Brave. Rose McGowan

or on the streets, to perform. Singing Jesus songs on the streets of Rome with a hat in front of me, street busking. After the coins would stack up in the hat, a hand would come over my shoulder to take all the coins I’d earned. They let me carry the empty hat. Gee, thanks. It was my work that was bringing the money in and I was pissed at the injustice of having to give it up. I’d see regular families with the kids walking around with gelatos and candy and I’d wonder about their lives at home. Did they have a bed? We had plastic mats and I got cold at night. The girls wore pretty dresses; I had faded brown overalls and Jesus sandals. My hands and feet would get dirty and I’d try to hide them when other, cleaner children looked at me. For hours we would stand and sing those damned songs, under hot sun, in the rain, it didn’t matter. I was five or so. My little legs would get so sore from standing, but I knew I couldn’t sit or there’d be trouble.

      We had to return with money or else there would be sanctions and punishments against our family. I could feel the stress of the adult members as the “Systemites” (that’s what they called people outside the cult) turned away and ignored us and the pamphlets we were selling. Little incoming money equals not much food. Not surprisingly, there was often hunger. Our food was rationed. If we returned with not enough money, the rationed food was given to another family as punishment. If potential new members or press were coming to visit, they’d put us kids on a white rice, milk, and sugar diet to fatten us up. We’d stuff ourselves with it until we gagged, but I loved it because at least there was something to keep me full. Plus, sugar, which I loved.

      Sometimes the local press would be invited to come and cover our good deeds: “To see what great work we’re doing in the Children of God community, join us.” See, we’re not a bunch of freaky hippies, what kind of freak could sing a Jesus song this well?

I was sent to entertain sick children in hospitals. I remember thinking: Kid, if this is your last day on earth, I’m really sorry that we’re forcing you to listen to little me singing about Jesus. I don’t want to be here, either. I apologize.

      But even though it was awkward performing in hospitals—and this may sound weird—I always knew I was going to be famous, even before I understood what fame was. It was kind of a foregone conclusion. I don’t know how to explain it.

      At some point in my childhood I remember being taken to see a film. It had a great impact on me. I don’t know what it was called. It was Italian. The lead actress had short raven hair and was a nurse. She wore a crisp white uniform and a little white hat. She was in a phone booth, crying and screaming at her married doctor lover, who was throwing her aside. She took the back of her hand and smeared her lipstick across her face. She ripped her shirt open, popping its buttons. Her chest exposed, she took lipstick out of her purse and drew all over her breasts like a wild woman. I was captivated. It was fabulous. I wanted her lipstick and her hair. I finally got to see some glamour in my young life and I knew it was for me. My feelings of being in the wrong life intensified.

At some point my father found a Brownie, a vintage camera, so the few photos that exist from my childhood look like they’re super old and are largely black and white. I watched my father as he captured objects and people with the camera. Then I got to play with it myself. I learned to see things through a frame. Looking through that crappy lens, I felt as if I could see more and that everything I looked at told a story. Soon I was nearly always outside of myself, watching and filming and documenting everything that was going on, taking note of everything: smells, sounds, tastes, situations, people. Only now can I see that this was early disassociation to deal with trauma. Looking through a lens has been a coping mechanism I have employed throughout my life. It had a silver lining: my falling in love with photography and cameras. But more than that, it gave me a way of putting something between me and the world, and a different way of looking at it. Every detail as seen through a lens. Because it’s not really happening if I’m once removed, right?

      I also used books as an escape. Words were my solace and my saviors when I was small and have remained so to this day. Words, different lives, different centuries, that was how I survived.

      Books also furthered my training for being an actor because I took on the persona of whichever character I was reading. It could be a serf, it could be a queen. I would mimic the posture, everything about that character, while I was reading his or her story. When I finished a book, I went into mourning for that character because it was a death. I took books very seriously. But not the Children of God books. I could not understand how anyone could believe them. Those Mo Letters were just so . . . well, stupid. It’s so hard to understand how so many have fallen for it.

Meanwhile, the beliefs and practices of Children of God started getting more and more dangerous. Moses David, our leader, made the young women members do this thing called “flirty fishing.” He sent them out—and these were little more than girls, really—to seduce men at bars or cafés. The men would wake up in the cult. Moses David christened the girls “Hookers for Jesus.” Hookers for Jesus? Fuck you, Moses David, you piece of shit. Fuck you for all the pain you caused. At the end of the day, it was all about male dominance, and using sex as a weapon for mind control. Beautiful women were major targets, not unlike what I would later see in Hollywood. And, like in Hollywood, there were women who helped Moses David do bad things to others.

      The cult was a highly sexualized environment, run by men, to benefit men. My father loved it, I could tell. I remember standing in a corner, watching my father preach, as he sat on a thronelike rattan chair. Women—girls—were on their knees staring up at him with dreamy expressions. Women literally worshipped at his feet. I remember looking at the women on their knees. Then my father on his throne. I’ll never be like those women, I thought. Never. It grossed me out. Looking back, it was the time of my father’s life when he was at his most radiant. Abuse of power was inevitable, and he certainly abused his position.

One day my father said to my very young mother: “Saffron [my mother’s name in the cult], I want to be married to this other woman as well.” Well, hell. That must have sucked. There have been lots of times I have wanted to go back in time and kick my father’s ass, this being one of them. My poor mother’s own mom, Sharon, had just died tragically. My mother’s dad was gone, too. She was alone in a cult in another country with a bunch of kids she was told to have and now this? It must have been crushing. She had no choice, and he took another wife. That’s how my four youngest siblings—two full and two half—are so close in age.

      Children of God next started advocating child-adult sex as a way to “live the law of love,” which is just beyond disgusting and criminal. I saw an eleven-year-old girl being forced to sit next to a naked man, with his floppy dick on his leg. They made her sit between his legs so he could “massage” her back. I saw her tears. Even then I knew none of it was “normal,” whatever normal was. I don’t think there really is such a thing as “normal,” but I knew that this was something deeply wrong, something to be avoided at all costs.

      I feel bad for that small child I was, who from age three or four already knew so much about surviving. I didn’t know what it was like to feel safe. In its place, there was stress and, underneath it all, a deep undercurrent of fear running through the commune. From a very early age, I realized kids were very far down the list on things to care about, which is lame when you’re the child on the bottom of that long list.

An unfortunate necessity in this environment was being able to immediately pick up on danger. I excelled at it. One of my survival skills was, upon entering a room, to locate a weapon. I would do an immediate scan of the area to see what I could use to cause someone else the most damage and defend myself against attack. My quick mind and rapid thought processes have been my lifelong savior as much as my fight. I’ve always gone by the seat of my pants, and my intuition is damned good. It’s too bad I didn’t apply the same skills to Hollywood. It would have saved me a lot of heartache. It could have saved me from unspeakable trauma.

      In any case, my outwit-and-outlast mentality served me well as a child. Thankfully, I was just young enough to escape getting molested, or maybe my penchant for always having very short hair and wearing my brother’s hand-me-downs helped save me. They thought I was a boy most of the time. Although the boys certainly got nailed,