From Bethy K., 31, second-generation member of the Family International.

My viewpoints on recent happenings: The murder of Angela Smith and the suicide of Ricky Rodriguiez.

My name is Bethy. I am the daughter of Peter Amsterdam and Abi. I am 31 years old, and I have one child. The murder of Angela Smith and subsequent suicide of Ricky Rodriguez has shocked and deeply saddened me. Until now, I had never experienced losing someone I personally knew and loved through death. It has affected me deeply.

I knew both of them well. Ricky was a dear friend of mine for years, and I loved him. I knew Angela off and on over the years since I was 10 years of age. Her giving, selfless nature and concern for others made a lasting impression on me.

Ricky and I were close friends for a great deal of our teenage years. He was a loyal friend. If you were Ricky’s friend, he would never let anyone say anything bad about you or hurt you, and would in fact be very upset if someone did. He was kind. He was thoughtful. He did not speak badly of people. He was one of my best friends during my teenage years, and our friendship brought me a lot of joy and many happy experiences and memories, which I shall always cherish.

I simply cannot fathom how in four short years, since leaving our fellowship, Ricky changed completely from the dear friend I once knew and loved, into someone who came to hate everything and everyone that both of us once loved, who was able to entirely discard his Christian upbringing and Christian values and premeditatedly kill someone before taking his own life.

I know there are some who justify his actions as revenging an abusive upbringing. I beg to differ. I lived with or around Ricky for part of his upbringing during the time such “abuses” would have occurred, and I never witnessed anything of the sort. In all the time that he and I were friends and in all the conversations we had—and there were many—he never once expressed hate or anger towards those who had raised him, those he lived with, or the circumstances in which he lived his life. In fact, he had much good to say.

It was Ricky’s lot in life to be born the son of Maria and Father David. Those of us not born to that position will never know exactly what that meant for Ricky–what possible burdens or personal difficulties such a title presented him with. I know it wasn’t easy for him. I know he struggled with it in his teenage years. There was a certain responsibility that he felt and a position that he felt he must live up to which was ever present in his life.

I talked with Ricky shortly before he left our group to pursue another lifestyle than that of a full-time missionary. He explained the difficulty he was having with some of our doctrinal beliefs. There was no mention of any abuses, no hate towards anyone or bitterness towards his past. Because of who he was and the title he held, I imagine it was a very difficult decision for Ricky to leave our group. Ricky had every right to make whatever decision he wished, and he was supported in that decision by those of us who knew and loved him.

Something tragic happened to Ricky that transformed him into an unstable man full of bitterness and hate and revenge enough to kill. Having lived with and known Ricky as I did, I can only conclude that such a drastic change in his personality and values had to be the result of very poor choices on his part, low self-esteem coupled with a strong desire to fit in with a small circle of bitter former members he chose to associate himself with, as well as being flooded with massive amounts of extremely negative input.
To our most vocal detractors and those bent on destroying our group, I put this question to you: Did you have a hand in driving Ricky to suicide? Our group is being accused of doing this, but in my opinion, there seems to be an awful lot of evidence on your hands. The lifestyle change Ricky was attempting to undergo when leaving the Family to pursue another vocation was going to be a difficult transition for anyone—more so the son of the founder of our group. Did he find the support and help and assistance he needed from those of you who have personally gone through such a transition and would understand the challenges that would be faced? From some, I’m sure he did, and if you are one of those people, I personally thank you for everything you may have done to help him.

But to others of you I ask: Did you care enough to help him when he sought out help, to help him fit in, get adjusted, and feel loved and part of something positive? Or did you just sit there and tell negative story after story–some true, most twisted, some completely false–till he was filled with guilt and felt he must take matters into his own hands and enact “revenge” for the “injustices” that were supposedly committed? God help you if you actually went so far as to manipulate him and knowingly feed him with such horror in order to further your own selfish ends. Is this the end you had in mind? Are you happy now?

I’m going to quote Ricky’s own words, from the video he made just before his horrible act, “You fuck with their minds so much that they can’t go on, they really can’t go on. Isn’t that really like killing them?” Were you guilty of doing this to Ricky through unrestrainedly sharing your hate and bitterness with him and twisting the truth? In truth, the Ricky that I knew died of hate and bitterness long before he ever put the gun to his head.

Ricky Rodriguez made his own decisions, and before God he will stand with the blood of Angela Smith on his hands. I cannot ever condone or justify what he did, as it was wrong in the sight of God and morally evil in spite of whatever wrongs he may have felt needed avenging.

However, words cannot do the subject justice when I think of how some vocal, aggressive detractors succeeded in manipulating Ricky, filling him with every negative account—whether true, false or exaggerated—that ever happened in our group, and no doubt somehow making him feel personally guilty or responsible because of the fact that he was the son of the leadership. I can only imagine how they managed to twist his own loving, godly upbringing into a horrible abused life until he himself believed it to be true and felt that he must do something in revenge. This would be my definition of emotional and psychological abuse.

To those who knowingly gave voice to such evil and preyed upon Ricky, filling him with guilt and hate and evil, knowing full well who Ricky was, I say you clearly demonstrated no love for Ricky, no concern for his emotional well-being, and no shame in speaking in exaggerations and lies to further your own destructive purposes. I pray that you seek for and find forgiveness from God, as in my opinion, you assisted in destroying not one, but two, once-beautiful lives.

As a Christian believer, it is my responsibility to love my enemies, to do good to them that hate me and pray for those who persecute me. It is a challenge to live up to such a responsibility at times like this when I am personally grieving the loss of two who were dear to my heart. God’s words and the heritage of faith that I possess will assist me. I pray that though these events are terrible in every way, that somehow good can come out of them, both in my life and in the lives of others.

Words have power. Words can help or they can hurt. They can bring life or they can kill. Let the horrible results of such negative words and attitudes that we have seen move us all to be ever mindful with our words. We can look at an event in life positively and speak of it positively or we can see through negative eyes. Let us choose the positive. Everyone has negative experiences in life, but let us not burden others with them. Let us not lie, exaggerate, or otherwise pass on any negativity we have to others, for if we do, we may one day have to bear the guilt and burden of responsibility that such negativity produced in another.

Bethy K. is a second generation member of the Family International.