Controversies and Responses

This record documents two distinct court proceedings concerning allegations of child sexual abuse inside The Family International, formerly the Children of God, heard in different countries and reaching opposite conclusions.

The first is the 1995 English High Court wardship case. Lord Justice Alan Ward reviewed the movement's own internal publications from the 1970s and 1980s alongside testimony from former members and scholars, and found that the sexual teaching the group had promulgated in that period had in fact resulted in the abuse of children. Rather than simply removing the child at the center of the case, Ward made his ruling conditional: the group's leadership was required to acknowledge the abuse and formally disavow the teaching that had permitted it, in terms he specified, and the movement complied.

The second is a set of Argentine criminal proceedings that reached the opposite finding. On 1 September 1993 federal police raided five Family communities in Buenos Aires; twenty one adult members were imprisoned for 103 days and 130 minors were placed in state custody, on charges including promoting the corruption and prostitution of minors and involuntary servitude. Argentina's Federal Appeals Court dismissed every charge that December, stating there was not the slightest shred of evidence that the alleged acts had occurred; medical examinations of the young women involved supported the finding. Argentina's Supreme Court upheld the dismissal in June 1995 and the children were returned to their parents.