The following article is from Alex Constantine's book, "Psychic Dictatorship In The U.S.A.", published by Feral House. Any one care to comment on his views?
The Children of God have gathered alms from powerful admirers. Chief Inspector Juan Carlos Rebello, who led police in the COG raids, said "we found evidence suggesting that the Family was funded by influential businessmen worldwide." One Argentine magazine found that some financial supporters of the cult were "well-known and powerful people, and pondered whether Berg's disturbed mental state "is being exploited by a network of powerful people to sexually control an army of children." Julia Berry, the prophet's own kin, has said that it was her "privilege" to be paired sexually with "very important men - men from the government." The Children of God, she said, "always had very powerful friends.... I met presidents from around the world. The children's chorus gave us an image of purity and innocence. It was a seduction."
According to the Washington Post for June 2, 1993, "the Family's leadership follows a policy of lying to outsiders, is steeped in a history of sexual deviance and has even meddled in Third World politics." Edward Probe,(sic) a Canadian who once edited Family publications, worked in the Philippines from 1986 to '88. He told the Post that "Family officials openly sympathized with right-wing military officers who tried to overthrow the government of. 'What we were doing was supplying all the moral support.'" One former member from Costa Rica told Argentina's Gente magazine on September 9 about her life inside the cult: "My father used to have certain privileges inside the organization," she said. "He was considered a very important person for public relations. His paternal grandfather, the criminal lawyer, Guillermo Puddle, was a close friend of Chile's military dictator Pinochet, and Juan Carlos, the king of Spain." Pinochet and Carlos became financial and political benefactors of the cult.
The Family, according to David Hubert, a former member, contends that sexual evangelizing was used to curry political favor. "They would target special people," he told the Washington Post, "in the media, lawyers, in the government."
The guiding inner-circle of the Family is known as the Royal Family, and blue-bloods have in fact been sought out by Berg. In the 1970s, the prophet's "official representative" and second-in-command was Barbara Convair, the Italian duchess of Zoagli and Castelvari, rechristened Queen Rachel. Then in her twenties, the "ravishing, long-haired No. 2 leader" was rumored to have been a Berg consort. In 1973 she married Duke Emanuel Convair, a sect member, who invited the Family of Love to his estate, a wine-producing farm near Florence. The Duke graciously donated a vineyard to the cult. Germany's Stern reported in 1977 that a school on the estate trained women in the ancient art of religious prostitution. When Tim asked her about the allegation, she denied it ... but insisted: "There is nothing wrong with a sexy conversion. We believe sex is a human necessity, and in certain cases we may go to bed with someone to show people God's love."
In Bromley, south London, a recruit's millionaire father donated an abandoned factory, adapted as the Family's headquarters in England. And they could not resist the call of the Holy Land, migrated to Egypt, and were expelled in November, 1985. Egyptian law, it seems, forbid the unorthodox sexual and religious practices of the cult. In 1977 the Children of God found a new messiah in Colonel Mummer Khaddafi, who offered them sanctuary from police investigations in California and New York. Louis Lefkowitz, the attorney general of New York, had charged them with kidnapping, brainwashing, imprisonment, enslavement, prostitution, incest and rape. But the U.S. Justice Department unexpectedly dropped the case, concluding, "'brainwashing' and 'mind control' do not constitute violations of federal law.... We have also concluded that the possibility of drafting effective federal criminal legislation in this area is unlikely." The New York attorney general's fraud division also lost interest in the case. "When it came time to prosecuting the group," reported the Los Angeles Times, then Atty. Gun. Lefkowitz sidestepped the issue with the claim that the Children "were protected by the First Amendment - a baffling rationale that later aroused suspicion the report was issued mainly to placate influential parents who had lost children to the sect. Lefkowitz, now retired, says he doesn't recall the matter."
The Justice Department probe hardly amounted to a bloody inquisition, but the Children cried religious persecution and fled the country. They left behind some nagging questions, foremost among them: Who murdered one of the Children in 1976, the body discovered with crushed internal organs at a medieval Belgium fortress? And who killed Berg's son, found in the same condition in Switzerland a few years earlier? Berg accused unnamed "enemies" of the Children for the murders. His critics blamed the sect. The public statements of some of Berg's followers fed their suspicions. In Canada, the Children declared on a national network that they were capable of lies, theft, murder, anything if so ordered by Berg. In 1972 a COG defector told NBC that she had been trained to commit criminal acts, including murder. In Libya, Colonel Khaddafi was enamored with the cult.
He provided them sanctuary, counsel, and even penned a song, addressed to "all industrial countries," performed at Children of God songfests around the world:
Do as I do.
I pray to God.
I'm very happy
Because I found the road
With Allah, Allah, Allah[...]
