Soundtrack To My Life – Chapter Three – He’s Leaving Home

Music featured in this chapter:

Woodstock – Joni Mitchell

Woodstock - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Big Yellow Taxi – Joni Mitchell

Eve Of Destruction - Barry McGuire

Getting Better - The Beatles

She’s Leaving Home – The Beatles

Can’t Buy Me Love – The Beatles

Brother Sun, Sister Moon – Donovan

Freedom - Richie Havens

The title of Chapter 3 in my memoir is an obvious reference to a Beatles song. The chapter opens with these paragraphs:

The Beatles song, “She’s Leaving Home”, in their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, depicts the moment a teen runs away from home. Paul McCartney said the song was inspired by a newspaper report about a missing 17-year-old runaway, noting there were many at the time. In North America that year, the Summer of Love influenced tens of thousands of young people to leave home. Three years later, Joni Mitchell’s Edenic call to “get ourselves back to the garden” in her counterculture anthem, “Woodstock”, expressed the essence of the era, as idealistic drop-outs from an alienating politico-economic system dreamed of creating a peaceful, egalitarian society.

From 1967 to 1971, an estimated 500,000 young American drop-outs experimented with alternative lifestyles and communities. In her book, Runaways: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped Today’s Practices and Policies, Karen M. Staller explains the impact of the counterculture on the phenomenon of young people running away from home. She describes the surge of teenage runaways sparked by the Summer of Love as a crisis that continued for several years, ...

I should’ve added how highly relevant the lyrics “I came upon a child of God”, “get my soul free” and the reference to the garden of Eden were to my personal story.

Woodstock – Joni Mitchell

I came upon a child of God

Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” was covered by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. This rockin’ version has clips from the movie, which I watched twice as a teen.

I also refer to another Joni Mitchell song:

“In 1970, activists in Vancouver trying to prevent that third test created Greenpeace and held a benefit concert there headlined by Joni Mitchell to raise funds for a protest ship to sail to the testing ground. Her hit song that year about deforestation and pesticides, “Big Yellow Taxi”, was part of my environmental awakening ...”

Big Yellow Taxi – Joni Mitchell

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

I wrote:

Humanity was facing the existential threats of nuclear war and environmental destruction, while men were landing on the moon, and the Beatles sang it’s “Getting Better” and “All You Need Is Love”. I didn’t know if I should be hopeful or fearful, which added to my adolescent angst. Not only was my childhood ending, it seemed the world’s end could be near too.

I then provide a quotation, which I’ve excerpted here:

In 1965 a song lamenting that we were on the “Eve of Destruction” became the first song on a political issue to become a number-one popular tune in the United States; the nineteen-year-old writer explained that he felt war like “a cloud hanging over me all the time.” ... By the 1960s, observers from Teller to Dr. Benjamin Spock of SANE were reporting talks with young people who said it was pointless to save up money or study when the world might end tomorrow. In 1982 a psychiatrist, summarizing decades of studies, said that the nuclear problem had left many young with a “sense of powerlessness and cynical resignation.”

Eve Of Destruction - Barry McGuire. All the lyrics in this song are highly relevant to the current state of the world. https://genius.com/Barry-mcguire-eve-of-destruction-lyrics My story comes full circle in the Epilogue of my memoir, where I describe the similarities between the existential threats of war and environmental destruction in the 1960s, and the rise of new cults, to the current existential threats to the environment, world peace and humane civilization, and a new wave of thousands of cults, all of which are worsened by the digital world of disinformation and Artificial Intelligence.

But you tell me over and over and over again, my friend

Getting Better - The Beatles. This is the 4th song from the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album that I’ve cited so far in these 1st three chapters. I dropped out of high school to “join” the cult.

I used to get mad at my school

I also wrote:

Like the runaway teen in that Beatles song, I was living alone though living at home, increasingly alienated from my family, friends and community, wondering who I was, what I would do, where I fit in the world.

She’s Leaving Home – The Beatles This is the 5th song from the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album that I’ve cited so far in these 1st three chapters. It obviously had a huge influence on me.

