Prosecution of La Luz del Mundo Will Expose CIA's Human Trafficking Operations
It will also help Lopez Obrador bring down the corrupt ruling class in Mexico
Leader of La Luz del Mundo Faces New Charges for Child Porn
By Surya Palacios for Alto Nivel
October 30, 2023. At least five videos in which the protagonist is a minor under 16 years of age are the evidence for a federal indictment, for production and possession of child pornography, which Naasón Joaquín García, leader of La Luz del Mundo, is facing in the United States.
Garcia is also being sued in at least two civil actions filed by several women who accuse the religious leader of having enslaved and exploited them, sexually and for labor. According to the file consulted by ALTO NIVEL, the evidence that led to the new charges against Joaquín García was stored on a tablet that was seized during his arrest at Los Angeles International Airport in June of 2019. Naasón Joaquín García, 54, is serving a sentence of 16 years and 8 months imposed on June 8, 2022, after pleading guilty to three counts of sexual abuse of minors.
The two new criminal charges are serious felonies for production and possession of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), which carry from 15 to 30 years, and 5 to 10 years respectively. Some of the details of this complaint were sealed by the Court of the Central District of California to protect the victims. However, the indictment states that on May 6, 2019, García “knowingly employed, used, persuaded, induced, attracted and coerced a minor,” who was 16 years old at the time, to participate in “ sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual representation” of it.
Unlike the prosecution of the self-proclaimed “apostle of Jesus Christ” that followed his 2019 arrest, in which the District Attorney offered a reduced sentence in exchange for pleading to “two counts of forced oral copulation against a minor, and one count of committing a lewd act upon a child,” the new child pornography charges are federal crimes.
That is to say, while the first case was prosecuted by California, the second, formally notified in this month of October, is being handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. If Joaquín García is found guilty, he will be transferred from state prison to a federal prison.
Punitive Damages
In addition to this new indictment, Naasón Joaquín García, La Luz del Mundo Church and senior church leaders are being sued civilly by several women for harms they suffered as members of that cult.
Identified as inmate BS9418 in the prison located in Chino, 56 kilometers from Los Angeles, Joaquín García spends his days in constant contact with his lawyers, who have filed dozens of motions to prevent these lawsuits from being successful. In these events, the victims claim that the religious leader and his co-defendants ran a sex-trafficking network that exploited them financially while subjecting them to constant sexual abuse.
For example, in one of the lawsuits it is alleged that one of these women served, since she was nine years old, “as an erotic dancer and sexual servant” of Samuel Joaquín Flores, former leader of the Light of the World and father of Naasón Joaquín García.
“Over the next twenty-two years, she was trafficked through California and Mexico, forced to serve Samuel, and his son and successor Naasón Joaquín García, raped dozens of times and suffered numerous severe beatings, causing physical, emotional and mental injuries that afflict her to this day,” the complaint states.
At the same time, this victim's servitude was not only sexual, since from the age of sixteen she worked approximately 30,000 hours or more, including nights and weekends, without any payment from the defendant and the church.
“She did so under threat of serious physical harm, ostracism, financial destitution and spiritual condemnation.” Furthermore, Joaquín García and his father, who died in 2014, “were actively helped by several members of the senior management” of the church, including members of the so-called Council of Bishops. The latter, the lawsuit says, provided the “apostles (sic) with small children – including their own relatives – for sexual purposes.”
For all this, the plaintiff, who only managed to escape the cult when she was 30 years old, seeks compensation for all the decades in which she suffered “physical, emotional and financial damages.”
La Luz del Mundo Church was founded in Guadalajara in 1926 by Eusebio Joaquín González, who called himself Aarón Joaquín. He was the grandfather of Naasón Joaquín García. Its headquarters are still in Guadalajara in western Mexico, in addition to being present in about 60 countries, in which the cult claims to have five million followers.
Since December 2022, three streaming platforms have shown documentary series that feature the stories of the victims of this church. HBO addressed the issue in the production “Behind the Veil: Surviving La Luz del Mundo Church.” It was followed in June of this year by A&E with “Secrets of the Apostle of Evil”; while last September the series “The Darkness of the Light of the World” premiered on Netflix.
Surya Palacios - Periodista y abogada, especialista en análisis jurídico y de derechos humanos. Ha sido reportera, conductora de radio y editora.