A message from beyond the grave

Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

You'd think a religious group would protect and defend its children, especially one called "Children of God." That was the name of a controversial group founded in the 1960s, that preached a gospel of "free love." But many who grew up in the group say "free love," meant sexual abuse of young children.

Now one of them speaks out, in a haunting, tormented voice: An extraordinary videotaped message that comes from beyond the grave. He was a boy groomed to be a prophet, but doomed to a life of pain. And that life would end in an explosion of violence.

As the awful business begins, there is simply no sign of what is to come. It seems friendly, cordial, a young man making a video for friends.

“Well, hey everyone. This is Rick… I want there to be some record of the way I feel, um, my ideas, just who I was, really.”

But then, that past tense: "Who I was." How he came to make this strange, sad, desperate tape, and what is still coming, as he talks to the camera, nearly defies comprehension.

“I think it's kind of easy to, uh, just one night, you know, just one day, just decide to end it, just do it. But I think it's pretty [expletive] hard to do what I'm trying to do.”  

He is Ricky Rodriguez, not quite 30, was suicidal and on the edge.

How different it was when he was Davidito, the blessed child, son and heir of the founder of the “Children of God.”

It was David Berg, "Moses David," who founded the "Children of God" in the late 1960s. And, at a time when many new sects sprang up in America, imprinted his with something unique: He decreed that one of the best expressions of divine love was earthly sex — lots of sex.

"'The Family' began to view sexuality as their sort of their distinctive freedom mark," says James Chancellor is a professor of religion who interviewed hundreds of "Children of God" members for a book he wrote about the group. He says Berg encouraged his followers to have sex freely with each other.

They even filmed their exploits, as these tapes obtained by NBC:

"God gave sex as a pure and true gift to humankind. If your brother is hungry, you feed them. If they were thirsty, you give them drink. And if they have sexual needs, you help fulfill those needs."

And Berg instructed women believers to have sex with outsiders, to bring them into the group. He even had a name for that — flirty fishing, he called it.

"They would go into a hotel bar, hotel waiting rooms, uh, lounges, and essentially pick up men," describes Chancellor.

It may have been on one such fishing expedition that Berg's second wife got pregnant by another man. Berg adopted the son she bore and named him "Davidito" — little David — heir-apparent to David Berg. 

Chancellor: There was this understanding that God had blessed this couple who leads 'The Family' with an heir — a son who would inherit the mantle, who would carry the prophetic spirit on until the end times. And so he, from his earliest stages, he had these expectations constantly with him.

Was it that pressure and the strange theology of the "Children of God", that eventually twisted the beautiful boy, Davidito, into Ricky Rodriguez, the troubled man on the videotape?

“Everybody has said, who I've talked to about this, well, you know, everybody has their problems, everybody has [expletive] life, but those people who say that, you know, they had no clue as to what actually went on because they weren't part of the cult.” 

He used the word "cult." And certainly the group was secretive, constantly on the move, keeping the kids out of school. Chancellor believes it has moved past that stage now, and while still quite radical, years ago abandoned the idea that children could learn about life through sex. The idea that David Berg had explained this way:

Chancellor: Only the law of love controlled their lives. So whatever was done in love is above the law.

Back then, Davidito was the first to experience the new teachings.

Chancellor: He was raised at the very pinnacle of all this where all the experimentation began, where much of the very unusual practices with the children were initiated.

Keith Morrison: And those unusual sexual practices would have been used with him--

Chancellor: Oh, yes.

Morrison: --earlier and more than all the other--

Chancellor:  Yeah. It started when he was 2 years old. 

Far from hiding the details of Davidito's upbringing, the group actually produced a book about it written by one of his early nannies and distributed to church members. It's called "The Story of Davidito." It's a daily diary of the little boy's accomplishments, full of snapshots and tips on parenting. Tips on parenting that might seem to an outsider not only bizarre, but even criminal.

In the book are photographs and stories of a 3- and 4-year-old boy having sex with adults and with other children his age, photos so graphic we've decided we shouldn't show them to you.

The sex was supposed to welcome Davidito into God's loving embrace. Instead, as he made clear on his videotape, he thought his parents and others simply exploited their children:

“You just [expletive] over because you're a sick [expletive] pervert and you don't have anything better to do with your life than to [expletive] your little kids. It's just so far beyond me, I just can't [expletive] imagine it but yet it happened, it happened right before me. It happened to all of you. Thousands of us.”

"Thousands of us?" Exactly how many is not certain, but some, like ex-member Julia McNeil, have come forward with harrowing tales.

Julia McNeil: My parents would send me off with two adult members from the group. And we'd all sleep in one big bed together and the man would start touching me in the night and molesting me. And I would just kind of block it all out and pretend this was happening to somebody else.

Morrison: How old were you?

McNeil: I was 11 at the time.

The group was free with sex, but also extremely authoritarian. When Julia and Davidito rebelled against its teachings, they were sent to so called "teen training," which featured hard labor and sometimes, they say, physical abuse. Ricky Rodriguez says teen training is where he first thought seriously of suicide.

"I was thinking, well, you know, what kinds of poisons are there. Poisons are, you know, easy, or so I thought." 

Back then he never acted on those suicidal thoughts. He kept rebelling and eventually left the "Children of God". And so did Julia. But then they discovered that fleeing the group did not mean they could escape from the demons hiding in their pasts.

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