Iglesia Tabernáculo Internacional: Argentinian Court Chastises PROTEX for Fabricating Victims
by Massimo Introvigne
The defendants were absolved and the judge recommended to investigate the “scandalous” abuses of the anti-trafficking agencies and psychologists
There are horror movies and then there are “horror cults.” In the incredible case of the Buenos Aires Yoga School (BAYS) the expression “secta del horror” was liberally used by the media. But it seems that in Argentina it is now a general category: an Evangelical church called Iglesia Tabernáculo Internacional (ITI) was also called “secta del horror” by the media.
What the cases of the BAYS, the ITI, and Cómo vivir por fe (How to Live by Faith), the Argentinian affiliate of the Australian movement Jesus Christians, have in common is the key role of a special prosecutorial office called PROTEX (Procuraduría para el Combate de la Trata y Explotación de Personas, Office of the Procurator for Combating the Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons). PROTEX raids with great fanfare and the presence of the media groups it accuses of being “cults” practicing “coercive persuasion” or “brainwashing” and “trafficking” their members, arrests their leaders, and “liberates” the “victims”—who unanimously deny being victims.
While the BAYS case is still pending, the Jesus Christians were found not guilty of trafficking or any other crimes on November 28, 2022, by the Federal Criminal and Correctional Court of Sáenz Peña, with an order severely criticizing PROTEX.
Even more severe for PROTEX, the other prosecutors, and the anti-cult “expert” psychologists who see “cults” and “trafficking” everywhere is the decision rendered on February 1, 2024, by the Court of Paraná in the case of the ITI.
On September 1 and 2, 2022, a farm operated by ITI in El Redomón, in the Deparment of Concordia, and several private homes were raided at the instigation of PROTEX. The pastors of ITI, Sergio Gabriel Ziegler and his wife Mónica Viviana Mancinelli, were arrested together with two co-workers and later committed to trial, together with other six leaders of the movement who had not been arrested. It was announced that twelve “victims” who had been “imprisoned” in the El Redomón community, called ITI Jerusalem, by “false pastors” and compelled to work without salary, had been “liberated.” As one newspaper reported, “The event had an enormous media repercussion and some Buenos Aires media called the ITI Jerusalem community ‘the cult of horror’.”
As it often occurs in similar cases, all started with the complaint of the father of a female member, who called the anti-human-trafficking hotline complaining that his daughter had been “brainwashed” and trafficked. Later (but after the raid) the mother of a male member also called the hotline. The PROTEX interviewed the complainant, quickly concluded that the ITI was just another “coercive organization” involved in human trafficking, and passed the case to the local prosecutors, instigating the raids.
At trial, however, not only the prosecutors’ case collapsed completely, but the legitimacy of the whole anti-trafficking campaign against “cults” was severely criticized. The court recommended not to use the term “secta,” the Spanish equivalent of “cult,” noting that “The term ‘New Religious Movements’ or ‘NRM’ is now preferred by specialists to replace the term ‘cult’. The advantage of this new expression is that it does not carry the negative connotations of the previous one, but is ideologically neutral.”
The decision notes that the Argentinian Constitution guarantees the freedom of embracing unconventional beliefs and alternative lifestyles, so that “diverse life choices have been developed and tolerated throughout past and present history, such as the ‘Discalced Carmelites’ (cloistered nuns), the ‘Hippie’ communities of the 1960s, or the current ‘Mennonite’ communities that lead a simple life.” The references to the Discalced Carmelites is interesting, as they have also been accused by Argentina’s main anti-cultist Pablo Salum, who collaborates with PROTEX in various cases, of being a “coercive organization–cult.”
The court also mentioned Argentinian case law stating that it is perfectly legitimate for both secular and religious non-profit organizations to carry out their activities through non-salaried volunteer work. The decision found that the work at ITI Jerusalem “was unpaid volunteer work legally protected by the legislation in force and the prevailing case law. There was nothing sinful, hidden, criminal or, in short, reproachable in its activities and in the actions of its directors.” The court said that this conclusion was “reinforced” by ITI’s cooperation with REMAR, an international Evangelical charity that cooperates with various European governments.
According to the decision, “REMAR is a non-profit NGO, which has a number of people dedicated entirely to humanitarian aid, most of whom have first been helped to get out of precarious situations and who decide to help others who are in emergency situations.” The court noted that the Argentinian Supreme Court decided in 2018 that volunteer work for REMAR is legally protected. However, in July 2023 PROTEX raided 38 centers of REMAR, always in search of elusive evidence of human trafficking.
