How I Escaped Life In An International Cult | Extraordinary Lives Podcast | @LADbible​

in the cult there wasn't just physical and sexual abuse there was you know you're talking about entire childhood of psychological and emotional abuse as well and for a lot of ex-members sadly a lot turned to addictions um and a lot of us suffer with depression with PTSD and sadly you know we've lost a lot of um X sgas so my peers to suicide thank you hi and welcome to this episode of extraordinary lives the podcast from love Bible I'm Ben Paul Jones and today we're joined by Natasha Tommy Natasha it's great to have you here thank you um for anyone who isn't aware of who you are would you mind giving a brief introduction sure so my name's Natasha Torme I'm the author of born into a children of God a book in which I detail my upbringing in the notorious sect the children of God which is now known as The Family International it's a cult that existed throughout the 70s 80s and still exists to this day and in which uh there was quite a bit of scandalous doctrines involved and which resulted in the mistreatment of many people including children during the course of this conversation we're going to talk about some quite upsetting topics I imagine um please do just let me know if there's any point that you want to pause or stop sure okay fantastic so thanks so much for coming in today and um I suppose let's get back to the very beginning of your story because you were born into the cult weren't you yeah so the court was founded originally in 1968 by an American Evangelical pastor called David Berg so he started in the U.S but it very quickly spread into Europe and then the rest of the world so you had the original members who joined most of them were very young adults 17 18 early 20s at the start and then as time went on they went on to have children who we call the second generation adults sgas who were all born into the cult so the big difference is that these sga's knew nothing else about the outside world they were really from the their date of birth uh immersed into this very strange lifestyle um kind of kept in a bubble for their childhoods so I was born into it in the early 80s and well remained into it until I could legally leave at age 18. so it's quite an interesting story there where you say that so David Berg the founder he was American that's correct yeah and then you said it quickly spread into Europe so how how are you aware how does something like that happen how does somebody start a cult somewhere in America and then for that to be able to spread into different areas of the globe so already Berg felt like an outcast in the Christian Community his mother was a very famous Evangelical preacher and he thought he was going to have the same sort of success except that he had very um he had a bit more radical views on Christianity and how Christians should be living so he was rejected very much by the mainstream Christian groups which is when he had the idea to start the cult but even then he started to get a lot of negative attention from the Press from parents of people who had joined the cult who had kind of gone off the radar and they had big concerns about what was going on so that's when he decided Well America is an evil Place uh you know let's go let's go to Europe and see if they'll accept us more there and then the same thing kind of happened in Europe too where before long they got some bad press and some concerns were raised so then it was let's go east let's go into Asia into South America into Africa wow so he was basically running away from the negative press around the globe and pretty much so it in the cult's height they were very very active predominantly in Asia South America countries where they could get away with things okay okay and what what defines a cult you know what's the difference if somebody says oh I'm gonna just start and I'm in a small town there's not many churches I'm going to start practicing Christianity in a community center with a group of people what what's the Tipping Point when something can be defined as a cult um well I think it's the main thing is a level of control and generally it's control of over multiple multiple factors of a person's life so often it will start with the control of their finances so in the cult in our Cults you know everyone gave up all their money to the cult when they joined and everything was shared no one had their own finances so to speak um and then there's a level of control over lifestyle when it becomes to a point where you're being told how to live of course in our cult that became very extreme as I'm sure we'll discuss later a control of a reproduction a control over your working life um I think spiritually as well psychological control obviously comes into play too and when it gets to that point where the movement is controlling the person to such an extent that they don't have any freedom left I think we can clearly call that cult and then okay so to go back to your story what are your first memories of because because you were born into the cult you didn't choose to join it so I guess the beginning of your life was that's all you knew you know what were your first memories of it very difficult to explain it because that was all we knew we didn't know anything else so for us for many years growing up I think we just believed everyone lived like this we didn't really realize that we were different and that we were being brought up in a very strange way um I think the older you get it's like a slow recognition starts to come into play where you start thinking well why aren't we allowed to leave the house when we want why aren't we going to school like other children out there and little things like that you know they start to add up you know why do I feel anxious all the time why do I feel scared and I think in the back of your head there's something in human nature where you know something's wrong even at the a very very young age but you just don't know what it is because no one's telling you but so can you give us a little bit of a snapshot of your life you know when you're born you know which country you're in what's your what does your family look like at that point where are you living like is it a compound is it a house on a street you know just explain to anyone who isn't aware what your life was like at that point so it's important to note it's like the the frog in boiling water scenario the cult didn't just start out with these drastic doctrines and things like that it was a very slow you know curve over time that being said it was only over probably a decade so not that slow so my parents joined in France um contraception was banned in the cult at this time and for a long time after that so they had four kids very quickly four boys and then they went on to have me so I was born in Thailand they had just moved to Thailand when I was born and I was raised in several compounds so we moved a lot in a cult again things had changed very drastically from the early days things were becoming quite extreme when I was growing up so we lived in many compounds we usually moved every two years or every year even and these compounds were very big houses usually a collection of buildings sometimes where you could have a hundred 150 people living in it so they very much operated a bit like a an army camp so to speak or a boarding school army camp a bit of the both um in the sense that everyone lived like one commune there was no individual families so that's one thing Cults often do they'll break down the family unit because if you can't trust your own family and you can't Unite with your own family all your trust is going to the leader so so as a child were your parents clearly your parents or was it like the other adults in that area were also given the task of raising you in a way yeah so you knew who your parents were um but everyone was your parent so all the other adults you would call uncle and auntie and they had as much right to discipline you as anyone else to tell you what to do Etc so we were because we're so many children about 60 to 70 percent of the population at its height was children wow because contraception was bad so we were put in straight away you know put into groups by age range so you'd have the nursery group you'd have the young children the middle children the older children so you were raised in these groups with a teacher which was any uncle or Auntie from that commune that was assigned to your group so they would be with you all day they'd often sleep with you as well at night in the same room so you're kind of raised in that kind of environment where there was no like individual family you'd see your family only once a week on the Sunday the rest of the time you were permanently in this group separated from your parents separated from your siblings