Jesus Freaks

by Don Lattin

  Ricky hoped his mission would put the public spotlight on the current leadership of The Family International. Although he succeeded in that effort, he would still be enraged by the fact that none of the top leaders, including his mother, have yet had to defend themselves in an American court of law.

  Karen Elba Zerby declined to be interviewed for this book. But writing under the name Maria David, Ricky’s mother prepared a eulogy for her son and posted it on www.Rickyrodriquez.com. She refers to her son as “Pete” in that testimony:

  Nothing and no one could fill the place Pete occupied in my heart while he was here on Earth. He lived with me for nearly 25 years, something I was very happy about, as I loved him dearly. Pete was a joy to me, a happy child, an exceptional teenager, and an intelligent and charming young man….

  Although he made some decisions in the last portion of his life that have greatly saddened me and those he loved, I know that he is now in a place where he can find rest and peace.

  In her eulogy, Zerby went on to say that her son can only find forgiveness if he repents and goes through “the time of learning and rehabilitation that takes place in Heaven for those in need of it.” Zerby also says that she has heard directly from Jesus Christ about Ricky, the child who was supposed to join her to battle the forces of evil on the eve of the Second Coming. Jesus Christ told Zerby that he has “erased the anger, the pain, and confusion Pete felt. Now he is discovering what he has desired all along. Now he is in a position where he can learn and grow and further develop the gifts and talents that I gave him from the beginning.”

  As for the incest allegations against her, Zerby issued a separate statement through her spokeswoman, Claire Borowik, in which she vigorously denied that she ever had sexual relations with her son. Borowik said the “recently hatched apostate tales of Maria engaging in incestuous relations with Ricky” were “absolutely false.”

  “This is an absolute lie! Even Ricky himself never accused Maria of such things in his video or his Internet rants about The Family,” she said. “Not only did her son never accuse her of this, neither did any former member until just recently, eight months after Ricky’s death, when this absurd story surfaced. Of course, given that Ricky is dead and never alleged that this happened, there is no evidence to support this story.”

  Karen Zerby’s husband, Peter Amsterdam, said in another statement released by The Family that Ricky only turned against them after he left the fold and “started having a lot of contact with some very vindictive apostates.”

  Ricky started coming out with accusations against us, complaints about his upbringing, and demands for money. As his contact with these apostates grew, so did his complaints. This is the cycle of apostasy, which is well documented in scholarly writings. Eventually he told us that he didn’t want to be in contact with us at all, and to please stop writing him. Some time later, he came out with a physical threat in a post on a Web site, saying he wanted to find us and kill us.

  Some of Ricky’s associates apparently were aware of the seriousness of Ricky’s threats. They had heard him talk about his desire to kill his mother and they knew he had a penchant for knives. We can only assume that they tried, unsuccessfully, to convince him that this was wrong.

  Others are now trying to make Ricky look like an innocent victim, and even a hero and role model, ignoring the fact that he murdered someone. He claimed that it was his deserved “revenge” because of alleged abuses. No matter what his motives might have been, and no matter how overcome by “darkness” he was at the time, that does not justify his killing someone. He was not the victim; Angela was the victim. She was a wonderful woman who suffered a cruel and violent death.

  Sue Kauten’s slaying and Ricky’s suicide forced The Family to respond to reams of written evidence that David Berg saw nothing morally wrong with sexual activity between adults and minors. It forced them to respond to allegations by at least three women—including his granddaughter—that Berg had sexually molested them as children. While The Family statement does not address those specific allegations, it concedes:

  In the late ’70s The Family’s founder, David Berg, published some articles in regards to sex being a God-created natural activity, which could be engaged in without inhibition or sin. This opened the door for sexual experimentation between adults and adults, and minors with minors. However, unfortunately in some cases the lines blurred. In 1986, David Berg and [Zerby], realizing that stringent safeguards hadn’t been put in place to protect minors, banned such conduct involving minors and put those safeguards in place. In 1988, David Berg renounced all literature, including his own, that indicated in any way that sexual activity with minors was permissible. All such literature was expunged from our communities. He clearly stated that any sexual activity between an adult and a minor was not to be tolerated. It was from that time forward that The Family made this grounds for immediate excommunication from our fellowship.

  Another voice yet to be heard is that of Christina Teresa Zerby, also known as “Techi.” Born March 19, 1979, Techi is the daughter of Karen Zerby and the late Michael Sweeney, a devotee known in the family as Timothy Concerned. Of the four children who got the closest look at “Life With Grandpa,” including Ricky, Davida, and Merry Berg, Techi was the only one who has remained loyal to The Family. In 1987, the year before The Family says it instituted a firm policy against child molestation, The Family produced a comic book for children, entitled “Heaven’s Children,” in which David Berg fantasizes about having sex with Techi as a young teenage girl.

