RedHanded - Episode 346 - David Berg & The Children of God - Part 2

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

If you thought Part 1 was bad – just you wait. Last week we talked about the origins of one of the world’s biggest cults. And this time, we look at how that influence and control bedded down – and seduced so many of the most famous people in the world.We’re talking about sex magic, incest, chid abuse, demonic possession, and Fleetwood Mac. It’s time to close the book on the Children of God.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And welcome to part two of your worst nightmare. I'm just going to move this mic because it's right in the way of your face. I'm also going to turn that down a bit more because it's very loud in my ears. Better? Better. Much. Now I can hear with more clarity

all the horrible things we're going to say. Indeed. There's a bit later on that actually made me cry. Oh no. Oh my god. Indeed. There's a bit later on that actually made me cry. Oh, no. Oh, my God. OK, I'm preparing myself. Prepare yourselves to listeners. It made me cry so much I didn't actually put it in the script so I could decide if I was going to say it or not. I think you will say it. I think I will say it, too.

But, you know, let's play the game. Last week, we left you with a trip to Libya. And this week, we're going to kick off with some musical facts about the children of God. A Berguian dancing troupe called Les Enfants de Dieu reached number one in the charts in France in 1974 with a number called My Love is Love. Inspired. And on the continent, they were properly properly famous they even went on tours and were on tv and stuff and speaking of the properly famous jeremy spencer guitarist for fleetwood

mac joined the children of god no way yes way what in fact fleetwood mac had to cancel a gig at whiskey a go-go in la because the rest of the band turned up and Jeremy Spencer never showed. And they found him, ages later, shacked up with the Children of God. Any further releases he made from his solo outfit, Jeremy Spencer and the Children... Nope. No, no, no, no, no. ...were produced whilst he was an active member of the cult.

And the most popular of his songs was called Cool Breeze, which is still a favourite in beach bars across the world. I know I talk about Dan Schreiber's show all the time, but it is really good. He had Bexie Cameron on, who grew up in the Children of God and left, and now she has a book and a documentary series called Cult Following.

And she said she was an Ibiza, and Cool Breeze came on, and she was just like, Fuck off! Oh my God. Anyway, music was a big deal in The Children of God and so was sex, as we all learned together very horribly last week. The second and thankfully final part of our series on The Children of God

is the one where we are going to take you through The Children of God's most famous recruitment technique, flirty fishing, and the devastating effect it had on the people it involved, and worse, those who were brought into the world because of it. Flirty fishing, like everything Berg ever instilled in his follower structure, was trialled first with his inner circle. This time, it was Karen Zerbe's turn to take the lead. Karen Zerbe is tricky for me because she definitely was indoctrinated by Berg himself when she was super young.

But she also makes my bones feel cold. It's hard to completely hate her because she was indoctrinated and groomed, etc, etc, etc. And we don't know what happened to her because she's never spoken about it. But the fact is the things that she did and is probably still doing are horrifying. So it's really hard. I don't know. I do know where I stand on her. I just feel weird about it. Yeah, I think it's tricky because it's like with anybody, right, who goes on to commit terrible offences as an adult. We often do look at their childhoods and we're like, OK, there's horrible abuse here.

There's something awful that happened. To what extent that mitigates your choices as an adult, I don't know. Here it's different because the person who did it to her, Berg, is still very much in her life manipulating her. I think I'm more on the fuck you Karen Zerbe side. But let's see where we end up. I have also seen it written that she wasn't the sharpest pixie in the draw. So easy to manipulate, maybe. But still, does some really fucking horrible stuff.

And we will probably never really know how sharp of a pixie she actually is because Karen Zerbe is still in The Children of God. Right now, 77 years old she is. Don't know why I said that like a hobbit. And Karen Zerbe is actually the head honcho now. Some sharp to her. Well, I guess. You know better than I do.

Let's see. She just never says anything. So it's... Also quite sharp, though. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, also the Children of God are now called The Family International. You can go on their website.

All of the information that we have about the atrocities that happened inside the Children of God have come from people like Bexie Cameron who have left the fold and published exposés. And Karen never has. So it's hard to say how much of what we're about to tell you next was her idea. When Berg and Zerbe were living together in London, one or both of them had the bright idea that recruiting rich people

into the Children of God was going to be far more economically viable than soul-searching hippies who had already turned their backs on the system. I mean, they're not wrong. No, they're very much not wrong. Hanging around outside like, what was that beach bar handing out fucking peanut butter sandwiches to fucking hungry hippies is not the most effective business model. And again, here you see that entrepreneurial mindset of the cult leader. They're like, do you know what? We need some rich people. Because if you're just going after hippies, living outside the system, although radical, makes it quite difficult to obtain cash money.

You know, the thing we all need to survive. Yeah, the thing that you can buy other things with. Yes. The thing that cult leaders desperately crave more than almost anything else except maybe power and all the horrible sex stuff that's coming. So right here in London, Karen Zerbe started to take ballroom dancing lessons so that she could go to the clubs in the West End and dance with rich men. Which is a plan and a half. I'll give it to her. She comes up with a laser-focused idea on how she's going to make this happen. I mean, that's where they are, and they're dancing. And she needs to know how to do that.

