The founder of a Philippine church trafficked girls and young women and forced them to have sex with him on pain of “eternal damnation,” the US Department of Justice charged on Thursday.
Money raised for a bogus charity in California was used to recruit victims who would be brought to the US from the Philippines to work in a church called the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, The Name Above Every Name (KOJC), the department said as it indicted the founder.
Some would be put to work raising more money to help fund a lavish lifestyle for Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, an ally of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
Photo: AP
The 71-year-old Quiboloy, referred to by church members as “the Appointed Son of God,” along with two codefendants is charged with sex-trafficking of girls and women aged 12 to 25 to work as personal assistants, or “pastorals,” a wide-ranging indictment said.
“The victims prepared Quiboloy’s meals, cleaned his residences, gave him massages and were required to have sex with Quiboloy in what the pastorals called ‘night duty,’” the department said in a news release.
“Defendant Quiboloy and other KOJC administrators coerced pastorals into performing ‘night duty’ — that is sex — with defendant Quiboloy under the threat of physical and verbal abuse and eternal damnation,” it said.
The indictment alleges the sex trafficking scheme ran for at least 16 years to 2018.
Victims who complied were rewarded with “good food, luxurious hotel rooms, trips to tourist spots and yearly cash payments that were based on performance,” paid for with money solicited by KOJC workers in the US, the indictment said.
The indictment builds on a previous indictment to include a total of nine defendants. Three were arrested in the US on Thursday.
Quiboloy, who maintained large residences in Hawaii, Las Vegas, and a swanky suburb of Los Angeles, is thought to be in Davao City, the Philippines, along with two others named in the charge, the department said.
On its Web site, the church claims to have accumulated six million members in 200 countries since it was founded by Quiboloy in 1985.
Duterte appeared in photographs posted on Quiboloy’s official Facebook page in October, captioned: “President Rodrigo Duterte in a private dinner with close friend and spiritual adviser Pastor Apollo C. Quiboloy.”
Philippine Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles, who is also Duterte’s acting spokesman, declined to comment on Duterte’s “personal relationship” with Quiboloy.
Nograles said he was not aware if the US had filed an extradition request for Quiboloy, but the Philippines would “cooperate if there is one against whoever.”
A secretary for Quiboloy’s lawyer in the Philippines said there was “an emergency meeting” and her boss, Dinah Tolentino-Fuentes, was not available to comment on the case.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS