Rose McGowan And The Children Of God
PinterestRose McGowan narrowly escaped an abusive sex cult as a child.
Rose McGowan found Hollywood success with film classics like Scream and the hit television show Charmed. And she is one of the highest-profile actors to have contributed to the #MeToo movement in 2017, with her rape accusation against producer Harvey Weinstein ultimately leading to his imprisonment.
But McGowan had experienced trauma long before that, having spent her childhood in the abusive Children of God cult.
Formed by preacher David Brandt Berg in 1968, the Children of God had 19,000 members across the globe. McGowan herself was born into its strictures, which demanded living in communes and not attending school. The cult not only fostered a deep distrust of institutions but forced its women to recruit men through sex.
“I remember watching how the cult’s men were with the women, and at a very early age I decided I did not want to be like those women,” recalled McGowan. “They were basically there to serve the men sexually. The women would go to bars and lures — they called it flirty fishing.”
Berg himself was accused of raping his own children, while his daughter defined the group as a “worldwide prostitution network” in her memoir. When Berg began preaching child-adult sex to his followers, McGowan’s father realized he had put his children in danger. He fled with his three kids and one of his wives in tow.
Boris Spremo/Toronto Star/Getty ImagesChildren of God members celebrating in Toronto, Canada in 1972.
“We had to leave on the sly. My dad, Nat, Daisy and I escaped with my dad’s other wife in the middle of the night. I remember running through a cornfield in thunder and lightning, holding my dad’s hand and running as fast as I could to keep up with him,” she said.
“We hid in an old stone house and had to boil pots of hot water to take baths. [The cult] sent people to find us. I remember a man trying to break in with a hammer.”
Fortunately, the family narrowly escaped. McGowan never forgot her volatile upbringing, however, and would find purpose as an adult advocate of women worldwide. Ultimately, McGowan escaped Berg’s cult only to be abused by Weinstein in 1997.
While was convicted of rape in 2020 and sentenced to 23 years in prison, Berg evaded the FBI, fled to Portugal, and died in 1994.
“There’s a trail of some very damaged children that were in this group,” said McGowan. “As strong as I like to think I’ve always been, I’m sure I could have been broken. I know I got out by the skin of my teeth.”
Marilyn Monroe’s Childhood As Norma Jean
Ed Feingersh/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesMarilyn Monroe was abandoned by her mother only to live in 12 different foster homes and be abused by her husband.
The epitome of a vintage Hollywood star, Marilyn Monroe rose from rags to riches and made her own way there. But while her alluring smile and playful presence onscreen have become iconic, Monroe’s difficult childhood and mentally ill mother nearly left her too traumatized to accomplish anything at all.
Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles, California. Her mother, Gladys Baker, placed her in foster care when she was two months old and ran off to India. She would return to forge a semblance of trust with Monroe, who never knew her father and instead was raised religiously by Ida and Wayne Bolender.
Monroe was three years old when Baker unexpectedly visited and tried to kidnap her. Ida Bolender was highly alarmed at the attempt but grew trusting enough to reunite Baker with Monroe when she was seven. The dream crumbled shortly after adoption, however, when Baker suffered a psychotic break in front of her daughter.
“My mother was on her feet. She was screaming and laughing,” recalled Monroe. “They took her away to the Norwalk Mental Hospital. I knew the name of the hospital in a vague way. It was where my mother’s father and grandmother had been taken when they started screaming and laughing.”
Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesGladys Baker (left) with baby Norma Jeane Mortenson (front) and friends on the beach.
With Baker relegated to a series of hospitals for the rest of her life, Monroe spent her childhood in foster homes — finding the Los Angeles Orphans Home Society most lonely. She lived with 12 families in total, suffering everything from neglect and abuse to an incident of sexual molestation that left her with a stutter.
Monroe was 16 when the Goddard family got tired of raising her and married her off to their 21-year-old neighbor James Dougherty in 1942. When the merchant marine was deployed overseas in 1944 to fight in World War 2, Monroe was discovered by a photographer — and signed her first movie contract in 1946.
Tragically, Monroe’s troubles never truly ended. In 1951, the first issue of Playboy published nude photos she had agreed to model for before her Hollywood stardom against her will. That same year, she married baseball star Joe DiMaggio — only for him to beat her.
And although she had overcome her childhood trauma enough to find fame and a stable career, she never truly broke free and was found dead of a barbiturate overdose at age 36, in 1962.
Ultimately, the true cause of Marilyn Monroe’s death remains debated decades later.
