The radical religious cult Children of God was active in over 100 countries with over 10,000 members. The granddaughter of the founder David Berg talks to Dr. Oz about how and why she left the notorious sex cult.
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00:00 Imagine truly believing that the Antichrist was coming and God would soon destroy the world.
00:06 For many, that was a terrifying reality.
00:09 The alleged sex cult known as the Children of God was active in over 100 countries with an estimated 10,000 members.
00:16 Celebrities like Rose McGowan, River, and Joaquin Phoenix have all come forward saying they were raised in this cult.
00:23 And many former members have alleged unimaginable sexual abuse at a very young age.
00:28 Today, the granddaughter of the cult's founder, David Berg, is here speaking out.
00:33 But first, what drives a cult like this and where are they today?
00:38 Dr. Oz's senior investigative correspondent, Marske Abacampo, has the story.
00:42 An international extremist religious group, an alleged child sex ring, hiding behind an innocent sounding name, Children of God.
00:52 Pastor David Berg founded the group in California in 1968, claiming that God had gifted him with prophecies and that the world would end in 1993 when Jesus returned.
01:04 The group attracted hippies and outcasts by exploiting the free love movement.
01:09 Berg encouraged adults to have sex without barriers, which allegedly included spouse sharing, having sex with toddlers, and even incest with young children.
01:21 Female followers claim they were forced to use sex to recruit men into the group.
01:26 Many members also say they were whipped and beaten for misbehaving or questioning the teachings of the church.
01:33 Berg isolated members from the outside world, forcing them to live nomadic lifestyles in secluded communes without access to television and radio.
01:42 By the early 90s, allegations of sexual abuse finally caught up to David Berg, but he died while in hiding in 1994.
01:50 Many former members, like actress Rose McGowan, have spoken out about growing up in the alleged cult.
01:56 In an interview, the late River Phoenix said he lost his virginity at just four years old.
02:02 Survivor Flora Edwards discussed her experience on this show.
02:06 It was mental abuse. It was psychological abuse. It's sort of like an invisible disability, you know, to skew someone's perspective of the world.
02:14 It's very, very damaging and very difficult to heal from.
02:18 Although many members left the group in the 90s, it continued under the leadership of Berg's widow and was renamed the Family International in 2004.
02:27 Mara joins us now. How did David Berg get thousands of people to believe in all of his apocalyptic prophecies?
02:37 Yeah, Dr. Odds, this is a story that's very common in cults. Berg was a charismatic leader who prayed on the vulnerable.
02:44 He actually started out as a pastor and created a teen church where he would recruit hippies.
02:48 But he increasingly became more eccentric over time, and he eventually convinced his followers that he was a prophet,
02:54 and he would communicate with them almost exclusively through written letters.
02:59 And reportedly, he also increasingly became more abusive, forcing his followers into very isolated communities where sexual abuse was rampant.
03:06 Let's talk about this alleged horrific sexual abuse that started at very young ages for a lot of these folks.
03:12 What is known about this? How was it allowed to continue?
03:14 Yeah, the sexual abuse that this cult allegedly practiced is among the worst that I have ever covered as a reporter.
03:22 Berg convinced his followers that they were supposed to show their love for God by having sex with one another.
03:29 And this reportedly included forcing women to have sex with complete strangers as a form of recruitment
03:35 and unthinkably forcing children into sexual relationships with adults, including their own parents.
03:43 In fact, Berg's own son said that he was sexually abused by multiple people throughout his childhood.
03:48 And in adulthood, that boy, as a man, murdered one of his alleged abusers and then took his own life.
03:54 So the founder, Berg, died in 1994. These stories that you're recounting are hard to fathom.
04:00 Where is the cult now? Once the cult leader dies, does it dissolve?
04:04 Yeah, so they are still in existence, but in a different form. So they've changed their name.
04:07 They go by the Family International. They're also much smaller, reportedly about 2,000 members.
04:12 And they've renounced the practices of child sexual abuse and pedophilia, which of course is a good thing and very necessary.
04:19 But make no mistake, a lot of the former members are still very much involved and active.
04:23 And the cult, the group as it stands today, is led by Berg's former widow.
04:28 Laura, thank you very much.
04:29 Thank you, Dr. Osborne.
04:30 So it takes enormous courage to leave all you ever known behind.
04:33 But that's exactly what my next guest did when she escaped from the children of God.
