MINNESOTA
New York Daily News
DAVID BOROFF
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
A former “maiden” of a Minnesota cult leader who was repeatedly forced to have sex with him for nine years starting when she was a child has filed a lawsuit against Victor Barnard and other elders of the “church.”
Lindsay Tornambe claims in the suit filed this week that Barnard persuaded her to believe her relationship with him was comparable to the one “between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, or King Solomon and his concubines.”
Tornambe was sexually abused starting when she was 13, and the assaults continued until she was 22, according to the suit. She is seeking damages against Barnard, the River Road Fellowship and its leaders for failing to protect her at the compound in Finlayson, Minnesota.
“Since childhood, I was brainwashed into believing that being a Maiden was a way of achieving a higher spiritual state,” Tornambe, now 30, said in a press release. “It wasn’t until years after I left the River Road Fellowship that I realized that the Maidens and the sex was all a lie and a manipulation by Victor Barnard.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.