COG-TFI Survivors: The fight for justice in the aftermath of a destructive cult

In our first ever two-guest episode we talk with two of the founders of the COG-TFI Survivors movement. Their mission is to spread awareness and bring justice to the survivors of the extremist cult, the Children of God. To expose their crimes, and appeal to authorities to take action against COG-TFI leaders and abusers. We have a chance to ask some tough questions and talk about what justice means to us.

Join us for for this international interview, then visit, follow and like their social media.

Please sign the petition!  We are shooting for 7,500 and we're only 2,177 signatures away!
https://www.change.org/p/bring-the-family-international-aka-the-children-of-god-and-karen-zerby-to-justice


https://www.facebook.com/cogtfisurvivors
https://www.instagram.com/cogtfisurvivors
https://twitter.com/cogtfisurvivors



Born Into the Children of God By Natacha Tormey
https://www.amazon.com/Born-into-Children-God-religious/dp/000756032X

Transcript

Do you have a lot of memories from Thailand then? Yeah, do you like it good or bad or not so far of Thailand? What? Thailands? Yeah. What like the homes there? Not the homes, but I do you, did you like the country. Oh, yeah, but we didn't see much of it.

Did we? No, we didn't. We didn't. 

About four years ago I had the chance to go back with , a couple of my brothers. Because I had a, younger brother that passed away and he lived his whole life in Thailand pretty much.

So  we scattered his ashes in the ocean there.  It was a wild experience going back to that country that. I like I know I knew it and I loved it, but I didn't know anything, and  we went as a tourist and did like touristy things and it was, it was amazing.

It was really a good trip.  that's awesome. I wanna go back there for sure.  yeah, I need to do that too. . It's almost like reconciling with the country or something like that. It really was. I was like, I'm gonna put my feet down on this ground and tell 'em that they didn't break me.  that's awesome. Not win.

That is so cool. Yeah, that's fantastic. Welcome everyone to butterflies and bravery. Yeah. We have a very exciting episode today, cuz it's not just whisper and I, with a guest, it is whisper and I with two guests  and. They are part of the, is it called cog T F I survivor? Yes. Is that the right? Yes. Yes.

And do you wanna explain basically what that is and maybe how it came about?  We started in February around David Berg's birthday, cuz we know that was always like a celebration in the cult. So we wanted to do something that was like exposing in opposite way instead of celebrating the cult also at the time the Ghislaine Maxwell scandal was like going viral.

Media. , we saw some parallels between some of her crimes and then she was being punished for her crimes and like how accountable, but some of her crimes, which were very similar to what Karen Zerby has done. But Karen Zerbe had never been held accountable. For what she's done. Yeah, that's why we started with making infographic with comparing Ghislaine Maxwell and Karen Zerby

and that's how it started into a bigger social media campaign.

yeah, that's fantastic.

And what's your guys' focused right now? , do you have a particular project or a particular goal that you're working towards right now? Or is it  more like just laying foundation getting a following that type of thing?

 We have different social media themes. We focus on every month, but our ultimate goal, we have two things. One thing for people to do is they can sign the petition to bring Karen Zerby and TFI to justice.  and our second goal of course, ultimately, is to have the relevant authorities take legal action against Karen or B and T F I, that would be more of a long term goal.

Okay. Yeah, for sure. I've been curious, ask you guys a few questions, but one of them is one of the problems that we've always run into with . Trying to get justice is,  so much of the stuff that happened was like overseas or , people crossing borders all over the place.

The likelihood that, Karen, Derby's not even in the us,  we'd have to , get her extradited to, have her to have her in court basically.  Have you guys like talked to some lawyers and what that would look like? I'm just curious about it, cuz that's always been like the ceiling that we've hit before.

When we tried to go about this,  go about getting some justice yeah. That is one of the main challenges that survivors face.  We haven't been able to establish those legal details. Yeah. But yeah, we've been talking to and consulting with lawyers.  although one thing is that besides the fact Karen Zerby is American, a lot of the main leadership.

Some of the most atrocious abusers they are American. And so that might be in our favor.

, if we can't get Derby into the states, we could. Go after, try to, bring some of the other bigger leaders. Yeah. Like Sarah. Yeah.

 

It must feel a little bit big to you guys sometimes, cuz there's so many  missing parts and so many moving parts  and  with us and ex-member community that we have, our second generation community everyone's so different and has so many different opinions about this and that, and how to go about That's probably gotta be a pretty uh, Overwhelming experience trying to bring all of that together from people, right? Woo. Yeah. I also found that very challenging. Cause my experience in TFI was I lived in a single TFI home and then I lived in that home without any interaction with other T I people, even when I was still in T I, okay.

So like being part of this group was like the first time I had interaction with other survivor. So that was all very new for me.

Wow. Oh, wow. That's crazy. 

 You pretty much grew up in the same, not only the same country and city, but the same house, even which that's so unusual. And then Natasha, you had the opposite experience, right?

Yes. Too many cities and too, I think I counted once and we must have lived in 35 different houses.  a lot of moving around for sure. Yeah. It's a wild experience to have that happen.  yeah, definitely. It's nowhere called home. I think  even now, I think I struggle a bit to identify as a person from any country, even though I'm French, both my parents are French.

I never build French truly. Nor do I feel Thai, even though I was born there and spent most of my childhood there. So yeah. It's special. Isn't it?  There's this they call them TCKs, which is third culture kids. And it's yeah, that's the closest thing that I, when I read about that, like when I read stuff that they write, I was like, that's about the closest.

It feels like it does make sense.  and it's interesting that  some of the things that the psychiatrist and psychologists have seen , are similar stuff that, like I think a lot of us struggle with keeping relationships,  they  put one foot in not two because at any moment, you're gonna be somewhere else. And it's, that's really interesting cuz that's very similar to, a lot of us, our experiences too. It's just  there's that hesitation to embrace, I guess anything really never let your roots grow too strong.

Yeah.  yeah. I love that song. I got no roots know

that's one of my favorite songs too. Yeah. It's kind of like, well, if y'all are gonna be proud of your heritage, then we'll be proud of our not heritage

 One of the ways that I feel the most unusual sometimes still that I have not settled into is things like holidays, both in the, both the country that I'm in which currently is United States, but, or any other holiday, like there's just no connection to any of it.