and kind of raised in this boarding school type environment um which you know I always say was a for me a very very sad upbringing because we were there were so many people around you but you were so lonely um so what was it that made you lonely if you're saying you were surrounded by a load of people and actually you had more access to adults that were in a sort of educational and parental role what was making you feel lonely well firstly you couldn't trust anyone so you learn very quickly that you couldn't trust the adults and you definitely could not trust your peers so they created this environment of reporting on each other you know your only loyalty was to to God Jesus the cult leader the Shepherds of the home that was it and your teacher of your group so if another kid did something wrong you had to go report on them say what they did they'd get badly punished for it yeah and there was just an environment of of high anxiety and stress and complete distrust of each other even at very very a very young age which is pretty sad because you know you're separated from your siblings they'll be in different age groups to you than urine you're not seeing your parents hardly ever and then you've got that kind of environment you're in 24 hours a day so I just remember being very anxious as a child and why was it happening like what was David Berg trying to achieve why did he want to set up this cult and create all these rules and separate the children and make you know what was he trying to do well it was it's all about control so he when I was growing up was when the doctrines were at at their worst or most extreme I would say but he believed that it was his job he was the prophet of the end or reincarnation of the Prophet Moses and that the Colt's job was to raise an end time Army so that's what we were wow okay um we were being raised to be soldiers for God in the last seven years of the earth which Christians call the end time which is when the Antichrist comes in and tries to eradicate all Christians and kill them off so we were being trained to to um fulfill this great destiny which again was a lot of pressure growing up as a kid but we had constant uh psychological training Doctrine training you know a lot of reading books Publications memorizing his words Etc we had practical training as well how to survive in you know forests so he thought this would be like a genuine sort of apocalyptic fight absolutely yeah wow so you'd be out there controlled you know we would be on the Run for at least three and a half of those seven years and he predicted dates too so he predicted several but I remember one key date he had predicted was 93. and that's when you know the Jesus was going to come back and all that so I was expecting to die around the age of 10 12 because we're told you know most of us were going to be murdered as Martyrs for God and we kind of had to just accept that fate and was he because quite often with these kind of people the the the Antichrist is then used as a way of describing types of people that already exist on Earth was he like that or was he actually saying like there'll be devils and monsters reappearing that you have to fight with the Antichrist for him was an actual man right who was going to take over the world in its entirety and he was going to exerto you know full control over everything he was going to ban all religions he was going to make everyone have a chip in their forehead or their hand you know and just have full control over everything and it was our job to fight him and his his armies and how were you fighting him like like weapons guns you know what what was the fighting well we were supposed to get super powers okay so there was supposed to be a point in the end time where we would receive superpowers from God be that you know we could do lightning bolts from our fingers or throw fire through our eyes um so where is he getting that from verses in the Bible or is he just did he just start to make invent things he based a lot of his stuff on things from the um Book of Revelations but obviously he also received most of his information through his gift of Prophecy which is hearing directly from God now of course we didn't know until much later that he was a raging alcoholic so okay yeah a lot of his rants were under heavy influence of alcohol okay okay so um I guess let's go back to the so you're born in Thailand and how long did you stay there for so we stayed in Thailand about 10 years in many different communes we then moved on to Malaysia for a couple of years Indonesia for a year and finally back to France and bounced to Reunion Island and a bit everywhere and where where so is he buying these communes is he creating or is he renting space you know where's the money coming from to generate the ability to move whole groups of people around the world so there are several sources of income depending on the period of time it was in at the very start uh a lot of their income came from incoming members because when you joined you gave everything if you had inheritance that inheritance went to the cult wow after that they did a lot of selling you know posters and things they did a lot with music they had a in France for example in the 70s they had a very famous dance and singing group called lisner fondue the children of God in French and they were actually on TV and everything um and they were cult members yeah wow and they were just like a pop group super popular yeah and even in later on in Thailand for example um they had a lot of very big dance troops and stuff and some of their singers became very famous um they didn't always use you know the family International they would use a lot of other names depending on which country they're in so with this because at this point at the beginning it was called the children of God right yeah and that name had maintained through your childhood is that right no there was a point um it was probably around the time I was born I don't know the exact date but there was a point where they changed to the family of love and very quickly to the family International so again all of this was part of the you know escaping bad reputation yes you know no we're not the children of God we're not we're the family International right we're a completely different cult we disbanded the children of God but it was all the same people right okay you know it was they were quite savvy in that way and they became even more Savvy with time where legally they knew exactly how to twist things and and slip out when you're moving around the world like that so when you move to Thailand are you picking up thai members or is it like the same kind of group of people moving around you know were you collecting different nationalities of people as you went yeah yeah yeah it was a very uh multi-cultural place so we had a lot there were quite a few Thai Nationals who joined as well um but from a fundraising point of view so you had a period where a lot of the fundraising then starts to come from flirty fishing which is one of the most scandalous doctrines that the cult is most well known for so that began again you know nothing just happens overnight it's always small suggestions that lead to other things so it started off with David Berg believing that well first he introduced the law of love which was a law he said anything was permissible if it was done in love with love yeah you know where this is going yeah um so first that very much affected adults so there was a lot of sharing they called it that started happening so this is over over like 10 years they went from being quite conservative no sex before marriage um things like that then they said actually it's okay for people to have multiple wives or multiple husbands so threesome started happening then sharing started with the law of love so that was the idea that to obtain full unity in the group adults should share their partners with other adults that did not have a partner so it was the idea that no one should be frustrated in that sense out of love you should you know let your wife go and help out that lonely member over there who doesn't have a wife and they still have the no contraception rule yep right um but very quickly that just went to complete extremes it was not at all about single people anymore it was everyone sleeping with everyone married not married orgies were happening sharing schedules were put up in some homes some homes were you know there was more control the more radical communes which are a lot of those in Thailand so there'd be a schedule and the Shepherds of the home would decide tonight you're sharing with that person you're sharing with that person you know so over what a year or two it went from conservative to you don't even have a choice you sleep with anymore so that that feels fast to me because to go from a over