Escaping the Children of God sex cult
BEXY CAMERON OVERCAME A CHILDHOOD IN THE CULT TO REBUILD HER LIFE
Growing up, Bexy Cameron was told she was “special”, and that she had been chosen to fight in Jesus’ army. But, as a child soldier of God, she was warned she would die in battle at his Second Coming, and not live to see her adult years. Confusingly, Bexy was also told she was “evil”, and was exorcised when she was nine years old, before being banned from speaking for nearly a year.
All of this happened inside a cult called the Children of God. She tells us, “Growing up in the Children of God was confusing and controlled. I was raised to be this soldier that was going to die at the Armageddon. I was also told I was going to have lasers coming from my eyes and breathe fire like one of the X-men – that was the cool part.
“But it was damaging to think I would never grow up, that I would not have a future. I grew up thinking the end of the world was coming, the world would be destroyed with the Antichrist’s return, and my job was to be raised to fight in that war.”
CULT BEGINNINGS
Founded in Huntington Beach, California, in 1968, Children of God was the brainchild of pastor-turned-prophet David Berg, who claimed to be a “channel to God”, and prophesised about Christ’s Second Coming. His spiritual message of revolution and happiness caught on following the Summer of Love, winning him thousands of followers, and the sect quickly grew around the world. At its height in the 1970s, the organisation had around 15,000 members living in 130 international communities. Members included River and Joaquin Phoenix, and Rose Mcgowan, who were all born into the group.
However, Berg – also known as Moses David, King David, Father David and Dad/grandpa to his followers – had a sinister side. A polygamist, he advocated sex with children, telling members that God was love and love was sex, so there should be no limits, regardless of age or
‘I WAS TOLD I WAS GOING TO DIE AT THE SECOND COMING’
familial relationship. Exploiting the free love movement of the ’60s, he encouraged his followers to have sex with each other and with kids, permitting incest, and he practised what he preached. Bex y – who spent the first 15 years of her life inside the cult with her parents Martin and Linda, who changed their names to Gideon and Rachel – explains, “Children of God was a sexually deviant group, led by a man who thought he was a prophet, but ended up a predator. It started out with a powerful message of the world’s
end, but within a handful of years, became an extremely damaging and deviant cult.”
Under the encouragement of their leader, mass orgies were commonplace and sexual abuse was rife. Berg was alleged to have raped young girls, including his own daughter and granddaughters, although he was never charged or arrested, as he went into hiding. Other members of the sect have been convicted. Actress Rose Mcgowan, who lived with her family in a Children of God commune in Italy for the first nine years of her life, is among those who have spoken out about the abuse she suffered within the organisation.
“The sexual abuse was one of their defining beliefs,” says Bexy, who reveals how she was urged to “make love” to another boy when she was eight. “David Berg was a predator and a paedophile. We grew up with the idea that children were allowed to have sex as a complete norm.
It was in our literature, it was spoken about all the time. It was around us on a daily basis. And when you have a group preaching about doing things to kids, you will have sexual predators joining it. Children of God was an evil entity in many ways.”
Around 1973, Berg made a new policy, instructing female followers to practise “flirty fishing” and become “hookers for Jesus”, earning the sect the nickname of “the sex cult”.
The women would seduce men in bars to get them to join the group, and hundreds of thousands of men were “fished” before the practice was discontinued in 1987.
HELD PRISONER
As well as the disturbing sexual aspects, daily life in the Children of God was brutal. Public beatings happened regularly and food was scarce. At one point, the members were fed horse food disguised as bran flakes. “Imagine waking up in a commune deep in the British countryside, but you don’t know your address or where you are. You share a 15x15ft room with 15 other girls and the majority aren’t related to you,” Bexy says.
“Children were the workforce, and my day was divided into looking after younger children, cooking and cleaning in between prayers. I was cooking for up to 100 people when I was nine years old, and watching babies, day and night, doing feeds, naps and changing, when I was ten.” She continues, “It was a toxic and dangerous environment. The group forced me to betray other children, my friends, daily. We were watched, we had to tell on each other, we had to conspire against each other. We were prisoners.”
Living on the commune was also very isolating. “We had to be kept separate from Systemites [society]. We didn’t go to school, watch television or listen to music, because we had a singular purpose: to be a soldier for Christ,” says Bexy. When she was nine, after being caught lying, she experienced her first exorcism – an event that continues to traumatise her to this day. It involved everyone in the commune touching her all over while shouting in tongues.
“The exorcism told me I was evil.
It’s quite a scary thing to have a child go through and I had my first panic attack,”
she recalls. “When I was 27, all these past events started to hit me in the face. I couldn’t hide any more. It took me years to realise I could trace a lot of things back to that moment.”
Life soon got worse for Bexy. When she was ten, she was enrolled into a training camp known as End Time Army Training. There, she was placed on Silence Restriction, where she was forbidden to speak, look at or communicate with anyone else for 11 months, all while being separated from her family. “That year was one of the defining moments of my life, and I still think it may be one of the most difficult years I will have to go through,” she says. “The most damaging part of it was my right to communicate was taken away. I wasn’t allowed to talk, look people in the eye, smile or react to someone else. I had to act as if I was invisible – and I felt invisible. I felt like I was losing my mind. The training camps had the most effect on me. Our routines became a severe combination of army training and a spiritual camp.”
ESCAPE
Bexy’s freedom came when she was 15. After meeting some local teens and finding herself a secret boyfriend, she sneakily got a job in a nearby pub – only to be caught when her employer called after she accidentally gave them her house’s telephone number instead of her boyfriend’s. She was kicked out of Children of God following
‘AT TEN, I WASN’T ALLOWED TO LOOK ANYONE IN THE EYE’
a unanimous vote, with her parents also voting against her. “I had wanted to leave, but not like that,” she says.
It has taken Bexy more than two decades to come to terms with her past, particularly with her parents’ involvement in the sect. They remain in the cult to this day, while all her siblings escaped. Therapy, grief retreats and writing her new memoir, Cult Following, have all helped.
Bexy remains very close to her brothers and sisters, and loves being an aunt to her nieces and nephews.
Now 38, Bexy has carved out a successful career as a filmmaker and activist. Her story is being adapted for the small screen, with Dakota Johnson playing her. “It’s extremely exciting. I know they are going to honour it and make something incredible out of it,” she says.
Bexy reveals, “I’ve come to terms with what happened, and the book was a big help in that. I now have a life that I never, ever dreamed was possible as a kid. What I want to forgive my parents for some day is the lies, the betrayal, the lack of protection. Our parents are meant to protect us and we’re ingrained to trust them, so when our protector starts to damage us in some way, it messes with our perception of love and trust. Being denied my reality as a child has given me bigger scars than any beating ever did.”
She adds, “One of the biggest things I struggle with is how they defended a group that we know abused and exploited children. That’s the worst thing the Children of God did.”