She (We gave her most of our lives)

I don’t reference the following song in my book, but it does represent my lack of interest in money and material things, and how those didn’t motivate me in my search for a meaningful life.

Can’t Buy Me Love – The Beatles

I’ll give you all I’ve got to give

In this chapter I also describe the interaction between my Catholic indoctrination by Franciscan priests and my indoctrination into the Children of God cult. My parents, worried about my recent involvement with that group of strangers, asked me to talk to a priest, even though I had stopped attending church a couple years earlier. I went willingly, but it wasn’t the result my parents hoped for.

… Certain similarities between the Franciscan Order and the Children of God must’ve been obvious to Father Mark. He would’ve understood their literal obedience to Jesus’ command to give up everything to preach the gospel, and he lived a similar communal life, sharing everything in common with his brethren. He also seemed sympathetic to their criticism of churches in general, and admitted to me that he took issue with some aspects of the Catholic Church, but he hoped to help reform it from within.

It seemed to me that Father Mark was more inspired by my description of the Children of God than he was concerned about my involvement with them. Instead of discouraging me, my talk with him pushed me closer to the group. The only advice he gave me was to not make any sudden decisions that would upset my parents, but I ignored him and did exactly that. Ironically, it was this follower of Saint Francis, not a San Francisco flower child, who influenced my decision to drop out of society.

In an endnote for chapter 3, I wrote: “A year after I joined the Children of God, their founder, David Berg, compared his group to the Catholic Franciscan Order in his review of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1972 film, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, based on the life of St. Francis.” Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan sang all the songs on the soundtrack.

Brother Sun, Sister Moon – Donovan

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

At the end of this chapter, I write about the moment I left home:

“The only other possessions I planned to take were my transistor radio and bongo drum. Both were Christmas presents from my parents.Throughout my childhood I dreamed of playing the drums, and did play a rented snare drum in the junior high school band, but after seeing a conga drummer play with Richie Havens in the Woodstock film, I begged my parents for one. A conga was too expensive, but I was happy with the bongo.”

Within weeks of “joining” the cult, the leaders took my bongo and sent it to another commune where musicians were creating cult music.

“Freedom” by Richie Havens at Woodstock 1969.

Sometime I feel like I’m almost gone

Chapter Two – California Dreamin’

Music featured in this chapter:

California Dreamin’ - The Mamas & The Papas

San Francisco - Scott Mckenzie

With A Little Help From My Friends – The Beatles

Across The Universe – The Beatles

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds – The Beatles

Time - Pink Floyd

Question - The Moody Blues

Jesus Christ Superstar - Superstar (1971)

All Things Must Pass - George Harrison

What Is Life - George Harrison

Awaiting On You All - George Harrison

Chapter two of my memoir opens with this paragraph:

In the summer of 1971, a couple months before my sixteenth birthday, I hitch-hiked with my classmate Dave to California, where I had my first LSD experience. I first got high with a little help from my new friend two years earlier at a junior high school dance. Dave brought a few cannabis joints and we smoked them behind a classroom building bordering the forest. There were a few of us gathered there, but when Dave lit a joint and passed it around a couple of them fled the scene of the crime. That was my initiation as a counterculture freak.

Like chapter one, this chapter is also titled after a song, The Mamas & The Papas - California Dreamin’. Coincidentally, on that long hitch-hiking trip to California I describe in this chapter, we also “stopped into a church” that gave us a place to sleep for a night. It was a Catholic church, and I used my past as an altar boy to beg the priest to give us a place to stay for the night. He let us sleep in a storage room.

California Dreamin’ - The Mamas & The Papas

Stopped into a church

San Francisco - written by John Phillips of the The Mamas & The Papas, sung by Scott Mckenzie. This song was the publicity showcase of the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival, one of the best known anthems of the hippie movement.

All across the nation

As that first paragraph of this chapter describes, I first got high with a little help from my friend.

With A Little Help From My Friends – The Beatles, featuring Ringo Starr, the 2nd song on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends

I had my first LSD experiences on that California trip.

