Du, jag skulle ju köpa några nya palpställd i lagret. Det kanske blev lite mer grejer. De hade ju allt, man hade en skribord, jag köpte en sån här, och kontorstolar, och så hade de en skit snygg tippkontor. Vi har inredning för hela arbetsplatsen. Välkommen till AI-produktion. I'm Hannah. I'm Suruti. Welcome to Red Hat. It's gonna be really horrible. Mm.
So horrible that we recently guessed on Help I Sexted My Boss and they asked us about it. Mm-hmm and we said, Don't wanna know. Yeah. And they said, No, we do. Yeah. And we said, No, you don't. Yeah. And then they said, No, we do. Uh-huh. And then I told them. And then everyone was like, Ugh and then it didn't make the edit, they took it out. Do you remember and this is a a way, way, way, way, way, way, way back throwback. Do you remember that Michelin Webb look sketch?
about the woman. She's like it's an estate agent and he's showing this couple round. He's like, Oh, so what do you do for a living? And she's like, Oh, I'm uh a therapist for torture survivors and he's like What's the worst thing you've ever heard?
And she's like, I really I really don't think it's it's appropriate. I I you don't you don't wanna know. I've seen some really bad things and he's like, No, go on, tell me. Tell me what's the worst thing And then it's like cuts to them going into a room and just walking out and he's just like This is cut from the edit. And uh I feel like that is what happens when we talk to people about children of God.
So I was recently on the tube with Sam. We had like gone out for a few drinks and we were out maybe Piccadilly, I don't know, somewhere. And there was a person playing a guitar. And she turned around. Prime Harakrishna territory round there. Oh oh my god. Where yeah. I was in Chinatown the other day.
Fucking Harakushnas up to my eyeballs. Handing out leaflets. Didn't give me one though, did they? Oh, because you're too brown. So they were like, Not not you. Not you. Um but yes, this woman, she turned round, she was wearing a denim jacket, and it said children of God, emblazoned on the back. Oh my god. And he was like, well, you don't want to know. And he's like, you're right, I don't.
And I was like, No, let me tell you And so we were sat on a packed tube while I did think I whispered to him all of these horrible things. We're about to scream at you lovely people. For two weeks. I know. To Tubata. This is actually quite a difficult story to tell because for the first time on Red Handed there are tens of thousands.
Of one man. And we can't tell all of their stories as much as we might want to. It has been I won't lie, this has been one of the hardest scripts I've ever done. Oh really? Because I made the mistake of reading about seven books from Survivors. Oh. And what we usually do when we do like a uh a nebulous topic like uh residential schools for um First Nations children or
Something like that, we have one through line story that we follow and then we sort of hang all the hooks on. Mm-hmm. It's impossible to do that with this. So I've done my best. And this is part one. You could spend years, decades even learning all there is to know about this stomach churning cultural.
And if you, dear listener, know anything about the children of God, you probably know that Rose McGowan, River Phoenix, and Joaquin Phoenix were all born into it. I really recommend going to see going to see going to listen to Rose McGowan on Louis Three's Lockdown podcast. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because sh I mean, Rose Rose McGowan I admire her so much, but she's not okay. No, I was gonna say Rose McGowan, River and Rocking Phoenix, all famously, fine, right?
Do you remember that mental Oscar speech that Wackem Phoenix gave about cows? No. I don't watch the Oscars I find. No, nor do I. Nor do I. I d I just couldn't give a fuck. But this was Insane. Look, he's a victim in this. But though he alleges not to be. So maybe I can take the piss out of his Oscar speech? I don't know. But basically he was just like, Stop drinking milk, you're murdering cows And goes on about it for quite a while. I don't know the children of God stance on cows, I'm afraid.
But I do know that it's an organisation famous for free love, hookers for Christ, and putting garlic cloves up bumholes. Why? Oh, you'll find out. I mean if they put up the other part of a lady apparently can cure B V. If you're fresh out of boric acid suppositories, apparently a clove of garlic will clear it right up. When I was working at Flatiron years and years ago, there was a guy who really nice guy, can't remember his name, I got a wart on his.
Um unfortunate. Oh yeah. And we're all just like, paint your face green, call it a day. So he read that if you put gar if you cellotape garlic to it at night it makes it better. And then he came back in like a few days later. And it was still there, but there was like a c cavern around it and we were like, What have you done? He was like, Turns out
The difference between my little garlic and my mum's waitrose garlic is uh quite significant. Oh my god. He chemically burned his face with garlic. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I know, I know. I'm upset. Uh, I'd forgot about that at all just now. Anyway, the children of God are still technically Going to this day. Yeah, that woman was playing her guitar loud and proud.
And it's still going because, unlike Jonestown, Om Shimrikyo and the Branch Dividians, there was no great end to the Children of God story. There was no raid, no terrorist plot, no cool. I put that in because it rhymes. I know it was flavor aid before you all come and tweet at me. After dodging multiple child abuse suits, FBI investigations and press pressure, the Children of God just downsized and changed their name.
And that's why I'm surprised that that w lady was wearing a jacket said the children of God'cause they're the family international now. Maybe it was like a vintage maybe she picked it up in a vintage shop and she doesn't know what it is. Maybe she thrifted it and she just No'cause if you take away the cult context, children of God just sounds like quite a fun little hippie'cause you know, that's kind of what they
Major sounds like a bit of a fun hippie thing. And maybe she just, you know, picked up her Yale vintage sweatshirt and picked up a children of God. Flow flower child. Yeah. Oh, I'm a child of God. I love it. I will wear it when I buckle. In Piccadilly Circus and one true crime podcaster will be horrified and ruin her boyfriend's night. I feel like maybe that's what it is now. Maybe. Because we will never, ever catch them all. Or even a few of them, honestly.
Officially speaking, the Children of God was not founded until 1968, and it ran for over four decades in its original form. It reached millions of people and converted hundreds of thousands looking for purpose into sex mentioned. The founder of the Children of God was David Brandt Berg. And he didn't really get going cult wise.
Until he was in his late forties. So maybe it's never too late to start again. It it's like one of those things you add to the list, like how Vera Wang didn't become a dress designer until she was like fifty or some shit, and Oprah Winfrey got sacked from her first journalism job. David Burke didn't even become a cult leader until he was forty. Forty nine. Forty nine? Oh my god. Though once he started the cult, David wouldn't keep his name for long, because it wasn't sparkly enough.