The Children rechristened the budding psalmist "Godhafi." Moses Berg enthused in New Nation News, a sect newsletter: "There has not been another worldly political leader in modern times as this young prophet of the seemingly impossible. There has hardly been such a godly world political leader since the days of his own prophet Mohammed ... Jesus." Berg portrayed Khaddafi - now a deity - as "the savior who will ignite the young and rescue them from those twin forces of evil, godless Communism and American materialism."
Berg's politics were shared by messiah Khaddafi. Muommar Khaddafi was a product of the Libyan secret service, a branch of government assembled by Adolph Eichmann, Otto Skorzeny, Heinrich Muller and other engineers of the Final Solution who, like Berg, enjoyed the protection of totalitarian Middle Eastern despots. (Besides the Children of God, Khaddafi was also the patron of the infamous Paladins, a coterie of Nazi mercenaries from West Germany. Founded by Colonel Skorzeny, Hitler's commando chief, and the CIA, the Paladin group was responsible for a 1973 airport bombing in Rome that claimed thirty-two lives. They have linked up with death squads in Latin America and terrorists in Europe, South Africa and elsewhere.)
But the Libyan leader's fascination with the Children of God quite possibly ran through religion and politics to unconventional sex. His personal life is rarely discussed. He is said to be sexually eccentric, another trait he shares with Moses Berg.
Berg and his "prophet of the impossible" also found common ground in violent opposition to Israel. Reclusive, eccentric Moses David held a peculiar set of political beliefs for a demigod. One of his commentaries insisted that a small group of international Jews lurk behind a worldwide conspiracy. Berg assailed Jews again in a 1982 "Mo letter," and "their stooges, the Negroes ... the curses of the world," the source "of everything that's evil." Berg claimed that his hatred of Jews and blacks sprang from a higher authority - "I'm a racist because GOD is!" he exulted in one of his delirious "Mo" letters.
In 1978 the COG changed its name to the Family of Love (and so continued to operate in Argentina after the Children were banned). By this time they boasted some 250,000 coverts in 60 countries. The sect currently estimates that its ranks number about 300,000.
In the United States the political pull of the sect extended to the Bush administration. A chorale of Family children kicked off a Christmas show in 1992 for Barbara Bush in the East Room of the White House, for which they received certificates of appreciation signed by President Bush. The sect also sang for Bush after he toured the ravages of Hurricane Andrew in south Florida. (It wasn't the first time Bush's name arose in connection with a child prostitution cult. At the 1988 national Republican convention in New Orleans, Larry King of Omaha - a ranking GOP figure and convicted credit union rip-off artist - sang the National Anthem. In 1990, Nebraska state senator Schmit set out to investigate King and his circle of political operatives and business tycoons, alleged to have operated a national child prostitution network that catered to wealthy patrons. Shortly thereafter Schmit received an anonymous phone call warning him off.)
The Family's political clout tends to put a damper on judicial investigations. Julia Berg recalls that adults in the Buenos Aries chapter "talked very openly about sex in front of children." At the age of 13, she alleges she was forced into a sexual relationship with a local pastor, and after leaving the Children attempted to press for his prosecution. But the judicial system, she says, flatly ignored her. After a police raid in 1989, Berry requested that a court-appointed physician examine her. The judge complied, But the doctor refused, explaining that he didn't want her "traumatized" by the examination - an ordeal, she says, incomparable to the trauma of molestation. "The doctor wouldn't accept my word that I wanted the examination." Family officials like to point out that "not once have we been found guilty of any kind of child abuse." This is true even in cases backed by solid evidence. The suggestion is that they are clean, but another interpretation is that strings are pulled by well-heeled patrons to stifle public disclosure.
Police came away from the 1989 raid with cocaine, pornographic video tapes and childrens' books with condoms adhering to the pages. No Family members were prosecuted. Likewise, investigations in Brazil and Spain also fell apart. In May 1992 police in Australia swept into six Family communes, removing 142 youngsters. A key witness for the prosecution recanted his testimony and charges were suspended. Another case in Melbourne awaits trial. In June 1993 French authorities raided 12 of the sect's homes, but the court ultimately returned 40 children to their parents. Another raid in Spain also unraveled. Likewise, the September '93 raids in Argentina led nowhere. In December it was determined that a federal judge had no jurisdiction the case, and the sex abuse charges were dropped.
The Family is most assuredly not suffering religious persecution for their admittedly "controversial sexual beliefs," as the cult leadership often claims. On the contrary, if the group was continually harried by police - as were, say, the Black Panthers - they would be unable to boast that "our members have always been completely exonerated by authorities," to quote Family spokesman Phil Edwards, writing from a sect haunt on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. in response one magazine article critical of the cult.