’s Italian chapter. 

 

Back in the States, Moses was laying down the law, but unlike other cult-leaders including Jim Jones, David Koresh and Charles Manson, he didn’t live among his followers, nor did he reserve exclusive sexual rights to the females in his flock. On the contrary, in 1976 he introduced the Flirty Fishing program that urged female members to offer up their bodies in the name of Christ. Berg’s unique form of religious prostitution was designed to literally seduce men into joining the group. It was a success.  By 1979 over 19,000 men had been recruited to join the rank and file.

 

The Children of God’s offspring were not off limits. The group’s sexual promiscuity edict wasn’t limited to consenting adults. Berg began to encourage sex with and between children. In 1991, River Phoenix told Details magazine that while a member of the sect, he had lost his virginity at the very tender age of 4-years-old. 

 

Having sex with minors wasn’t limited to senior members of the church, who were called ‘The Chain’. In fact, as Timeline reported, in a 1971 letter entitled ‘A Shepherd-Time Story’, Berg described his ‘happy folds’ where Children of God members protected little lambs “who laugh and sing and dance and play and fuck and bear lots of little lambs!” ending with the sickening epilogue, “And the Shepherds like it!” Timeline went on to say, “In public, Children of God was invoking the name of God. In private, its prophet was running a child sex ring.” Even Berg’s daughter, Deborah “claimed he attempted to have sex with her several times, and engaged in a continuous sexual relationship with his other daughter, Faith.”

 

In the late 70s Berg’s letters included the notion of ‘sexual sharing,’ which said that it was God’s intention for boys and girls to have children of their own by the age of 12 and that encouraging kids to experiment sexually was “raising children the natural way.” Evidently, the natural way included a potpourri of sexual behaviors that ran the gamut from fornication to adultery, lesbianism to incest. Ironically, the one adherence to Christian dogma — male homosexuality — was expressly forbidden. 

 

In 1975, Berg’s wife, Karen Zerby’s son, Ricky Rodriguez, from a previous relationship, was identified as the future prophet of the sect. According to reporting in The New York Times, Rodriguez “would guide them all when the End Times came.” Now Berg’s stepson, Rodriguez served as the role model of what a young Children of God soldier should be. He appeared in The Davidito Book, a parenting manual distributed to followers. The Times reported that in it, “The toddler Ricky is described or else pictured as watching intercourse and orgies, fondling his nanny’s breasts and having his genitals fondled.” Rodriguez, like many other second-generation members who were born into the cult, had no idea that the behavior he was participating in was considered taboo. “At the time, I didn’t think of it as abuse,” another former member told Timeline. “I thought it was perfectly normal for parents to have sex with their children, and children to have sex with each other and adults.” 

 

According to an ABC News report, “At its peak, the Children of God claimed to have had tens of thousands of members around the world and that 13,000 children had been born into the set.” But front-page news coverage of the 1978 Jonestown mass suicide, and the church’s own prurient practice of childhood sex created growing dissatisfaction among a number of its followers. The fallout resulted in a minor exodus of only 8% of the church’s membership, including the disillusioned Phoenix clan. Berg decided it was time to rebrand the sect again, this time to the Family of Love. 

 

Declining membership wasn’t Berg’s only problem. By 1993 Interpol launched an investigation into his activities in Argentina and according to The Guardian, the FBI was investigating him as well. He fled to Portugal where he died in 1994 of natural causes at the age of 75. By the time of his death, he had distributed more than 3,000 Mo’s Letters to his followers.

His widow Zerby and her new husband, Steve Kelly took over the church. Reading the tea leaves, they sensed that public sentiment about the sect was changing, and with its membership eroding, they announced that the apocalypse was on hold – well, at least for the time being. As reported in The Guardian, they sent a series of letters to their flock admitting “they really couldn’t be sure when Jesus would return and that the Lord showed them they needed to set goals up to 30 years or even farther into the future,” which meant that suddenly, everyone needed to start worrying about money in order to care for their aging membership and their children.

 

With Armageddon off the table, many followers were adrift. Many felt cheated, lied to and ill-prepared to re-enter society. Zerby and Kelly tried to overhaul the church, which by that point had changed its name yet again to The Family. Mounting what they called ‘The Reboot’, they dissolved many of the church’s authoritarian programs, loosening the reins so that members were no longer required to live in communes or devote themselves selflessly to the church. Kids could go to school, people could take jobs, and enter into relationships with outsiders. 

 

Post liberation, many followers — especially the cult’s second generation – didn’t know how to adapt to an outside world they never knew existed, let alone thought they’d live long enough to see. Unable to cope, many committed suicide including Berg’s stepson, Ricky, who had left the group in 2000. After his defection, his wife told The New York Times, “He wanted his mother prosecuted for child abuse.” In a video Ricky recorded in 2005, he is seen sharpening knives and loading guns. It is obvious that he wanted to do more than see his mother brought to justice. On the tape, he said, “Man, if I don’t get to her… I’m going to keep hunting her in the next life, let me tell you. And I’m going to keep going until somebody gets her or I get her — justice will be done. Believe me.” 

He never found his mother who, according to ABC News, “had long ago gone underground.” Instead “he arranged a meeting with Angela Smith,” his former nanny, whom he wound up stabbing to death before turning a gun on himself.

Zerby, who is also known as Maria, Mama Maria, Maria David, Maria Fontaine and Queen Maria, has never been charged for the role she played in the church’s child sex abuse practices. She remains the spiritual leader of the church, now called The Family International, which according to a spokesperson, still has about 2,500 members.

Copyright 2021 by Michael Arkin. All Rights Reserved.