Or Bernie Bushy enough. Lots of name changes happen so that that makes it quite difficult to follow. So if you know the story particularly well and you're like, you've left out the name of this person, it's on purpose. Got it. Got it. But David Berg did not just drop from the sky or float up the Nile. He was the end of a long line of evangelists. Because nothing bad ever happened.
In the beginning, there were the Bergs. The youngest David was born in Oakland, California, on the 18th of February 1919. And he spent most of his life on the road, because all of his family wouldn't shut the hell up about Jesus. And they just had to tell absolutely everyone about it. And everyone meant everyone. Yep. Up and down at the country constantly. That sounds fun. And also Berg's dad, whose name is Halmer. Wow. Which, if I've said that wrong, I don't care. Sounds a bit
Scandy Iceland. In that area. So Halmer did minstrel shows alongside his uh his mum's Evangelical Protestants don't have masses, what do they have? Services. And also, interestingly, Halmer apparently he was a bit of a party guy when he first met Virginia, which is David Berg's mom. And Virginia's dad was very rich, so Helmer was like, I'll convert and I'll clean up my axe so I can marry your daughter.
Sure, sure. And then Virginia was like, Who the fuck are you? I didn't marry this boring ass bitch like it's it's so and Berg like points to it like throughout his adult who's like, Well, you know, it's just not what my mother wanted. She didn't want this, you know, straight lace church going sober guy, but that's what she got. Interesting. All of this travelling meant that David Berg spent most of his childhood in tents and in caravans.
Up and down the country the Merry Band of Burgs did go in true revivalist style. Berg's mum, Virginia, as I said, was a particularly special one of God's children. She claimed to have been healed by God as a young woman after she was paralyzed, from being thrown from a horse drawn carriage. And Virginia was so good at telling this story that she landed a full time preaching gig in Miami. And also a radio show, I believe.
So the burgs could hang up their travelling boots for a little while. And in Miami David worked as his mum's assistant. Never stepping into the limelight himself, at least not for now. He just drove his mum around doing whatever she said. In nineteen forty one, Burr claimed he was conscripted into the army at twenty two years old. And whether he actually served or not though is a bit of a mystery.
But he was struck down with double pneumonia. I don't know what double pneumonia is. No, nor do I. Both lungs? I don't know. Both lungs. I'll look it up. Double pinu Oh, there you go. Oh, my little joke turned out to be a horrible fact. So yeah, he struck down with double pneumonia before he could actually even be deployed anywhere, and was told by doctors that it was all over.
J, jag skulle ju köpa några nya palpställd i lagret. Det kanske blev lite mer grejer. De hade ju allt, man hade skrib, jag köpte en sån, och kontornstolar, och så hade de en skit snygg tippkort. Vi har inredning för hela arbetsplatsen. Välkommen till! So Berg pledged to the Almighty Father that if he pulled through, he would dedicate his life to holy serving.
It's not like he wasn't doing that already, by the way. It's very easy to say. Oh, if I don't die of double lung pneumonia, then I will start drinking coffee every single morning. God. Now other people who are not Berg say that he never went into basic training and actually signed up for Divinity School after he was drafted in order to get out of going to war. Yeah. And um I think we know which one we but.
Yeah. Giraff Dodging is uh a favourite of the American president, um one might add. But yeah, I don't believe for a second that he actually signed up. Like but they say this is the tricky thing is that like some of the books that are listed in the show notes. Some of the books that were written by Survivor Some of it they still believe. So like one of the I think it's there's one called Sex Cult None. Um and it's in Sex Cult None, I think, that
I read that, you know, and he he was so desperate, he was such a patriot that even though he could have got out of it, he signed up. But then you read something that's not by a survivor and they're like, No, he fucking didn't Yeah yeah. Interesting. Well, the one thing we know about David Berg and all cult leaders is They're very good storytellers. Uh very good spin artists, so who the fuck knows what is true and what isn't?
But perhaps this kind of lying ran in the Berg family. If you believe Berg's children, Virginia's horse and cart accident never actually even happened. Actually, in the five years that Virginia claimed to have been bedbound, she was actually attending Christian University to cover up the birth of a child that she shouldn't have been having at all, because Oh no, she was married. Oh ho ho ho I see. So Virginia's story of miraculous godly recovery was probably a total pile of shit.
But the key point to notice here before we move on is that even in this early stage of Berg's life, lying, when connected to Ministry for Christ, was totally fine. Fraudulent stories about a horse accident or double pneumonia are completely and utterly fine to spin, as long as they end up bringing people to Jesus. The means to an end theme is going to come up a lot over the next couple of weeks, so I hope you are ready.
But whether Berg actually joined up or not is pretty irrelevant, because in no time at all he was back being his roving reverence mum's little bitch boy. He wanted to preach, but he also knew, he wrote later in life, that Virginia needed a few more years in God's holy light. In nineteen forty four, Berg met and married his wife Jane Miller, and managed to wiggle away from his mum a little bit.
He and his wife Jane managed to push out a couple of kids. The girl, Deborah, would go on to write an expose on the children of God, and what her father, David Berg, would go on to become. I'm afraid it's not very good. The book. Mm-hmm. It's kind of the worst one for unsubstantiated stories that cast Bug in a very positive and then very negative light at the same time. So I actually think the most like
The article I read the most that I trust the most that I think is the most um the most neutral because it's an academic paper. It's Lustful Prophet, a psychosexual history of the study of the children's God Leader David Book. That is like, well, Deborah says this.
I can't find it anywhere else, so I don't know. You know, not to shit on Deborah, she went through a lot. But it's not it's not the best of the books. Sure. The best of the books is Jesus Freaks. Okay. Yes, I've heard of Jesus Freaks. Cool. So living his new married life, Berg finally got round to actually being ordained, and he was sent off to spread the word in Arizona.
This placement did not go particularly well, however. Berg and his followers claimed that he was relocated away from this parish because he asked the white people to share their wealth with the Native Americans and the Mexicans. And apparently the whites didn't like that no, they don't like that. So they ran him out of town. No Sherry. Which again is not quite true.