And Christmas was pretty much the only like other outside world holiday that we ever, and I wouldn't even call it celebrated. We Observed it. Yeah, I dunno.  so it's I wouldn't say we celebrated it. I think for us in certainly in Thailand, it was more like the hardest labor period of the year, because that's, we had to constantly and go out and do Christmas shows and things like that.

So it was a very stressful time  yeah, it's just awful. 

Oh, I was in the sink room with the kids that had whooping cough at Christmas time. And one of them puked in my dinner

oh, no. You remember that one? When then when we got a catered meal at the TC, that Christmas, when everybody had whooping cough and that never ever happened. So it was really special. I got one plate, a kid puked in it. I'm like a kid puked in my plate and can I have something else?

And they're like, sorry, it's all gone. So I literally had nothing  that sucked. I know.

 Did we already answer the question about what the survivor group's about and all that? . Ella was filling us in a little bit.  What I understand is like you guys have, you have a long term goal and then, , a current goal , which is so there's like awareness  I think it's our main goals at the moment are to raise awareness of not only the past crimes that the cult committed, but the fact that current leader, Karen Zerbe is still out there and has never been even investigated.

Yeah. That's enough faced any charges. And to us, it's pretty incredulous. The main excuses we've been given by authorities and so well, justice bodies worldwide, really, every time we look into it is, know, we have two issues. We've got the problem with the locations in which it happens 

so if you take my example, for example, I was sexually abused at age four by a Filipino national whilst living in Thailand. And I'm a French national now living in France. So you can see from a justice point of view, where do you even start? Yeah, let alone, you'd have to prove the guy was even there you'd have to prove it was even him because he was using a fake name as most members in the co did.

So we've got that issue. And then we've got the time that has passed as well. And that's two challenges we face or we thought we faced because when we look then at situations like Ghislaine Maxwell who's just been convicted. It seems when the media gets really interested in something and there's a big social media storm about it, suddenly these problems that we think we're facing seem not to be an issue anymore.

And we've seen that time and time again with Epstein, with other. Abusers where locations and time doesn't seem to be an issue as long as the media's really interested in it. So based on that we thought, what can we do? Let's try and get some more attention online. Let's do a campaign. Let's try and get as many followers as possible.

Try and get as many people to sign our petition on change.Org as possible. , let's see if we can't get people interested enough. So that authorities in the us, most likely it's gonna have to start there or elsewhere where the call was very active, that they actually start doing something and at least open investigation at the very least.

So that was our beginning ideas. We've been running campaigns since then on, on social media. Yeah. And there are, people would say you just bang on about the past the culture's changed and firstly, that's not true. They haven't changed that much. Yes. They're not doing. The same level of crimes as they were in the past.

But just because let's just pretend like they have changed, let's go with that theory.  What is that relevant to what we're trying to do here? Just cause someone's changed their outside image and said, oh, we promised we're not doing these same things before you have totally different way of working now.

It doesn't matter. You still did those things in the past. There were still tens of thousands of children affected by it who are still affected by it. Now when they're out of years I'm sorry, that's not relevant.  Can you imagine if you brought it down to a day to day, regular situation a guy, some guy raped a woman, 10 years later he's I've changed.

And they're like, oh, that's okay. Then , that's fine. Since you changed.  exactly. But that's very much be what Steve Kelly and Karen Zerbe have been trying to push on the world, whoa, Berg, this wasn't us. We're totally different. Look at how we've changed things since we've been in charge. And they forget the fact that they were actually David Berg's, right hand man and woman for all the years, all the worst abuse was taking place.

And you're talking about a guy who was a completely useless alcoholic for many years as well. The person who really ran the show for many years before his death. Was Karen Zerbe. Certainly she approved everything that came out, including the Story of Davidito look at every other publication that led to widespread sexual abuse on children.

So it's very cute for her to try and sell her story now that she had nothing to do with any of it, better, I think. Yes.

  I'm curious also about   do you guys have any plans  to prosecute  take some of this to civil court it'd be very difficult for me. I'll let Ella answer after it'd be very difficult for me to do anything from France. That's for sure. I think if anything would be possible on a jurisdictional level, it would probably need to originate in the us just based on the fact that Karen Zerbe is a us citizen.

The cult was founded in the us, et cetera. Yeah. I have looked into options on international justice bodies, but I've just hit a wall. But again, we keep hitting these walls, but if we manage to get enough attention online and social media and things like that, you'll find that these walls suddenly from, so that's the way we're going now because we've hit so many walls on actually taking legal action.

Yeah. Yeah. Very true. You had the same experience. Yeah, especially , in many countries in Asia TFI didn't even register as an organization. So the government didn't even know of their existence in a lot of situations, and they would just operate through like third party charities or humanitarian organizations.

So it's very difficult to take action against TFR as an organization because the government will just say it didn't actually exist. Cause I've been looking into some of these options over the last few years. Like the only hope for justice is to suit individuals for their individual crimes, but to take action against the organization as a whole.

Okay. Yeah. I even wondered what do they call it? Do they call Rico? Like thinking about just the amount of money that was exchanged gene hands and crossing borders. And you're talking about millions and millions of dollars that have never been taxed by any government. I would think that somebody might be curious about that or not curious, but there's an investment there's an interest.

You don't want it terribly, but if what you're saying you've come up against that. That's not even close to being possible. There's not point, in, chasing that rabbit. Yeah, the issue is they they've been always been very smart. The TFI leadership  Ella said they never were almost never actually registered themselves as the family international or Children of God anywhere.

They were always fake. Or NGO organization needs all over the world. So to prove that they were even active and existent in a country is almost impossible. So how do you go after an organization that keeps telling people they don't exist these days? Even though they're still turning over about a million a year, apparently they don't exist.

. And where do you even start with tracing those funds? They were always so secretive and, yeah. In the way they did things it's so difficult to get any solid evidence. Yeah. And they also like specifically Karen Zian and and Kelly they changed their names. Like legally changed their names a few different times.

So  there's that, that you're up against. And what you were saying about being in the country, like how many of us, how many people did you know that were in a country, like overstaying their visa, not even getting a visa to be in the country. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. It's yeah.