The hallucinations on my first acid trip were pleasantly mild, mostly a cool fractal kaleidoscope of constantly shifting, swirling, pulsating patterns. Inanimate things seemed alive. At times it got a bit more intense, like when we were making faces in a mirror and Dave’s face seemed to melt like a surrealist painting by Salvador Dali. We tried playing pool, but the balls wouldn’t cooperate, so we went night swimming instead. Swimming underwater on LSD was such a sublime feeling of freedom I almost forgot to surface, until my brain alerted me to breathe. Floating on my back, staring at the stars, it felt like I was drifting across the universe.

My second acid trip a few days later had an even more profound effect. Dave and I dropped a tab before heading to the Santa Clara County Fair with his relatives. The hallucinations began by the time we got to the fairground. With all the intense sensory input from the crowded, colourful sights and loud sounds of the midway amusements, it was an odd place to have a spiritual epiphany.

I was sitting alone on a bench waiting for the others, when I became entranced by a large leafy tree that pulsated as if breathing. It suddenly started shaking and swaying like it was about to walk away at any moment. It seemed alive in a supernatural way. I thought I was seeing the life force in the tree and glimpsing another dimension, a spiritual world hidden from the physical one, which is how I interpreted the drug-induced experience for many years. That hallucination seemed to confirm my religious belief in the spirit world.

Across The Universe – The Beatles

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds – The Beatles, the 3rd song on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. That album obviously had a big influence on me.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river

The next two songs are very relevant to an experience I had after I returned home from California. While high on LSD sitting in a pub, I stared at the clock on the wall and hallucinated that I had grown old and wasted my entire life sitting in that bar.

My last trip was the worst.

It started at the Kingsway Hotel beer parlour. A year earlier, the legal drinking age in British Columbia dropped from 21 to 19. After I turned 16, I went to that pub with an uncle a couple times and the bartender didn’t check my ID, so I thought I could get away with it again without my uncle. It was more about bragging rights than drinking, because I couldn’t afford more than one or two beer. I dropped the half tab of LSD before I went in with two older looking classmates and, surprisingly, we all got served. The pub was packed with the usual crowd of mill workers, loggers, longshoremen and fishermen. As the acid began to take effect, I felt the stubble on my chin and I felt like I was growing old on the spot, turning into a grey-haired old-timer like some of those around me.

While staring at a clock on the wall, I had this intense perception that time had slipped away, that I had wasted my entire life sitting in that bar. I panicked and headed for the exit, followed by my puzzled friends. Passing by the pool table, I pulled a cue off the wall rack and carelessly tossed it as I walked out the door. The guy it hit chased after me, lifted me in the air by my hair, and punched me in the mouth. For a moment, I was Alice Cooper hanging by a noose, an hallucination triggered by a calendar photo I recently saw of Cooper doing exactly that. As he punched me my friends began screaming, “he’s high on acid, don’t hit him”, so he dropped me and we took off.

Time - Pink Floyd

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

In that LSD anecdote I describe how I hallucinated that I was Alice Cooper hanging on a noose, an image from the calendar that was included in his 1971 album, Killer. This is that photo in the calendar:

Another song from that era similar to Pink Floyd’s “Time” that made me question my life is the Moody Blues song “Question” I had the song memorized, and after I ‘joined’ the cult, I learned to play guitar and often played this song.

Question - The Moody Blues

Why do we never get an answer

Also in chapter two, I mention the huge influence that George Harrison’s music and the musical Jesus Christ Superstar had on me.

Since its release in 1970, I had listened to George Harrison’s highly spiritual triple album, All Things Must Pass, over and over again until I had memorized most of it, including the hit songs “My Sweet Lord” and “What Is Life”. Now, after my LSD experiences, contemplating the notion of the spirit world and the concept of time in relation to my mortality, the lyrics from that album meant more to me as I questioned the meaning and purpose of my life.