I know. Because we don't two-step in this country. No, we don't. We waltz. And whenever Karen Zerbe could, which was very often, she would sleep with these men. Then she would bring them to Berg so he could tell them about Jesus. Sneak attack.

Mm-hmm. Stealth Jesus. Stealth Jesus. Oh, what lovely sexing we just did. Can I introduce you to my beardy husband who's going to talk to you about Jesus for an hour? Now, the pair found that men were much more amiable to the Gospels if they'd been fucked first. So they, well, Karen, we should say, kept at it.

And the very favorite fish that Zerbe managed to land and suck dry of finance. Ew. I'm not going to say it. It was someone that Berg started to call King Arthur. And King Arthur would feature in many, many Moe letters to come as the pinnacle of what you can get. It just sounds like it's in many, many Moe letters. Moe are the letters that he wrote.

Naturally, once Serbian Berg worked out how effective this policy was for recruitment, or at least for their checkbook, they decided to tell the rest of the colonies what a brilliant idea that they had had. Of course, they did it the way they did everything else, through a mo letter entitled Flirty Fishing, and obviously, as always, backed up by biblical verse. This time, Matthew 4.19, which is,

follow me and I will make you fishers of men. Which is what Jesus says to his first two disciples, because they were fishermen. And he was like, you don't need to be doing this fish stuff anymore. Come with me and eat people instead. Oh my God. So Berg made it clear that this tactic was being employed because all of the leafleting that they were doing weren't working

because they were just so persecuted by the police who were constantly asking them to move on. So because of the powers that be the children of God had absolutely no choice but to fuck for Jesus because they had to save everyone. Berg said that women are bait and that they should have sex with men who are the fish so that Berg, therefore Moses, therefore Jesus and therefore God could get more followers and also obviously money. He wrote that sex is a human need as great as shelter or as hunger and so Jesus, who sheltered the downtrod and fed the hungry, would feel the same way about sex.

Men need sex and women should give it to them despite how they feel about it. He's a Jesus in cell. He is! It's like cult communism, right? We all share everything, and you've got to have the redistribution of sex also. Go for it, ladies. So after a while in London, Berg decided that even though he absolutely loved his second wife shagging a load of men and letting him watch, he actually would like quite a few more women to have sex with. Presumably, he wasn't having much luck with us uptight British bitches, so he once again decided to take his show on the road. And he, Zerby, and a group of meticulously collected babes in Christ

were moved from various colonies to Tenerife in 1974. These God's whores were expected to fish five nights a week on the Canary Island. Just as Jesus had laid down his life for us, they had to lay with men for him. Moe Letters added later on, quote, If they fall in love with you first, before they find it's the Lord, it's just God's bait to hook them.

Again, it's this like means to an end mentality of like to the pure, all things are pure, like it doesn't matter what depraved and horrible butt stuff you have to do. As long as it's in love. As long as there is a chance that the person doing it to you might maybe give you some money or convert. So again, yes, all's fair if done in love and love is sex, which is a line that you will hear repeated by many people who escaped this cult. I think even in the Tony Robbins documentary, there's someone

at one of his conferences who was like, I was born into a cult and I was taught that love is sex and sex is love. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in US history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes.

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The women who were doing the fishing were also encouraged to join escort agencies to induce a fixed payment for their services if they failed to hook the fish into the conversion and handing over all of their possessions net. And the women were also assured that violence may happen, but just like Heaven's Girl and just like the Christian martyrs, they should just take it. Big pimping over here. This is so gross. Turn the other butt cheek. Turn the other butt cheek. Because to the pure, all things are pure. Except men having sex with men. Didn't like that. Not allowed. Lesbianism, absolutely fine, obviously. Masturbation was allowed, but only if the person thought about Jesus while they were doing it. Oh my God.

So that means, because homosexuality isn't allowed, right? If you're a man and you're masturbating, you have to be thinking about Jesus. But you have to be thinking about yourself as a woman while Jesus is fucking you. Who can maintain that level of imagination for the entirety of a wank that is a lot to ask of a person a wank doesn't last that long um yeah about just the amount of sex these people are having who's got time to masturbate uh right yeah yeah and I, I'm surprised that he even allowed masturbation. But I thought he would have been like, no, you have to save it.

Yeah, save all your seed. Yeah, exactly. But he's obsessed with masturbation, isn't he? Like he can't, like it's his only childhood memory. Oh, true, true. I'd forgotten about

that horrible bit. So, yeah, he obviously explained all of this in a Mo letter. And I believe this was actually came from Karen Zerbe. A handy list of phrases that one could exclaim whilst having imaginary sex with the Lamb of God. explained all of this in a mo letter and i believe this was actually came from karen zerby a handy list of phrases that one could exclaim whilst having imaginary sex with the lamb of god

and don't worry i've got some you can go and read all of them on the x family website but here are some choice cuts horny for you jesus fill me Jesus. Thank you for wanting me, Jesus. And I'm desperate for your big hard penis, Jesus. Wow. So if you're a man, you're allowed to shout? You're allowed to say those things, yeah. I'm desperate for your big hard penis as long as you are imagining that you are a woman. Yep.

