OLIVE PRESS
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Vol. 5 Issue 128
www.theolivepress.es
Your expat
voice in Spain April 8th - April 21st 2022
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HYPNOTISED BY JESUS!
HE grew his hair long like Jesus and was looked up to ‘like a god’. A so-called ‘healer’ (or curandero) he had a herbal medicine practice on the costas and a series of intelligent graduate friends. But sex cult leader Tio Toni, 64, was allegedly an evil child abuser, who brainwashed dozens of people into effectively living in slavery. Now, after police arrested Tio Toni - real name Antonio GL along with eight other followers, five of them female, he is set to face 80 years in prison. In a shocking investigation, the Olive Press can reveal how Antonio allegedly hypnotised his followers to believe he was a spiritual healer over a staggering 30year period. Victims and psychologists told us how the alternative medicine practitioner conned his respect-
PSYCHIATRIST: Miguel Perlado
Victims and therapists tell Olive Press of ordeal at the hands of sex abuse cult leader Tio Toni By Jorge Hinojosa
hind the scenes he was allegedly abusing their children and often their wives and partners. When police finally raided his huge finca, Mas de la Chaparra, a bright pink building, near the village of Vistabella del Maestrat, on March 15, they were astonished by what they found. Aside from €15,000 in cash, they discovered over 100 valuable watches, but the most unusual was a collection of keepsakes and mementos.
bers, including one, ‘A course of Miracles’ which gave them a series of exercises and able middle class patients into orders to follow. giving him money and sometimes This week, a long-time neighbour even their homes. of his home in Castellon, told the He even managed to enlist them Olive Press Tio Toni would iniinto ritual sex sessions, some of tially not charge for the ‘health’ them filmed on camera. services he provided. In some of his most depraved The woman, a fortune teller, visacts, he allegedly took the virginiited his practice in Castellon on ty of teenagers, in front of his folmany occasions and ‘nearly got lowers, also on camera. sucked in’. He managed to first snare his She said: “I spent months going victims through an alternative to his consultation because he health practice in the coastal city said he was a healer. He put his Orgies of Castellon. hands on me, claiming it would At the clinic, which doubled as a These included drawers full of bi- cure me. health shop, he conned his vic- zarre hair cuttings and dozens of “But it soon became clear he was tims into believing their health religious calling cards. trying to manipulate me, espe- and lives - would improve by There were numerous storage cially when after a few sessions joining his cult, called Vistabella. devices and computers and ‘a he asked me to go to a private As well as saying that he had been bunker full of security and sur- back room with him. chosen ‘as an envoy from God’ veillance equipment’ revealed the “That was the moment when I felt and he was ‘cleaning up society’, local mayor. something strange was going on.” he told them he was able to cure There were also allegedly videos Asking to remain anonymous, she their ailments, including cancer. of sexual orgies in which ritual continued: “He was over-friendly But once they had moved to live practices regularly took place. with me, and told me he was sent on his giant inland estate in the M e a n from God rural Maestrazgo region of Valen- while, they and that’s cia, they effectively became his s e i z e d why he grew slaves. training his hair out Working around the clock on a m a n u a l s like Jesus. schedule their leader dictated, for mem“He was they had no idea, at certainly least initially, that bevery persuasive and I saw a lot of people become totally obsessed with him,” she continued. “He made them feel they were totally loved.” Over the course of ‘a few years’ she lost an alarming four friends to the sect, as well as a female member of her own family. SITE: The sect’s compound in rural Valencia “I was so worrie I ended up organising a meeting with them to try and tell them that this guy was Portals Nous, manipulating us, but they just refused to 07181, believe me,” she conMallorca. tinued. She revealed how
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SECT: Leader Tio Toni
Toni continually managed to expand and add to his inland estate in order to house his growing number of ‘believers’. When she tried more recently to get her friends out, she revealed how Toni had sent some of them to her home threatening to expose her as a witch. “They accused me of having done witchcraft on a child in the sect who had got really ill or died,” she explained. “It was very intimidating.” A psychologist, who called in police after he began working with a number of victims last year, said the abuse on the group and, in particular, children was ‘truly shocking’. Miguel Perlado told the Olive Press that the victims had first come to him ‘very confused’ about what was going on inside. “They could barely even describe the place where they had lived for so long,” he revealed, adding that they were threatened about speaking out ‘or they would get bad energy’. He said they ended up becoming very isolated from their family and friends and Tio Toni even made them become isolated from each other and ‘encouraged conflict between them’.
Burdened
They were burdened with many chores and the house was continually upgraded and maintained, so they ‘could not think for themselves’. He added that many of the minors didn’t attend school and also created ‘alternative identities’ because they didn’t have the capacity to explain what was going on. He added that it was possible the place was visited by foreigners and other expats, but the main sect was Spanish. A total of 12 victims were ‘liberated’ when police raided the farm, including two children, aged 13 and eight, who have been taken in by Valencia social services. This week, six of nine adult members were given bail while three, including Toni remain in custody.