It's very sinister in that sort of like really like low, dirty, gross kind of way.

Yeah. And I, I think the reason they pushed people very early on in the cold to move out to these third world countries was precisely for that reason, they knew that they couldn't get away with that in Western countries or the us. So they moved everyone out to these countries where you could give people backhand lots of cash to get away with things you could get away with almost anything back in the day, those days in Asia and Africa and places like that.

Yes. True. That's yeah. It's very interesting. Yeah. I was aware of a practice in  in Taiwan when I was very young or was basically all the adults. It was called getting a visa sponsor in which a company agreed to have you their employee on paper, but you actually did not work for them. And that was a way to stay legally in the country.

So that's how many tier five people stayed in countries like Taiwan,

visa, fraud.

  I definitely admire what you guys are doing for even, like knowing all the walls. Are being hit and probably still gonna be hit and just to keep trying to move forward with what we can cause it's we sat in our in our, a podcast with with Dr. Janja Lalich and she straight out said that, like the worst thing of the worst stuff that's ever happened in cults to kids is to the children of God kids. And she's been studying cults for 30 years that's pretty, that's a pretty, bold statement or in, as far as it was, I think it's validating, in, in a lot of ways that at least there's some people out there that believe what happened and believe that it was horribly wrong.

Yeah. Yeah. I think one thing that's been encouraging for me is that from the comments and interaction on our Facebook and Instagram, we not only reach our fellow survivors, but also maybe people who are like ex fundamentals, Christian or in like oppressive religious institutions, like they've also like felt spoken for or felt like that someone was speaking up for their experiences.

Cause a lot of TFI types of child abuse were also like quite difficult in fundamentalist church. Yes. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, for sure. The, yeah, the religious aspect of it.  I work part-time with a nonprofit organization. That's anti-human trafficking and. The more I learn about it, the more I realize how similar some of the experiences that they've gone through too.

It is, because so many of them have been kept basically, just controlled and kept and separated. And when they finally get away, it's like being born into a new world, which is all of our experiences, so yeah, it is interesting. The different ways you can connect to people with such varying backgrounds and you're absolutely right.

, it is very encouraging to, to get that sort of feedback.  just to hear Hey, you made a difference. You made a difference to me today. Is it? It's huge. I think what's really important as well is to consider, even though, much of these crimes happened 20, 30 years ago, what's very important to me is definitely the ongoing impact. , there are people out there who would say, leave the past in the past. There's nothing to do. You've tried, at some point you've got to move on with your life. It's do I really, because there are still people nowadays who are committing suicide because of this cold.

Yeah. We've had two losses very recently were direct suicide that were directly related to the trauma of the cult upbringing. Yeah. And those who haven't killed themselves, certainly so many people that I speak to suffer with some form of PTSD or severe anxiety depression, things like that, or on medication, so this is not something that just happened in the past. And, the leaders have so called apologize, which was. The most insincere apology I've ever heard in my life. The apology doesn't take away the ongoing impact of what happened on adults now. Yes. Likely suffer probably their entire out adult life with these kind of things.

Yeah. I agree.  yeah, that apology it's wild, especially you coming out and being able to, study and learn things  and then go back and read something like that again. And it's oh my God, talk about gas lighting is they literally, we're like we're sorry. You guys feel like that, Yeah. We're good now. So anyways,  exactly it's full of, if it happened to you, I know there was abuse. It's please stop. You knew full well, you encouraged it. And you did not ever, this is another thing they never actually punished the abusers even very late on into the late eighties and nineties, when someone was found to be a pedophile, they would excommunicate them and nothing else.

Where was all the reporting to authorities and things like that? No, nothing still. And often they would actually excommunicate them and then let them back in a few years later. So they thought they, repented or something. Because what they were actually getting excommunicated for was not the abuse to the child or the young person.

It was because they jeopardized. They're, they're standing, like they could have got the authorities come. That's what they were getting punished for is because, that's that secret letter that went around to all the leadership. That's oh, we just wanna let you guys know that we still believe that everything that happened was right.

And that, sex with kids is still like up the Lord.  Yeah, absolutely.  like the letter Karen Zerbe wrote after yeah. The court case where to win the court case, they had to denounce, Bergen all his teachings and then straight away after, as soon as they won well won, I put that, I say that very loosely, they didn't actually win a custody case, but as soon as the custody was granted back to the mother under heavy conditions and survey, of course.

Yeah. If they issued out that letter where it was like guys, we had to say this for the case, but obviously we do not believe it. Blah, blah, blah. So seriously. Yeah. Yeah, there was a lot of that going on. Cuz the same thing happened in the mid eighties when they said we don't have sex with kids anymore.

And then they sent out another letter saying, okay, we still believe in it, but the world just can't accept that. It's okay. So we have to stop doing it. Yeah, definitely. Didn't stop anyway, but

  Yeah, I've Al I've always I've always laughed at that. I don't know if it was  when  Ricky died and there was a lot of documentaries going around and they asked, they were talking to this family spokesperson CLA and  and she was like We outlawed child sex in 19 whatever.

And the interviewer was like, yeah, but have you even thought about like, why that needed to be said

I was like, oh my God, I love you.  that's really true. It's Hey guys, can we please stop murdering? Yep. Gotcha. Good.

even well, after that, they continue to support and sponsor their well known abusers Sarah Keely, who obviously was one of Ricky Rodriguez's main abusers too, who wrote the story of Davido, she was financed and kept in the cults and probably still financed by them these days. Yep.

 And now they're doing nothing to bring any kind of validation to the victims. It's all words. And absolutely no. Yeah.

Yeah. Like every time a survivor speaks out about their story, T five releases a statement, oh, now we are just a small online community of believers, so on and so forth. But I left just few years ago and I can say that there was still abuse going on. And I know people who are still suffering abuse from T I people right now.

So what they say is not true. Yeah.

So how long ago did you leave Ella? Three years ago. Oh, wow. Okay. So that's quite current then? Yes.  So you're probably really still all just processing this, huh?  yeah. I was living like a double life in my family, like pretending to be a good disciple, but. Doing my own thing waiting until I could be financially independent and then could be,

yeah, that's smart.

that's interesting that there was, you were in only three years ago, so that just supports what we all know that they are definitely not some little online community. If you look at even their products that they're selling online, between their magazines, their audio, their children, a lot of children products, whether it's video, audio activity books, which they sell under many fake names on platforms, such as Amazon, very easy to link them, actually start looking into it.

So they've got a proper production company. That's still very much functioning. They're still receiving tides from. Older members. Yeah. It's with a million or more coming in every year. So I think the claim that they're an online community is a little bit hard to believe . Yeah. Instead of what we used to call Ws, now it's called TFI services.

So there is still a leadership structure that produces their products and finances stuff.

 Oh. Living proof, ladies and gentlemen.  they are not a small online community, like they claim . Wow. I'm curious. So Ella, is there still in, just from your observation is there still a lot of young people. No, I think most of the young people have left and most of them are like FGA, but I think there's FGA and then there's minors, quite a few minors who are still in the care of T right?

Yes. Okay. Wow.

Pretty crazy. They're still, yeah. Pretty crazy. still minors in the fold. Yeah. What did they do? Just keep having babies, like  apparently somebody did. , after go for the gold, which I always had this very interesting theory about those for gold. Cause you think about the timing of it.

It's quite incredible. They went from contraception is band to actually, we're gonna give you guys some more freedom. If you want to use contraception, you can, and then go for the gold, came out where it was like, we know we said you could have your freedom , but if you are using contraception, the Lord's really not gonna bless you.

Whereas if you're just trusting him and using nothing, you're gonna be, you're gonna get your gold medal type thing. And if you think about the period that happened in when SGAs were probably sorry, FGA, the first generation was nearing. They were probably getting, five to 10 years close to their menopause period.

And at the same time, a lot of SGAs were starting to leave. When this came out. So what was this really about expanding numbers by chance? Yeah, I my parents at that point had 10 kids already and I think they were gonna stop there, but then go for the globe, came out and, three more came along.

 , I was one of the three kids that born after go for the gold king and in your family? Yeah. Okay. How many are in your family? Ella? Nine. Nine. Okay. Yes. So when goal for the goals came out, my mom already has six and she was like it's a lot already, but then go for the bill.

Came out . Oh, wow. Yeah, I think that's when my, I had two more brothers also. It's like one that's weird. It's one last pushed, increased membership numbers or to replace those that were leaving it's very, the timing was very odd. And then as soon as that kind of. Faded off a bit. They went into the whole intergenerational marriage thing.

to try and retain SGAs were left by getting them married to FGA. Oh my God. That's really creepy. That's a nightmare lead to more babies. Wow. That's a nightmare where that I have the smallest family here. There's only eight in my family.  only tiny. Yeah. And Taji, did you say, you said 10, but then you had three.

Your mom had 3, 4 13. So there's 13. Okay. Yeah. That's with just my mom and my dad together. Five lines as well. Yeah.  I was thinking how I was just thinking of Every, the cult probably as they are now, but even, especially back then, if like we all started taking, 23 me tests, the DNA tests, , it'd be very interesting to find out who actually followed who.

Yeah, I think there'd be a lot of surprises. I think so, too. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think my mom was very honest with me. About a couple of my brothers and sisters.  I'm sitting here going, there's just no way. You're not the right color. You're not the right. So just, you're telling me that this person had the blonde baby.

No, it didn't happen, especially when you're like, but there's this other guy right here that looks just like that, baby. I heard you guys. I heard you guys in the room. I was, I have a we lived with this family really funny. They had all of them blonde hair, blue eyes. And they had four kids and then the fifth one was Chinese baby.

And. When they, when she was having the baby and they were in the hospital,  as soon as the baby came outta the doctor, cuz it's an Asian doctor as, as well. And he's like looking at the baby, just looks at the dead and he is like, what do I see?  and the dad goes if one in one in five people's world are Chi our Chinese, I guess that's we were

due. That is a good one. OMG, that's funny.

oh boy, it sounds really creepy, but that's also one of the reasons I, when I left the cold, I told myself I'm never gonna date an exer. Yeah. So you just, no, you could be dating your half brother. Could you? You have no idea. Really?  The only reason we know of one in that are from our family is cuz she happened to come out looking exactly like my sister, like exactly.

But otherwise, yeah, like you're looking at somebody who's the same age in the same city in the same, like you're seeing each other. If they kept on going with the vision that they had I, I just, what was gonna happen?  Were we just gonna all intermarry each other? It's just weird that, they don't, people don't even stop and think about those kind of things.

It's just, it's so weird to me. Yeah. It's true.

Yeah. When you think about what could have happened, if everyone had stayed exactly, you could start having a third generation of children with a lot of physical and mental health problems. From intering and things like that, people just didn't know they were related. And  you not only passing on your trauma gene, but passing on the crazy gene.

that's weird. Wow. It's I just can't stop thinking about like the tactical planning that must have gone into a lot of things that we didn't realize. Yeah. Like now that you mentioned that about the timing and the goal for the gold, all of a sudden, all these things are going through my head and I'm just like, oh my God, that was like a tactical move.

Not a prophecy from Jesus. A lot of it was like, okay, this is how we wanna make it work. Start spitting out some words  right. They probably had a plan in front of them, Jesus said go into all the world.  what is that? You said right there and just reading like their planned notes with a few little thou shout knots and weird little, praise the Lords in between.

it just, yeah. It's I bet. I bet. If you went, if we like put, somebody would have to probably put a lot of time into it, but we started going back and looking at some of the visions and the moves here and this and that. A lot of them were probably tactical, even for reasons that we don't know and we'll never find out, but yeah, like for example, me moving to Thailand, cuz they were gonna send me to Macau.

And then the next day I was going to Thailand and I never knew why and oh, no, dropped up. Sorry. When I went to the Philippines,  next day, I'm going to the Philippines instead. And then I found out like a while back that they had gone in with all these visas, like 200 people or something and all got denied and I was one of them.

Oh, wow. We never knew any of that kind of stuff. Yeah. We were just fucking there and okay, you're leaving. Oh, okay. I'll back my stuff. I just gotta close my suitcase. I'm ready to go.

yeah. My husband still teases me for not ever moving in anywhere.  I put all my stuff in the drawers. I'm like, I'm finally moved in I still got some stuff back. One of, one of my, one of my early experiences with with when I was dating someone, I was like, That I was with for a little bit longer.