Wow. Okay. By 1973, the Children of God had 2,400 members living in 140 colonies in different countries. The major reason for this was that pulling out was not an option. One of the goals of any cult is to get bigger. And for that reason, contraception was most definitely banned. Not just for married couples, for everyone, including those who were out flirty fishing so that means that these babes in christ's horse for jesus whatever they were being called who are going out and sleeping with just random men in the hopes that they might convert or just give

the money could just be getting pregnant by absolute strangers cool that's what they want yes yes no they want. Yes, yes. No, they want loads of babies so that the cult gets bigger and they're not particularly bothered how that happens. Now, aside from just babies, there was, of course,

the inevitable flood of STDs that also comes with that level of unprotected sex. And that was just very much presented by David Berg as collateral damage. Berg believed that women should suffer STDs because Jesus had laid down his life for them. He illustrated this point in a mo letter with a cartoon of a woman with a crucifix shaped stake through her vag. And it's like, again, women taking the fall is a very Christian thing because original sin is Eve.

Like, women fucked it all up for everybody and we're expected to pay for it. So, like, yes, this is an extreme version. But there is a reason women aren't allowed to be priests. Like, it's not this. He hasn't pulled this out of nowhere. No, no. More rules. More rules for you.

Women's pubes were to be trimmed but not to be shaven, so it looked neat but also provided what Berg referred to as a shock barrier. And sharing, I just have fucking everybody all the time, was expected of everyone. Some former members have said that no one was forced into sharing, but if you decided that you didn't want to share yourself or your spouse or your child then you were deemed a backslider which meant a closed-minded unspiritual doubter because sexual openness was not only healthy it was divine and look if you want to be doing that like sharing yourself like communal sex you and your spouse like okay fine if you can handle it sure go nuts but the fact that this cult was

powerful enough to make people parents overcome one of the most fundamental biologically hard driven things that they would have had in their minds the idea that you don't let strangers fuck your child is a testament to just what a fucking horribly great job david burke was able to do and how much humans are willing to sacrifice to feel happy yeah a couple more rules you. Women were expected to share until they were eight months pregnant. And then they could have a little break, apparently. Great. And of course, children were pulled

into this horrible mess as well. Got a quote from a Moe letter for you. It is pure to us. There is nothing wrong with it. So we let our kids be in on it. We let them get in on it if they want. We even play with them because it's nice and it makes them feel good and they enjoy it.

Right, let's leave that and get back to flirty fishing for a second. Here are, as written in the mo letters, the seven Fs of flirty fishing, which was often abbreviated to FFing. Number one, effective. Two, effective. Yeah.

It's not a word I've come across before. No, it also doesn't begin with F. No. Three, fruitful. Therefore, it should be done as much as possible. Four, efficient. Systemites were better for the health of the cult. Five, financial.

Most of the time, at least a monetary donation would be made. Six, official. Bringing in or at least fucking influential people. Again, doesn't start with an F. And seven, forever. He doesn't try that hard. No, that's really, really like someone who had a good idea, the seven Fs for flirty fishing, and then couldn't think of seven F words.

The first word doesn't start with an F. Nope. It's effective. Either he's completely illiterate, which clearly he's not because he writes like five million mo letters. Oh, yeah, you're right. He's just like, they'll they'll be anything also efficient and effective mean the same thing yes i know so he's really scraping the barrel yeah but it has to be

seven because seven is so important in christianity yeah yeah and what do we think effective means if we were going to hazard a guess at the definition of the word effective i think i think what he's getting at is that it's efficient and you can fuck while you're doing it sure i effective fucking sure i think that's probably what he was going for yeah although the first word is also effective um i can't help looking at it written down and thinking it's like when you email somebody, you're like, nice to meet you. Maybe it's like a person that you just have like sexts with. Like my boyfriend.

Nice to, he fucked you. It was so effective for me. Anyway, those are the seven Fs. I hope you wrote them all down. Now, the problem was, even though the children ofs. I hope you wrote them all down. Now, the problem was, even though the Children of God were run out of Tenerife by a prostitution investigation, flirty fishing was incredibly effective. In the first four years of it being enforced

across the Children of God ministry, the bait witnessed over 400,000 times, fucked 63,000 people. And half of those 63,000 people stayed in the Children of God. That's effective. That is, that's number one. That's wild. That's a crazy high conversion. Yeah. It't argue with that you can't you couldn't think of seven f words but you can't argue with that but who gave us these stats did he write these down they're in jesus freaks they're in jesus freaks okay and another one little fact it within the first four years of flirty fishing, which went on for many more years after, 300 children were born as a result of flirty fishing worldwide.

And those children, who were fathered by systemites, were kept inside the children of God, and they were given the title Jesus Babies. Because they were delivered to the cult by Jesus through the penises of other men. And those men were referred to... No. Yes. As flesh daddies. He's so sick.

He's such a horrible little toe rag. Yeah. David Berg, the internationally renowned toe rag. He's a trollop. We haven't called someone that in ages. He's a disgusting trollop. So haven't called someone that in ages. He's a disgusting trollop. So the flesh daddies are the outsiders.

