Berkeley police arrested 90-year-old William Brumfield yesterday on a warrant alleging lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under 14, while his son, Marbel Om — who also goes by Marvel — remains jailed without bail on charges of intercourse with a child under 10 and committing a sex crime with a child under 10. The arrests stem from allegations that trace back to a cult Brumfield founded decades ago in Berkeley, one that operated in plain sight for years before a survivor's 2026 report to police finally led to charges.
According to charging papers reviewed by The Berkeley Scanner, a 25-year-old woman reported in May 2026 that she had been sexually abused by three adult male relatives between the ages of 5 and 10. The woman's family was part of a cult that operated in Berkeley and Oakland in the early 1970s, and she alleged that Brumfield himself made her touch his penis when she was 5 or 6 years old. She also told investigators that Marbel Om sexually assaulted her at least three times over a period of a few days in 2010, when she was 9 or 10 years old, in South Berkeley, and that one earlier incident occurred on a private bus parked near a Berkeley BART station around 2006 or 2007.
The woman confronted Marbel Om about the alleged abuse in June 2026, and according to the charging documents, he apologized and admitted that he had sexually assaulted her, though he also told her not to tell anyone. Marbel Om was arrested near the Berkeley police station on Monday, and his charges carry potential sentences totaling 40 years to life if imposed consecutively. He has a pretrial hearing set for August 28. Brumfield, arrested Thursday, is being held on $350,000 bail with an arraignment scheduled for August 24.
From Sexual Freedom Advocate to Self-Declared Deity
Long before he was known as William Brumfield, the man went by Richard Thorne and was a prominent figure in 1960s East Bay counterculture. In early 1966, he took over leadership of the East Bay Sexual Freedom League in Berkeley, organizing public nude parties, according to Alchetron. He also used classified ads in the alternative newspaper the Berkeley Barb that year to recruit participants for open sexual living arrangements, as detailed by Cambridge University Press. He later traveled to Mexico and returned, reinventing himself as a religious guru, eventually changing his name to Om and founding what he described as a new religion, the Om United World Brigade, whose followers were known as Om lovers or lovers of Om. The group announced its presence in Berkeley in June 1970 with a three-person nude march down Telegraph Avenue, and it offered what it called sacred eroticism classes, with religious rituals that included sexual intercourse.
Brumfield's connections to Bay Area political history run deeper than his cult. Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton wrote in his 1973 autobiography Revolutionary Suicide that he and Brumfield lived together for a time in North Oakland after meeting at Oakland City College, and that Brumfield introduced him to Bobby Seale before departing from political activism to build the Sexual Freedom League and Om Eternal, as recounted in the book hosted by DOKUMEN.PUB. Newton described Brumfield's group as a spiritual cult called Om Eternal.
Decades of Documented Abuse, Only Now Charged
The abusive practices at the center of this week's arrests were not unknown. A 2003 East Bay Express investigative profile reported that Brumfield and roughly 18 cult followers, including multiple children, lived in an apartment above the Starry Plough pub on Shattuck Avenue in South Berkeley during the early 1970s. Former child members interviewed for that piece recalled a rigid, militaristic environment in which adults and children were forced to solicit alms on East Bay streets to fund the group and were required to cut off contact with non-member relatives. A woman featured in that 2003 article alleged that Brumfield had sexually abused her as a teenager, and the same reporting described the group plainly as a cult that had subjected minors to sexual and physical abuse while advocating for children's sexual activity.
At the time of that 2003 profile, Brumfield was living in an old converted school bus parked near the Ashby BART station in South Berkeley, where he kept up a daily routine of playing tennis at local public courts even as he maintained his cult identity. A prior police report tied to the group had already been barred by the statute of limitations by 2002. That legal roadblock is why the current charges, covering alleged abuse from 2006 to 2010, only became possible now: under California Penal Code Section 801.1, felony sex offenses against a victim under 18 can be charged at any point before that victim turns 40, according to Eisner Gorin LLP. California separately expanded civil remedies for survivors through Assembly Bill 218 in 2019, extending the civil filing deadline to age 40 and opening a temporary lookback window for delayed claims, per Cutter Law P.C.
A Survivor's Public Voice, and Unanswered Questions
The human toll of the group extends beyond the current case. Piero Amadeo Infante, who fled Brumfield's group at age 15, went on to co-found the 1980s Berkeley ska-funk band Freaky Executives, which won a Bay Area Music Award, before publicly speaking out about the cult's childhood trauma in 2003, according to Wikipedia.
With both Brumfield and his son now in custody, it remains unclear whether additional victims will come forward, and how Alameda County prosecutors will manage the evidentiary demands of a case involving a 90-year-old defendant. The arrests land amid a broader rise in violent crime reports in Berkeley; police statistics released in March 2026 showed aggravated assault cases climbing 16% citywide, from 482 incidents in 2024 to 561 in 2025, even as overall crime fell 11%, according to Hoodline's earlier reporting.
