Agents of the National Police and Customs Surveillance officials of the Tax Agency have arrested a psychologist and his wife in the province of Cáceres who offered “therapies to cure homosexuals.” The couple operated from the town of Villanueva de la Vera (Cáceres) and through a company they promoted alleged psychological therapies and provided drugs to their followers. In this way, they were made to believe that homosexuality has a cure and for them they had to follow two rules: abstinence and “sanatory” sexual relations with the group’s guru, which the woman applied. The detainees maintained hate speech regarding homosexuality and claimed that it was a disease that could be reversed. The detained psychologist endorsed these grounds and consented to sexual relations with his wife.
The detainees are accused of their alleged participation in crimes against public health, injuries, against sexual freedom, against workers’ rights, professional intrusion, coercion, against moral integrity, money laundering and illicit association. In addition to the arrests, two searches have been carried out, one at the home of the detainees in a large property in Villanueva de la Vera and another at a location in Madrid, where they carried out therapies one day a week. During the searches, more than 100,000 euros in cash, different narcotic substances, as well as various computer and documentary material of interest to the investigation were seized.
The detainees, under the protection of one of them’s degree in Psychology, carried out different pseudo psychotherapies, without the establishments in which they were practiced having any kind of health authorization or administrative authorization for this purpose.
During their activities, the detainees used coercive manipulation techniques, with which they managed to subdue the will of the followers, ultimately victims of different criminal specialties, putting their physical and mental health at risk, who often abandoned medical therapies. conventional ones supported by scientific evidence, causing a risk to their health as well as economic fraud.
It was common for detainees to provide different types of narcotic and psychoactive drugs during the development of pseudo-therapies, in order to induce specific states of consciousness that lead to the introjection of the expected norms of social and individual behavior.
The detainees had been carrying out this type of activities for more than 20 years, during which they had gained new followers, sometimes bringing together more than 50 people whom they isolated from their family, social and professional environment, urging them to dedicate themselves to the functions they They were ordered within the group and to follow its guidelines, reaching the point of exercising total control over them, to the point of not having the ability to discern where to live, what studies to pursue, and who to marry. Furthermore, the financial demands by the detainees were constant, without receiving any type of invoice or proof of payment in return, enriching themselves through allegedly illegal practices. Researchers continue to analyze and collect economic and patrimonial information.
The operation has been developed by the General Information Commissariat of the National Police, with the collaboration of the Behavior Analysis Unit of the General Judicial Police Commissariat, and the Regional Operational Unit of Madrid and Extremadura (Cáceres Operational Unit). and the Customs Surveillance Land Operations Area of the Tax Agency, has had the collaboration of the Provincial Information Brigade of Cáceres and has been carried out under the direction of the Court of First Instance and Instruction No. 1 of Navalmoral de la Mata (Cáceres ).