the period of a year to go from like conservative Christianity to basically the flip of what you know the way that most sort of it may have been more than two years but it certainly wasn't more than but it feels like it's you know when you look at he was American originally and when you look at conservative American Christians they're very much against that yeah that way of life and the fact that you know do you think that was because that was something he truly believed was the correct thing to do or do you think it was he it's just something he wanted to do you know where was his thought process coming from do you think I think he was uh for lack of a better word with all we know now about him he was a sexual pervert a complete deviant in that sense you know he used to get prophecies and dreams about sleeping with his own mother you know so I think a lot of it was about control but then a lot of it was that he was fulfilling his own strange fantasies in some ways so during this big sexual Revolution as I called it you know he also requested that woman send in Striptease videos to him and he would write these letters detailing exactly what he wanted them to do you know and I don't want you to show me everything straight away you know and and in detailed instructions so all the loads of women around the world and even sadly some children we're sending in these Dance videos to him this is Ben Paul Jones we're just going to take a break from today's episode to talk about one of our sponsors better help this show is brought to you by betterhelp how much time do you spend on yourself in an average week so easy to get caught up in what everyone else needs from you and never take a moment to think about what you need from yourself but when we spend all of our time giving it can leave us feeling stretched thin and burned out therapy can give you the tools to find more balance in your life so you can keep supporting others without leaving yourself behind therapy is something I've used several times in my own life I think sometimes we think it has to be for huge events or massive changes but I like to just use it every couple of months or a couple of times a year check in on myself if anything's feeling like a struggle book a few sessions top myself back up visit betterhelp.com minutes with today to get 10 of your first month that's better help h-e-l-p.com slash minutes with now back to the episode and this at this point this is still because God wants this to happen because this is going to help us in the fight or is has it becomes something different oh that that's still going on yeah whole end time thing but this is all about unity and and love we are a family of Love okay so um so then sharing went a step further into flirty fishing so then it you know Berg again slowly introduced it saying oh my wife and I Karen Zerby are doing this experiment where at night we're going to clubs and she's showing God's love to lonely businessmen who are there yeah you know and it started with you know just talking to them and dancing with them and then very quickly the experiment went further and she was actually sleeping with them and so it became this is really successful for us so you know we'd like you guys to start this too and the purpose was to recruit people to the cult or just to do it well at the beginning yes it was really about showing God's love and you know potentially trying to recruit someone to the cult but you know demonstrating demonstrating God's love in a physical way right um so and then that you know was so successful that it became means of fundraising so it wasn't just flirty fishing it was escorting Services called esing where they were actually being paid as escorts as well and expecting donations in exchange for their time and whatever Services they were providing and you know you have to understand the concept of group think to understand how you can get to such an extreme you know and there were people who left along the way but the majority stayed and if you understand the way group think and and um uh psychological coercion work then you understand why all these people stayed because they were just in that environment where if you dare to go against it you were an outcast and I guess at this point I mean maybe I'm wrong but I'm imagining that the men weren't doing flirty fishing yes they were they were so the majority was woman because obviously yes that was the more successful side of things but yeah the men would do it too so the doctrine at that point was that everyone had to go out to clubs and do their best to sleep with people in the hope of getting a donation for the course yeah not everyone would you know there were some homes where they didn't like the practice as much as others but certainly the more active and more dedicated communes it was uh a big operation basically it was like a you know every night you had your core ffers there were esers that would go out and they'd be accompanied by some guys to you know for protection and then you had the people who obviously weren't as successful at it as at it be it because they just didn't have the looks for it who would stay home and take care of things at home but they threw FFA flirty fishing they met a lot of powerful people as well lawyers politicians members of the army generals things like that who later would go on to protect them and you know Shield them a little bit from when the rumors started coming out again and things like that in certain countries I mean I know there were some someone I lived with had a Arabic Prince as well who was on her ffing schedule who would you know just give her handfuls of jewels God yeah and what do you think the what was the draw to an outsider to join a cult like that like because what you're describing you know if I mean it sounds awful you know it sounds like no control over your life no control over your finances or your home or your family so if people are born into it obviously you know no different but if people are outside that looking in and get invited to join it what's the draw for a for an adult to see that and go okay yeah that seems like a positive way to live my life well firstly they never showed that side to the world their facade that the public saw was so so different it was black and white you know to the outside we looked like this really uh lovely group of people who were just trying to do good for God you know we did a lot of humanitarian work as well as part of our fronts so from the outside we looked like people who were really just there to help you know help people were poor uh help orphanages schools and things like that but also by the time all the extreme doctrines came out they already had their core membership okay they didn't recruit very much from the time I was uh a very young child I don't remember there being many incoming new recruits it was quite rare and if there were it was more in places like Africa and things like that where you know they weren't aware of what was maybe going on in the other more extreme communes of the cult but then they also didn't tell new recruits what was going on you didn't join the cult and hey gonna go flirty fishing tonight there was a whole process to join the cult he started off Babe's status where you could only read certain documents that were very clean called The Milk of the word and they slowly built you up to the meat of the word okay which was the more heavy duty stuff and that's the frog in the pan of hot water you described earlier where you as you developing being part of this going further into it okay well let's just go back a little bit to to one of the more stressing aspects of that cult um there are quite widespread reports of child abuse within it yeah would you mind if we talk about that a little sure because we've had also be huge brainwashing techniques going on but they are adults obviously with children who have less ability to make their own choices is more distressing you know can you tell us a little bit about that aspect of the cult sadly as part of the sexual Revolution came also uh Berg's suggestion that children should be able to experience sexuality from a very very young age um so the way children were impacted was greatly affected by one particular book that was published um so you had Berg's letters that already started a quite a wave and it wasn't like uh pedophilia was happening out in the open or anything but it basically gave permission and no rules for anyone who was that way inclined to go ahead and do it and whether it was there were some homes in which it was openly practiced so I know there was some communes in Greece where it was open practice everyone knew it was happening there were other homes like the homes in Thailand where I lived where it was happening maybe some people knew about it but didn't say anything but it