NM judge wants to cut sex-offense sentence for cult leader Wayne Bent

Albuquerque Journal/January 5, 2016

Santa Fe, New Mexico — A judge has ruled that a cult leader convicted of sex crimes in 2008 should be released early from a New Mexico prison after being diagnosed with skin cancer.

The state Department of Corrections says 74-year-old Wayne Bent must appear before a parole board before any decision is made.

KRQE-TV reported Tuesday that a Jan. 26 hearing has been set to clarify the judge’s amended motion to release Bent from prison so he can get medical treatment.

A jury sentenced Bent to 10 years in prison after he was found guilty of lying naked in bed with two teenage girls at his northern New Mexico compound near Clayton, in the state’s northeast corner.

Bent, who’s been in prison for nearly seven years, also was convicted of criminal sexual contact and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Bent, also known as Michael Travesser, was the leader of a religious community called the Strong City compound. He was charged with criminal sexual contact with minors based on ceremonies he claimed were cleansing ceremonies, convicted in a jury trial in Taos in 2008 and sentenced to 10 years.

Bent claims God spoke to him in 2000 and told him he was the messiah.

He was accused of lying in bed with naked 14- and 16-year-old sisters in separate incidents in 2006. He and the girls testified that the incidents were spiritual exercises and that nothing happened sexually.

In October 2012, the New Mexico Supreme Court overturned a state Court of Appeals ruling and reinstated Bent’s convictions, saying that even though his sex crimes indictment was flawed, the remedy could not be a new trial.

“At this point in the proceedings – post conviction – there is simply no adequate remedy available for (the) defendant,” the high court said then.

In its June 2011 opinion, the Court of Appeals had ordered a new trial, agreeing with Bent’s defense that a grand jury that indicted him three years earlier had no authority to act at the time, because it was long past the 90 days of its authority.

But Bent, whose arrest made national headlines, was never released while the Supreme Court had the case under consideration.

For a time, based on a court order, Bent was fed a liquid diet by a feeding tube after refusing to eat while locked up at the Central New Mexico Correctional Facility.

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