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Oh, sheet.
Honey, chill.
It's just laundry.
Not that.
I'm talking about these Arm & Hammer power sheets.
All the power of Arm & Hammer laundry detergent in a convenient, tossable sheet.
Oh, sheet.
That's what I'm saying.
And Arm & Hammer power sheets deliver an effective clean at a great price.
Think of all the laundry we'll do.
And all the money we'll save.
Oh, sheet.
Arm & Hammer, more power to you.
Crime, conspiracy, cults, murder, and you.
All of which are my favorite topics to talk about.
That's a little weird.
Anyway, let's start off with you look absolutely fabulous today, all snuggled up.
Or maybe you're not, but get snuggled up, because we're going to talk about some not so snuggly topics.
We're talking about cults today.
I put a vote up on Instagram and I wanted you guys to tell me whether you wanted serial killers or cults.
And y'all said cults, which I was excited about because I feel like a lot of people focus a lot on serial killers for these deep dives, and I'm excited to dive into this cult because I don't think it's talked about enough.
I was gonna go the Jim Jones route, which I might do in the future.
And I was thinking maybe Charles Manson, but that feels overdone.
So we're gonna do the children of God.
And it sounds nice, but it's fucking not.
The main cult leader in charge, David Berg, is the biggest POS you have ever heard of in your life.
And I'm excited to deep dive into this.
I'm very interested in how cult leaders come to be and how they get these people to follow them and everything.
So let's unbuckle our seat belts, go mach 5 down the highway, slam on the brakes and deep dive through this windshield together, All right.
So for those of you who don't know, the Children of God, otherwise known now as the Family International, is a far-reaching Christian sex cult that started in the late 60s by David Berg.
This Santa Claus looking perverted f- But it's always the 60s, isn't it?
Something about that time just is terrible. but it also had its ups.
Some trippy hippies Elvis Presley, the invention of the handheld calculator and international criminal sex cults.
That's the not so good part, but that's what we're gonna talk about today.
Now you may ask, why, Chris?
Why are we diving into this particular sex cult?
And it's because over the years, this cult has become involved in a plethora of sex scandals involving, but not limited to, incest, religious prostitution, child abuse, and PDF-elia.
But they have now reformed, whatever that means, and are known to be somewhat of a reformed Christian church now, but I'm not gonna take their word for it.
But that's not what we're gonna talk about today.
We're gonna be diving deep into the very beginnings of this cult and its leader, David Berg, and all the scandal and abuse and crimes that lied within.
So David Berg was born on February 18th 1919 in Oakland California, but during his early years he lived in Florida.
So we're already starting off on a bad note, okay?
He was born in a place where people signed contracts to El Diablo, and then he was raised in Florida, where well, it's Florida, you know.
Anyway, he was the youngest of three children born to Virginia Brandt, his mother, and Hilmar Berg he's Swedish, can you believe it?
His father.
And to really understand David Berg, I need to tell you about his POS parents, Hilmer and Virginia.
Let's start with his mother.
So David's mother, Virginia Brandt, was a radio evangelist and a traveling preacher during the Pentecostal revival, which was a time big on fire and brimstone.
And for those of you who don't know what that means, it's a term used to represent God's wrath in Christian tradition.
Pretty metal.
Along with speaking in tongues and laying of hands, et cetera, what most people would consider old time religion practices.
And David's mother got hooked into religion from an event that happened when she was a teenager, where she got whipped off a horse and buggy and broke her back.
And then she was bedridden for five whole years.
But then one day the heavens opened up and she rose from the bed like the exorcist.
It's the power.
And she was just miraculously able to walk from then on.
And from then on she was known as the Miracle Woman, telling her tale of divine healing, something of which other cult leaders, such as Jim Jones, used to preach and claim as well.
So from that tale on she would grow up and become the first female evangelist preacher in America and would go on to host a radio show called Meditation Moments.
Something I feel like I had to do several times while researching for this video.
But isn't that just like a nice story?
Something that gives you hope in life for humanity.
Just miracles happening on their own like that.
That's pretty great.
Spoiler!
It was fake.
Can you believe it?
A religious leader trying to exploit people for money and fame and favors?
I've never heard of such a thing.
But disclaimer, no hate to anybody that is religious, okay?
I know plenty of people that are religious, and they're some of the best people I know, including my family.
Alright?
But let's not pretend there aren't some slimy scumbags that use and abuse it for evil.
Okay?
I digress.
Let's continue.
So like I was saying, all David Berg's mother's claims were found out to be horse shit.
Because years later, one of David Berg's daughters would reveal that the entire time she claimed to be bedridden for five years, she was actually at the Texas Christian University.
In Texas.
Healthy as a horse.
So all this goes to show that blatantly lying to use and abuse innocent vulnerable people for gain was already in David Berg's DNA.
But wait, there's more.
David Berg's father, Hilmar Berg.
I really hope I'm saying that right.
It's really fun to say.
A poor Swedish immigrant who, before coming to America, made money performing musical numbers and acrobatic routines in a wandering minstrel show.
In a minstrel show.
Menstrual show?
Minstrel show?
I definitely spelled it wrong.
I said menstrual show, but I feel like that's wrong.
He was like a Swedish hippie, which wasn't bad necessarily, but just added a little bit to the David Berg cult leader stew that we're cooking.
Having a mother who already practiced scamming people through religion and a father who was, just like a naive hippie drifter, along with the fact that David Berg was growing up in a time where new religion, conspiracy and cults were absolutely rampant.
