She joined to find solace after her baby had died – instead, she was forced into extortion, mental torture and sexual depravity. “Olivia” is just one of the thousands of victims that fell prey to the Defenders of Christ cult, whose members were subjected to forced labor or sexual activities.

Last month, law enforcement officers raided the sect’s house near the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo: twenty-four sect members were arrested, 14 of whom were foreign nationals, including its Spanish leader Ignacio Gonzalez de Arriba, who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. The sect offered classes in ‘bio-programming’ and other pseudoscientific health care to attract followers.

For the first time, “Olivia”, a women in her 30s whose name is changed to conceal her identity, tells about her ordeal at the hands of those operated in the name of Christ.

Metro: How did you come to join this sect?

Olivia: It began in 2008: a friend of my ex-husband invited me – it was at that time when I was passing through a period of severe depression over the loss of my baby boy. I was emotionally devastated. Then I heard how much you can do [in the sect] to get better so I decided that I wanted to take some of the classes on offer in the sect. I felt really well at the basic level and also with the second one, the intermediate level, which allowed me a sect volunteer. By April of 2009, I was hired as their assistant.

At what point did the pressures set in?

Two of my bosses [in the sect], José Arenas Losanger Segovia and his wife, were very strict. From the beginning I started to suffer from workplace violence, which was also psychological. For the smallest mistake they would punish me without pay. And the reality is that I paid for my technical classes with my work. They had told me I had to be a good servant and obey.

When did the cult’s leader, Ignacio Gonzalez de Arriba, come into the scene?

In the summer of 2009, I started to hear about Ignacio’s arrival to Mexico from Brazil. At that time, we were told about the ‘Defenders of Christ’, but I was told that it was not so much a religion as a different way of thinking. What’s more, they started asking us to pay tithes.

What was the mechanics of the contributions?

Systematically, they planted in our minds the idea that we had to pay up once a week, and then it was every day. They received tithes through Western Union from places like Paris, Spain, Colombia, Venezuela and Chile. By then, they made us believe Ignacio was the master, a great being of light. Over time, they wanted to establish the Defenders of Christ as a religion, but in Mexico it could not have been possible because Ignacio is a foreigner.

Ignacio arrives and what happens?

He began running more classes, which became more expensive, and in the end he started to openly tell us that he is the incarnation of Christ. As part of our training as “apostles of the Defenders of Christ”, he would provide us with 343 different precepts (commandments): on this he would start talking about polygamy and how women’s bisexuality was seen as something good, and how the apostles could each have seven women and Ignacio up to ten. From that he began talking about supernatural powers, about magic – catalyzed with sex.

Was that moment the peak of it all?

They told us that we should have sex with women, and not with men. Then prostitutes started being brought in because they said that Ignacio had a heart condition and he was losing magic, so he asked for some women.

How close was your relationship with Ignacio?

We shared a close empathy, but I had no privileges at all – he was telling me that I should obey everything that was said. By obeying the 343 precepts I was such a good servant and showed great loyalty to be on his right-hand side. But when he arrived, Ignacio also became the worst for me.

What were you forced to do?

I had to go out to the bars or clubs to find prostitutes, seduce them and take them to Ignacio to have sex with him. I lost my dignity and my family fell apart. There were times when Ignacio gave me something I had to drink and he’d tell me, “This is poison” and then laugh out loud, all to test my loyalty.

How did you realize the gravity of your situation?

In 2010, it was a night when I went out in search of women, but I had an accident that kept me in bed. However, I had enough strength to turn my back and escape [the sect]. It has been very difficult because I realized I didn’t even had something to eat, or means to live. I was alone.

How did you feel when you heard Ignacio was arrested?

I was happy, I felt relief. However, I still have a feeling tingling in my spine: I hope that the authorities would be smart enough to know what they face because those cult leaders can manipulate your mind. I am worried in a particular way because the people who were closest to Ignacio are going to defend him no matter what. [Other leading cultists] José Losanger and Tito Shoucri are going to blame themselves just to get Ignacio free.

What would you like to request from the authorities of the countries some of the sect members are from?

Please do not take this case lightly – they are comparable to very dangerous criminals, even psychopaths. Just think about it: they brainwash you so much that we even sold our bodies to pay them and, even worse, they showed us how to die or kill for Ignacio.

FACTBOX

• The “Defensores de Cristo” (Defenders of Christ) was present in 80 countries, with 4,000 victims in Mexico and 10,000 across the rest of the world, according to the Argentina-based Victim Support Network (Red de Apoyo a Víctimas de Sectas).
• For online courses in ‘bio-programming’, members were charged up to $130,000.
• After paying the maximum fee, members would be conferred as “Apostles of Christ” and purportedly received supernatural powers, like the ability of resurrection and curing of diseases by touch, the network added.

