A woman who grew up in a cult has shared all the harrowing experiences she witnessed until leaving in her ttens.
Writer and director Bexy Cameron opened up on her childhood in an interview, as she was part of the infamous 'Children of God' cult, now known as 'The Family International'.
There have been several horror stories made public by those who were once part of cults and Cameron's story is no different, as she recalled being starved and beaten at certain times.
The author recalled her parents' decision to join the cult in the early 1970s, just years after it was founded, as 'it was very much part of the Jesus freaks, hippie revolution', she described.
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She recalled 'lots of people' having a different way of living at the time, 'living outside what was happening politically and socially', which her parents decided to do.
The Brit recalled being part of a commune in Bromley, which apparently had 'belief systems inside of it change with the wind', as she explained: "They’ll change based on how the leader is thinking that day, what they 'download' from God – and, potentially, how corrupt they’ve become."
She labelled it as 'toxic and abusive' for children, which she experienced alongside her 11 siblings.
Cameron went on: "It was our 'normal' to grow up thinking that we were soldiers for the Armageddon, and that we were going to have superpowers, and that we were going to die as teenagers."
Apparently, kids were the workhorses of the cult, as they were made to look after the younger ones, even cooking every meal and cleaning houses.
Despite all the hard work, they were led to believe that the world would end in seven years, meaning they wouldn't reach adulthood and therefore there was no point in going to school.
"We were also told we were going to develop these superpowers, which is amazing storytelling for kids – you’re like, 'wow, life might be really horrific right now, but wait till my lasers kick in and I can start blowing things up!'" she added.
Speaking about coercive control, Cameron revealed: "So many of the girls who left when they were teenagers ended up turning to what we were taught - which was sex work.
"The Children of God became infamous in the Seventies and Eighties for 'flirty fishing' - it was used to make money, essentially by using the women of the cult as sex workers," adding that 'orgies and abuse were normal'.
In 'End Time teen camps', the author said they were psychologically and physically abused: "Everything from being isolated for months at a time, to being starved to the point of hallucinating, to exercising to the point of broken bones, to malnourishment, to public beatings. It felt like the types of things they would do to make soldiers break in wartime."
She remembered meeting a journalist who was granted entry into the community, and said that it was a 'complete facade', a 'PR exercise' as they were trained on their answers about how their education and welfare was in the cult.
"He spoke to us kids like we’d never been spoken to before – like we were human beings. He asked what we wanted to be when we grew up, a question we’d never been asked before. It started the wheels turning for me," Cameron remembered.
Soon, she started to hang out with teenagers in a local town, understanding what life was like on the outside.
She would be cought and excommunicated, thrown out on the streets while bouncing between jobs to make a living, recalling that 'the one thing the Children of God had prepared me for was working my arse off'.
But after years, she managed to make a life for herself, and visited her siblings once a year with a cheaperone until they all got out too.
Joshua Nair