That wasn’t the only spiritual music I was listening to. The rock opera album Jesus Christ Superstar was also released in 1970, and I memorized that entire album too. Singing aloud along with those albums when no one else was home rekindled the inspiration that singing hymns in church had once sparked. I was super excited to attend a theatrical production of Superstar that came to town towards the end of 1971, performed in the high school’s 1,000 seat auditorium. After the finale, in a reprise of the title song, audience members were invited on stage to sing along, and I didn’t hesitate to join them. Though I stopped attending church a few years earlier, I was still spiritually stimulated by the gospel and willing to publicly profess my faith. Soon, scripture-quoting strangers would take advantage of that and misguide my youthful search for meaning and purpose.

Jesus Christ Superstar - Superstar (1971)

Jesus Christ

All Things Must Pass - George Harrison

All things must pass

What Is Life - George Harrison

Tell me, what is my life without your love

I especially related to those two songs because of the political, environmental and personal tragedies I describe in my memoir that had a major influence on me, impressing on me the impermanence of life and causing me to question everything. But it was this next song that I related to when I was being recruited by the cult to drop out and serve God with them.

Awaiting On You All - George Harrison

You don’t need no church house

Chapter One - Gotta Serve Somebody

Music featured in this chapter:

Gotta Serve Somebody - Bob Dylan

Sixteen Tons - Tennessee Ernie Ford

Murder Most Foul – Bob Dylan

Abraham, Martin and John - Dion

Into the Ocean - Blue October

How Great Thou Art - Elvis Presley

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles

All You Need Is Love - The Beatles

I open my memoir with a flash-forward to the time I first heard Bob Dylan’s song “Gotta Serve Somebody”. Here is the first paragraph:

I believed God was speaking directly to me through the car radio the day I first heard Bob Dylan singing “Gotta Serve Somebody”. The lyrics surprised me so much I pulled over to the curb to make sure I was hearing them right. I didn’t know that Dylan had converted to evangelical Christianity, so he seemed like an odd messenger for that clearly Biblical message. Hearing those familiar words reactivated the dormant dogma I had been indoctrinated with. I immediately recalled a Bible verse I memorized seven years earlier, after I dropped out to follow Jesus with the Children of God.

To avoid the copyright issue of citing lyrics from the song, I instead cited the Bible verse that Dylan paraphrases in his song.

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew 6:24

Here is how Dylan paraphrased that scripture in his song Gotta Serve Somebody:

You’re gonna have to serve somebody

By the way, there is an “easter egg” in that first sentence, where I write “I believed God was speaking directly to me through the car radio...”. I wonder how many readers made the connection between that and the 1977 movie Oh, God!, in which George Burns plays God. There’s a scene where he speaks through the car radio to the character played by John Denver that he is trying to recruit.

After that flash-forward introduction to my story, I describe my family and first 16 years of my childhood. I write about my existential fear of spending my life in the drudgery of mill work as “a cog in the machine”.

Dylan’s song sent me right back to the moment I first learned that scripture from a Jesus freak street preacher. As he showed me those words from his pocket Bible he pointed to the pulp and paper mill in the distance where my father worked, explaining that the factory represented mammon, a Biblical term for money, material possessions and related greediness. I was an impressionable, immature 16-year-old in grade eleven, worried about my future and the lack of options the small, forest industry mill-town held for me. Then that stranger appeared and offered me an alternative way of life.

My father, maternal grandfather and uncles all worked in the logging industry, either in the woods harvesting the trees, or in the mills that processed the logs into lumber or paper. Even my mum worked in the plywood mill before she got married. So, growing up it seemed to me that there was an unexpressed expectation that I would wear the same working class boots just like most in my family and community did. As a teen, I dreaded the thought of following my father’s footsteps in the factory, becoming merely a cog in the machine. It was not a life I wanted, but I had no guidance from reliable mentors showing me other possibilities.

I felt trapped in that town, so when that evangelist offered me a way out of the valley into what I thought would be a life of freedom I grabbed the chance to escape. Within weeks I would become a COG of a different sort, but still controlled by the machinations of others. Biblical truth did not set me free, as promised. Instead, I became a prisoner of Christian dogma, bound by spiritual chains.

Sixteen Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?

In this chapter I also describe two events that had a major impact on my childhood, reminding me of the impermanence of life: the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the huge tsunami that hit Port Alberni hours after the 1964 earthquake in Alaska.

