I was born into the group the Children of God (COG) or as they are called now, The Family, the Family International, or Activated Ministries, a Christian cult started in the late 1960’s made up of dropout hippies in Huntington Beach. They went “international” after the leader was sought for kidnapping and tax evasion.
Many will remember the 2005 suicide of their heir apparent Ricky Rodriguez, right after he killed his childhood nanny Angela Smith. That was sensational enough to make headlines and inspire a “Law and Order” episode. Recently author Don Lattin released a book about the cult’s history titled “Jesus Freaks.”

My parents left the sect when I was five, while my uncle and cousins remained members for the next 20 years. I obsessively follow any press that the group gets. While watching CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” report detailing Rodriguez’s death and the group’s well-known child sex practices, Anderson said, “Well, that has nothing to do with Jesus!”
This is how the public has always reacted to the COG. It’s upsetting and so it’s dismissed outright as not actually Christian. It’s a quick effort to make sense of it.

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