Famous Cult Abuses Inside The Children Of God
Boris Spremo/Toronto Star/Getty ImagesChildren of God members celebrating in Toronto, Canada in 1972.
The Children of God cult was founded in the 1960s, and so it would later become infamous for taking advantage of America’s free love movement to promote relationships that were morally reprehensible. According to the cult, God was love, and love was sex — so members were told that it was okay to have sex with children and their own family members.
Founder David Berg reinterpreted Christianity by warning of a looming apocalypse, with Earthly laws being unimportant to those who courageously believed in him. At one point, this organization boasted a global membership of 25,000 people — with nearly 15,000 of them being children.
Actress Rose McGowan and actor Joaquin Phoenix spent parts of their childhood in the cult before their families left. But not all families got out quickly. As one of the many traumatized survivors, Christina Babin recalled her entire childhood consisting of promoting Berg’s faith — with ruthless guidelines being the only constant in her traumatic life.
Babin recalled being beaten for wetting her bed, witnessing children thrown through windows, and even seeing infants being physically struck. For her, joining hadn’t been a choice, as her mother naively entered the cult before she was born.
“There were no bedtime stories,” Babin recalled. “Instead, we heard gruesome tales of how the world was about to violently end, and how as martyrs we’d either burn at the stake or be shot. We went to sleep in a state of fear.”
While she’s unsure just how old she was when the sexual abuse began — the cult didn’t celebrate birthdays, after all — Babin remembers the organization shifting in a disturbing direction toward sex when she was about 8 years old. Around this time, female cult members were told to have sex with men to convert them.
“Then, in a disturbing twist, a letter arrived from the Children of God leader, ‘Moses David,’ encouraging adults to teach children how to have sex, claiming it was healthy and good,” she said. “And so the sexual abuse began. I was violated in this way from the age of 12 too many times than I care to remember, but sex was encouraged with children who were far younger.”
Wikimedia CommonsDavid Berg in his harrowing element in the 1980s.
At age 12, Babin was sent to a Children of God “reprogramming camp,” then to Japan shortly afterward. By age 15, she was sent to the Philippines. For about a year and a half, she didn’t step outside the cult’s compound property there — as armed guards surrounded the outside.
“In effect, like the other children there, I was a slave,” she said. “It was a place of unchecked abuse and vicious control. The regime was brutal, and there was no talking at all. If you laughed, they’d put tape over your mouth. We were forced to fast for days, they publicly beat us, and children would disappear for months, emerging bruised and silent.”
Furthermore, Babin’s passport had been confiscated by cult authorities — and her distraught mother had no idea where she was. It took 18 months before Babin was allowed to return to the United States.
After meeting her future husband in the cult at age 19, Babin began to ponder life outside. He convinced her to visit his family members a year later. By the time she was 21, she finally mustered the courage to leave — and today raises her own family in peace.
As for David Berg, he reportedly went into hiding around the early 1970s and died “peacefully” at age 75 in 1994.