The post Mexican sex slave cult member speaks out: ‘I was prepared to die for our leader’ appeared first on Metro.us.

The new mystery series “Cult” follows investigative journalist Jeff Sefton (Matt Davis) as the disappearance of his brother leads him into the dark underworld of rabid, cult-like fans of a hit TV show called… “Cult.” Which is about a cult with a charismatic leader named Billy Grimm who is played by an actor named Roger Reeves, who is played by in real life Robert Knepper. Still with us?

“What was interesting to me was to try to create a show that was truly unique, was truly different. And in doing so, yeah, it can make it a little harder to explain and describe,” creator Rockne S. O’Bannon admits. “It’s also a show with a lot going on, and I have a great deal of faith and trust in the audience to be able to hook into that. But we’re very aware that we have a complex, multifaceted show going on, and we’re trying to keep it as clear in our heads as possible.”

TV veteran and “Farscape” creator O’Bannon is no stranger to obsessed fans, he admits. “The origin of the show actually did come out of my ‘Farscape’ experience, where I witnessed the kind of incredible fan passion for a show and the ability of fans to kind of find each other through social media and connect up,” he says. “It started me thinking what if the show were something with a little bit darker edge and what kind of fans would that then draw?”

Multilayered mysteries and disappearances are one thing, but the show-within-a-show conceit also gives O’Bannon and his writers chances for inside jokes that play with the audience even more. For instance, the actual show ends with a “created by” credit for Steven Rae, the name of the creator of the fictional “Cult.” (Eagle-eyed fans might notice that Rae is also the pseudonym O’Bannon has used for some less respectable entries on his resume, like the 1995 TV movie “Deadly Invasion: Killer Bee Nightmare.”)

“From our perspective, there is nothing too meta,” O’Bannon says. “For me in creating ‘Cult,’ one of the things that I really got excited about was how to create a visceral experience for the audience and really try take the glass away from between the television show and the audience, take away that control. So to me, the very fact that the creator of the show, Steven Rae, inside the show is Steven Rae, part of the fun of it is the fact that we’re actually incorporating what normally is the return of the audience back to the real world and keeping that as part of the entertainment. So I’m hoping that the audiences will hook into that and kind of go along for the ride.”

But is there any fear of life imitating art, of “Cult” fans becoming obsessed enough with the show to start acting out like the fans of the show within the show? While that would suggest some intense ratings for the new series, O’Bannon thinks that idea might be a bit too far-fetched. “We obviously hope that the show is incredibly effective and creates that kind of visceral experience for the audience, but I don’t know that it has the power to go quite that far,” he says. When asked if the network has a contingency plan for a rash of “Cult”-inspired kidnappings, O’Bannon’s answer is refreshingly simple: “No.”

Staying close to home

“Cult” marks another CW series for star Matt Davis, whose “Vampire Diaries” character, Alaric, bit the dust at the end of last season. Luckily, the network had another role in mind for him. “I knew that they were going to write Alaric off the show, and I called my agents to let them know that I needed to find another job. And they sent me a few scripts over the weekend, one of which was ‘Cult.’ And it was clearly the best one of the bunch, and it really spoke to me on a lot of dimensions.,” he says.

The producer felt the same about Davis, making him an offer for the role right away. The only wrinkle came in coordinating schedules between the two shows. “I was shooting the final scenes of Alaric dying one week, flew to Vancouver to shoot ‘Cult,’ came back to shoot Alaric dying again for the finale,” he remembers. “So that was a strange overlapping effect that was only made possible due to the efforts of both productions being gracious enough to make it happen. It felt very synchronistic. It felt right. It just sort of all fell together at the last minute. And I’m very blessed that it did.”

The post Matt Davis returns to CW in new series ‘Cult’ appeared first on Metro.us.

The new mystery series “Cult” follows investigative journalist Jeff Sefton (Matt Davis) as the disappearance of his brother leads him into the dark underworld of rabid, cult-like fans of a hit TV show called…”Cult.” Which is about a cult with a charismatic leader named Billy Grimm who is played by an actor named Roger Reeves, who is played by in real life Robert Knepper. Still with us?

“What was interesting to me was to try to create a show that was truly unique, was truly different. And in doing so, yeah, it can make it a little harder to explain and describe,” creator Rockne S. O’Bannon admits. “It’s also a show with a lot going on, and I have a great deal of faith and trust in the audience to be able to hook into that. But we’re very aware that we have a complex, multifaceted show going on, and we’re trying to keep it as clear in our heads as possible.”

