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I found this article written for a Christian website from January. The writer seems to have a good understanding of the Family and its sordid history. He treats Ricky with the understanding he deserves.
Daniel Roselle
Ricky Rodriguez 1975-2005
By Bob Waldrep
He was born David Moses Zerby, and was also known as Pete and as Ricky Rodriguez; but to those familiar with the Children of God cult (now called The Family) he was Davidito, the Prince. On January 25, he would have been thirty years old, but on January 9 his life ended in a murder-suicide. Perhaps he would not have had such a tragic death if his life had not also been so tragic.
The Children of God cult (COG) was founded in California by David Berg (“Moses David”) as part of the Jesus Movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Almost immediately Berg began making wild prophecies that would ultimately strengthen his control of his followers. In 1969 he prophesied that an earthquake would destroy California. This caused members to flee the state and allowed Berg to begin organizing them into communal groups. Later he prophesied a comet would destroy the United States, resulting in the communal group’s exodus from the country to settle in Europe and South America.
Initially, most of their evangelism was done through “litnessing”: distributing literature, particularly the Mo Letters written by Berg, in exchange for a donation. However, by the mid-1970s Berg had a revelation from God that showed him a whole new way to reach people for Jesus: “flirty fishing” or “FFing.” Berg taught his female followers that they were to be “fishers of men,” enticing men into the group through affection and sexual favors. They became known as “hookers for Jesus.” One ex-COG website explains the rationale behind the new practice:
Flirting and sex were considered ways of showing the love of God to the lost and lonely. Women were told to sacrifice themselves as 'bait' for the fish. Men were told that they should lay down their lives AND their wives for the sake of the gospel. Not surprisingly, Flirty Fishing quickly became outright prostitution, and was used as a way to raise money for the cult.1
An early experimentation with FFing in Tenerife, Canary Islands, resulted in Berg’s longtime mistress, Karen “Maria” Zerby, becoming pregnant and giving birth to a son, David Moses Zerby. Berg raised the boy as his heir apparent and he was known as “Davidito.” He became the guinea pig for the “revolutionary” lifestyle Berg and Zerby sought to promote among their followers. A website created for the grown children of COG members describes the importance Davidito had to the COG movement:
From his birth, David Berg and Karen Zerby determined to make Ricky a “poster boy” for their followers. He was, according to them, a divine prince, destined to lead the Children of God through the biblical endtime. As such, they felt that Ricky must be moulded into an ideal follower, an incarnation of their beliefs and practices. His upbringing was exhaustively documented and highly publicized as a model for all parents in The Family to follow. As a result, Ricky's childhood and youth was spent in a highly controlled environment characterized by intense indoctrination, stringent discipline, and sexual initiation by adults.2
The COG published a book, The Story of Davidito, which tracked the childhood of Davidito for the purpose of serving as a manual on raising children. Large sections of it documented in words and explicit photos the sexual indoctrination of Davidito by the young women who helped care for him. One of these, Angela Smith, would later die at his hands.
Having become disillusioned with the group, he left it in 2001: no more was he the Prince, but instead only Ricky Rodriguez. He hoped to establish a new life with his wife and put his past behind him. It turned out that the abuse suffered as a child had been so great and the pain so intense that this would not be possible. Last August, Ricky wrote the following painful admission:
I also was under the mistaken impression that … I could leave it all behind, start a new life that had nothing to do with the cult, quit talking to anyone who had anything to do with the cult, and really "move on" with my life. I know now that will never happen. I can't run away from my past, and no matter how much longer I live, the first 25 years of my life will always haunt me. I accept that, and am dealing with it as best I can.3
In hindsight, his letter also provided chilling clues as to what was to come:
Something has to be done to stop these child molesters, and it would be nice to find some people who think the same way. Every day these people are alive and free is a slap in the face to the thousands of us who have been methodically molested, tortured, raped, and the many who they have as good as murdered by driving them to suicide. It would probably involve a great deal of sacrifice, and would best be accomplished, I think, by people who have nothing to lose, such as myself.4
Separated from his wife and unable to overcome his past, Rodriguez acted upon these words and, in his mind, became the avenger of himself and all other victims of childhood abuse in the COG. Newspapers and television media throughout the country have reported the story: a man molested as a child kills a former nanny whom he believed responsible for the abuse. It seems a simple, cut and dried, case:
Richard P. Rodriguez, 29, the disaffected son of Karen Zerby, current leader of the communal Christian ministry known as the Family, allegedly killed longtime group member Angela M. Smith, 51, in his Tucson, Ariz., apartment. Then, after driving to Blythe, he apparently took his own life.5
Missing from this report is a recognition of the tragic life that Rodriguez had to endure, forced upon him by his parents in the name of religion, that caused him to reach that desperate point in his life. He provides a glimpse of it in an email exchange with one of the Family's leadership in May 2002:
As an adult you have the legal right to throw your life away if you want to. The problem is that you or any other cultist does not have the right to pass on that same (expletive) life to their children and screw up their lives as well which has happened to countless other Fam[ily] cult children… If the Fam[ily] cultists were following the truth of Jesus' love found in the Bible, they would never have put up with and participated in all the ritualistic sexual abuse of children in the past… I never want to have to see or hear of another child having to grow up with the same kind of Family [expletive] that I did. It's cruel and ungodly to put an innocent child through that kind of [expletive] evil weirdness! I will not stand for it anymore and consider anyone who supports or sympathises [sic] with the Family in any way an enemy or potential one.6
Naturally, the Family's public relations department is trying to deflect any responsibility for Ricky's actions. A group spokesperson, Clair Borowik, has repeatedly stated in media interviews that Rodriguez was "an obviously disturbed young man," and that The Family gave him "ample financial and emotional support." If such support was truly given, it was obviously too little, too late-too late not only to avoid the untimely deaths of two individuals and the pain of their families and friends, but even more tragically, too late to stop the parentally-sanctioned sexual abuse of a toddler that led to this murder-suicide.
In fairness to The Family, in 1986 they did enact strong policies against members engaging in sexual acts with those under age 21. However, the very need for such a policy indicates there was something deeply wrong within the COG, as Anderson Cooper pointed out in a CNN interview with Clair Borowik:
Cooper: I was alive in 1986 and even the '70s and late '60s. Why did you need a policy? I mean, most people don't need a policy saying don't have sex with 4-year- olds... I mean, why do you need a stringent policy? Isn't that just kind of common sense?7
Borowik's response was evasive:
Borowik: Well, there wasn't rampant sexual abuse, but some cases did come to light where there was contact going on or sexual improprieties that young people were uncomfortable with. When these cases surfaced, it became clear that there had to be very stringent policies. Now, mainstream churches are just addressing this issue over the last five years. We addressed it two decades ago.8
This answer shows that the Family just doesn’t get it. Sexual abuse occurred in their group at the instruction and by the example of those at the very top of the movement, David Berg and Maria Zerby. Berg died in 1994 without renouncing the sexual practices that he had established through his teachings and lifestyle. After Berg’s death, Zerby took control of the organization; she has never renounced Berg and his teachings, particularly as related to the molesting of children and FFing. In fact, in 1993 Zerby affirmed and justified the past positions on sexual activity, rather than renouncing them:
This [sexual contact between adults and minors] is about the only subject where we're really going along with the System, we're playing along with them, we're acting like we believe what we did was wrong, because we have changed, and stopped doing it ... We need to somehow explain to our [teenagers] that love and loving affection is not wrong. As it says in [Berg's writings], if it's not hurtful, if it's loving, then it's okay. Of course, having actual intercourse with a child wouldn't be okay as it wouldn't be loving, but a little fondling and sweet affection is not wrong in the eyes of God, and if they have experienced the same in the past they weren't "abused."9
It seems this mentality is still held by many members today. Occasionally, I will see Family members soliciting funds for "missionary work" outside stores, particularly Sam's Clubs and Wal-Marts. In discussing the past sexual practices of the group, they will immediately say all that has changed. When I then bring up what happened to the child Davidito at the instruction of his mother and Berg, they deny it happened.
However, I know Ricky's abuse occurred because we have a copy of The Story of Davidito in our research library. I have seen the pictures and read the accounts of his sexual "training." As a parent, I sorrow for the young child depicted in those accounts and pictures. Unfortunately, those to whom his care was entrusted did not also sorrow, then or now, over the abuse they put him through.
Without question Angela Smith did not deserve the horrendous death she suffered anymore than Ricky deserved the abuse he endured as a child. Both were victims. Sadly they are neither the only nor the last victims of abusive religious groups. Many such groups are still out there waiting to prey upon the searching and the innocent.
So, are there any lessons to learn from this? Yes.
First, we need to remember that children do not join cults, their parents do. A child who is in an abusive situation did not choose to put himself there. If we cannot reach the parent, then we must speak on behalf of the child and point out the injustice and abuse, demanding that those in authority take action. For those who were raised in such an environment, we must do all we can to make sure they get the professional help they need to work through their unresolved pain and anger.
From a more personal perspective, if you have children, you might want to give them a hug after reading this. Assure them you love them and commit anew to do everything in your power to nurture them and help them to grow up in a healthy environment so they might develop to their full potential. And don't forget to thank God for giving them to you and allowing you the privilege of being responsible for their well-being.
In June of 2002, Ricky wrote a lengthy article describing what life was like for a child in the Berg family. It provides a descriptive picture of the abuse they endured. Its closing also provided a glimpse into the hurt of a young child and the hope that he yet saw for others:
I'm writing this article in a very beautiful park down at the waterfront… There's a young couple nearby, walking with their twins… Seeing kids with normal, loving parents who really seem to care about them is a bitter-sweet experience for me. On one hand it hurts because I'm reminded of the stark contrast between parents who most likely want what's best for their kids, and the kind of parents I had… On the other hand it brings me such joy to see kids like these little twins running around, because I am so thankful that they have a good shot at happiness and success in life. They have a loving, caring family to stand behind them, and don't have to struggle with the horrible memories and abuse that many of us who grew up in the Family do.10
Truly the phrase "Rest in Peace" was coined for such as Ricky Rodriguez.
