Juvenile Corruption, Abuse and Scandal: The shocking story of "The Children of God", the sect that moved the country

The dogs noticed that something was going on. However, their barking failed to wake them in the middle of the winter morning of 1993. When the police entered the house, the 72 children slept under the heavy wool blankets in the bunk beds of the villa Pilar of 5000 square meters. It would be the last night they would be there: the court order required his custody and that of 196 other boys from six other houses searched simultaneously. The complaint concerned the corruption of minors and they were the "children of God".

David Berg He was a Protestant pastor in the middle of power of flowers that everything could in the late 60s in California, United States. In equestrianism, the effervescent counter-culture, tired of capitalism and violence, has found a space to preach.

He claimed to be the elect of God, to have received his message and to have the mission to gather the lambs of God to save them from the end of the world., the data that also has.

In 1969, he creates the sect "The children of god", also known as "The family"where he (Father David, Moises David or Mo to dry) was the maximum leader. With Mo's letters wrote the Bible movement his interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.

In 1972, legal problems began for Mo. In the United States, "La Familia" was accused of tax evasion, polygamy, rape, incest and kidnapping. ; children. Several members have emigrated to Europe, Southeast Asia and South America.

Among the 30 detainees of the 1993 operation led by the federal judge of San Isidro, Roberto MarquevichThere were Canadians, French, Irish, Spaniards, Americans, Brazilians, Paraguayans, Mexicans, Peruvians, Venezuelans, Colombians and Norwegians. The cause had started three years earlier, when Ruth Mc Kee of Frouman, an American who has lived in Argentina, He denounced the fact that his 4 children aged 20 to 12 were the hostages of the sect.

The charges related to corruption and concealment of minors and violations of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the reduction to servitude and conspiracy.

In the raid ready-to-sell booklets, tapes and videos have been seized. according to José María Baamonde, President of the Spes Foundation (Sects Clarification Service), the "children of God" worked with two and on the guitar: they walked the streets, preached love and they offered their magazines, videos and tapes. They came to take place at the Foire des Nations.

Of the product, 40% were left for the colony and 60% were sent to Moalthough we never knew where he lived. News of the future! and The time of the end They were two of the publications. Some song titles: "Try, maybe you like it!", "I want to give you my light!", "The Manners!", "The sounds of the night!". All edited by "Chiqui video productions".

"The story of Davidito" that was not for sale – it was for internal consumption – was a kind of textbook of education and badual initiation. In a picture, a woman is lying, face up. Two children sit on it. Foot, "A trio of 3!" (A trio to 3). In another, a child pinches a woman's nipple. Legend: "He is a" mechanic "in the soul!" (He is a heart mechanic!)

"And he said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19). For Mo, women should be fishing women. They would fish and bring men flirting with the kingdom of God. One of her daughters, who left the cult, told the American interviewer this way Barbara Walters: "It was a religious prostitution."

In the family" they practiced the "FF", the "Flirty Fishing" from 1974 to 1987. Then Mo decided to stop using it to get money and loyal because it was too dangerous. A year earlier, in 1986, a deadly virus had been named: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).

The day after the raid, the prosecutor Chronic who had testimonials from people who had received badual favors in exchange for money and the Commissioner Juan Carlos Rebollo I said that the videos had been diverted badgraphic, that children "move like automatons" and "There was racial discrimination: they reject dark-skinned men and Jews."

Two months before the Spanish justice had placed in detention 22 boys who lived in sectarian houses in Barcelona. Five months earlier, the French police raided 12 houses in Condrieu, near Lyon. They took 40 boys. And 6 months ago, in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, they searched the seat of the sect in which lived 140 boys aged 2 to 16 years.

The cause of 1993 was not the first in Argentina: already in 1989, the sect had one and in the same court of San Isidrobut the judge was not Marquevich but Alberto Piotti. The complaint concerned the corruption of minors and drugs. The cocaine was seized but you never knew who it belonged to. it has also not been found inside or outside the home. The corruption of minors could not be proven and the detainees were fired.

