Not Without My Sister: The True Story of Three Girls Violated and Betrayed

333 Pages·2008·1.45 MB·English

by  Kristina

Table of Contents
Title - Not Without My Sister
Dedication
Quote
Prologue
Introduction
Part 1 - Celeste's Story
Chapter 1 - Daddy's Little Girl
Chapter 2 - Loveville
Chapter 3 - Come Union
Chapter 4 - Behind Four Walls
Chapter 5 - Indoctrination
Chapter 6 - Torn
Part 2 - Juliana's Story
Chapter 7 - A Broken Family
Chapter 8 - The Odd One Out
Chapter 9 - The Rod Of Correction
Chapter 10 - Adopt Me, Please
Part 3 - Kristina's Story
Chapter 11 - Living A Double life
Chapter 12 - A Gypsy Missionary
Chapter 13 - Abusive Love
Chapter 14 - Escape
Part 4 - Journey To Freedom
Chapter 15 - Hide and Seek
Chapter 16 - Searching For Celeste
Chapter 17 - On Opposite Sides
Chapter 18 - Bittersweet Reunion
Chapter 19 - A Deceiver Yet True
Chapter 20 - A tale Of Two Fathers
Chapter 21 - Rehabilitation
Chapter 22 - House Of The Open Pussy
Chapter 23 - Anorexia
Chapter 24 - A Dream Come True
Chapter 25 - Is Justice A Dream?
Chapter 26 - Pearl Of Africa
Chapter 27 - Breaking Free
Chapter 28 - The Chained Eagle
Chapter 29 - The Power Of Love
Epilogue
Celeste Jones, Kristina Jones,
and Juliana Buhring
To our sister, Davida
To my sister in sorrow:
Too well did I understand
The look in your haunted eyes;
Pain and disillusionment.
You fought a losing battle,
And lost.
And died.
I will shedfor you the tears
Of a lifetime you will never live.
The tears you will never more shed.
Madonna of suffering,
Wrapped in the cold shroud of death.
I wept with you.
I weep foryou.
For I still can.
The tide of tears has turned.
Sleep, my sister,
Ad weep no more.
(Written on Davida's tombstone, Juliana 2005)
Lies written in ink cannot disguise
facts written in blood.
—Lu Xun (1881-1936
In January 2005, our sister Davida died from a drug overt dose. She was twenty-
three. The shock of Davida's death affected us deeply though we understood her
pain and despair. Each of us in our own way has struggled with painful
memories of abandonment, neglect, and abuse as children born and raised under
the malign influence of a religious cult, the Children of God.
We were systematically abused, physically, mentally, emotionally, and sexually;
from the earliest age. We were separated from each other and our parents and
raised communally in this organization, which was also known as the "Family."
Unlike our parents who had burned their bridges and left their former lives, we
were never given a choice over the paths our lives would follow. Isolated from
society, we were controlled by fear—fear of the government, police, doctors,
and social workers, and the even greater fear of God's wrath if we ever left the
protection of the Family.
Our childhood was dominated by one man: David Berg—a man we never met,
but who was like an invisible ghost that was with us at all times. He was the
warped and manipulative force behind the Children of God. David Berg liked to
see himself as a benevolent parental figure, and called us, his followers, the
"Children of David." He saw himself as the successor of King David and the
Prophet Moses—calling himself Moses David, or Mo for short. The children
were taught to call him "Grandpa." He was the head of our family, the prophet,
the leader, our "light in the midst of darkness." The rules we followed were
dictated by his words. We read about every detail of his life, his dreams, his likes
and dislikes, and the women he slept with and the children he abused. From a
very young age we memorized his words and hours of every day were dedicated
to studying his writings, called Mo Letters. "Word Time"—which was the time
spent reading these letters and studying the Bible—was an important part of
daily life. It would be difficult if not impossible to write about our life without
acknowledging the dominating influence of David Berg on our lives.
From birth, we were conditioned to obey and follow the way of the cult. We had
no choice, and knew no other way. We never heard our father express an opinion
that was his own; it was always, "Grandpa said..." If we were punished it was
because we had disobeyed Mo's rules; if we were rewarded it was because we
were "faithful followers." Our father's devotion to Berg and faith in his
prophecies and predictions was unwavering. If he questioned if any of it was
real, or if it was a chimera—smoke and mirrors—he never showed it, not even
behind closed doors.
Berg taught that birth control was rebellion against God, so within a few years
there were thousands of children born into the group. He boasted that we were
the "hope of the future"—a pure second generation untainted by the outside
world. We were told it was the highest privilege to be born and raised in the
Family, free from the shackles of the "System," as the outside world was called.
It was our destiny to become God's Endtime soldiers, and to give our lives for
the cause. Berg predicted the world would end in 1993, and we would become
the leaders of the New Millennium. As our lives on earth would be short, we
were never allowed to just be children. Our individuality was suppressed, and we
were simply commodities used to further the collective goals of the group.
The belief that damaged us the most was Berg's "Law of Love." God was love,
and love equaled sex. Sharing your body with someone else was considered the
highest expression of love. Age was not a barrier in Berg's Law of Love and
Family children were made to participate in his warped, pedophilic philosophy.
His own children and grandchildren suffered from his incestuous predilections.
In this book we describe the emotional journey we undertook from our earliest
years, through to our teens when we secretly, then more openly questioned it—
and finally, when we struggled to break free, like butterflies caught in a spider's
sticky web. This is a story of darkness and light, of imprisonment of the soul, of
redemption and freedom. We survived—many didn't. Thousands of the Family's
second generation have had to deal with the devastating consequences of their
parents' blind faith in a leader who claimed he was the voice of God on earth.
Those who have bravely spoken out about their suffering have been vilified and
slandered by their former abusers. Our hope is that in telling our story, you will
hear the voices of the children they tried to silence.
Celeste Jones, Kristina Jones, Juliana Buhring England 2007
Celeste Jones, Kristina Jones, Juliana Buhring England 2007
The Children of God started in Southern California in the late 1960s, among the
hippiesdropouts of Huntington Beach. The founder, David Berg, was born in
1919, in Oakland, California. His mother, Virginia Lee Brandt Berg, was a
celebrated evangelist with the Christian Missionary Alliance. In 1944 Berg
married Jane Miller, a young Baptist youth worker. After the birth of their
second child, Berg became the pastor of a Christian Missionary Alliance Church
in Arizona. However, after only three years he was expelled, reputedly for a sex
scandal. His expulsion began his life-long bitterness and disillusionment with
organized religion.
In December 1967, Berg moved his family—his wife Jane (later known as
Mother Eve) and their four children, Deborah, Faithy, Aaron and Hosea—to
Huntington Beach, California, where they stayed with his eighty-year-old
mother. She had started a small ministry from a coffee shop called the Light
Club, distributing sandwiches to the hippies, surfers, and dropouts who
congregated on the pier. But when the Light Club's clean-cut image failed to
attract the longhaired hippies, Mrs. Berg saw the opportunity for her son and
grandchildren to minister to the youngsters with the music and fervour of their
own generation. In a short time, David Berg and his family began attracting the
youth in droves with the free food and anti-system, anti-war message they
endorsed.
The group traveled across the United States gathering more young disciples as
they went, and soon opened communities across the country. They attracted a
substantial amount of media coverage, and in some articles the writers referred
to them as the "Children of God," a name that the fledgling group subsequently
adopted.
After a string of illicit affairs with some of his young female members, Berg
found a devoted companion in his young and ambitious secretary, Karen Zerby,
aka "Maria." Publicly branding his estranged wife Jane and late mother the "Old
Church," Berg endorsed Maria and the Children of God as the "New Church,"