Works Cited
0. http://www.exfamily.org/cgi-bin/gf.pl?fmt=dyn&t=articles&m=1&s=&r=art/exmem/brief_outline_main.shtml
0. http://movingon.org/ricky/about_ricky.php
0. http://movingon.org/ricky/writings.php?id=3
0. Ibid.
0. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-family17jan17,1,6382293.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=1&cset=true
0. http://movingon.org/ricky/documents/Ricky_to_Johnny_May_02.pdf
0. http://transcripts.cnn.com/transcripts/0501/18/acd.01.html
0. Ibid.
0. http://www.exfamily.org/cgi-bin/gf.pl?fmt=dyn&t=history&m=2&s=&r=hist/cog_1968_to_current_day.shtml, quoting from Summit 93, Mama Jewels #2, 1992. p.19
0. http://movingon.org/ricky/writings.php?id=3
Please read the Profile for more information about the Children of God.
Rev. Bob Waldrep, MRE, serves as State Director—Alabama at Watchman Fellowship’s Birmingham, AL office.
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This is an article on me as a student of Berkeley and also on The Family.
This reporter really did her research
Here is the link: It should be good through September 19th
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/09/16_roselle.shtml
By Bonnie Azab Powell, NewsCenter | 16 September 2005
BERKELEY – Last spring, Daniel Roselle bought a UC Berkeley baseball cap. Despite teasing from his friends, he superstitiously refused to wear it until he knew he'd been accepted as a transfer student from Santa Monica Junior College. When at last his UC Berkeley welcome packet arrived, "I put on my hat and popped the cork on some champagne I'd saved in the fridge for this moment. I was just so happy," he recalls. "You have no idea how happy."
Roselle's journey to Berkeley illustrates the diverse and singular paths that many students take to campus. In 1995, at age 20, he left his parents and six of his younger siblings in the Los Angeles area with only a bus ticket, $50, and the address of a grandmother in the Midwest who he barely knew. His formal education had stopped with first grade, and his only work experience consisted of taking care of other children and selling religious pamphlets on the street.
But his biggest challenge was leaving not just his immediate family, but The Family International. According to its website, the Family is an "international Christian fellowship dedicated to sharing God's Word and love with others." Its detractors call it a cult, one that has irreparably damaged the lives of many children who never chose to join it.
Children of the Children of God
The Family was founded in 1968 in Huntington Beach, Ca., by David Berg, an itinerant Pentecostal pastor who began ministering to disaffected counterculture youth. Roselle's parents joined in 1969 and 1970. Originally calling his hippie adherents Teens for Christ and later, Children of God, Berg preached communal living and active evangelizing while remaining firmly isolated from non-Family society, which he dubbed the "System." He encouraged the "sharing" of God's love through sex, among both adults and children.
Berg died in 1994, around the time that courts in several countries began investigating the group for child abuse and pedophilia. His wife Karen Zerby became the group's leader, communicating with followers as Berg had — from a secret location through copious inspirational letters.
In response to the negative public attention, the Family amended its teachings regarding sex with children, and its members (it claims 12,000 in more than 100 countries) receded into the background — until this year, that is. In early January, 29-year-old Ricky Rodriguez, known as "the Chosen One" for being Zerby's son and the apple of Berg's eye, tracked down and stabbed to death a female former caretaker, then shot himself. Lest his motives be misinterpreted, he first made a videotape announcing his intent to exact revenge for the abuse he had suffered at The Family's hands, which included participation in sex as a toddler and later, with his own mother.
Much has been written about the fallout surrounding the Rodriguez murder-suicide. Among other things, it served as a wake-up call for second-generation ex-members like Roselle, who say that Rodriguez's death brings the number of known suicides among his peers to 30. (The Family disputes this number.)
"[The Family] said that if I left, at best I'd end up working at McDonald's, at worst I'd be a heroin addict and end up on the streets," says Roselle. "But you know, that's what they set us up for. We received no education and were allowed few contacts on 'the outside.'"
In the wake of Rodriguez's death, Roselle has spoken out in People magazine and to CNN about physical and sexual abuse he and other children suffered at the hands of Family members in the 1970s and '80s. Other second-generation members run several active websites like XFamily.org and MovingOn.org dedicated to the "children of the Children of God."
In response, the Family has issued statements saying, "Some of those who have left us are propagating stories that child abuse is common in the Family. This is false. The Family has a zero-tolerance policy toward abusive treatment of minors, punishable by excommunication, a policy which has been in place since 1988." And at Myconclusion.com, pro-Family second-generation members post testaments about the many benefits of growing up in the group and attack the others' accounts.
"The Family will never appear with me on TV," Roselle says. "They just snipe at me from behind press releases, saying 'Dan has a vendetta, he's anti-religion, if he thought things were so wrong why didn't he say anything?' But you know, I was a kid, and we were taught never to question them.
"They didn't start out bad. At some point they surrendered their critical thinking skills to Berg, who was a pedophile and a dirty old man. Unfortunately for me my parents signed on to his religion. So they believe heaven is in the moon — whatever, have it your way. But you shouldn't abuse kids, work them like slaves and have sex with them."
A ticket out
In addition to publicizing their experiences with the Family, Roselle and other ex-members this year started Safe Passage Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group and resource center for people who want to leave high-demand organizations, or HDOs. "We prefer that term because 'cult' is pejorative, and we don't want to alienate the people we're trying to help," he explains, adding that not all HDOs are religion-based — take militia groups — but they share common elements, such as marked isolation from society and the stress they place on the children brought up within them.
The still-nascent Safe Passage intends to advocate for the rights of such children, as well as support those who choose to exit HDOs for the outside world. "Suppose you're 15 and you're part of the Family in India but you want out," explains Roselle. "You say you have relatives in the United States but no way to get to them — well, we'll get you a plane ticket."
It's help Roselle could have used. Born in Puerto Rico, he has lived in Venezuela, Mexico, Panama, Japan, Korea, the United States and Brazil, in homes ranging from 15 to 400 people. (His is fluent in Spanish and speaks some Japanese and Korean.) But at age 20, when he landed at his grandmother's, although he could read and write, he had no idea how to open and use a bank account — he could barely do basic math — and only a hazy grasp of making telephone calls.
With no education or employment history to put on his résumé, the only work he could find at first was painting restaurants at night and making deliveries. "For a while I was living in the car that my grandmother had helped me buy," he says.
But his curiosity was unleashed. Until he left the Family, he was allowed to read only prescribed teachings by Family members and a few books from closely vetted Christian sources. He would find books that had been thrown away and read them secretly under the covers with a flashlight — including an old car-repair manual. "Anything with printed English on it was like gold," he recalls.
For the past 10 years Roselle has been on a reading binge, devouring books from the public library. He has immersed himself in books on religion and cults. Asked to define the difference between an experimental or young religion like Mormonism and a cult, he answers quickly. "To me the difference is transparency," he says. A religion is not afraid to engage with society and openly discuss its doctrines, while a cult thrives on secrecy. "You should be able to say, 'Here's what we believe, here's our leader, here's where he lives.'"
The freedom to ask those questions has been hard won for Roselle. The seeds were planted in 1994, when the Family selected him to speak publicly in response to a British court's investigation of child-abuse claims against the group. He was 19, and like others, had always operated under the Family's strict "don't doubt" policy. "They had me do what they called 'bearpit' sessions — sorry, Berkeley — in which they fired questions at us like, 'Why do you have sex with kids?' and we practiced firing answers right back," he says. "But the more I thought about the questions, the more contradictions I saw in the leaders' answers. It was a semantic song and dance."
Fraternal history
In 1998, Roselle got into the hotel business, where his experience coordinating large households earned a promotion to manager and the start of his first career. In 1999, he moved back to Los Angeles to help Josh, his eldest younger brother, start a new life after leaving the Family. In turn, they conspired to get Angelo, their 17-year-old brother, out.
In 2000, Daniel landed a job at UCLA's School of Nursing as an instructional support manager. The next year, when Angelo tentatively announced that he was interested in going to college, Daniel and Josh saw their chance. They picked him up with their parents' reluctant permission and immediately started trying to figure out the college application process. To their grateful surprise, Angelo was accepted to Santa Monica Junior College.
"We wanted him to go first," says Daniel. He and Josh were determined that Angelo should have a "normal" college experience, commencing at the right age and attending full time while they supported him. Daniel started Santa Monica along with Angelo, only part time; Josh began a year later.
In 2003 the brothers learned that community college students with high GPAs could apply to transfer into the UC system. Angelo went first, to UCLA, where he will graduate this spring. Josh followed in his footsteps to UCLA this fall. Daniel decided to head north. Leaving his brothers in Los Angeles was hard, but "UC Berkeley has always held a special attraction for me," says Roselle. "It has such a storied history, and I like how the university looks at the world from a humanitarian and activist viewpoint. It also has a good history department."
All three brothers are history majors. They speculate that their common interest comes from having lived in so many countries, having read and re-read the Bible, and because "there's no math in history," laughs Roselle. One of their sisters is about to move west from New York to start nursing school. Only three of Roselle's father's eight children remain in the Family.
In his third week at Berkeley, Roselle says he feels like a kid in a candy store: "There's so much to learn and so little time." Ultimately, he plans to go to law school. To pursue the Family in court? He says no. "Look, I'm an accidental activist. My real interest is Asia — I hope to do something with business in China," he says. "But I will always be attached to this kind of work pro bono. I am not going to just walk away."
Do unto others
Although he and others are called "the apostates" on the Family's messageboards, Roselle says that while he is no longer religious in the Family's way, he's not anti-religious either. Nor is he an atheist. "Basically, I'm kind of a moderate guy. I believe in science as well as the Golden Rule," he says. "I think that accepting things on faith without any proof can be cool, but it can also lead to damage. Sometimes religion can be a crutch, and sometimes it can help people. As the Bible says, 'By their fruits ye shall know them.' If the results are good, fine. But if a religion results in people getting hurt, I have a problem with it."
