How ordinary and religious activities are translated into the language of crime when the anti-cult script is activated
by María Vardé
Article 3 of 4. Read article 1 and article 2.
Human trafficking cases involving religious and spiritual minorities in Argentina tend to articulate the local anti-trafficking framework—widely criticized by specialized scholars—with the discredited theory of “brainwashing.” This series, based on a comparative analysis of five high-profile case files, examines the practical effects of that combination: how categories such as “cult,” “coercive persuasion,” and “vulnerability” can be imposed in prosecutorial reasoning. Here we move one level further: the interpretation of the facts themselves.
The entry point for turning that script into criminal charges is the broad wording of Argentina’s anti-trafficking law. Article 145 bis of the Argentine Criminal Code punishes anyone who “offers, recruits, transports, receives, or harbors persons for purposes of exploitation (…) even when the victim’s consent is present.”
Various legal and socio-legal analyses have shown that, in practice, the interpretations adopted by judicial actors can expand core notions of the offense, enable generic victimization, and criminalize a wide range of lawful conduct, often with the influence of cultural and gender biases. Added to this is the fact that, when the alleged “victims” deny the occurrence of the crime, their testimony is dismissed, as we saw in the previous installment. Nor can an act be validated as voluntary if operators label it “trafficking,” because Argentina departed from the international standard and considers consent irrelevant.
The wording of the provision allows for highly elastic readings if a criterion of reasonableness is not followed: how many acts can be defined as “recruiting”? How many as “transporting,” “receiving,” or “harboring”? Those verbs encompass thousands of legitimate acts. Only those carried out for purposes of exploitation constitute trafficking. Now then, what is meant by “exploitation”? One thing is to attract a person through violence or deception, remove them from their social environment, and retain them to subject them to sexual or labor exploitation; quite another is that someone joined a group, became a member, and participates in community tasks. Yet prosecutors label these latter three actions “recruitment,” “harboring,” and “exploitation.”
In the case of Cómo Vivir por Fe (CVPF), the Office of the Prosecutor for Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons (PROTEX) structured the charges using that verbal scheme: a “coercive organization” that “recruited” followers through “coercive persuasion” and then “transported and harbored” them at its premises “for purposes of exploitation.” The alleged victim, Gabriela (32), was said to have been “recruited” through YouTube videos. Her move to the community was construed as “transportation” because two members helped her with the move; living in the community was presented as “harboring,” and “exploitation” was linked to her decision to share her belongings with the group—what prosecutors termed a “transfer of assets”—, to participate in domestic tasks, paint flowerpots, and distribute religious pamphlets in exchange for voluntary contributions. As aggravating factors, the prosecution invoked “coercive persuasion” as a form of coercion (analyzed in the first installment), “deception” (the promise of a mystical or spiritual benefit), and “abuse of vulnerability” (developed in the previous installment).
In the Buenos Aires Yoga School (BAYS) case, PROTEX defined “recruitment” as entry motivated by promises of spiritual evolution, directed at “vulnerable persons” (also discussed in the previous installment). It argued that integration into the group occurred through “coercive persuasion” exercised in weekly philosophy classes taught at the premises and through “indoctrination” in philosophical beliefs. It introduced an expanded notion of “harboring”: this existed by mere membership in the School, aggravated—according to the prosecution—because some members owned apartments in the same building where the headquarters occupied one floor.
According to the charging document, “exploitation” consisted of the prostitution of nine women for the benefit of 27 defendants, and the extraction of assets from all members. The defendants’ businesses (a law firm, a real estate agency, medical and psychological clinics, a company that provides courses in hospitals, etc.) were said to be “fronts” to conceal the origin of that money.
The owners of those businesses submitted tax records, public certificates, photographic documentation, and accounting records related to those activities to support the legality of the businesses and the absence of sex work. Numerous friends and relatives who were not BAYS members described the School’s activities and denied prostitution, exploitation, or manipulation, and attested to the members’ economic and social independence. The alleged “victims” sued the heads of PROTEX. Three and a half years later, the case remains open.
In the case of Pastor Roberto Tagliabué, the prosecution argued that the defendant, as a spiritual leader and director of a rehabilitation facility, had launched “a recruitment process using a religiously tinged discourse to persuade, intimidate, and subdue the will of the victims in order to exploit them for labor, reducing them to servitude.” In that account, pamphleteering, outreach on social media, the search for young people in informal settlements, and preaching in prison contexts were presented as methods of “recruitment.” Housing young people in rehabilitation and people experiencing homelessness in the congregation’s shelters was interpreted as “harboring.”
