This article piqued my curiosity after I did a search on a different cult and found COG listed as well as many others incl. House of Judah. How closely related all these cults were is chilling with regard to dynamics and damages done to followers and those born and raised in cults.

http://www.csj.org/infoserv_articles/langone_michael_children.htm

It is a brief thumbnail article listing several cults but it also referred to the parents in a cult being "middle management" with the cult leader in the parent role.

In the COG this was worse it seems the closer a person was to a family "school" which was usually attended and lived in by leaders of the region the school was in as well as children of childcare workers.

I know that I lived in a school when children were very small and I worked with a school age child that I know to this day. We have both been out for years, decades in my case. I consider myself extremely fortunate for that. I don't know but can imagine how much more it would hurt if my children had to attend victor camps or combos.

Part of healing is to look at the parts of the past that any normal person wishes they could forget. I hope one day there might be some common ground where people from the generation recruited in their youth and those born in can look at the ugly past and while having their own peer groups to express themselves in, can also offer validation, support and understanding to some degree of each others experience.

I was struck by another site where 2G youth from another cult sounded so much like the 2G from TF and experienced similar abuses and hardships. I am glad for everyone of any age that gets out of a cult like TF. That site is at FactNet and is under the Tony Alamo section.

Interestingly enough, people like David Berg and Tony Alamo knew each other at some point. However in cults like TF and Alamo's there is only room for one ultimate leader and they started their own communities. Who of the first generation knew what it would become?

I am sure a few did like Maria for instance because she alledgedly was gunning for bedding leadership in the early days. That is something that most people recruited in early days would never have imagined.

So here is a question for those who are interested in answering: How in your viewpoint has your family been affected by time spent in the cult and how has it been healing? I realize that for some people who may be in crisis that healing doesn't feel like the word itself implies. Healing sometimes is very very painful for a time. Relief is deferred but worth the pain.