It was just a recipe for disaster.
So after David was born, the Bergs threw themselves into the Pentecostal church.
And for those of you who don't know, those are like the snake handlers, the faith healers, the tongue speakers.
These are the people that in my opinion, the Lord would claim went hard to the paint.
And by paint, I mean huffing it.
This type of religion and these type of people were basically just dramatic theatrical performances put on for every sermon that happened, which is pretty fun.
You know, if you're not hurting anybody, I don't know.
But for those of you who don't know, the only way I can describe it is what looks and sounds like a bunch of severely intoxicated adults in a reptile terrarium who think they have superhuman powers.
So pretty, pretty fucking baller.
So David's parents became a big part of the church, whether they were preaching or in charge or music directing, etc.
And this church grew rapidly over a very short period of time.
Within a year, it went from a dozen members to filling up an auditorium of over 4,500 members.
And this is when David claims to remember less about the church and more about his mother scolding him about touching himself constantly.
This guy was horny from the start.
And I'm talking, he's like five right now, by the way, like five.
And I know like kids do that, but he was like doing it.
You know what I mean?
Which is...
Strange.
Anyway, one night Virginia, his mother caught him touching himself and then gathered the entire family into one room and she grabbed a bowl and a knife.
Do you see where this is going?
I didn't.
And then proceeded to tell David Hey, if you do that again, I'm gonna take this bowl, put it under your dick and then chop it off in front of the entire family, okay.
But I thought my mom was scary when she called family meetings, man.
Can you imagine your mom just calling you like Sweetie, you gotta come downstairs for a family meeting.
We need to talk about how you stuck out last night.
And you don't know whether you're going to go downstairs and get grounded or get your fucking legs lobbed off by your entire family.
What a great parenting tip.
Virginia's solid.
Virginia should write a book, in my opinion.
She's dead now though, so thank God.
But alas, David did not stop touching himself, which we know because I'm making this video.
Looking back on this time, he said, quote unquote, it just felt too good to quit.
How horny do you have to be to risk getting your dick cut off in front of your entire family?
Like, it's fucking crazy to me, dude.
Anyway, this is clearly the obvious beginning of the fucked up sex cult leader picture being painted.
He would also claim that his Mexican babysitter Maria, used to quote unquote suck me to sleep before my nap every afternoon.
What?
This is, this is unconfirmed.
This is his claim, but I hope to God it's not true, but I think it might be because he did use it as an excuse in the future to molest children in an act of calming them down.
And he would get other members of his cult to do the same to their children, to calm them down as well.
How about just giving him a shot of whiskey like all our moms did?
You know, it was just mine.
Oh.
And I know I'm like speaking very, you know, in a funny way.
And I think this person is the fucking scum of the earth.
And I hope that he's just fucking just burning in hell right now.
So I just want you to know this entire time, I have all the sympathy for these victims.
And I fucking hate David Berg.
Let's just make that very clear.
But...
On a more serious note, his daughter even spoke about these acts as an adult, like plain as day, saying her father, David Berg, used to put her to sleep by giving her a front rubbin', which is just just heartbreaking, you know.
And it's even more sad because everybody that talks in these interviews that I watched, that were a part of this and that were okay with it or grew up in the cult, just thought it was completely normal and they didn't really know that they were getting taken advantage of.
So it's just so fucking sad, man.
And I hope all the people that participated in this are just... burning, you know?
So anyway, so it all really started with his family and then eventually branched out into the cult.
But we will get to that.
So obviously David's obsession with sex started at a very young age and was only amplified by the fact that David's mother chastised him for having any sexual thoughts at all or committing any self-inflicted sexual acts on himself, because he was caught again masturbating later in life, when he was a teenager, and didn't get his dick cut off, unfortunately.
That would have solved a lot of problems looking back right now.
We wouldn't be making a video.
I wish she would have held up to her threat, but alas, she did not.
Instead, she made Hilmerberg, his father, come in mid-stroke and she made David finish in front of her and his father.
So a family that jerks together stays together.
Don't pause that.
That's fucking gross.
I'm kidding.
I'm kidding.
But what the f-?
But you can slowly start to see that the punishments that his mother inflicted on him slowly became David's fetishes later on in life.
Because you know that old saying if you tell someone not to touch wet paint, they're gonna masturbate in front of their family.
But anyway, this rebellious behavior towards sex and punishments just somewhat normalized the breaking down of any sexual barriers that were in place at all, if any at all, with his family.
And just basically taught him that any sexual activity was A-OK with the fam jam.
Thanks, mom and dad.
I'll go fuck myself.
Literally.
And those boundaries would be dropped, allegedly based on a letter later in life that David Berg wrote about his mother.
Accounting a night.
Him and his mother got stuck in a cold, cold house on a cold, cold winter night in which she was naked and spooned him from behind, and he regretted deeply that he did not make sweet, sweet love to his mother.
Ahhhh.
And I would like to believe that his mother had no intention of doing that, but I'm gonna safely assume she might have.
I don't really know.
Either way, this is just catapulting him into the weird fucking mindset of I need to have sexual intercourse with my family.
Shortly after that incident, it was World War II and David Berg was doing anything not to become part of the army.
And his way out of this was to become an ordained minister and conscientious objector.
In 1941 and married his first wife, Jane Miller, and had two little children, Deborah and Aaron.
And this was when David was appointed to be a minister in a rundown church in Arizona, but was soon accused of inappropriate sexual acts and run out of town.
You'll see this is a pattern.
It happens a lot.