The fact that they lived under a regime—signed by mutual agreement between residents and administrators—with limited outings and no cellphone use during rehabilitation was read as coercion of freedom. “Exploitation” was linked to the sale of baked goods, where residents received 50 percent and the remainder was allocated to the maintenance of the shelters. As in the previous cases, the prosecution considered the offense aggravated by the “deception” of performing a “service to God,” by the use of “coercion” (“coercive persuasion”), and by “abuse of vulnerability.” In the previous installment we saw the harsh terms in which the court rejected the prosecutorial claim.
Similar arguments were raised in the case of Iglesia Tabernáculo Internacional, which also provided assistance for addiction rehabilitation and lodging for people with limited resources. As in the Tagliabué case, in dismissing the charges, the courts noted that the testimony described recovery trajectories and ordinary religious activities. Classifying those practices as trafficking, they held, amounted to a violation of human rights.
hIn the case of Konstantin Rudnev, the charging instrument states: “This concerns a transnational criminal organization led by Konstantin Rudnev, through which they exercised total control over the victim (…) under the guise of a philosophy and yoga center that recruited, transported, and harbored the victim and her child, whose characteristics were those of extreme vulnerability; reducing her to servitude and for purposes of sexual exploitation.” The prosecutors also asserted that she lacked economic independence and freedom of movement.
The discursive construction includes all the terms of the model.
To support the charge, prosecutors took as an indicium that, during the pregnancy, two women helped E. communicate with medical staff, and from that assistance inferred domination over E.
Now then, what does the “victim” say?
In her judicial statements and before specialists from the National Program for Rescue and Assistance, E. explained through interpreters (since she speaks neither Spanish nor English) that she traveled to Argentina to begin an independent life, away from a violent former partner, and that she maintained permanent contact with her family in Russia. Both the poor relationship with her former partner and the contact with her family are corroborated by her phone records. She also stated that the women who accompanied her to medical appointments provided linguistic and emotional support, but that most of the time she managed on her own with automatic translators when shopping or going out.
She denied knowing Rudnev and also denied having been a victim of the accused individuals. Eight months after returning to Russia—far from her alleged “captors”—she maintains the same account: a personal project marked by the pursuit of independence in a new country, with family support and a social network sufficient to attend the hospital despite the language barrier.
This contrast with the prosecutorial hypothesis led the first judge in the case to dismiss the charges. However, prosecutors went to a second judge, who granted them an additional year to investigate and ordered Rudnev’s pretrial detention.
This judge made explicit the discursive generalization through abstract formulas when, in granting that additional year to prosecutors, he referred to: “(…) the mode of operation of this type of organization, which has a system of recruitment and absolute control to take advantage of those who are in situations of vulnerability, thus drawing in their will with promises of personal and spiritual growth, isolating them from their family and social ties, depriving them of their assets and food, among other things.”
Through such discourse, a criminal court judge keeps a man in prison for a year, basing the decision on “everything this type of organization does,” while prosecutors request time to investigate.
This shows what happens when an expansive interpretation is combined with religious prejudices activated by an anti-cult framework: preaching, teaching classes, maintaining a website, sharing goods, living austerely, performing community tasks, helping with a move, and even sheltering the destitute can become “recruitment,” “transportation,” “harboring,” or “exploitation,” and can send to prison the administrators of any entity prosecutors choose, whose members, after joining, collaborate in any activity.
Added to this are “coercive persuasion” and “vulnerability,” which function as hinges: they reinforce the accusatory hypothesis, justify reading ordinary practices as indicators of control, and at the same time operate as aggravating factors.
The result is twofold: the criminal response hardens and the field of suspicion expands, especially when religious difference is presented as a sign of risk. In the next and final installment, we will see how these readings filter into the press—and are also fed by it—intensifying moral panic against non-conventional religious groups and producing concrete legal effects: what begins as a judicial interpretation can end up installed as a public condemnation.
Maria Vardé graduated in Anthropological Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires and is currently a researcher at the Instituto de Ciencias Antropológicas, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires (Institute of Anthropological Sciences, Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities, University of Buenos Aires). She has written and lectured on archeology, spirituality, and freedom of religion or belief.
