Judge in New York Denies Motions by Lawyers for La Luz del Mundo Leader Naasón Joaquín

The Southern District Court of New York held a hearing on Tuesday, October 27, at 11 a.m. for three leaders of La Luz del Mundo: Naasón Merari Joaquín García, Eva García de Joaquín and Joram Núñez. The source reports that the hearing had first been set for March 10 of the current year, then cancelled and rescheduled for mid-September and later for October 27. Members of the former Luz del Mundo community described the postponements as delays by the lawyers for Joaquín, and said they believed the delays were meant to keep the media from covering the case. The source presents this as the community’s view.

According to the source, the defendants appeared in restraints, with their hands and feet chained. The men wore khaki-colored overalls, and Eva García was in yellow and had completely gray hair.

The source reports that Joaquín’s lawyers have presented La Luz del Mundo as a sect in their legal filings and have pointed to sexual practices as part of the group’s doctrine. The defense maintains that these practices date to 1926, during the time of Naasón García’s grandfather, and that one purpose of the organization was the sexual gratification of the “Apostol.” These are the defense’s claims, not findings of the court.

In a motion filed October 2, defense attorney Caleb Massón acknowledged that the seized devices, which included tablets, mobile phones, USB drives, laptops, hard drives and television receivers, contained pornographic images and videos. He also argued that prosecutors should be barred from presenting images of Joaquín engaged in consensual sexual acts with an adult, saying such material could predispose the jury against his client. At the new hearing, Massón stressed that sexual videos involving minors that his client possessed dated to before 2015, and he claimed they had not been recorded while flying over waters under the court’s jurisdiction. To test this, the defense visited a federal building, and the source reports that the material is dated 2016. Prosecutors maintained that Joaquín possessed videos of a criminal nature before 2015, and the source says the defense’s effort to corroborate the dates did not succeed.

The defense also objected that it had not been told the specific sexual offenses it faced, which ranged from inappropriate and non-consensual contact to rape, or the precise New York locations where the alleged crimes occurred, which the defense said made preparation difficult. Judge Preska replied that the prosecution was not required to specify the offenses at the pre-trial stage, because doing so was not a necessary condition for preparing a defense.

Massón argued that when Naasón García, referred to as “Servant of God,” told victims that they should sexually please him and that their spiritual lives, including whether they would go to paradise or hell, depended on it, these statements were part of the teaching of the Light of the World. The prosecution raised the concept of “spiritual coercion.” The source notes, however, that the law does not focus on a person’s religious beliefs but on whether the person felt fear as a result of threats. Massón also said the only crime for which Joaquín could be charged was belonging to a sect whose members obeyed its leader.

The defense asked that the case be moved to California, where the organization has a larger presence and Joaquín would be more comfortable with his legal team, but Judge Preska rejected that request. Eva García, the mother of Naasón Joaquín, asked that the charges of conspiracy to commit organized crime, and those related to sex trafficking of minors and women within the church, be dropped. The judge denied the petition. The source states that these charges allegedly describe how the organization operated.

The motions filed by Joram Núñez’s defense were also denied. Núñez is accused of conspiracy to commit organized crime, sex trafficking and child exploitation, allegedly linked to the structure of La Luz del Mundo. Judge Preska stated that the government has a pressing interest in stopping sex trafficking.

Source: Read the original report (translated from Spanish)