I was sent home from school after John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. I was in grade three when the shocking news reached my little four-grade River Bend Elementary school that November 22nd morning. The principal sadly explained that the US President had died and that out of respect the school would close for the rest of that Friday. It was the first time I saw an adult cry. Over that weekend I was fascinated by the constant television coverage of events, including the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, the first murder ever televised live, and Kennedy’s elaborate two-day state funeral.

Murder Most Foul – Bob Dylan. In this epic 17-minute song Dylan not only describes Kennedy’s assassination in great detail, but he references many songs from that era that capture the zeitgeist of the 1960s culture, which I describe in the early chapters of my memoir as having a huge influence on my teen anxieties.

‘Twas a dark day in Dallas, November ‘63

Abraham, Martin and John by Dion

Anybody here seen my old friend John?

Five months after that assassination, a tsunami hit Port Alberni on Easter weekend 1964. It was caused by a magnitude 9.2–9.3 earthquake in Alaska, known as the Good Friday earthquake, the largest ever to hit North America. I refer to the tsunami as a metaphor for the “spiritual wave” that would soon sweep me out of my family’s life.

Those two momentous tragedies, the assassination and tsunami, had a significant impact on my young psyche, impressing on my eight-year-old mind the impermanence of life. Disaster or tragedy could strike at any time, and things could change in a moment. The tsunami also portended two pivotal, life-changing events that would wash over my world on two other Easter weekends, in 1966 and 1972. The first, involving two uncles, was a personally traumatic tragedy that triggered existential questions about death and the meaning of life. The second was my encounter with the Children of God, part of a wave of Jesus People who came to Canada from California and swept me out of my family’s life.

Some of these lyrics in the song Into the Ocean by Blue October express the essence of my existential crisis as a “normal boy” trying to figure out my life.

Into the Ocean by Blue October

I’m just a normal boy

This first chapter also describes in detail my childhood Catholic indoctrination, and how it made me more susceptible to the manipulations and tactics of cult recruiters who took advantage of my Catholic beliefs.

Father Sigismond Lajoie, or Siggy as we called him, approached my mum and I with the idea that I become an altar boy. The notion of playing a part in Mass, wearing robes and assisting the priest, appealed to me. I always enthusiastically took part in the call-and-response prayers of the Catholic liturgy, and I especially loved singing hymns with their unifying, spine-shivering emotional power. Father Siggy’s favourite hymn was “How Great Thou Art”, which we sang at nearly every Sunday service. Perhaps Elvis Presley’s 1967 hit recording of the song had something to do with that.

How Great Thou Art sung by Elvis Presley

As a young teen in the late 1960s and early 1970s I was heavily influenced by the counter-culture. I wrote:

For my 12th birthday in 1967 I got my first album, the boundary-breaking Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. A few months earlier, in June, I watched the Beatles sing “All You Need Is Love” to hundreds of millions of people around the world on the first TV show broadcast globally by satellite. It was the Summer of Love. The short-lived hippy movement had erupted earlier, in January, when 30,000 people with flowers in their hair held the Human Be-In in San Francisco, ending that summer with the three day Monterey Pop Festival.

The counterculture, anti-establishment, anti-war, pro-drugs spirit of the sixties played a large role in my adolescence. I was attracted to the psychedelia of both the Beatles and the Flower Children, so I changed my greasy 1950s hair style to a Beatles mop top and started growing it long. It wouldn’t be long before psychedelic experiences on LSD opened the “doors of perception” to what I interpreted as the spirit world, and I walked into the arms of Jesus freaks, the spiritual offspring of hippies.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

All You Need Is Love - The Beatles

Soundtrack To My Life - Introduction

Music featured in this post:

To Be Free - Glyn Lehmann, sung by Shrewsbury International School children

Stereo - The Watchmen

When I created the outline for my memoir, Misguided, as a guide for writing the first draft, I found that naming the chapters with song titles or lyrics was a useful way to summarize or foreshadow the subject of each chapter. I did that for every chapter in the first draft of my manuscript. Under each chapter title, I also included a few lyrics from the song. However, I later read in various articles on the subject of writing that using song lyrics in a book can be problematic because of copyright issues. All the advice I read said that obtaining permission to use song lyrics could be very difficult and expensive, and cautioned against citing lyrics to avoid copyright claims.

