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While it presents itself as a Christian movement it has a number of un-Biblical and extra-Biblical teachings, including several that militate against the Bible’s teachings on grace. It has an elitist view of itself and its members. It encourages unreasonable corporal punishment for children, and reportedly prevents members from seeking medical aid. Apologetics Index online report 19 May 2018
ALBUQUERQUE, NM (AP) — A paramilitary Christian sect with members facing child sex abuse charges evaded law enforcement authorities for years by hiding births, physically punishing followers and quietly operating in isolated areas of New Mexico, former members say.
In interviews with The Associated Press and in court documents, the ex-members also alleged that leaders of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps exercised control over followers by forcing them into hard labor and refusing to give their children medical care.
When members complained, sect co-leader Deborah Green would hold ‘trials’ against them for questioning her authority, which Green said came directly from God, former members Maura Alana Schmierer and Julie Gudino said.
The trials led to banishment to isolated sheds without toilets and from the sect’s compound without being allowed to take their children, the women said.
‘It was a form of brain-washing,’ Schmierer, who left the group in the late 1980s and sued, winning a $1 million award when it was based in Sacramento, California, told the AP.
The secretive sect in the small ranching community of Fence Lake was spotlighted when authorities raided its compound Sunday and arrested three members, including Deborah Green, in connection with a child abuse investigation. Business Insider online report 23 August 2017
On Sunday, police arrested current and former members of a Christian group in New Mexico for a litany of alleged crimes. According to a report on Monday by ABC affiliate KOAT-7 Action News, one member was charged with 100 counts of sexual penetration of a girl who was allegedly smuggled into this country from Uganda. The warrant used to make the arrest, which was viewed by VICE, further claims the group concealed the births of multiple children and the death of at least one boy, whose remains were buried on the group’s private property.
The The Aggressive Christianity Missionary Training Corps (ACMTC) of Fence Lake is an isolated, militaristic religious organization. In 1981, Deborah and James Green formed the group in Sacramento, California. Previously, they have been accused of familiar cult-like tactics of controlling member’s finances, limiting contact with the outside world, and isolating members without proper food, water, or hygiene. Since their inception, they’ve been listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
The investigation leading to Sunday’s arrest began last year, when two female members of the group claimed to have escaped – and told the Cibola County Sheriff’s Office of almost unspeakable horrors.
The Sheriff’s Office arrest warrant asserts that ‘General’ Deborah Green refused to allow a boy suffering a severe case of the flu to be taken to the hospital in 2014. According to one witness, after three weeks of illness, the 12-year-old’s head became deformed and pus began leaking from his forehead. The boy was said to lose the ability to speak or move his right side.
Green is described by the warrant as someone who does not believe in modern medicine – a claim she refuted to the Sheriff’s Office. But cops assert she would tell members the sick ‘are in sin and must repent to be healed.’ When the boy with the severe flu died, the warrant continued, he was buried on ACMTC property. The authorities were not notified. Vice online report 23 August 2017, ‘Cops Accuse Christian Commune of Smuggling & Raping Children’
A new Christian sect, the Free Love Ministries, forms in downtown Sacramento. I Escaped a Cult, National Geographic 2012
Jim and Lila Green run the Free Love Ministries. ibid.
To convince new members to join God’s Army, the cult uses a mind control technique called ‘love bombing’. ibid.
Free Love Ministries changes its name to Aggressive Christianity Mission Training Corps. ibid.
The Greens manipulate followers with sleep deprivation. ibid.
A militant ministry bent on mind-control, cruelty and shame. Escaping Evil: My Life III
The End Times were coming and they must prepare. ibid.
Acts of cruelty against her children. ibid.
Fence Lake New Mexico 20 August 2017: An extremist religious group in a remote town in New Mexico: The Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps. The leaders are arrested on multiple charges including kidnapping and negligent abuse resulting in death. People Magazine Investigates: Army of God Cult, ID 2018
For three decades they were controlling, abusive, manipulative, they were generals of an army that didn’t take no for an answer. ibid.
1971: An idealistic movement to create a loving community in Christ. ibid.