Jesus Freaks

by Don Lattin

  Palmer happened to be staying at the San Diego home the night of September 8, 1993—the same evening that the NBC television show Now, hosted by Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric, broadcast a special report on The Family. Recent raids on Family homes in Argentina and allegations of child abuse there had put The Family back in the news. The piece by NBC correspondent Fred Francis included an interview with Merry Berg and a scene where twenty-year-old Merry was first re-united with Shula, her long-lost mother. There was also recent footage shot at the San Diego show house that hosted Palmer that very night.

  Everyone in the home gathered to watch the show. When the TV reporter mentioned that Family members in Argentina had been arrested on charges of rape, kidnapping, child abuse, and sodomy, some of the teenagers watching the program started screaming at the screen.

  “Sodomy!” one exclaimed. “Eooh! Gross! That just proves they don’t know anything about us. Grandpa’s always been against sodomy!”

  “If we’re a so-called sex cult,” asked a gorgeous eighteen-year-old girl sitting next to Palmer, “I don’t understand why I’m not getting any.”

  “Yeah!” her peers agreed. “How come there’s never any sex coming our way.”

  “Shhh,” cautioned the shepherdess. “Let’s listen.”8

  After her week with The Family in San Diego, Palmer concluded that the best way to describe the members of this new religious movement was as “Christian Fundamentalists with a heavy millenarian and communal emphasis.

  “In another hundred years,” she adds, “it appears likely that The Family will enjoy the social status of a small Christian church or denomination—quite as respectable, upwardly mobile and certainly less ‘heretical’ than Christian Science or the Latter Day Saints.”9

  Palmer was among those who testified in London in the child custody case before Justice Ward. The British judge was not impressed with her presentation, saying he was “less than fully convinced of her objectivity and her ability to see the whole picture.” Ward was especially troubled by Palmer’s statement that she began her research into the treatment of children in The Family “tending to find new religious movements delightful and amusing.”

  “They knew I would not be hostile or critical,” she told the court. “As a sociologist, I am value-free.”

  Ward’s ruling in the case—brought by a grandmother of a child born into The Family—was issued in November 1995. While the decision allowed the four-year-old boy’s mother to remain in The Family, the judge’s three-year investigation produced shocking revelations about the treatment of minors in The Family during the seventies and eighties. In the end, however, Ward was convinced that The Family had changed its ways.

  Significant numbers of children, more within The Family than outside it, had masturbation and even sexual intercourse forced upon them by adults. I am, however, equally satisfied that The Family have made determined efforts to stamp out this unacceptable behavior and that they have been largely successful in that endeavor. Whereas the blame for the abuse that has occurred is to be laid at Berg’s door, the credit for effecting change most probably can be given to [Zerby]. She and World Services have, however, failed fully to acknowledge The Family’s responsibility for this past misconduct….

  They must denounce David Berg. They must acknowledge that through his writings he was personally responsible for children in The Family having been subjected to sexually inappropriate behavior; that it is now recognized that it was not just a mistake to have written as he did but wrong to have done so; and that as a result children have been harmed by their experiences…. The Family must be encouraged honestly to face up to this shameful period in their history so that those harmed by it, victims and perpetrators alike, can seek to come to terms with it.10

  In response to Ward’s judgement, Peter Amsterdam issued a statement that fell far short of denouncing David Berg.

  The judgement refers in particular to “The Law of Love” and “The Devil Hates Sex,” and we accept that as the author of ideas upon which some members acted to the harm of minors in The Family, he [Berg] must bear responsibility for that harm. Maria, and all of us in World Services leadership, also feel the burden of responsibility…. Father David’s statements in his discourse entitled “The Devil Hates Sex” opened the door for sexual behavior between adults and minors, such sanctioning being the direct cause of later abusive behavior by some Family members at that time.11

  David Berg did not live to read the Ward judgement or see Amsterdam’s statement. But that did not stop Berg from participating in the sect’s response to the Ward judgement. In a purported prophesy from the grave, the Endtime Prophet apologized to anyone he hurt in The Family. “I did not intend to hurt, but I see now that I did hurt others at times by my words, by my actions,” Berg said in a prophecy channeled through Zerby.12

  In that same October 1995 communiqué to Family members, Zerby and Amsterdam said that the “Law of Love” sometimes led to “quite a wild time, with a lot of sexual activity.” They also conceded that literature was published that “challenged the barriers between adult/minor sexual contact, opening the door to some members crossing over that barrier.”

  At the same time, Zerby defended the Law of Love and said The Family will never renounce it. “Many of those outside The Family misunderstand the Law of Love. They strongly criticize it, and think it deals only with sex. They don’t seem to understand that this principle governs more than just our sex lives; it governs every aspect of our lives.

  “We try to show show love and kindness in all we do. Of course, unlike most Christians, we feel that God’s Word grants us freedoms in our sexual lives as well…. We do not believe, however, that these freedoms extend to adults having sexual contact with minors.”13

  In the decade since they issued that statement, Berg’s writings have been sanitized and his reputation restored by Zerby and Amsterdam. In 2006, a person interested in the history of The Family could go to its Web site and read this about “Our Founder”:

  David Berg called on his followers to devote their full time to spreading the message of Christ’s love and salvation as far and wide as possible, unfettered by convention or tradition, and to teach others to do the same.