was happening and some knew some didn't it was kind of behind closed doors um but there was this one particular book that came out that was written by a woman called Sarah Keeley and co-written by Karen Zerby who's currently an earth cult I'm called the story of davidito so davidito was a child Karen Zerby had who was born as a result of ffing flurry fishing um and but David Burke had kind of taken him under his wing and adopted him as his son and he was kind of being raised to be the next king of the cult so to speak and this book was all about the different ways they were experimenting with raising him including you know some pretty disturbing detailed accounts and photographs of him being sexually molested when he was a toddler from the age of one two and onwards so when that book came out I mean there are some adults in the cult who say they never took it as an instruction to abuse they took it as a a Doctrine experiment and there are others in the cult who really took it as this is what we're gonna do now so unfortunately you know because children don't always talk when they're abused it wasn't until quite a bit later that I think we realized there was a lot more sexual abuse that happened than anyone could have imagined and it was known at the time because there was a point where they had to put their foot down say stop because I think there were some instances where very young girls got pregnant then also came AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases so flirty fishing had to stop and then further down the line they kind of said okay we need to stop we need to ban shot uh any type of interaction with children um because of all you know it was starting to get out there was starting to be rumors and stuff um but before that it was very much it just went on and after that it went on as well where they would issue a you know an official letter saying anyone who does this is touches children is going to be excommunicated and then just behind that would come a bar letter Burn After Reading guys we've had to say this and this happened all the time in the cold we've had to issue this you know because the world doesn't understand our doctrines they don't understand what we're trying to do so yes we need to stop doing it but just to let you know that we stand behind our doctrines you know and we still believe there's nothing wrong with things I've done love so you know the mixed messaging so they'd send a letter like that and then the the adults would read it and then destroy it so that there wasn't evidence that they'd said yeah discard that previous one and there were so many documents that were destroyed um luckily some ex-members actually stole a trunk of them that hadn't been destroyed yet and that's all the evidence that's online now without that we would have no evidence really and what what happened to the boy that was being raised by the two cult Founders oh that was extremely sad so davidito who um later was known as Ricky Rodriguez um he went against his mother at some point after his father died his mother took over um even though he's being raised to be the next leader he you know he started traveling and listening to okay his peers and finding out all the abuse they went through as well he went through terrible abuse too um and he tried to rebuild his life in the outside world but he just didn't manage to get there he was so haunted by everything that happened to him and he felt some kind of responsibility because of his position in the cult and he spent some time looking for his mother because he wanted to kill her and instead she was she's been living in hiding for decades and instead he found one of his nannies one of the ones in the infamous book who abused him and he killed her and then killed himself it was absolutely tragic but it was also a huge event that caused a lot of the younger generation to leave because then we thought nah if this is the the child of the cult leader you know and things were so bad for him you know this was just crazy we need to go and I I um do you mind me asking you about your experiences because I know you had sure um deeply unpleasant experiences uh along the lines of what we've been discussing yeah sure so I was uh sexually abused at the age of four multiple occasions over about a year um yeah it was uh someone who was assigned one of the uncles who was assigned to take care of my group children you know these were people who had absolutely no child care experience and you know it was considered a lowly job as well all the super smart super popular people were the fundraisers and things like that so it was kind of all the all the Riff Raff were put on child duty um but yeah he was a Filipino member of the cult who took advantage of this position really and I know that he did it to another girl at least one other girl and my father actually excommunicated him a few years later because he found out about the other girl I didn't say anything until I was about 10. I don't know why I just felt so dirty hmm it's just you just didn't feel like you could trust anyone enough to tell as well because you could see sometimes someone would say something about someone touching them and then they go and get their mouth washed out with soap or they'd be put on silence restriction for a week you know you were punished and called Liars all the time so it must have been confusing too because from what it sounds like there was actually mixed messages whether it was actually a bad thing anyway so as in when the people well that's it and that was the main thing is that you didn't know was bad no one ever told you it isn't until much later it's not okay for someone to touch you in that way or to do that to you you know so you had no idea you were being told by this abuser that he was showing you God's love but at the same time you felt so sick to the stomach when it was happening and so just horrible and scared and disgusted it was very very confusing especially when you're that young you know at age four you just don't have the mental capacity to deal with a situation like that um so did he did did your abuser remain in the cult for several years with you yeah yeah until your father well thankfully he was only in charge of our group for one year okay so that put an end to it at least at some point but then yeah my father found out he was he had done something to another girl and he excommunicated him but then you know it happened all the time people were excommunicated and then you'd go to another commune and there they'd be oh really they were left back in because they'd repented oh that happened a lot as well I I mean you said that you became aware that something felt wrong about the cult you know like you say you'd grown up there you'd been raised in it um you're progressing through life that's all you're told and you as you said earlier that you're told that everyone else doesn't understand the other Christians don't understand they've turned away from the true word of God what was the point in your life where you started to feel like something might not be everything that you've been told oh much later I think it was only um because the cult started having some legal issues around 93 94 just after just around the time Berg died um so they had there were raids that took place because there had been reports in several countries that there was a lot of child abuse going on in this cult so their homes were raided by police and Social Services in certain countries it was like a simultaneous raid across the world oh wow yeah so like they'd all sort of community I believe so because it was all around the same time so there must have been some kind of uh coordination going on um so some homes in South America Australia France um not in Thailand now um yeah I think that was it England maybe as well and that led to there was a big court case going on at the same time in England with a custom it started as a custody court case um there was a grandmother who was trying to get custody of her grandchild who was being raised in a cult but it turned into the cult being on trial so all of this media attention was happening so they had to clean up their act at some point and they had to stop being so obvious and so you know standing out so much so they ordered all the big communes to break down into smaller units and the Spurs type thing um so when we ended up in a smaller unit we then moved back to France it was kind of just my family it's the first time we were alone as a family with just one or two other members passing through sometimes so we started to have a little bit more access to the outside world because growing up you know these big compounds you never left the compound unless it was to go fundraise or to go renew your Visa or for something specific you know you couldn't just interact with Outsiders