To the Family's displeasure, he is vocal both online and off about his problems with how the group has hurt some of its kids in the past. "If people want to join the Family now, I say fine, that's their deal. But they have some accounting to do with us," he argues. "They have never formally apologized or offered to pay for therapy — without wanting to control the therapist. Basically, they don't believe they're wrong. Unlike the Catholic Church, which [in the wake of many pedophilia scandals] is offering reparations and setting up ways to police themselves, the Family's attitude toward the abuse is 'Take it to the Lord and forgive the guy.' "
Roselle hopes that he and the other second-generation "apostates" can pressure the Family to change in three ways. First, he'd like the Family to make sure every kid gets a real high-school degree. "I have no problem with people deciding to educate their kids outside the school system, but you have to teach them to read and write and do math," he says firmly. Next, he would like to see it renounce its racist and anti-Semitic writings; according to Roselle, they blame the Jews for the Holocaust and believe that non-Christian blacks (or those with African ancestry) are cursed.
Lastly, he is arguing for a Truth and Reconciliation Committee, like what was used in post-apartheid South Africa. "We want to find the people who abused us and confront them," he says. "The Family says they don't condone what happened, but we've had reports of former abusers running orphanages in Third World countries for the Family. That's very upsetting for us, to say the least."
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Los Angeles times article
Lost to the Only Life They Knew
Officials say more than 400 teenage boys have fled or been driven from a polygamous sect.
By David Kelly
Times Staff Writer
June 13, 2005
ST. GEORGE, Utah — Abandoned by his family, faith and community, Gideon Barlow arrived here an orphan from another world.
At first, he played the tough guy, aloof and hard. But when no one was watching, he would cry.
The freckle-faced 17-year-old said he was left to fend for himself last year after being forced out of Colorado City, Ariz., a town about 40 miles east of here, just over the state line.
"I couldn't see how my mom would let them do what they did to me," he said.
When he tried to visit her on Mother's Day, he said, she told him to stay away. When he begged to give her a present, she said she wanted nothing.
"I am dead to her now," he said.
Gideon is one of the "Lost Boys," a group of more than 400 teenagers — some as young as 13 — who authorities in Utah and Arizona say have fled or been driven out of the polygamous enclaves of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City over the last four years.
His stated offenses: wearing short-sleeved shirts, listening to CDs and having a girlfriend. Other boys say they were booted out for going to movies, watching television and staying out past curfew.
Some say they were sometimes given as little as two hours' notice before being driven to St. George or nearby Hurricane, Utah, and left like unwanted pets along the road.
Authorities say the teens aren't really being expelled for what they watch or wear, but rather to reduce competition for women in places where men can have dozens of wives.
"It's a mathematical thing. If you are marrying all these girls to one man, what do you do with all the boys?" said Utah Atty. Gen. Mark Shurtleff, who has had boys in his office crying to see their mothers. "People have said to me: 'Why don't you prosecute the parents?' But the kids don't want their parents prosecuted; they want us to get the No. 1 bad guy — Warren Jeffs. He is chiefly responsible for kicking out these boys."
The 49-year-old Jeffs is the prophet, or leader, of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The FLDS, as it is known, controls Hildale and Colorado City.
The sect, which broke from the Mormon Church more than a century ago, has between 10,000 and 15,000 members. It believes in "plural marriage," that a man must have at least three wives to reach the highest levels of heaven. The Mormon Church forbids polygamy and excommunicates those who practice it.
Polygamy is also illegal, and in recent weeks law enforcement has turned up the heat on the FLDS.
On Friday, Jeffs was indicted in Arizona on charges that he had arranged a marriage between a 28-year-old man, who was already married, and a 16-year-old girl.
He faces two years in prison if convicted, though he hasn't been arrested and is thought to be in Texas.
A few days earlier, a Utah judge froze the assets of the United Effort Plan, an FLDS trust that owns most of the homes and land in the polygamous towns. And on May 24, the records of the financially troubled Colorado City Unified School District were seized to prevent any evidence of potential wrongdoing from being spirited away, according to the Arizona attorney general's office.
At the same time, Jeffs is being sued by five of the Lost Boys, who claim he conspired to banish them so church elders would have less competition for wives.
Jeffs has not responded to the lawsuit, filed in Utah's 3rd District Court, leaving him open to a default judgment from the bench.
"There is a virtual Taliban down there. You tell people this stuff happens and they don't believe it," said Dan Fischer, a former FLDS member and dentist living outside Salt Lake City who helps educate and house the exiled teens. The exodus "has been far more dramatic in the last year."
FLDS officials rarely speak to the media. But church lawyer Rodney Parker, who isn't a member of the faith, said some of the ousted boys were delinquents or proved unable to live up to the community's strict moral code.
"I think many are minimizing their own behavior," he said. "These places are very different and very strange. But broad-stroke claims about what goes on down there are exaggerations — and often fiction."
About half a dozen boys who spoke recently say it's all too real.
Tom Sam Steed said he was put on "religious probation" at 15 for sneaking off to see the film "Charlie's Angels." Shortly after, he said he was ejected from the FLDS, living temporarily in a tool shed. When he begged to return to the church, he said he was refused.
"I was really into the religion. I would have been the first to drink the poison Kool-Aid," said Steed, now 19. "I felt [the faith] was the only way to go to heaven."
He said he made a personal plea to Jeffs, meeting him in a Colorado City print shop.
"He told me I wasn't welcome," Steed said. "And on the way out he said: 'Just to let you know, when the final devastation comes, you will be destroyed.' I believed it completely. If you are told your whole life the Earth is flat, what else would you believe?"
Many of the exiled boys express affection for their hometowns, but seldom for the FLDS.
"It wasn't so bad until I got some knowledge of the world and saw how they treated us," said John Jessop, 16, who said he was thrown out two years ago. "I would definitely go live there again with my family. It's a great place, but I want no part of the religion."
Once children are expelled, the FLDS forbids parents from visiting them, and violating the rule can result in eviction from their church-owned homes, say state authorities and former town residents. Many parents sever all ties to their sons.
In some cases, families outside the communities have unofficially adopted the boys.
That's what happened to Gideon. A Mormon couple, Stacha and Neil Glauser of St. George, took him in.
"Taking Gideon was an impulsive thing," said Stacha Glauser, a 47-year-old hairdresser with two other teenagers. "I just couldn't stand seeing a kid kicked out into the streets."
As a child, she heard strange stories about the polygamous towns, stories of men with dozens of wives, hundreds of children and homes the size of barns.
According to Gideon, he is one of 71 children born to his father, 73-year-old Dan Barlow, and his father's eight wives.
The Barlows were among Colorado City's first settlers and have served as political leaders and lawmen. Gideon's father was mayor.
But last year Jeffs called a meeting. He announced that Dan Barlow and 20 other men were being expelled. His reasons were never fully explained.
Then he "reassigned" their wives and children to other men, say local authorities and witnesses.
"Warren said, 'All who agree with the decision stand up,' and I stood up," Gideon said. "I stood because I was scared. My dad left that day."
Suddenly, Gideon had a new father — one who he said didn't like him listening to music, wearing short-sleeved shirts and mingling with girls. The pressure built. His mother made a pile of his CDs and shirts to toss out. Finally, he said, Jeffs gave the order for him to leave.
When Gideon called his exiled father in St. George for help, he was rebuffed.
"He told me we had two different goals," Gideon said. "He wanted to get back into the community and said he couldn't help me."
Dan Barlow could not be reached for comment.
Gideon was staying with friends in St. George when the Glausers heard of his plight from a woman sympathetic to the Lost Boys.
"When Gideon came, he didn't know how to act around people," Stacha Glauser said. "This was like a foreign country for him."
Like many kids from his hometown, Gideon's poor education left his vocabulary wanting. When he was hungry, for instance, he asked Glauser to "build" him something to eat.
"I met his mother once; she was just a baby when she had him," Glauser said. "I told her she had a really wonderful son. She said she did the best she could, and that was it."
Last summer, five of the boys who left Colorado City and Hildale filed their lawsuit, claiming they were excommunicated unfairly. Gideon is not part of the suit.
Joanne Suder, a Baltimore lawyer and lead counsel in the case, said the expulsions had resulted in emotional and psychological damage to her clients.
"They are clearly trying to get rid of the competition. Warren Jeffs himself is reputed to have 70 wives," Suder said. "These kids are kicked out and lose the only world they ever knew. They leave without an education and can have no further contact with their family. It's horrible."
Despite the open practice of polygamy in these towns, authorities have been careful how they pursue offenders.
In 1953, Arizona state police swarmed into Short Creek, now Colorado City. They arrested the men and transported crying women and children to detention camps. The result was a public outpouring of sympathy for the families — and scorn for state political leaders. The governor, Howard Pyle, lost the next election.
Today, law enforcement officials are going after the FLDS by targeting child sexual abuse, welfare fraud and tax evasion rather than polygamy. The Arizona attorney general's office has opened a branch in Colorado City, where an investigator looks into alleged illegalities.
In 2003, Rodney Holm, a Colorado City police officer, was sentenced to a year in prison and three years' probation on charges of bigamy and unlawful sex with two girls, 16 and 17. Another FLDS member, Orson William Black Jr., was charged with child sex crimes and is still at large.
Meanwhile, authorities believe Jeffs has left Colorado City and may be staying with family at a 1,600-acre compound the FLDS is building near Eldorado, Texas.
The spiritual heart of the church lies in Hildale and Colorado City, communities a mile apart with a combined population of about 10,000.
The towns sit at the foot of the remote and majestic Vermillion Cliffs, a place of red rock isolation. Women walk the streets in bonnets and trousers under long dresses. Their hair is pinned high on their heads, often with a braided ponytail hanging in back.
Many of the boys said children didn't attend school past the eighth grade and that they were taught that blacks were inferior — the offspring of Cain and doomed to slavery. Such views have earned the FLDS a hate-group designation by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The children are told that dinosaurs came from another planet, and man never walked on the moon. More important, they learn the outside world is wicked and salvation comes through obedience to the prophet, who channels God's will.
According to those inside and outside the community, this way of life has become even stricter since Jeffs took over in 2002. Competitive sports — said to promote pride — have been curtailed or eliminated. Swimming is frowned upon, and talking to a girl can earn a boy a visit from the local police.
Ross Chatwin, who lives in Colorado City, said when Jeffs took charge, "rumors started going around that if you weren't obedient, you would be kicked out."
Chatwin, 36, was ordered out last year for trying to marry a second wife without the prophet's permission. He refused to budge from his sparsely furnished home in the center of town, and now is in a legal battle with the city, which once moved another family into his house and briefly shut off his utilities.
