76 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 3, 2012
Something Somebody Stole: A Personal Journey to Soul Recovery After 20
Years in a Controversial Religious Cult
By Ray Connolly
Reviewed by Joseph Szimhart
Charleston, SC: CreateSpace. 2011. ISBN-10:
1460922549 ISBN-13: 9781460922545
(paperback), $12.95 (Amazon.com). 223 pages.
The title of this book comes from a line in the
Billy Joel song “River of Dreams”: “I’ve been
searching for something, taken out of my soul,
something I’d never lose, something somebody
stole.”
Ray Connolly, the author, sent me a copy of his
memoir to review. He self-published the book
through CreateSpace, a member of the Amazon
group of companies. The book is actually more
than a memoir it offers practical and applicable
advice regarding recovery from any aberrant
religious group or controversial cult. In the
early 1970s, the author encountered and became
a zealous member of a new religious group
commonly called The Children of God, or CoG.
Much later, the group called itself The Family
International in an effort not only to reflect its
energetic childbearing practices, but also to
distance itself from the aggressive sex-cult
image that CoG had earned. CoG was founded
by David Brandt “Moses” Berg (1919–1994), a
charismatic but deranged Christian preacher who
attracted thousands of followers during the early
years of a burgeoning Jesus revival movement
that emerged in the late 1960s. After Connolly
was recruited in 1970, he was saddled with the
group name Kenaz taken from an Old Testament
passage. He would remain deeply involved with
CoG, rising to a leadership role during the next
20 years.
CoG was among the most notorious cults
mentioned in the press in the 1970s, cults that
attracted intervention efforts of various kinds to
get members out. CoG was also a prime
concern to emerging, so-called anticult
organizations, the most significant of which was
FREECOG, later reorganized as the Citizens
Freedom Foundation. Moses Berg founded the
group in 1968 after having been expelled from
Christian and Missionary Alliance for aggressive
proselytizing and sexual misconduct with a
minor. The group spread quickly via communal
homes and aggressive proselytizing. By 1982,
the group retained 10,000 members and,
according to researcher Bill Bainbridge, from
1974 until 1987, members had sexual contact
with 223,989 people while practicing Flirty
Fishing (see Family International in Wikipedia).
Berg died and was buried in Portugal in 1994
and his wife Karen Zerby, a.k.a. Mama Maria,
Queen Maria, or Maria Fontaine, took over the
The Family International (TFI). TFI became
less radical, with established bylaws forbidding
sex with minors. TFI remains fundamentalist in
approach to the Bible, with belief in the Last
Days as imminent, when Satan will reign
through a one-world government, and the
faithful will be “raptured” at the end of a period
of “tribulation.” Under Zerby’s leadership, TFI
practices a form of prophesying that resembles
New Age channeling.
Connolly’s narrative begins in the spring of
1970 when he was a student at Holy Cross, a
liberal-arts Jesuit college in Massachusetts. The
Catholic Connolly was a young man affected by
the so-called Age of Aquarius and the sixties’
be-here-now narcissism. His Catholic
upbringing hurtled him further into introspection
as Catholics worldwide struggled to make
personal sense out of the recent changes initiated
by the historic Second Vatican Council. Many
American Catholic theologians (much to the
chagrin of the Vatican) interpreted the new
attitude as a church that swung from anti-
Modernist, authoritarian rule to promotion of
individual conscience in matters of sin, morals,
and other religions. Non-Catholics were no
longer destined for hell as some hardliners in the
Something Somebody Stole: A Personal Journey to Soul Recovery After 20
Years in a Controversial Religious Cult
By Ray Connolly
Reviewed by Joseph Szimhart
Charleston, SC: CreateSpace. 2011. ISBN-10:
1460922549 ISBN-13: 9781460922545
(paperback), $12.95 (Amazon.com). 223 pages.
The title of this book comes from a line in the
Billy Joel song “River of Dreams”: “I’ve been
searching for something, taken out of my soul,
something I’d never lose, something somebody
stole.”
Ray Connolly, the author, sent me a copy of his
memoir to review. He self-published the book
through CreateSpace, a member of the Amazon
group of companies. The book is actually more
than a memoir it offers practical and applicable
advice regarding recovery from any aberrant
religious group or controversial cult. In the
early 1970s, the author encountered and became
a zealous member of a new religious group
commonly called The Children of God, or CoG.
Much later, the group called itself The Family
International in an effort not only to reflect its
energetic childbearing practices, but also to
distance itself from the aggressive sex-cult
image that CoG had earned. CoG was founded
by David Brandt “Moses” Berg (1919–1994), a
charismatic but deranged Christian preacher who
attracted thousands of followers during the early
years of a burgeoning Jesus revival movement
that emerged in the late 1960s. After Connolly
was recruited in 1970, he was saddled with the
group name Kenaz taken from an Old Testament
passage. He would remain deeply involved with
CoG, rising to a leadership role during the next
20 years.
CoG was among the most notorious cults
mentioned in the press in the 1970s, cults that
attracted intervention efforts of various kinds to
get members out. CoG was also a prime
concern to emerging, so-called anticult
organizations, the most significant of which was
FREECOG, later reorganized as the Citizens
Freedom Foundation. Moses Berg founded the
group in 1968 after having been expelled from
Christian and Missionary Alliance for aggressive
proselytizing and sexual misconduct with a
minor. The group spread quickly via communal
homes and aggressive proselytizing. By 1982,
the group retained 10,000 members and,
according to researcher Bill Bainbridge, from
1974 until 1987, members had sexual contact
with 223,989 people while practicing Flirty
Fishing (see Family International in Wikipedia).
Berg died and was buried in Portugal in 1994
and his wife Karen Zerby, a.k.a. Mama Maria,
Queen Maria, or Maria Fontaine, took over the
The Family International (TFI). TFI became
less radical, with established bylaws forbidding
sex with minors. TFI remains fundamentalist in
approach to the Bible, with belief in the Last
Days as imminent, when Satan will reign
through a one-world government, and the
faithful will be “raptured” at the end of a period
of “tribulation.” Under Zerby’s leadership, TFI
practices a form of prophesying that resembles
New Age channeling.
Connolly’s narrative begins in the spring of
1970 when he was a student at Holy Cross, a
liberal-arts Jesuit college in Massachusetts. The
Catholic Connolly was a young man affected by
the so-called Age of Aquarius and the sixties’
be-here-now narcissism. His Catholic
upbringing hurtled him further into introspection
as Catholics worldwide struggled to make
personal sense out of the recent changes initiated
by the historic Second Vatican Council. Many
American Catholic theologians (much to the
chagrin of the Vatican) interpreted the new
attitude as a church that swung from anti-
Modernist, authoritarian rule to promotion of
individual conscience in matters of sin, morals,
and other religions. Non-Catholics were no
longer destined for hell as some hardliners in the