04:37 Granddaughter of cult prophet David Berg and author of the new book, "Sex, Cult, None, Breaking Away from the Children of God,
04:43 a Wild, Radical, Religious Cult," Faith Jones is here.
04:47 I know this is a lot to talk about, but maybe let's start at the very beginning.
04:51 You grew up on the islands of Macau in this cult, this cult compound.
04:57 What was your typical day like?
04:59 I'd say our typical day was a little different than maybe other members of the group because my parents moved us out to this small Chinese village,
05:07 the back end of nowhere.
05:09 The house we moved into had no running water.
05:11 It didn't have an indoor toilet.
05:13 We had an outhouse.
05:15 And, you know, over years, we basically helped rebuild the village.
05:21 So as you described it, the cult did do good for that community.
05:25 Yes, and my parents were very interested in helping, serving, right?
05:30 So the people who joined this group were very idealistic.
05:34 But as far as our day-to-day life went, it was based in, you know, biblical principles.
05:43 So, you know, we would spend hours a day reading either scriptures or my grandfather's writing, praying, singing,
05:52 and then out preaching or proselytizing.
05:57 So, you know, and then other than that, we're doing dishes, chores.
06:01 Let's talk about your grandfather, David Berg, and his beliefs about society, his thoughts about the approaching end of the world.
06:08 Yes.
06:10 So my grandfather believed that the end time was eminent, and he actually--he believed that he was the end-time prophet.
06:20 So he was given to know when this would happen.
06:23 So he actually prophesied about when Jesus was going to return.
06:27 And so we all lived in this kind of constant state of, you know, the end's coming any time.
06:35 You're constantly in preparation for, you know, soldiers to come and get you and, you know, just very cut off from society.
06:46 Some of the other beliefs, you know, were about no personal possessions, you know.
06:55 So it was sort of we lived communally in kind of a--called Christian communism.
07:00 All right. We've got more to talk about up next.
07:03 It wasn't just apocalyptic prophecies that cult members were taught to believe.
07:07 Faith reveals the horrifying sexual abuse that she says she was indoctrinated into as young as 4 years old.
07:13 We've been talking about the Children of God cult and the allegations of extreme sexual abuse.
07:18 We're back with Faith Jones, a survivor of the cult and granddaughter of its founder, David Berg.
07:24 So what were your grandfather's beliefs about who owned your body, his thoughts around sexual relationships?
07:30 So to kind of understand the whole sexual aspect of the group, you have to understand initially when the group was founded, right, when my parents joined and stuff,
07:40 there was no sexual relations unless you were married.
07:43 And then when my grandfather wanted to take a new wife, he began to have these revelations about something called the law of love,
07:53 that the love is the only law and the Ten Commandments are done away with.
07:58 So anything done in love is OK. This extended to having sexual relations outside your marriages.
08:06 And I think based on his own predilections and perversions, even saying, well, you know, children are sexual beings at a young age.
08:15 So extending that type of sexual relations, even with children to sort of awakening children's sexuality at a very young age,
08:25 really inappropriate sexual contact between adults and children, which was abuse.
08:31 And it ended up going in that direction that my grandfather promoted it.
08:37 I know this is sensitive, but there was an event in your own life when you were age four.
08:41 If you're willing to share with the audience, I think it would help underline what you're saying.
08:46 Yeah. So, I mean, someone asked me once, like, when did you learn about sex?
08:50 Actually, I don't remember. I don't ever remember not knowing about sex because it was in like my earliest comic books and the literature and everything.
09:01 I always knew what it was from the earliest memories. But there was a time when my mother actually, you know, I think in her mind, this was just an innocent.
09:12 Oh, I'm just teaching my daughter like, hey, show her how it's done kind of thing.
09:16 So she did a demonstration with my father for me when I was very young, but she didn't ask me to engage in any way.
09:23 Right. So to me, I feel like the impact from that was not nearly what it was from other instances where adult men particularly actually, you know, force me to engage with my body.
09:37 And so that I found had much more lasting harm.
09:42 How old were you when that started?
09:46 The first time I was six.
09:49 Six?
09:50 Yeah. And then it happened a few more times when I was like 10.
09:55 And then after that, the family created a, they basically banned any sort of sexual interaction between children and adults because they were getting so much bad press and police, you know, people had been reporting abuse who had left the group.
10:16 And so the police were really starting to look at it and began raids and court cases and other types of things.
10:22 So they banned all sexual contact when I was around 10, I guess.