The spiritual daddies are the insiders, right? So that's the men inside the children of God. The flesh daddies are not very important, but they are tools of God. Fleshy tools. Now the first and most famous Jesus baby was born to Karen Zerbe herself. And she called him Davidito. Now if you know this story at all, that name is going to make you immediately sad like it just did to me.

Davidito was born in 1974, the same year that Flirty Fishing was written into scripture. And how he came to be is quite the story. Berg and Zerbe were staying in a hotel and Zerbe had sex a total of 137 times with 18 different people who worked at this hotel. And she got pregnant. Somehow Berg and Zerbe decided that a Spanish waiter called Carlos must be the culprit. Which like, oh flesh daddy. How? I know, yeah. How are you pinpointing poor Carlos? Maybe he was the one with the most money and they were like, he's the best one. The waiter? Yeah. Spanish waiter. I mean, who knows? Who knows who else she was fucking? Oh my God. So yeah, Berg and Zerbe obviously attempted to induct Carlos into the cult, but he was having absolutely none of it.

He dipped after Berg tried to get him to molest his son and fuck his wife. Yep. He like invites him into a hotel room and is like, would you like to molest the baby? And Carlos is like, no. Oh my God. Carlos, I'm glad you left but why for the love of god did you not call the police okay i'm never ever gonna like say it's fine to abandon a

baby uh-huh it's never fine to run out on your child firstly carlos doesn't even know if it is and i mean yes he probably should have called the police. But maybe he did because they get run out of Tenerife. This is true. This is true. Davidito, as he grew, was heralded as a great prophet. One of the two mentioned in Revelation as leading the righteous through Armageddon. Berg alleged that Davidito was special because he was born on the seventh hour of the seventh day, which is somehow 6 a.m on a saturday which if if some very orthodox christians do count the week from saturday sure because it's the like sundown of the sabbath it's a push but that's what he says okay okay and seven does come up a lot in abrahamic religions which is why there

had to be seven ffs of flirty, even though you couldn't think of them. You thought of like three. Because seven is associated with fullness. So seven is associated with like a prophecy being complete in the language, basically. And that's why it comes up a lot. Also, I would add, seven is also a very important pagan number. There are seven spirits, there are seven deadly sins, like, we love sevens. Berg claimed that Davidito was his own son because he argued that the crop belongs to them who tend

the land, not the tool that tills it, which presumably makes Carlos some kind of combine Anyway, the second prophet to fight alongside Davidito to defeat the Antichrist in the end times, surprisingly, it was not David Berg. It was Karen Zerbe. So perhaps Berg knew that his days were numbered, because he did only kick all of this off when he was 50 years old zerby berg and another woman susan coughton who was from the inner circle plus a few more from that dirty little ring raised abedito not only communally but as what they called the world's first, and I just don't even want to say these words, the world's first sexually liberated child. We haven't met Susan before. She had a reputation for not only being

an elite flirty fisher, but also for being the most malleable of berg's closest disciples she offered up her own seven-year-old daughter for berg to rape with absolutely no prompting whatsoever no you didn't even ask her she was just like there you go go nuts so what we're dealing with here is like the communal raising of children which is happening in every colony right like i think i explained last week that you don't get to spend any more time with your biological mother than you would with any other woman and that's what they're doing with davidito but they're adding this sexual liberation thing yeah and you know this is classic cult behavior because the minute you have your own nuclear family you have your spouse spouse, you have your child, they can become more important to

you than the cult itself and the systems and the batshit crazy things that you're being preached at. So by separating and breaking those familial connections and making every child or every person as equal to you as your own family, it kind of keeps you trapped in this cult. And that's very much what David Berg is doing, whether he knows that's what he's doing or not. So yeah, sticking with this story. In 1982, Berg, Zerbe, Susan and others published The Story of Davidito, which we are not going to tell you about because there is no way to do that without this becoming some sort of horrible crime scene. If you want to find it, if you want to really look

at the story of D'Avedito and read it, you can. But on your head be it. I have seen some of it before Did you? Yeah Yeah I didn't need that information No, it's like It's really bad Genuinely wish I didn't know Yeah, it's just some of the worst shit that you can imagine

Basically the story of Davidito was intended to be a guideline For rearing the second generation of the cult, those who had been born on the inside and of course the Jesus babies. Davidito was the prophet so all children within the cult were to be raised in his image and you should know by now that that meant a lot of child sexual abuse at the hands of the child's biological parents, their spiritual fathers, and literally anyone else who was knocking about. The story of Davidito is essentially a guidebook on how to rape your child. That's all you need to know.

And the molestation of Davidito began when he was just 17 months old. He was raised alongside a girl Jesus baby called Davidita, who he was encouraged to have sex with from a very young age. And I mean very young. The year after the child rearing guide was published, the cult reported 746 births, mostly Jesus babies, all over the world. The story of Davidita was eventually recalled, heavily redacted and then re-released once those on high realised that it could be used against them in child abuse cases.

