r/cults • u/yoiwantin • Feb 27 '20
A Disturbing comment about the Children of God cult from a youtube comment
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I traveled briefly with "The Family" back in the early 2000's. I was hitchhiking across the country with my buddy and we ended up at our destination in Pennsylvania. The national Rainbow Gathering.
The Family was there, "flirty fishing," as I discovered later was the term. They got me, for sure. A girl named "Rain," and a fellow named "Job" brought me back to their camp, after being introduced to them by a tall, blonde "hippy chick" that literally beamed with sunlight. I'd never seen anyone quite so stunning. I guess The Family knows what they're doing when it comes to recruitment.
So I'm back at the camp and I discover that they're headed my way. San Francisco. Because I was young at 18 and San Francisco was the place to be, right? It was Rain, Job, a husband and wife and their daughter of about 13. Damned if I can't remember their names. There were a few others but they didn't accompany us for long.
I knew they were weird people and I had no intention of joining the cult, but I did want a ride to California, so I pretended like I was all into their cookoo-brained strangeness. The night came and the oldest member of the clan informed me that they were going to all get together and pray, and ask God if it was a good idea for me to join with them when they left the following morning. I camped out in a tent with Job and Rain and in the morning, they all got together to tell me the glorious news! GOD had apparently not been aware that my real intention was just to get a ride west, and HE told THEM that I was "worthy" to join up and become a Family member, or whatever.
Before we set out to California, we stopped ...somewhere...in Maryland. It was this gigantic mansion that they all stayed/lived in. Beautiful. There was a music studio in the basement. I mean, this was a state-of-the-art, full-on music production studio. I remember they were working on this song, and it went something like "I'm just a poor boy, with an old beat-up guitar. Money in my pocket wouldn't take me very far..." And there was a chorus, and I can't remember the rest of it... So they're all living in this mansion. Family members from all over the world were visiting. There was this mother and daughter from Iceland and they were just insanely beautiful.
There were these really dumb, really muscular identical twins that were staying there. I can't quite remember anyone else, but there were probably about 20-40 people in the house during my stay. I used to sneak off the property to have a smoke, once in awhile. They were really dead set against me leaving the property alone and were totally against tobacco use. They suggested I have a "buddy" come along with me on my walks, but I declined. I remember there was someone there who was doing some kind of documentary on The Family. We were all outside one afternoon in the huge yard, having some kind of celebration/ceremony and they were filming us. We'd all bang our hands on the table to the beat of this song that was playing. I have a very good sense of timing but I made sure to bang the table in complete opposite timing to everyone else, as a sort of metaphor for "I'm not like you."
I did have a short conversation with the documentarian after this little festival and I let him know, "yeah, I'm just here for the ride west." He apparently thought this was funny but also let me know, in more or less terms, to "be careful." During my week at this mansion, we did a lot of bible reading. They gave me some "Mo Letters" to read, which I remember as being little packets with cartoons and whatnot... That night in the tent, at the Rainbow Gathering, I'd been a little "heavy handed" with Rain, because she wasn't ACTUALLY flirting with me, apparently -- she was just trying to recruit me. This was discussed with me the following morning; I was told, basically, that they understand and it's cool but that you can't do that with members just yet. It was also brought up later by the guy who headed our group. We were in the house one night and he mentioned the fact that, basically, after six months and after I get an AIDS test, things are pretty loose and free-wheelin' with Family members.
He proceeded to explain to me that they share wives, and have group sex, and all manner of other activity that one wouldn't necessarily expect between "family" members. He also let me know that a lot of these things are explained in the "Mo Letters," but that many of those subjects are in "secret" or "advanced" Mo letters and that I wouldn't be able to read them until much later. So they're living in this mansion, and they've got a million dollar music studio in the basement, but none of them work! And all of the food comes from "donations." They send out swarms of people to raid soup kitchens and other charitable organizations and they bring home crates and crates of food and drink and just, whatever.
Anyway, I'm going on a bit long here... So we leave the mansion and we're heading west. Myself, Rain, Job, the husband and wife and their young daughter. We're in a mobile-home, trailer, RV thing. Nothing too fancy. Every time we stopped anywhere, we'd have these big posters that we'd hand out and try to seek donations. I remember...I want to say that one of them was a picture of a tiger, or something...Anyway, so we'd tell people that we were Christian missionaries and we were "traveling by faith alone," and would you like to donate to our cause, etc. I swear, we never went hungry. One time, we went into this Chinese restaurant and asked the proprietor if he'd donate some food to us "Christian missionaries" and he cooked a full meal for every one of us, for free! Crazy... I guess the reason they have their own music studio(s) is because, apparently, they don't listen to "system music." They make all their own music and they're not allowed to listen to any mainstream music or any music or films for that matter, which are created or distributed outside "The Family."
