Americans Among Hundreds of Cultists Held in Argentina

Argentine officials, horrified by emerging signs of a global child-sex network, said Friday they had counted 58 Americans and people of 18 other nationalities among the hundreds of people held after a raid on a sex-for-salvation sect.

Pointing to a system in which children appear to have been moved around the globe, court officials said 58 of the 227 people now determined to be in their custody were Americans.

Although the biggest group was from Argentina, there were 13 Spaniards, 10 French nationals, six Britons, five Canadians, two Germans and one each from Norway, Greece and Ireland. There were also Latin Americans from Mexico to Chile.

A 20-year-old former member told the daily Clarin she had escaped in 1990 after having been moved around nearly a dozen times, occasionally under false names.

After two days of scrutinizing adult-child sex videos seized during raids on seven homes run by the sect and counting heads to match people to multiple forged identity papers, officials said nearly 140 of the final tally of 227 people were children age 17 or less.

The children were in homes occupied by the Family, an offshoot of the Children of God sect founded in Huntington Beach, Calif., in the 1960s, authorities said.

At least some of the children show clear signs of severe emotional trauma, prosecutor Carlos Villafuerte said.

Thirteen cult members were released from custody Friday, and one accused authorities of persecuting them and planting pornographic videocassettes during raids on their homes.

“They couldn’t prove any of the charges against us,” said Enrique Lacuesta, an Argentine who was among the adults freed.

Similar raids on the group have been made in other countries, including one in France last month in which at least 72 children were placed under foster care.

The Family has been accused of using female members to seduce prospective male members, and of encouraging children to engage in sexual practices.

The U.S.-based Cult Awareness Network, which monitors such groups, said the sect’s adult members and its children sleep with each other indiscriminately, believing that salvation comes through sex. The sect denies the charge.