The details are actually a bit unclear, but it seems as if the real reason that Berg got run out of Arizona was a lot more to do with some kind of sexual scandal than it was to do with, well, literally anything else. Deborah Berg claims that this scandal was actually an affair, including Berg's own niece. Yeah. One of the things she writes in her book is that her father told That he wanted to stay married to Jane, but he also wanted to have his niece as like a congregation.
So yeah, raised eyebrows, raised eyebrows for everyone. Mine are have disappeared. But for now, let's focus on the sharing aspect of this for a second. He's asking the white people to share with the Native Americans and the Americans. Because David Berg was Saruti Bala's favorite political persuasion. It's a big fat commie. Is Barry Jones talent? At least the way Jim Jones presented himself, David Burke kind of presents himself in a similar way. Would you say at the start? Yes. I I think that
The children of God is what happens when Jim Jones and Joseph Smith have a baby. Okay. Got it. Got it. Because yeah, Jim Jones very much was like This is gonna be a communist utopia. We're gonna my rainbow family. We're all gonna share everything. It's about racial equality. So tell me how this didn't work. Anna Because actually being communist is quite a Christian thing to be, no matter what American politicians want you to think.
And we've spoken about tithing before in our Mormonism episodes. Lots of not cults, lots of quote unquote legitimate religions, expect tithes from their parishioners, usually around the twenty percent mark, as in twenty percent of household income goes to your church. And most Catholics' first major sin is stealing from the collection plates. Everyone's done it. And it's also the only crime that Adelin Sayed has ever admitted to. Definitely not the only one he committed though.
So, whether we like it or not, money and religion are intertwined because you need money to live, and a lot of people need religion to live as well. They always have been. Almost one in the same. And one thing Berg was really good at was finding passages in the Bible to justify anything and everything he decided to say.
Having said that, he is far from the only person to claim that Jesus was a communist. But here is the bit from the Bible that Berg used to justify the idea that everyone should share stuff with everyone else. It's Acts 244 and it is all the believers were together and had everything in common. You can't argue with it. It does say that. Mm. That's what it says.
And unlike us uptight Brits, Berg came from a tradition of Christianity that was not afraid to rock the boat. We're far too scared after the whole Anne Belinda barkle. We'll do whatever we're told now. I'm actually rewatching the Tudors. Do you know what's happened to me? Is after we did I think after I did the Lady Jane Grey episode for shorthand.
somehow I've got onto the side of TikTok where they only talk about Tudors. Interesting. Yeah. And so I know did you know that Katherine Howard was only nineteen? Yes. When they killed her. And there's this really tragic bit where she's like
locked up in the palace and she runs down the corridor to try and get Henry to save her and then she gets dragged back. Yeah, and how she asked them the night before she was going to have her head chopped off for the executioner's block so she could practice putting her head on it again and again and again. And also all the horrible stuff that happened to Catherine Howard when she was like a teenage. She was definitely like
all sorts of sexual abuse. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So uh no, I'm very familiar with the tutors because I've spent far too long watching so many videos about them. Why am I doing that? I don't know. But I it did it did like ping in my brain even when you were like He just looked in the Bible to find a verse that fitted what he wanted, which is exactly what Henry does, in order to be like, I need to get a divorce. Yep, let's dissolute the monasteries.
Dissolve the Morris. The dissolve the monasteries, the dissolution of the monasteries, dissolve the monasteries. I'm having a stroke. Please go on. But anyway, this episode is not about Tudors. We are staying in America. Because there, in particular, the attitude of the pilgrims fleeing Britain to be more hard line was alive and well in David Berg's heart.
And there was a significant air of not wanting to be ruled by the church, but to actually take the Bible word for word, and not all the made up Catholics. Like indulgences, etcetera. Which is all made up by the church, it's not in the book. And that is the tradition that Berg was born into. The Pentecostal model. The Bible is it.
all additional religious rules instilled by men in dresses are not part of the vision. Which Americans are just a lot more game for. Mm. Which may sound noble, especially if you love Jesus or whatever. But it also lays the foundations for culture. Because the Bible is so long and so old that you can make it say whatever you want. And that is exactly what David Berg did. He just mixed it up with the naivety of the hippymyth.
Unfortunately, to great success. Did you know that Christianity was in Africa before it was in Europe? No. The Ethiopian Bible is much, much older than any Bible that we have. Wow. So like the type of Christianity in Ethiopia is very unique. Oh it's interesting, isn't it? Interesting.
You may have already picked up on the fact that David Berg's relationship with his mum Virginia was not totally okay. And obviously sex is a big part of the Children of God story. And surprise, surprise, those two things are connected. Nobody who ends up like David Burke has a normal relationship with their mum. But this one is really something.
David Berg, like more children than you would think, was a compulsive masturbator as a child. It's actually the only thing he claims to remember from his childhood. Oh my god. He like writes it later and he's like, I liked it then, I like it now. Like When his mum caught him playing the Devil's Trombone, she brought the whole family in and told her four year old son that if he didn't stop, she would cut off his penis in front of all of them.
Oh, don't do that. Don't do that. Maybe we can write action. A parenting book, Hannah. Not Don't Just don't do that. Don't do that. And it can just be all of the fucking horrible things that
people did to turn their kids into little fucking serial killers or cult leaders or horrible shit. Don't do that. Do not tell your four year old son you're going to cut his penis off in front of your entire family. Don't do that. No, she even brought a little bowl in with her and she was like, It's gonna go in here. Fucking hell. But it didn't stop him. He also tells a story about a lady who he only calls the Mexican babysitter. I don't know what her name was.
And apparently she used to suck him off to sleep when he was a child. Oh my god. Yeah, rough. And if he and I love that Hannah is just like Little bread crumbing you now s to to ease in all of the truly, truly horrible shit that is coming up over the next two weeks in nothing yet.
Oh yeah, just she used to suck him up before he went to bed. Let's move on. You all prepped? Just tenderizing them like a big fat slab of meat. I've been living in this for weeks. Let's get it out of your head. Let's get on with it. And I'm afraid it immediately gets worse.
There is more, I'm afraid, to this particular part in David Berg's life. And we're telling you because it's important. Virginia caught Berg ranking as a teenager, and instead of threatening him with GPH, instead she brought his dad into the room and made her son finish in front of him. That's porn star material though. If you can finish wanking off in front of your dad. Jesus Christ.
