SICK SEX CULT
Family life should mean cherished memories, but for Angela Cameli being raised in a cult meant years of mental, physical and sexual abuse. She shares her story of suffering and survival with Kate Graham
Every parent knows the feeling when your child springs a question that stops you in your tracks. For Angela Cameli, 40, it wasn’t about where babies come from or what happens to a pet when it dies; it was when her daughter Gabriella asked about Angela’s first day at school. She didn’t have a lovely anecdote to share. In fact, Angela didn’t set foot in a school until she was 16. Until then, her only education had come from a self-proclaimed prophet who oversaw the apocalyptic worldwide cult that she grew up in – a cult riddled with sexual abuse.
‘My two daughters are so happy,’ says Angela, who now lives in Chicago. ‘They love to dance and read and dress up. They feel safe. It’s the childhood I want for them and would have done anything to have had myself.’
Angela’s American father and Spanish mother were 18 when they met in Spain in 1977. Disillusioned hippies looking for meaning in the world, they joined a group known as The Children of God, which had been founded by American former pastor David Berg in 1968. Members formed communes around the globe, isolated from mainstream society and the outside world.
At first the group was traditional, focused on ‘saving souls’ for Jesus, with strictly no sex before marriage.
From the outside, it appeared to be a familyfocused Christian community. Actors Joaquin Phoenix and Rose McGowan, whose parents were early followers, spent part of their childhoods within the cult’s communes – Phoenix in Venezuela, McGowan in Italy – before their families left. But by the time Angela and her twin brother Michael were born in Spain in 1979, The Children of God had morphed into a terrifying cult known as The Family of Love – labelled a ‘sect’ by the FBI – with some 15,000 global followers.
Berg, by then a self-professed ‘prophet’ calling himself ‘Moses David’, had begun preaching to his followers of a fast-approaching apocalypse, and that they were God’s chosen people who would be saved. Members were discouraged from working, relying instead on begging, and children were to be kept within the communes. Worst of all were Berg’s twisted beliefs on sex that he promoted through a philosophy he called the ‘Law of Love’. Followers were taught to believe that love for God was expressed through sex, even between adults and children. To ensure followers were totally dependent on the cult, members were moved constantly across the world. When she was three, Angela’s family lived in a commune in Argentina, where her sister Suzy* was born. She was six when they went to France, where her sister Linda was born. The last time Angela lived with her parents permanently was that year in a Swiss commune. ‘From then on I sometimes had no idea where they were. I lived in more than 20 countries and I was always moved without warning, sometimes without my siblings.’ Everyone had a ‘fleebag’ with a few personal belongings and had to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. ‘Never knowing where you would be sent and when was deliberate. That way you were always on edge.’ Families were broken up – instead they had ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’ – and children had to fend for themselves.
Some communes were in huge homes while others were ‘just a collection of caravans’. Conditions were dire: children slept in bare rooms without proper bedding, in freezing or boiling temperatures. Everywhere the daily regime was the same. ‘There were devotions – two or three hours of praying, reading and singing every morning and evening, plus endless chores.’ There was ‘an ever-increasing list of rules, from how much toilet paper we could use, to being forbidden to cut our hair or wear bras’. Children were taught to read by adults.
Then there was sex. The cult’s obscene practices permeate Angela’s earliest memories – Berg’s letters on sex were read to her from a young age. At five, she recalls crying as her mother changed out of her tattered
The van in which the cult travelled, Hungary, 1994; leader David Berg; Angela (left), her dad and Michael performing, South America, 1982; with Bosnian refugees in Croatia, 1996 –
during her years in the cult, Angela lived in more than 20 countries; Angela (right), Linda (middle) and their mum dressed to go begging, Chicago, 1996 – members were encouraged to
beg rather than work; Children of God visit Brighton, 1971
Angela’s family arriving in Chicago, 1996; cult members protesting against Argentina’s clampdown on its camps, 1983; teenagers including Angela had to care for the cult’s younger children; teaching Suzy to read, Switzerland, 1986; Suzy (second left) performing,
Hungary, 1993; at a Bosnian refugee camp in Hungary (Angela far left), 1993. Centre: praying with
Michael, Austria, 1988
clothes into a tight dress to go ‘flirty fishing’ for the cult. This practice – where female members were expected to prostitute themselves to reel in new followers (and their money) – was framed as a way to win souls for Jesus. In 1979 Berg announced that flirty fishers had added 19,000 followers to the group’s swelling ranks.
In 1982 Berg wrote and distributed The Story of Davidito, a guide to child-rearing that advocated paedophilia, alongside letters that encouraged incest. Angela and her siblings were not sexually or physically abused by their parents. But ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’ had free access to the children, and Angela remembers being abused by an ‘uncle’ in a so-called ‘love room’.