"The kids here are giving up hope," Chatwin said. "There is nothing for them anymore."
Hildale Mayor David Zitting, an FLDS member, said the exiled boys were defiant.
"The people in this community have certain standards and values," Zitting said. "If you have a son or daughter in your home, and their behavior got worse and worse and they defied you, wouldn't you want them to leave?"
Girls are rarely banished for improper behavior; but there have been several high-profile cases of girls running away to avoid arranged marriages or escape sexual abuse.
The first stop for many boys is Hurricane or St. George, where a network for exiles exists. They often share apartments or sleep on couches while trying to find work. Some end up in Las Vegas or Salt Lake City.
Fischer, the former FLDS member who runs the Diversity Foundation in suburban Salt Lake City, wants to raise awareness about the boys as well as provide them with housing and further their education.
"The sole purpose of this foundation is to maintain a relationship with the Lost Boys," said Dave Bills, managing director of the organization. "I keep tabs on them. I offer them programs to get educated. Education is the key to this whole thing."
The boys working with the foundation are either in school or getting their GEDs. If they want to attend college, the Diversity Foundation will pay for it.
Bills said that many of the Lost Boys had emotional problems and turned to drugs or alcohol. "Imagine being 16 years old and asked, 'If you had one wish, what would it be?' These kids say, 'I'd love to see my mom.' "
Gideon has pretty much given up on that.
He attends high school in St. George and is learning to navigate, even embrace, the world he was once warned against.
He still favors wearing short sleeves — and flashy shell necklaces. His cellphone rings often. Regular sessions with a therapist have made it easier to talk about his past, and he doesn't flinch anymore when classmates call him "the polygamist."
He is coming to grips with being abandoned, and no longer cries when talking about his family.
"If you have 71 brothers and sisters in the house, how can you establish a relationship with your father?" he asked.
As for his mother, Gideon is moving on.
"This is my mom," he said, nodding toward Glauser. "She treats me the way a mother should treat a son. She wakes me in the morning. She always talks to me. I don't know if I could ever pay her back."
As traumatic as the experience has been, Gideon said, it has taught him a crucial lesson about family and faith.
"No loving God would tear a family apart," he said. "Because a family is meant to be together."
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
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It took them awhile but they did a wonderful job
Saturday 3/12 Los Angeles Times Online dated for the 13th so it should be in Sunday's hardcopy newspaper
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-family13mar13,0,5373901.story?coll=la-home-headlines
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-family13mar13,0,5373901.story?coll=la-home-headlines
PORTRAIT OF THE FAMILY
Tragic Legacies of a Sex-Based Religion: Murder and Suicide
Raised in a licentious yet tightly controlled group, a young man seeking to help others finds a fatal way out.By Nita Lelyveld, Paul Pringle and Larry B. Stammer
Times Staff Writers
March 13, 2005
Early one Sunday morning in January, an employee of the Palo Verde Irrigation District in Blythe arrived at his office building to a gruesome sight: a bloody body behind the wheel of a Chevy Cavalier parked in the driveway.
The driver, a young man, had a gunshot wound to his head. A Glock .40-caliber pistol lay at his side.
To the police detective who responded, it looked like a straightforward suicide.
Then a cellphone rang on the passenger seat.
On the line was the dead man's wife.
She said her husband had called the night before to say he'd committed a murder.
She directed police to an apartment more than 200 miles away in Tucson, Ariz., where they found the body of a middle-aged woman. Her throat was slashed. She had half a dozen stab wounds.
Soon, authorities released a bare-bones story: Before driving across the desert and killing himself, Ricky Rodriguez, 29, had killed Angela Smith, 51. The two had known each other. Smith may have helped to raise Rodriguez.
The names didn't mean much to most people. But the news was cataclysmic within the secretive religious society to which both had once belonged.
For more than three decades, the Children of God, now called The Family, had been a world unto itself. In that world, Rodriguez had been royalty.
He was the son of the group's self-proclaimed prophet and prophetess, who led a fervent flock scattered in communes around the globe. When he was 2, they declared him a prophet too, announcing to followers that the boy would one day "deliver them out of great sorrow and bondage."
That was not to be.
Childhood Indoctrination
More than four years before his death, Rodriguez left the group's tight confines, venturing out into the world with little knowledge of how it worked. Almost all he'd learned in life had come from one man, David Berg, who founded the group and kept its members isolated, indoctrinated with his views.
Born in 1919 in Oakland to evangelist parents, Berg had bounced around before finding his calling. He briefly ran an Arizona church, taught school and promoted "Church in the Home," the show of the late Los Angeles radio and TV evangelist Fred Jordan.
He was nearly 50 when he landed in Huntington Beach and began ministering to hippies, with help from his own teenage children.
Huntington Beach in 1968 had dropouts and drug addicts galore, sacked out on the sand, with little purpose. It didn't take much more than guitar music and free peanut butter sandwiches to lure them to the Light Club, a Christian coffeehouse where the Bergs set up shop as Teens for Christ.
"Uncle Dave," as Berg started calling himself, invited his followers to join a "revolution for Jesus." Berg told his converts to shed past lives, including their names, and offer up their assets to the cause. They would warn those in the "System" that the apocalypse was coming.
Group members fanned out across the country, gathering on Capitol Hill, and in Times Square to mourn the approaching death of America. They wore red sackcloth robes and yokes, smeared ashes across their foreheads and ominously shook long wooden rods.
The more converts he collected, the stranger Berg's message became. Claiming that God now spoke to him directly, he declared himself "God's Endtime Prophet." God had ordered him, he said, to leave his longtime wife for his girlfriend, a pretty convert from Tucson in her early 20s. Karen Zerby, Berg explained, represented the new and pure "infant church."
Now calling himself Moses — or Mo — after the biblical prophet, Berg told his followers that he would no longer live among them. He would cloister himself and dedicate his life to prophecy. He broke the news in a 1970 letter, which he called "I Gotta Split!" It was among the first of nearly 3,000 "Mo letters" he would mail out to his flock in the coming years.
Berg's departure was well timed. By 1971, a group of parents had organized against the Children of God, which they were calling a cult.
As the anti-cult activists began "deprogramming" efforts, as they pushed for media coverage and government crackdowns, Berg left for London and soon urged his followers to spread their "colonies" across Europe.
And the changes in the group were more than geographic. Berg began preaching a new and potentially lucrative gospel of sex, which was proving an excellent way to recruit converts — and their cash. He urged his female followers to employ "flirty fishing," to troll for lonely men. He likened it to what Jesus did when he called on his disciples to be "fishers of men."
Zerby, by then also known as Maria, was among the first flirty fishers. In a 1974 "Mo letter," Berg told his flock about his prayer for her new endeavor. "Help her Oh God to catch men! Help her to catch men, be bold unashamed and brazen, to use anything she has Oh God to catch men for thee!... Oh God, help her, Oh Jesus to be willing to be the bait!"
'Daddy ... Shared Mommy'
Ricky Rodriguez was born on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands on Jan. 25, 1975. His mother, Berg's consort Karen Zerby, had become pregnant by a Tenerife hotel waiter named Carlos, whom she landed by "flirty fishing."
Berg and Zerby originally named the baby David Moses Zerby after themselves. But they openly celebrated his origins.
"Their life was love, and all because Daddy loved Mommy and shared Mommy to love another," read one update about the happy event.
And why not share?
Sexual "sharing" was at the center of Berg's ministry by that time. Nowhere was it practiced more fervently than at Berg's house. People had sex in front of Rodriguez. The nannies had sex with their boyfriends. Berg had sex with anyone he fancied. Everyone had sex at an orgy that Berg organized. At the time, the boy was 3. He wandered from group to group, taking it in.
Rodriguez — nicknamed Davidito ("little David") — was raised by a bevy of young group members, who served as his nannies. They didn't just change his diapers. They lay naked in bed with the naked child, fondling him and urging him to fondle them.
His main nanny, Sara, described these acts in regular reports to the group's followers, who by then numbered several thousand, in more than 100 communes across the globe. Later the updates were compiled in a book called "The Story of Davidito," which, with its leather-like brown cover and title stamped in gold, looked for all the world like a Bible.
It became, in fact, the group's bible of child rearing.
In its pages was a host of general baby-care advice: "Soap used too frequently is not good for the skin" and "Children should never be given skim milk."
There were also plenty of photos of the beautiful boy with the big brown eyes and the bowl haircut.
In one photo, the baby lies on a bed with Sara's face between his legs. "It's a wonderful relaxation, a satisfaction created by the Lord," reads the caption.
In another photo, Angela Smith, the woman he would kill 25 years later, lies beside the child and seems to be undoing his pants.
"Undressing ... for Sue!" the caption reads. Sue was the name Smith went by at the time.
When the boy was 2, Berg wrote the following passage, which was included in the parenting reference work:
"God made children able to enjoy sex, so he must've expected them to! I did! — All my life! — Thank God! I love it! — And it didn't hurt me any! Nearly all kids do anyhow, despite prohibitions! — And the only reason the System frowns on it is that the churches have taught sex is evil! — Which is contrary to the Bible! — How could God-created sexual enjoyment be a sin? — The System is really screwed up! God help us! — They're the ones not normal!"
Skepticism Suspended
Throw a frog into a pot of boiling water and it will jump right out. But fill the pot with cold water and gradually turn up the heat, and the frog will stay put until it's cooked.
This is the analogy used by one former member to explain how Berg's followers came to accept his sexual ideas.
They joined the group with such idealism, said the former member, who goes by the name James Penn to protect his identity. They accepted that Berg was God's prophet. They believed that Jesus spoke through him, updating the Bible for their benefit. Having that faith and having severed their ties with all outside sources of skepticism, they continued to believe, even as the water began to boil.
Berg's texts about flirty fishing got bolder and bolder. Soon female followers were getting graphic instructions on exactly what to do with the strangers they picked up. The language was no longer biblical. It was simply vulgar — even blasphemous.
