Three sect leaders sentenced for inciting incest

IANS Saturday 7th February, 2009

Three Taiwanese have been sentenced by a local court for posing as religious masters and forcing a woman to have sex with her three sons, a newspaper said Saturday.

The trio - Chang Yao-ming, Chen Ming-tsun and Hsu Su-chun (a woman) - set up a sect several years ago in Pingtung County in south Taiwan, the Liberty Times said.

Calling their sect the 'Save the World and True Life Religion', they posed as  religious masters and claimed they had the power to cure illnesses.

In 2005, a local woman sought help for her sick husband at the temple run by the trio, the paper said.

The fake religious masters told the 43-year-old woman that her husband was dying and the only way to save him was for her to have sex with her three teenage sons. The sons were told that they must have sex with Hsu, too. The defendants then allegedly intimidated the three sons into submitting to the sex in order to save their father's life.

From 2005-08, the three sons had sex with their mother and Hsu many times each month, with Chen and Chang always present and occasionally in the presence of as many as 20 other cult members, the paper said.

The paper did not say how the fraud was exposed, but said the Pingtung District Court sentenced Chang, Chen and Hsu to prison terms ranging from eight to 18 years on convictions for fraud and sex crimes.