Yeah. Yeah. You've literally published an illustrated pamphlet on what you're doing to this child. Now there were other changes too over the years. The complete blasé attitude towards STDs came under scrutiny in the wake of the AIDS crisis. Berg wrote that the children of God could not let the disease of the sodomites affect them or spread within the family. Now it is worth noting that after Jonestown,

Berg changed the name of the cult from the Children of God to the Family of Love. Yeah. He, as we have said multiple times, is not dumb. He rebrands to get the heat off. I think it's to do with the prostitution investigations, all of the child abuse scrutiny, and he's just like, it's not us. We're the Family of Love. It's nothing to do with children. Nothing to do with children is happening here.

Yeah, yeah, you're right. And slowly, flirty fishing was reigned in too. Those with long-term fish who made financial donations to the cult were allowed to maintain their relationships for a while. Then, anyone who kissed a systemite would have to go through two rounds of AIDS testing before they were allowed back into any sharing parties. Yeah, so STD-wise, it's the AIDS crisis that really shakes them up. Because all the other ones are all like, just get some antibiotics, you'll be all right. Except you're not allowed modern medicine,

you just have to have a garlic clove up your bum hole. But yeah, so eventually it was the AIDS crisis that meant the end of flirty fishing. It is remarkable with David Berg. And again, this comes back to that whole thing of how have the children of God, then the family of love, then the family international survived this long. And it's because David Berg was not stupid even the fact that he is able to recognize an existential threat to his group in the form of prostitution rings being investigated child abuse he knows what he's doing as well he's not delusional the name change removing any phrase of the word children from that and then understanding the risk the AIDS crisis posed to him and the group. And being able to, again, restrain what his cult was doing in order to survive,

which we see in a lot of cults, they're not able to pull back once they've sort of let everything go crazy. And he does that quite effectively, which is interesting. Because I don't think he's deluded. I think Jim Jones was deluded. I think delusion plays an enormous part in the downfall of... David Berg is not, you're right. ...of almost every cult in history, but not David Berg Berg because he knows what he's doing is vile.

So eventually, there was no more contact with outsiders allowed at all. With the end of flirty fishing came a period of relative quiet for the Children of God, or the Family of Love as they were now known. But the Moe letters continued,ibly because the heat had been turned up after the publication of the story of Davidito, Berg toned down the sex abuse stuff in the letters. For a good while, they were more filled with how to live best in Christ, which, of course, was actually all about control.

One of the techniques used by Berg and the Shepherds to control their followers in the group Holmes was open heart reports, commonly referred to as OHRs. These would take place every day in the evening, where adults and children alike would answer seven questions designed to expose their sins. These were then shared with the whole group. What did Jim Jones call his ones? I've forgotten. But this is so common again.

Like fucking struggle sessions. Yeah, they would call it... Oh, fuck. In Jonestown, they had to get up and say in front of everybody. Yeah, I can't remember what they're called. But again, it just shows you how so many of these leaders play from the same book. And yeah, that's what they are. And like these questions were like, how many glasses of water did you drink today? How many times have you pooped?

He would like, he would include in Moe letters like, I did three poops today and you should be doing a minimum of that many poops. It's absolute. But I assume because he did so many Moe letters, he just ran out of stuff to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met.

But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him.

This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app,

Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near LA in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. In some group homes, children were required to write down all of the sins they had seen performed by other children. And if both children, both the accused and the accusee, didn't record the same exact sin, then they would both be beaten because they'd say, well, one of you is lying. And this distinction of some group homes is important. The colonies of the children of God were home to thousands. They were led by hundreds of different people and not every home followed everything to the Mo letter. But the prostitution investigation carried out by the Tenerife police did shake Berg up a bit. So much so that in 1978, he reorganised the

whole group. He fired 300 of the top leaders, including his own children. He really, really does take a lot of his playbooks from like, not just other cult leaders, Putin, but yes, from despots, like the whole struggle sessions from Mao Mao and now you've got this whole like right periodically I'm just going to cull everybody who's in my inner circle get out because I can't trust any of you. Chair Mark Mao. And he called this mass firing the RNR reorganization nationalization and revolution. Oh my god. And he told his followers that this was absolutely necessary because everything had become too complicated and nothing was getting done.

He wrote, quote, many a democracy has failed and ended in wrangling confusion, corruption and economic collapse, necessitating a military or political coup by a strong man fed up with it all. And again, in another genius move from Mo, he removed himself even more from his flock and created an even bigger distance between him

and the allegations of sex abuse, fraud, thievery and incest that were still to come. One unavoidable detail of the Mo letters was the encouragement of adults to sexually abuse children accompanied like we said earlier with cartoon images of berg and sometimes zerby in bed with naked children and look i don't want to give them too much credit but these illustrations are not like if you've not seen it they're not like shit cartoon like stick figures they are incredibly good illustrations yeah of horrible horrible things graphic was he drawing them or somebody else in the group probably i don't know now one account that we read from a group home in thailand was a girl asking her father about the illustrations of children being molested by

adults her father told her that it was a way of playing, but we don't play like that here. So there are some of them that here. Yeah. Some of them are like, no, maybe I won't rape my own child, but they still don't leave. Yeah, yeah. It's remarkable. Now life in the group homes across the world is a tricky thing to cover because there were hundreds of them. So what we have for you is a collection of stories that we've gathered from the books listed in the show notes. There are of course thousands more out there that you can find at your own discretion. Good luck. But here are some common themes. College was seen as the ultimate betrayal of God.