After he was run out of town, he took him and his family and started to work under a faith healer named Orville Jaggers.
What a fun name.
I like that name, but it also kind of sounds like a slur, but it's not.
Alas, it did not work out.
I wonder why.
Maybe it's because he tried to have sex with somebody that didn't want him to.
I don't know.
I don't know how I turned into Jerry Seinfeld.
And after Jaeger he moved to working under an evangelist named Fred Jordan, who had founded the American Soul Clinic, which was also a missionary training school.
Here.
David would spend 15 years working under him, but would eventually, of course, have a fallout for probably having sex with somebody he wasn't supposed to.
This guy.
But now 50-year-old, David would leave with his family and take them on the road, as the Berg family singers.
That's right.
He made his family into the White Jackson Five, but would fail miserably.
And that's a pattern that happens in his life.
He's already 50 years old and everything that he has done in life has been a massive failure, which is kind of a pattern for most cult leaders that you look at.
They are successful later in life as being a cult leader, but it was due to them failing constantly in life, just doing you know goods.
Not really.
But you find that the only thing that they find success in is manipulating people and being pieces of shit.
So what do you do when you're a massive failure at 50 years old and your family resents you and you can't take care of them?
You crawl back home to mommy.
And where is mommy?
Mommy is in California.
California love.
This is when the hippie area was in full swing and Virginia was out there taking advantage of it.
She would go out and give peanut butter sandwiches to the homeless hippies and in exchange give them the word of God.
And I just picture her just on the boardwalk.
Hello, would you like a peanut butter sandwich?
No, no, no.
Come, come.
I need you to come masturbate in front of my husband first, and then I'll tell you about Jesus Christ.
All right?
Remember that?
Remember what she did to her kid?
I do.
So it was around this time that David and his family joined Virginia in California.
And David would change the name of his family singing group to the Berg Family Singers to the Teens for Christ.
Much better, much better.
I would never see the Berg Family Singers, but the Teens for Christ?
You bet your sweet holy water I'm gonna be front row at that concert and he would get them to perform on the beaches of California to make some extra ends meet.
But shortly after arriving, Virginia Berg would die.
Oh no, no, Virginia, she's dead.
Oh no, I loved her so much.
Just kidding.
But this is when David would get a second wind and truly realize his potential in making the optimal, unstoppable sex cult he's always dreamed of.
And And that's how a lot of cults started back in the day.
The sixties were a time of the hippie movement.
No one really had any direction.
Everyone was doing drugs and having sex and partying and free living, living life on the road with no responsibilities, et cetera.
And near the end of the movement, which is the time period we're kind of talking about right now, people were kind of over that and they were looking for a purpose and they were looking for something to live for.
In comes religion and religious cults.
And a lot of people found purpose in those because they were far away from their family, they didn't have any possessions, or even if they did, it wasn't much, and these religious groups would take them in and just fucking brainwash them.
So these semi-intelligent manipulative sex-crazed, power-hungry assholes like Charles Manson, Jim Jones, L Ron Hubbard and David Berg saw the potential of this perfect feeding ground.
Essentially,
And I'd like to think that I was smart enough not to be a part of one of these groups.
But I am such a people pleaser and I love sex and dri-.
I'm kidding.
I'm kidding.
All right.
So the not named yet group, the Children of God, would start out in a small coffee shop that also doubled as a Pentecostal youth ministry in Huntington Beach California, which was essentially the perfect place for David Berg to come in and just start leading and manipulating, because he's already had 50 years of practice being a minister.
Not that well, but he has had practice in leading people.
So this was just kind of the perfect breeding ground for him.
And he would do exactly that.
And he would use his child singing group to bring people in.
They would sing on the beach, and people that would vibe with them or whatever they thought needed help, would offer them free food and beverages at the coffee shop.
And they would come into the coffee shop and get the free food and beverages.
And they talk to them a little bit and then they just like shove in their pitch.
I always think like, how dumb are these people that join cults and everything?
But at that time, like these people had nothing, you know?
They're all starving and stuff.
And if people are offering free food, man, I probably would have gone in too, you know?
Who hasn't wandered into a room they're not supposed to be in, and saw a snack table with a sign that said help yourself.
And then later realized it was an AA meeting and your dad was there.
Just me.
All right.
So Berg basically used his kids to prey on people that looked lost, helpless, poor, and sad.
So they would befriend these people, get to know them a little bit and then, like I said, would pitch them their master plan, which Berg came up with, this propaganda-type pitch, basically going against the system.
You guys have probably heard of that, like, the system, man.
The system is gonna get you down.
That's the man, you know?
Everything's a conspiracy, man.
It's the government.
Your parents are after you, man.
You should be able to not wear a shirt and not wear shoes, you know?
And just not wear underwear and pick up that pen that I threw over there.
Whatever.
What?
But that's what his pitch was.
The whole pitch during this time was that Jesus was a rebel.
These type of people would later on become known as Jesus freaks.
And also Elton John has lyrics saying Jesus freaks in the song Tiny Dancer, which is fun.
But David Berg's whole plan was to build up their confidence and to be independent religious rebels.
Meanwhile, he was under their watch and we're gonna be under him soon.
And unlike many other cult leaders who essentially claimed they were God themselves, David Berg only claimed that he was a prophet of God, like Moses.
You know, the guy that did the stick and that thing.
So it was easier to convince people that he was merely a follower or a messenger of God and not God himself.
Not the idol to which they were praising, essentially.
But how nice would that be, you know?
