NEW MEXICO
Palm Beach Post
Associated Press
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.
A paramilitary Christian sect with members facing child sex abuse charges evaded law enforcement authorities for years by hiding births, physically punishing followers and quietly operating in isolated areas of New Mexico, former members say.
In interviews with The Associated Press and in court documents, the ex-members also alleged that leaders of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps exercised control over followers by forcing them into hard labor and refusing to give their children medical care.
When members complained, sect co-leader Deborah Green would hold “trials” against them for questioning her authority, which Green said came directly from God, former members Maura Alana Schmierer and Julie Gudino said.
The trials led to banishment to isolated sheds without toilets and from the sect’s compound without being allowed to take their children, the women said.
“It was a form of brain-washing,” Schmierer, who left the group in the late 1980s and sued, winning a $1 million award when it was based in Sacramento, California, told the AP.
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