Customer Reviews

Jesus Freaks: A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Strap yourself in for a ride into true sickness. The "Children of God," known today as "The Family" is a cult that started in the 1970s and descended into true sexual madness by following the "God-inspired" personal prophecies of a drunken, sex maniac who called himself Moses David.

Yes, sex between adults, sex with children, sex between children, sex with your own children too. In one section you discover that the murderer had been having sex since he was a few months old (his nannies played with him) and then at 18 months was engaging in sex with a five month old!

This cult wanders from place to place around the world to this day. Adherents have numerous kids and numerous grandchildren but no one knows whose kids are really theirs or whose are those from when these individuals' wives were prostitutes luring men to join the cult by sharing God's love through sexual relations.

To say this is the story of sickness is to underplay how truly vile this "religion" is.

This is eye-opening reading.

Frank Scoblete: author of Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution!

My name is Josh Bruni and while I haven't yet read the book, I have heard about it and would like to make a few comments about COG/the family.
I was born and raised in "the family". I left when I was 20 in the year 2000. My mother and 6 brothers and sisters still live in "the family" in various parts of the world. I'll never rejoin and I don't recomend anyone else join. What a lot of people who've never been a member don't realize is, when you have been born into "the family" you don't know what "normal" is. When you leave, it takes a while, several years in my case, to realize how weird and twisted some of the things you've been taught actually are. Any book that exposes the inner goings on of that group, I strongly recomend. See also the book "Not without my sister" by ex-members of the same group.

Josh Bruni
[...]

This book provides a background and context for the murder-suicide of Ricky Rodriguez, the involuntary prophet-apparent of The Family, an international religious cult. Also known as The Children of God, the group began in the late sixties under direction of David Berg, a self-appointed prophet, polygamist, pedophile, and narcissist. It continues today, led by Karen (sp?) Zerby, Ricky Rodriguez's mother. The book is a very well-rounded account of the cult's beginnings, compared with other so-called new religions, written by a journalist who covered religion for major newspapers for many years. It's a quick, informative read. I also recommend Not Without My Sisters, a memoir by three girls who grew up moving in the cult around the world.

Don Lattin's JESUS FREAKS is the well written, well researched, and well documented account of a fringe Christian cult called The Children of God. The church, which began in the 60s and was designed to appeal to street hippies and to lost souls who were searching for meaning in their lives, was of the apocalyptic persuasion. The world would end in a specified period of time - 7 years, 38.5 months, whatever seemed right at the time - and the members of The Children of God, founded and led by one David Berg, would attain their rightful place in heaven. The rest of you? Not so fast there, Marty.

It appears that The Children of God, like many other cults, was begun with good intentions, but eventually Berg established himself first as the group's connection to God and then as God himself. And, as God, anything that Berg decreed was not only okay, it was positively sanctified. And what Berg, the alcoholic son of itinerant fundamentalist preachers, mainly decreed was sex - often mandated - between adults, their marital status notwithstanding; between adults and children; and between children. Incest? No problem. That was encouraged as well. Berg also had young women in his congregation engage in what Berg called "flirty fishing" which was basically prostitution designed to deliver money and converts to The Children of God. As Lattin writes, "Berg was to become God's pimp."

JESUS FREAKS, Lattin's history/expose of the cult, revolves around the story of Ricky Rodriguez, a child born into the cult who, though not biologically related to David Berg was raised by Berg and Ricky's mother as his own son and who was designated the boy king who would assume leadership when Berg passed on to that great orgy in the sky.
Rodriguez was presented to the increasingly far-flung legions of cult children as the perfect child and the pressures on him, as well as other inner circle kids, were intense and ultimately unsupportable. He along with thousands of other children born into The Children of God ultimately left the church, a practice the church tolerated, and as a young adult suffered the intense emotional trauma and suicidal ideation common to the defectors. Rodriguez sought and obtained revenge.

The only complaint I have with the book is that it sorely needs a comprehensive cast of characters section. Such a section exists, but it is wholly inadequate. The book has a large number of important characters who would be hard to keep straight under normal circumstances, but who, in addition to their real names had one or more cult names.
The list of players we are given has a total of 11 names on it. There should be around 50 or 60, and the manner in which this alleged instrument of help is provided is unhelpful and cavalier.
But the pictures at the beginning of each chapter are excellent.

JESUS FREAKS is not even-handed and leans heavily toward the side of the defectors,
But it is also intelligently written, and is closer to 4.5 than to 4 stars. I found it to be a fast and enjoyable read that should appeal to anyone interested in the subject.