  Techi herself gave birth to a son, Trevor, when she was just sixteen years old. Several former members close to the Unit said the child was fathered by an older Swiss devotee who has since left The Family. Techi herself vigorously denied that claim in an e-mail in January 2005: “I am married to my husband of nearly ten years, and my nine-year-old son is his,” she wrote. “I am a grown woman living my own life. I think it’s childish to even bring up things like this, which can serve no good purpose and only cause pain.”3

  Those making the allegation, including Don Irwin, say the issue is important because it shows that there was still sexual activity between adults and underage girls in the inner circle of The Family well into the nineties.

  “Techi arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia [from Portugal] pregnant with a child,” Don Irwin said. “The cult leadership lied to their membership saying that she got pregnant from a teenage boy in Vancouver. That was not what happened.”

  Irwin said he knows the real father of Trevor. On top of that, Irwin said that his own father, Ralph Keeler Irwin, legally changed his name to “Robert William Zerby” to make it easier for him to bring the pregnant Techi back to Canada.

  “They encouraged the boys in that location [Vancouver] to have sex with her immediately upon her arrival. Trevor was born very quickly after and not a full nine months after her arrival.”

  Irwin also said Techi told him that she thought “there was nothing wrong” with “a fourteen-year-old having sex with adult men.”

  “Having the child made Techi dependent on the group,” Irwin said. “She is not allowed to travel alone with the child. When she visits relatives, the child does not come with her. That is how they control her.”

  Techi declined to be interviewed for this book. But in the aftermath of Sue’s slaying and Ricky’s suicide, she issued a prepared statement through The Family International. Watching the angry video her brother made before killing Sue Kauten and himself, Techi said, “made me physically sick to my stomach.”

  It was unbearable to hear the way he talked about my mother, and her husband, Peter—two of the most wonderful people on Earth, I think. Our mother! Our mother who loved us so deeply, who showed us that love at every possible opportunity, who did her best to make sure we had the best upbringing she could provide for us. It’s so horrible. And, I imagine, even more horrible for her to have to listen to it. So sad. Such unbelievable hatred, darkness and evil came out of his mouth.


  We were close, and I know that when I knew him, he never ever felt any of the things he stated in his video. After Ricky left The Family, it’s not like Mom stopped loving him, either, and she did all that she could to try to show him that. I don’t understand why he refused to believe her. And for the record, I was never once in all my life in The Family abused.

  Techi’s statement, issued January 28, 2005, says Ricky “had no reason to think that either I or my son needed to be ‘rescued.’

  “In closing, I would like to say that I loved my brother. I love him now, and I forgive him, and I know that God loves him and forgives him, and that I will see him again some day in a much better place.”

  Zerby, Amsterdam, and Techi were not the only current members of The Family to enter the media fray following Sue’s slaying and Ricky’s suicide. Borowik complained that early news reports only quoted a few alienated second-generation members who had left the movement and ignored the voices of the majority of second-generation adults who loved The Family and were still members.

  Borowik pointed to a series of statements from second-generation members The Family compiled following the murder/suicide and put on the Web site www.myconclusion.com—another example of the ongoing Internet war over what happened to Ricky and his peers. Maria, twenty-five and a mother of one, wrote:

  It baffles me that some of you who are attacking us so vehemently do not get the point or have completely forgotten what the scriptures have to say about persecution, not to speak of the numerous times we’ve come out on top and that the Lord has delivered us from attacks such as these. But then again, when I think about it, you are helping to fulfill scripture….

  Those who think that you will weaken and frighten us and cause us to run are fools. We are not wimps! We will not take this lying down. No sir! You should know better than that. You think you can destroy us? Finish us off? Defeat us? Do you really think you’ll win? You’re gonna have hell to pay….

  Do yourselves a favor and let us live our lives, and go on and live yours. Really, move on! If you don’t believe in what we’re doing fine, don’t. But it’s useless to spend the rest of your lives trying to fight us and get us to believe the same as you do, because we never will….

  For the record, I’ve been living in [World Services] 6½ years, and I’ve had the privilege of meeting Mama, Peter and many other wonderful people whom you say are some of the so-called “evil abusers.” Sorry, you are so wrong. May God help you for criticizing and accusing them of such terrible deeds!

  Emmanuel Thomas, twenty-two, lives in a Brazil, and is a second-generation of The Family International. He wrote:

  I have lived in The Family my whole life, just about all of which has been in Brazil being a missionary. I’m married to the most wonderful woman in the world named Rafaela, and I have a son, Calvin who will be turning one very soon. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that The Family International is where I want to live for the rest of my life. I would consider it an honor to live and work for Jesus in The Family for the rest of my life. This is where I want to bring up my son “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” I know that this is a safe place because it has been a safe place for me. I never suffered abuse or mistreatment of any kind! This is the best place Calvin could grow up in! I am sure of that.

  Over the next year, more than 450 Family members would post their testimonies at www.myconclusion.com. They would paint a markedly different picture of what life was like growing up in The Family. Much of this is understandable. Those suffering the worst abuse were the older members of the second-generation—those born between 1972 and 1980. Even The Family’s toughest critics will admit that minors living in the sect now are much less likely to experience sexual abuse than those in the late seventies and eighties. It also mattered where children grew up and under what level of leadership. Some Family colonies were loving homes—love in the best sense of the word. Others were ruled over by serial child predators.

