TAOS, N.M. (AP) — Jurors on Friday began deliberating the case of the leader of an apocalyptic New Mexico sect who is accused of illicit sexual contact with 14- and 16-year old female followers.
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Bent, 67, says he placed his hand on the sternums, but not the breasts, of the young sisters who lay naked with him in separate incidents in July and August of 2006.
But Chavez told the jury that common sense dictates that an adult man’s hand on the chests of the girls, who are both small in stature, would be touching their breasts.
“The state’s not saying any of this was for sexual gratification ... we are not saying his beliefs are wrong ... we are treating Mr. Bent the same as anyone else,” the prosecutor said.
Bent’s laywer, Sarah Montoya, said the state failed to present the evidence needed to convict. Bent did not touch the intimate parts of the body needed for a conviction for criminal sexual contact, she argued.
Bent’s prosecution is “wholly unfair,” she said, accusing prosecutors of unfairly portraying her client as odd and perverted.
“People with different religious practices have been perseucted throughout history,” she said.
Bent, a self-described Messiah and leader of The Lord Our Righteousness Church, is charged with two counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
During testimony Thursday, Bent said he was careful that the spiritual healing exercises with the two sisters not take a sexual turn.
“I never touched any fleshy part of the breast,” Bent said during about an hour on the witness stand in the fourth day of his trial.
Bent said the girls were unclothed “because that’s what they requested of me.”
“I’ve always told the children, follow your heart, do what God tells you. Don’t follow me,” said Bent, adding that it would have been a betrayal to turn the girls away.
Asked if he didn’t think it was wrong, he replied: “I didn’t have any thought that it was wrong. My thought was that this could be troubling — and here I am.”
Bent said the 14-year-old came to his house late at night after he was already in bed and “asked to be skin-to-skin with me.”
Asked whether they did that, he said, “There was a space in between us.”
God told her to come to him, Bent said the girl told him.
He said he was wearing only undershorts, and didn’t recall having told police he was “in the buff” during the encounter with the younger girl.
The girl had testified she believed he was naked.
Bent was clothed during the incident in daylight hours when her older sister came to him, according to testimony.
Standing in the witness box and facing the jury, Bent demonstrated how he touched the girls, his hand placed vertically on the upper part of his chest.
He testified that he “could have” kissed the 16-year-old because it’s something he does with church members, and he “may have” laid his hand on her stomach.
He said he didn’t remember kissing the younger girl.
In other testimony, sect member Allasso Michael Travesser said he experienced spiritual healing by Bent, recounting an incident in the last couple of years at Travesser’s home.
Travesser said he lay on the floor and Bent knelt beside him, placed his hands on Travesser’s chest, and prayed. The men also kissed, he said.
“His whole focus at that time was on my best well-being. ... They’re not acts of sexuality,” said Travesser, 51.
Another church member, Gabriel Travesser, testified that Bent does not coerce members of the church. Gabriel Travesser, who has known Bent for more than 30 years, described Bent as a spiritual shepherd and guide.
Travesser said Bent wasn’t a dictator and did not make decisions for the 45 people who live in the remote compound the call Strong City, near the Colorado-New Mexico line.
He described Bent as “a man who would do whatever God told him at any cost to himself. And this is part of the cost.”
Another witness for the defense, Stephen O’Leary of Los Angeles, an expert in apocalyptic religions, said lying naked with young females without sexual contact has been a practice in religions including Christianity and Hinduism.
He cited early Christian celibates and, more recently, Mahatma Gandhi.
“It’s very hard for us in the world that we live in to look at an action like this and not interpret it as predatory, or self-seeking, self-serving, done under cover of religion for purpose of sexual gratification,” he said.
But many spiritual leaders have done it as a way of testing their chastity and growing their spiritual life, said O’Leary, an author and associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.
They were harshly criticized for it, he said, likening it to the way the outside world views Bent’s conduct with the girls as being “something shameful.”
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