NEW MEXICO
New York Times
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
AUG. 25, 2017
Eight members of a paramilitary Christian sect in New Mexico were arrested this week on charges of child sexual abuse and other crimes against children, officials said on Friday.
Three members of the sect, the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, were arrested on Sunday in Fence Lake, a remote, sparsely populated area in western New Mexico, and a fourth was arrested that day in the city of Truth or Consequences, more than 100 miles away, Sheriff Tony Mace of Cibola County said.
Four more members were arrested by Cibola County deputies on Wednesday as they drove away from the Fence Lake compound with 11 children in tow.
The arrests were the culmination of years of investigation by law enforcement. The sect had “been on the radar” of the authorities in Cibola County since members of the group moved there from California in 1995, Sheriff Mace said.
But the scrutiny escalated in 2015, when a former member reported that he was unable to find or contact his children at the site in Fence Lake, and again in 2016, when a woman told the authorities she had been sexually abused as a child while living there.
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.