Just blaming all of your problems on just this being and not taking any blame for it.
Like, I could just see him like, Listen.
Melanie, I don't want you to give me a lap dance naked, okay?
And I don't want to lick whipped cream off of your bosom.
But the guy upstairs, I talked to him, and he's not budging, all right?
He said that we got to do this, and I don't know what to tell you, all right?
So...
Let's get to it.
So David had established this group and it was rapidly growing.
Even the newspapers took notice and they would actually give them the name, the children of God.
And at this point, the church itself was pretty much asexual.
David Berg was preaching purity and only really protesting against causes and focusing a lot on God.
Basically, like it was like pretty normal church to begin with.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, he was doing horrible things to his own kids and family.
He wanted to reel these people in and make them feel safe and secure because they hadn't for so long, during that early 60s era, being so free bird.
So he basically was just trying to gain their trust and make them feel safe and comfortable, all to make them eventually bow down and give into every sick request and sermon he would preach down the lines
So in 1969, David Byrd began making his first prophecies.
The first of which was that the whole of California was gonna get sucked in by a giant earthquake, which is pretty believable.
I think that's pretty good.
Some guys are saying like, oh, spaceship's gonna come and take us all up.
But he actually went with a practical route because I feel like that might happen in California.
Like a lot of cult leaders, David Berg was using a fear tactic to split all these people up from anything they knew.
If they had family or if they were questioning themselves in the church.
He wanted to pick them up and move them so they didn't have time to think about anything.
He did this by using Armageddon as a fear tactic.
So he picked up the now 50 members of the Children of God and left California.
But he also left a few behind just in case the earthquake didn't happen.
And can you imagine being the people that left behind?
Like he's just like, all right, everybody, get out.
The earthquake's coming.
And you guys, you stay here just in case it doesn't.
Probably will, but it might not.
So you just stay here.
We're going to go.
You got this, Caroline.
You got it.
There you go.
All right, bye.
But he did this as a master plan to start spreading this cult around the world.
He would do this.
He would go to different places, drop off people and go to another place repopulate, drop off people and it would become a worldwide cult.
But we'll get to that.
So Berg went to Arizona with around 50 people, And it was here that he formed his 12 groups that were modeled after the 12 tribes of Israel, and the children of God began.
And thus began the recruitment of hot women, basically.
David Berg's whole strategy was to get attractive women for the most part and go out and fish for new recruits.
And this would be called flirty fishing.
We'll get into that a little bit later in the video, but it worked. pretty damn well.
And the irony is that his wife, Jane Miller, was one of the flirty fishers, and she would later pick up an attractive woman named Karen Zerbe, who's a piece of shit bitch.
We'll talk about her later.
But anyway, Karen would end up being David Berg's new wife.
So Jane basically picked up David's new wife and she just got tossed out basically, which I think is absolutely savage and like just a little bit funny.
I'm I'm sorry, I need to put my glasses on.
I'm starting to get a headache and I need to start wearing these more because I can't see.
But before David Berg would ship off Jane, his old wife, he would convince Jane and Karen that the only thing to make things work would be polygamy.
And for those of you who don't know what polygamy is, this is what it is.
But basically it's allowing a man to have multiple wives or vice versa, I believe.
I might be wrong.
The description's right here.
But anyway, how convenient for David.
Again, he's just like well, I don't know Karen and Jane, the guy upstairs.
I don't want to have multiple wives.
That's crazy.
I definitely don't want multiple women doting on me all the time, but the guy upstairs just isn't budging.
All right, so...
Let's get it on.
So later that year David Berg would take his wives, children and the now a hundred cult members and go to Quebec, a gathering that would now be seen as the founding convention of the children of God.
So now they're going international, baby.
All right.
They're going pit bull with this thing.
Mr. Worldwide.
Sorry.
But yeah, this is when they start to take the children of God international.
And this is also when David would declare himself as Moses, calling himself Moses David.
And that would later be shortened to the name Mo, which is so fucking dumb.
And this is when he began to convince his cult members even more that Armageddon was happening.
And the only way to survive this Armageddon was to be a part of the cult.
And he would preach that there were only 144,000 spots in heaven.
And the only way to get those spots to go to heaven was to be part of the cult.
But there's a little kicker.
If there ended up being more than 144,000 members at some point, he said, don't worry.
If, If you're part of the cult and 144000 positions are taken, you can pray an innocent person out of heaven and just steal their spot.
Only if you're in the cult.
So basically, this guy's like alright, there's a rollercoaster to heaven, the park's about to shut down and you're almost at the gate, but the guy closes it right away and he says no sorry, we're full.
But David's like if you're in the cult you could say get one of those motherfuckers out of the rollercoaster and one of them just gets ejected into oblivion, and then the guy with the gate's just like oh shit.
All right, go ahead.
Pretty baller.
It's so ridiculous.
I can't.
Anyway, and the cherry on the cake was that if you join the cult, you get to sign a contract called the revolutionary contract, where you basically gave up all of your possessions and forfeited all your assets.
And that's how the church made money and paid for trips and paid for everything that they had basically.
So it was a big communism cult.
After gaining more members and more momentum.
In 1970 he would take 200 members from the cult and move to Texas, because everything good happens in Texas, right.
So many terrible things happen in Texas.
But anyway they'd go to the Texas Soul Clinic, which was basically a ghost town in Texas that they filled.
And here any new members, new members being called Babe would get new names when they enter the cult, usually coming from the Old Testament.
And like in Quebec, everyone was split up into 12 groups and were also assigned work assignments.