Women were expected to be skinny and have long hair, which meant many of them had obsessively restricted diets, which is not hard when you're living off scraps. Women were also instructed to walk like the pendulum of a clock. What? Yeah. Like swinging your hips. Oh. Like a oh like a strut okay right got it not that's what i'm doing but like waving my arms back and forth that is such a random thing okay and modern medicine was discouraged in favor of natural remedies A cure managed without the system's help was seen as the ultimate win and a cause for bragging rights. However, a lot of the group homes were in tropical climates, obviously because Berg was like,

oh, they go to the east, they're way less corrupt. And we all know that children, adults, males and females all lived in extremely close quarters with very little sanitation, often without running water. And what does that mean in very hot places? It means viruses, bacteria, infections and parasites. Worms seem to be a particular problem amongst the children of God,

with the natural recommendation remedy being a clove of garlic inserted into the butthole at night. And nobody was allowed to sleep with underwear on and the adults were asked to check the children for underwear before they went to bed and that that garlic clove thing and the worms it's like i think i read that story three times from three different accounts so like it was a problem now when they weren't incapacitated by worms, children would be sent out into the streets of the area that they inhabited and forced to beg from passers-by, saying, we are the Family International, a non-profit, non-denominational Christian organisation. And more often than not, money would be given. Unwashed missionaries in far-flung corners,

not speaking the local language, has been going on for thousands of years. This is not exactly new. No, so you can understand how it went on for so long because he's not doing anything that hasn't been seen before to the outside world, you know? Alongside the novel Jesus Babies, Berg did of course have biological children, who went on to have their own children.

But not all of them were as favoured as Davidito. Heaven's Girl, the superhero laser-eyed prophetess that we met last week, was actually based on Berg's favourite granddaughter, Mary. Sometimes you see her called Mene, like M-E-N-E, but everyone has like 75 different names, so if I've got that wrong, I'm sorry. Anyway, Mary fell out of favour as she got older, and the Moe letters became filled with stories of the demons possessing her and the efforts made by Berg and his closest circle to cast them out. Mary was tied to her bed and beaten

by Mama Maria and Susan Counten, the same woman who had nannied Davidito, and she was beaten and tied up for days on end. Susan Counten is sometimes called Sarah Counten, sometimes she is called Angelica. It is very confusing. What, and get possessed by demons? To let them in, I think, is the...

Or to question, and therefore... And they're like, oh, my God, she's possessed by demons. Do we think what happened is the um or to question and therefore and they're like oh my god she's possessed by demons do we think what happened is mary got older and is like stop raping me that's exactly what my next bullet point says sorry the to the pure all things are pure motto didn't seem to apply to mary and we don't know what her exact transgressions were but i think we can make an educated guess that it probably involved her grandfather and his penis yeah so she's like no thanks and he's like oh my god she's possessed by demons tie her to this bed and let's beat her right but the fact is Mary was not on her own in quote-unquote making this mistake. Many of the children born into the children of God got to adolescence and started to think,

hold on, this isn't what I want to happen. This bizarre anti-transgression coming of age happened en masse, and it destabilised the cult of the children of God on a global scale. So the Bergs came up with a classic divide and conquer plan to certainly not leave them kids alone. Troublesome teens refusing to be complicit in their own abuse were sent to teen homes, essentially training camps, usually in developing countries where they were tied to beds, like Mary had been, and routinely beaten and humiliated.

And the plan was that they would be so blinded by all the sex that they would eventually stop asking any questions. They were also forced to listen to hours upon hours of music made by and for the children of God. Including such bangers as, Kathy, don't go to the supermarket today. Great.

And watch out for the green door. Yeah. The worst of all of the teen homes was by far one in the Philippines. And the torture device of choice there was called the smile machine. The smile machine was a device made with hooks and elastic that attached the ears to the mouth, forcing a smile. The Filipino teen home was so bad that eventually the children of God themselves dismantled it, afraid of lawsuits and the children that had been in the home were spread across other group homes in different countries like Thailand, Russia, Brazil and right here in the UK. But as the children got

older things got even trickier. Long questionnaires were handed out to the teenagers and revealed that a lot of teen and pre-teen girls specifically were traumatised by their sexual experiences with adult males. And in response to this widespread questionnaire where the children are like, no, we don't like this, a Mo letter was sent out entitled burn after reading and nice yeah it essentially shifted the policy of sex to no more sex with children we don't do that anymore but burn this so nobody ever finds out and i think what's really interesting is that it's the children

who offset the balance which makes it seem like there is something innate within us that means we know what is right and what is wrong. Yeah. When we're made, like from the beginning, we know. And perhaps that sense can be beaten out of us as we get old and jaded. And it seems to be pretty easy to do that as evidenced by the thousands of adults

