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

The True Story of Three Girls Violated and

Betrayed by Those They Trusted

Celeste Jones, Kristina Jones

and Juliana Buhring

Harper Element

An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

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This edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008

Copyright © 2007 Green Shirt Limited

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be identified as the author of this work

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To our sister, Davida

To my sister in sorrow: Too well did I understand The look in your haunted eyes; Pain and disillusionment. You fought a losing battle, And lost. And died. I will shed for you the tears Of a lifetime you will never live. The tears you will never more shed. Madonna of suffering, Wrapped in the cold shroud of death. I wept with you. I weep for you. For I still can. The tide of tears has turned. Sleep, my sister, And weep no more.

(Written on Davida’s tombstone, Juliana 2005)

Lies written in ink cannot disguise

facts written in blood.

– Lu Xun (1881–1936)

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

Prologue

Part One: Celeste’s Story

Chapter One: Daddy’s Little Girl

Chapter Two: Loveville

Chapter Three: Come Union

Chapter Four: Behind Four Walls

Chapter Five: Indoctrination

Chapter Six: Torn

Part Two: Juliana’s Story

Chapter Seven: A Broken Family

Chapter Eight: The Odd One Out

Chapter Nine: The Rod of Correction

Chapter Ten: Adopt Me, Please

Part Three: Kristina’s Story

Chapter Eleven: Living a Double Life

Chapter Twelve: A Gypsy Missionary

Chapter Thirteen: Abusive Love

Chapter Fourteen: Escape

Part Four: Journey to Freedom

Chapter Fifteen: Hide and Seek

Chapter Sixteen: Searching for Celeste

Chapter Seventeen: On Opposite Sides

Chapter Eighteen: Bittersweet Reunion

Chapter Nineteen: A ‘Deceiver Yet True’

Chapter Twenty: A Tale of Two Fathers

Chapter Twenty-One: Rehabilitation

Chapter Twenty-Two: House of the Open Pussy

Chapter Twenty-Three: Anorexia

Chapter Twenty-Four: A Dream Come True

Chapter Twenty-Five: Is Justice a Dream?

Chapter Twenty-Six: Pearl of Africa

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Breaking Free

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Chained Eagle

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Power of Love

Epilogue

Exclusive sample chapter

About the Author

About the Publisher

T he Children of God started in Southern California in the late 1960s, among the hippies and dropouts of Huntington Beach. The founder, David Berg, was born in 1919, in Oakland, California. His mother, Virginia Lee Brandt Berg, was a celebrated evangelist with the Christian Missionary Alliance. In 1944 Berg married Jane Miller, a young Baptist youth worker. After the birth of their second child, Berg became the pastor of a Christian Missionary Alliance Church in Arizona. However, after only three years he was expelled, reputedly for a sex scandal. His expulsion began his life-long bitterness and disillusionment with organized religion.

In December 1967, Berg moved his family – his wife Jane (later known as Mother Eve) and their four children, Deborah, Faithy, Aaron and Hosea – to Huntington Beach, California, where they stayed with his eighty-year-old mother. She had started a small ministry from a coffee shop called the Light Club, distributing sandwiches to the hippies, surfers and dropouts who congregated on the pier. But when the Light Club’s clean-cut image failed to attract the longhaired hippies, Mrs Berg saw the opportunity for her son and grandchildren to minister to the youngsters with the music and fervour of their own generation. In a short time, David Berg and his family began attracting the youth in droves with the free food and anti-system, anti-war message they endorsed.

The group travelled across the United States gathering more young disciples as they went, and soon opened communities across the country. They attracted a substantial amount of media coverage, and in some articles the writers referred to them as the ‘Children of God’, a name that the fledgling group subsequently adopted.

After a string of illicit affairs with some of his young female members, Berg found a devoted companion in his young and ambitious secretary, Karen Zerby, aka ‘Maria’. Publicly branding his estranged wife Jane and late mother the ‘Old Church’, Berg endorsed Maria and the Children of God as the ‘New Church’, and himself the last prophet of the Endtime. He also started using the pseudonym ‘Moses David’, identifying himself with King David of the Bible and the prophet Moses, who had led the Children of Israel out of captivity in Egypt (the ‘System’) to the Promised Land. Berg decided to start a royal dynasty. His series of residences were designated ‘The King’s House’ and he crowned himself and Maria, the King and the Queen.

For many years a council of ministers ran the cult, mostly members of Berg’s extended family, referred to as the Royal Family. He expected Family members to obey him and the other leaders without question. The only contact between Berg and his members came through his many writings, detailing policies, beliefs and instruction on how the communes were to be run, as well as prophecies and revelations he claimed proceeded directly from God.

In the early 1970s, the Children of God fell under the close scrutiny of the media and law-enforcement agencies, as parents of recruited children witnessed complete personality changes in their offspring after they joined the cult. More worrying was the fact that all contact between them was severed, some of their children disappearing in the night not to be seen again for years.

Evading negative publicity and a court summons, Berg fled to Europe, advising his followers to get out of America. The group left the USA in 1972 in a mass exodus to evangelize and recruit in other countries, beginning with Europe. Berg and Maria arrived in England in 1972.