12 Things We Learned From Rose McGowan On Louis Theroux’s Podcast

McGowan detailed some of the group’s cult-like characteristics, including the bizarre and nonsensical task of having to learn how to repeatedly snap her fingers 8 hours a day - with the belief that this would allow God to eventually teach you how to drive a car when you’re sixteen. Odd, right?

The conversation then turned to the nature of the cult’s sexualisation of young women - described by Theroux as the luring recruitment process to attract external outsiders. When growing up in Rome and being reluctantly enrolled in this process herself, McGowan knew it as a term of ‘flirty fishing’ or working as ‘hookers for Jesus’. The recruitment itself included provocatively dancing on the streets and even actively approaching recruits for sexual activities.

In the latter years of the cult’s development, McGowan’s father made the decision to escape the group after founder David Bird began to give out directives of ‘loving children’ - what McGowan believes was strong advocacy for child-adult sex.