right never happened you were always being watched being you know told what to say and things like that so when we started being able to actually talk to Outsiders is when you know we started to realize I was a young teenager by then this is the way we live is just really weird let me ask you a question there then um just get a bit of detail can you explain how you lived what was the day today in Nicole you know why was it weird why was it different to what somebody that was raised in France as an average teenager my experience already it was sort of military Camp lifestyle so you didn't leave the cult you had your group you were had school in your group all of our schooling was cult created we had no access to outside music books films there were a handful of those that we could access but they had been chosen by the cult because they fit the Cults doctrines so you know on movies for example would be uh The Sound of Music right Jesus of Nazareth um and biblical stories and things like that but they were very very very few things that we could access everything because they were very successful in creating their own content as well they actually started media companies and created videos for children music videos for children they created all sorts of you know um music tapes and videos and books which they sold to Outsiders as well under different names of course Aurora Productions right you know so it didn't say it was specifically from the cult and that was a big way they made money for a long time as well and through their subsequent magazines too which they still do now um so you kind of had this complete bubble you know everyone came in and out it was everything was controlled there was no access to anything and day to day was regimented on on the minute you know you single fall marched to your classroom for school time oh wow um single foul to the canteen you know the big room with all the tables because there were so many people it was like and when you when you're going to the classroom for school time are you doing are you studying maths English biology or is it you know what kind of you had the three R's so Reading Writing arithmetics that was pretty much it they taught science as in their own version of science you know the biblical they taught history in their way too you know their version of history or Bergs so was that like how you know when you say their science was it no Evolution no dinosaurs yeah the Earth is only 4 000 years old right okay that's that's science yes so there was no curriculum so to speak it was really you were studying what Berg had written in letters over over the years I mean he wrote thousands upon thousands of letters over the time he was leader on every topic imaginable from day to day you know Ever every aspect of day-to-day life down to how many pieces of toilet paper you could use oh yeah that detailed to how to raise your kids obviously to you know what kind of diet you should have what kind of exercise you should be doing it's really really uh regiment and is that because he he is he saying because I'm just trying to understand you know why you if someone tells you how many pieces of toilet paper to use is it because he's saying God's told me that that's correct or is it at this point is he just a charismatic leader of the people and they just think well he's yes well he was the father of the people so every ass he you know it was really like I care so much about you I want to make sure you're really living the way we should be living according to God's standards and the toilet paper one is one that comes up often because it's so ludicrous um but that was really about waste you know he hated waste so he thought you know you could take three pieces of toilet paper and use it for seven different things before he threw it away yeah oh my god um but yeah it was really that controlled and how would because he as a leader he must have been sort of charismatic you know did you did you ever meet him no very few people met him oh really so he wasn't standing here from the beginning when he left the states it became his core leadership Circle and they went into hiding and that was it we didn't even see a photo of him until after his death it was always a cartoon depiction of his face wow and then so he'd just be sending these letters out to everyone communes but you weren't you know he well this is one of the most incredible things about Berg I not 100 sure but I think he is the only cult leader who has ever managed to do that to successfully maintain such a high level of control yeah over you know 10 to 15 000 people without them ever meeting him without them ever being in his presence he was that charismatic through his words and he had that level of control through his leadership team so he he was he lived in hiding for the majority of his life yeah because when we've been talking so far I imagined that it was him moving to Thailand and saying right we're moving here now setting it up then him no no we were everywhere across the globe even in the west which was evil he still maintained smaller communes there we were absolutely in every continent and that was his aim was to be you know International hey this is Ben Powell Jones we're just taking a brief break so I can tell you about one of our sponsors a brand new six-part podcast from message herd and podimo who robs A banks he follows journalist Jake Warren as he sets out to explore the Stranger Than Fiction tale of the man who kidnapped a Banksy statue from the middle of Central London in broad daylight and held it to Ransom the ACT would lead to an almost 20-year war of bad blood relations and legal battles that are still been waged today and it all comes down to one man and one Vendetta but it doesn't end there the story will take us on a journey through UK's most subversive subcultures from art heists and art terrorists to 80s football hooliganism and the 90s illegal Rave scene even fetish parties and throughout it all Jake will be trying to get a hold of the most Elusive and famed Anonymous artists in the world in the new six-part series host Jake Warren speaks to Tiger King of the art scene Andy link and those closest to Banksy himself exposing their two decade-long Feud and attempting to track down the world's most elusive Anonymous artist who robs a Banksy is available now wherever you get podcasts to hear the whole series ad free subscribe to Pottermore UK on Apple podcasts now back to our episode so when you see when you see documentaries on Cults and the brainwashing that goes on with the people that join them or that are born into them it's usually by a couple of people who are very good at that but it's usually face to face or mass groups so how was he able to do you mind the term brainwashing is that an okay term to use that's fine yeah um how is he able to brainwash adults without any like how when when adults were joining how how was the cult able to you know we spoke earlier about the gradual slope into it but I'm just trying to put myself in this position how would they persuade me that my lifestyle was evil I was doing the wrong thing if I joined that call I'd be guaranteed you know a place in heaven or whatever it was like what were the techniques they used if he wasn't there face to face well they were very good at recruiting firstly everyone became very good at recruiting they created this kind of on fire excitement in people and they were very very persuasive but he led through his leadership team which he changed often to make sure no one got too powerful wow there was a point in in the height of the craziness where he just went every all you leaders are demoted I'm putting a whole new structure into place and they regularly restructured to make sure you know that's crazy there wasn't even a group of people that were constant leaders it was it was some yes at the higher level so you had you know his wife Karen Zerby Peter uh Peter Kelly who's now her husband her second husband so you had some core people at the top that remained pretty constant but and he had his his team around him you know quite a few followers who were there um running his show and then he had his World Service offices which would produce all the material You Know audio visual material and then he had well they called them different names over the years as they restructured but he had his his well the latest term would have been visiting servants so they were people who were in touch with some of the higher up people and they would go out and visit all the communes very regularly to make sure things were going as they were supposed to the people were lit were following Berg's instructions and these local leaders as we can call them you know they were really worshiped as well you know they were seen as wow and were they friendly kind people were they intimidating