Background
Zerby was raised in evangelical Pentecostalism. Her father was a Nazarene minister, and she is credited with bringing the "fundamental Pentecostal principle of being "spirit-led"" into the church she eventually came to lead.
Zerby was raised in evangelical Pentecostalism. Her father was a Nazarene minister, and she is credited with bringing the "fundamental Pentecostal principle of being "spirit-led"" into the church she eventually came to lead.
She also goes by the names Mama Maria, Maria David, and Queen Maria. Going by the name Maria she joined the group, then called Teens for Christ, in 1969. In 1975, while living in Tenerife, Spain, Zerby had a son, Ricky Rodriguez.
The book is controversial for its encouragement of child sexual abuse.
By the mid-1980s Zerby began to issue edicts of her own. Throughout the 1980s she dictated and enforced elements of discipline, ending for instance a training program for children she deemed too harsh.
In January 2005, Rodriguez killed his childhood nanny Angela Smith (a former member of the cult who sexually molested Rodriguez). Hours later Rodriguez committed suicide.
