Abi Freeman

Abi Freeman, December 1995

Abi Freeman (born 1958, formerly known as Rosalind Hora and Morning Star) was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family and joined the Children of God in 1974 at age 16. She has worked for the organization in a number of countries including Iran (where she lived in a Family Home with Lawrence Corley), India, Russia, Hungary and the United Kingdom. She lives in Britain and is the organization's primary spokesperson in Europe.

In a March 2005 interview with David Cohen from the British paper The Evening Standard, Freeman initially denied that she had ever "personally encountered any sexual abuse of children." However, near the end of the interview, she changed her story:

She hesitates. "Okay, so something happened," she snaps. And then it comes. "My daughter was sexually abused in the Family when she was 12 by two 15-year-old boys. Okay? And maybe she walked in a couple of times when I was having sex." She jumps up, angry and confused. "Don't tell me that my daughter has mental health problems because I'm in the Family!"

Her daughter however recalled the situation rather differently:

Was her mother being truthful, I ask? She says: "I don't remember the incident my mother described when I was 12." But suddenly she is shaking violently, and lights a rollup cigarette to steady her nerves. "No, the incident I remember happened when I was nine. I was sexually abused by a 15-year-old boy. It happened again, on two occasions, when I was 16. But this time it was by 40-year-old men. Those men are still in the Family in the UK, even though they openly admitted what they did."

On September 22, 2006 Freeman was arrested in Britain over complaints lodged to the British Police regarding the sexual molestation of at least one minor. She has been released on bail.

Press coverage

• London Times: Revenge of a son on cult of free love — 2005-01-23
• London Times: 'After my mother, all I need is one bullet for myself' — 2005-02-09
• Evening Standard: The Little Girl Seduced in the Name of God — 2005-03-09
• Dagbladet: Guds misbrukte barn — 2005-04-09 (Norwegian)
• BBC Radio 4: Today (4:50. 851k) – 2004-1203 — Freeman and Graham Baldwin discuss cults.

Writings by Freeman

• *Intervention by Abi Freeman, European lnformation Department of the Family lnternational — document presented by Freeman to the OSCE Conference on Anti-Semitism and on Other Forms of Intolerance in Cordoba, Spain – 2005-06

More Information

• Abi Freeman lies about COG History saying 'no girls were sent out to do prostitution' on BBC 4 Dec 2004 – from MovingOn — 2005-01-30
• movingon.org: ABI FREEMAN ARRESTED! — 2006-09-25

Notes and Refences

This article is a "stub". This means it is an incomplete article needing further elaboration.

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