Berg's followers by now had come to accept his words as scripture. The tracts he sent out were given titles, their paragraphs numbered like Bible verses. Rev. Lovemaking 259:70, for example, refers to Berg's tract "Revolutionary Lovemaking" and in particular to the passage: "For the Bible says plain as day, 'Let her breasts satisfy you at all times!' "
One of Berg's daughters from his previous life, Linda, who now goes by the name Deborah Davis, said her father was obsessed with sex, including incest and pedophilia. She said that he molested her, when she was a girl, but that after she had reached adulthood, she successfully rebuffed him.
"It was like he started the group, and he could literally let his desires run wild," said Davis, who left the group in the late 1970s and in 1984 published a book, "The Children of God: The Inside Story." "There was no accountability. He was the prophet getting orders from God."
On the Run
Rodriguez grew up on the run, his parents moving around the globe just ahead of authorities. Group members changed their names frequently — including the young Davidito, whose name was changed along the way to Ricky Rodriguez.
The frequent moves, those who knew him say, took a toll on the boy. He grew painfully shy and awkward, especially in the presence of other group members, who saw him as a superstar and knew everything about him — including personal details that he found humiliating.
As a boy, Rodriguez would watch Berg having sex with different young women, who were put on a "sharing schedule" to satisfy the prophet's needs. As part of his "teen training," Rodriguez was assigned a different older teenage girl each afternoon for sex. He could see that this made some of the girls uncomfortable, and that bothered him, he later wrote. This was sex by decree, not by choice.
Bit by bit, Rodriguez was questioning the life his parents lived. He knew that they were worshipped. He was taught to worship them. But he also saw how they lived. Berg was often drunk, erratic and demanding. Those who refused to follow his orders were swiftly punished. Children were beaten and sometimes sent to harsh retraining sessions. By the time Rodriguez was a teenager, he later said, he frequently contemplated suicide.
Changing Sexual Views
By the mid-1980s, sexually transmitted diseases had become a serious problem within the group. So had negative publicity, especially about The Family's attitudes toward children and sex.
Berg by this time was not well, and his leadership role was declining. Zerby was beginning to take his place and starting at least publicly to change some of the group's key stances on sex.
In 1986, the leadership officially imposed a ban on sex between children and adults. In 1987, it ended the practice of flirty fishing, all but banning sex with outsiders.
At the same time, the group started purging its literature, destroying sexually themed videos — including ones in which preschool-aged girls danced naked in tribute to Berg — and slicing sections out of books and pamphlets. Copies of "The Story of Davidito" suddenly lost the sex references.
But the cleanup efforts came too late for the group to avoid legal consequences.
In the early 1990s, authorities in Spain, Argentina, France and Australia organized raids on Family communes, removing hundreds of children and, in some cases, arresting the adults. The raids were unexpected and frightening, especially to children who had been raised to think of the outside world as bad and scary. In the end, partly because of the authorities' tactics and partly because The Family had changed some of its more outrageous practices, all of the group's children were returned to their homes and all charges were dropped.
A British court case proved more problematic. In 1992, a woman petitioned British authorities to remove her newborn grandson from her daughter, a Family member. Lord Justice Alan Ward began an investigation.
In 1995, he ruled that the baby should remain with his mother, noting that he believed The Family had in recent years changed its ways. But most of his 300-page decision was aimed at documenting the group's past behavior.
"I am totally satisfied that there was widespread sexual abuse of young children and teenagers by adult members of The Family," Ward wrote.
Ward put much of the blame on Berg, who had died the year before, at 75. He said The Family should denounce its founding prophet.
Claire Borowik, The Family's current spokeswoman, said the group broke with some of Berg's teachings long ago. But she stopped well short of denouncing the founder, who to this day group members must accept as "God's Endtime Prophet."
"We renounce certain parts of his writings that should not have been written," she said of Berg.
In 1994, she said, The Family's leadership apologized to children who had been harmed. The group offered them a chance "to come forth and talk to their parents, seek counseling." The Family offered the services of a psychologist, but no one requested them, she said.
"We dealt with this issue back in the early '90s," she said. "It's not like it's a brand-new issue and nobody has ever taken responsibility."
Love in Budapest
It took a long time for Rodriguez to find a way to leave The Family. It took love, which came to him in a Family-run home in Budapest. Rodriguez moved there about nine years ago, to get some distance from Zerby. At first he was treated as he'd always been. People made a fuss.
"He was the idol, the image of what everybody wanted to be like. He was our version of a Hollywood celebrity," said Elixcia Munumel, who lived in the Budapest home.
She soon noticed that he didn't like that kind of attention.
He worked as a handyman, she said. She worked in the kitchen and quietly watched him.
"I'm a very, very shy person, and he was also very shy," she recalled. One day, she mustered the nerve to tell him that lunch was ready.
One night soon after, most of the others in the house were off at a Family-organized dance. Rodriguez and Munumel, who had both stayed behind, began talking. He invited her to his room. He taught her to play cards. They talked all night, she said.
The next day, he left a rose on her pillow.
The closer they got, the more Rodriguez opened up. He told her that he'd secretly been studying the Bible to see what it really meant, even though his mother wanted him to read only Berg's interpretations.
"He said it contradicted a lot of what we were taught," said Munumel.
The couple moved in with Zerby at her home in Oporto, Portugal, where they began to make plans to break away.
Rodriguez confessed to Munumel his growing disdain for the group and said its sexual practices had always bothered him.
That was common ground. Munumel was about to turn 21, at which time, according to The Family's revised policies, she would no longer be off limits sexually to adults. "Two adults, men, were waiting to get a piece of me," she said.
In early 1999, they told Zerby that they were heading to The Family's compound in Mexico. Instead, Munumel went to England and Rodriguez to the United States.
When he reached San Diego, Rodriguez persuaded Zerby to buy him a car to drive to Mexico. Instead, he sold the car and used the money to finance his escape with Munumel.
She had gone on to Venezuela to see her mother. Rodriguez got his first real job, working on a fishing boat in Alaska.
When they met in Tacoma, Wash., they were married in a minister's home.
Life was a struggle. Despite their years of home-schooling, the couple knew nothing about checkbooks or job interviews. Even when they learned what resumes were, they had nothing to put on them. They rented the first apartment they could afford. They were shocked, Munumel said, to learn later that it was in the worst part of town. They were also surprised to move into an empty space, which they had assumed would be furnished, as were the communal homes they knew.
Rodriguez tried to protect Munumel.
"He was the strong one for us," she said.
But he still didn't really know how to live in the world. He didn't know how to talk about his past. When pressed, he told people that his parents had been missionaries.
Seeking Understanding
It's a common problem, say others raised in The Family. How do you explain your history to outsiders? Where do you begin?
"Because of the stigma associated with membership and former membership, people get out of these groups and don't know where to turn. There is little understanding, even from their families," said Janja Lalich, a sociology professor at Chico State University, who is the coauthor of two books on cults. "People look at them as freaks."
Often members of such groups end up turning more and more to one another, which is what Rodriguez eventually did. He started posting messages on www.movingon.org cyberspace clearinghouse for former members who spent their youths in The Family.
But even on that site, Rodriguez stood out from the crowd. He couldn't escape being the famous Davidito.
In June 2002, he wrote about the pressure of being in The Family's royal family: "We were supposed to be super-kids, commissioned with taking over The Family when Berg died, and leading God's Endtime Army through the Great Tribulation!"
His recollections caused a stir.
"Rick, your letter was great! And you have all the necessary credentials (on account of being Zerby's only son) to actually do something to stop her," wrote someone named yellowman.
"Ricky, I am sorry for what you went through but you have got to know where they are or a way to turn them in. Someone has got to put a stop to this," wrote patijo.
Back in Tacoma, Rodriguez began focusing on just such a plan, Munumel said. He didn't know where his mother was; she took great pains to conceal her whereabouts. But he was determined to find her.
"Ricky was on a mission," his wife said.
He took up an Indonesian martial arts form involving knives. He was very intense about it, said his teacher, Kevin Schmitt, who gave lessons at his home studio in Puyallup, Wash.
"I remember having that conversation with him that, 'I don't want to teach you this if you're going to hurt somebody,' " said Schmitt, 43.
Rodriguez told him he had no such plans, but he also said that he'd thought in the past about killing the leaders of The Family.
"He told me stories about having sex when he was 7 years old," said Schmitt. "He felt badly about the girls who had to do that.... He was more concerned about what happened to the other people than what happened to him."
Sarah Martin, 31, of San Diego, who left The Family at 18, became a close friend of Rodriguez's after the two exchanged e-mails on movingon.org.
She, too, felt that he harbored a sense of responsibility. It was as if he had never gotten over the prophecy that he would take his people "out of sorrow and bondage."
"He carried this huge weight on his shoulders," she said. "He often thought that this was maybe his purpose, to help the thousands of others who had been abused, to put an end to his mother's abuse."
Stalking Smith
Last summer, Rodriguez left Munumel in Tacoma and drove to San Diego.
There, he stayed with Martin and other ex-Family members. He got a job working for ex-Family members too. But his daily routines were a ruse. He had come to California to stake out the Family Care Foundation, a charity with ties to The Family. He wanted information on his mother's whereabouts.
Even if it took force, he would find someone to tell him. That person, he soon decided, would be Angela Smith, who had been the secretary of both Berg and Zerby. She'd served on the board of the Family Care Foundation and of Elderhaven, the nursing home his grandparents run in his mother's hometown of Tucson. He told Martin that Smith had long been his mother's "eyes and ears."
In early fall, he left for Tucson on the assumption that Smith would eventually show up there.
In Tucson, he quickly got a job with electrical contractor Mark Flynn, who with his wife, Denise, befriended Rodriguez. He was a hard worker, Flynn said. "If I had 10 workers like Ricky, I'd be a millionaire in a month."
But although Ricky accepted his boss' dinner invitations and seemed to like the couple, he never confided in them about his past, saying only that he'd traveled the world with his missionary parents.
He also got to know his mother's relatives, who sensed his despair. He stayed for the first month with Zerby's sister, Rosemary Kanspedos, her husband, Tom, and their children. The simple interactions seemed to move him, like the day he spent time with his uncle and aunt, installing a new fan in their kitchen.
"He looked up at me and said, 'I never knew a family could be like this,' " Rosemary Kanspedos said.
When Rodriguez wasn't at work or with his family, he was spending time at a shooting range, firing off rounds and taking a course to get a concealed-weapons permit. He was also waiting for Smith to cross his path.
