In the dim basement of a small Minnesota rental, just feet from where her fiancé took his own life, Sarah VanBlarcom recalls her horrific upbringing.
Raised in the Children of God cult, later known as The Family International, the 45-year-old was brought up in a community that wielded coercion, humiliation and isolation to control members.
Denied any sort of a normal childhood, education or family life, as a youngster Sarah was separated from her parents and suffered horrendous abuse, as well as being forced to survive in poverty and live with horrendous lice infestations.
Founder David Berg started the the Children of God (COG) in 1968 with the intention of protecting a generation from ‘groupthink’ and allowing them to think for themselves, although former members have spoken about their stringent indoctrination.
The group, which was rebranded as The Family International in 2004, still operates in 70 countries globally, though it previously told Metro it had ‘disassembled [its] previous organisational structure’ in 2010 and now functions as a small online network.
Talking about her life in the cult, she explains: ‘If you stepped out of line, you got noticed. If you spoke out too much, you could be put on silence restriction, where you had to wear a piece of cardboard around your neck, saying, “don’t talk to me”.
‘I was put on a silence restriction once for eight days, aged 12, with duct tape over my mouth. I was lucky though. I’ve heard of kids being put on silence restriction for over a year.’
The community’s ‘free love’ doctrines and apocalyptic Christian beliefs meant children were raised to expect the end of the world.
Sarah spent her early years in communes across Brazil, away from her parents and crammed into cramped conditions, brainwashed into waiting for Armageddon.
But it wasn’t just emotional torment she faced. While Sarah avoided sexual abuse herself, she remembers a friend being raped at knifepoint by a man.
‘Adults were given keys to the girls’ bathroom and teenage boys would come and watch us change,’ the author recalls. ‘We tried to take showers at times when people didn’t expect so that we were less likely to be invaded.
‘But it was a normal thing to have boys break into the bathroom while you’re showering.’
Despite all this, emotion was forbidden. ‘You were taught not to have feelings. If you cried, they would beat you until you stopped,’ she adds.
A day in the life of a cult
With no formal education, Sarah lived in poverty. From the age of six, she was expected to pay her own way by performing, selling posters, tapes, videos, and later shaking cans for donations.
‘I hated canning on the street corners, especially when we also had to dress as clowns, winter was terrible,’ she remembers.
Her parents, mainstay cult members, lived in separate communes, leaving Sarah and her six sisters to fend for themselves.
‘At one place, we had a little generator, a small stove, and every day we went out and fundraised until we made enough to buy some food,’ she says. ‘We’d drink water throughout the day and eat cornbread and beans for dinner.’
It was her mother’s cancer diagnosis at 42, that finally brought the family back to the US for her treatment when Sarah was 14. However, before long, the teenager was forced to return to South America and found herself pregnant at 17.
It proved to be a pivotal moment in the young woman’s life.
Becoming a mother in the real world
‘I knew there was no way I could protect a child in that environment, so I moved back to the US at 18 with my two-month-old son Derrick in my arms, two suitcases, and £37 in my pocket,’ Sarah explains.
‘My grandparents sent me the ticket, while my sister got us into our first apartment – but I didn’t know how to exist in the real world.’
Even so, she managed to learn to drive and trained in the beauty industry, where she worked tirelessly and eventually launched her own business.
However, while on the surface her life was going in the right direction, trauma wasn’t far behind, and by the time Sarah was in her 20s, she’d been diagnosed with depression, complex PTSD, anxiety and panic disorder.
A profound loss
Sarah’s life became even more painful during the pandemic when she lost three loved ones to suicide. Her fiancé Jordan took his life in 2020, while her two brothers, Tom and Gabrielle, both raised in the cult, also died by suicide; Gabriel in 2020, Tom in 2023.
Recalling Jordan’s death, Sarah says: ‘We’d been talking that evening about travelling. I told him to do whatever would bring him peace. I didn’t realise he wanted to be gone, for real.
‘I headed to bed, and he said he’d be coming up shortly. 10 minutes later Derrick was banging on my door.’
Her son had found Jordan in the basement. Sarah did compressions until paramedics arrived but he tragically passed away.
‘That was the last time I saw him,’ she remembers tearfully.
The following months were a blur. Neighbours brought food, her sister cared for her, and Sarah went through the motions as her salon reopened, tearfully informing clients of her bereavement. Panic attacks and overwhelming grief made every day a battle.
‘Days and nights blended together in drudgery,’ she says. ‘I worked and came home. I cried throughout the day, all day, for over a year. I had panic attacks if I ventured out, so I stayed home. I shut down, shut out everything, and nearly everyone.’
Sarah admits she even began to feel suicidal herself, scared she might follow in the footsteps of her brothers and fiancé.
In a bid to escape her troubled mindset, Sarah decided to push herself into trying new experiences that she would never have dared while in the cult.
She says: ‘Like walking on a frozen lake; I’d always seen other people do it but was too frightened to try. So I walked out and nothing happened; no cracks or movement.’
It proved to be a vital step in her healing process, and from there, Sarah went to Pride, a metal concert, and began to feel more alive. Then she decided to take care of her health and wellbeing.
‘I wanted to focus on three things and committed to making small adjustments to improve each one,’ she recalls. ‘I chose sleep, diet, and movement.’
For sleep, she started by getting up by noon. For diet, she chose peanuts over Cheetos. For movement, she started walking as she smoked her cigarettes.
‘It wasn’t about perfection,’ the mum says. ‘It was about making the smallest change that moved me in a positive direction.’
Now Sarah, who still lives in the home that she shared with Jordan, walks daily, her insomnia has eased, she eats better and has ended a 25-year smoking habit. Her suicidal spiral has also disappeared.
She calls this change ‘phenomenal’ and feels ‘at peace now’.
‘I still have depression and days where I feel an enormous overwhelm, but I have a lot of self-compassion,’ Sarah explains.
And, in spite of the bad days, there’s only one thing she says matters: ‘I’m proud of how far I’ve come and I’m content with where I am.’
Metro has contacted The Family International for comment.
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