Mississippi Sun Herald: Cult's 'prince' loses control

From the website of the Sun Herald in Mississippi. We now get to hear about hot The Family gives aide to Tsunami victims:

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunherald/news/world/10653111.htm

Posted on Sat, Jan. 15, 2005

Cult's 'prince' loses control

End Times guide kills former nanny, then himself

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

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.

Last Saturday, the 29-year-old Rodriguez 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 border to the small desert town of Blythe and called his wife on his cell phone to explain why he'd done it, according to the police in both states and Rodriguez's wife. Then with one shot from a semiautomatic handgun, police said, he ended his life.

The group lives on. What was once known as a '60s cult, attracting members like the parents of River Phoenix and the Fleetwood Mac guitarist Jeremy Spencer, is now called The Family International. A Washington, D.C.-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 disasters like the recent tsunami.

But Rodriguez's murder-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 committed suicide.

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 subject to rapes and beatings.

For The Family International, the latest murder-suicide threatens to revive a past Borowik said she thought the organization had already put behind it.

The Family 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, and while some members were briefly jailed, there were no convictions of top leaders.