Flower Child
If Smith hadn't been carrying a cellphone, if the phone's address book hadn't had a listing for Mom, the Kauten family of Winchester, Va., might have had to wait longer to learn of her fate. She had legally changed her name along the way. Finding her next of kin would not have been easy.
John Kauten Jr. said his sister, Susan Joy Kauten, had left home at 18.
"She was just like many of the flower children. I think she hooked up with somebody that seemed to care," her brother said.
Years passed without word from her. Then she started checking in sporadically. Last year, Smith had gone home to help nurse her dying father. She told stories about her work: helping the poor, teaching children good hygiene. She spoke of her travels — to Italy, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Japan, Argentina. She also announced a decision — to take some time away from The Family.
Visiting Elderhaven in Tucson, she had gotten to know an elderly resident and then had gotten to know his son and had fallen in love with him, her brother said. In November, after her father died, they had moved into an apartment in Palo Alto, where she found work at a Restoration Hardware store.
Kauten said his sister had always had a good heart. If she'd ever harmed Rodriguez, she hadn't meant to do so: "Something may have happened somewhere that maybe was inappropriate, I don't know. But if she did anything like that, I know she thought she was doing good."
The sentiment echoes something Rodriguez told Munumel when he called her on his cellphone to say his goodbyes, as he drove across the desert after killing Smith.
While Smith lay dying, he told his wife, "she still didn't understand what she had done wrong."
'I Got Stuck'
The night before he killed Smith and himself, Rodriguez videotaped a farewell message in which he tried to explain what he was about to do.
He affected a Rambo-style bravado, looking straight into the camera, holding up the hunting knife with which he planned to stab Smith and the Glock he would soon use on himself. He swore constantly, loading shiny bullets into magazines and showing off a drill whose sides he'd padded to dull the noise if he used it for torture.
He said he'd tried hard to fit into the everyday world.
"But I got stuck on this one thing. I got stuck. Because there's this need that I have, this need," he said. "It's a need for revenge, it's a need for justice, because I can't go on like this."
Several times, he mentioned his plan to kill Smith as a first step in his larger plan to kill his mother. But his logic seemed to have blurred and, just as frequently, he said he was unlikely to accomplish the greater act of vengeance.
Sometimes, he said, he felt like scrapping the plan altogether and just killing himself. He said he'd created an elaborate fantasy about it. He would rent himself a fancy hotel room, "spend a night with a nice, nice hooker," then end it all gently, slitting his wrists in the big bathtub.
But in the end the boy who was supposed to deliver a sect "from bondage" still seemed to be searching for a way to fulfill the prophecy.
He wanted to do something for his people, he said, for the other victims like himself.
"I'm trying to do something lasting," he said, adding that he hoped people would look back and understand.
He hoped they'd see that "OK, maybe I didn't technically do the right thing, but I tried to do something to help," he said.
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Defrocked priest guilty of molesting boy who later shot him
BALTIMORE, Maryland (AP) -- A defrocked priest was found guilty Thursday of molesting a former altar boy who shot and wounded him on a city street a decade later.
Jurors found that Maurice Blackwell, 58, who did not testify, molested Dontee Stokes, 29, when Blackwell was pastor of St. Edward, a Roman Catholic church in West Baltimore.
The jury convicted Blackwell of three of four counts, finding he abused Stokes in 1990, 1991 and 1992 but acquitting him of a charge relating to an alleged incident in 1989, when Stokes was 13.
Sentencing was scheduled for April 15. He could face up to 45 years in prison.
After the verdict, Stokes said he felt vindicated.
"Mr. Blackwell was at no point on trial. It was all about me," he said. "The world can see that I'm not a perfect person, but I stand here right and he stands wrong."
Stokes had served home detention on a gun charge related to the shooting.
Blackwell declined to comment. Defense attorney Kenneth Ravenell said he felt jurors reached their decision on evidence they should not have heard, referring to detectives' references to "other victims," which the judge ordered stricken from the record.
"It's impossible for people to wipe clear what they've already heard," Ravenell said. He said he planned to seek a retrial and if that failed, to appeal that decision.
On Wednesday, the jurors deliberated five hours without reaching a verdict, sending a note to the judge saying they were unable to agree and asking how to proceed.
Judge Stuart Berger read them standardized instructions Thursday morning on the importance of a unanimous verdict. They then deliberated about a half-hour more before reaching their verdicts.
In closing arguments Wednesday, the prosecution called Stokes a vulnerable victim who was preyed upon by a trusted father figure. But Ravenell portrayed Stokes as a disturbed young man who made up the allegations to deal with a sexual identity crisis.
"There was absolutely no credibility to anything Dontee Stokes has told you," Ravenell said.
Stokes admitted in court that he has had trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality at times, but firmly maintained he was sexually abused by Blackwell.
Prosecutor Jo Anne Stanton called the allegations that Stokes was concealing homosexual tendencies a "smoke screen."
Stokes had made accusations against Blackwell in 1993, but Blackwell denied the allegations and no other alleged victims came forward at the time. Blackwell received psychological treatment and returned to his parish, although he was barred from working with children and young adults.
In May 2002, in the midst of the national scandal involving Catholic priests, Stokes shot Blackwell three times. In the aftermath, Baltimore prosecutors reviewed Stokes' old allegations and charged Blackwell with abuse.
Stokes, who testified he had an "out-of-body experience" at the time of the shooting, was acquitted of attempted murder in December 2002 but was convicted on gun charges. He served 18 months on home detention.
Blackwell was stripped of his church authority after acknowledging he had a sexual relationship with a teenage boy in the early 1970s. The Vatican defrocked him in October.
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Defrocked priest guilty in rape trial
Sentencing scheduled for next week
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (AP) -- Defrocked priest Paul Shanley, the most notorious figure in the sex scandal that rocked the Boston Archdiocese, was convicted Monday of raping and fondling a boy at his Roman Catholic church during the 1980s.
The conviction on all four charges gives prosecutors a high-profile victory in their effort to bring pedophile priests to justice for decades of abuse at parishes around the country.
Shanley, 74, could get life in prison for two counts each of child rape and indecent assault and battery on a child when he is sentenced Feb. 15. His bail was revoked and he was immediately led off to jail.
The victim, now 27, put his head down and sobbed as the verdicts were announced after a trial that turned on the reliability of what he claimed were recovered memories of the long-ago abuse. Shanley showed no emotion as he stood next to his attorneys.
"There are no winners today. There are only losers," his niece, Teresa Shanley, said as her uncle was led from the courtroom. "We're no closer to finding out the truth about this scandal or finding out what happened."
During the trial, the accuser broke down on the stand as he testified in graphic detail that Shanley pulled him out of Sunday morning catechism classes and raped and groped him in the church bathroom, the rectory, the confessional and the pews starting when he was 6.
"It felt awful," he testified. "He told me nobody would ever believe me if I told anybody."
The accuser said he repressed his memories of the abuse but that they came flooding back three years ago, triggered by news coverage of the scandal that began in Boston and soon engulfed the church worldwide.
Shanley, once a long-haired, jeans-wearing "street priest" who worked with Boston's troubled youth, sat stoically for most of the trial, listening to his accuser's testimony with the help of a hearing aid.
The defense called just one witness -- a psychologist who said that so-called recovered memories can be false, even if the accuser ardently believes they are true. A lawyer for Shanley argued that the accuser was either mistaken or concocted the story with the help of personal injury lawyers to cash in on a multimillion-dollar settlement resulting from the sex scandal.
The accuser, now a firefighter in suburban Boston, was one of at least two dozen men who claimed they had been molested by Shanley. The archdiocese's own personnel records showed that church officials knew Shanley publicly advocated sex between men and boys, yet continued to transfer him from parish to parish.
Prosecutors said the accuser had no financial motivation in accusing Shanley of rape in the criminal case because he received his $500,000 settlement with the archdiocese nearly a year ago. They also cited his three days on stand, during which he sobbed and begged the judge not to force him to continue testifying.
"The emotions were raw. They were real," prosecutor Lynn Rooney said in closing arguments.
Most priests avoided prosecution
Victims' advocates said they were gratified by the verdict.
"This shows that when survivors find the strength to speak up, sometimes, sometimes, kids are protected, and justice can happen," said David Clohessy, the national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abuse by Priests. "When survivors stay silent, nothing changes."
Shanley is one of the few priests prosecutors have been able to charge. Most of the priests accused of wrongdong avoided prosecution because the statute of limitations on their alleged crimes ran out long ago. But the clock stopped when Shanley moved out of Massachusetts.
He was arrested in California at the height of the scandal in May 2002, and brought back to Massachusetts in handcuffs -- charged with raping four boys from his parish in Newton, outside Boston. All four claimed they repressed memories of the abuse, then recovered them when the scandal broke.
But the case ran into numerous problems. In July, prosecutors dropped two of the accusers in what they said was a move to strengthen their case. Then, on the day jury selection began, they dropped a third accuser because they were unable to find him after a traumatic experience on the witness stand at a hearing last fall.
The clergy abuse scandal in Boston began in early 2002 when Cardinal Bernard Law acknowledged he shuffled a pedophile priest from parish to parish despite evidence the priest had molested children. That priest, John Geoghan, was convicted of assault and was later killed in prison.
The scandal intensified later in 2002 when the church released Shanley's 800-page personnel file. Despite church teachings, he argued for acceptance of homosexuality and pushed for gay rights. He called himself a "sexual expert" and advertised his counseling services in the alternative press.
He resigned from parish work in 1989 and moved to California. At the time, Law, who resigned as archbishop in December 2002 at the height of the scandal, praised his "impressive record." Boston church officials recommended him for a job in the Diocese of San Bernardino as a priest in "good standing."
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I know that TF leadership and their “media team” read and probably files every word I write on this site. A big part of what I write in this article will be directed at them.
Because I am very busy, this article will address things on a point-by-point basis and will be mostly devoid of rhetorical flourishes.
Firstly I want to thank those many people who have either called or emailed me with expressions of support and offers of help. If I have not responded, it’s only because I have been very busy or in the last couple of days trying to catch up on three weeks of missed sleep.