that get drawn in by cults. Yeah. Particularly one as extreme as the children of God. Definitely. I mean, the last page of our chapter on cults in our book, we do talk about this. We talk about the idea of how a person's personality can be reorganized if the right set of circumstances are created, if the right amount of abuse and the right amount of deprivation and the right amount of beating down of them, psychologically speaking and emotionally speaking, it can reorganize the structure of your personality to be the same as somebody who has a personality disorder, essentially. You can manifest that in a person and then they're going to be much more pliable to your will especially when you've got them from such a young age but i think while that

can happen and that does explain why a lot of people were in this cult i do think it's something we shouldn't ignore that all these children that were being abused from a very young age get to a point and they're like no even though you've done all these things to me I know that this isn't right and I'm I'm going to say I don't want this to happen anymore so I think it's the interesting condition of being human right that there is the ability for people to destroy us and to reshape your personality but also the inherent resilience that exists in so many of them that they don't and because quite a lot of them were born at the same time it all happens across the world at the same time at the same time it's so interesting and bexy cameron talks about this a lot one thing she said that i thought about for about a week

after i listened to it was that you know when a hug isn't for you and you do you do know when like someone is hugging you because they want it anyway bexy's wonderful go and have a look at her book it's called cult following she's also really pretty so you may be thinking what happened with all these tales of child abuse and published accounts of incest did anyone face any justice for this unfortunately there are as many answers as there are members of the Children of God to that particular question. In 1993, a former member called Ricky DePuy appeared on Larry King and said that he had been ordered by the Children of God to rape a 10-year-old. But before he filed any official charges, Ricky killed himself. River Phoenix said that he was first

sexually assaulted at the age of four. And we all know what happened to him. Interestingly, Joaquin Phoenix has never said anything. No, no, no. But he's not fine. No, he's not. And again, look, coming back to the resilience aspect of it that I mentioned, of course, not everybody who goes through this kind of abuse or goes through abuse like this is doomed to be somebody who has, you know, a broken life and no future. Of course, that's not true. There's so many stories of resilience. But River Phoenix was most certainly not OK. And, you know, Joaquin Phoenix's story is his to tell. And he hasn't

said anything. Now, Berg's own son, Aaron, also was not having the best time. He threw himself off a mountain in Geneva. Coming forward as a victim of any kind of abuse is an incredibly hard thing to do. When you've been told your whole life that your way of living is an alternate belief that no outsider would ever understand. And you're also told your whole life that your way of living is an alternate belief that no outsider would ever understand. And you're also told that speaking to the police or the press was an act of war on the cult, which more often than not included your actual parents. And then the final great shift came. In October 1994, Berg finally died, aged 75, from esophageal cancer, and Karen Zerbe was left in charge.

In his last Mo letter, he wrote, She's already my manager and tells me what to do. Zerbe inherited 10,000 members of the cult. 7,000 of them were children. At the time of his death, David Berg was under investigation by Interpol and the FBI, but the bastard managed to die before they could prove anything. Nothing's happened to Karen Zerbe either.

She has her own website. It's in the show notes. And she lists herself as, quote, the spiritual and administrative co-director of the Family International, a Christian fellowship dedicated to sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ around the world. Active in the movement since 1969, she is the author of numerous articles on the Christian faith. For some reason, she leaves out that she's a big fat pedo. One of the most vocal critics of Bergen-Zerbe was Davidito himself. And we're afraid that the story of Davidito has a very tragic end. That is also the last time you will hear us refer of Davidito has a very tragic end.

That is also the last time you will hear us refer to Davidito by that name. After years of being exposed to orgies and molestation as a child and as an adult, he left the cult and changed his name to Ricky Rodriguez. And the list of his abuses beyond the story ofito, are pretty endless, I'm afraid. He was forced into sexual relations with Karen Zerbe, his own biological mother, and also Susan Cowton. Ricky was put on the sharing schedule at just 10 years old and forced to have sex with Berg's granddaughter to continue the family line. He was also given a much older girlfriend when he was just 12. But in the year 2000, Ricky left the Children of God for good, even writing an email to a top shepherd

that he had every intention of coming back as an Avenger. He wrote that he didn't understand why he should have to pay for the sins of his parents, spiritual or otherwise. Initially, after he left, Ricky moved to Washington, bouncing through the couches and floors of former members. And of course, he struggled to get a job because he had literally no skills. But he did manage to get an apartment with his girlfriend. And he did eventually manage to get a job as an electrician's apprentice. Although he was emerging into the real world with a flat and a job, he never spoke to anyone about what had happened to him. He didn't think that anyone from the system would believe what had happened,

because it was so beyond comprehension. And after four years of trying his hardest to live a normal life in the world that Ricky was born and bred to hate and not understand, he got into a car accident and he was never the same again. After that, Ricky moved himself to San Diego and started to concoct a plan to bring down the children of God. To do that, with his spirit daddy dead, he only had one option. He had to track down the current leader, his own biological mother and rapist, Karen Zerbe. And when he found her, he resolved to kill her. To do this, Ricky made contact with other people still active within the Children of God, and he heard that Zerby had been spotted in Tucson. And the nanny that we've been hearing so much about,

who had been complicit in Ricky's abuse for years, was one of the people that he contacted. Susan Couton. By this stage in the game, Susan had officially left the cult, but she was still in touch with Karen Zerbe. So, Ricky Rodriguez convinced Susan Counten, a woman who had abused him for years, to come over to his apartment for dinner. His intention was to extract from her where his mother was. The night before the dinner, Ricky set up a camera in his kitchen and recorded an hour-long video which he put up on YouTube.