presence when they arrived to check up oh both right you know they would put that lovely smile on and I am a servant of God but there was a a great Authority over people a control over people and you know it's very simple you don't like what's going on here get out and would there ever you mentioned earlier about uh Mouse being washed out were there ever punishments for people who weren't behaving in the correct way well for the adults so as part of the control you have to remember due to contraception families were big most people had my parents ended up with 12 kids in the end and that that's not uncommon in the cult but um wow by this stage as I was growing up you know most families were eight nine ten people ready um and you were usually living in a foreign country so some homes would take a take the passport some home was wouldn't so that wasn't necessarily a mean to control but even if you wanted to leave what are you going to do you've got this massive family you've got no access to significant finances certainly not enough to fly 10 children and a wife back to Mainland Europe you know let alone what are you going to do when you get to Europe you've never had an official job you've never contributed to a pension or any social thing you know you were completely and utterly trapped and what was your option if you started to complain go but your spouse and your children are staying oh I see so that's you know going back to why you destroy the family unit because then the wife would be like I can't give up serving God you know if that's what you want then you leave but I'm staying with the children and then the guy would be like well obviously I have no choice then and it will work the other way around too I guess at that point they've disconnected from their their parents as well of course you know you're isolated you haven't spoken to your parents in 20 years of course there are situations where you know people got in touch with their parents and got rescued you know there was one situation in Thailand where a man had stayed with the children and the woman went back home I think she was from the U.S and came back and kidnapped her children from the cold it's a there's a documentary about it online it's quite interesting um but that was rare most of the times it was either you stay and you shut up or you go and you lose your family so there wasn't a threat of violence or those kind of punishments it was it was much more psychological than that the control methods yeah the children of course there was a lot of violence towards us or what like corporal punishment yeah oh really well they strongly believed in spare the rod spoil the child oh right okay so there was a lot of very harsh physical discipline you know even later on when the first group of children were becoming pre-teens and teenagers they were starting to maybe show some signs of rebellions they set up teen training camps as they called them where they got all these teenagers together um it's you know put extra effort into making sure that they were staying on the right path that the court wanted them to so they would go through hours and I never went to one my older brother did it was hours and hours of being read Birds doctrines every day physical work work to you know make sure you were good and tired so you're more receptive in some cases like in McCall I believe in the Philippines and in Japan we now know there were literal forms of torture going on horrendous from isolation to you know the silence restriction but to extreme levels where you couldn't speak for a month to anyone and yet to walk around with a sign around your neck saying I am on silence restriction don't speak to me you know there were forms of physical beatings and exorcisms that took place that were just completely beyond the realm of Corporal punishments and that was in the more extreme camps detention camps some of them were cold but in the average home I mean physical discipline just became part of your daily life really right okay there's a lot to take in you know there's I mean every time you we go into a new area of it the things you tell us are just sort of more and more horrifying when you mentioned earlier about Berg and the fact that he was in hiding for years ultimately as soon as he left America him and his wife and the went into went into hiding was he rich like was he in hiding in a mansion somewhere with servants or was he in hiding as we think of you know terrorist leaders in hiding moving around from you know a bit of both because there was a point where he was looked for by Interpol he was on their Wanted list for prostitution because of flirty fishing okay um and when you've just said that that's so true as in I was listening to flirty fishing going oh wow that's a weird thing the cult did but it was just prostitution wasn't it I always like to call it what it is religious prostitution yeah it's that simple except the poor woman weren't even allowed to keep the money yeah so but he he um he traveled under fake IDs fake passports him and his surrounding they moved a lot country to Country to make sure no one could really ever figure out where they were only his court very very core Circle ever knew where he was or what name he was operating under but at the same time he also lived a life of luxury because every home would give um I believe it was about 14 of their income every month later tithe kind of thing yes that was tithe exactly um and that would apparently go towards the running costs of the whole leadership team and all that but I mean we know he always lived in houses with lovely pools had access to the best food and as for Servants of course that was just the cult members that was their job so okay so when you I want to get the order right actually so when you'd move back to France and you're talking about the time when you'd move back just with your family was he still alive at this point no no so what so did he die while he was still in Thailand we were in Malaysia when he died okay and you were what age I would have been just 10 10. so quite often in these circumstances I think when the central leader of occult not always but if they die or pass away all the arrested or something it's very hard to maintain it and keep it going and keep the cohesive whole so how was that presented like him dying before the prophecies had been realized that he said 1990s he was talking about the Antichrist coming back and stuff how did they manage to keep the cult together and running as they wanted it to and who took over from him so his wife Karen Zorb took over there was a whole series of letters that came out where Berg had passed the mantle on to her she was the chosen one to to pick up the mantle and become the next leader um but I think essentially if you look at their entire history things kind of went downhill after his death and okay so she did manage to maintain control mainly through bringing out a lot of her own Innovative doctrines and things and you know trying to she tried to to Really uh say hey I'm not Berg you know excite the younger generation of things and was she getting messages from God yet so now she was the yes and how many people were in the culture at this point at its height at its height about 10 to 15 000. God all all in all 30 people 30 000 people have passed through the group approximately okay huge at any one time at a time it was about ten to fifteen thousand okay again about 70 were children okay a massive population of Second Generation and so she's now saying you know I've got a new way of doing it God's now showing me the new more I don't know what was it what was the difference when you said she wanted to put her own stamp on it what was different well she tried to focus she tried to eradicate a lot of um the practices that Berg had brought in that she knew because around the time he died there was a lot of attention from authorities in the media and she knew that in order for the cult to survive they would have to kind of um turn their back a little bit on Berg but again so what they had to do for example for the UK court case it was essentially the cult was on trial they brought in all sorts of witnesses who talked about abuse said lived through and things like that and the judge ultimately he wasn't um the court case was not about the cult officially so he couldn't do anything about that it was about custody but he did say in his ruling which is hundreds of pages long and very interesting that he did find that there was systematic abuse across the cult and that it was institutionalized so the cult in order to win the custody case they had to write to the judge renouncing all of Berg's doctrines on child sex and all that which they did to win the case the custody case for children that were in the for a child a child it was a one custody case that