And we went on trip, the first trip that we went on it was like, we were gonna be a weekend in Vegas and like even unpacking his stuff and like putting his clothes in the drawers in the ho in the hotel, I was like, what are you doing? And he's like, this is normal. And I was like, no, it's nuts.

But yeah, you, you can still, we, our  experts at packing. Yeah. Teris man  can fit anything in anymore. But it is very interesting. One of us should do a kind of timeline thing of all the big moves of the spirit that happened and what was actually behind it. Yeah.

Like we all the go east thing when go to the land of the rising sun was actually. Interpol looking into the cults, let's all go to third world countries where we can operate to, without being noticed. We know that now that's a hundred percent proven. Yep. All the other big moves there, there was always something behind it.

And it sounds really horrible. But for me, looking at the way they were with having children and all their sexual policies and all that, I really feel like  breeding was their way of expanding the cult that joining members. But I don't think that was enough. They wanted to expand and as much as possible.

And for them, they really used breeding as their method of expansion. We were just numbers. Really? Yeah. Yeah. That's what my mom always said. That was her grief. When all of her children of the began flee out of the house when they were 17 or 18, like she was disappointed. She had failed in life by failing to produce a flock of disciples for a tier five.

She that's, what she understood was her life, school or life school was to produce children who would be disciples andt I, and then she just watched all crumble and that was like devastating to her. Oh,

It's bad. Isn't it? Yeah. That's incredible.

We didn't exist for our own reasons or as individuals, we existed the soldiers and thoughts and time army that's.  yeah. Yep. Which is why I think a lot of us struggle with that. Unless you're producing something,  you're useless and feel like you shouldn't even be around unless you're actually producing things.

And I, I see that a lot too, that, we struggle with that because from our birth, yeah. It was like that you were born for a reason  for slavery. That's what you're born for. Yeah.

That, and the delusion that we were gonna be uh, incredibly special end time soldiers, the highest elites in God's army and all that for me, when I left the cult, that was, I didn't realize it straight away, but obviously I became extremely depress with and I realized after years later that. That must have been at the core of what it was because you raised your whole life to thinking or something special and that you had this huge colon and you were destined greatness, and also treated like shit on the side, obviously.

Yeah. Having that and then suddenly going to whoa, I'm just a normal person. In fact, I'm not even normal. I'm a completely abnormal person who doesn't fit into society with no education, nothing special that, I can face a life on and it's just kind of soul destroying. Really? Yeah. No, it is.

It really is. Yeah. That's what made the reboot in 2009. So devastating, like for the younger half of SGA, it's like I'm 25 now. So I was a teenager when the reboot happened, all of a sudden, the end time that we have been trained our whole lives more, was going to happen a very long time later. We were not going to be missionaries.

We all have to go study and get system jobs. So then we were just all left wondering what was the first half of our lives for? And the community we were raised in was crumbling apart. And basically it was like, there was actual grieving process, even for kids who didn't want to stay int five. Cuz we felt everything we had lived for was over because well, he has changed his mind for unknown reasons.

Yeah. Madness and as well for the first generation, imagine that all these adults, but spent their entire lives. Yeah. A huge identity crisis, all giving them money and suddenly they're out there in their fifties and sixties. They've never had a real job. They have no retirement funds. It's just, I mean it must be devastating for a lot of people.

And it's really, for me, it was just so cowardly, the whole thing, you took the best years of these people's lives. You took the childhoods of these kids. And suddenly when it's, we're getting a bit old now, we can't be bothered anymore. Okay, bye. Everyone have a good life. It's incredibly selfish and just no ownership at all for the people who had dedicated their lives, their loyalty, everything to them.

They'd given them everything. And they were just literally, I'm it frightens me what things are gonna look like in the next five to 10 years, because like my mom she's nurse, she's 70. She called me yesterday cuz she was just talking about. How she might have to move to Mexico to be able to stretch the money she's gonna get from the little stipend that she's gonna get from the government, because she had not, she has nothing she had never paid in taxes has no social security has no nothing.

And not, there's obviously there's the argument. You also stayed in the cult. So certainly they have some Culp culpability, but regardless the situation is now that there's all these people that are getting old and going to mean care because, and they have nothing. So they're actually gonna need to be needing not only physical care, but financial support.

And guess who's gonna have to do that. All of us who, just, who, who didn't get an education, like the people that. . Probably most of us are barely building up to that place where we're like, okay, now we have something to give to our kids.  and it's oh no I also now have to raise the parents that bore me into this cult.

You can just see that, that, that ripple effect of, it's not just one thing that you did, that's, you didn't just steal like our childhoods, you sold our child, our children's childhoods. Because if that's what the future's gonna look like and it's completely on the cult, I just it, yeah, it just, it breaks my heart.

Thinking about what's gonna end up happening to a lot of us.  yeah. And a lot of SGAs. And that's the issue I'm also having to face is that we're going to have to support our abusers in their old age. Exactly. Yep. It's terrible conflict. Isn't it? Because on one hand you could say, tough, you deserve this, you stayed in, in the cold for so many years, you had opportunities and leave and didn't, but in another sense, that you have to take into a counter, maybe the brainwashing and manipulation and the fear of leaking something that was your whole life, so you can do the blame thing.

You can be like, I wash my hands of you, but then we're also all human beings. So we're not gonna be, many of us are gonna feel rightly or wrongly responsible in some way, it becomes like you said, our responsibility now, which then impacts our own kids, our futures. And this is where you see just the catastrophic, a never ending effects of this cult.

It just doesn't end it's generation after generation is impacted. Yeah. And we're certainly not at the end of it now, for sure. Like you said like we were saying earlier about strategic timing, reboot was very strategic too, because Hey, thousands of people were gonna retire and they were gonna expect the cult to help them with that.

But no, they just ran off of the money. Oh, that's really interesting. I don't, I, I didn't know what the premise of the reboot was. I've heard people  talk about it, but I didn't know that's what it was. They just send everybody out oh, now it's time to get system jobs. It was the Lord decided that we're all grown up now.

