Alberta Report-Western Report: Badly kept Family secrets

Badly kept Family secrets

Alberta Report/Western Report/1995-05-08

By Peter Verburg

Social workers raise the alarm that a notorious pseudo-Christian sect has reappeared

The Youth Emergency Shelter in south Edmonton, a haven for troubled teens, was packed with 90 anxious social workers last week. They were there to learn about the Family, a pseudo-Christian sect that gained notoriety in the 1970s over allegations that it used sex to recruit street kids. The controversy caused its members to flee North America to foreign lands, where they stayed for over a decade. The Family re-surfaced in Alberta about six weeks ago, and the group is once again caught in a media tempest.

Local Family members are wondering what all the fuss is about. They insist the alarmist response from social agencies is unwarranted. The Family--called the Children of God until a name change in 1978--claims it is simply out to "share God's love" through preaching and communal living. But critics warn that, while many of its past sexual practices appear to have ceased, the Family still exhibits the marks of a cult.

The Children of God (COG) was founded in 1968 by "Moses" David Berg, a leader in the hippie Jesus movement in California. A former Alliance Church pastor, he preached on beaches, adapting biblical teachings to the sexual revolution of the period to form a ministry that advocated, among other things, "free love" between adults and children. Christ was presented as a fun-loving hippie who could give followers an eternal turn-on.

Vagrant evangelists, many of them teens separated from their parental homes, took to the streets to distribute pamphlets written by Berg. They set up communes near high schools and YMCAs, competing for recruits with Hare Krishnas and Moonies. During the 1970s, COG expanded to over 100 countries in Europe, the Far East, Australia and South America and at one point boasted of more than 25,000 members.

But midway through the decade, defectors began coming out with grim allegations of child sex abuse and forced prostitution. It became clear from Berg's writings that he viewed indiscriminate sex as a way of sharing God's love. Parents complained their children were being "kidnapped" by COG and police raided communes in several countries.

Berg was obsessed with incest and pedophilia. In 1978, he wrote a letter to his flock which described approvingly the use of fellatio to put toddlers and young boys to sleep. A babysitter did it to him at age three, he explained, and "if it feels good at that age, the Lord intended for kids to get used to feeling good with sex." In another letter, he wrote that it's "perfectly natural" for a mother to have sex with her five-year-old son.

Defectors also reported being coerced into a COG practice common in the 1970s known as "flirty fishing." The devout were sent on pick-up missions to bars, using sex to recruit followers. One former member, David Hiebert of Richmond who was involved in the movement for 15 years, shudders when he hears that the group still talks about "sharing God's love," which in the early '70s, described a successful "flirty fishing" expedition.

In 1978, after the Jim Jones massacre in Guyana ignited anti-cult sentiment around the world, Berg knew COG would be harassed, so he changed the name to Family of Love; so says Ed Priebe, who left the movement in 1989 after 18 years and now lives in Chilliwack, B.C. Mr. Priebe was one of the movement's top doctrinal authorities. Berg banned flirty fishing and child-adult sex by an internal order in 1987.

But the suspicions persisted. In September 1993, police in Argentina seized 268 children aged four months to 17 years and arrested 30 adult residents of seven Family houses in Buenos Aires. Charges included corruption and concealment of minors, and deprivation of liberty for religious purposes. The Family claims no convictions arose from this or any other police raid.

Despite the arrests in Argentina, and similar raids in Australia, Peru and Paraguay in the last few years, the Family has been trying to improve its image in North America. "They've become quite slick at public relations," says Mr. Hiebert. Members were even invited to the White House for a Christmas sing-along in 1992 with a smiling, doting Barbara Bush at their side.

The two couples who represent the Family in Edmonton have visited a seniors' home in Sherwood Park, a day care, and the U of A Hospital children's ward, says Cathy Delahaye, who with her husband Mark makes up half the local missionary team. Together with their 10 children, the couples live in a home near the university. A third couple has recently put down roots in Calgary.

Ms. Delahaye insists they don't want to recruit members. "Our commission is to preach the gospel," she says. "But we will not turn away those who wish to join us." The couples solicit donations on the street. As for the past allegations of sexual relations with children, Ms. Delahaye says, "I would never allow such evils for my kids."

Leading the talk for social workers at the shelter last week was U of A sociology professor Stephen Kent. He says he has kept tabs on the Family for over a decade and has interviewed some of Berg's own relatives who claim they were abused by the reclusive guru. He believes the group, which was active in Red Deer, Edmonton and Calgary in the '70s, is a "dysfunctional family with a demanding and incestuous leader."

