Children of God: Lost & Found

In 1968, a religious cult called the Children of God – later known as The Family – was created in California by David Berg, a self-proclaimed prophet who believed that men and women could reach salvation and be one with God through sex with each other and, according to some former members, with children. Membership in The Family grew rapidly through a practice known as “flirty fishing,” a form of prostitution that attracted men to the cult. As a result, women began to have many children with multiple partners, leading to large extended families with blurred sexual boundaries. By 1977, there were over 130 communes around the world, where individual families combined to create what was nothing like “a big happy family.”