Like we were first spiritual children. Now we're spiritual adults. We can be independent and responsible. We don't need mama and Peter to we and guide us anymore. So now mama, mom, and Peter is saying, good job, everyone you grew up. Bye. Bye. That's interesting. I wonder if it's not, if that's not only a financial strategic move, but if , it was a legal, strategic move as well.

Yes. Oh, our kids are old enough now and smart enough. And now they know what they're what we did to them. Okay. Everybody  run. Oh yeah. I think that was a hundred percent part of it too. You were getting to an age more and more people were starting to speak out about their experiences. Okay, let's shut this operation down, but not fully shut it down because we still want, the few of you are still faithful to us to give a.

Yeah, they still need their cushy life. Yeah.

Speaking of that I'm curious what kind of support that you guys have gotten and what I, and I'm sorry, I keep saying you guys at such a habit, but what kind of support have you seen in the ex-member community? Both the FTAs and the SGAs and if and what kind of pushback you're getting from people as well for this, for the cog TFI survivors.

Is that how you say it? Yeah. Yeah. Cog TFI survivors. Yeah. So are you getting a lot of pushback from people? And I'm also curious if, how many FTAs you have on board that are like, yes, this needs to happen. SGA is very few. Yeah, very few. I think as we all know,. Most of them are severely in denial and would just rather put their head in the sand and pretend like it didn't happen or just never speak of it again.

So yeah. Getting support from the FGA is definitely a few and far between Ella, you have more involvement with the accounts running social media accounts. So from an SGA perspective, what do you think? I think we are getting some pushback from FGAs who feel like were digging up their painful past and rehashing all those triggering things and they would rather just let it die out of public consciousness.

And I've also faced pushback from within my own family, quite vigorous. Pushback cuz they feel like I might jeopardize their careers. Like they're afraid of being outed because of our campaign, oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. I got some pushback when I posted some of the stuff. Cause I have some FGA friends, mostly the people that I lived with are new in Thailand and stuff and oh, they weren't that bad type of thing.

Or we went on these missions to Russia or stuff like that. Boy. Oh boy. I was sick. Good thing. I was sick when I got this text messages, but this guy was like, how dare you treat blah, blah. Like that. And so would be so ashamed of you and oh yeah. It's like, how dare you act like that and say those things and I'm like, what the fuck are you fucking kidding me right now?

Yeah, I got some really nasty really nasty pushback. That same year. When I published my book in 2014, it was a big fall there that big,  what's your, what was your book called Natasha?

Born into the children of God. So just talking about my life in the cult, it was very interesting when I published it already there were individuals that contacted my publisher, threatening them to try and get it, not published. Wow. Wow. Um, Try and block the publishing. So I had to fight tooth and nail to even get it out there.

And that's when I just realized the level of denial was astounding even from certain second generation. Yes, adults who have taken more of the path, which, it's not the wrong path to take, but some have taken the path. I don't wanna talk about past, I don't want to hear about it. I'm gonna focus everything on my career, or I've got things are doing well for me now, or, and that's great for you.

I have no problem with you taking that path, but then don't judge people who haven't taken that path and who have chosen to speak out, right? Don't call a liar when you know, full well, it's not a lie. And that's what was really difficult for me was to feel from people. I was very close to suddenly this rejection of everything that happened in the past, and basically calling me a liar and saying exaggerated things.

And even now I still hear commentary from certain people. Every time I do another article or another interview, those on TV or something like that, you always get little comments going around behind your back, for example, one that was so very hurtful to me recently, there was a TV interview that was aired and the person had called another person.

I know, and said, we take exception to her using the word rape when she told, cause it wasn't great. There was no penetration. And I was just like, wow, really? You gonna pick on small details like that. It was just so they used these middle little things like that to try and get to your credibility when it was like, hang on.

So you're saying I can talk about being sexually molested, but I'm not allowed to use the word rape because apparently that's only when there's penetration. Yeah. As they pick on these little things to try and make you look like a liar when you're like, do you even hear what you're saying here? Yeah.

That's crazy. And happened to me in the first place. There are those out there who will always have something against those who speak out and no doubt will continue to get that with the cog TFI survivor group from both and FGA who just want to bury the whole thing and want the world to just forget about it and never it be spoken up again.

Yeah. Yeah. We even had a recent incident on Instagram in which a former member actually named one of our group members and said, you can't accuse TF five abuse cuz you yourself an abuser like actually went and made some very serious and false accusations publicly online. Yeah. What did you go? What did you guys have to do something about that?

I What did. Or you, it was just with the people involved that these were ungrounded accusations. So like we deleted her comments. So her Phil is not polluting the at sphere. What do you think that was about?  Cause I heard about it. I was like, that was a really hard thing to understand because if it was not true and not, I'm not saying that it was true, but if it's not true, then what was the purpose behind it?

I think I wanted to discredit what we were saying. Like you can't say that if you are also involved and yeah. And that's the problem with people wanting to sweep it under the rug or forget about it. Let's not talk about it is. You end up in situations where, because it, it's not gonna stay, it's not gonna stay behind you.

because it's the way you grew up. It's the things that were ingrained in you. It's gonna come up in some way and it can turn, ugly either for them or for other people. And , it's like the worst road that you can possibly take, in, in a healing journey is to ignore it, , if you are gonna have people that are gonna stand up and say, oh,  this didn't happen.

  It must get very complicated  when you got people that for whatever their own personal reasons or, the fact that they haven't faced things themselves and they start fighting back on something like this, where people are trying to get justice.

 And you have people coming up and saying no, don't do this. Or, that didn't happen when you know it did, but that's because of their own story. And yet it's affecting what you're trying to do. Yeah. And I think I don't wanna play the blame game here, but I think a lot of SGA suicides.

Could be avoided, could have been avoided if more FGA were upfront about things and talked to their kids about things and helped to support them, went through some kind of therapy themselves to understand how they could help their children and how they could write the wrongs of the past. And sadly, that's just not the case in the majority of cases.

It's really, let's just move on and let's forget about it. And, until there's another tragedy, which no doubt they will refuse to acceptance.  It's just sad that there's a level of denial and I understand why, but it certainly does nothing to help the second generation heal.