But the point of these 12 groups really was just to separate everybody.
And the work assignments was just to get work done in the commune.
Those work assignments, including maintenance, cooks, livestock, et cetera.
But none of these groups were actually able to take advantage of what they curated.
All the good food and everything good that they procured went to the inner circle or the top of the food chain, like David's family.
And then the rest of them would just get like scraps even animal feed they would have to eat.
And not one person was allowed to be alone basically at any time.
Everybody was assigned a buddy, even to go to the bathroom, which that's fucking disgusting.
And a torturous ambiance was constantly playing, just like Jim Jones which, if you want me to talk about that, let me know in the comments below.
Like Jim Jones, he would play Bible verses on speakers constantly throughout the day, so people didn't have time to think.
And these Bible verses were also ones of which they were expected to memorize, which was over 300.
I can't even remember a fucking phone number, let alone 300 Bible verses.
But the whole point behind this was so people didn't have time to think about their shitty lives in this cult, basically.
Because if you're memorizing Bible verses, you can't think about your shitty life.
So everything in the Children of God cult was communal, even down to shoes.
And it's like, I just kind of imagine like an old guy going up to David just like...
Hey, uh, David, so I got these new work boots and, um, I can't, I can't seem to find them.
Somebody took them.
And, and I just, I just cannot tend the fields in these size six woman Louis Vuitton stilettos.
They do make my ass look fantastic in life.
Like I'm carrying a shelf, but I, it's just not practical.
Like everything was shared.
Nobody had a possession, but the only possession you could have was the Bible.
Of course.
So it all sounds really terrible and inhumane, and it makes no sense for us looking in.
But at the time, all these people were so brainwashed thinking that the world was going to end and the only way that they could get into heaven was to continue to practice what they were practicing.
So it's really just sad.
And this is before it even gets terrible, you know?
It's already terrible, but it gets...
Way worse.
At this time also, there were several members who were actually going to be famous, including Joaquin and River Phoenix and also Rose McGowan.
And also, a member from Fleetwood Mac, Jeremy Spencer, would join in 1971, leaving the band.
Which, why the fuck would you leave one of the most famous bands to be a slave to a sex cult?
I will never know.
But anyway, I digress.
But it just goes to show the impact that David Berg had on these people.
And this is around the time when David Berg would start preaching that you need to save sex for marriage.
You wouldn't even be allowed to hold hands, let alone kiss anybody before marriage.
Meanwhile, he's having sex with all of his family members in his house. and not keeping it a secret.
He was making the people under him feel okay and safe and pure still.
But he was practicing this on the side so they would see it and be like oh okay, so that's normal.
And then he would just slowly trickle in his practices into the rest of the cult.
But right now he's preaching purity.
And some of the things David Berg used to do with his family was sharing parties, which is where he would gather his family into one room, strip naked into his loose saggy, decrepit nude form and make his sons and daughters and their spouses all have sex together.
Well, he watched, which is just so terrible and awful and i can't even imagine, but david was just a giant.
So every sexual practice that Berg would eventually teach to his whole congregation was practiced beforehand with his family.
For another example, Berg used to pin his sons against each other and ask them if he could sleep with their wives, and if one of them refused which is fucking normal he would demote him in the inner circle or have him go out of the inner circle.
And if the other one would let him sleep with his wife, then he would promote him.
So the other one was forced to let David sleep with his wife so he would get promoted.
So basically, they didn't want Berg sleeping with their wives, but he didn't really give them a choice, which is terrible.
Can you imagine?
I don't even wanna, anyway.
And this is when Berg would eventually ship Jane Miller, his first wife his old wine wife, as he'd call her off into one of the other communes around the world.
And he would keep his new wine wife, Karen Zerbe, with him.
And she would become the queen of the children of God.
And this was also around the time where Berg would start writing his infamous Moe letters, which were just a series of rambling newsletters that Moe slash Berg wrote himself.
This is an excerpt from one of the letters that he wrote, and he would just send them out to the entire cult for them to read.
One of them said a look at the bible's history, you will make the shocking discovery that most of god's greats had oodles of wives women, mistresses and harlots and what have you.
So they're fun.
It eventually started to become comic books too.
We started to draw.
We'll put up some of them here.
So polygamy was only the first step in the children of God becoming a full-on sex cult.
But while this was going on, there was another group forming that were determined to put an end to the children of God.
And they called themselves Free Our Children From The Children Of God.
Ha!
Which, like, the name, you know, good for you, but the name is so just nail on the head, you know?
I just picture a couple of moms that made the group that are just like Okay.
So me and Debbie were just really putting our heads together just trying to think how we're going to free our children from the Children of God cult.
And we just thought the name should be something that explains that.
So we were thinking that it would be Free Our Children from the Children of God.
What do you think?
And the guy in charge is just like, It's good.
Maybe we'll try to get some other requests.
I'm not sure.
And she's just like, I'm the one that brought the cookies and juice in the back.
And he's just like, all right, free our children from the children of God it is.
And this is also when Ted Patrick, aka Black Lightning, what a name, came into the picture as well.
Now, Ted was a deprogrammer.
Basically, he would kidnap people from cults and deprogram them, sometimes making them even worse in the process.
But the whole point of it was to take them from the cult, deprogram them and give them back to their families.
Was it illegal?
Yes.
But was it baller?
A little bit.
So he would go around trying to kidnap members of the Children of God and deprogram them as best he could.
But eventually Black Lightning, unfortunately, would be put in jail for kidnapping, unfortunately.
