#theinfluencecontinuum

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.)

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.