Cultic Studies Journal, Volume 17, 2000, Page 43
The Teen Training Programs and Victor Camps in Academic Studies of The Family
Only one of the existing academic discussions of The Family has anything beyond a brief
mention of these camps and programs (see Chancellor, 2000: 234-241). Indeed, it is
impossible to know what these programs were like from information gleaned from most of
the standard (and even controversial) studies on the organization. The earliest scholarly
discussion appears to be David E. Van Zandt‘s Living with the Children of God. Writing
during a period (January 1991) when at least some of these camps probably still operated,
Van Zandt stated that ―[a]t the age of eleven or twelve, a member is sent to one of the
TTCs [Teen Training Camps] for leadership training. In many cases, those who attend the
TTCs do not return to their parents, but are sent directly to new [Family] Homes to begin
their adult proselytizing efforts for the Family‖ (Van Zandt, 1991: 171-172). Van Zandt did
not indicate that young people above the age of twelve also entered variations of TTC
programs.
Van Zandt suggested that the teen camps were designed to protect teens from sexual
pressures:
As with adult sexual sharing, there are reports that some leaders set up
―sharing nights‖ for children in which they were paired off to make love
before falling asleep. Moreover, there were many cases in which older males
were pressuring young girls to share sexually.
This activity apparently got out of hand by 1984, and the group established
―Teen Training Camp[s]‖ (TTC) in 1985 and 1986 at which pre-and young
teens were removed from these sexual pressures and were educated (Van
Zandt, 1991: 171).
Our ex-member sources, however, indicate that pre-teen sexual sharing took place for a
brief period at one of the camps, and that teen sex flourished at another (Hosea‘s Macao
camp). Moreover, adult sexual exploitation of young girls almost certainly continued at
Macao‘s Detention Teen program, which we will discuss later on.
Other references to The Family‘s teen camps and programs in academic literature appear in
the controversial study of The Family edited by James R. Lewis and Gordon Melton (1994
see Balch, 1996). One article, written by a psychologist and a sociologist who studied young
people in The Family, mentioned the problem caused by individualistic expressions in the
organization. It continued by stating:
[A]n initial approach to this problem was the establishment of special youth
centers in certain parts of the world (e.g., Japan, Mexico, and Brazil) where
young people who had been identified as ―problems‖ could be sent for an
intensive period of social and spiritual ―retraining and strengthening‖ under
the direction of adult teacher-supervisors.... These centers were called
―Victor‖ programs, signifying the hope that those who entered the program
would be able to gain a ―victory‖ over personal problems and return to their
homes in a ―yielded‖ state, with heightened motivation to make more
positive contributions (Shepherd and Lilliston, 1994: 63).
Readers can infer from these comments that one purpose of the Victor program was to train
teens to subjugate their individuality to the collective will (presumably what the researchers
meant by ―a ‗yielded‘ state‖), but they give no details about how this subjugation occurred.
Gordon Melton‘s brief mention of these camps and the Victor program only said that ―the
attendees and the leaders engaged in a rather frank discussion on sexual issues‖ (Melton,
1994: 90), without mentioning their more central purpose of individual teen subjugation.

Cultic Studies Journal, Volume 17, 2000, Page 44
Hints about the intensity of the techniques that many teens experienced in the Victor
program appear in a brief section written by David Millikan (1994: 229). Millikan indicated:
[t]he problems of discipline within The Family of young people, led to the
establishment of Victor Camps. In a limited number of locations in Maca[o],
the Philippines, Norway and elsewhere, problem adolescents were separated
from regular Family activities. They were submitted to a strict discipline of
hard work, long hours of ―Word‖ study [i.e., David Berg‘s writings], and for
the recalcitrant, extended periods of isolation. The last of the ―Victor‖ camps
was closed in England in 1992. They have been the attention of close
examinations, in particular, of a wardship court case in London. Some of the
accusations of excessive discipline and physical beatings have been admitted
to be true. These accusations have been brought by ex-members, including
Berg‘s granddaughter Mene [Merry] Berg, who described a regime of
discipline which went beyond the bounds of what could be regarded as
acceptable (Millikan, 1994: 229).
Millikan knew about the harsh and often physically abusive conditions of the Victor program,
but he did not give details about it. Nor did he, or other researchers, use the term,
―brainwashing,‖ to describe what the young people went through, even though the long
hours of study, the physical beatings, the ―excessive discipline,‖ and the social isolation
strongly suggest that the term would have been appropriate.
The British wardship case that Millikan mentioned involved a grandmother attempting to
obtain custody of her grandson because her daughter (the child‘s mother and caregiver)
was in The Family. The written judgment by The Right Honourable Lord Justice Alan Ward in
the High Court of Justice, Family Division (London, England) about the case (which allowed
the mother to maintain custody as long as she followed strict guidelines) spent nearly eight
pages discussing Merry Berg‘s plight (including her Teen Detention Camp experience in
Macao). He concluded, ―[f]or The Family to gain respectability which they [sic] now appear
to seek, they must acknowledge that what David Berg did to his granddaughter was wrong,
not just a mistake, but inexcusably wrong. They must atone for their treatment of her which
I find to have been barbaric and cruel‖ (Ward, 1995: 133, see 125-133).
As clarification to The Family‘s ―disciples‖ and ―friends‖ about its written response to Justice
Ward‘s queries about reform within the group, Family leader Maria specifically
acknowledged that abuses against teens had taken place, and she apologized for them:
Also, we apologize to any of you young people who may have been harshly and
unlovingly disciplined in the past. We have heard a number of testimonies of
past excessive corporal punishment, prolonged ―silence restriction‖ and/or
isolation, as well as other means of discipline which some of you experienced,
and we want to say that it pains us to hear such things. It was wrong, and we
are truly sorry that any of you received such treatment (Maria, 1995: 6-7).
In essence, because of the trial, the accounts of abuse within many Teen Training Camps
had received extensive exposure in open court, and Family leadership had (at the very
least) to acknowledge and apologize for what had occurred.
The most recent academic book on The Family quotes two young adults who had been
through the beatings, humiliation, silence restrictions, and hard physical labor of the Teen
Training Camps, and one older adult who had imposed these regimes on the teens
(Chancellor, 2000: 237-241). This study also mentioned, ―[i]n the early stages of the Teen
Training Camps, several teenage girls related experiences of inappropriate and uninvited
sexual contact with adult males,‖ (Chancellor, 2000: 20). In response to these experiences
(which probably took place in early-to-mid 1986), Maria instructed the person responsible