I actually I forgot to put this in the notes, but this is another story that happened to him. He claims that he had penetrative sex with his cousin when they were both seven. Because she had seen her parents doing it. And then he realised that I think three of the house staff and his uncle were watching. Oh fuck. And look, David Berg goes on to be a horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, gross, disgusting person.
who damages a lot of people, as we said at the very start. But uh his teenage his childhood and his teenage years, they really did a number on him. Hm. So I think we can all agree that the Westermark effect does not live in the Berghouse, and that is a very clear foundation of what we've done.
After the Arizona disaster when he was run out of town, Berg moved on to work for a faith healer called Orville Jaggers, and I only put that in because it's such a ridiculous name. Oh my god, one day I would like to own a pig. And I will call him Orville Jackers. Not Sorrunty. Not Sr there'll be two. You don't want him to get lonely. They only differ. Sorrunty and Orville Jackers. I don't know, when I hear that name I just think of a little pig. Boink.
But uh we don't really know what happened with Orville the Pig Jaggers, but Berg didn't last long with him. He moved on to somewhere else, chillingly called the American Soul Clinic in nineteen fifty four. And the American Soul Clinic happened to be owned by a bloke called Fred Jordan. And Berg and Fred must have got on pretty well, at least in the beginning, because Berg worked for Fred at the American Soul Clinic, training missionaries, for thirteen years.
Which, bearing in mind, he was born in nineteen nineteen. He's already old as shit. Fred Jordan was one of the first ever televangelists, and Berg trained under him, sending missionaries all over the world. This is where he learned that there are plenty of people willing to leave it all behind and go to developing countries exclusively to talk about Jesus. You also learned aggressive sales tactics. Because that's all it is. Is that um angels on your body? Is that a televangelist thing? Yes.
Ha ha ha. I what is that? It's from a Louis Thuruda. It's a weird weekend. A weird weekend at that woman. I think whenever she picks up the phone or she puts the phone. Angels on your money. Give me your money. It was her Children of God jacket that that bust picked up. So in nineteen sixty seven, for reasons we can't quite put our finger on, Fred Jordan fired Bert.
So David Berg, with four children, a disgruntled wife, and almost broke at the age of forty nine, hit the road once more, this time in a twenty eight foot motorhome that Berg called the R. Es ist wahr. 哇 Oh, we talk about her all the time. Killed her babies. Andrea Yates. Didn't Andrea Yates' husband call their motor home then?
I don't know if he called it the Ark, but they definitely lived on a Greyhound. I'm currently proofing the book for an upcoming paperback version. Stay tuned, it'll make a great Christmas present. If he did, we didn't put it in the book. I feel like we would have put it in if it was true. But he definitely made her live on a greyhound bus that definitely did not help her psychosis one tiny little bit.
And um yeah, Berg forced his entire family to also live on this bus while he drove it around, and he also made them sing for their supper. Now I don't know when as a society we lost our appetite for travelling theatre troupes of children, but I for one am glad. it happened. Yeah. Let's let's just stop doing that. Let the children go to school, that's what I say. I I would agree.
Maybe this is why we all got over it as a society. The Berg family singers, as they called themselves ingeniously, was a complete and utter flop, and that meant that David Berg, now in his fifties with the loads of kids and no money. had to come up with another plan. And being a creature of habit, that plan involved his mum Virginia. Virginia was in her twilight years living in Huntington Beach, California, home to the National Surfing Museum.
And perhaps in an effort to impress his mum Berg, changed the name of his von Trapp extravaganza to Teens for Christ. Oh I remember that. And joined Virginia on the beach. That is another classic vintage tea, if I ever saw one. The teens for Christ in like a jazzy font. ' And there in Huntington Beach, Berg started forcing his spawn to sing in somewhere called the Light Catholic.
To the hippies, who probably hadn't had a glass of water for a week. There were also free peanut butter sandwiches involved, so they lawed them in. Come there. By nineteen sixty eight, the hippie movement had died a bit of a death, and there were a lot of lost souls kicking around Huntington Beach, which of course made it the perfect hunting ground for David Berg and his band of merried children. To tell washed up hippies and freaks. So they could get off the drugs and get high on Jesus instead.
Last podcast made this point that I think if they have a series on this, it's like four or five parts long, it's really good, go listen to it. They made the point that like this is right at the end of the hippie movement and it's You know that episode of Peep Show where Jez is like, turns out watching someone you love having sex with someone else is really, really horrible. So they talk about this like particular moment in time of like, it's all over.
Like Yeah. Y and it wasn't fun. Last days of Saigon. Yes exact. No, it's true. I think a lot of the times you see this sort of cult formation happen in times where a particular society is going through some sort of fluff. Like if you look at for example Om Shin Riko, the religion pre Om Shin Rikyo in Japan had been very much Shintoism, like state Shintoism. And the emperor was this divine being, like a literal god on earth.
Then the bombs fell on Nagasaki and Hiroshima and it was a bit harder to be like, I'm a god when that's happened to your country. So then obviously when religion fell out of favour, people in Japan were like, Oh my god, what do I do now? Boom. Blind yoga man. It's kind of obviously I'm not saying that he was a good person, but it is kind of genius. Like most like quote unquote successful cult.
Fi they just happen at exactly the right moment in time. Absolutely. You know, one of the things that we talked about ad nauseum on uh Sinister Society's our short lived um series that we did a while back. Which actually was really good. We just like couldn't keep doing it because of other things.
But yeah, like one of the things that I felt really became a running theme during that show was the idea that cult leaders are entrepreneurs and the ones that are successful are just the good entrepreneurs. They identify a niche in the market and then they fucking go for it with everything.
And then they get greedy and they fuck themselves over. Which is why I do think it's interesting that the Children of God slash Family International has managed to survive. And it's exactly because of he circumvents that issue. Yeah. Evolve or die. So getting back to Berg, by this point he was fifty years old and had fifteen years of missionary training. He already had the Tekkers. Then at last Virginia died, and Berg took things up and off.
The Light Cafe was started by Pentecostals, but soon became the temple of the rage against what Berg called the system. The night he gave this speech against the system was actually the first time he had spoken publicly. With Virginia, his mum dead, he was free to declare war on the religious system and also on the way that he had been raised.