You can go and watch it, but like everything this week and last, I strongly advise that you don't. There is a grim irony about the video recording, considering that the Children of God were the original camcorder cult. They recorded everything from chores to orgies to child abuse and they sent it off to their illustrious leader. The video shows Ricky describing what happened to him as a child and his hatred for those who did it to him.

I have watched this video and Hannah is right. Like I guess it's his his telling of what happened to him but I also think it is incredibly distressing, which is putting it mildly. Because, as Ricky is saying and explaining the horrendous things that happened to him, he's also loading clips. Also, in shot, there is an electric drill, socks to be used as gags, duct tape, a K-bar knife, and a soldering iron. He admits that he doesn't want to do this, but his need for revenge and justice was an irresistible need, not an urge unresisted. He tells the camera, what about us? They're not even fucking sorry. He also apologises for deserting his boss. He writes in this really long letter about, oh, I'm so sorry,

I think you're a really great person. He tries so hard to have a normal life, but he convinces himself, like you said, that it's impossible until he gets revenge. Susan did go to Ricky's apartment. We don't know what happened or whether she told him where Karen Zerbe was hiding. We do know that Ricky Rodriguez stabbed her five times and then slit her throat. Then he got in his car and called his girlfriend and said, killing someone, so much harder than I thought it would be. Then he drove to a Holiday Inn Express in California just over the state line.

He checked into the hotel, ate some beef jerky, drank some beers and had a shower. Then he got back in his car and drove to a nearby industrial estate, put his phone on the dashboard and shot himself in the head. And this is the bit. There's a bit in the video where he says

every day is a little bit worse than the one before. Something I say to myself and everyone else when bad things happen is like, this is the worst it will be. Tomorrow will be better. And once you get into that headspace of every day is a little bit worse, it is so hard to pull it back. Ricky was discovered the next day. It has been speculated that he drove over the state line to involve the FBI by committing crimes in two different states.

We still don't know where Karen Zerbe is, but we do know that she started rickyrodriguez.com, a website dedicated to suicide victims, making a martyr out of him, the last thing that Ricky ever would have wanted. Which she well fucking knows. That woman needs to fucking go to prison. These days, the children of God are going under the name

The Family International. And you can take yourself over to their website if you really, really want to. You can even listen to their podcasts, which we haven't had the strength to do, but it does feature, in Hannah's opinion, the best stock image of all time. What it is, is an open Bible with a USB cord just in the pages stuck into an iPod. It's so funny. Effective. I'll show it to you. It's so funny.

If you go and listen to the podcast, you will also discover that there is an entire series on there about parenting. The copy reads, The Keys to Parenting series features practical tips, techniques and helpful information on how to raise children with love and integrity. Does it? I don't know if I've said anything that's ever been more sinister than that on this show. I need to go and have a shower. A burning one.

In February 2009... Fuck you, Karen Zerbe. Karen Zerbe announced that the end times had been delayed. Fuck off. Oh, my God. Look, I'm not like, I wish Ricky had killed her. I wish she was in prison. Yeah. In 2010, presumably as a result of Armageddon being pushed back a bit, the Children of God disbanded completely and quote, reorganised

as an online community. They currently claim to have about 1700,700 members, or thereabout, and I'm sure that communal living still happens because original members would be well into their 70s and 80s by now, with no pensions or transferable skills because they were all told that the world was going to end so there was no point paying into the system with mind or money. Children are now allowed to be enrolled in schools and members are allowed to get in relationships with non-members on a non-fishing basis, but still thousands of lives and millions of hours of collective belief just went up in

smoke. And the strength of numbers of a cult that taught something so reprehensible as child abuse, it just shows us that it happens. And it happens a lot more than we think it does. Humans are susceptible to cults because we all want to have an authority tell us what is right and what will make us happy. And we seem to be able to lose the deep sense of morality that children have. And over the past two weeks, we've also, maybe not learned, but proven the point that the Bible can be made to say literally anything, as in Corinthians 119. For ye are not your your own ye are bought with a price therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit

which are God's. It's all in there. So plug your USB cable into your Bible and set it on fire. Yeah, absolutely awful. I think about Ricky Rodriguez most days now. Yeah, it's so horrible. Poor ricky poor all of those children it's again i don't want to condemn people for like oh well that was

so fucked up you are fucked but ricky rodriguez is one of those people that never ever stood a chance and he tried so hard that's that's what it is he tries so hard and he just can't do it so yeah that's it guys that is incredibly horrible story of david berg karen zerby and the children of god and what became of them and the fact that they are still around yep whatever that's it yeah go and touch a tree or something yeah we'll be back next week with a different case goodbye bye Thank you. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so.

Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy.

Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.