I understand that TF has decided to single out a few of us and especially myself as “declared enemies” of TF. Aside from being inaccurate, it is a tactic error. In my writings and comments both on Movingon and to the media, I have never made the “destruction” of TF an issue. I have argued for a few simple things. I will list them in bullet form:
1.We want accountability from TF for the abuses that the organization institutionalized and committed.
2.We want the cooperation of the leaders to identify and bring to justice those who committed egregious abuses against Family children and young people.
3.We want quantifiable and third party supervised systems in place to ensure that A) those with abusive pasts no longer have access to any children, and B) that there be a codified system for addressing future cases of abuse by both excommunicating abusers and notifying the relevant authorities.
To suggest that only a handful of disaffected ex-members support this is disingenuous in the extreme. I wonder when a list of some 150 people calling for the same thing stops becoming a “handful’ and become a real concern.
To call for accountability and protective systems in not hate speech. It is not vitriol. I have been forceful in calling for such things. I will continue to be forceful in calling for such things. The Family speaks of “discrediting me.” In attempting to discredit my own tale of abuse they come across as cold and heartless. They cannot discredit the evidence of their own writings.
The Media:
As anyone who follows the media knows, the media responds to events with a flurry and then loses interest in short order. After the initial rush for headline, there are follow-ups by magazines and documentary shows without the same pressing deadlines. We are beginning to enter that phase now. The story will eventually subside and then disappear. This is to be expected. But what has happened is that a baseline understanding of the situation has been established. No longer can TF throw out their carefully crafted catch phrases and press packets without having to face the real questions as to their past writings and behaviors.
Whatever comes next, be it more in depth coverage or legal action, The Family leadership now has to deal with a press and public who has at least a basic understanding of the history of their organization.
When I decided to put my name out there for the press I took careful stock of the ramifications. I am about to transfer into a good four-year college (a long time goal of mine). I have a good job, and many loving friends who knew little or nothing about my upbringing. I understood that all this I have spent so long to build would be impacted on some level. I understood that per TF’s usual modus operandi, they would ignore the majority of voices speaking out and instead seek to target me as “vitriolic, disaffected, lying, someone taking advantage of the situation” etc. I did not and still do not know to what lengths they will go. I have to say I have not been surprised at the attempts to illegally access my phone records on line, nor at their efforts to place some of the blame for Ricky’s crime in my lap. I repeat that I believe they have made a tactical error. By placing the onus for this firestorm they find themselves in on me, they ignore (to their own peril I believe) the ranks of those many calling for accountability and justice. And even if by dint of some dirty trick they succeed in shutting me up, I have no doubt that they will not be able to do it to all those who are stepping forward to speak up.
I repeat a call that I fear continues to fall on uncaring and unhearing ears:
Leaders of The Family: Come out and face those many who have made complaints against you and some of your followers. There must and will be accountability. This will not go away. Every year your victims become stronger and more unified and we cannot all be “discredited.” More than a decade of carefully crafted PR has crashed in three short weeks. It will be a long fight back uphill for you. Unless you take the steps to acknowledge the abuses directly, and acknowledge the victims, there will be no end of this for you. Don’t YOU be responsible for the destruction of TF. Come out and meet with us to address the complaints of the victims. The ball is in your court. We will not stop pressing for answers EVER. If this goes away for a year or two we will come back next time with more education, more money, more influence, and even more determination.
Sending your second generation out to cover for you is a cowardly thing to do. It is ineffectual because our complaints are not and have never been against them. They are our brothers and sisters. We are saddened by their words but we know why they speak them…we did the same once.
You know what you must do. We will not stop until you do it.
Daniel Roselle
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It has been nearly three weeks since the tragic murder-suicide in Tucson and Blythe. In the weeks since, I have been in almost non-stop conversations with representatives of the media, attempting to shed some light on the history and practices of The Children of God/The Family. I spent the first couple of days in grief and shock, only to jump into the maelstrom of media interest. Consequently, I’ve had little time to address my own grief and feelings on this horrific tragedy. I have also found little time to articulate much of anything on this site. This is my attempt to do so.
In the summer of 2002 I wrote an article for Movingon.org attempting to clarify the relative differences between Justice and Revenge as I saw them. I quote from that article:
"I do not believe in revenge. I see revenge as a position of weakness. The emotional component of seeking revenge often leaves the seeker frustrated, unfulfilled, and angrier still, if only because most endeavors are best undertaken with a level head. That is not to say that Justice cannot be pursued with passion.
Any attempt at exacting Justice from the Family must take into account the effects on the innocent. That is not at all to say that we should stay our hand. It just means that we should enter into anything we do with the mind that ‘we must take care, lest in fighting the monster, we become the very thing we seek to destroy’ (author unknown)."
http://www.movingon.org/article.asp?sID=1&Cat=31&ID=510
If anything, my position on the necessity to seek redress for the wrongs committed against us through the proper channels has become more entrenched. I have spent countless hours in the last few years lobbying attorneys and law enforcement representatives in the attempt to get them to look at our case. I freely admit that I have been met in many cases with disbelief or frank assessments of the "difficulties" we face in bringing our abusers to justice. I admit to becoming discouraged at times, but never disillusioned. If anything, my resolve has been strengthened.
But here we are in the shadow of this horrific tragedy. There is no way to put a good face on the unspeakable crime that Ricky committed. We can seek to explain, understand, and parse it out, but the horrifying truth remains that one of our peers committed a gruesome crime. Whatever may or may not be the particulars of Angela Smith’s history with Ricky or the Family, the simple fact remains that she did not deserve to be murdered. There is a legal system set up to address complaints. Sometimes the legal system may fail us, but we must never take the law into our own hands. In the days following the breaking of this story, I was saddened and horrified to see a few postings that seemed to perhaps applaud the action that Ricky took. My only comfort is that in three weeks of speaking to my peers I have found nothing but revulsion and sadness over the events that took place, and sympathy and sorrow for Ricky and Angela’s families.
As those of you who tried to reach me either by phone or email in the six months before this tragedy can attest, I was nearly incommunicado. I had taken a leave from this effort to find justice in order to complete a very grueling stage in my education, namely two very busy semesters with difficult math classes that I had to pass or else. The stresses of work and school during these months eventually landed me in the Emergency room with severe asthma. I had been slowly recovering my health and strength through a lot of rest and vacationing right up to the moment this tragedy occurred. Since then I have set myself back months thanks to very little sleep and enormous amounts of stress. I don’t regret my involvement in the effort to tell our story. I am proud to have been able to meet and stand shoulder to shoulder with many wonderful, bright, caring and articulate individuals who I had known only as names or perhaps in my childhood. I have made friends who I hope will remain so for the balance of my life.
In three weeks I return to an absolutely vital semester in school. I face a statistics class that for my math adverse brain will be quite an ordeal. I will therefore begin to ramp down my involvement in the media side of this effort. I will continue to work on a few projects I have been involved in, but will attempt to mostly clear my plate before school starts. I am gratified that I have not been alone in speaking to the abuses of our past. I will work closely with those who continue to do so in order to insure that the most factual and both intellectually and emotionally honest story is told.
I am saddened but not surprised by The Family’s response to date. They have as always in the past screamed about witch-hunts, tearing apart families, and religious persecution. I will not answer all their charges here except to say that their attempts to portray Ricky’s actions as having been influenced by others are absurd and directly contradicts their own statement on brainwashing.
Despite everything, I still hold out hope that they will see their way towards working with us to acknowledge the abuses and to identify and address the issue of those who committed the abuse. There is no need to scream at each other from across this gulf. We can walk halfway and meet each other, that is, if we are indeed willing to meet at all. I know that I am. I have been asking for such a meeting for years.
I close by extending my hand in sympathy to Ricky and Angela’s families, as well as to all of my peers who were friends of Ricky. I hope that out of this horror we can all come to a place of dialogue, understanding, and to a place where this fractured family of ours can finally put to rest the demons of our past.
Daniel Roselle (Albatross)
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Thank you LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-shanley26jan26,0,2809159.story?coll=la-home-nation
THE NATION
Sexual Abuse Trial Starts for Former Priest
Paul Shanley faces charges of raping and assaulting a child in the '80s. His lawyer says the allegations are based on inconsistent stories.By Elizabeth Mehren
Times Staff Writer
January 26, 2005
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The trial of Paul Shanley, one of the most notorious figures in the Boston clerical abuse scandal, began here Tuesday with the prosecution invoking lost innocence and the defense explaining the case as one of faulty memory.
Shanley's accuser — a man now 27 years old — has said that between 1983 and 1989, the priest raped and assaulted him at a church in nearby Newton, Mass. If convicted, Shanley faces life in prison.
In her opening statement, prosecutor Lynn Rooney showed a picture of the accuser as a smiling 6-year-old and asked the jury to imagine that the year was 1983.
"This boy … sits in his Sunday school class at St. Jean's church," Rooney began. "He is waiting, dreading, afraid. He knows the priest will come. And so he does, week after week."
But Shanley's lawyer countered that the accuser's recollections were inconsistent and "orchestrated by the personal injury lawyers" who last year won an $85-million settlement from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston for hundreds of alleged abuse victims.
"This case is about two things: old memories and really, really old memories," Frank Mondano said. The defense lawyer noted that Shanley's accuser, who had asked not to be named in the media, received $500,000 in the settlement.
Shanley, who turned 74 Tuesday, is charged with three counts of child rape and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child. The slender figure, with wispy gray hair and double hearing aids, bore little resemblance to the popular Boston street priest who once roared around the city on a motorcycle, clad in bluejeans. Having built a ministry for troubled youth, he was beloved by many in Boston in the 1960s and 1970s.
But when the clerical abuse scandal erupted here three years ago, Shanley became the target of public outrage.
Formerly confidential documents showed that church authorities knew of allegations against Shanley from as far back as 1967. Rather than removing him from duties involving contact with children, officials transferred him from parish to parish.
With the approval of Boston church leaders, Shanley went to a parish in San Bernardino in the early 1990s. Retired, he was living in San Diego when he was arrested in May 2002.
Shanley was defrocked by the Vatican last year.
Scores of Boston priests were accused in a child molestation scandal that led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law. Most avoided criminal trials because their alleged offenses occurred too long ago to be prosecuted.
