c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Like the circumstances of his birth, nothing about Ricky Rodriguez’s life was normal. His death, in 2005 at the age of 29, would be no different.

He was born to an American woman, Maria Zerby, who embraced the gospel of “flirty fishing” that used sex as a tool to recruit new members to the Children of God, a 1970s Christian sect now known as The Family International.

Overseeing it all was David Berg, whose gospel of sexual liberation also included adult-child sex. Berg took Rodriguez under his wing and declared him to be a “Prophet Prince,” the chosen one who would sacrifice his own life to save fellow believers.

In a strange and twisted way, he did live out that prophecy, according to longtime religion writer Don Lattin, whose new book, “Jesus Freaks: A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge,” chronicles The Family.

Three years after Rodriguez tried to avenge the childhood sexual abuse by fatally stabbing his former nanny and then taking his own life on a desert road in California, he remains a symbol of the group’s troubled past and uncertain future.

“Maybe I didn’t technically do the right thing,” he told fellow ex-Family members in a video he made just before the murder-suicide, “but I tried to do something to help.”

What seemed to anger Rodriguez the most, according to the video he left behind, is that the leaders of The Family _ including Berg, who died in 1994, and his mother _ were never punished for sexual exploitation and other crimes.

“I wouldn’t say he was a hero,” said Lattin, a longtime reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle, “I would say he was a misbegotten martyr.”

Claire Borowik, a spokeswoman for The Family International, wrote in an e-mail exchange, “We regret that cases occurred where minors were exposed to sexually inappropriate behavior” in the late 1970s and early ’80s. An official statement after the 2005 killings condemned Rodriguez’s “brutal, premeditated murder.”

In his book, Lattin begins The Family’s story in the revival tents of the early 20th century, when Berg traveled the country with his mother, a well-known Pentecostal preacher. Berg’s mother also enforced a strict sexual morality on him, threatening and humiliating him when she discovered him masturbating, for example.

These twin currents in Berg’s life _ evangelical revivalism and sexual repression _ came together in the late 1960s, when Berg preached to young California hippies a Christian doctrine of free love, in which “loving your neighbor” meant sexual sharing.

Berg also taught that God created children to enjoy sexual pleasure. In 1982, The Family published a book about Rodriguez, “The Story of Davidito,” (as Rodriguez was sometimes known,) in which Rodriguez’s nannies described the sex play they engaged in with him.

“They didn’t see this (as) abuse,” said Lattin. “They thought they were sexually liberating their children.”

According to Borowik, the group’s current spokeswoman, sexual contact between adults and minors was officially banned in 1986 and made an excommunicable offense in 1998. At the same time, “questionable publications were officially renounced and expunged.”

Today, Lattin said, Berg would be classified as a sex addict, one who was corrupted by the absolute power he held as the group’s leader and prophet. And while child sexual abuse has occurred in many religious groups, Lattin said he found The Family to be unique.

“In the Catholic Church, it was done in private by people who were supposed to be celibate; it was not officially condoned,” he said. “The Family was worse because it was their explicit teaching at the time.”

Not all of the 13,000 children born into The Family between 1971 and 2001 suffered abuse. “Basically the further away you were from Berg, the better off you were,” Lattin said.

That may help explain why many current Family members heatedly deny claims of sexual abuse. On the Web site MyConclusion.com, current Family members write lovingly about their Christian life in the group. Some close to the leadership have remained loyal to the family, including Rodriguez’s half-sister, “Techi” Zerby, and Bethany Kelly, daughter of group leader Peter Amsterdam, who painted a glowing portrait of Berg in her self-published online autobiography (http://www.anuncommonlife.com.).

A number of online support networks have also sprouted for ex-members. Lattin said seeking legal redress is often difficult because much of the abuse occurred overseas, decades ago, and Family members often change their names, making it difficult for adult victims to identify perpetrators.

While Lattin said The Family “has gone to great lengths to stop actual sexual abuse of minors by adults,” he faulted the group for “not taking responsibility for long-term effects they’ve had on kids.” Rodriguez isn’t the only ex-member who has committed suicide.

Today, The Family claims just under 15,000 associate and full-time members around the world, most of whom “are active in missionary service,” according to Borowik. The group’s central teaching is salvation through Jesus Christ, she wrote.

Will The Family survive the round of scrutiny set off three years ago with Rodriguez’s murder-suicide, and now reinforced by Lattin’s book?

“They have survived past crises by laying low, changing their name, and later resurfacing, and I think that’s what will happen now,” said Lattin. “I don’t think we’ve seen the end of this story.“

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A photo of Don Lattin and the cover of “Jesus Freaks” are available via https://religionnews.com.