The infamous group The Children of God who now call themselves The Family, are about to outrage the world once again. After surviving the dawn raids of 1992 when 127 of their children were taken into the custody of Community Services, they say the Lord has spoken to them once more in ways that will confirm the darkest fears of their enemies. They beleive that their dead leader, David Berg and Jesus have been speaking to them from heaven. The heady mix of sex, religion and children is being stirred once again. This is what the Lord has been saying: "With you I deep kiss. With you I send My tongue into your mouth. With you I hold and I kiss and I caress your breasts and I suck on them. And with you I have deep lovemaking and deep penetration. As I love you, as I f... you, as I bring forth orgasms of My Spirit, we are united....even as the husband thrusts.... etc."
The Police and Community Services raids on The Family homes proved to be an expensive and damaging blunder. The barrister representing DOCS Robin Tupman, claimed in Cobhram Childrens Court in 1992 that the children had been and were likely to be sexually abused. But no evidence was found and at least $10 million later, both DOCS and their Victorian equivalent are obliged to watch from a distance. In fact a multi million dollar civil suit by the Family against DOCS will be decided in the next 6 months.
There are 300 Family members in Australia, living in communal homes in Sydney, Melbourne, the Gold Coast and Brisbane. They are also in more than 30 countries world wide and have a stable membership of around 10,000. Since 1969 they have maintained that Jesus was calling them to a life of open and joyous sexuality. Between 1976 and 1986 the women of The Family went into up-market hotels and bars in Australia offering their version of the love of Jesus. It was a form of evangelism in which their prophet and leader David Berg, called on the Family women to use sex and seduction to win souls for the Lord. In Sydney, the Family actually ran an escort agency. One can imagine the astonishment of the clients when the girls arrived with a Bible or a guitar and gave a little message of salvation before getting to the business in hand. But, because of the fear of Aids and the adverse publicity it was causing, the practice of Flirty Fishing stopped in 1986. Although, I know of at least one lawyer in Australia who was "flirty fished" in the last four years.
For the last 25 years the leadership of the Family has hidden itself from the world. David Berg believed that he was in a deadly battle with the forces of Satan and he was afraid that angry parents or Interpol or other groups were intent on killing him. During that time he moved from country to country, went out in disguise and hid himself even from his own followers. But in the two years before he died, Berg wrote to me to congratulate me on a summary of their theology I wrote as an expert witness in their court battles. From this first encounter, I asked him if he would agree to an interview for Television. In 1984 he died, he was 76 years. But two months ago in a world exclusive, the new leader Peter Amsterdam agreed to meet with me for an interview with Jana Wendt's Witness program. Amsterdam is a charming and entirely pleasant man about 40 years. He talked on camera about "Flirty Fishing" and the place of the children in the Family in their radical sexual life. But the fear is still there. He insisted in waring a wig.
Peter Amseterdam believes that Berg is still talking to them. And despite the trouble their sexual beliefs and practices have caused in the past, they say Berg is calling on them to take sex into their relationships with God.
A series of prophecies have been circulating in The Family for the last two years. The call it "The Loving Jesus Revelation". It calls on the Family to do three things, first they are to visualise their sexual activity as happening with Jesus. They say throughout history religious there has been a belief that moments of ecstacy on this earth, with sex or music or drugs or any moment of utter joy, there is a religious dimension. They have taken this to the limit. They are being called on to masturbate to Jesus, the men are being asked to visualise themselves as women so that Jesus can make love to them, and they are being told to call words of love to Jesus as they are having sex. This is one of the Family writing about this new direction: "I understand that other men, when they say love words to Jesus or masturbate with Him or have sex with a woman while loving Jesus, visualize in his fantasy, represents himself. In other words, the man sees himself as the woman making love to Jesus."