SPAIN
The Local
Police in Spain have detained two leaders of a sect accused of sexual abuse and taking money from up to 400 followers, a court said on Friday.
The sect’s leader, Feliciano Rosendo da Silva, and his right-hand woman, the self-described “nun” Marta Paz Alonso, were detained on Thursday in the town of Collado Villalba, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) northwest of Madrid.
An investigating judge will question the suspects “once several outstanding police procedures” are completed, the High Court of Justice of Galicia, in northwestern Spain, said in a statement.
The pair ran the sect, dubbed Mandate and Order of Saint Michael Archangel, in Galicia but moved to the Madrid region after Da Silva was expelled from the Roman Catholic diocese of Tui for “inapproriate moral behaviour”. They then renamed the sect “The Voice of the Serviam”.
Police accuse them of sexual abuse, money laundering, tax fraud, criminal association and crimes against moral integrity.
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