10:29 Were your parents aware of what was happening to you when you're age six, age 10?
10:39 Probably, but maybe not fully.
10:43 It's like some of the instances of things that happened to me when I was 10, I don't think they knew about.
10:50 I think that because it was like some adult manager would just corner me, you know, and so they didn't know it.
10:59 But I think I didn't say anything either because I just figured because that's how I was raised.
11:03 I just figured that that was OK.
11:05 They normalized it.
11:06 Yeah, it was normalized completely.
11:09 There was also this activity called flirty fishing, which was, if I understand correctly from what you've written, heavily promoted within the cult.
11:17 Yeah, so the flirty fishing was an extension of David Berg's concept of the law of love.
11:24 Right. So he initially started it with his wife or his second wife, I should say, going into clubs and flirting with men, businessmen, having sex with them even,
11:38 and preaching to them about Jesus, about the group and getting them as supporters.
11:46 Right. So my mother did this. All the women in the group did this.
11:49 I think that and they had to do it. It wasn't optional.
11:54 If you wouldn't do it, you were considered disobedient, rebellious, probably needed to be prayed over.
12:01 And so some women, I think it was easier for them than others.
12:05 I do remember going with my mother to do some of this when I was young.
12:10 And I also remember, you know, times she was OK with it and other times when, you know, maybe she really didn't like the person that she was supposed to do this with.
12:23 And I think it was very difficult for her. It was promoted as you have to sacrifice your body.
12:29 You don't own your body. Your body belongs to God. You just need to use it in the way that, you know, to serve the greater good, to serve the higher purpose.
12:38 Your grandfather, David Berg, the cult leader, dies before his prophecies can come to fruition, come to pass.
12:46 And I would gather that had a massive impact on the cult.
12:52 Could you walk us through how the members of the community reacted when he passed and some of the things he predicted hadn't yet come about?
13:01 So my grandfather predicted that Jesus would return in 1993.
13:05 So I didn't really even expect to have a chance to grow up or be an adult. And that's how we were raised.
13:11 And because of that, nobody in the cult, we didn't have jobs. We didn't believe in education. We didn't own property.
13:19 We had no way to support ourselves outside of this group. And this created a whole system of control.
13:25 Because where were you going to go? It was like any year now it's going to happen.
13:29 And then my grandfather died in '94, a year after Jesus didn't come back.
13:35 Of course, there's always an excuse for a prophet, right? Jesus gave us more time or whatever that is.
13:40 You know, there's always some excuse. But his wife took over.
13:44 If things didn't change that much, I would say because she had really been running it for years because he had been very sick.
13:51 But I think a lot of the members, especially older members or people who had been drawn to the group by his charisma and believed in him as a prophet,
14:00 they were not as keen necessarily on the transfer of leadership.
14:06 But for a lot of people, it kind of went on business as usual.
14:10 How about you? When did you start becoming disillusioned with the cult?
14:16 So I had always had a very questioning mind and I would get in trouble for those questions sometimes.
14:24 When, you know, told, you know, doubting is the devil and you need to just put it in a bundle of faith and, you know, God will show the answer eventually.
14:35 But I genuinely believed in the doctrines of the group. This was all I knew.
14:42 I was there from birth. That was how I was raised. I didn't have a lot of contact with the outside world to see other perspectives.
14:50 For me, it wasn't I was disillusioned with the doctrines, but at a young age I became disillusioned with the people in the group.
15:00 I saw leadership make really bad decisions that harmed people.
15:05 They separate forcibly separated my parents. They put us in a situation that was very dangerous.
15:12 I began to see like how people were using it and abusing it.
15:18 And so. I didn't always trust the people in charge, but I still believed in the doctrine.
15:27 And it wasn't until later that I became actually became depressed.
15:31 So what gave you the courage to make that big step to go to an outside world that is completely foreign to you?
15:38 You mentioned there's no money. You don't know how to make money. You haven't had any real education.
15:46 Left it all behind. Yeah, well, that's the choice that I tell people.
15:52 Do you want to be happy? Do you want to be happy?
15:56 And to me, I said to myself, I was like I was saying I'm depressed.
16:01 I don't I even then I said I never want to look back and say if I only had I never want to look back and have that bitterness,
16:09 feeling like I didn't do what I wanted to do, something that was important to me and then blame other people for it.
16:15 So I just said, you know, sometimes being happy involves leaving behind everything you've ever known and just saying, I'm going to go.
