Shocking secrets of The Family
Faith Morgan Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99
It was a question from her 15-yearold son that gave Faith Morgan the courage to look back at a childhood and adolescence she had spent years trying to forget. “Mum, were you in a sex cult?” he asked, as she drove him to school.
Her son had found her diary and newspaper cuttings revealing that she had grown up in the Children of God, a notorious “free love” cult also known as The Family. It was established by David Berg in 1960s California and, over the next few decades, spread across the world.
Berg preached a doomsday message of imminent apocalypse, but it was his twisted teaching about sex that brought the cult into the public eye.
Faith was born into The Family and her early childhood was spent in Costa Rica. However, Berg’s devotees were expected to travel around the world evangelising, so Faith and her parents were never in one place for long, moving between communities in India, Greece, Mexico and the UK.
Faith managed to break free of the cult at the age of 19. Now living in the Home Counties, she decided to write about her experiences to try to make sense of them, and to shine a light on its treatment of children.
To protect the identities of all concerned, Faith Morgan is a pseudonym and the book leaves some questions unanswered, but the story she tells is a shocking one.
She writes: “At the heart of what was most disturbing about the activities of
The Family was the complete disregard for the children within it… we were there to be used.”
She grew up in the late 1970s and 80s and says that the children were often cruelly disciplined by visiting “aunties and uncles”.
Berg’s main means of communication to his followers was via letters. It was through these that Faith learned about the darkest side of his beliefs.
Sex, or “sharing”, she says, was encouraged between cult members, including children. She recalls staying in one commune where a “sharing” rota was pinned up in the kitchen beside a list of daily chores.
Women were encouraged go to “flirty fishing” (attracting wealthy donors with sex) while teenagers were expected to “love up” with each other and with adults.
When Faith confronts her father as an adult, he admits that while there were some “mistakes along the way”, he was “winning souls for Jesus”.
Faith’s fury at the terrible abuse suffered by children who grew up in the cult blazes through each page. This is an unflinching and courageous memoir, exposing one of the world’s most infamous cults. It’s an inspiring, if at times upsetting, read.
Faith ends on a hopeful note, saying that she is now able to “live and love in peace” – something she most definitely deserves.