But I say, you know, give him a Nobel Peace Prize or like a Grammy or something.
I know it was illegal, but he meant well.
And also Black Lightning, what a fucking name.
That's awesome.
So Berg would continue to write these Moe letters and in 1972 would convince his followers that these letters were basically now the voice of God that he was writing through him.
And it would become the only way he would communicate with the lower circle.
And the only way you could really see David Berg face to face is if he wanted to have sex with you.
Unfortunately,
Just like, don't see him, you know?
There was a lot of members of this cult that actually never really saw David Berg.
And they were kind of fine.
Like, there wasn't anything that bad going on.
But I digress.
There was a lot bad going on.
But anyway.
But in these letters, he would promote things like polygamy.
So this is when he started to really start to ramp up the sexual innuendos and sexual preaching in these Moe letters.
He would start to preach that people should be practicing polygamy, that they should be doing public masturbation orgies, wives swapping and Moe and Moe.
Sorry.
Until these letters basically just became smut.
And he would do things like use girls' periods as an indication as to when you should be allowed to sleep with them.
He'd say, quote unquote Then why did- girls able to conceive and bear children at such a young age if it is wrong for them to marry at such an age?
God made children desirable and able to have intercourse and bear children at those ages.
What?
This guy is fucking disgusting.
So he's basically just preaching justification for PDF-elia to his people on a regular basis and just feeling it out basically.
And the only sexual activity that he didn't preach or preached against was homosexuality and pulling out.
So he's like you can sleep with kids and leave it in, but don't you dare sleep with a consensually accepting adult of the same gender.
You sick piece of shit.
But lesbians totally fine.
He's totally cool with lesbians, by the way.
So you can just see how, how incredibly just sick and perverted this guy is.
It just gets worse.
It gets worse.
So David's mode letters would just get more and more graphic as time continued.
And they would just eventually become excerpts of how he had sex like, almost like descriptions or instructions on how to have sex.
Like David Burke, the prophet Moses,
He'd also talk about his preferences in women and girls and how he would like them trimmed and bathed beforehand.
And it's just gross.
So naturally, he would have a lot of followers be like, this is not what I signed up for.
And to any of those people that were against anything that he was doing, he just purged them.
He just said, get out.
We're having fun here and you're lame.
Get out.
Now, eventually David would become sick and old and weak, because he's a sick old weak, fucking fuck.
Sorry.
And his wife, Karen Zerbe, would take over writing the Moe letters.
And in one of them she would write that quote-unquote When a member of the family is masturbating or having intercourse, they were required to imagine Jesus having sex with them.
So she was demanding that everybody in the upper and lower circle, if having intercourse, was to imagine Jesus.
And if you didn't, you're...
You're going against what they believe in.
I don't even understand how you would regulate that.
Like what is she just going up to houses and just busting down the door while people are sleeping together?
And she's like, hey, are you thinking about Jesus Christ?
And they're just like, Jesus Christ.
And she's just like...
It's so weird.
It's so weird.
And to help their followers out, Karen would give them phrases to say during copulation, such as, but not limited to I want you inside of me.
Give me your seeds.
I want to woo you, Jesus.
And to be wooed by you.
I'm getting really horny for you.
Jesus, jesus christ.
There are so many more dozens even.
If you would like to read them, you can look them up on the internet.
I'm not gonna, i'm not gonna say anymore because i already feel physically ill from saying that.
But yeah, if you want to look up the mo letters, it's the mo letters under cool tips for hot sex i you, not?
That's what it's called.
So by 1973, the children of god had 2400 full members and 140 colonies in 40 different countries at this point.
So they are spreading like a virus.
But lo and behold, tragedy would strike in 1973 and one of David's sons Aaron, would take his own life.
He would walk up to the edge of a mountain and jump off a cliff.
And the reasoning for this was most likely because he was just just horrified with the life he's been living you know, he's raised by this man who's having intercourse with his wife and children and he just couldn't take it anymore.
So he took his own life, and this was a very common practice in the cult of the children of god.
A lot of people were taking their lives.
If they left, they just couldn't live with themselves and And not shockingly, I guess David Berg wasn't even really affected by this.
He was so transfixed in this sex cult.
Almost immediately after this, he would begin a new recruitment process in which was called flirty fishing.
And it was a tactic to get more members in, because a lot of people were leaving or, you know, offing themselves because they didn't wanna be there.
So he was just trying to get more and more people in the cult.
So flirty fishing was a form of religious prostitution.
Based on Matthew chapter 4, verse 19.
Follow me and I will make you a fisher of men.
Dad got the terminology from fishing, what Jesus said in the Bible, to go out and fish for men.
And so she was going to use the women to fish for the men, to bring the men to the kingdom of God through flirting.
Only the flirting was more than flirting.
It was actually, you know, religious prostitution.
So these women would basically be hookers for Jesus.
And I'm not just saying that, they actually had posters that said that.
And their job was to basically go into the world and sleep with and recruit members to join the children of God, sometimes even getting impregnated by people.
So that would force them to come in and then make new members for the children of God as well.
And David would make his followers use this technique very strategically as well.
He would make them target people of wealth, especially to get money for the cult including, like oil millionaires, military officers, et cetera.
It was also at this point when David put a requirement out to his members that they must be having sex with each other, including their own family members and including children, which is just so fucking.
It's just heartbreaking, dude.
Now David Byrd, still not being satisfied enough by only having sex with his family members, would force women, teens and children to send videos of themselves dancing nude in a series called Glorify God in the Dance.