  Perhaps the main factor in the child abuse equation was simply this—how close one was to David Berg. Ricky was close. Davida was close. Merry Berg was close. One of Peter Amsterdam’s sons, Jon-A, did not spend that much time around the Endtime Prophet, or even his own father. But he was Ricky’s age and did spend time at the infamous Victor Camp in Macao. He wrote:

  I knew both [Sue] and Ricky, and still cannot quite comprehend the needless death that took place. It’s not every day someone you knew well was murdered, and rarer still, someone you knew who just four years earlier seemed like a normal individual, change to the point where he’d be willing to take the life of someone as sweet and harmless as [Sue]. I’m telling you, everyone reading this has done more harm to others through unloving acts than [Sue]. She was truly an angel.

  I would say that my life was not that typical of a young person in The Family. Because of who my parents were, much was expected of me, and as a kid, naturally I resented that fact. I recognize now that it was to be expected. Any child with prominent parents, in any walk of life, has more expected of him than others….

  I also went through my share of disciplinary type programs, such as the “Victor programs”—one in Japan and one in Peru. Both of those were typical of the types of programs used by The Family in some parts of the world in those days. In my opinion, these programs were no more harsh then their counterparts in secular society. There was silence restriction, extra labor and some corporal punishment—all to be expected from that type of system. These programs have not been used in The Family for many years—most likely for good reasons. However, considering that disciplinary boot-camp type programs are still actively used throughout the secular and Christian world today, I fail to see how one could be so up in arms about their previous use in The Family….

  The one program I was in that I would consider excessive by way of corporal punishment and hard labor, was the DT [detention teen] program in Macao during the late ’80s. There were under ten young people admitted to that program, so its use was certainly not widespread, nor was this program duplicated elsewhere. I know for a fact that half of the participants are still in The Family, and the other half have left. Those who were negatively affected by this program, I personally feel sorry for. I don’t think some of the things that went on were justified or necessary, and I consider it a failed experiment at best. It’s something I feel was unfortunate, but I lived through it, and I’ve put it behind me. And most importantly, I forgave those who I feel wronged me. That’s what I consider the bottom line here: it’s about forgiveness! In life, you have to forgive people, just as you need to be forgiven.4

  One problem with relying on e-mail postings and the Internet to tell “the other side” of Ricky’s story was that one can’t be certain who actually authored those statements and under what circumstances they were written. Shepherds could be telling rank-and-file members what to write. Nevertheless, it is important to hear those voices. What happens inside a religious cult often lies somewhere between the horror stories of apostates and the happy tales of current devotees.

  In the weeks following the slaying of Sue Kauten and the suicide of Ricky Rodriguez, five second-generation members sat down for interviews at a Mexican restaurant in Old Town San Diego.5

  Justin Paone, twenty-eight, was one of the five. He was born to Family missionaries in Venezuela and grew up in communal homes across South America. “My upbringing was different, but I’m very proud of my parents and my upbringing,” Paone said. “I know a lot of these people who are bitter and are fighting against us now. A lot of times it’s situations in their personal families. They get all worked up about it and generalize it over the whole Family. It makes us all suffer.”

  John Orcutt, twenty-six, was born in Italy, the third of nine children. Growing up, he lived in Argentina, India, Thailand, Puerto Rico, and the United States before going out on his own as a Family missionary in Hungary. He was not surprised by the post-Ricky wave of negative news coverage about his religious movement. “Persecution
is part of our lives,” he said. “You read news articles and meet people who don’t like you, but in a way it motivates me more.”

  “They said Jesus hung out with whores,” he added. “If they said those things about Jesus, they are definitely going to say those things about his followers.”

  Orcutt, Paone, and the others around the table worked for Activated Ministries in Escondido, which produces books, periodicals, and musical products sold by Family missionaries around the world. They were accompanied by Cassandra Mooney, fifty-two, one of the directors of Activated Ministries and a member of The Family for thirty-three years.

  Mooney raised two daughters in the movement, both of whom now serve as missionaries in Mexico. “I love my girls and would never let anyone touch them,” she said. “I was in The Family five and a half years until I had sex—and that was with my husband. We were prudish in a sense. I was a very wild hippie before I joined The Family, so that was a big change for me.”

  Mooney concedes that changed in the late seventies, when Berg directed his female followers to practice flirty fishing. Asked whether she ever engaged in flirty fishing (or FFing), Mooney replied, “Very little.”

  “When it first started happening, we were in Beirut, Lebanon, which was a difficult place to do it,” Mooney said. “FFing was going out and meeting lonely people and witnessing to them. If it happened that we had an attraction or wanted to have sex, our religion did not forbid that. It wasn’t prostitution. It was witnessing.”

  Several of the younger Family members around the table defended the sect’s ongoing practice of sexual sharing among adult members, arguing that sex is just a small part of the equation and blown out of proportion by the news media and their critics.