A survivor of the notorious Children of God cult detailed the horrifying abuse she suffered when she was as young as five — revealing how the so-called “free love” ideals of the group promoted the sexual abuse of children.
Daniella Mestyanek Young, 36, escaped the “sex cult” at 15 and now works as a self-described “scholar of cults, extreme groups and extremely bad leadership,” she told The Sun in an interview.
While the cult advertised itself on sex, God, and free love, Mestyanek Young revealed the horrifying truth about what happened behind the scenes. She described how adults were encouraged to have sex with minors and said the group’s “free love” ideals included having to sacrifice your child to be trafficked.
“They officially say that there’s no more of that,” she said of the abuse, noting that the cult “was whitewashed, changed its name and survived.”
The notorious cult, founded by former priest David Berg in 1968, had upwards of 15,000 members at its peak before the collective became disgraced with allegations of rape, child abuse, incest and religious prostitution.
“[David] Berg was a failed, alcoholic preacher, who all of a sudden at 50 years old got thousands of people to follow him and give up their freedom, their children, everything,” she said.
Mestyanek Young, whose grandfather remains a senior leader who “runs the money,” suffered physical, sexual and psychological abuse at the hands of the cult.
“You’re taught that the outside world is evil and so bad,” she said.
Meanwhile, her world, which banned any education that wasn’t the Bible, was filled with “all different kinds of abuses, corporal punishment, parents with dual personalities, programming, medical neglect, sexual abuse, denial of education,” she said.
Mestyanek Young said she was sexually abused when she was as young as five, and by the time she was six she began feeling suicidal.
“I had experienced a very bad sexual assault, and I’m like if this is God’s love like I don’t want anything to do with this,” she said.
“They watched as I was dragged [away] by a pedophile… and I was gone for 10 hours. And nobody asked any questions.”
Mestyanek Young said the abuse was normalized because parents were convinced they had to sacrifice their children for God
Though the FBI began hunting down Berg as early as 1974, the cult simply went underground before rebooting in the 90s as “Family International,” Mestyanek Young said.
“We called ourselves one big family,” she said, adding that a lot of time was spent “rehearsing answers about why we are not a cult,” she said.
While the investigation into the group largely crumbled when Berg died in 1994, there are “never-lefters” who never experienced a “crack in their brainwashing” even as the cult began to fall apart, Mestyanek Young said.
She estimates it now has roughly 1,500 members and brings in more than a million dollars each year.
“Part of the genius of The Children of God was the moving all around the world and changing its name right?” she said, adding that without the true identities of her abusers, she is unable to get justice.
Now a mother of one and an author of “Uncultured,” a memoir about her experience in the cult, Mestyanek Young devotes her time to teaching others about cult psychology.
“I really try to teach people is that the only way to protect yourself from extremism is being comfortable in living in the grey and understanding that there are many valid ways to live a life,” she said. “Because the whole cult proposition is that ‘there’s one right way to live your life, and we have it’.”
“I think the best anti-cult mantra is just telling yourself all the time, there are many valid ways to live a life.”