#karenzerby

[ex-cogtfi]

TW child abuse, religious abuse

February 18th. On THE DATE that the cult of COG-TFI is still celebrating as the "birthday" of the cult and its late pedophiliac founder David Berg, COG-TFI survivors are speaking out in The Sunday Mail and on Episode 2 of the explosive documentary series Prayed Upon by the Courier Mail.

We are incredibly proud of these brave survivors for speaking out, as it is an emotionally intense, vulnerable, and demanding experience to go public with such personal and painful stories. Please support COG-TFI survivors and help us raise awareness by sharing this post and signing our petition to bring COG-TFI cofounder and current leader Karen Zerby to justice (link in bio).

[ex-cogtfi]

To close 2023, we're sharing this heartfelt poem by COG-TFI survivor E.S. @poetry_catharsis that traces the impact of psychological and emotional abuse inflicted upon children, the devastating repercussions, and the reclaiming and unlearning we choose as survivors. The choices we make each day to choose self love and freedom, to rewrite the messages ingrained in us. To take back what was stolen from us before we were born.

May 2024 be a year of continued healing and awareness, as we support survivors in telling their stories and healing, and shine a light on cults and cultic abuse.

[ex-cogtfi]

This is part two of a look at the context of the word “security” in the cult.

The Family International (formerly the Children of God and the Family of Love) have spent over 50 years avoiding prosecution for their crimes, conning donors, and developing and honing strategies to handle legal attacks and combat public criticism.

They’ve worked to create a carefully curated image of a wholesome missionary group, misunderstood by the public and maligned by detractors. Through setting up charitable fronts, befriending people with influence, and coaching members to practice the doctrine of “deceivers yet true”, TFI have attempted to publicly distance themselves from policies that resulted in the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of children. TFI has been so successful in their rebranding campaigns and coverups that they were invited to perform at the White House during the administrations of two United States presidents.

Meanwhile, TFIs internal publications show that the cult’s leadership have no remorse for the harms they have and continue to cause. Internal documents by the current leader and co-founder Karen Zerby explicitly state that the cult still believes there is nothing inherently wrong with adult-child sex and adult-child sexual interactions.

(The content of these posts has been adapted and excerpted from articles on exfamily.org, especially “The Family - Official Policy on Lying & Deception”. Underlining is consistent with the original cult publications.)

[ex-cogtfi]

This is a heartbreaking account from one of Peter Puppet’s (Hugh J. Fowler’s) daughters, sharing her memories of her father and what he suffered at the hands of the COG-TFI founders and leaders, David Berg and Karen Zerby (see the previous two posts, "Healing and Rewards" and "Trust God", which document the public attacks and abuse that Berg and Zerby inflicted on Peter).

In the end, after publicly humiliating, attacking, and maligning Peter, and profiting handsomely off his talents and labor via the Luvvets puppet show, the cult discarded Peter, excommunicating him to die alone. He died in physical agony, daring not to even use pain relief, and in psychological anguish and fear, believing he had angered God, without even his family by his side. The injustices and abuses that Peter suffered in the cult are heart wrenching. After his passing, Peter’s family was ordered to burn their photos of him and were told that God was punishing their family.

This unimaginable suffering, this preventable death, this generational trauma – all of this and more are the unapologetic acts of the founders and the current leader of The Family International, the “family of love” committed to “sharing the message of God’s love”.

[ex-cogtfi]

Have you ever felt like you had a chance to be reborn, to see the world with fresh eyes? Verity Teri Carter, a second-generation survivor of the COG-TFI cult, describes the intense emotional rollercoaster she experienced after escaping the cult.

Although she had to contend with many struggles after starting her life over, the challenges did not diminish the sheer joy of having the freedom to make her own choices and forge her own way, in contrast with the coercive control of the cult infrastructure. Finding freedom is not without its cost, but it is worth it!

Please read, share, and take a moment to sign the petition (in bio) to bring current leader of 'The Family International' (formerly known as 'The Children of God') to justice.

[ex-cogtfi]

Mary Mahoney, a first-generation survivor of the COG-TFI cult, describes the emotional devastation of coming to terms with spending much of her adult life in a cult. Coupled with guilt and regret for the decades devoted to an exploitative organization was the struggle of unlearning years of propaganda and manipulation. Over time, Mary has found healing and is grateful for each day now spent in freedom.

Read more of Mary’s writings on Medium https://mary-mahoney.medium.com/

and on her blog, where she shares her journey: https://comingtogripswith.blogspot.com/. Read about her experiences in COG-TFI in her memoir, Abnormal Normal: My Life in the Children of God.

[ex-cogtfi]

February 18th, the birthday of COG-TFI’s late founder David Berg that doubles as the cult's self-appointed "birthday", has been a day of cultic rituals and forced declarations of devotion, but in 2002 it became a very different anniversary for second-generation COG-TFI survivor Whisper James ( Whisper Wind ). Instead of a day devoted to a cult that oppressed and abused the most vulnerable, it became the day that Whisper James found her freedom. In this post, she describes the many obstacles, psychological and physical, that she bravely overcame to gain freedom for herself and for her children. Despite the cult’s mechanism of forcing cult women into coerced reproduction and childrearing to keep them enslaved to the cult and its ideology, Whisper found the strength to become a Cycle-Breaker, taking herself and her children away from the cult’s clutches forever.

[ex-cogtfi]

This piece reflects on the unequal power dynamic and oppression many second-generation cult survivors experienced being raised in the cult of COG-TFI. Children raised in the cult were of value only in their potential to serve the cult’s interests, not for their inherent worth as human beings. As many cult members watched large numbers of second-generation adults choosing to leave the cult, some cult parents became fixated on guilting and trapping their children into staying in the cult. This piece uses the relationship between a tyrannical empress and a slave girl to portray the dictatorial control children and youth in the cult went through. After a long struggle, freedom is sweet, as it would have been to a slave girl bidding farewell to the empress who enslaved her.

Credit: image by pngtree