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HEAVEN'S HARLOTS: MY FIFTEEN YEARS AS A SACRED PROSTITUTE IN THE CHILDREN OF GOD CULT -- PHOTO GALLERY |
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My father, John Fred Williams, in one of the few photographs that I have of him, taken around 1949. My father had not yet met my mother.
My mother, Elfriede Seeger Williams, in a photo taken in the late forties while she was working at a German newspaper in Philadelphia. Shortly afterward, she would meet my father.
Before my family moved out west from Philadelphia, my grandparents snapped this photo of me. I was two years old.
In 1956, my family was living in Venice Beach, California. My mother is holding my sister Marlene. I'm in the center, alongside my brother, Steve.
My high school senior picture. I graduated from McCaskey High School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1971. At this point, I was seeing my sister's teacher and had stopped hanging out with the "hippie" crowd at school.
Wedding day for Cal and me in the summer of 1972 at the Ellenville camp in upstate New York. Cal, the drummer in Jeremy Spencer's band, is twenty, and I am nineteen. The long skirt I am wearing was standard for a woman in the Children of God -- the bare feet must be attributed to my rebellious streak. The entire camp was present for the "ceremony." Cal and I wouldn't get married officially until I was nine months pregnant with Thor, about one year later.
The nursery of the Essen, Germany, colony. Thor, less than a year old, is in the arms of a nursery worker. The conditions of this particular nursery were quite good by Children of God standards -- some colonies did not even have money for cribs at that time. There are Scriptures written on the chalkboards in the background. We were required to memorize two a day.
Cal, Thor, and I appeared on the cover of New Nation News!, the Children of God newsletter. While we lived in Paris, photos were always being taken of us. On the outside, we must have looked like well-adjusted models of happiness. Sharing, threesomes, and flirty fishing were to come.
One of the first publicity shots of Les Enfants de Dieu, taken in the Massif Centrale in France. I'm standing sixth from the right and Cal is standing third from the left. Also shown are Jeremy Spencer of Fleetwood Mac; my dance partner, Jon; my busking partner, Nahum; Hopie; Esther; Micah; James; and Ruth. Timothy, Sharon, and Breeze would come into the show Group later, although Breeze's husband, Abraham, was present here.
I'm posing with Mara (left) at the port of Monte Carlo in 1978. Mara had officially, according to COG standards, become another wife to Cal at this point. Ironically, people were always telling us that we looked alike.
Here I'm standing between Sharon (left) and Breeze in our Beausoleil home. The three of us were quite a force as flirty fishers. Our home contributed thousands of dollars to the Children of God World Services.
Moses David (with beard), also known as David Berg, and his mistress, Maria (to his right), surrounded by the Tenerife flirty fishing colony in 1977. Popular magazines like Germany's Stern besieged the small island with photographers and reporters. Moses David was forced to flee after the scandal hit the press.
Illustration from the Mo letters, dated April 26, 1976. Many controversial teachings were in this pamphlet, among them the idea that husbands should show their love for God by willingly sending their wives to bed "fish," and the idea that female members of the Family were whores of God. Moses David wrote, "He's [God's] going to put so much love in your heart for them [fish] that you're going to want to take them to bed ... " (#560:24). Later he said, "God is a pimp!" (#560:27).
Here I am at the Beausoleil home. Although I was part of an FFing house, I always felt that I was doing these acts for God, or a higher cause.
In Perpignan, near the Spanish Basque border, in the summer of 1983. I'm breast-feeding Genvieve, and Thor is ten years old. After the kidnapping and recovery of Thor, I tried to visit him as often as possible.
Charles took this picture of my family, in Liguria, Italy. I'm standing behind Genvieve (left) and Athena, holding Jordan. This was one of the busiest times of my life, and I often felt I was living on faith alone. I had no car and had to go out singing every night from 7 P>M> to midnight to earn money. And there were two nursing babies to attend to.
I'm with Thor at a 1995 blues festival in the South. At the time, Thor was living with me. He's now a graduate student in mathematics in Germany.
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