turned into the whole cult being on trial in the UK okay so they did that letter just to be able to get custody of that kid as a court so the cult want or was it the parent of the child that was trying to get the kid back or was it the grandmother was trying to get the kid out right okay cult spent Millions fighting the case to keep the child because it became the cult okay okay sort of on trial um so they were forced to renounce Berg's Doctrine on that and of course right behind that Zerby then published another letter to her followers saying we only had to say that to win the case you know all that again you have to remember that Karen Zerby even when Berg was alive was extremely powerful in the cult so like I said he was an alcoholic for many many years and she was really the one running the show most of the time she's the one who wrote the story of davidito she's the one who would take down his words was heavily involved in the final drafts that would be sent out but then over time after Berg's death she kind of tried to imply that everything was Berg that you know that's that's the big issue we have now is that no one's looking at Karen Zerby when she was so so involved in everything that happened but you were saying earlier that she is still on the run as well right she's in hiding is that is that that's right we know she her last name change legally was Catherine Smith but we have no idea where she is anywhere in the world rumored around Mexico somewhere but so okay so you have moved back with your family to France there's more access to the outside world you're now how old sorry um that point of time I was about 13 13 okay so is this the point in time you start to realize something's up you know the outside world is is not as horrible as you might have thought or absolutely yes that was the first uh big shocker for me was you know these systemites as we called them you know they were seemed to be really nice people they didn't seem to be evil at all or scary or you know and just generally the way the outside world seemed to function um just didn't seem wrong to me and then more and more the way we were functioning seemed wrong to me and that was around that time in the cold a lot of SGA started leaving second Generations it started with a small handful who left who were heavily criticized by the cult leader of course we were they were called demons and you know we're always told that really bad things would happen to us if we left the coach and we all become drug addicts and die and get murdered and all sorts of things so there was a huge fear about leaving but luckily once the first batch left it just kind of started a role as kids were becoming of age they were starting to leave and more and more and more left until uh the pretty much the majority of sgas left the cult in the end wow over time because of course each you know you had to get to an age where you could legally leave and be independent and was that 16 or 18 18 18. what I guess it depends on which country you're in certainly in France it was 18 yeah so was there a point was there a specific point in time you sat down with your family and said look I'm going to leave yes yes already left right so the worst was when you were the first of the family to do it yeah um but I had some who had already left so it wasn't as difficult but then it was horrible in a way because you knew that you were causing the greatest disappointment you ever could to your parents who really believed that that was the life that you were chosen for that was your your ultimate mission in life was to to grow to be this this person in the end time um so yeah it was difficult having that conversation and even more difficult after you left because you were treated like a backslider or traitor of some sort so can you talk us through what it was like to leave you know what did that look like was it a slow process or were you suddenly this is how I've lived my life and now the whole world's opened up to me and I'm living in a flat somewhere you know what what did it actually mean to leave uh I think the process was over a few years by the time I got to around 16 17 years old I knew I was going to leave when I was 18. I just had to ride my time a bit it was incredibly scary for me very very frightening because you know we've been told the outside world was a dangerous place the bad things happened especially to people who turn their back on God so you know you had all that fear of being punished by God and bad things happening to you and then from a practical point of view we really didn't have the knowledge just to live in the outside world you know we hadn't been brought up to open to you know know how to open a bank account or how do you get a job especially when you've had no formal education you've been homeschooled your whole life in a very questionable uh amount of Education was given to you that was very strange and not really adequate to to get any kind of a decent job on the outside um so you it kind of felt like you were just thrown out there yeah you wouldn't get any support Financial or practical from the culture or your family uh you were just set you know you want to leave go and you had to learn very quickly how to survive on your own I had met someone at that point so luckily I had somewhere I could live in the early days but the whole process was extremely difficult and it was really over a decade at least before I even felt remotely like I was part of society because you know it wasn't even just the Practical things that I had to learn to do from scratch it was just the way I was for example you know the way I talked I used terms that were very strange to Outsiders because they were cult lingo and cult terms that we used so you always kind of felt completely out of place like you didn't belong and that was very difficult psychologically and would you say to people that you met after a couple of years you know would you say was it was the cult something that you felt embarrassed and ashamed about that you didn't want to talk to new people about I was definitely yeah because I think once or twice I had tried and I saw the way people looked at me differently after that um I think now maybe not so much but back then there was a perception that if you were from a cult born or recruited into it you were you know a strange person you were someone who was screwed up and someone who wasn't normal I think with time now I've learned to accept that there is a massive difference already between being recruited and being born into already there was no choice um but secondly um I like to prove to people that you can have a past like that and be completely normal but certainly the first years very quickly I understood it was going to be a big secret I had to keep so an old fake story you know because people be like why do you come from such a big family I'd be like oh my parents are really Christian and why did you grow up abroad my dad worked for the embassies I kind of made up this whole fictional past that I'd use to try and get away with the fact that I had a weird accent despite being French and you know just so many things just you had to explain away because you just couldn't tell the truth obviously as I got to a point later where I felt part of society I then moved on to a big stage of my healing which was writing my book and I was as I was writing that that's when I started to get a bit more confident about speaking up and realized you know this is not my shame to carry absolutely not I I had no choice in this and the fact that I'm still live right now when so many of my peers aren't you know that's something I should be proud of and when you say that your peers aren't because of what why are they not well a lot of ex-members because you know in the cold there wasn't just physical and sexual abuse There Was You know you're talking about entire childhood of psychological and emotional abuse as well and when you get out into the world you know it's very very difficult to try and become part of society when you've grown up in such an alternative lifestyle it's like being dunked on an alien planet and you know and for a lot of ex-members sadly a lot turn to addictions a lot you know especially the the first ones that left particularly some of them had to go and get jobs as you know strip teasers and things like that for example because they just they had no education they didn't know how to make money um but a lot of people still did well practically and with jobs and things but then had so much trauma from their past and you know we were never talked about things we never talked about things like mental health in the cold we didn't we feared psychologists rather than you know seeing that they could be there to help um and a lot of us suffer with depression with PTSD um and I think back in the days