The Family denies the allegations. According to Lonnie Davis, a Family spokesman in Washington, D.C., over 600 of the group's children "have been examined around the world by a wide range of medical and psychological professionals, and not a single one has shown any evidence of any kind of abuse." Mr. Davis says that in every case where allegations of abuse have surfaced, the movement has been exonerated.

He adds that critics often ignore the "many good works" the organization carries out, such as providing food and clothing to the needy and encouraging the sick. In official literature, the group calls itself "a Christian missionary fellowship" that strives to "preach the Gospel" and warn the world that "we are living in the Last days." It reports a membership of 3,000 adults and 6,000 children.

The Family's method of raising children may even appear sensible to some conservative Christians. They home-school, for instance, and disagree with "the policy of dumping children indiscriminately in [public schools] for a 'socialization' experience in disrespect, lack of religious conviction, lack of discipline, drugs, alcohol, sexual problems and perversions .... gangs and crime."

But according to Mr. Hiebert, who runs a "recovery group" for defectors, the process of emotional and intellectual control is extremely rigid from the start. Members are disassociated from their extended family, and adherence to the writings of Berg are mandatory. Mr. Priebe adds that those who try to leave are told "their children will be killed in a car accident, they'll be stricken with a deadly disease, or some other horrible thing will happen."

The group has compiled a list of academics who defend it. One of them is Stuart Wright, a professor of sociology at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. Prof. Wright says the Family "has a checkered past, including some unconventional sexual practices which they have pretty much abandoned."

Mr. Davis admits that "sexual sharing" between consenting adults outside the bond of marriage but within the commune is still permitted, but Prof. Wright argues that this kind of "sexual experimentation" does not make the Family a cult. He describes the response of Edmonton social workers to the group as a "moral panic."

At the same time, he is able to see how conservative Christians would find their beliefs blasphemous. For example, Berg taught that Jesus was "created" by God (not begotten), and that the Holy Spirit is a semi-naked woman who has intercourse with the Father.

In a 1973 letter to a concerned Red Deer woman whose daughter had joined COG, the guru described heaven as a place to enjoy "a wild orgy" with a "sexy naked God." He added that kids need and want to know about sex." Five years later, the woman's daughter returned to Red Deer a prostituted wreck.

According to Mr. Priebe, Berg once claimed that he visited the throne room of God and had sex with the Holy Spirit. When asked whether he believes this happened, Mr. Davis responds, "Yes. It may seem a little unusual on first observation, but we believe sex is celebrated by God. The first commandment in the Bible was to be fruitful and multiply." Mr. Davis adds that Berg's writings "must not be taken out of context."

Although many Christians find a good deal to disagree with when it comes to the Family's teachings, that doesn't make it a cult in the eyes of police, says RCMP cult specialist Detective Hugh Frey. He says a group becomes a cult when "methods of mind control" include deceptive recruiting, food and sleep deprivation, or when it is motivated by money, sex or power. They also watch out for "leaders who control the group in a dictatorial manner."

The Family should not be viewed as cultic simply by virtue of its regimented, communal lifestyle, says Prof. Wright. Modern-day Hutterites and Roman Catholic monasteries throughout history have been just as reclusive. "What is called cultic on one hand becomes religious socialization on the other." Moreover, he says, "the harm many people say the Family is causing today is so esoteric that demonstrating the group is cultic is difficult."

Det. Frey says that drawing comparisons between monasteries and the Family is inappropriate; monastic orders are frank about what is expected once a person joins and people freely commit themselves. "They don't invite vulnerable people to a good time," and offer them safety and a secure environment using "spiritual blackmail," he says. But he suspects that of the Family.

One factor which links the Family to the Jim Jones cult of the 1970s, the Moonies, and the Branch Davidians, is that each movement was led by a demagogue who "sanctified his potentially harmful behaviour according to supernatural claims," says Prof. Kent. In that respect, he adds, Moses David is nearly identical to Branch Davidian leader David Koresh.

Det. Frey says that although the Family has to his knowledge never been convicted of a criminal offence, the fact that the sect has been investigated so often is cause for concern. But he says "police action is limited until allegations of abuse surface. Mind control is not illegal, and neither is belonging to a cult."

As for Ms. Delahaye, she insists they are "victims of religious persecution. I am a free moral agent. I am not mind-controlled." She adds that members are not obliged to follow everything Berg wrote down. "He's just an iconoclast who liked to say crazy things."