However, it is permissible to use song titles, which can’t be copyrighted. So, to avoid that issue of copyright, I removed all lyrics at the top of each chapter, and in several places in my book where I explain the importance of various songs to my story, I carefully paraphrase the relevant lyrics. It’s unfortunate that I had to do that, because many of the songs I cite in my book, such as Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody”, several Beatles songs, Don McClean’s “American Pie”, and R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” had significant influence on me.

Over the several years I worked on writing my memoir, I made many changes to the initial manuscript, including reorganizing and renaming some of the chapters. Although many of the chapter titles in the published book are still named after a song title, or paraphrase a song title (Chapter 3 – He’s Leaving Home) some are not. But as well as the songs I did cite in my book, there are several others that also had an impact on me, or are relevant to certain parts of my story. Often they played in the back of mind as I wrote some of those stories.

Although unlikely, if the film rights to my book were ever sold and a movie version was made of my memoir, I have imagined a soundtrack that would be a very entertaining aspect of that movie. So, in this series of articles I provide my suggestions for that soundtrack, with a few lyrics from each song, and links to the songs on YouTube. Each of these posts will cover one chapter of my book, starting with the Preface.

In the Preface to my book I cite a section of the United Nations Convention On The Rights Of The Child, and write:

Children have an inherent right to freely form their own thoughts and conscience, and choose their own religious beliefs, or have none at all, since freedom of religion necessarily includes the right to be free from religion. ... A parent’s right to religious freedom does not give them the right to deny that same freedom to their child. As the U.S. Supreme Court famously ruled: “Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children before they have reached the age of full and legal discretion when they can make that choice for themselves.”

Song to play while the Preface is being read or shown onscreen.

To Be Free - Words and music by Glyn Lehmann https://songlibrary.net/To-Be-Free/

Song to play during the opening credits of the film.

“Stereo” by Canadian band The Watchmen [crank it up for this one]

This poem is also relevant to my story.

This Be The Verse

Children of the Cult – episode 5 – Fighting Back

Finding justice becomes a compulsion for Hope and Verity, a necessary step towards their healing. They tell their stories to Scottish detectives. Up to then there had been no criminal convictions of COG/Family cult child abusers in the UK, and only a few in other countries, because of the cult’s secrecy, multiple aliases, frequent moves and other legal obstacles. Hope assists the investigation by trying to identify the locations of the cult’s communes in Scotland where her abuse occurred. Verity becomes a witness in Hope’s case.

After leaving the cult Celeste seeks justice against her main abuser, a top leader in the cult. She receives a letter of apology from him admitting his guilt. She sends the letter to her dad who is still in the cult. Although that top leader admits to systemic sexual child abuse in the cult, Celeste’s dad remains in denial of child abuse in the cult and continues to fully support it. Celeste reconnects with her sister and begins a happy life with her real family.

Verity speaks with her brothers, who both gave statements to the police about their childhood abuse. She tells her father she is bringing a legal case against him. He apologizes and begs her not to, but tells her he will plead guilty. At trial he changes his mind and pleads not guilty, but does eventually plead guilty to four sex assault charges as part of a plea deal. Verity is shocked to learn his sentence is merely 240 hours of community service and being on the sex offender registry for only 3 years, despite his extremely cruel sexual abuse of his daughter and another girl. It was the first criminal conviction of a COG/Family child abuser in the UK.

Hope’s abuser is arrested in France, extradited to Scotland and charged with 9 sex assault offences against Hope and another girl. He pleads guilty to 7 of the charges. Hope screams for joy, “that’s justice”, on hearing that he was sentenced to 11 years 6 months in prison and put on the sex offenders registry permanently. Hope: “He took around 12 years of my life, and justice took around 12 years of his.”

Verity: “Every single court case that’s successful, every single conviction, is a little bit of justice for everyone that grew up in that environment. Even if it wasn’t their abuser, it’s an acknowledgement that the abuse happened and these people should be punished.”

