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.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS