MINNESOTA
International Business Times

By Mark Hanrahan
@markdhanrahan m.hanrahan@ibtimes.com on March 01 2015

A fugitive Minnesota cult leader, who is wanted in connection with a long list of sex charges in the U.S. was arrested in Brazil Saturday, according to media reports.

Victor Arden Barnard, 53, was arrested late Friday by Brazil’s military police at a condominium in the beach resort of Pipa, on the southern coast of Rio Grande do Norte. Also arrested was a 33-year-old Brazilian woman, who police said was giving cover to Barnard, Brazil’s Globo News reported.

Barnard is wanted in the U.S. on 59 counts of sexual assault. A criminal complaint alleges that he sexually abused two girls, beginning from the time they were aged 12 and 13, for up to a decade.

In the mid 1990s, when Barnard was a Minnesota pastor, he set up an isolated religious community called “Shepard’s Camp”,…