Verity’s brother Ken: “Surviving and thriving is the best revenge you can ever have, it’s the best victory you can ever have against your abusers.”

Hope: “My call to arms to second generation survivors who have suffered like I have suffered: ‘come forward, speak out, speak your truth, you’re not alone anymore.’”

***

This five-part documentary series, Children of the Cult, charts the remarkable true story of three British women born and raised in the infamous cult Children of God, now known as The Family International. Hope, Verity, and Celeste speak out about their years of abuse within the cult and their incredible fight for survival, escape, and quest for justice. Hope and Verity both successfully brought criminal convictions against their abusers, a very rare outcome for survivors of that cult. I participated in this documentary, primarily by giving many hours of interviews to the producer’s research assistant for background information. I appear briefly in a couple of these episodes. I consider it the best documentary on that cult so far. It is no longer available anywhere, so I am making this important documentary series available here. Subscribe for free to my page and you will receive emails with links to each video or article I post.

Children of the Cult – episode 4 – Escaping the Family

This episode starts and ends with disturbing clips from the murder/suicide video of Ricky Rodriguez, the son of cult leader Karen Zerby. Early 1990s, global media scrutiny intensifies as many in the second generation escape and expose child abuse in the cult, which is now rebranded as the Family. Fearing persecution, members are ordered to burn all incriminating evidence of abuse in the cult’s documents, photos and videos. Children and teens are coached on how to deceive and lie to media and authorities.

The largest ever UK child custody case exposes mountains of evidence of extreme child abuse in the cult. Celeste’s sister testifies against the cult, Celeste is forced by cult leaders to oppose her sister’s testimony and defend the cult, which causes her great psychological distress. The judge believes Karen Zerby’s lies that they now denounce the perverted sexual teachings of the deceased David Berg, so he allows 3 year-old to remain in the cult with his mother.

Teen Hope is trapped in Europe and sex-trafficked by the cult. She secretly plots a dramatic escape from Prague back to the UK and sets herself free. Celeste is recruited into Karen Zerby’s secretive household in Portugal and discovers Zerby is still sex-obsessed. Celeste meets Zerby’s son, Ricky, who is disgusted by his mother’s leadership and tells Celeste they are in a cult. Ricky leaves the cult. Celeste gets pregnant and doesn’t want to raise her child in that environment, so asks to leave Zerby’s home, but she’s told she can’t because she knows where Zerby lives. When Zerby moves, Celeste leaves the cult and returns to the UK, where she has the support of her mother and sister. Many of the second generation didn’t have that support when escaping the cult, so life after the cult was very difficult, with many spiralling into dark paths, including suicide.

Second generation survivors organize to expose the cult’s systemic abuses, and provide the FBI with evidence, but the legal system fails to bring justice to those survivors. Ricky, recognizing there would be no justice for most survivors, plots to murder his mother, Karen Zerby, but unable to find her he murders her assistant, one of his abusers, then kills himself. It made headlines around the world. Zerby has no remorse, she blamed Ricky for yielding to the devil. Verity and Hope begin their quest for justice by separately reporting their life-long abuse to Scottish police, who believe their stories and start their investigations.

***

This five-part documentary series, Children of the Cult, charts the remarkable true story of three British women born and raised in the infamous cult Children of God, now known as The Family International. Hope, Verity, and Celeste speak out about their years of abuse within the cult and their incredible fight for survival, escape, and quest for justice. Hope and Verity both successfully brought criminal convictions against their abusers, a very rare outcome for survivors of that cult. I participated in this documentary, primarily by giving many hours of interviews to the producer’s research assistant for background information. I appear briefly in a couple of these episodes. I consider it the best documentary on that cult so far. It is no longer available anywhere, so I am making this important documentary series available here. Subscribe for free to my page and you will receive emails with links to each video or article I post.