Very well written, although disturbing book: I didn't know much about the Children of God/The Family except for a short segment on 60 Minutes several years ago about Ricky Rodriguez and the murder-suicide. I read this book a few months ago, and it's still in my head. Definitely worth reading but the level of abuse described is horrific.

In the mid-1970s, my brother's friend found Jesus and straightened out from his rebellion. He came back to visit and give us the good news. His eyes were clear and his afro bobbed as he talked away in our living room and my father listened politely. The first stage in any conversion is often welcome, though I never found out what happened later to our friend the Jesus freak. Now in his compelling new book, Don Lattin tells how one branch of these born-again Christian hippies quickly diverged into a dangerous cult. Lattin, a fellow religion reporter, keeps the story on track with evidence, anecdote and inside accounts. Sometimes painful, always engaging, the book sounds the alarm about any religious faith that veers into a privatized realm of authority and power.
Chris Ringwald is author of several books on spirituality and religion, including A Day Apart: How Jews, Christians, and Muslims Find Faith, Freedom, and Joy on the Sabbath and The Soul of Recovery: Uncovering the Spiritual Dimension in the Treatment of Addictions

Well-written tale of neo-religious cult spinoffs that head down a dark and desolate path. Expertly told story should please students of religious history as well as true crime readers.

Jesus Freaks / 978-0-06-111804-3

Sometimes you're walking through the "True Crime" section of the bookstore, and a book leaps out at you, and you realize that it's the true account of that one Law & Order episode you caught that one time that totally wasn't based on a true story or anything, except of course they all are. And because you thought the episode (Season 15, Episode 19, "Sects") was interesting (in a horrifying kind of way), you take the book home and you read it, and you find a gripping tale of horror and sadness. That's what this book is.

I knew I would like "Jesus Freaks" right off the bat, when I saw that the author had thoughtfully included a 'cheat sheet' of important personas as the first page. Having just spent this winter reading through the labyrinthine family trees of the Warren Jeffs' FLDS cult, I appreciated immediately that the author of "Jesus Freaks" recognized how difficult it can be to keep straight all the names when plumbing decades of cult behavior. What I hadn't expected, however, was that the writing and characterization here would be so clear and memorable, that I would rarely have to refer to my cheat sheet.

Although this book deals with some truly horrible human behavior, Lattin does a wonderful job of keeping the material accessible. He has a very careful way of zooming into the terrible history of this cult, but then zooming back out to cover some other, less distasteful history in order to let the reader get their bearings back. It takes a careful hand to write about the history of a cult, and Lattin manages wonderfully - he is careful never to blame the victims, he humanizes the adult members of the cult wherever possible, he carefully outlines the blame on the leaders, and how they gained and maintained control over the others, and he understands how to keep the subject gripping without becoming so heavy that the reader can't go on.

What was most fascinating for me, however, was seeing how closely the cult of the Children of God parallels the Warren Jeffs' FLDS cult, despite the fact that the two seem, superficially, to be so different. Whereas the FLDS cult is ostensibly about 'conservative' polygamous marriage, contracted at a young age (on the part of the women and girls, at least), the Children of God professed to be ostensibly about free love and polyamory. However, in practice, both cults boiled down ultimately to the complete control of the leader over the followers, with the women being ordered to sleep with whomever the leader desired - the Children of God had their 'flirty fishing' and the FLDS have their 'priesthood prostitutes' (due to the Warren Jeffs' habit of "reassigning" wives frequently - and on multiple occasions - when their current husband falls out of favor with the cult leader). And, of course, both cults involved the systematic abuse of the children within their community. (I was surprised, though, to note that both David Berg (founder of the Children of God) and Warren Jeffs were child abusers *prior* to their ascension of power over their respective cults; I had expected the timeline to be otherwise in that regard.)

If you have any interest in true crime and cults, this book is a superb addition to the genre, and is worth a read. Lattin deserves special mention for his ability to present so infuriating, appalling, and horrific a history in such a lucid manner, such that the reader is left stunned and shocked, and yet hopeful that perhaps we can learn from this past and prevent such abuses in the future.

~ Ana Mardoll

I joined the Children of God in August 1971 and became an independent disciple in October 1973. I had found a spouse in the organization and got married to her shortly after we decided to become independent disciples. We sent in reports until mid 1976 when we felt it was no longer worth our bother.

