by Rachel Ogbu
A cult called ‘Defensores de Cristo’ or ‘Defenders of Christ’ that allegedly recruited women to have sex with a Spanish man who claimed he was the reincarnation of Christ was recently exposed.
According to reports, Mexican officials broke up the strange cult that also ran a sex-slavery ring among its followers on the U.S. border, Mexican immigration authorities revealed today.
The National Immigration Institute revealed that members were subjected to forced work that included prostitution and 14 foreigners detained included six Spaniards, two people each from Brazil, Bolivia and Venezuela, one person from Argentina and one from Ecuador.
Earlier in the week Federal police, agents of Mexico’s National Immigration Institute and prosecutors raided a house near Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, and found cult members, including children, living in filthy conditions, according to the institute official.
in a statement, officials from the institute said 10 Mexicans mainly women were also found at the house and it is assumed they are among the victims of the cult. The institute statement said the sect’s leaders made members pay ‘tithes,’ with money or forced labor.
The Attorney General’s Office said the more investigations are still going on as it was still hard to work out which of the detainees may be considered victims, and which were abusers after a three year spin.
The Mail Online reports:
The institute said in a statement that the Defenders of Christ was headed by Venezuelan citizen Jose Arenas Losanger Segovia.
But according to the cult’s website, the leader was Spaniard Ignacio Gonzalez de Arriba. He set up shop in Mexico about three years ago, after a stint in Brazil and other parts of South America, said Myrna Garcia, an activist with the Support Network for Cult Victims who has worked with victims of the Defenders of Christ cult.
He became involved in offering courses on ‘bio-programming,’ an esoteric practice that claims to allow practicants to ‘reprogram’ their brains to eliminate pain, suffering and anxiety, according to institute.
Neither Gonzalez de Arriba nor Losanger Segovia could be reached for comment on Tuesday.
A number listed in an advertisement for the ‘bio-programming’ courses was disconnected. It was not clear if they were among those detained.
The cult thrived in an area of Mexico that is tightly controlled by the violent Zetas drug cartel.
The Interior Department said the Defenders of Christ had not registered as a religious group, as required under Mexican law. Garcia said cells of the cult might still be active in Peru and Argentina.