Du, jag skulle ju köpa några nya palpställd i lagret. Det kanske blev lite mer grejer. De hade ju allt, med skribord, jag köpte en sån här, och kontorstolar, och så hade de en sitsnygg typcontainer. Vi har inredning för hela arbetsplatsen. Välkommen till For David Berg, fear and condemnation died that day in nineteen sixty eight, as he railed against the church, the war in Vietnam, politicians, and parents who had all made us miserable.
This is a huge turning point for him when his mum dies because when he was attempting to be a minister himself but she was still alive, she was like, You're just a knockoff Fred Jordan, who do you think? And his wife wasn't particularly happy about it as well. Um, and so he had all of this judgment and shame and all the and then all of the sex stuff that happened when he was a kid.
But then Virginia dies and then it's like, Oh, she was so horrible to me that everything she m said, everything she made me feel, I should be feeling the opposite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, very well timed. This was a genius move from him. He included things in this speech that hippies liked, like protests and sit-ins. And I'm not crazy, it's like when Lisa's like, the whole damn system is wrong. Like it's it's like that.
It's not my fault that things haven't worked out, it's'cause of the system. And eventually, Berg would blend his own sexual perversions with fundamentalist Christian doctrines, godly missions, and the counterculture movement. So far, none of the sex stuff has happened, so it's this isn't particularly bad. If people want to live off the land and off the grid, then fine. Not everybody is built for the rat race. And we're told all the time that hardship is just the way.
And when someone tells you that it doesn't have to be this way, that existence doesn't have to be rigid and painful and full of rules, I do think there is an innate human response to believe them because we want it to be true. We all want to be happy, and not many of us are.
But this wouldn't be an episode of Redhanded if it had a happy ending. The people that Berg was recruiting from the Light Cafe had already turned their back on the system, and Berg just took advantage of it. They needed to fill that hole. They needed a mission. And after closely observing what the great unwash responded to the most positively, David Berg grew a big long beard, bought a beret, and asked everyone to start calling him Dad. Market Research.
He also took advantage of the anti Vietnam War sentiment by preaching not only that the system was bad, but that America was particularly bad. And a great punishment was coming. And then he says to them, And you have to tell everyone. Yeah. This is now the drugs are gone, the free love is gone. You don't worry about your material possessions'cause I'll take them off your hands. Yes. Give'em to me. I'll hold on to them. Go forth and spread the word of Jesus. Mm-hmm.
And by fuck did it work? As soon as David Berg upgraded Teens for Christ to the children of God. David Berg's followers were in the hundreds almost overnight. They'd go to like university campuses and stuff and car parks and like flyer people.
And it was actually a journalist that called them the children of God first. And he read it and he was like, Oh, I like that And they would get like moved on from all of these places and that obviously he just used it's like, Well, they're persecuting us because we're right. One particular recruit in the hundreds was young Virginal Catherine Zerby, and she caught David Berg's eye in nineteen sixty nine. She quickly became his secretary, and her virginity didn't last very long.
If you even tangentially know this case, the name Karen Zerby is going to send, like it just did for me, a little chill up and down your spine. Lusting after Catherine Zurby presented a bit of a problem for David Berg, because he absolutely wanted to bang Karen Zerby, but he didn't want to stop banging his wife Jane. Up until this point, Berg had been taking the traditional Christian route that sex is only allowed inside a marriage.
This is feeling again very Henry VIII. In these very early days, Berg even insisted that the leaders of his pamphlet teams, his witnessing teams, could only be married. So, Berg being Henry VIII, came up with a way around it. The way he got around everything, justifying his actions with passages from the Bible. And let's face it, it is in there. Loads of people in the Bible have multiple wives. So Berg changed Karen's name to Maria and moved her into the Ark with his first wife, Jane.
True of everything. Jane couldn't argue with Berg, and she didn't make her discomfort known in the group around her. But she did cry quite a lot, and made a point of not being in the caravan when Karen Zervey was there. And Jane probably didn't love that her husband started to refer to her as the old wine and the old church. And to Karen, he changed her name to Maria. He now called her Mamma Maria, the new wine or the new church.
Mamma Maria is a lot more sexy than the old church. And he would use them as parables almost. He would refer to Jane as the old church being stuck in her ways and not following new revelations. And then along comes Catherine Zerby who's like It doesn't have to be this way. She's the sexy new church, willing to do anything that David Berg asked of her.
Mamma Maria was uh the answer to David Berg's prayers, or so he wrote. He publicly took Maria as a second wife. And Jane got a younger second husband. Good for Jane. I you know what? Yeah. For now. Fun fur for now. Berg also came up with a new name for his followers, and I hope you are all ready to vomit, because he called them, the women especially, Babes in Christ. Why not? Why not? Which again he justified with biblical text.
In Psalms, God ordains strength out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, which is referred to also in the Gospel of Matthew. Yeah. And also out of the mouths of babes is what we say that as a saying, you know? I know. And yes, it's just so uncomfortable because obviously when people say out of the mouths of babes, they mean out of the mouths of children, I presume. And here he's like babes in Christ. Yeah.
Does love children. Spoilers. And I I hate myself for saying this, but Jane getting a new younger second husband, I'm like gets a lot. I'm just I'm just prepping the people, Hannah. Just prepping the people. I know. So with Virginia, David Berg's mother now out of the picture, and no one left to ridicule him, David Berg began to make prophecies.
He would predict the end of the world three times. And spoilers, it never happened. He's very specific too. It's just that's your downfall. That that is a mistake. But he he survives every time, like they always come back. Well that is good going. That is good going. Going back to Jonestown, Jim Jones moved his lot up to UKIA because he was convinced it was the only place that would not be destroyed by the nuclear weapons that the entire world was extremely worried about.
David Berg, however, took a different route. He predicted that an enormous earthquake was going to swallow up all of California, so he decided that he was going to have to leave Huntington Beach. But unlike Jim Jones, crucially David Berg said that not everybody could come with him. He left some followers behind in 1969 in Huntington Beach, just in case. And this is why he survives so long. Decentralized government.
And eventually, after some time on the road witnessing and singing and doing all sorts, the children of God decided that it was commune time, and they all moved to a ranch in Thurbo, Texas, owned by none other than Fred Jordan. And he basically says, Yeah, you can live that, but can you light do it up a bit?
