By JÖRG WOLLSCHLÄGER|A sensational trial against the self-styled “Sect of the Beast” began in Turin’s Palace of Justice on 26 April 2022. Charges were brought against 28 people by Lara Ruffino and Paolo Stupino of the Turin Anti-Mafia District Office and the Novara prosecutor Silvia Baglivo.
Of the accused, 21 are women aged between 24 and 62, all from Milan or Lombardy. Il Dottore, the 77-year-old leader of the sect, wanted to rob the “educated and intelligent upper classes of their female offspring”. The indictment is for “criminal conspiracy” to commit crimes against the “sexual sphere, serious sexual violence and sexual gang violence, including against minors”.
The victims were subjected to methodical brainwashing and sexual torture by the cult’s own psychologists with the aim of destroying the “thinking ego” in order to “kindle the inner fire” and thereby enter a “magical, fantastic and very secret world”. Many victims, some of whom fell into the cult’s clutches as children, suffered a reduction in their mental abilities as a result of the traumatic experiences of abuse [link].
The cult leader could rely on his accomplices who acted as torturers. The recruitment of new victims was done through a network of businesses, including two dance schools, a school for the “Celtic sword” (?), several herbal shops, a handicraft business and a publishing house. These were mainly children or unsuspecting young people. The cult controlled every aspect of the lives of the female members, both in the personal and family sphere and in education.
New members were often selected from the wealthy class for financial reasons. They were usually completely isolated from the outside world, including family, but sometimes other family members were recruited. The “doctor” decided on the studies, training or work the girls had to do, almost always in companies linked to the organisation, with the calculating aim of binding them permanently to the sect.
A victim’s account shows that the group was formed in the mid-1980s from the merger of two parallel organisations from the province of Novara. The guru was able to monitor every movement of the female followers in the area from his residence. The psycho-sect owed its success in recruiting and indoctrinating new victims to the use of psychologists who are themselves initiated and part of the group [link].
Torture methods
The practices to which the girls and older members were forced are horrific. These included group sex, sometimes with the guru, abuse with objects or animals and various torture methods. Whippings or hanging from the ceiling with hooks, wounding the victims with boiling wax in the genital area, tattoos, bites in the nose and head or “piercings” were also part of the “punishment repertoire”. After a certain age, the girls and women were enslaved and had to work in the sect’s own factories. They were cut off from all normal family and friendship ties in order to be able to immerse themselves completely in a pretended fairytale world. Then began the “mental, physical, emotional and spiritual subjugation” [link]. It is possible that this professionally run group is part of a larger lodge-like organisation, its name and the sexual and psychological abuse suggest a Satanic connection. However, there is no information on this so far [link].
Short film clips from the inner life of the sect can be seen here:
Psychotic cults always use the same mechanisms to subdue their victims and control their perceptions and emotions. Here are links to the topic: link, link.
