Articles and News Reports

Deaths revive allegations of abuse

Children of God had checkered past

Posted on Sun, Jan. 16, 2005

The New York Times

Growing up in the 1970s in a religious cult known around the world as the Children of God, Rick Rodriguez was revered as “the prince.”

The group's leaders were his mother and stepfather, and they taught that their son would guide them all when the End Times came.

He was so special that his unconventional upbringing — by a collection of often topless young nannies — was chronicled in The Davidito Book, which was distributed to members as a how-to guide for raising children.

On Jan. 8, Rodriguez, 29, invited one of his former nannies, Angela Smith, to meet him at his apartment in Tucson, Ariz., for dinner. He stabbed Smith to death, got in his Chevrolet, drove west across the California state line to the desert town of Blythe, and called his wife on his cell phone to explain why he had done it, according to police in both states and Rodriguez's wife.

Then, with one shot from a semiautomatic handgun, he ended his life, police said.

The group lives on. What was once known as a '60s cult, attracting members like the parents of River Phoenix and Fleetwood Mac guitarist Jeremy Spencer, is now called The Family International. A Washington-based spokeswoman for the group, Claire Borowik, described the organization as a Christian fellowship with about 4,000 children and 4,000 adult members who live in 718 communal houses in about 100 countries. The group sends aid workers and missionaries to the scene of disasters like the recent south Asia tsunami.

But Rodriguez's homicide-suicide is reviving allegations by former members about routine physical, emotional and sexual abuse they say they experienced as children.

Rodriguez recorded a videotape the night before he killed Smith and himself. The video, which was provided to The New York Times by Rodriguez's widow, shows him loading a gun. He said he saw himself as a vigilante avenging children like himself and his sisters who had been subjected to rapes and beatings.

For The Family International, Rodriguez's acts threaten to revive a past that Borowik said she thought the organization had put behind it. The group announced in 1986 that it had changed its guidelines and would excommunicate anyone who had sexual contact with children, she said.

The group survived child abuse investigations in Spain, Argentina, Australia and France in the 1990s.

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