So they've made friends, apparently. Mm-hmm. And the members were asked to give up all of their worldly possessions and categorized into groups based on the twelve tribes of Israel. Every tribe had a different job. It's like in Brownies when you're like an imp or a pixie or it's like As the twelve tribes of Israel with different jobs, they wandered through the wilderness in God's grace. The jobs ranged from scavenging for food in bins to just basic admin.
Someone's gotta keep track of all the wealth he's accumulating and how to hide it from the taxman. But the foragers were not allowed to eat anything that they found. They had to deliver it straight back to the top of the cult food chain. So at this stage, let's recap. Polyamory, fine. Sex outside of marriage, still a no-go. But that's not gonna be around. around forever. And we have got also lots of time for the horrible sex stuff.
Berg was convinced that he was leading his disciples across the United States, and eventually away from it entirely, as Moses had led the Jews from Egypt. Berg's obsession with Moses is one of the reasons this never blew up in his face. He never said that he was God, only that he was a conduit of God.
And I think that is an important point to make. A lot of cult leaders get very carried away. They may start off just using pre-existing religious mumbo jumbo to like get people through the door. Pretty soon they escalate to saying that they are the one and only God on earth. Berg doesn't do that. No, and again that's another reason that he gets away with it. It is an astonishing amount of restraint for a man who shows so little in every other aspect of his life.
So Berg identified with the Prince of Egypt so much that he actually changed his name to Moses. But we're not gonna call him that because fuck him. I didn't call Sean Coombs P Daddy P. Diddy. I'm not gonna call David Berg Moses. No, we won't be doing that. So Yeah, just know he legally did change his name to Moses, but we are going to continue to call him David.
So this takes us up to january nineteen seventy, where Berg, the new and the old wine, and hundreds of babes in Christ were at the ranch in Texas. In cultology, communal living is a big turning point, and this is what happened on the ranch. Those living there not only had to change their names to biblical ones, they also had to cut off all ties with their family and friends.
Yet again, Berg had biblical backup for this. Luke fourteen twenty-six reads, If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and yes, even their own life, such a person could not be my Elma! Koska you must love only me. So you can't argue, as I keep saying, that it's not in there and that Berg didn't know it. He knew his stuff, he knew the Bible back to front, and he wanted his followers to know it too.
Every member of the children of God was expected to memorize three hundred biblical verses within the first three months of living on the Rhine. And actually, on the ranch, the only thing that the children of God were allowed to possess as their own was their Bible. Everyone had their own Bible, and that was yours, but it was the only thing that Everything else was shared. Clothes, shoes, hairbrushes, everything. Didn't ask me. Let's have a look at a normal day out on the run.
Mornings were dedicated to Bible study, and then the Israelites would be given their orders for the day. Orders would be fulfilled with one's assigned buddy. Like the Mormons on mission, a person could never be apart from their buddy even when they went. Oh, and when they did go to the loo they were only allowed to use two sheets of toilet paper per bathroom visit.
But still, Berg, being a man of the road, sent out teams to recruit yet more babes in Christ. He sent out teams across the whole of the North American continent, whilst maintaining the base at the Ram. And then one day Berg got a call from God, who told him that America was so last week, and the East was the new frontier. And so Berg sent four six person teams overseas.
and the true legacy of the children of God began. Remember, up until now, sex was only permitted between married couples, but Burke had grown tired of his own law. So he gathered up his inner circle, including his four children and their spouses. and they all went to a motel in Dallas. And in that motel room, with his actual own biological children, Berg changed that rule.
He told his closest acolytes that the rules in the Old Testament, no adultery, for example, are conveniently superseded by the Golden Rule from Matthew 22, 36. Someone asked Jesus, Teacher, which commandment is the greatest in the law, and Jesus declared Love the Lord your God with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The next one is the famous one Love thy neighbour as thyself.
So Berg told his top brass that as long as everything they did was in love, they could do whatever they wanted. So basically, as long as you can quote some Bible verses, you can fuck whoever you want. And then David Berg watched all of his children fuck their partners in front of him in that motel room in Dallas. Shortly after, presumably after growing tired of just watching, Berg came up with the concept of sharing.
Where married couples could swap partners with each other, which also meant that separated couples, who were sent on missions to different places, could basically fuck whoever they wanted. This is how revelations from Berg were passed down to the eventual thousands of followers. First he tested his new plans out with his nearest disciples, so basically his actual children, and then the practice would trickle down through the elected officials. And yes, I say elect.
As more of the children of God spread across the world, a very effective system of governance was actually put in place. Each, for want of a better word, colony, had a leader called a shepherd. They were elected by the groups in which they lived, and then they reported to an area. These group homes and colonies quickly spread all over the world, particularly outside of Europe, because Berg taught that the East was far less corrupt than the West and therefore much easier to save souls in.
So yes, that is so very convenient and so very, very telling. He's like It's very Jim Jonesy again, who's like, let's just move to Guyana, where like people aren't gonna ask as many questions about what the fuck I'm doing with all this fucking cyanide and flavor eight.
Again, it's just like r r like replace every word in there that David Berg uses. The East is less corrupt than the West and therefore easier to save souls. I think what he means is the East is more corrupt than the West and therefore it's easier to rape people. Yes, that is exactly what he means.
And life in the group homes, as I'm sure you can imagine, was not easy. Burke himself spent most of his time bopping around Europe with the old church and the new, and he gave instructions to the shepherds by writing letters every month. And he called these the Mo letters. Pause for effect. The Mo letter. Are you thinking about Mo Lester? Yes, I am. I am. I am thinking about Mo Lester and his letters that he would have eventually written me.
So in case you need it spelling out for you, Mo is in Moses. And they even had little pictures as well. In 1972, David Berg was living right here in London, and he entitled one of his famous letters to his followers, I Got A Split. The very odd thing about David Berg. Very seventies though. So seventies. But he's also fifty in the seventies. Like he's not cool. He's not young and hip and with it, but he'll do he'll say things like a split kid. I got a split kid
And he's like, hey Ma, burn your bra. Like he'll just like say he speaks in rhyming couplets quite a lot and uses a lot of like new age. Oh my god. Funky talk. Oh. So these letters, of which there are thousands, were entitled the Molest. And it was the way in which David Berg communicated with the children of God.
all the way out to every far flung corner of the world that his flock had spread. He wrote that the storm of God's judgments begins to break upon the wickedness of the lowlands of America.