  David Berg’s lively, down-to-earth, and sometimes unconventional approach to heavenly matters makes his writings a unique contribution to Christian literature….

  Though the world may know him as David Berg, to The Family he was known as Father David, Moses David, “MO,” or as most Family members came to call him affectionately—Dad. He truly was a Father in the Lord to those who knew him, either personally or through his writings.

  In November 1994, The Family commemorated his passing from this life into the next. Surely he has now heard his Savior’s “Well done!” for his life of Christian service.14

  10

  Elixcia

  BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

  August 1994 – Family International Offices

  Elixcia Munumel and Ricky Rodriguez.

  NOTHING TESTS A NEW and working in an office set up to translate Family publications into Russian, Croatian, Hungarian, and other Eastern European languages. The place was perfect for The Family. It was a huge facility originally built to house workers with Hungary’s state-owned electrical utility, but leased out to private concerns after the fall of Communism. Around sixty members of the sect were housed and employed at the compound, which included a recording studio to dub Family videos into the various languages.

  Ricky was just passing through. He was nineteen and heading to Russia from his mother’s hideout on the Portuguese coast.

  Elixcia was sitting at her computer terminal learning how to type when the famed Davidito walked into the office. He and his shepherds were getting a tour of the facility. Their guides were reeling off statistics about worker productivity in Elixcia’s unit when her eyes met his.

  “They introduced me and I just turned around and smiled,” Elixcia recalled. “I was so shy. He was wearing a pai
r of red shorts that runners wear, split up the side. Really short ones, with a white seam that went up the side. I remember thinking, those are really short shorts. He was wearing a blue tank top, muscle shirt. It was the summer, so it was really hot outside. He didn’t say anything. He just smiled and they all walked out.”1

  Elixcia had good reason to be flustered. This was no ordinary visitor. This was Davidito, the little boy she and other Family children had read about for years in their “Life with Grandpa” comic books. Elixcia learned to read by memorizing all those stories about the adventures of Davidito, Davida, and Grandpa as they moved from Tenerife to Portugal to the Far East. She’d read them over and over again. There was the story about Davidito’s “miracle ride” on the big yellow duck at the playground in the park. There was the story entitled “Three Little Accidents” about what happens when little children disobey. There was the tale about the time Davida dressed up like a sexy gypsy girl and danced for the Prophet Prince. Suddenly, here was Davidito in the flesh, twenty years old and quite hot!

  “We all knew about him. He was like a storybook character,” Elixcia said. “All the girls always talked about how they were going to marry Davidito when they grow up. They had their little crushes on him.”

  Ricky was now—at least legally—an adult. At nineteen, he was starting to openly question his mother’s demands that he play the role of the Prophet Prince. In Russia, he’d gotten in a little trouble with Davida, his spiritual sister from the early days in Tenerife and the south of France. They were smoking, drinking, and hanging out with outsiders—refusing to be Karen Zerby’s obedient representative.

  “There was a lot of pressure on him all the time,” Elixcia said. “He didn’t do anything that much different than other people, but the Jesus freaks among us, the people that really followed Karen, were disillusioned by him.”

  Ricky convinced his mother to let him move to Budapest to help with repairs at the compound and to be around when The Family moved into a new Hungarian headquarters elsewhere in the city. Elixcia was running the kitchen when Ricky arrived and moved into a bungalow with some other teenage boys. One afternoon she went up to the cottage to tell the guys lunch was ready. “One of them made a little guy remark about girls. You know, at sixteen everybody is so stupid. I sat at the edge of the bungalow talking to them. It was really weird talking to Ricky like a normal person. For my whole life, he wasn’t real. He was something you read about.”

  A few nights later, Ricky and Elixcia found themselves alone in the big house at the Budapest headquarters. There was a party that night at a hall the shepherds had rented away from the compound. Sect leaders didn’t want young people mixing with outsiders at clubs or other venues. “Systemites” were to be avoided—except for proselytizing and fundraising.

  Elixcia didn’t feel like going to the party, and unbeknownst to her, neither did Ricky. She was walking up the grand stairway, a graceful half-circle rising from the ground floor to the second story of the main building, when she saw him. It was about 9: 30 P.M., and everyone else had just left for the evening. Elixcia looked up and Ricky was coming down the stairs. “I was so shy. I remember looking up at him at the top of the stairs then looking down at the ground as I walked up the stairs. My heart was pounding. I didn’t know what to say.”

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” Ricky replied. “Why didn’t you go to the party?”

  “I don’t know. I just didn’t feel like it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I was thinking about getting a movie from the video collection.”

  “Hey, do you know how to play cards?” the Prophet Prince asked.

  “No.”

  “Well,” he said, smiling. “I can teach you.”

  “Cool.”

  “Great,” he said. “I’ll go over to my room to get some music and a deck of cards and meet you back at your room.”