In the case of the ITI, the court found an “absolute absence of evidence” of human trafficking. Worse, it found that the alleged “victims” were terrorized during and after the raid and submitted to intolerable pressures aimed at making them admit they had been victimized. None did. As the decision summarizes, “As those who were supposedly the victims of this enormous and incomprehensible judicial mess, bordering on scandal, testified, it was demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that the complaint was plagued with inconsistent subjectivities elaborated by the attitude of a father obsessed and displeased with the lifestyle chosen by his daughter and the influence he exerted on the people around him who repeated his words (his ex-wife and his current partner). And that it was all a misunderstanding that acquired unprecedented dimensions that had innocent citizens subjected to trial. All this, because of a certain messianic and biased attitude of the investigators and the state bodies created to disrupt criminal organizations, which of course do exist. It seems that once the machinery of the State is set in motion, it does not stop despite the fact that the evidence was conclusive to the contrary, acting on the basis of prejudices, and what is even more serious, affecting the constitutional rights of the alleged victims and their alleged perpetrators, treating the former, according to their testimonies, as if they were defendants.”
The decision noted that some “victims” suffered post-traumatic stress not because of their experience in the ITI, which they unanimously described as beneficial, but because of the raid. One of the alleged “victims” testified that, “She was treated as a criminal when she was supposedly considered a victim; she remembers that she had a nervous breakdown and they even refused to let her go to the bathroom. They did not explain what was going on, she only found out when she talked to the people they lived with, they took her to a shelter at six in the morning. At seven in the morning they took her to a court, without eating, without sleeping. She does not even remember what she declared because she was in shock, she only wanted to talk to her family and they did not ask her if she had a place to stay, neither was she asked afterwards if she needed anything.”
There are many similar stories mentioned in the decision and they are reminiscent of what I and other scholars such as Susan Palmer were told when we interviewed the “victims” allegedly “liberated”—but in fact abused—during the 2022 raid against the BAYS.
The decision is particularly critical of the PROTEX-connected psychologist who examined the “victims.” One of the latter reported that he was “interviewed by a woman who said she was a psychologist, ‘but she did not look professional at all.’ Instead of asking him how he was or treating him as a victim, she began to question him, she accused his pastor, telling him that he was full of money. He told her that he did not regard himself as a victim, but he felt that she only wanted to get information out of him to get what she wanted.”
The court concluded that the “specialized” psychologists exhibited “a sort of professional deformation, understood as certain defective practices or bad habits, consisting in justifying their existence or biased interpretations by believing that they see in all cases the disvaluable behaviors they were trained to combat.”
The attitude of the psychologists was not only unprofessional, said Judge Roberto Manuel López Arango, who drafted the decision. It was possibly criminal. “It generates great concern and astonishment what was related under oath by the ‘victim’ witnesses regarding a possible direction by the psychologists so that they would affirm a falsehood to the detriment of the defendants. According to my criteria and experience, I need to say that I perceived the statements of the alleged victims as spontaneous, sincere, heartfelt and true (at least, with reference to how they perceived the truth) with the necessary degree of verisimilitude for me, in my capacity as a public official, to be obliged to take the case to the prosecutor to investigate what occurred.”
Not only did the court declare all the ITI defendants innocent of all charges, it sent the case back to the prosecutor to investigate the wrongdoings of the psychologists and whether they had committed the crime of instigating witnesses to give false testimony. Nor did the court find the PROTEX and the others who instigated and conducted the raids innocent either. The spectacularization of the raids, the mistreatment of the defendants and the “victims,” the leaks to the media inducing them to create the myth of the “horror cult” justify a rebuke to PROTEX and the other agencies and the admonishment that such human rights violations should cease.
“Never again,” said the court, summarizing in vivid terms the horrific experience of the “victims” who denied being victims: “Their lives changed for the worse after the raid on the camp. They emphasized how traumatic it was to have been woken up screaming in the dark in the early morning of that day by armed security forces personnel, who did not allow them to go to the bathroom or talk to each other; that they were then taken without providing them with any information, to a location that they still do not know where it was; separating the children from their siblings and relatives,” they were submitted to aggressive interviews.
The problem, the court said, is systemic. It seems that in Argentina operates “a state that under the banner of protecting the most ‘vulnerable,’ intervenes, takes what it needs from them for the sole purpose of being able to carry out a process with edges that make it highly mediatic, focused only on those it considers ‘responsible,’ without even allowing itself to listen to the truth of the supposed ‘victims’ it went to ‘rescue’ for the sole fact of not accepting that they, freely, have decided a different life project—but one not illegal for that reason—from that of the majority of society.”
Bitter Winter has kept warning about the abuses of PROTEX and its psychologists and the fabrication of non-existing “victims.” It is refreshing to see that some in the Argentinian judiciary agree and ask that something should be done “to prevent episodes of this nature from recurring in the future.” The problem, however, cannot be solved by the judiciary alone, and calls for political intervention.
Source: Bitter Winter
yogaesoteric
February 15, 2024
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