 And it's so complicated because some of our abusers are our friends' parents. Yeah, that gets really complicated when you're like, okay,  really close to you, but your dad  yeah. We had a, we had that come up in one of the groups where somebody when FGA died, passed away and there was a lot of people because they were very, they were actually a fairly public person in, in, in the cult.

So there was a lot of people coming around oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. That type of thing.  and one of the, one of the SGAs was like, yeah, this man like spent years abusing me and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I don't know. Do you remember Jemima? There was, it was like weeks, I think of arguing over that, like people just back and forth, some people are like, shouldn't have done that.

Other people, they have every right to do that. , this is gonna happen more and more because either they're gonna get too old to do anything, and then we have to take care of them. Or, if they start dying,  when someone that, that abused you passes away, there's that really weird space of like closure, cuz it's not closure cuz oh, you never got to confront them.

You never got an apology from them and now you cannot. At all. So when an abuser of someone dies, I understand that conflict  that  the abused goes through, and this is what we're gonna have to start facing more and more as time goes on. And especially if we are able to start getting some legislation some type of justice that way, then you're doubling down on those kind of issues too, of, you can't accuse my father of that.

Maybe their parents were good to them, but they were abusive to somebody else. 

I guess I've always been the person. If somebody ever came up and said, yeah, like your mom or your dad did this to me, I'd be like, oh my God, I believe them. , because of everything that, we saw in the way that we grew up. But that's not an easy thing for a lot of people to do.

Yeah. Yeah, I had a situation like that  I, I had tracked down and found a, an FGA who had very badly abused. One of my siblings who was living out in Myanmar is how we call it now, formerly Burma and he started a school there . Yeah, course we always end up working with children. These people. And I had exposed him online and I put out his photo and the name of the school and all that.

And I got contacted by his daughter who was like no, you don't understand that. We, I run the school now with my husband, please stop this take down what you put online. And I was like, I feel bad for you, but no, . Yeah. If I go look at the recent photos on the school page, he's still in them. And so is your mom, can we just stop this?

Yeah, you're actually a very lucky taking advantage of this very successful school and all the income it brings that was created by an abuser. But it gets so complicated. It can get really complicated because you don't want to actively, harm someone's future. But at the same time, you also know that even in the SGA community, some were treated.

Let's say some had advantages. Yep. Especially when they left. So children of leaders and things like that where others didn't. So you don't really feel like they're completely blameless either.  For example, with the SGA thing, there are some SGAs who left the cult, who were given substantial amount of month who went on to start businesses and things like that, because simply they were the child and the right person in the leadership rank.

And that's really difficult to think about when you know, that the majority of SGAs were literally kicked out without a penny in their pocket and had to struggle for decades to get anywhere of life. Yeah. So it's just all of that, and, parents get so complicated when you start speaking up.

I think that's why a lot of people don't wanna do it.  yeah, but somebody has to, you can't, in my opinion, you can't just let these people carry on in doing these things. Because if they did it to you, they're gonna do it to somebody else.  Absolutely let's take Paul Peloquin for example, who was a notorious abuser in the cult?

Everyone knows it. There's evidence of it. People have spoken out about it. And where did I find him? Somewhere in the us? I can't recall exactly where it might have been Florida. And he was, he had a party company, seemed like a clown and balloon balloonist in children's parties. I actually phoned him up  , right before I exposed them online, I just called them up.

I was like, Hi is this so and so his fake name? Yeah. He's yes. I was like, hi, Paul. Peloquin just to let I'll posting publicly about you shortly and about your little company that you're running and he just hung

phone. As we said, the got Sarah Keeley, as we said, the notorious, we all know it's even photographic evidence of her abuse, abusing children. , I found her in Costa Rica working for an organization for vulnerable woman and children. It's just incredible. Incredible. But again, I called Interpol was notified.

The FBI was notified. The Costa Rican police was notified. The media in Costa Rica was notified. No one did anything. There's a lot to be said for that, because you think about Interpol and FBI, for example, they have many statements on file. Yeah. They have a lot of evidence on file and they have not done a single thing in all these years.

I dunno whether it's not a priority or something, but it's pretty disgraceful. As for the Costa Rica media, they were going to do a big thing in the media. They're gonna publish a big article about her and scandal of it. And then suddenly bang, silence, everyone just disappeared. It was like incredible.

Wow. Kinda who was paid off there, but yeah. Yeah. We find the abusers, but nothing happens to them because there's no warrants out against them. There's no, one's looking into them. This is the issue. Yeah. We have mountains to climb in the future.  Yeah.

  What's your wishlist?  for what you're doing right now. What way can anyone listening to this? What way can they support what you're doing? Or find out more about what you're doing, even

 We're on Facebook Twitter, Tumblr and Reddit yeah. So we have accounts. If you search COG TFI Survivors, Okay. And we're focusing now on different themes monthly. So April we did child abuse. And then may we, did we republished survivor interviews and content, and now June we're doing discrimination and with Karen Derby's birthday next month, we're going to be doing something about that.

Oh, so yeah, so everyone can support us by liking and sharing our content so we can increase the visibility of our accounts. Cause right now our accounts are mostly followed by fellow survivors.  People can help us by liking and sharing. So the public can have more visibility. Yeah, that's what we really need is  many more likes and shares and interaction on our social media pages to raise our visibility.

So we can start to. Getting a bit more attention online. And we regularly post you'll see the petition, which is called bringing Karen Zerby to justice on change.org. So that's really our focus right now. And for me, the ultimate gain, I'm not asking for much, I just wanna see Karen Derby in a court of justice.

  That's my ultimate aim and always has me because I'm just disgusted by the fact that she was so involved in everything that happened, including child abuse. And yet she is just sitting there stills a Keenan cheese cook. Yeah. That's what she posts about now.  yeah. Yeah. She's like trying to really come across as this spiritual health freak posts, her little words of wisdom and on my birthday, but every year I have money, you get candy cheese.

God sake. Ugh. That's awful. Yeah.  one of these birthdays. You'd like her to be eating prison, food  yeah. And that, that would be probably the closest we could get to justice for her. Although, she deserves much worse, even according to the Jesus that they follow  , them particularly how many times did you hear that verse?

