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<\/p>\nA survivor of the notorious Children of God cult has shared some of the horrific abuse children living within communes were subject to, including rotating sexual partners.<\/p>\n
Founded in 1968 by David Berg, the cult\u2019s followers devoted themselves to ideologies of promiscuous sex. There have been numerous allegations of sexual and physical abuse made by survivors over the years.<\/p>\n
In one piece of testimony, Berg\u2019s granddaughter claimed that the cult \u201cemphasised\u201d sex, and suggested that women were expected to prostitute themselves for Jesus Christ. <\/p>\n
Juliana Buhring was born into one of the cult\u2019s communes in Greece in 1981. Speaking on the BBC\u2019s Outlook podcast, she shared the story of her time in a Children of God commune. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe [David Berg] twisted Bible scripture to basically make it okay to do whatever you wanted,\u201d she began.<\/p>\n
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\u201cSo, he used the idea that God is love, and he called it the \u2018law of love\u2019, and that included their own sexual proclivities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just sexual, it was also beatings, it was the physical torture that they inflicted on the children.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter a beating they would then hug you and say, \u2018I love you\u2019 and play with you, and that was also a form of love. So it was a very confusing idea of what love meant.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the defining aspects of life inside a Children of God cult was the fact that, often, there was no line drawn between love and sex, and Juliana agreed that her community was no different.<\/p>\n
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She remembered: \u201cFor them it was all part of the same demonstration of, if you love somebody you also love them physically, you love them emotionally. You give your body to somebody because that\u2019s love."<\/p>\n
This philosophy, Juliana recalled, extended all the way down to educating young children about their bodies.<\/p>\n
She explained: \u201cWe were told that God made our bodies and that it was natural to have sexual feelings towards others, and it was just one form of showing love.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe adults came from that hippy era of free love and free sex, right? And so we grew up in a very sexualised environment where we just saw it in front of us all the time. I mean, the adults walked around naked, everyone walked around naked.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAnd as the kids became older they were then included in what they called the \u2018sharing schedule\u2019, which was a sexual schedule; every day you had a different partner, you didn\u2019t get to choose, they chose for you.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach commune had a leader, and they would decide everything. From who you had to have sex with, and family time was very regulated, they didn\u2019t encourage private families or relationships, so you were supposed to be married to the group as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n
This meant that, when Juliana was only three years old, her parents were forced to separate and her mother left the commune. The pair only reunited years later.<\/p>\n