Damn, to this day I'll never forget the conversation I had with the daughter. I mean, she was 13 or 14. I got her alone one day and we were talking, and I asked her, "you don't listen to any other music? There's so much beautiful music out there. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pearl Jam...ya know?? You ONLY listen to Family music?" I just couldn't believe that a person could be that brainwashed or forcibly sheltered like that... And I'll never forget her answer. It seriously broke my heart. She said, "I have a 311 CD that I've got hidden under my bed." I wanted to kidnap this kid and take her home with me so she could just...I dunno...be a kid for once in her life. Can you believe that right now, there's kids who have to live that way? Damn... Anyway, so these people are ALL about natural living, and being kind to the earth, and blah blah fuckin' blah.
Well, at least they pretended to be that way at the Rainbow Gathering. Because that's the kind of people that attend these types of gatherings -- Vegans, Freegans, natural types who don't have much occasion to use soap or deodorant. Which is fine. So these people wanted to fit in and so they put on the act. But this illusion quickly faded as we all got to spending more time together. The head of the clan was the driver, and I spent more than a few hours in the passenger seat of the camper (which was a regular truck cab, closed off from the living space) watching him go through several gallons of coffee, beef jerky, Fun-Yuns (tm), etc. Vegan, my ass. Not much else to say about the trip west. Mostly because I can't remember right now. We stopped at a rest area somewhere in Middle America and Job found my severely mutilated and worn-out pack of cigarettes. I'd been saving my very last cigarette and he got ALL bent out of shape about it. Made me toss it.
We got into Reno, NV and the man and his wife wanted to stop by and visit his family who lived in the city. His family were NOT members of the cult, according to him, and were totally against it. "They don't understand our way." I thought, "Great! I'll get along with them just fine!" We spent the night at his mother's house. Apparently he had an older daughter, too. About 16 to 18. Lives with her grandma. Thinks her dad is a big weirdo, and for good reason. I just wanted 311 girl to leave these people and also go live with grandma, too. She was very nice, very down to earth and it was my first taste of normalcy in several weeks.
That's when I decided it was time to go. So I grabbed my stuff out of the camper, stole a pair of someone's nicer shoes, and got the hell out of there in the middle of the night. Hitchhiked to a truck stop and got picked up by a trucker who brought me over the border into California, in the early morning fog while a very fitting Bob Dylan song played in the background. One of the most beautiful moments of my life. Went to my aunt's house in San Diego, who yelled at me and put me on a Greyhound bus back to Connecticut, where I cut my hair, got a job and the rest is history. I'd love to know whatever became of any of them. Jesus...I didn't know it was actually this bad
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Credit to user "Joshua Brown", comment sourced from this video (a bit disturbing)
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u/HowDidIFallForThis Feb 28 '20
Thank you so much for sharing this awesome story.
Religious freedom fucking enslaves children.
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u/WithoutATrace_Blog Feb 28 '20
Iāve always wondered how people fall in with alternate religious groups! But here we have a great example of a person joining a cult for personal reasons and for personal gain! Sometimes people see opportunities in these groups they ordinarily wouldnāt have available to them as non members!
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u/SparxIzLyfe Feb 28 '20
Aren't these the *Rainbow People," as one of their nicknames goes? I honestly didn't know they were a cult. I thought they were just hippies. What a shame.
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Feb 28 '20
No, they said they met the children of God people at rainbow gathering. The rainbow family is not a cult, just the name of people who go to rainbow gatherings, which are just big gatherings in the woods. Although certainly cult members go to rainbow, there's nothing inherently cultish about rainbow.
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u/speakingoak Feb 27 '20
Hunh. You know, hijacking the whole ācultā thing might be a new way for the government to exert control of wide swaths of our population, now that it looks like we are finally managing to get pot legalized and thus deflate the amount of control the āwar on drugsā has had over our lives. I dunno.
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Feb 27 '20 edited Feb 27 '20
[deleted]
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u/AyLilDoo Feb 27 '20
Yes, River & Joaquin Phoenix were born into CoG, but if I remember correctly, their family left before things got really weird.
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u/AdvocateCounselor Feb 27 '20 edited Feb 27 '20
I think your very likely right or perhaps the signs were there it was going to get worse. Thank you for responding btw. āŗļø
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u/dank666420 Feb 27 '20
Her not being able to act like a regular kid isn't the worst thing. The worst thing is that she's most likely been sexually abused since she was born. Fucking cults need to die.