IN THE PIPELINE:

This year marks the 40th anniversary of a strange chapter in Huntington Beach history. The effects of this chapter are still felt today all over the world, and firestorms of controversy have burned all along the way.

Let me frame this story. Several weeks ago, I watched a riveting British documentary, which aired on MSNBC. It was called “Cult Killer: the Ricky Rodriguez Story.”

The background on the documentary is: Two decades after a Christian religious sect officially renounced adult-child sex in response to allegations of sexual misconduct, “Cult Killer” was produced to revive many of the questions. The sect, known as The Family International, and commonly known as The Family, was founded in the late 1960s with thousands of members worldwide. In January 2005, Ricky Rodriguez, the one-time heir apparent to The Family, fatally stabbed his former nanny and then shot himself dead.

He left chilling videotape alleging that the sexual abuse he had suffered as a child at the hands of members of the group was the reason he was about to exact revenge. The tapes he shot of himself describing his unbelievably depraved upbringing formed the centerpiece of the documentary. They were dramatic, compelling and deeply disturbing.

The Family, which was actually first called The Children of God when formed by David Berg, was among the movements prompting the cult controversy of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States and Europe, and triggered the first organized anti-cult group, Free the Children of God.

Among The Family’s thousands of members is Jeremy Spencer, the former Fleetwood Mac guitarist. How he wound up in the sect stands as one of rock ’n’ roll’s more bizarre stories.

In 1971, Spencer went to buy some newspapers one day up at a bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard (Fleetwood Mac had just kicked off a tour of America). But he never came back. He’d been approached by a member of The Children of God and almost instantly, fell under their spell.

When the guitarist failed to show up for that evening’s gig, the police were contacted, and after five worry-filled days Spencer was traced to the Children of God headquarters at a warehouse in downtown Los Angeles.

In order to get in to see Spencer, Fleetwood Mac Manager Clifford Davis had to make up a story about Spencer’s wife, Fiona, being seriously ill. According to a Fleetwood Mac roadie who was at the scene, Spencer “was walking around in a daze like a zombie . . . he’d been brainwashed. It nearly killed me to see him.” His head had been shaved, and he now answered to the biblical name Jonathan.

After a three-hour talk, during which members of the cult rubbed Jeremy’s arms and chanted “Jesus loves you,” Spencer explained he had tired of the hedonistic rock ’n’ roll lifestyle and that he was through with the group. Today, it is believed Spencer is still involved with the Children Of God.

There are other celebrity connections. Actor River Phoenix spent his early childhood in The Family. His parents had joined in 1972, and Phoenix and his siblings often sang and performed on street corners for food. Eventually, Phoenix’s parents grew disillusioned with the Children of God and left in 1977. Actress Rose McGowan was also raised in The Family.

But it was Ricky Rodriguez’s story that had me on the edge of the couch, watching in both amazement and disgust as he detailed the abuse he was forced to endure and take part in. The adopted son of Berg, he was to have carried on the faith; he was the chosen one. But he escaped the madness and the rest is brutal history.

Getting back to the start of this column, just what is the strange anniversary in Huntington Beach history? Well, it was here, in 1968, that Berg started The Family. Berg, a former Christian and Missionary Alliance minister, started operating an independent Christian ministry in Huntington Beach in 1967. His mother lived here, which is one reason he arrived. Another reason was the throngs of impressionable young people looking for a new way. Called the Teen Challenge, Berg’s group was a youth ministry of the Assemblies of God. He separated the group from the national Teen Challenge organization, renamed it Light Club and ran it from a Main Street coffee house where he preached. It was here that Berg found his life’s calling, and the movement now known as The Family had its birth (Berg would die in 1994).

The Family gave this nation (and other parts of the world) some first tastes of the concept of a modern-day “cult” and many of the charges they faced over the years (and what Ricky Rodriguez painfully documents on video) are far too lurid to be documented in these pages. I recommend Don Lattin’s excellent book “Jesus Freaks — A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge,” if you’re interested in a full-blown, well-documented history of The Family. But be warned — it is not for the faint of heart.

The next time you’re walking downtown, perhaps you’ll pause for a moment outside 116 Main St. Today it’s a retail shop, but 40 years ago, during a psychedelic summer, it became ground zero for one of the most controversial movements in American history.

CHRIS EPTING is the author of nine books and hosts “The Pop Culture Road Trip” radio show on webtalkradio.net.