It's better for a millstone  to be put around his neck and it's really interesting that now that we are all grown up and said, yeah we're that kid that was getting hurt. So where's millstone, . Yeah. But I've actually been thinking about about it a bit. Since, I knew we were gonna be talking with you all and stuff  that's always been, my question is like how are we gonna come up against, the, like getting her into the United States even, and then, and prosecuting and all that kind of stuff. But there's actually something bigger behind it. I thinking, which is the fact that especially around the statutes of limitations  , more people are coming out and speaking about what , what's been going on, but they've been trapped.

, everybody was trapped in whether it was like a fundamentalist group or a call like us. We couldn't even go to the authorities if we wanted to at the time. Now we're growing up and we are like we'd like to press charges. , we'd like to see something done.

And everyone's like, well, too bad. You should have come. At the first five years that it happened. And that's a, like a really big. Issue, not just for us, but for a lot of other people. And I think that's like a good thing to that we can start putting out in front of people is no, , , these kids, we, all of us, we were victims of a,  crime, really.

And if you can get the authorities or legislation or whatever, to, to look at that, I'm, I don't mean if you can get, but  if we could get laws and society, even just to look at cult kids, , as victims of crime, , that could change a lot. Of people's lives of what they're able to do, whether it's, get some help, get government help, or it would just be, yes, then you can go and prosecute, your abusers.

.  All the steps that you guys are taking, whether or not it ends up with Zerbe behind bars there's that underlying  other important work, which is we, we should have a voice now we should have a voice now because we didn't before.

And instead of just being told like sorry, too late statute limitations, it's a really big deal.  Traffic people face that too. it's a issue, I think in our quote unquote system justice. Yeah, that, that was the second thing I was talking about at the beginning.

I could not remember the term. When I said we have the two big issues the international nature of the crimes, and the second was the statute of limitations. There are more and more countries that are actually abolishing it for all serious crimes, whether it's the rape, sexual crimes, violence trafficking.

But there needs to be more countries that are bullshit. It should not exist anywhere worldwide. It's absolutely insane because even if you could let's say with myself, when I left at 18, say five years from. Yes, I could have gone to the police, but where, huh, that's another question.

But even assuming the crime had happened in the country, I was living in and  my abuser was there too. People don't realize what a state of shock you're in. When you leave a cult, your first instinct is how to survive. You need to find a way to earn money. Mm-hmm, ,, you're completely traumatized.

It can take you 10, 15, 20 years to even get to a point where you're willing to even talk about it.  And you can't underestimate what the trauma does and how that will keep victims just silent, for years and years, sometimes you don't just come out and realize, oh, look, I'm a huge victim.

I'm gonna, the police now doesn't work like that.  Not very often. No, that's a huge challenge we face and yeah, I think definitely we'll be including that in some of our campaigns in the future. But then as I said earlier, when there's enough attention from the media enough outreach from the public, suddenly there doesn't seem to be an issue with statues of yeah.

It's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. So let's see if we can get enough people to be talking about our cause then maybe we can actually get something to happen despite it. 

Yes,  I know a lot of people have, gone on campaigns or whatever, but I feel like this one's. Sticking like you guys have some perseverance behind it. It's not just a little, whim and I'm gonna do this for two months and then I'm just gonna, yeah. Okay, nothing's happening? So goodbye  so yeah, I feel like I'll definitely try to support you in any way we can whisper. And I are actually have the privilege of meeting with some lawyers and the International Cultic Studies Association in week, a little over a week. Exciting. Yeah. And it's the first time that anybody that's not a board member is gonna be part of the meeting.

So I'm really excited about it.  Because that's what the counter cult coalition is really trying to do is change legislation to give more resources to cult children, and then also more laws to protect them. And.  She asked me what, what do you guys think is a big thing?

I'm like the statute of limitations. Yep. That is our biggest obstacle. And she said the problem with that is the memory and this and that. And I'm like, but that's completely unfair.  I don't think my mind is telling me stories.

, the fact is true that I got raped. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's, it's fantastic. I feel like the more of us that try to do something and try to make a difference that the more we'll be noticed and yeah. And hopefully that things can be done about this. Yeah, for sure.

And I also I really appreciate hearing from you guys and. What you're doing. And when we were interviewing Dr. Janja Lalich she was talking about advocacy and how sometimes survivors want to go directly from their situation into advocacy, because of course, can somebody get mad about what happened to me?

That's a very healthy, actually a healthy reaction. But she was saying that  unless people have taken steps to get healed and start their healing journey, , it's gonna implode basically. So the way that the way that you guys have created something created  this group it sounds like you have a real foundation of, who you are and what you've done.

And now you're ready to, okay. Now it's time to do something for other people. So I really appreciate that with talking with you guys. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So everybody helped support  C O G T F I survivors. Yeah. You can find us on all social networks pretty much. Yeah. And liking and sharing and sign the petition to bring Karen Zerbe to justice.

so It's on change.org. What would people search for to find it, , I think if you would search for Karen Zerbe said EER B Y it should come up. Okay. Otherwise, if you find any of our social media pages, it's often a link on our posts. Okay. Yeah. Very good. And we can put links to all of your guys' stuff in the transcript of in the show notes, in the show notes.

Yep.  thank you. . If you search Karen Z on change.org, it'll come up right away. Perfect. Okay. Yeah. And time position. Yeah. Come on. No matter what you feel about, this, this vision this purpose, like you can put your name on a piece of paper.  make a signature.

If you agree that if anyone agrees that yes, bad shit happened in the cold. Then sign the, then sign it, put your name down. That's you don't have to, you don't have to get involved.  Just a way to support each other I think is really important.

Yes. Yeah. That would be great. Yes.

Thank you guys so much for joining. Yeah. Yeah. It's been really good. And I feel very inspired and motivated to  continue to do whatever we can and use our voices in whichever way we can. Yeah. Same to you guys as well. It's very inspiring your podcast.  so sweet. Yeah. And Natasha will put your book also there we'll yeah, that's great.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. We'll make sure that there's a link to that. So anybody that wants to. Read that can find it easily born in the children of God. Is the title correct? Born into the children of God. Yeah. Born into the children of God. Okay, awesome. We'll get all that info from you guys. Yes. Thank you so much.

And we'll end it. Like we always do stay brave and remember that every butterfly was once a caterpillar. Aw.