When I was still at this music unit, Berg sent out a letter called Glorify God in the Dance.
And we read it, and all the women were going to do these dances for Berg's birthday.
And he made a very detailed explanation of what they should do and how.
It's glorifying God if you disrobe in a very I guess you'd say gracious manner.
And that's how he presented it, as you're like a heavenly woman who's dancing with, So women started making videos for him at his behest.
And then someone got the bright idea that let's include the children.
So although a lot of people were against these new practices, a lot of people were for it as well.
So in 1974 David instituted the RR, or the Reorganization Revolution, to purge any members who objected to his practices.
And in that same year, Jim Jones had committed his mass suicide of over 900 people in Guyana.
So there was a lot of public backlash at this point against cults.
So David Berg, fearing that they would try to end the cult Children of God, faked disdaining the cult and just changed the name basically to Family of Love, which is just disgusting.
Even fucking more gross somehow.
And it was around this time Karen Zerbe, David's new wine wife, had claimed to have slept with over 18 men from one hotel over 137 times.
Jesus Christ.
Which I'm sure she was thinking about while having sex with them.
And can you believe it?
She got pregnant with a son.
Now in the book of Revelation it says in the end times, two prophets of God would merge to battle and defeat the Antichrist.
And David Berg believed that Karen was one of these prophets.
And he also believed that her unborn child, who was not his child but some rando hotel staff member, was also a prophet and the new messiah, essentially.
And this child would be known as Little Ricky.
Now, Ricky would pretty much have the most documented and heartbreaking story out of this whole thing, because as soon as he was born, his entire life was documented in a book, in a 762-page book, describing all the horrific things that happened to him through being an infant into childhood.
The book to this day is one of the most disturbing cult artifacts to exist.
Now, this book was made as a guideline for the second generation.
The second generation being all the children that were born into the Children of God cult and how they should be raised.
And the 8000 members of the Children of God at this time would believe that Ricky was the new Messiah from reading this book when it was published in 1983.
Like I want to have some sympathy for these cult members, but at this point you're just dumb and stupid and gross and a piece of shit.
If you're a part of this, okay.
Because you know what you're doing is wrong.
But I do have the utmost sympathy for all of these children born into this cult.
And I think anybody that did anything to these kids should just be just fucking beat down into the pits of hell.
So Ricky, otherwise referred to as the Brown Prince, was used as an example of how the perfect child of God should be raised.
And since his mother, Karen Zerbe the bitch, was too busy doing other cult activities, he was raised by two of Berg's right-hand women, aka elite flirty fishers, aka sick fucks Sarah Kelly and Angela Smith, and also Suzanne down the lines.
Sarah, for example, offered her seven-year-old daughter to Berg for sexual activities of his choosing without even blinking an eye.
And she began practicing sexual acts on Ricky when he was only 17 months old.
You're a piece of fucking shit.
I fucking hate you.
So honestly, there are a plethora of incredibly disturbing excerpts from this book in relation to Ricky growing up and getting molested and abused as a baby and as a child.
And I'm choosing not to say a lot or most of these excerpts from the books, the story of David Ito in here, because it's it's just it's honestly too difficult to talk about and it's sick and disgusting and it just it breaks my heart.
Sorry, I'm trying to keep it light, but like, fuck, the People are sick, you know?
If you would like to research more and find out more about this, you can look at the story of David Ito.
But just all the trigger warnings.
Tread carefully with that.
So obviously Ricky was born into and had lived a life of abuse and trauma from a very early and young age.
And then unfortunately only continued.
For example, he would be forced to have a girlfriend at the age of 12, a girlfriend of which was much older than him, almost in her thirties, and be forced to commit sexual acts with each other as well, and his mother would force him to have sex with him as well.
This is Karen Zerbe.
But in 1986, with immense pressure from the public and the tabloids, David Berg had to ban sexual activities between adults and children in the cult.
Boo fucking hoo, good.
And not that it did actually stop, but a lot of it did because he was told he had to ban it.
And in 1887, flirty fishing was called off as well.
But this was mostly because of the AIDS crisis that was happening.
David Berg didn't want any new members coming in or spreading AIDS amongst the cult.
So it was essentially just to keep his cult healthy and clean and pure as if.
So during this time, although David Berg called off all sexual activity between adults and children, the abuse did not stop under David Berg's roof.
He would continue to abuse and have sex with every woman and child in his family, including the daughter, Mary Berg, of the man that took his life jumping off the cliff.
Aaron Berg, so David Berg's granddaughter.
Berg would also make Ricky, his grandson, have sexual relations with Mary Berg, his granddaughter, in hopes that they would one day carry on his bloodline.
So Karen, being the sick fuck that she is, was jealous of Mary, her granddaughter, that she may possibly become the new queen of the God of Children, because she was having sexual relations with her husband and grandfather, David Berg.
So she sent Mary off to the Philippines, to one of the teen training camps, which is basically where they put teens that would be rebellious against the cult.
And Mary was put through six straight months of just abuse and being beaten.
And she was tied to a bed for six months in this one room.
And she would also go through multiple exorcists.
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And, man, I started thinking, wow, how could I do it?
Well, I wasn't the oldest.
I was the oldest for a long time but of course at team training there was a bunch of girls there that were older than I was.
But, you know, let me tell you, suicide is not something that you talked about with people, anybody.
Or, you know, you were going to turn into a fucking meanie case.
They'd beat the devil out of you or whatever.
It's just fucking insane.
