Rose McGowan fled cult to avoid child sex abuse
By William Smith
We are well aware that childhood trauma can manifest itself in mental illness many years later. Here, for now, we see a beautiful young woman who seems to have escaped the ravages of a very unusual and difficult start to life.
Rose McGowan is famous for her roles in ‘Charmed’, ‘Scream’ and the ‘Conan The Barbarian’ remake. Her life now seems ‘charmed’ but her start in life was very different from what you might expect.
In a report on Yahoo.com it states that Rose spent the first nine years of her life in a religious sect.
Rose McGowan, 37, spoke about her unusual start to life in an interview with People Magazine. She speaks candidly about the details of her bizarre upbringing in the Italian countryside.
The sect was called the ‘Children of God’ sect and its principles were based on those of free love. This was combined with a hippie lifestyle with preparations being made for ‘the second coming of Jesus’. It may sound to some like an idyllic situation with beautiful Italian surroundings, free love and religion but Rose says that 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’ Rose told People Magazine.
Rose added that she was always uncomfortable with the sexual side of life in the sect.
‘I did not ant to be like those women. They were basically there to serve the men sexually. The women would go to bars as lures (to pick up new recruits). They called it flirty fishing.’
The situation worsened when the group began to advocate adult-child sexual relationships. Rose recalls that her father was ‘strong enough to realise that this hippie love had gone south’. Fearing that his daughter might be molested he fled to America with Rose and her siblings.
It is hard to imagine the impact that being raised in this situation would have on a young, vulnerable child and Rose found it hard to adjust to normal life. She ran away from home and was taken in by drag queens for a while before she eventually went back home to her father.
There seems to be no mention of her mother in any of this and one can but wonder where she was while all this was going on.
The way that Rose seems to have adjusted to this bizarre and dangerous start in life is admirable.
‘There are people who will read this story and think I had a strange existence’ she tells People ‘I think they’ve had a strange existence’.
Many people would have suffered mental health difficulties after a start like this. Risk of child-molestation, isolation and indoctrination are enough to test mental strength to its limits. Unfortunately, it is all too often that childhood trauma can take many years to surface. Many abuse victims keep it locked deep inside only for it to emerge in poor mental health later in life. Let’s hope that Rose McGowan can continue to have such a healthy and positive take on life.
