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Bexy Cameron was raised in incestous cult The Children of God, ruled by a polygamist who advocated sex with minors\u00a0<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2024\/01\/BEXY_HS_024_preview.jpg” title_text=”BEXY_HS_024_preview” force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|600|||||||” text_text_color=”#FFFFFF” background_color=”#111111″ text_orientation=”center” custom_margin=”-2.75%||||false|false” custom_padding=”4px|8px|4px|8px|true|true” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
Bexy Cameron grew up thinking the end of the world was coming\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Growing up, Bexy Cameron was told she was \u201cspecial\u201d, and that she had been chosen to fight in Jesus\u2019 army. But, as a child soldier of God, she was warned she would die in battle at his Second Coming, and not live to see\u00a0 her adult years. Confusingly, Bexy was also told she was \u201cevil\u201d, and was exorcised when she was nine years old, before being banned from speaking for nearly a year.\u00a0 All of this happened inside a cult called the Children of God. She says, \u201cGrowing up in the Children of God was confusing and controlled. I was raised to be this soldier that was going to die at the Armageddon.\u00a0 I was also told I was going to have lasers coming out of my eyes and breathe fire like one of the X-Men \u2013 that was the cool part. But it was damaging to think I would never grow up, that I would not have a future. I grew up thinking the end of the world was coming, the world would be destroyed with the Antichrist\u2019s return, and my job was to be raised to fight in that war.\u201d
Founded in Huntington Beach, California in 1968, Children of God was the brainchild of pastor-turned-prophet David Berg. He claimed to be a \u201cchannel to God\u201d and prophesised about Christ\u2019s Second Coming. His spiritual message of revolution and happiness caught on following the Summer of Love, winning him thousands of followers, and the sect quickly grew around \u2028the world. At its height in the 1970s, the organisation had around 15,000 members living\u2028in 130 international communities. Members included River and Joaquin Phoenix, and Rose McGowan, who were all born into the group. However, Berg \u2013 also known as Moses David, King David, Father David and Dad\/Grandpa to his followers \u2013 had a sinister side. A polygamist, \u2028he advocated sex with children, telling members that God was love and love was sex, so there should be no limits, regardless of age or familial relationship. Exploiting the free love movement of the \u201960s, he encouraged his followers to have sex with each other and with kids, permitting incest, and he practised what he preached. Bexy \u2013 who spent the first 15 years of her life inside the cult with her parents Martin and Linda, who changed their names to Gideon and Rachel \u2013 explains, \u201cChildren of God was a sexually deviant group, led by a man who thought he was a prophet, but ended up a predator. It started out with a powerful message of the world\u2019s end, but within a few years, became an extremely damaging and deviant cult.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Pastor-turned-prophet David Berg had around 15,000 members at the height of the cult’s popularity in the 1970s<\/p>\n
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Under the encouragement of their leader, mass orgies were commonplace and sexual abuse rife. Berg was alleged to have raped young girls, including his own daughter and granddaughters, although he was never charged or arrested, as he went into hiding.\u00a0 Actress Rose McGowan, who lived with her family in a Children of God commune in Italy for the first nine years of her life, is among those who have spoken out about the abuse she suffered within the organisation.
\u201cThe sexual abuse was one of their defining beliefs,\u201d says Bexy, who reveals how she \u2028was urged to \u201cmake love\u201d to another boy when she was eight.
\u201cDavid Berg was a predator and paedophile. We grew up with the idea that children were allowed to have sex as a complete norm. It was in our literature, it was spoken about all the time. It was around us on a daily basis. And when you have a group preaching about doing things to kids, you will have sexual predators joining it. Children of God was an evil entity in many ways.\u201d
Around 1973, Berg made a new policy, instructing female followers to practise \u201cflirty fishing\u201d and become \u201chookers for Jesus\u201d, earning the sect the nickname of \u201cthe sex cult\u201d. The women would seduce men in bars to get them to join the group, and hundreds of thousands of men were \u201cfished\u201d before the practice was discontinued in 1987.