But prosecutors in the Shanley case maintain that the clock stopped on Massachusetts' 15-year statute of limitations when he moved to California in 1990.
Most of Tuesday's witnesses were Boston-area priests who corresponded with Shanley while he was living out of state.
Shanley's accuser is scheduled to testify today.
Three other complainants dropped out of the case, one after going through extensive questioning by Shanley's defense team.
Mondano said he would call experts on "dissociative amnesia" — or repressed memory — to discredit the accuser's recollections about his alleged abuse.
The lawyer pointed to what he called inconsistencies in the accuser's statements about the sexual acts he said Shanley performed on him when the accuser was 6 to 12 years old.
"He forgot, he remembered, he forgot again," Mondano said. "The simple truth is that [the accuser's] story is not reliable."
In opening remarks that were sometimes graphic, Rooney said Shanley took the accuser out of religious education classes and molested him in the church pews, rectory and confessional. She said the priest continually warned the boy: "If you tell, no one will believe you."
She said Shanley made a habit of watching the accuser while he used the bathroom. She said they often played a card game called war. If the accuser lost — as he usually did — he was required to take off his clothes. If Shanley lost, he removed his own clothes, Rooney said. Win or lose, the accuser was molested as part of the game, she said.
Rooney said the accuser had dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player. When those hopes faded, he joined the Air Force and became a military police officer. The accuser's memories of his alleged abuse emerged in 2001 while he was stationed in Colorado, she said.
A jury of eight men and eight women will weigh the case against Shanley, who took notes throughout Tuesday's proceedings. Among the spectators in the small courtroom were about a dozen alleged victims of clerical abuse. Shanley's niece and a handful of supporters sat together in one corner.
The trial is expected to last two weeks.
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Amazing article!
Rage turns to vengeance against 'Family'
Anguished ex-cult member decried years of abuse before killing 'molester,' himself
- Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer
Saturday, January 15, 2005
Click to ViewClick to View
Ricky Rodriguez was exhausted, scared, frantic. He'd just fled his Tucson apartment, leaving behind the body of 51-year-old Angela Smith. He'd stabbed her three times and slit her throat.
As a baby, the 29-year-old Rodriguez had been christened "Davidito," the young prince and future prophet of the Children of God -- a freewheeling religious sect founded in the late 1960s by Oakland native David "Moses" Berg.
But heading west into the desert last Saturday night in his Chevy Cavalier, all Rodriguez could think about was whether to kill himself. Or someone else.
He pulled out his cell phone.
At Elixcia Manumel's Seattle apartment, the phone rang. She was not surprised to hear the drowning voice of her husband on the other line. It had been only a matter of time, she told The Chronicle, before Rodriguez committed suicide.
Rodriguez had disavowed the Children of God, now called the Family, five years ago, but he could not escape his own demons. His mother had set up the toddler for sex acts with his nannies -- all part of her being a missionary for the international evangelical sex cult.
The former "Jesus baby" blamed his mother and was obsessed with revenge. On a Web site for former Family members, he proclaimed: "Something has to be done about these child molesters."
Angela Smith, a former nanny of Rodriguez and confidante of his mother, seemed to be an easy target.
"Don't let anyone ever tell you that taking someone else's life is easy. It's not," Rodriguez told his wife on the phone. "It's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life."
His wife sobbed.
"I miss you so much. Come die with me," Rodriguez begged her. "All I ever wanted in life was to be loved."
During the spiritual counterculture of the 1960s, Berg embraced a strange brew of evangelical Christianity, radical politics and free love.
By the late 1970s, his secretive cult, the Children of God, would be known as the Family, an "international Christian ministry" with thousands of members living in communes and missionary organizations scattered around the world.
In Berg's search for new converts, he encouraged many female followers to expand the "law of love," which promoted "sexual sharing" among members. They were sent forth into the world as "sacred prostitutes."
They called it "flirty fishing," after Jesus of Nazareth's call that his followers become "fishers of men."
Rodriguez was the only son of Karen "Maria David" Zerby, the current prophetess and spiritual leader of the Family International. Zerby was an early convert to the Children of God who became sexually involved with Berg in 1969.
According to several former members, Rodriguez's biological father was a Spaniard named "Carlos," one of many "flirty fishing" recruits who did not stick around long after their initial encounter with Children of God missionaries.
But that didn't stop Berg from taking Ricky as his own spiritual son when the boy was born in 1975. Berg proclaimed the infant "Davidito" and anointed him the future prophet and spiritual leader of the Children of God.
"Davidito was almost like a mythological creature when we were growing up, '' said Jonathan Thompson, who was born into the cult two years after Ricky. "We were given comics and story books with prophecies about how he would one day take over the world as one of the two witnesses written about in the Book of Revelation.''
For his entire life, Rodriguez had lived in the secretive inner circle that clustered around his mother and Berg. They were always on the move -- Greece, Spain, the Philippines.
Most of the sect's thousands of members never knew where the leadership was located. They communicated with their far-flung flock through a series of missives entitled "Mo letters" and "Mama's Jewels."
Former members say there was rampant sexual activity in Berg's inner circle among adults, teenagers, children and even toddlers.
Some of that sexual fondling was described in a Children of God publication, "The Story of Davidito," which was given to adults and children as an activity to emulate.
One scene describes sexual activity between the 20-month-old Rodriguez and another one of his nannies.
Other pages show pictures of "Davidito" lying in bed with naked teenage girls.
"We were sexually abused from a very young age,'' said a former "playmate" of Rodriguez who has left the group. "It was a lot sicker than they wrote about in the book. It was very morbid. We were the guinea pigs of our era."
Rodriguez was a bit older when Berg, his spiritual father, came up with the idea of "Teen Training."
Young teenage girls selected on a rotating basis would be sent to the boy's room for sex.
"Of course, I didn't have to have my arm twisted for that,'' Rodriguez would write years later. "But I must say it was a bit awkward -- especially since I was much younger than most of them were, and I could tell that a couple of them were uncomfortable with it.''
Rodriguez was about to turn 21 when he met his future wife, Manumel. This time she was the younger one, age 16, and one of the growing army of second- generation members of the Children of God.
"We clicked right away," said Manumel, who went by the name "Nicole" when she was in the Family. "We knew we were different than everyone else. He took me in his arms and said he would take me away."
And that's exactly what he did. In 2000, Rodriguez could no longer handle being "Davidito." He had to escape.
Rodriguez and Manumel tried to settle down in Seattle, but their marriage wasn't working.
"It was hard for Rick to be with me," Manumel sad. "I was going to medical school, and it was hard for him to see me doing so well. I had found a way to move on with my life. He just couldn't do it.''
Rodriguez moved to Tucson, where he was trying to get his life back together. But according to Manumel, who is now a nurse, and others who knew him, he was determined to get back at his mother, his nannies and others he blamed for his early sexual abuse.
According to Manumel, Rodriguez had not seen his mother since 2000, when "The Unit" -- as the inner circle was called -- had landed on the southern coast of Portugal. By this time, Berg had died.
Rodriguez began meeting with other disgruntled second-generation members of the Family, and writing postings on their Web site, www.movingon.org.
"Someone needs to put an end to it," Rodriguez wrote in an Aug. 14, 2004, posting, ominously titled "Still Around."
"Because only then can we feel some semblance of justice."
His opportunity for "justice" came when Rodriguez learned that one of the nannies in the "Book of Davidito" was staying in Tucson.
She was Angela Smith, just 18 years old when she joined the Children of God in the early 1970s.
In the book, she is photographed with the toddler prophet. In another photo, she lies naked and seductive in a bathtub with another of the child's teenage nannies.
According to several former members, Smith served in recent years as the personal secretary of Rodriguez's mother, Zerby.
Smith also was on the board of several organizations with ties to the Family, including the Family Care Foundation, a California nonprofit public benefit corporation in the San Diego area. She was also on the board of Elder Haven, a Tucson nursing home run by some of Zerby's relatives.
According to police, Rodriguez learned that Smith was coming to Tucson for an Elder Haven board meeting, and he arranged to meet her for dinner.
"She was the first person he had access to,'' said Manumel, Rodriguez's wife. "He wanted people closer to his mom, but Angela just came along. He wanted to get other people, but he was just too exhausted. Angela was (his mother's) eyes and ears.''
Police in Blythe (Riverside County) found Rodriguez's body parked in the driveway of the Palo Verde Irrigation District, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Authorities called the last number on the dead man's cell phone. Elixcia Manumel answered. She suggested that someone go over and check out Rodriguez's Tucson apartment.
On Sunday morning in Tucson, homicide Detective Benjamin Jimenez drove over to Rodriguez's apartment on North Los Altos Avenue. Smith was dead on the floor.
It was a murder-suicide, former Family members say, spurred by the haunting echoes of a life wrecked by sexual, psychological and religious abuse.
On Friday, a video that Rodriguez made the night before he killed Smith surfaced in which he displays his weapons and talks about the abuse he and other kids suffered in the Children of God. "Unfortunately," said one defector who saw the tape, "there's a rallying cry of sorts for others to 'take out' their perps."
Attempts to reach Angela Smith's family were unsuccessful. The Family keeps secret the whereabouts of Rodriguez's mother, and officials at its Washington office did not return phone calls.
But in a written statement, Claire Borowik, a spokeswoman for the Family International, said Smith's "memory has been slandered by individuals who never met her, nor knew Ricky Rodriguez throughout his entire childhood.''
After leaving the Family in 2000, the statement said, Rodriguez "became estranged from his mother" and "began to manifest violent tendencies.''
"In searching for a motive for this tragic crime," Borowik said, "journalists should take care to not casually write off Angela's death and justify the actions of an obviously disturbed young man."
Borowik goes on to say that "Family leadership officially addressed ... questionable past actions of individuals regarding discipline, education or sexual misconduct," adding that "apologies were published" and "Ricky Rodriguez received ample financial and emotional support to assist him in his transition."
Yet in his August posting on www.movingon.org, Rodiguez made it clear that his transition to the real world was not going well.
"No matter how much longer I live, the first 25 years of my life will always haunt me,'' he wrote. "I was so brainwashed with 25 years of s -- that I had no idea which end was up. I just knew that I had to get away from my mom. ''
E-mail Don Lattin at dlattin@sfchronicle.com.