Judgment of Lord Justice Ward

In 1992, the mother of a member of The Family International filed a case with the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Ward in England, requesting the custody of her unmarried daughter's child. The grounds presented for the removal of the custody of her grandchild was her daughter's membership in The Family and the repercussions this could have on the child.

Despite the fact that this case was strictly a custody case involving a Family member and her mother, Justice Ward devoted several years to hearing both current and former member witnesses, as well as scholars of religion, investigative experts and social workers. He also studied thousands of pages of never before revealed internal documents, and ordered social services to evaluate the condition of local Family communities in England. The court hearing lasted an unprecedented 75 days in which 10,000 pages of evidence were presented.

After three years of rigorous investigative work, in November 1995, Justice Ward issued a lengthy ruling. This document was originally 295 pages long. It is a ground-breaking legal document which details not only a trial for custody of a child born into The Family, but also how the writings, doctrines, practices, leadership and the group's treatment of children were placed under scrutiny.

Justice Ward ruled that The Family, including its top leadership, had engaged in abusive sexual practices involving minors, as well as severe corporal punishment and sequestration of children. However, in a last minute turnaround, he said The Family had abandoned these practices and that they were an acceptably safe environment for children. Conditional custody was granted to the mother, a full-time member of the group, with the requirements that the group cease all corporal punishment of children in England, improve the education of children, denounce their founder David Berg's writings, and "acknowledge that through his writings Berg was personally responsible for children in The Family having been subjected to sexually inappropriate behaviour".

As a result of this, The Family accommodated (albeit quietly) the custody-granting condition of admitting wrong-doing on Berg's part for literature which endorsed adult-child sex. In his apology to the judge, Steven Kelly (Peter Amsterdam) stated:

"The judgement refers in particular to 'The Law of Love' and 'The Devil Hates Sex', and we accept that as the author of ideas upon which some members acted to the harm of minors in 'The Family,' he [Berg] must bear responsibility for that harm. Maria, and all of us in World Services leadership, also feel the burden of responsibilty [...] Further, in 1980 Father David's statements in his discourse entitled 'The Devil Hates Sex' opened the door for sexual behaviour between adults and minors, such sanctioning being the direct cause of later abusive behaviour by some 'Family' members at that time." —Steven Kelly

However, despite the group publicly renouncing former policies and doctrines that condoned or encouraged sex between adults and minors, in their internal publications there has been no such renunciation. Evidence of this is represented by the following quote from Family leader Karen Zerby:

This [sexual contact between adults and minors] is about the only subject where we're really going along with the System, we're playing along with them, we're acting like we believe what we did was wrong, because we have changed, and stopped doing it [...] We need to somehow explain to our [teenagers] that love and loving affection is not wrong. As it says in [Berg's writings], if it's not hurtful, if it's loving, then it's okay. Of course, having actual intercourse with a child wouldn't be okay as it wouldn't be loving, but a little fondling and sweet affection is not wrong in the eyes of God, and if they have experienced the same in the past they weren't 'abused.' [...] We need to explain to our [children] that any experience they may have had along these lines, if it was loving and if it was desired, was not wrong. We need to show them that even if in some case the experience for them wasn't so great, that by comparison to what goes on in the System, it still wasn't abuse. —Karen Zerby, Summit '93 Mama Jewels #2, 1992. pg.19

• Complete Judgment of Lord Justice Ward — Editor's Note: Around 650 KB.