It was a horror that Angela had to keep to herself. It didn’t matter if she was starving or exhausted from hours begging on the streets; adults didn’t want to hear complaints. Anything except a smile meant a serious punishment, which ranged from sudden, vicious beatings to being put on silence restriction. At 13 she saw a 15-year-old friend – already a father – being punished this way. ‘A sign was hung around his neck forbidding anyone to speak to him, and it went on for weeks. His toddler daughter kept tugging his shirt and asking him to talk to her until she threw herself on the floor crying. He sat silently, tears streaming down his cheeks. He had to follow the rules.’
Other children were sent to isolation, where they were left alone to pray until they ‘got right with God’. Angela remembers one boy being kept in isolation for a month.
By 1993, the outside world was catching up with the cult. Interpol had launched an investigation into Berg’s activities and the
FBI was reportedly also investigating him.
Berg fled to Portugal, where he died in 1994, aged 75. His widow, Karen Zerby, assumed leadership of the group but found a growing disillusionment among the young followers that remained. In 1995, in order to assuage the doubts of cult members, she introduced new rules that allowed young people to go to school and families to live independently.
In the same year, Michael, who was now 16 and living in the same Hungarian commune as his parents, had reached breaking point, telling them daily that he was going to leave and live with his grandparents in Chicago. Realising he wouldn’t change his mind, his parents got a dispensation for the family to live in Chicago until Michael turned 18. Angela was flown from her commune in Prague to join them in the US.
The experience was life-changing. The family lived in an apartment near their grandparents and her dad worked in the family business. Angela and her siblings went to school for the first time. That first day at school wasn’t easy. Angela saluted the teachers, just as she’d been trained to do in the cult. She couldn’t believe the shouting and swearing from the other teenagers. She found education – particularly the idea of evolution – eye-opening.
Every day made her more determined never to return to the cult. But that would mean being separated from Suzy and Linda, who were made to return to Europe with their parents just after Angela and Michael turned 18.
‘It was the hardest decision I’ve ever made,’ she says, ‘because I chose myself over my sisters. But I knew I had to put myself first.’ The investigations into the cult had stopped adults having sex with children, but as an 18-year-old, Angela knew that if she returned she would be put on the ‘sharing’ schedule: ‘That meant I would be made to have sex with any man. I wouldn’t have survived going back to that.’
She found a place to live in Chicago with Michael, but the impact of their upbringing meant difficult times for them both. Without education or any understanding of how the world worked, there were drink and drug problems and unhealthy relationships, particularly with men. Angela worried that her past would be too much for any man to handle.
Slowly she was able to build a life for herself, getting a degree and a job as a social worker. In 2004 she met John at her local gym. She was open about her past from the start. ‘I told him about life in the cult even before our first date,’ she remembers. ‘He just hugged me. That’s when I knew he was the guy for me.’
Their relationship hasn’t always been easy, and the trauma of Angela’s past is still playing out. For decades she couldn’t process what had happened to her. ‘I’d learnt to push my feelings into the corner of the attic, then to numb them with substances. John still has to take sleeping pills because of my insomnia and nightmares of my previous life.’
They got married in 2009 and welcomed daughter Giovanna in 2011, then Gabriella in 2013. Still the nightmares persisted, so Angela turned to writing. The process was cathartic.
‘For the first time I was able to be honest about how I felt. That made me feel strong for what I’d overcome, instead of ashamed for what had been done to me.’
Seeking understanding, Angela confronted her parents, who now live in Spain and are no longer associated with the cult. ‘After my girls were born, I had to know how they could have let us live in a place where they knew these terrible things were happening. Dad says he believed things like incest were just ideas the leader was experimenting with. Mum says she was naive, telling me, “We made mistakes and I’m sorry I didn’t protect you.” It’s been a long road, but I have forgiven them.’
She now sees her parents regularly and says they have a good relationship with their grandchildren. As for her siblings, all are successful and happy – Michael lives in
Chicago, Suzy and Linda in Spain.
Karen Zerby still leads the group, now known as The Family International, but things have changed since Angela’s days. In 2009 Zerby announced that the world would not be ending imminently. Many of the communes have collapsed and today it counts some 2,500 members in 80 countries, who are ‘committed to sharing the message of God’s love with others’ and active in missionary work.
As for those questions from Giovanna and Gabriella? ‘I’m never going to lie to them – we talk about everything. I’m a survivor. I want them to know that their mum has gone from victim to victorious.’
To learn more about Angela’s upcoming book follow her on Twitter @AngelaMOrlando3