A YOUNG woman who disappeared in Elche (southern Alicante province) a year and a half ago has been found – in the Peruvian rainforest.
She had been captured by a religious cult which convinced her God had chosen her to repopulate the earth.
Patricia Aguilar Poveda was 16-and-a-half when she vanished on January 7 last year and, having found no trace of her nor any clues as to her disappearance, her parents have been fearing the worst for a while.
But she had fallen victim to a sect leader, Félix Steven Manrique, now 34, who calls himself 'Prince Gurdjieff'.
Preaching apocalyptic theories on social media, he offered spiritual help, accommodation, gifts and even cosmetic surgery to young girls and women who were willing to live with him in the Peruvian capital, Lima – and in exchange they 'only' had to be prepared to maintain sexual relations with him.
He made his female followers take the powerful plant-based tropical drug known as ayahuasca to dull their free will and make them comply.
Patricia had made cryptic comments about her 18th birthday, hinting it would be her 'last', and then ran away the night after the bank holiday for the Three Kings, or the Epiphany, with the takings from the family business - €6,000 in cash – and sending a text message to her parents saying, “I'll be okay. I'll speak to you in a few hours.”
She was spotted at the airport in Santiago de Chile about two-and-a-half months later, 'heavily drugged' and 'in the company of a man', who has since turned out to be Manrique, leader of the cult that calls itself 'Gnosis'.
Chilean authorities denied them entry to the country, and it turned out México had done so earlier.
Yet none of the border forces alerted police in Patricia's home country of her presence or the fact that she may be in danger.
Her parents say she had been very badly affected by the death of her uncle, aged 29, shortly before she disappeared, and was 'very fragile' but did not display her grief.
Although her personality did not change greatly, she spent more and more time on her mobile phone and computer and would not let anyone near either.
Patricia's mother even sourced books her daughter asked her for, without paying much attention to their content except for the fact that they were spiritual in nature, focusing on the tarot, meditation and sexual magic – which turned out to be the main foci of the cult.
Her parents said they just thought this was how their daughter was trying to deal with her grief.
The sect is said to be 'very dangerous' – in fact, a woman lured by them in the Galicia cathedral city of Santiago de Compostela killed her baby in her hotel room in line with Gnosis' belief that infants are the 'spawn of the Devil'.
Patricia's father Alberto Aguilar travelled from Elche to Perú last month, and eventually found his daughter with the sect in the Amazon rainforest, about a 10-hour drive north-east from the capital city, which is on the coast.
Now 18, she had not long given birth to a baby girl, fathered by Manrique.
Manrique was arrested in a lodge in San Martín de Pangoa, where he was found with two other women, one of whom is pregnant, and their various children whom their families had been searching for.
Patricia was in another house an hour away with her infant daughter, who was then only 11 days old.
Alberto managed to rescue his daughter and new granddaughter, and the three are now due to fly back to Spain shortly.
Manrique has been arrested and the families of the other missing women and children alerted.
Photograph by the Spanish missing persons charity, SOS Desaparecidos
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