16:23 I'm going to go do it. Right. Coming up, how faith transition from a cult survivor with no formal education to a top university graduate and powerhouse attorney.
16:33 We're back with former Children of God cult member Faith Jones, who bravely escaped the cult in her early 20s.
16:39 So what was the biggest challenge when you left?
16:43 I can't even fathom how you stepped into this brave new world.
16:48 The biggest challenge was just trying to integrate into society in general, you know, like walking into and getting my first job, learning how to drive.
17:00 And and, you know, fitting into like all these weird societal signals and things and pop culture like I totally didn't understand any of it.
17:09 And I was making mistakes constantly. Could you rely on your parents at all?
17:14 No, nothing. When I mean, did they leave the cult?
17:19 I mean, I know they left the cult, but when they left the cult, did you bond with them again?
17:22 How have you maintained a relationship with them? When I left, they left the cult themselves, but I could never rely on them for money or anything because they had none.
17:30 Right. I mean, they were destitute in their own way.
17:33 So it it took some years, I think, for us to have a closer relationship, but it took many years for I think for them, even after they left as well, to be able to face and recognize, wow, OK, that was wrong.
17:50 And what was wrong about it and for themselves to integrate into society because they'd spent their entire adult lives in the cult.
17:59 And but they did eventually. And that has allowed us to have a closer relationship.
18:07 You know, I think my mother, I really admire her for what she did when she left.
18:11 She went back to school as well when she left and ended up getting a good job.
18:16 And the principles that I've shared, like on the TEDx talk that I did, the principles I've shared about self-ownership.
18:23 When I shared those with her, we were able to have really good discussions about exactly what went wrong in the cult, where those abuses stemmed from and what some of those abuses were.
18:34 We were able to more clearly identify it from those principles that I teach.
18:40 How did you find your identity, your purpose through all this? Just try to keep your head above water.
18:46 I mean, I think like anybody, I spent a long time looking for who I wanted to be.
18:50 I made very specific decisions and went for it, like with my education and becoming a lawyer and so on.
18:56 You're a summa cum laude, Georgetown, top institution. You're a power attorney.
19:01 Yeah. So you've done things that would not have, would not naturally have expected to come from a young girl growing up in the backwaters of Macau, China.
19:11 You have to plan it away.
19:13 Well, I mean, that's one of the things I wanted to do. This was to show people you, it doesn't matter what your past is.
19:19 You get to choose who you want to be and what your life is going to be.
19:22 How did you go back and reevaluate the sexual pressure that was on you and realize that you were actually abused?
19:32 Very good question. So quite a few of the experiences that I describe in the book, I didn't recognize because there were times we were coerced into having sex with someone for fear of punishment.
19:46 Because sex was considered like a duty that you had to give this as your duty to God, that you had to share it with men in the group, even particularly men you didn't want to.
19:58 So it wasn't until some years after I got out of the group and I was having this discussion about law and someone said, you know, that's still rape.
20:08 If you are feeling pressured into having sex for fear of punishment or because someone is using some coercive pressure, even if you willingly walk in the room and submit to it, but something you really don't want to do, that's rape.
20:25 Just a different form. And that was like such an aha moment for me.
20:29 So how do you advise a viewer right now who's trapped in a situation they want to leave but they're afraid?
20:38 First, really get clear on the principles of self-ownership.
20:45 You really want to get that into your bloodstream, into your bones that I own myself.
20:50 Every decision I make, I am responsible for. And financial and economic independence.
20:56 Because it's so hard to leave an abusive situation if you don't have, if you see no way to support yourself and survive.
21:03 That's what I often hear.
21:05 Ketha, I really enjoyed spending time with you. Thank you for sharing your story and being honest about, I'm sure, a very painful part of your life.
21:12 Thank you.
21:13 We reached out to the Family International and they said in part, "The Family International's policy for the protection of minors was adopted in 1986.
21:20 Regrettably, prior to the adoption of this policy, cases occurred where minors were exposed to sexually inappropriate behavior.
21:27 We continue to extend our sincere apologies to anyone who experienced anything negative or hurtful during their childhood or time as members of the Family International."
21:35 You can see the full statement on DrRoz.com.
21:37 For more on Faith's remarkable journey and her experiences within the Children of God, check out her new book. It's very well written.
21:43 "Sex, Cult, None. Breaking Away from the Children of God."
21:46 Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss out on new videos to live the good life.