TV veteran and “Farscape” creator O’Bannon is no stranger to obsessed fans, he admits. “The origin of the show actually did come out of my ‘Farscape’ experience, where I witnessed the kind of incredible fan passion for a show and the ability of fans to kind of find each other through social media and connect up,” he says. “It started me thinking what if the show were something with a little bit darker edge and what kind of fans would that then draw?”

Multilayered mysteries and disappearances are one thing, but the show-within-a-show conceit also gives O’Bannon and his writers chances for inside jokes that play with the audience even more. For instance, the actual show ends with a “created by” credit for Steven Rae, the name of the creator of the fictional “Cult.” (Eagle-eyed fans might notice that Rae is also the pseudonym O’Bannon has used for some less respectable entries on his resume, like the 1995 TV movie “Deadly Invasion: Killer Bee Nightmare.”)

“From our perspective, there is nothing too meta,” O’Bannon says. “For me in creating ‘Cult,’ one of the things that I really got excited about was how to create a visceral experience for the audience and really try take the glass away from between the television show and the audience, take away that control. So to me, part of the fun of it is the fact that we’re actually incorporating what normally is the return of the audience back to the real world and keeping that as part of the entertainment. So I’m hoping that the audiences will hook into that and kind of go along for the ride.”

But is there any fear of life imitating art, of “Cult” fans becoming obsessed enough with the show to start acting out like the fans of the show within the show? While that would suggest some intense ratings for the new series, O’Bannon thinks that idea might be a bit too far-fetched. “We obviously hope that the show is incredibly effective and creates that kind of visceral experience for the audience, but I don’t know that it has the power to go quite that far,” he says. When asked if the network has a contingency plan for a rash of “Cult”-inspired kidnappings, O’Bannon’s answer is refreshingly simple: “No.”

“Cult” marks another CW series for star Matt Davis, whose “Vampire Diaries” character, Alaric, bit the dust at the end of last season. Luckily, the network had another role in mind for him. “I knew that they were going to write Alaric off the show, and I called my agents to let them know that I needed to find another job. And they sent me a few scripts over the weekend, one of which was ‘Cult.’ And it was clearly the best one of the bunch, and it really spoke to me on a lot of dimensions.,” he says.

The producer felt the same about Davis, making him an offer for the role right away. The only wrinkle came in coordinating schedules between the two shows. “I was shooting the final scenes of Alaric dying one week, flew to Vancouver to shoot ‘Cult,’ came back to shoot Alaric dying again for the finale,” he remembers. “So that was a strange overlapping effect that was only made possible due to the efforts of both productions being gracious enough to make it happen. It felt very synchronistic. It felt right. It just sort of all fell together at the last minute. And I’m very blessed that it did.”

The post ‘Cult’ Creator and Star Talk About Their New CW Show appeared first on Metro.us.

A group of Russian Orthodox Church worshippers described as “cult followers” have ambushed a sex shop in central Moscow.

Video footage from the “Tochka G” (“G Spot”) shop’s CCTV and eyewitnesses’ telephones show seven elderly women in head scarfs, sprinkling what is believed to be holy water on merchandise on the shop’s shelves and shouting “Shame! Shame!”

The group of women were led into the shop by a young man holding a ‘Madonna and Child’ icon, who was apprehended from entering by security guards before the women managed to pass through. Footage from last Wednesday’s encounter has already been uploaded to YouTube, garnering thousands of hits.

“The women looked like cult followers,” Dmitry, security guard at Tochka G, told Metro. “They had deranged eyes with dark circles under them. People from the Church would never do this.”

“I would never think that ‘babushkas’ with icons would go into a sex shop!” Yuri, an eyewitness who filmed the encounter on his phone, told Metro.

The event ended on a violent note after an unidentified man threw punches at the man carrying the icon, destroying the icon’s picture frame and bringing the man to the floor.

“Ahh! They are killing!” Demons!” one elderly woman said after seeing the scuffle. “Police! They have killed a man.” The man in fact rose to his feet, leaving the premises with a bloodied lip.

The Russian Orthodox Church has been making recent strides in promoting conservative Russian values as opposed to Western liberalism. A parliamentary bill that bans “homosexual propopganda”, which critics believe could crimimalize almost any overt public expression of gay sexuality, is being drafted and is supported by the Kremlin and the Church.

The post Babushka Riot: Russian Orthodox Church ‘cult members’ ambush sex shop appeared first on Metro.us.