He, like Jesus, was being persecuted by the unholy, and therefore he had to disappear. From now on the Mo letters would be the only form of communications with his shepherds, who would pass it on to the Berg himself would of course be with them in spirit, just like Jesus was with his disciples after his ascension to heaven.
And this separation from his followers was also a major reason that the Children of God is arguably the most successful cult of all time. I mean look You could write a whole cult business book. on this. And it's basically like, look, founder led businesses are very hard because the founders can be quite intense about things. If they take a little step back and let the business run itself, things can sometimes be more successful. AKA
The David Berg model. The David Berg model is uh you're much more difficult to catch if not even your closest followers know where you are. This is true. And um I mean hands off in the loosest possible sense, because as we will find out, he's a very hands-on kind of man. Tender. In actual fact, very few of the children of God knew what David Burke even looked like.
No photographs of him were circulated. And even when he was featured in the Mo Letters in the Little Cartoons, he was either depicted as like a classic cartoon godman like Longbeard, White Robe, etcetera, Or he was drawn as a human man with the head of a lion, because no one can dob you in if they don't know what you look like. It's very interesting. Do you think that was his
reason behind not being so visibly present throughout his cult. I think there are so many decisions made by him and or Karen Zerby that are so clever. If it was just a one off, I'd be like, oh, it's a coincidence, but there's so many of them, and he evades justice forever. I think he did know what.
Fascinating because yeah, if it was purposeful and deliberate, it is genius. Even the idea of if David Burke dies, then no one knows who he is. So they can just keep the whole shebang running by substituting him with a different person. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You didn't hear that. Go back to suspending your disbelief immediately.
So this sudden shift from spiritual being rather than colony visitor might have had something to do with New York's Charity Fraud Bureau investigation on Berg and his associates for fiscal jiganery and uh perversion of the course of justice because it did Mm-hmm.
Berg encouraged his followers to leave the States too. So in nineteen seventy three there was a mass exodus of the children of God for over a hundred and thirty colonies all over the globe. Some of the original three hundred on the Texas ranch did stay. But not many, and Berg continued to send his mow letters, telling all the children of God how to live every second of their lives.
Now if you want to go and look at the Mo Letters for yourself, then you can give them a quick Google and they are there for your viewing displeasure. But we really wouldn't recommend it. They are incredibly graphic and quite a lot of them involve No surprises, child molestation, gang rape, and really awful cartoon images. I have seen these before. And uh I would just say don't don't do it. It you just don't need it. It like nobody needs to watch the Serbian film. Nobody needs to read the Mole.
They are either incredibly boring of like how many times you should take a shit a day, or they are just childright. Yeah. Now what we have attempted to do instead is collect examples of some of the most batshit things that Berg wrote down in his Mo letters without making us all so depressed that we want to end it all. Yeah, we've read them, you don't have to.
One of the first Mo letters that he ever sent out confirmed that sharing spouses sexually was fine because Jesus loved sex. It's actually the devil that hates it. What? Plot twist. Annie went on to explain that sharing was also fine, because the wife of one man was the wife of God, and therefore everyone else's wife as well.
And it was also unfair for single people to be lonely and left out. In addition to that, he wrote that having sex in front of children was totally fine because there is no shame in it. Yeah, so he's like a he's like a sexual communist as well. Oh yeah. Everyone gets sex. No one is left out at the sex, whether you want to give them the sex or not.
And children were also told this in their own version of the Mo Letters called Kids with a Z. No. Kids True Comics and I've written comics with a C but I do believe it was comics with a K. And in these comics the children were told that everyone sleeping in the same bed was fine, and that nobody should be wearing underwear in bed, and adults were encouraged to check this before.
Children were told that when the end times came they would be able to shoot lasers out of their eyes and fire from their mouths in order to defeat the Antichrist. They were physically trained from young ages, literally preparing for war. And because the only other books they were allowed to read were the Three Musketeers and the Count of Monte Cristo, the children wholeheartedly believed it. I always find it very strange that.
Children in cults'cause it's I'm sure it's not the first time I've seen this where they're allowed the Count of Monte Cristo as one of their Why? It's a story about like It's a jail break. Yeah. Yeah. No. Why? Why? And it's fucking massive. What child is reading the Count of Monte Cristo? Anyway, the Mo letters were filled with women wearing floaty see-through scarves, most of the time having sex with lion-headed birds.
The women of the colonies dressed up like these women and sent videos of themselves dancing to Berg, and these videos included the children of the cult as well. Berg made it very clear in his letters that quote, boys get semen and girls get their periods, if God didn't intend them to start having sex then, they wouldn't be able to procreate at that age. So nothing wrong with sex ever at all, as long as it was practised in love. Even if that sex was with a child, even your
And once more Berg pointed to the Bible to back himself up. In a letter from Saint Paul to the Corinthians, Paul wrote All things are lawful to me, but all things are not helpful. So basically, do whatever you like, but don't let the system see you do. Now of course by far the most concerning element of the children of God is the abuse of the children that were either born into the cult or brought in by their parents. We have a lot more on that next week, but here is a brief overview.
As we said, children and adults all slept communally, and underwear was forbidden. And because even before the children are brought into it,'cause there are years where that doesn't happen. Even before that, because sex is so encouraged and like the thing you will h always hear in interviews with people who've left the children of God is that like God is love and love is sex and that's what you're told. So adults are fucking each other in front of children all the time. And that's the thing it's
The idea of the cult leader, if you want more information by our book, paperback coming out in September. But definitely this idea of when you join a cult, right, the cult leader's vision, the cult leader's view of the way in which world should be, the w the kind of deviant life that they want to live. They don't want to be a deviant on the outskirts of a society. They want to create their own society within which their deviance is normalized.
And that's exactly what you see David Berg doing here. He creates this group with hundreds of thousands of followers all over the world and then he uses the Mo Letters as a vessel to normalize and warp the view and vision and the framework of reference for all of his cult members to go along with his own levels of deviance that he wants to live in. So once you've normalized it, you're not a freak anymore.
