A Californian woman has filed a civil lawsuit against the Guadalajara-based Luz del Mundo evangelical church, saying she was treated as a virtual sex slave for almost two decades, suffering abuse at the hands of its current leader, the incarcerated Naasón Joaquín García, as well as his late father, Samuel Joaquín Flores.
According to 33-year-old Sochil Martin, the abuse began when she was just nine years old, when her aunt “offered” her to Joaquín Flores as a “blessing.”
“I was taught to believe that my body, my mind and my soul belonged to La Luz del Mundo because it was the will of God,” Martin said at a press conference last week in Los Angeles. The leaders of the two-million-strong church are considered “apostles of God” and are revered by the congregation.
Martin is not a claimant in the criminal case against Joaquín García, who is charged with child rape and human trafficking involving three girls and one woman between 2015 and 2018 in Los Angeles County. Two female accomplices are also facing charges, while another remains at large.
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