Kristina Jones - Not Without My Sister - The True Story of Three Girls Violated and Betrayed by Those They Trusted

Increasingly paranoid for his personal safety, he gradually withdrew from his followers, keeping his whereabouts secret. While in seclusion, Berg and Maria experimented with a new controversial method of using sex to win converts and supporters, infamously known as ‘Flirty Fishing’. Berg gradually introduced the idea of Flirty Fishing to his members through a series of letters documenting their own encounters. He also promulgated a new revelation called the ‘Law of Love’. Berg told his followers that the Ten Commandments were now obsolete. Everything done in love (including sex) was sanctioned in the eyes of God. Adultery, incest, extramarital and adult – child sex were no longer sins, as long as they were done ‘in love’. He demanded loyalty to his radical message of the Law of Love and Flirty Fishing and every member was required to actively put them into practice or leave. Consequently, two-thirds of the group left, marking the end of the Children of God era and the beginning of the Family of Love.

In 1979 Berg wrote a letter called ‘My Childhood Sex’ in which he revealed that a nanny had performed oral sex on him as a young toddler, which he said he had enjoyed. He said that it was normal, natural and healthy and that there was nothing wrong with it, which gave anyone so inclined carte blanche to follow suit. In the following years other Mo Letters and Family publications reinforced the idea that children should be allowed to enjoy sexual contact among themselves as well as with adults – and many adults in the Family embraced and carried out these suggestions.

Christopher Jones was born in December 1951 in a town near Hamelin, Germany, to Glen, a British military officer and Krystyna, a young Polish woman he had met while stationed in Palestine. He was educated at a public school in Cheltenham, and studied drama at Rose Bruford College. He dropped out after the second year and joined the Children of God in 1973. He has fathered fifteen children, including Celeste, Kristina and Juliana, by seven different women and remains a member of the cult.

Rebecca Jones was born in March 1957 and had a secure middle-class upbringing in the south of England. Her father, Bill, was a civil engineer and her mother, Margaret, a devoted housewife. Her parents were not religious, but they sent her to the local Sunday school at the age of five. She became a Sunday-school teacher when she was twelve and two years later she was baptized. Rebecca was recruited from her school by the Children of God at the young age of sixteen, and met and married our father in 1974. They had three children together, including Celeste and Kristina, before they were separated. Rebecca left the cult in 1987.

Serena Buhring was born near Hanover, Germany in October 1956. Her father was an architect and her mother an accomplished musician, playing the piano, violin and the cello. Serena travelled as a hippie in India where she joined the Children of God. She met our father after he separated from Rebecca and had three children by him, including Juliana. Serena is still an associate member of the cult.

I n January 2005, our sister Davida died from a drug overdose. She was twenty-three. The shock of Davida’s death affected us deeply though we understood her pain and despair. Each of us in our own way has struggled with painful memories of abandonment, neglect and abuse as children born and raised under the malign influence of a religious cult, the Children of God.

We were systematically abused, physically, mentally, emotionally and sexually, from the earliest age. We were separated from each other and our parents and raised communally in this organization, which was also known as the ‘Family’.

Unlike our parents who had burned their bridges and left their former lives, we were never given a choice over the paths our lives would follow. Isolated from society, we were controlled by fear – fear of the government, police, doctors and social workers, and the even greater fear of God’s wrath if we ever left the protection of the Family.

Our childhood was dominated by one man: David Berg – a man we never met, but who was like an invisible ghost that was with us at all times. He was the warped and manipulative force behind the Children of God. David Berg liked to see himself as a benevolent parental figure, and called us, his followers, the ‘Children of David’. He saw himself as the successor of King David and the Prophet Moses – calling himself Moses David, or Mo for short. The children were taught to call him ‘Grandpa’. He was the head of our family, the prophet, the leader, our ‘light in the midst of darkness’. The rules we followed were dictated by his words. We read about every detail of his life, his dreams, his likes and dislikes, and the women he slept with and the children he abused. From a very young age we memorized his words and hours of every day were dedicated to studying his writings, called Mo Letters. ‘Word Time’ – which was the time spent reading these letters and studying the Bible – was an important part of daily life. It would be difficult if not impossible to write about our life without acknowledging the dominating influence of David Berg on our lives.

From birth, we were conditioned to obey and follow the way of the cult. We had no choice, and knew no other way. We never heard our father express an opinion that was his own; it was always, ‘Grandpa said…’ If we were punished it was because we had disobeyed Mo’s rules; if we were rewarded it was because we were ‘faithful followers’. Our father’s devotion to Berg and faith in his prophecies and predictions was unwavering. If he questioned if any of it was real, or if it was a chimera – smoke and mirrors – he never showed it, not even behind closed doors.

Berg taught that birth control was rebellion against God, so within a few years there were thousands of children born into the group. He boasted that we were the ‘hope of the future’ – a pure second generation untainted by the outside world. We were told it was the highest privilege to be born and raised in the Family, free from the shackles of the ‘System’, as the outside world was called. It was our destiny to become God’s Endtime soldiers, and to give our lives for the cause. Berg predicted the world would end in 1993, and we would become the leaders of the New Millennium. As our lives on earth would be short, we were never allowed to just be children. Our individuality was suppressed, and we were simply commodities used to further the collective goals of the group.

The belief that damaged us the most was Berg’s ‘Law of Love’. God was love, and love equalled sex. Sharing your body with someone else was considered the highest expression of love. Age was not a barrier in Berg’s Law of Love and Family children were made to participate in his warped, paedophilic philosophy. His own children and grandchildren suffered from his incestuous predilections.

In this book we describe the emotional journey we undertook from our earliest years, through to our teens when we secretly, then more openly questioned it – and finally, when we struggled to break free, like butterflies caught in a spider’s sticky web. This is a story of darkness and light, of imprisonment of the soul, of redemption and freedom. We survived – many didn’t. Thousands of the Family’s second generation have had to deal with the devastating consequences of their parents’ blind faith in a leader who claimed he was the voice of God on earth. Those who have bravely spoken out about their suffering have been vilified and slandered by their former abusers. Our hope is that in telling our story, you will hear the voices of the children they tried to silence.

Celeste Jones, Kristina Jones, Juliana Buhring