Self- styled guru died on run from FBI
The Children of God cult was the creation of Californian David Berg in the late 1960s.
By the 1980s the cult claimed to have 10,000 full-time members in 130 communities around the world.
Hollywood stars Rose Mcgowan, River and Joaquin Pheonix were born into the cult.
Mcgowan’s parents Terry and Daniel, were involved with the cult in Italy but quit when the sect began openly advocating sexual relations between children and adults.
The actress, 44, spent her first nine years in the cult and has described how she began to rebel against them.
She said: “At a very early age, I thought, ‘ These beliefs are absurd’.
“Like in most cults, you were cut off. There were no newspapers, no television. You were kept in the dark so you would obey. It was not a wealthy existence.
“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. They were basically there to serve the men sexually.”
The cult eventually came to the attention of the FBI and Berg, under investigation for incest and child abuse, went on the run. He was still a fugitive from the FBI when he died in 1994 in Portugal.
Berg’s own daughter Debbie also escaped, revealing she had been abused by her father. Bad publicity forced the cult to repeatedly change its name, first to The Family and later to The Family International. After Berg’s death, one of his wives Karen Zerby took over the running of the organisation.
They say the organisation is now an online network of approximately 1900 people in 80 countries.
A spokesman said: “Although the Family International has apologised on a number of occasions to former members for any hurt, real or perceived, that they may have experienced during their membership, we do not give credence to tales of institutionalised abuse.”