As well as the disturbing sexual aspects, daily life in the Children of God was brutal. Public beatings happened regularly and food was scarce. At one point, the members were fed horse food disguised as bran flakes. \u201cImagine waking up in a commune deep in the British countryside, but you don\u2019t know your address or where you are. You share a 15x15ft room with \u202815 other girls and the majority aren\u2019t related to you,\u201d Bexy says.
\u201cChildren were the workforce, and my day was divided into looking after younger children, cooking and cleaning in between prayers. I was cooking for up to 100 people when I was nine years old, and watching babies, day and night, doing feeds, naps and changing, when I was ten.\u201d She continues, \u201cIt was a toxic and dangerous environment. The group forced me to betray other children, my friends, daily. We were watched, we had to tell on each other, we had to conspire against each other. We were prisoners.\u201d<\/p>\n
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As a child Bexy was subjected to exorcisms during which everyone in the commune would touch her while shouting in tongues<\/p>\n
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Living on the commune was also very isolating. \u201cWe had to be kept separate from Systemites [society]. We didn\u2019t go to school, watch television or listen to music, because we had a singular purpose: to be a soldier for Christ,\u201d says Bexy. When she was nine, after being caught lying, she experienced her first exorcism \u2013 an event that continues to traumatise her to this day. \u2028It involved everyone in the commune touching her all over while shouting in tongues.
\u201cThe exorcism told me I was evil. It\u2019s quite a scary thing to have a child go through and I had my first panic attack,\u201d she recalls. \u201cWhen I was 27, all these past events started to hit me in the\u00a0 \u2028face. I couldn\u2019t hide any more. It took me years to realise I could trace a lot of things back to that moment.\u201d
Life soon got worse for Bexy. When she was ten, she was enrolled into a training camp known as End Time Army Training. There, she was placed on Silence Restriction, where \u2028she was forbidden to speak, look at or communicate with anyone else for 11 months, all while being separated from her family. \u201cThat year was one of the defining moments of my life, and I still think it may be one of the most difficult years I will have to go through,\u201d she says. \u2028\u201cThe most damaging part of it was my right to communicate was taken away.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t allowed to talk, look people in the eye, smile or react to someone else. I had to act as if I was invisible \u2013 and I felt invisible. I felt like I was losing my mind. The training camps had the most effect on me. Our routines became a combination of army training and a spiritual camp.\u201d
Bexy\u2019s freedom came when she was 15. After meeting some local teens and finding herself \u2028a secret boyfriend, she sneakily got a job in a nearby pub \u2013 only to be caught when her employer called after she accidentally gave them her house telephone number instead of her boyfriend\u2019s. She was kicked out of Children of God following a unanimous vote, with her parents also voting against her. \u2028\u201cI had wanted to leave, but not like that,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Cult Following is Bexy’s 2021 memoir, which along with therapy and grief retreats has helped her heal<\/p>\n
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It has taken Bexy more than two decades to come to terms with her past, particularly with her parents\u2019 involvement in the sect. They remained in the cult, while all her siblings escaped. Therapy, grief retreats and writing her 2021 memoir, Cult Following, all helped Bexy heal. She remains very close to her brothers and sisters, and loves being an aunt to her nieces and nephews.
Now 40, Bexy has carved out a successful career as a filmmaker and activist. She reveals, \u201cI\u2019ve come to terms with what happened, and the book was a big help in that. I now have a life that I never, ever dreamed was possible as a kid. What I want to forgive my parents for some day \u2028is the lies, the betrayal, the lack of protection. Our parents are meant to protect us and we\u2019re ingrained to trust them, so when our protector starts to damage us in some way, it messes with \u2028our perception of love and trust. Being denied my reality as a child has given me bigger \u2028scars than any beating ever did.\u201d
She adds, \u201cOne of the biggest things I struggle with is how they defended a group we know abused and exploited children. That\u2019s the worst thing that cult did.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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But she managed to escape and tell her tragic story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":2023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-life"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"closermag","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/closer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/closer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/closer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/closer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/closer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2015"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/closer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2029,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/closer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2015\/revisions\/2029"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/closer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/closer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/closer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/closer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Read more from Closer<\/h3>\n