By the time Marquevich moved the 268 boys, which the media have titled as a ransom, to the Congress of the Nation there were three cult bills in the debate. Piotti was the promoter of one of the most severe prison sentences proposed and fines imposed on religious groups simply for failing to be registered in the National Register of Cults. At the episcopal conference of our country in 1992, the most important question was: "the proliferation of sects in Argentina".

Although the videos that Commissioner Rebollo was talking about were never part of the cause, yes, there were badgraphic tapes. They were provided by former members of the sect from other countries who declared themselves in Buenos Aires. Among them, a famous court of San Isidro: Abigail Berry she had testified in 1989, but then, she says, the group had to say that everything was perfect. Then she was not encouraged to say that she had been abused at age 7 and raped at age 12 by the group leader.

Shortly after this visit to the courthouse, he fled Pilar's house where he lived. A "fish" from her mother helped her to escape. He promised direct access to the United States, but before forcing her to live with him for more than a year. All the while, he mistreated her.

Abigail told the judge that she had to get the fallopian tubes removed because of an infection that had nearly killed her. When he got sick at home, he was ordered to pray; going to the doctor was a lack of faith. What he had was not germs colonizing everything, but a curse of the devil.

Richard Dupuy He was another of the former members who testified. A few years ago, he arrived from the United States in Argentina as leader of the sect. He said that he had a very idealized notion of the group, so did not see "as something negative the abuse of boys or the practice of FF".

Edward Priebe has approached several badgraphic videos shot in the Philippines where he lived for 8 months with David Berg himself (Mo).

Pablo Romone said she saw a mother having bad with her 5-year-old son. He also said that in 1987 the group limited bad with teenagers due to the number of pregnancies.

Guillermo Barberis spoke of "romantic nights," when children aged 12 and over watched their fathers have bad with each other and with others.

The doctors who examined the 268 children talked about food. On the basis of milk and cereals, they argued that the lack of red meat in the diet caused an "insufficient psychic development from which the sect leaders obtained obedient disciples and desirous of complying with any order, as disgusting as it could be. "The group was vegetarian.

Of a total of 30 girls undergoing studies aged 12 to 21, 25 kept the hymen intact. Of the 156 boys, the doctors found 9 cases of alleged badual violence. For the Federal Chamber the examinations did not validate the presumption of rape of minors; there was no evidence to determine that the detainees had been the perpetrators of this crime. The charge of prostitution could not be proven: no information was obtained from the three months of tapping phones.

At the door of the children's institute where were their children and at the table Key time, the television show that the journalist led Mariano Grondona, members of "La Familia" they denounced religious persecution and an intrusion into community life. Marquevich, the judge, had decided on the moral plane and on the private life: ordered a blood compatibility test to find out if five children of a sect couple were children of that mother and that father. He also asked Interpol for the capture of Chief David Berg.

While the cause dragged in the media and went from the cover and central pages to boxes in a few days, Antonio Quarracino, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, called Judge Marquevich to offer all the necessary help to "recovery".

A cable from the Reuters news agency broadcast the lyrics of John Paul II about the case: "people who hope to find happiness in sects that exploit their followers by showing forms of esotericism and magic will fail in their search, are exposed to great disappointments."

"Sacrificial vice" was the title that put him Tomás Eloy Martínez to the article that he published in Page 12 and he said, "Only between 1988 and 1992 were they proven 475 acts of rape and perversion without a name by North American priests lovable looking against boys aged 6 to 13 years old ".

Three months of this dawn raids on the fifth house all detainees were released and the children returned to their parents' homes.

After the scandal, "La Familia" left Argentina.

Currently, the group works around the world under the name "The International Family" (LFI). On their website, they are presented as a Christian Virtual Community made up of people from nearly 80 countries who are dedicated to spreading the message of God's love. Berg died at the age of 75 in 1994. You now know where he is: he was buried on the coast of Caparica, Portugal.