The cult was his unhappy home - 2007-09-05
The cult was his unhappy home September 5, 2007,
If Ricky Rodriguez had not committed a murder-suicide two years ago, "Children of God: Lost and Found" would probably not have wound up on Cinemax. Rodriguez was the stepson of the late Children of God cult leader David Berg, and his murder of another former "Family member" and subsequent suicide brought renewed media attention to the 40-year-old California-based religious group that had been accused in the past of abusing its children. Mainly because Rodriguez left a videotape explaining his actions: As the victim of repeated sexual abuse in the name of the Family, he was bent on getting what revenge he could.
"How do you do it, how you do it and sleep at night?" he asks as he pores over his small arsenal of knives and guns. "My goal is to bring down my own mother."
It is as raw and brutal a bit of videotape as one can see, and it is used, to great effect, midway through "Children of God," a Cinemax Reel Life documentary premiering tonight. Filmmaker Noah Thomson, a former member, has called his project a "personal journey," and though this term has been worn to almost meaninglessness by overuse, that is precisely what "Children of God" is.