particularly there were very few psychologists who were able to help cult members they just didn't understand um and sadly you know we've lost a lot of um X sgas so my peers to Suicide a lot so we we estimate now there's a minimum of a 150 probably closer to 200 and possibly a lot more because when they leave the coal often they'll you know go and disperse and they never want to have contact with another cult member again so the true number I mean we've been trying to keep some sort of record and we know it's in the hundreds but and it's definitely over a hundred but it's impossible to say how many but we still have suicides today we still have every couple months every three months we hear of another one and in terms of that and the reasons for it am I right in thinking that you've you'd be you've formed a group haven't you to try and bring some of these people to justice is that right well myself and several other xsgas uh we got together and formed a group called the cogtfi survivors so Cog for children of God TFI for the family International um and we decided you know we need we need to do something now because it's been so long they've been getting away with this the cult still exists Karen zerby's still out there there's not even an arrest warrant out against her when there is so much evidence against her um that can be easily found online there's so much evidence given against her in testimony as well be it from people speaking out to the media or even affidavits that you know the FBI in Interpol for example they've have many many files on the cult they have many many affidavits on the cult and yet they've done nothing absolutely nothing and she's just out there living a free life in hiding last reported was hiding somewhere in Mexico but we really don't know where she is but then you know that's something that an Enterprise like Interpol or the FBI they could find her easily if they really wanted to but it's a fact that they're not even looking that outrageous a lot of other sex members because we feel like you know we've been speaking out for so long and no one's doing anything and we're being told they're are two big factors so it's the international nature of the crime so for example the man who abused me he was a Filipino national who abused a French national in Thailand so where do you even start plus everyone used fake names in The Cult so I had no idea who he was like many people don't have the real identity of their abuser I did find out who he was I got a tip off after I went public and my name came out so I knew exactly which city he lived in in Philippines that he was part of a church that he had a young child and was married I got recent photos of him as well really and did you find his name as well yes I did WOW but all I could do was write to the Filipino Justice organization and that one nowhere of course so what what's my next option nothing and so many of us are in this same position or there's issues with statute of limitations which should not exist for sex crimes that's a big thing we talk about as well um any crime that happened to a child particularly there should be no limit on when you can report it because you know by the time you're ready emotionally to do so they just turn around and go well it's too late should have done that years ago but we've had two very successful convictions in the UK recently against abusers not against the cult but what we're saying as a group is we need the leaders to take responsibility now we need them to be searched for by Interpol or by the FBI you know you're telling us there's an issue with countries and time but that wasn't an issue with Weinstein that wasn't an issue with jizland Maxwell that wasn't an issue with Epstein either when the media is paying enough tension attention to something Suddenly It's possible to find these people and bring them to court and that's what we want is to raise enough media attraction to get someone interested in looking for Karen Zerby and making her answer for her crimes do you think that it's possible for anyone to join a cult not as you know not be born into one but any grown adult do you think it takes a certain type of personality to be able to be brainwashed into something like that or do you think it's possible for anyone to fall into that already I never use the term join occult you're recruited okay they're professional recruiters cults I think absolutely anyone could be dragged into one because they're they're so Adept at changing as well they adapt with times so for for example right now they're estimated to be about 1 000 Cults who are active in the UK but they're not going to look like the children of God or or anything like that a lot of them now are through other things that attract people they're online communities yoga running groups even I've heard of um they pass under all sorts of different more modern things that are more attractive to people and using more modern technology social media so that they they really they adapt the way they work all the time and their front adapts all the time to fit in with whatever is acceptable in society so it really doesn't take much to be pulled in I mean our cult you had people who were highly educated with phds just like you had drug addicts who joined you had rich people you had Fleetwood Macs guitarist Jeremy Spencer who joined and was in for many years wow yeah so yeah all walks of society I think you just have to have that combination of being at maybe a point in your life where you're searching for something or you may be a bit dissatisfied you need a change or you know maybe there needs to be that little spark but as far as what kind of person no I don't think there's any stereotype and the cult still exists today as you mentioned you know yeah how does it look today in terms of an organization is it still doing the big military style camps or is it in smaller groups so they're much smaller now I think there's a couple thousand people and they call themselves now an online Church um but we don't really know we know they're still active we know they're active in many countries still but they're so secretive about their activities that we don't really know though we did hear recently that they were still occasionally recruiting people so that was interesting for an online community I guess my final question to you is as someone who's lived a life that's really quite different to most people you know what's it taught you what's the lesson that your life's taught you predominantly to never give up because if I give up I feel like the cult wins hmm um and probably my view of humans in general you know never to judge people because I've seen what trauma and pain does to people you know even years down the line later in life you know even now there are a lot of ex-members some of who I know personally who who struggle very much with addiction still multiple addictions generally who are constantly feeling suicidal and it's I guess that it's made me understand just what actions can do to a child and I think it's really important in general to be very mindful of way you speak to a child the way you act with a child because the repercussions later are you know it could have been an experiment for them but what they did was raise an entire generation of people who who struggle every day just to stay alive because you know they have so much pain in them and if you could speak to anyone who is listening to this that's in the position you're in when you started to realize something wasn't right and probably had that fear of the realization what would you say to them I would say don't be scared to make that jump is going to be the scariest thing you'll ever do but there are more and more people out there who will help there's a lot more awareness now of the impacts of Cults of occult to bring your occult experience there's a lot more associations out there who are willing to help even practically and and you know with practical things to get you set up and things and a lot more therapists out there who are trained now to deal with this kind of trauma so yeah I'd say uh it's scary but take the leap and get out while you can don't don't give them any more of your life or your time Natasha it's been amazing having you in and it's a really really fascinating story and you thank you so much for being so open and telling it so well um we really do wish you all the best thanks for coming thank you very much for having me I looked to the side of the Qatar and she had a jar with things in it clitoris Libya Mojo everything that she has cut previously and then being sewn whilst you are fully awake is one experience that I don't think I will ever forget

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Id: wya2EpC5uFA

Length: 78min 17sec (4697 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 07 2023