Chattanooga News Free Press
Friday Sepetmber 3, 1993

Photo Caption: FAMILY COMPOUND - Two police officers walk outside a house in Pilar, Argentina, some 30 miles north of Buenos Aires, where about 30 adult members were charged with "conspiracy to kidnap and conceal children" while about 300 children were placed in protective custody in government-run orphan homes. (AP Photo)

Cult Members Relate Sex Abuse of Minors
by William M. Heath
Associated Press Writer

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP)

While doctors examine 268 Children taken into custody in raids on 10 homes used by a religious cult, former members are telling of sexual abuse and psychological domaination. About 80 of the children are Americans, and some of the others also were foreigners, the national news agency Noticias Argentina reported. Thirty adult members of the Family, an offshoot of the Children of God sect, were also detained. Twelve were charged with conspiracy to kidnap and conceal children, and others were held for interrogation, police said. Several people who said they were former members told stories of witnessing sexual abuse of children and corruption of minors.

The Children of God, founded in California in 1969, was disbanded in 1978 but reappeared under other names, including the Family. The cult is also found in England, France, Australia and elsewhere. Raids on the Family have been made in other countries, including France last month in which at least 72 children were placed under foster care. The Family has been accused of using female members to lure males into the cult and of encouraging sex between children and adults. A spokesman for the cult at its base in England denied the group engaged in child abuse.

Attilio Alvarez, president of the National Council for Minors and teh Family, said authorities were seeking help from foreign diplomats to identify the children and notify family members. The children, who ranged in age from infants to teenagers, underwent medical and psychological tests on Thursday. The raids were conducted before dawn Wednesay to catch cult leaders asleep and off-guard. The sleepy children "were like zombies, with sad eyes and a lost look as though they were somewhere else," said Police Commissioner Juan Carlos Rebollo. Inside one house, police noted repeated evidence of sexual themes, including posters on walls of tiny bedrooms shared by children of both sexes. Buenos Aires television channels showed film clips of nude children dancing, allegedly taken from videocassetes confiscated in the raids. Another police official, Federal Prosecutor Carlos Villafuerte, told reporters that confiscated material included "many things that were not normal," including "free and explicit sex between father and daughter."

Gideon Scott, a spokesman for the cult at its base in Leire, 100 miles from London, denied such claims. Scott, in a telephone interview, said 500 children had been taken from followers in raids in various countries. "Every single one has been given back to their parents," he said. There is no evidence of child abuse." The Family calls itself a worldwide Christian missionary church. In London, a former Children of God member said the group encoouraged sex with minors. Marie-Christine Hayworth, who left the cult in 1978, said women were encouraged to "spread the word," by sleeping with men they didn't know and luring them into the cult.

Oscar Lause, 32, an Argentine, told the Buenos Aires newspaper Clarin that he lived with the Family between the ages of 13 and 23 and finally left "because of certain practices" that he specified as sexual abuse and corruption of minors. Leaving was difficult, he said. "You become used to submitting to orders. Nothing can be questioned. It is absolute submission."