DAVID BERG

Her parents had joined the Children of God community in the early 1970s, before she was born, hoping to find an alternative way of life that was in line with their hippy Christian values.

But over time, the cult had become a dangerous and toxic community: one where mass orgies and child abuse was rifeBexy, who has written a memoir about growing up in the cult, was, along with the other children of the cult members, used as child labour, and subjected to rampant beatings and terrifying exorcisms - all of which left her with lifelong scarsFounded by David Berg in 1968, the Children of God had communities across the globe in over 130 countries, and actors like the late River Phoenix and Rose McGowan both spent chunks of their childhood inside it.

Phoenix described the community as "ruining people's lives" before his death, and McGowan has been candid about the huge amount of damage living in an Italian branch of the cult did to her, telling Louis Theroux that though she had "really thought I'd escaped the programming" some aspects of how she brought up still impacted her as an adult, though it "took years to notice".

Bexy has explained that the children in her Bromley cult branch were used as a "workforce" and so from a very young age, she was forced to cook and clean for the community of nearly 100 people, along with her 11 siblingsBexy describes her childhood as being a "prisoner" to the whims of the cult, where there was rarely enough food for everyone and errant members were regularly beaten in public.

Sexual abuse was a core tenet of the cult, Bexy explained to Crime Monthly, calling it a "defining belief"The following year, she was caught telling a lie and subjected to a terrifying "exorcism" at age nine, which saw everyone in her community touch her across her entire body while speaking in tongues.

Bexy told Crime Monthly that this left her with lifelong trauma.

"The exorcism told me I was evil.

It's quite a scary thing for a child to go through, and I had my first panic attack," she described.