'We lost kids.' Daniella escaped the Children of God cult. This is her story.

Content warning: This story deals with child sexual abuse and suicide and may be triggering for some readers. 

Daniella Mestyanek Young asked 'why' from the moment she could.

She considers herself an atheist that was born to religious fundamentalists and remembers thinking even at the age of six, "I'm getting out of here".

'Here' was a cult that her family had been a part of for three generations. A community that colloquially called itself The Family, but is better known as 'The Children of God'. 

It was founded in 1968 by a man called David Berg, who Daniella describes as "a failed wannabe preacher who saw an opportunity in California and the whole hippie movement in the United States".

Watch an explainer on The Children of God. Story continues after video.

It started as a movement of love and faith, but turned into a world of total obedience and absolute total isolation, she explains.

"By the time my mother was born, and certainly by the time I was born, we were 10,000 people strong living around the world in these communes of 100 to 150 people with almost no access to the outside world," Daniella tells Mamamia's podcast True Crime Conversations.

One of the core beliefs of The Family was strict child discipline, which Daniella says "is all based on this Bible verse that says, 'If you spare the rod, you spoil the child.'"

"Our Prophet believed that children were sinful, and babies as young as six months old needed to be spanked and needed to be sort of trained in this very extreme sense of 'good discipline.'"

Daniella was certainly on the receiving end of such discipline; everything from spanking, to getting her mouth washed out with literal soap, holding a Bible outstretched in her hands for an hour, isolation, and 'silence restriction,' where she wasn't allowed to talk to anyone. 

Listen to the full chat here. Post continues after podcast.

"I have memories of being seven years old and not being allowed to speak for two weeks straight, for example," she tells True Crime Conversations.

"I could find examples of the absolute full range of punishments, and certainly, you know... we lost kids. We lost kids to overly harsh discipline and to medical neglect, and it wasn't that rare."

Then there was the sexual abuse. 

Daniella's mother was 15 when she gave birth to her. 

When she was 13, she was sent with a whole group of teenage girls to the Prophet for what was called 'teen training.' At the training, a wedding ceremony of sorts was held for girls ranging in age from three to 14.

"They marry the Prophet who was about 75. And in theory, it was this symbolic ceremony where they were marrying Jesus but of course they all spent time alone with the Prophet," says Daniella.

"The young girls at this time were sort of involved in this entire world of what I usually call forced polyamory. So my mother gets pregnant at 14 and is impregnated by a man a couple of years older than her father." 

Daniella says the rules had somewhat changed by the time she was growing up, and the sexual abuse of minors was eventually considered 'against the rules'. But it didn't stop it happening to her.

"We were still raised in this environment of constant physical and sexual abuse. We had children's cartoons teaching us how to give your body to your attackers in the 'end times.'

"I find it a bit interesting when some of the grown-ups say that they didn't know what was going on, because while they didn't know the exact details, they certainly knew this over sexualised environment we were all growing up in."

For Daniella, the sexual abuse started "I think before the age of five".

By the age of six, she was having suicidal ideation. 

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"This to me is such a signal of really how bad it was. You cannot brainwash children under these conditions to believe in your way. Like it was just too awful that it was breaking most of us. I went on to struggle with suicidal ideation for a lot of my adult life." 

Daniella's trauma manifested in a number of mannerisms including ripping and biting at the skin around her nails, making a ticking sound at the back of her throat, and wetting the bed. 

She was punished for a lot of these habits, and so the cycle continued.

"I have 24 siblings." The reality of 'family' life.

Daniella has 24 siblings. Her mother gave birth to eight children, seven of which she had by the age of 30.

"She never had time to recover in between," says Daniella.

Daily life inside The Family meant that children were raised a lot of the time by other community members.

"We lived in nurseries from about six weeks old, maybe younger. All the babies were breastfed, whether that was by your mother, or somebody else's mother."

They were raised to be 'perfect soldiers of God.'

"I would see my mother for an hour a day for dinner, and for about 30 minutes after dinner, and then you'd go back to your dorm room," says Daniella.

"The whole idea of The Children of God is you are supposed to forsake your family to serve God. So even though you have a nuclear family, they are not supposed to be more important than everyone else that lives in your commune. And if you do anything wrong, you can lose your family at any point in time. So I had grown up with my mother losing her mother who had left the cult when she was young. And I definitely remember, you know, just living in constant fear that my mother would be taken away because of either something she did or something that I did."

They had no access to outside music, books or education and very little access to hospitals. During the day, they worked. 

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A post shared by Daniella Mestyanek Young (@daniellamyoung_)

Daniella and the other kids would sing, dance and perform in videos and then sell them on the streets to earn money for The Children of God.

"We were hundreds, thousands of children just constantly moved around the world for the purpose of our labour and raising money for the organisation. In every aspect of keeping a society going, we children were the labour."

Escaping, aged 15.

Those who lived in the outside world were considered evil, referred to in The Family as 'systemites' - those who 'follow the system'.

But even as a small child, Daniella knew she would prefer to be one of them, "even if I go to hell".

It wasn't until she was 14, when she saw live images of the horror of 9/11 on TV, that Daniella really started to plot her escape.

"I'm watching this horrific thing happening, and I'm hearing the grown-ups around me praising God for his judgement on 'evil America', which we called 'Babylon the whore'. And they were saying, 'It's a sign of the times, they deserve this judgement', and I'm watching this... and the crack in the brainwashing is just starting," she tells True Crime Conversations.

This turning point marked the start of a one and a half year journey of Daniella "getting them to let me go".

She eventually realised she'd have to commit an unforgiveable sin for them to release her, so she had sex with a boy she had met outside the commune.

With the 'crime' committed, her parents were somewhat expected to find her a place to live as she was no longer welcome in The Children of God.

At 15, Daniella was sent to live with a stepsister who was also living in the outside world.

"They dropped me off with her. I had zero dollars, I figured out how to get a job before I figured out how to get enrolled in high school."

In the outside world, Daniella describes her life as a 'comedy of errors.'

"I had this privilege of being this white girl who speaks English. I looked like your normal American kid... but high school was just this realisation for me that I'm from a different planet."

It was hard. Extremely hard. Daniella's mother never cut ties with her, and they did speak on the phone, but she was alone.

"I didn't know anything about the world," she says.

Daniella has spent her whole life trying to erase the past so as to not be known as "this girl from a cult".

She spent many years in the army, has a master's degree in organisational psychology, and a beautiful daughter of her own. Speaking to True Crime Conversations, Daniella says she has since come to peace with the fact that her childhood will always be a part of her. 

"I don't get to go back and have a nice childhood," she says.

"So I think one of the beautiful things about my life today is that when I stopped hiding it, and when I stopped trying to sort of fit into these roles of being a 'perfect person,' I've been so much happier." 

To hear more of Daniella's story, you can read her book Uncultured here. 

If you think you may be experiencing depression or another mental health problem, please contact your general practitioner. If you're based in Australia, 24-hour support is available through Lifeline on 13 11 14 or beyondblue on 1300 22 4636.

If this post brings up any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service. It doesn’t matter where you live, they will take your call and, if need be, refer you to a service closer to home. 

You can also call safe steps 24/7 Family Violence Response Line on 1800 015 188 or visit www.safesteps.org.au for further information.

Feature Image: Daniella Mestyanek Young/Instagram.

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