  Ricky returned and sat down next to Elixcia on the bed. He’d brought some tunes from Russia, rock music that Family members were not supposed to hear. He told her about Russia. He taught her the poker hands—straight, flush, Royal Flush. “We talked forever,” Elixcia recalled. “We talked that night about angels. He asked about my mother and father. I told him about growing up in Venezuela. A car accident when I was three. Busting my nose. About being a tom girl.”

  Elixcia’s father was a British hippie and son of a United Kingdom diplomat. He’d inherited his family estate at age eighteen and took off to live the surfer’s life in Australia. Later, he traveled to South America to go up the Amazon River. Then, in Venezuela, he met The Family. He had grown up in a strict Christian boarding school and hated the way they worshipped God and the hypocrisy of that scene. He joined the sect in 1976 and soon brought Elixcia’s mother into the fold.

  Her mom was the first daughter of a wealthy Venezuelan man and his mistress. They later married and had four children together. “My grandfather adored my mother and wanted to give her the best education possible and sent her to one of the top Catholic boarding schools,” Elixcia explained. “She became a clothing designer. My grandfather wanted to buy her a factory, her own company, but then she met and fell in love with my father.”

  Elixcia was born in Caracas on April 4, 1979.

  Flirty fishing was in full swing, and Elixcia’s mom was sent out to the clubs to be a fisher of men. Dad stayed home to watch the baby and got to know—in the biblical sense—another woman in the house while his wife was out fishing. “My mother came home one day and my father was in this other woman’s room doing ‘the naughty.’ My mother got upset, left the house, and went to my grandmother’s house. My father tried to call her. She was mad. She expected him to come and find her, but he never did.”

  Elixcia was seven or eight months old at the time. Her parents split up and assumed joint custody, but her mother still followed her father around the world. “My father decided he wanted to go to India and my mother followed him. Wherever my father went, my mother followed,” Elixcia said. “I still think she’s in love with him.”

  Now, as she told Ricky her story, Elixcia was the one falling in love. She and Ricky stopped playing cards and started showing each other their childhood scars—not the emotional ones, not yet, but the physical scars from the time a red hot lamp fell on Ricky’s cheek or the scar from Elixcia’s car accident when she was three years old.

  “We spent most of the night together,” she said. “I was sitting with my legs crossed and he kept putting his hand on my leg, very gently rubbing it. I remember kissing but not doing anything else. I was scared. He tried to play around with me, but I was shy. I was sixteen. We did make out. Around two or three in the morning he left my room. I said something about having to get up early. The next day a whole vanload of people came in the morning because we were moving. I went down to the kitchen to help pack stuff up, and when I went back to my room there was a beautiful red rose sitting on my pillow. Just a single red rose.”

  Michael “Tiago” Rugely was managing the Budapest print shop when Elixcia met Ricky. He saw her falling for him and urged her to slow down. “When Elixcia likes you, she really likes you. She’d say, ‘I love Ricky. I want him so much. I’ll even have his baby if not him.’ She was fifteen or sixteen and would say things like that. I’d tell her to calm down. Ricky is someone who needs his space. It took years for me to communicate that to Elixcia. I’d say, ‘If you hang onto him that tight, you’ll lose him.’ Ricky was a free spirit, and he had lots of girlfriends. Elixcia was never crazy about that.”2

  Tiago was born in Paris in 1974. His father, known as “Black Peter” in The Family, was one of the earliest members and the first African-American to join Berg’s sect in 1969. He married Tiago’s mother, a young convert from Los Angeles, who would go on to have thirteen children.

  Like all children his age, Tiago grew up reading stories about Davidito. “As a kid growing up, you always wanted to meet him. You respected him, but in some ways you f
elt bad for him. His parents were often rebuking him. When the Davidito book came out, you didn’t know what to think. Here was this kid posing nude in this highly sexualized environment. You knew something was wrong with this picture, but you weren’t sure what to think.”

  Tiago was nineteen when he met Ricky, and his print shop was in full swing. Packets of information would be sent to potential converts who would reply to an Austrian address listed on recruitment posters plastered across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. “It was like a normal office,” Tiago said. “When Ricky first came through, there was always a crowd around him. He came over and said ‘Hello,’ and I walked around and gave him a tour of the place. He was on his way to Russia.”

  They soon became friends. “I’m a quiet guy. I used to be shy, somewhat of a loner. Not very flamboyant. Ricky was very much like that too. Eventually we would click. He just wanted to be accepted for who he was. He didn’t want to be the guy with all the answers. People would ask him, ‘Where did Moses David die?’ and things like that. Our friendship was at a different level. He was like a brother.

  “One of the first things he told me was he was happy to get away from his mom. He said he was the happiest he’d ever been. He was so happy to get away from her. He didn’t miss anybody from his past and was happy about the way his future was looking.”

  At first, Elixcia and Ricky dated in secret. They would take long walks along the windy roads behind The Family compound on the outskirts of Budapest. Family members were given a weekly allowance of alcohol—three beers and two glasses of wine. Ricky and Elixcia would save theirs up and take it out into the woods, make a little bonfire, and spend as much time alone as they could without arousing suspicion.