Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, founder of a Philippines-based megachurch, a friend and adviser to Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte. recruited women and girls as young as 12 to work as personal assistants, forcing them to have sex, say U.S. prosecutors.
U.S. prosecutors on Nov. 18 announced sex-trafficking charges alleging that girls and young women were coerced to have sex with Quiboloy, who is now 71.
Quiboloy is the founder of a Philippines-based Kingdom of Jesus Christ, The Name Above Every Name (KOJC). Reuters News Agency reported.
A 74-page indictment charges Quiboloy, founder of the church, along with other church officials, including two U.S.-based church administrators, with running a sex-trafficking operation that threatened victims as young as 12 with “eternal damnation” and physical abuse.
The alleged crimes took place from 2002 to 2018.
Under Quiboloy and his accomplices’ orders, women and girls prepared his meals, cleaned his multiple residences in the Philippines and the United States, gave him massages and accompanied him on trips around the world, court records state, The Washington Post reported.
Quiboloy, referred to by church members as “The Appointed Son of God”, along with two co-defendants is now charged with sex-trafficking of girls and women aged 12 to 25 years to work as personal assistants, or “pastorals,” for Quiboloy, a wide-ranging indictment says.
“The victims prepared Quiboloy’s meals, cleaned his residences, gave him massages and were required to have sex with Quiboloy in what the pastorals called ‘night duty,'” the department said in a press release.
“Defendant Quiboloy and other KOJC administrators coerced pastorals into performing ‘night duty’ — that is, sex — with defendant Quiboloy under the threat of physical and verbal abuse and eternal damnation.”
The indictment alleges the sex trafficking scheme ran for at least 16 years to 2018.
The victims were forced to devote their lives and bodies to the founder of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, the Name Above Every Name by writing “commitment letters” to Quiboloy, prosecutors state.
‘GOD’S WILL’
Quiboloy, also known as “sir” and “pastor,” and his accomplices would tell his victims that obedience to Quiboloy was “God’s will” and that “night duty” was considered a privilege and a means to salvation, court records state.
Along with Quiboloy two of his top administrators, Teresita Tolibas Dandan, 59, and Felina Salinas, 50, have been charged with orchestrating a sex-trafficking operation, U.S. federal prosecutors announced.
Girls and young women were forced into sex with the church’s leader under threats of “eternal damnation,” according to a superseding indictment unsealed on Thursday and filed in the U.S. Central District of California.
Quiboloy, Dandan and Salinas could not be reached for comment said The Washington Post.
Michael Green, an attorney representing Quiboloy, denied the allegations against his client in an interview with The Washington Post.
Green said the new indictment is based on false testimony from former church members.
“He [Quiboloy] is being accused by people that have lied about him for years,” Green told The Post. “These people are trying to destroy him and the church… We’ll defend the case.”
Photo: Facebook)Pastor Apollo Carreon Quiboloy
