MANILA, Philippines — Witnesses to the human trafficking and immigration fraud charges against three administrators of Philippine-based Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KJC) Christian church in Los Angeles and in Hawaii “were lying about many things” to authorities “to support their claims”, the counsel of the church said Monday.
According to Los Angeles-based lawyer Michael Jay Green, the witnesses were former church workers of KJC who “left the fold.”
It was earlier reported that church workers who purportedly managed to escape from the church told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that they had been sent across the U.S. to work long hours soliciting donations year-round for the church’s charity, and were beaten and psychologically abused if they didn’t make daily quotas. Some even claimed to have lived in cars at truck stops.
The immigrants essentially became full-time workers, sometimes referred to as “miracle workers,” in a crusade to raise money for the nonprofit Children’s Joy Foundation USA, which was supposed to benefit poor children in their homeland. But according to the affidavit submitted by complainants, most of the money raised was allegedly used to finance church operations and the lavish lifestyle of Quiboloy.
READ: FBI raids Quiboloy’s church in Los Angeles in human trafficking probe
“Their testimony paints the entire church to be an ‘illusion’ which brought people to the United States from the Philippines, promised them careers in music, and forced them to work as slaves soliciting money,” Green said in a statement.
“These dissident workers knew in the beginning the goal was to help people around the world and they signed up for that voluntarily. So now when they got to the US, what they are saying is it was all phony,” he added.
He also pointed out that only 12 individuals filed a complaint as compared to the millions of KJC members worldwide.
The witnesses were also “discrediting” the Children’s Joy Foundation, which has recently won the 2019 Best Non-Government Organization Award in the Philippines, and has partnered with foster agencies, public schools, and children’s non-profits in the US, the statement said.
“I am troubled that people only have one side of the story. Having worked with the church since 2018, I have seen all the angles and my team and I are committed to get the real story out and let the people who have been unfair know the truth,” the church’s counsel said.
“I can also say that these people are out to destroy what the church has built up in this country. And this has been going on for several years now,” he added.
He vowed that his team of lawyers will exhaust all efforts to win the legal case.
Last month, the FBI raided KJC offices and compound in Los Angeles and Hawaii that led to the arrests of three church leaders.
READ: FBI raids Quiboloy’s church in Los Angeles in human trafficking probe
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