And my sister had such a fucked up time in team training.
She's a fucking six-year-old, for God's sake.
Fucking animals.
I hate those fuckers.
They're gonna fucking get it, too, if I have anything to do with it.
So Ricky and Mary would undergo years and years of abuse and would unfortunately, or unfortunately, only have one of their abusers pay for the criminal acts that they committed.
And that was a woman named Susan Joy Counten.
And the one to give out that punishment would be Ricky himself, which is kind of fucking baller.
Like, I don't agree with murder, but...
So David Berg, thank the Lord, would pass away of old age in 1994 at the age of 74.
I wish there was a better way he died, but he just flailed off like a flaccid dick.
Anyway, but I pray that he is just burning in hell and Satan is torturing him himself.
But anyway, this left Karen Zerbe to be the leader of the children of God.
And now Ricky being an adult, telling people of the public what happened to him as a kid and realizing that it was not remotely normal.
Not that he thought it was ever normal.
He always knew even just growing up in the cult that there was something wrong.
But now getting the outside perspectives from people saying, that's incredibly fucked up.
You should do something about it.
Ricky rightfully left the cult.
But it was extremely tough for these kids that did leave the cult because a lot of them did.
They would go out and a lot of them would end up ending their lives or becoming addicted to drugs or just not knowing how to live out in life because they were living in this like communism, communal sex cult, weird shit.
So like going out into the real world was just too much for a lot of them.
And that did include Ricky, including the looming memories of what happened to him and the kids in the cult and the fact that it was still happening just haunted Ricky.
And Ricky, being absolutely terrified to go to any sort of authorities, realized that he needed to take things into his own hands and cut the head off the beast and kill his mother, Karen Zerbe.
And now, goddamn, I can fucking shave with this bucket.
So, one shot, one kill.
Well, hopefully.
Anyway, we'll see about that.
So Ricky, knowing that one of the former members of the cult Susan, who we just talked about and also one of his worst abusers, was still in contact with his mother Karen,
Which at this point, no one knew where Karen was.
So his plan was to invite Susan to a charity event where he could talk to her about possibly re-entering the cult.
Or that was his plan.
That wasn't actually what he wanted to do, but that was his plan to get her to come.
And then, on top of that, he was gonna get her to come back to his apartment and then get the location of Karen Zerbe out of her with any means necessary.
And this whole plan was shown on an over an hour video of him in the place where the charity event was gonna take place, of him just talking to the camera, loading a gun and basically just saying everything that's on his mind and how he's going to dismantle the cult.
I would highly recommend going to watch this video.
I'll try to link it down below.
It's just incredibly sad to watch For growing up in the situation that he did.
He's such an empathetic man at this point, young man.
And you can just tell that he just wants to help people and to just dismantle this disgusting cult.
Not that murdering anybody is the right thing to do at all, but it's a pretty heartbreaking video to watch.
But I would highly recommend it because I can't show it all here.
I'll show you some clips though.
And the reason why he did film this video was so that when he did kill Karen Zerbe, he could show this video to the members of the cult so they would know what actually happened behind the scenes, because a lot of them were oblivious.
So his plan, like I said, was to take Susan back to his apartment and extract the location of Karen Zerbe from her, while holding Susan hostage.
So he actually did so, but in the midst of executing his plan, he was explaining to Susan why he was doing what he was doing.
And he was repeating all of the abuses that she did to him and that Karen did to him.
And in a full on rage, he attacked Susan and stabbed her five times and then slit her throat.
So, being absolutely horrified with what he had done, he got into his car and kept driving out of state until he got to California, where he would first stop at a motel to shower and get something to eat, but then get back in his car and go drive to an industrial site where he would put his phone on the console, take his gun out, put it to his head and decided he could not live with what he had done, and he pulled the trigger.
And to this day, we do not know where Karen Zerbe is.
But we do know that she is still the head of the Children of God, now known as the Family International.
And it still has over 10,000 members in 80 countries worldwide.
They sure fucked up our brains.
Used us as slaves, because that's what we were.
Every last fucking one of us, no matter how we were treated, we were fucking slaves.
Just there.
The sick fucker's pleasure.
That's all it was.
That's the way it was at grandpa and mama's house.
Okay, well, keep fighting, keep the faith, and all that other stuff.
And someday, in some way, some of us are going to be around to see those fuckers burn, literally or figuratively.
They're going down.
So...
With that happy thought, I shall leave you.
That is the unfortunate conclusion of this video.
It's just, it's a heart, heartbreaking story.
Reading about it and researching it was just, it was hard.
Interesting, but I just can't believe that there's these evil people in the world.
But I'm glad I get to talk about A kid that clearly fought through adversity and unfortunately lost in the end.
But I highly recommend reading his story because it is heartbreaking but also extremely interesting.
I really hope that you enjoyed this type of video.
I'm really enjoying doing these kind of more kind of serious but lighter videos.
And I get to research and learn about stuff.
And I get to teach you guys about stuff as well.
And also just stay safe, okay?
Don't listen to hot women in bars that are trying to get you into a cult, okay?
And just be smart and stay safe, okay?
I just want y'all to be safe, all right?
I grew up watching Dateline and stuff and I feel like it's made me real.
You know, aware of my surroundings and everything.
But I just want you guys to know I really appreciate you.
I love you.
And please be safe.
If you liked the video, please like the video.
If you want to subscribe, you can subscribe.
This is obviously the best YouTube channel ever.
And also, I will see your beautiful face in the next video, okay?
Bye.
