Rose McGowan's escape from childhood cult

by Michael Edwards


You might think celebrities lead charmed lives, but actress Rose McGowan, famed for her roles in 'Scream', 'Charmed' and now the 'Conan The Barbarian' remake, spent the first nine years of hers in the Children of God Sect.
Speaking to People Magazine, McGowan, now 37, candidly discusses details of her bizarre upbringing in the "pastoral settings" of the Italian countryside.
The 'Children of God' sect was based on the principles of free love, but combined this hippie lifestyle with preparations for the second coming of Jesus. But it was not an easy life:
"Like in most cults, you were cut off from your family, there were no newspapers, no television. You were kept in the dark so you would obey. It was not a wealthy existence" she laments.
And although McGowan believed in the Christian elements of the group, she says that she was always uncomfortable with the sexual side of life in the sect:
"I did not want to be like those women. They were basically there to serve the men sexually", adding, "the women would go to bars as lures (to pick up recruits) - they called it flirty fishing."
And matters got even worse when the group began to advocate adult-child sexual relationships.
She recalls that her father was "strong enough to realize that this hippie love had gone south", and, fearing that his daughter might be molested, fled to America with Rose and her siblings.
She found it hard to adjust to normal life, and ran away from home. In a fittingly strange twist, she was taken in by drag queens for a spell before she eventually went back to her father.
In the end, the actress is accepting of her background in a way we can't help but admire:
"There are people who will read this story and think I had a strange existence," she tells People, before joking, "I think they've had a strange existence!