Mark Russell
The Age
September 5, 2014
A former member of the notorious Children of God cult, known as The Family, has been jailed for two years for threatening a police officer with a sawn-off shotgun.
Joshua Cannane blamed his time in the cult for his paranoia and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Cannane, 26, of Croydon, pleaded guilty on Friday to one count of possessing the shotgun and one count of using the weapon to resist arrest on February 26 near the Chirnside Park Shopping Centre.
County Court judge Liz Gaynor said Cannane had pointed the gun at the police officer and warned him he was not going back to jail.
Cannane was jailed for two years with a non-parole period of 12 months.
He had been jailed in 2008 for 20 months after slashing a shopper at Knox City Shopping Centre and then stabbing a policeman who was trying to arrest him. He was released after serving six months.
Judge Gaynor said Cannane was the fifth of nine children born to parents who were members of the closed religious community known as the Children of God. He was born in NSW but his family came to Victoria when he was aged about one.
"When you were aged two or three, you were taken briefly by the Department of Human Services officers during the large-scale raid on the Children of God premises," Judge Gaynor told Cannane.
Police and Department of Human Services officers raided the cult's properties in Victoria in May, 1992, after ex-sect members claimed children were being sexually, physically and psychologically abused.
The sect had been set up in 1968 by David Berg to encourage free love and communal habitation.
A total of 128 children - aged between two and 16 and from six communities in both Victoria and NSW - were taken into protective custody before later being released, after no evidence of criminal wrongdoing was found.
Judge Gaynor said Cannane's parents gradually moved away from the cult, eventually leaving when he was aged 12 or 13.
"They lived in the community until you were about five and then moved in with another family from the Children of God, or The Family, as it was known, to assist them with the care of a person who was dying of cancer," she said. "The house was in Donvale and together with your siblings and parents and the other family, you shared the house with about 16 or 17 people.
"The family lived on benefits, donations and assistance from the Children of God."
After his family left the Children of God, Cannane briefly attended Norwood High School but found it difficult to settle into a conventional school setting and soon left while repeating year 9.
Cannane hardly left the house for the next three years and became a heavy cannabis smoker before later using heroin and ice.
Judge Gaynor said Cannane told her he had had a very unhappy childhood while his family were members of the Children of God, "enduring routine harsh punishment and disciplinary measures".
The judge said Cannane's earliest memory was of being lined up with a number of other children and hit with a stick. "You said the main emotions you experienced as a child were ones of anger and fear."
Judge Gaynor said while she was not critical of Cannane's parents, his childhood had accounted for the development of "a paranoid attitude to the world" to such an extent he developed a post-traumatic stress disorder.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/former-children-of-god-member-threatened-police-with-shotgun-20140905-10d2tj.html
