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 new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
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
CONFLICTING REPORTS: Beijing said it was ‘not familiar with the matter’ when asked if Chinese jets were used in the conflict, after Pakistan’s foreign minister said they were The Pakistan Army yesterday said it shot down 25 Indian drones, a day after the worst violence between the nuclear-armed rivals in two decades. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to retaliate after India launched deadly missile strikes on Wednesday morning, escalating days of gunfire along their border. At least 45 deaths were reported from both sides following Wednesday’s violence, including children. Pakistan’s military said in a statement yesterday that it had “so far shot down 25 Israeli-made Harop drones” at multiple location across the country. “Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations,” Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed
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