Flor Edwards: The Children of God
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Flor didn’t just grow up in the Children of God cult, she was born into it. Her parents had joined in the 70s, during the cult’s earlier years when David Berg was still promising free love and salivation to the lost hippies he felt called to save. Flor was born in 1981, one of 12 children her mother had while in the cult. By the time she was old enough to remember life, the children had begun to outnumber the adults and that’s when the strict regime of random discipline and fear really took hold.
Although Flor said she was never a victim of sexual abuse, she did witness it frequently, and was consumed by the idea of her impending death. (Berg claimed to have received a message that the world would end in 1993, and when that prophecy didn’t come true, he played it off that the cult has been so successful in their endeavors that they had been granted an extension.)
At age 14, Flor and two of her sisters had had enough of the abuse and fear and told their mother they wanted to leave, a request that was, incredibly, granted with little argument, As she began to try and live a more normal life, Flor struggled with socialization and the knowledge that the Children of God had been a very legitimate cult (thanks to a magazine quiz). Despite tough times in her teens, Flor eventually moved on to a moderately well adjusted adulthood and has written a book to help expel some of her demons from her younger years.