One of my goals in leaving the organization was to mediate between the supporters and the detractors of the group. Lattin felt there was some happy medium between the two camps, but such a medium appears to be elusive.

I wrote a booklength manuscript while in my twenties about the group entitled "Strange Fire," writing under the pen name Mick Bysshe which was derived from my name while in the Children of God. One chapter is available online.

It is interesting to note that David Berg, Ricky Rodriquez, and Sigmund Freud were all sexually molested by their nannies while they were toddlers.

David Berg followed in the vast excursions from monogamy that Joseph Smith and John Humphrey Noyes charted before him. Little by little the current Children of God has to deal with their own legacy of misconduct and poor leadership in matters of sexual behavior and family structure.

As with many of the books that interest me the most, this one raises rather more questions than it answers. That's OK; I have two more about the same basic topic (the Children of God aka The Family International), and lots of material culled from the Internet. I'm preparing a Power Point tentatively titled "But What About the Children?" to be presented at the Ethical Society on August 31.

Author Don Lattin has studied cults , and especially destructive cults, for some 30 years, covering the People's Temple, Branch Davidian, Heaven's Gate and the Family. He's also studied fundamentalist Christians and Muslims. In fact, he's had the writing career I ought to have had!

This line from the front inside dust cover sums it up neatly: "Jesus Freaks is a cautionary tale for those who fail to question the prophesies and proclamations of anyone who claims to speak for God." Or as I put it myself in trying to explain my 20+ years with Steve Holzman: I came to trust his judgment more than my own. Very, very dangerous, and I'm beginning to think I was lucky that Steve's magick failed.

Ricky Rodriguez was not so lucky. Having been raised as cult leader David "Moses" Berg's hand-crafted successor, he was told from the beginning that he was destined to be a martyr for the cause of bringing on the Rapture. He was also the guinea pig for Berg's pedophilia ideas of child-rearing, being pampered and petted -- oh, very much petted! -- from infancy. His mother and three or four other women of the cult were in the habit of performing oral sex on him as a way to relax him to get to sleep, as well as masturbating him, offering their bodies to him to play with, and offering his infant female cousin to "hump."

Due to these and other unconventional ideas about "sacred sex," including what they called "flirty fishing," but which was nothing short of using sex to lure in male members [sorry; the puns are part of the story, unfortunately], the group moved from home to home constantly, in all different countries, involved in child custody battles with the enraged spouses of Family members, issues of fraudulent financial practices, and so on.

One of the most amazing things about the story of Ricky Rodriguez, called "Davidito" (Little David) by the Family, was that while he was about three years old, the Family published a book entitled The Story of Davidito which was distributed throughout the organization as a manual for how to raise children. It was lavishly illustrated with pictures of the toddler Davidito and his "nurses," explicitly engaged in sexual conduct! Obviously, the censors considered it kiddie porn.

I said one of the problems was that the book raises at least as many questions as it answers. For one thing, the organization still exists, under the name The Family International. For another, if Davidito was so pampered and indulged, and the pictures show he did a lot of smiling, why did he rebel?

The answer goes to the heart of the question "But What About the Children?" that I mentioned earlier. The people who joined the cult as adults were mostly OK with the sexual part. Indeed, I almost joined myself when I heard about it in the early 1970s. The religion is otherwise very much fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity, with much "praise the Lord" and all of that. Indeed, I sympathize with the idea that sex can be a pathway to spiritual enlightenment, and calling on God at peak experiences is not necessarily inappropriate.

But the children did not choose; they were born there, or joined as little ones when their parents did. They didn't find out until they were nearly adult that the way they lived was not only not the norm, but was the reason they had to hide from everyone and be constantly on the run. Also, discipline was sometimes quite severe, and could be due to unwillingness to engage in specific acts with specific adults. For girls especially, being unwilling to do their share of "flirty fishing" could get them beaten black and blue, or sent to "victory camp," which is to say victory over the demons that cause them to disobey. They were exposed to "exorcism" which involved being sufficiently brutal to them that the demon possessing them would consider it no longer worthwhile and would depart.

And they developed the view that sex was all about using and controlling and being so open that they were criticized for wanting to close the bedroom door and not let anyone watch! One girl was told that if she left the group, she would be good for nothing but prostitution and drug addiction and disease and an early death.

So what about the children? Just when is it appropriate for the Child Protective Services or the courts to interfere between parent or guardian and child? Where do we draw the line?