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Children of the Cult – episode 3 – Teen Rebels

It is the early 1990s, police and child protection authorities in many countries conduct raids of the cult’s communes. Hundreds of children were taken into custody, but children of the cult were heavily indoctrinated to deceive and lie to outsiders, including authorities, so they were all soon returned to the cult where they continued to experience systemic abuses. As the children become teens, many begin to rebel against their abusive upbringing and receive brutal corporal punishments. Teen training camps were set up to indoctrinate them even more, forcing them to be Christian child soldiers in their parents’ fantasy of a spiritual endtime war. So-called delinquent teens were sent to a Teen Detention compound in Macau. Members who had joined the cult to escape the oppression of their parents, churches, governments, etc, became the oppressors of their own children. Teen Verity, desperate to escape the cult, has a brilliant tactic: purposely collecting contraband items then laughing in the faces of her abusers when they attack her as being demon possessed. Finding her own power, Verity physically fights back and sets herself free, but life after the cult won’t be easy. David Berg dies, none of his so-called endtime prophecies fulfilled, and Karen Zerby takes over the cult.

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This five-part documentary series, Children of the Cult, charts the remarkable true story of three British women born and raised in the infamous cult Children of God, now known as The Family International. Hope, Verity, and Celeste speak out about their years of abuse within the cult and their incredible fight for survival, escape, and quest for justice. Hope and Verity both successfully brought criminal convictions against their abusers, a very rare outcome for survivors of that cult. I participated in this documentary, primarily by giving many hours of interviews to the producer’s research assistant for background information. I appear briefly in a couple of these episodes. I consider it the best documentary on that cult so far. It is no longer available anywhere, so I am making this important documentary series available here. Subscribe for free to my page and you will receive emails with links to each video or article I post.

The five-part documentary series, Children of the Cult, charts the remarkable true story of three British women born and raised in the infamous cult Children of God, now known as The Family International. Hope, Verity, and Celeste speak out about their years of abuse within the cult and their incredible fight for survival, escape, and quest for justice. Hope and Verity both successfully brought criminal convictions against their abusers, a very rare outcome for survivors of that cult. I participated in this documentary, primarily by giving many hours of interviews to the producer’s research assistant for background information. I appear briefly in a couple of these episodes. I consider it the best documentary on that cult so far. It is no longer available anywhere, so I am making this important documentary series available here. Here is the second episode. Subscribe for free to my page and you will receive emails with links to each video or article I post.

Episode 2 - For Grandpa

Starts with a shocking story of a 3-year-old child bride, “married” to cult founder David Berg, who was on the run from the FBI and Interpol. The psychosexual aspects of Berg’s childhood described, which led to his perverted sexual doctrines in the cult. Children were denied a regular childhood and were raised in a highly sexualized abusive environment. They were not raised as children, but as endtime soldiers in a spiritual war, so they got no real education. The cult’s Music With Meaning ministry begins, child performers exploited. Celeste, Hope and Verity describe the horrific child sexual abuse they suffered, which was systemic and normalized in the cult. Scotland detectives begin investigations into Hope and Verity’s cases.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

The five-part documentary series, Children of the Cult, charts the remarkable true story of three British women born and raised in the infamous cult Children of God, now known as The Family International. Hope, Verity, and Celeste speak out about their years of abuse within the cult and their incredible fight for survival, escape, and quest for justice. Hope and Verity both successfully brought criminal convictions against their abusers, a very rare outcome for survivors of that cult. I participated in this documentary, primarily by giving many hours of interviews to the producer’s research assistant for background information. I appear briefly in a couple of these episodes. I consider it the best documentary on that cult so far. It is no longer available anywhere, so I am making this important documentary series available here. Here is the first episode, with the others to follow. Subscribe for free to my page and you will receive an email after each video or article I post.

Episode 1 - Welcome to the Family

This episode covers the founding and early years of the doomsday cult, Children of God, aka, The Family International. From one family in California in 1968, it quickly spread to thousands of members in over 100 countries. Hope, Celeste and Verity were born and raised in the cult, and they recount their parents’ stories of joining the cult and their devotion to their leader. They describe the systemic child abuse in the cult based on twisted biblical interpretations in the writings of the self-professed endtime prophet, David Berg. Their quest for justice begins.