You're not a criminal anymore. You're just doing what everybody's doing. But you made them do it. So the attitude to child rearing in the cult was very much it takes a vintage. Women did not spend any more time with their own children than anyone else's. Everyone was a mama or an auntie. In one of the books it said that so the lady who leaves, her mum is still in, I think. She was like, I was one of ten children and Or maybe it's a YouTube video actually.
She was I was one of ten children and I saw my own biological mother for an hour a week and it was spread across everyone, you didn't spend any more time with your actual mother than you did with anyone else. Again, very very communist though, if you believe in that, like he's preaching what he's saying. It's this idea of like it's not about individual nuclear families. It's about the state or i e the village raising your child.
Again, so that the family cannot have too much of an attachment to their own child. It's a it's a group communal living. Everyone is as important as everyone else. Your child is not or should not be more important to you than anyone else's. Which obviously goes against biology. Now fathers taking their sons to sex workers in the cult very young was also incredibly common, and boys were asked which of their aunties they wanted to have sex with.
This sort of teaching of how to have sex never goes away. In 1982, Berg and Karen Zerby released a child raising hand. And they declare that children were no longer allowed to attend any kind of school outside of the cult. This book was seven hundred pages long, and included everything the children needed to know, according to Berg.
Which is evolution is a lie, simple arithmetic, and boys got to do geometry because they had to do carpentry. The children were also treated to another comic, called Heaven's Girl. Who's a fifteen year old superhero who knocked around in a see-through toga and a shepherd's crook? And she was an end times prophet with supernatural powers. Her escapades came to the cults monthly, with the mow letters.
And there are lots of stories about Heaven's Girl. There are hundreds and hundreds of editions. Again, you can find them if you want. I wouldn't recommend it. There's one story which I haven't been able to get out of my head.
where Heaven's Girl is captured by a gang uh of soldiers and she's raped by them, and then they throw her to the lions. But instead of fighting the sexual assault off Heaven's Girl, whose name is Mary Claire, She s submits to the rape and whispers about Jesus to the soldiers as they rape her, and that makes them feel so guilty and filled with the word of Christ, that they come back and rescue her from the lions and she is completely Except having been r gang raped. Sure. But minor details.
Well that's one of his catchphrases is you you don't have to worry about rape in the children of God, it doesn't happen. Yep. Because women are just told that they have to submit. Yeah. And that happens to Heaven's Girl a lot. She uses sex and submission to escape the antichrist forces. She also performs the miracles of Moses and she can make people go blind as well.
Lovely. It's interesting that they do this Heavens Girl one because they also rape the boys just as much, right? It's a it's a free for all, isn't it? Well, kinda yes. But Male homosexuality, absolutely no. So the women were allowed to fuck the little boys, but David Berg was very much like an he called them sodomite. So he that wasn't fine. Lesbianism totally fine, obviously. Sure, sure, sure. But so all of the boys were raped predominantly by the older women.
And again, with cult formation, this is one of the most interesting things, right? It's that move from you just doing perverse things. and trying to get away with it, to the power and the gratification it would give someone like David Berg To take quote unquote normal people because there's hundreds of thousands of people in the car. They can't all be paedophiles. They can't all be child sex offenders when they join. Because that wasn't even, like you said, a part of the deal at the very start.
So his early power and control and that glory for him comes from taking relatively normal people that he finds to join this cult. And then not just normalizing his fucked up deviant worldview onto them, but then also getting them to commit the most heinous crimes imaginable, like raping their own children. It is mind boggling. So, what we've never been able to get our head around is how all of this came from the mind of one man. There are thousands of Mo letters, and I mean thousands.
And I think it was something like I read it was like three million pages were distributed by the children of God every month in their life. It's unbelievable. But then maybe yeah, it's not like he's doing anything else. You've got and then and George R. R. Martin not comparing him to David Berg. But like you people can come up with entire worlds just because my brain can't do it. Like
But I think the bigger question here is also how could a mind like David Berggs become so completely depraved when it came to sex? Well, we've got a little story for you that might explain some of the origins. When Berg was nineteen and driving his mother around, he wrote in one of his Mow letters that he was sharing a bed with his mother on the road.
It was cold, so she wrapped him up in a warm embrace. Apparently Berg's first reaction was one of shock, but he also admitted, I think for the first time in my life I had sexual feelings about my own mother. He describes how attractive she was in her thin nightgown, and then how he got a massive bonus. He wrote in a Mo letter, Had I been less of a square, I may have been more responsive. It could have been a beautiful sexual relationship.
Okay, look. Um he's nineteen years old here, and he has also been under the thumb and under the control of his mother, who is, I think safe to say, an incredibly domineering woman. his entire life. So whatever was going on here, she we can say is absolutely the instigator because David Berg was terrified of her. So she is the one with all the power. She's the one with the control. And for everything David Berg goes on to become
The roots of it lie in his own sexual abuse at the hands of his mother, I think. That's probably safe to say. But before we let you scuttle off to mentally prepare yourself for what we have in store next, to throw in a bit of children of God trivia for you that's not widely reported on. Berg was big mates with none other than Colonel Gaddafi. Why not?
Berg was actually invited to Libya by old plastic backface, and he saw this as an opportunity to spread even more of the word. So he took plenty of his women with him to fuck all of the Libyan leaders. Berg and his Harim actually stayed in Libya for two whole months, but as soon as it became clear that Gaddafi had literally no intention of converting, Berg went back into hiding and back to his old trick.
I think the point was that Gaddafi was hoping that the children of God, because they're American, would use their reach to publish positive things about his regime. But they didn't do that, obviously. So everyone lost in the situation. Yeah, I mean Gaddafi must have just been told, Oh, this is this guy, he writes out.
three million newsletters a year and it has an incredible reach all around the world and he's American. But I can imagine that even Colonel Gaddafi was quite glad when David Berg left Libya. And that takes us up to nineteen seventy four, when Berg and his nearest and dearest were living right here in London. And Karen Zerby started to fuck a lot of people who weren't David Berg. And Berg wrote this into the Mo letter scripture, called it flutter.
Which we're going to tell you all about next week. Come back then if you're brave enough. Yep, I don't know if I am. And I promised to explain the garlic and bomb holes as well. Great, great. You don't want to leave that particular plot hole a gaping ill. Let's leave. Okay, that's it guys. We'll be back next week for part two. Goodbye.