Marthandam Yesu Swamiyar Joseph- Sex Leelas

Unholy Messenger-

October 6, 1997

http://www.india-today.com/itoday/06101997/tamilnad.html

A priest’s arrest exposes a trail of murder and sexual abuse.

By M.G. Radhakrishnan

The Yesu of Marthandam, it seems, has run out of miracles. Not long ago, frenzied sessions saw his ‘devotees’ — over 5,000 of them, mainly Roman catholic women from the local fishing community near Kanyakumari — spellbound as he sang in praise of the Lord. Many would go into hysteria, sob uncontrollably, faint and, at the end of it all, even claim that they had been cured of the most serious of illnesses. Today, but for a lone fox and some peacocks and doves, Father John Joseph’s sprawling Charismatic Centre, 50 km north of Kanyakumari, wears a deserted look.

Two weeks ago, the Tamil Nadu Police arrested the 52-year-old Father and four of his aides, including two women, on charges of murder, rape and kidnapping. If the arrest wasn’t totally unexpected, it was because once before in July, he, along with the centre’s chief administrator Joseph Alphons and two others, was arrested for non-repayment of loans amounting to Rs 80 lakh taken in 1994. Then, they had all managed to secure bail after furnishing statements, promising to clear the dues. This time, however, the Father wasn’t so lucky.

His recent arrest follows a complaint by Fransiscal Jaya, Alphons’ wife and a former inmate of the ashram. She alleged that in November last year, the priest had attempted to rape her 14-year-old daughter Diana, a class ix student of the centre’s prestigious Maranatha Residential School in the same complex. She also alleged that the death of Gilbert Raj, 18, an inmate of the centre, in 1994, was due to “sexual persecution“. Following the charges, the police exhumed Raj’s body from the campus cemetery.

Enraged villagers tried to set fire to the centre. They had already submitted around 30 petitions to the police regarding the non-payment of loans and pasted posters all over the town denouncing the Father, who was expelled from the local diocese for anti-religious activities in 1995. The police say that the Father and his aides were involved in large-scale financial swindling. Says Vincent of Imperial Bankers, a money-lending institution at Nagercoil: “Not a paisa of the Rs 15 lakh loan we had advanced has been repaid.”

But reports of bizarre happenings had started trickling out of the centre even before that. About how Joseph would ask young boys to have sex with women inmates much older than them. And how they would be beaten up if they refused. Two such young men, Rajesh and Darwin, lodged a complaint with the police alleging sexual torture. “Swamiyar (Joseph) used to force me to have sex with women who were thrice my age while he watched,” alleges Rajesh, 18, who worked for the centre for three years till 1995. “Unable to take any more, I ran away.” Police suspect that Raj died of similar torture and claim to have proof of the sexual orgies at the centre. They are on the lookout for a lady doctor who is believed to have conducted several abortions on the campus. Says Shylesh Kumar Yadav, joint sp, Thuckalay, who is in charge of the investigations: “We have sufficient evidence to prove all the charges, including murder, rape and attempt to rape, to have Father Joseph convicted.”

Despite persistent rumours of strange goings-on at the centre, nobody considered filing a complaint against the Father earlier, as they were taken in by his charisma. Alphons claims that his wife’s complaint about the rape attempt on their daughter was made only recently because she came to know about it in July. “I was so attracted by Father Joseph’s magnetic personality that I would never believe such things,” he says. As for the case of non-payment of loans — in which Alphons has now been made an approver — he says: “My repeated requests for repayment of loans were ignored by him and I was left to face the creditors.”

The centre’s assets, according to the police, are worth around Rs 4 crore. Though all activities at the centre have come to a halt, the Maranatha Residential School, one of the more expensive in the area where the students pay fees of about Rs 900 per month, is still functioning. But since the Father’s arrest several students have left.

With so much at stake, counter-charges are flying thick and fast. “It is Alphons who has siphoned off the money and to escape trouble has made his wife issue a trumped-up complaint,” says the Father’s sister Angela, whose husband, a managing trustee of the centre, is among those arrested. And despite the mounting pile of evidence against the Father, she believes the “Lord will prove his innocence”. Evidently, she still believes in miracles.