MINNESOTA
Star Tribune
Article by: JENNIFER BROOKS , Star Tribune Updated: March 2, 2015
Barnard to return to Minnesota on sex-crime charges. Woman was arrested, released.
A Minnesota cult leader accused of raping girls and young women was found hiding out in Brazil with a woman who had been a member of his congregation since she was in her teens.
Victor Arden Barnard, one of the most-wanted fugitives in the country, was arrested over the weekend, along with a woman whom Brazilian media identified as 33-year-old Maria Cristina Cajazeiras Liberato, a Brazilian-born member of his River Road Fellowship.
U.S. and Brazilian law enforcement agencies are working to return Barnard to Minnesota, where he faces 59 counts of sexual assault on young women in the secretive religious community he founded in Pine County. He stands accused of separating young girls from their families and sexually exploiting them for years on end, while assuring them that the abuse was God’s will.
Barnard was arrested Friday in the beach resort community of Pipa. According to local news reports, Liberato had spent months or years shuttling Barnard between hideouts in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte.
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