Twelve Tribes Cult Raided In France

AFP/June19, 2015

Ten people were taken into custody Tuesday night after a major police operation conducted in Sus, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, in the premises of the sectarian community Tabitha’s Place.

“The activities of this community are the subject of a judicial inquiry that I opened in March 2014 as a result of information provided by a former follower,” said the prosecutor Jean-Christophe Muller at a conference press. The investigation “relates to abuse of vulnerability made in the context of a sectarian movement, the facts of abuse of minors for educational conditions and facts concealed employment” and child labor has Does it abstract.

It is “after long and careful verifications”, including the ramifications of the sect in Spain and Germany, a vast police operation was launched in the night against the castle belonging to Tabitha’s Place, considered as a sect by the parliamentary commission of inquiry on sects. The community is also known under the name of “Apostolic Order,” “Twelve Tribes” or “Ruben and Brothers.” It is part of the American fundamentalist movement Community of the Kingdom of the North Eastern Plymouth Brethren, whose members claim to strictly follow the Bible. The movement has 12 offices worldwide – a reference to the 12 tribes of Israel – one in France, Sus, with unknown number of members.

The operation involved some 200 police, a helicopter, the Criminal Research Institute and medical examiners. A similar operation was conducted in parallel in the Perpignan area where members of the sect also work. Ten people, “men and women community leaders” were in custody Tuesday evening, nine in Pau and Perpignan, Muller said.

Four children placed

Minors present in the community were heard and examined by doctors. Four of them, brothers and sisters of the same family aged 18 months to 13 years, were placed with social services of the General Council after the discovery of “traces of recent corporal punishment”, which are part of “fashion education “in the community, said the prosecutor Pau.

According to the Interministerial Mission of Vigilance and Combat against Sectarian Abuses (MIVILUDES), “physical punishment are regulated and graduated” within the sect, with shots of wicker rod or rule on different body parts. To justify this violence, proponents cite a verse from the Bible: “Foolishness is bound in the heart of children; stick chastises them depart. ”

The judicial investigation for “embezzlement by one parent to the legal obligation to its children” should enable to know under what conditions the “hundreds of minors” that pass the premises of the sect “live, are educated and involved in the economic activity, “said Jean-Christophe Muller.

Miviludes emphasizes that “children are up at 6 am and are taught all morning. In the afternoon, they work with their parents. They do not have the right to play, toys being the devil’s work. ”

Several convictions

Members of Twelve Tribes communities, which operate at Sus farmland and sell fruit and vegetables, are also suspected of clandestine work, of benefit fraud, tax fraud laundering.

In March 2002, 19 members of Tabitha’s Place had been sentenced by the Pau Court of Appeal for “evasion of legal obligations of the parents,” including refusing enrollment and vaccination of their children. In 1997, a 19 month old child had died for lack of food and care. His parents were sentenced in 2001 to twelve years’ imprisonment.

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