A YOUNG woman from Elche lured into a sect in Perú is on the plane home along with her father and two-month-old baby daughter.
Patricia Aguilar Poveda, 19, was traced in July after her father Alberto travelled to the Peruvian Amazon and provided substantial help to the investigation out of the family savings and a crowdfunding operation.
His daughter, vulnerable, grieving and seeking answers after her uncle died at the age of 29, was cannon-fodder for her captor, Félix Steven Manrique, 34, who claimed to be a guru leading the cult known as Gnosis.
He convinced 16-year-old Patricia that they were in love and that God had chosen her to repopulate the earth.
Their contact was entirely online until just days after her 18th birthday in January 2017 when she took some of her parents' savings and left for Perú.
She and at least two other women who had already had children by Manrique were kept captive in a flat in Lima and suffered repeated violence, including rape.
Neighbours said the women followed Manrique 'submissively' and always a few steps behind him, and the children, who did not go to school, were exceptionally aggressive, attacking other kids in the district 'like demons'.
Eventually, the women and children were moved to huts in a very hazardous part of the Amazon a long way off the tourist trail where even police would not go.
Patricia's congenital heart condition meant her pregnancy, and labour in early June, were extremely high-risk, but she gave birth alone in the jungle with only a native tribal woman to help her and no medication.
She and the baby girl, when they were found living in a dilapidated hut, were very underweight and malnourished and covered in mosquito bites.
A delicate undercover operation spearheaded by Alberto led to Manrique's arrest, and Patricia's family paid for her and the other women, plus all the children, to be flown to Lima.
They were placed in a women's shelter and have been given medical care and counselling.
The Aguilar Poveda family's main fear was that their daughter would still be in denial, brainwashed by the cult, and not recognise that she had been groomed and held captive.
In the early months after her disappearance, she went to the Spanish embassy in person several times to insist she was not kidnapped and urging them to stop the search.
But Alberto, when eventually reunited with Patricia and meeting his granddaughter, found her to be just as she had been before the cult took her.
Her decision to return to Spain is voluntary and she is happy to be going back to her family and old friends.
Problems were envisaged at first because the baby automatically has Peruvian nationality as she was born there, meaning Patricia could not be deported for being in the country illegally, as her parents had hoped.
Solicitor from the missing persons charity SOS Desaparecidos, María Teresa Rojas, said the news had been leaked about Patricia's homecoming, meaning the organisation and the family had little choice but to make an official announcement before they had planned to do so.
They all call for discretion and 'patience' from the media and the public for the time being, although they recognise that the press had played a huge role in helping to trace Patricia.
Family spokeswoman, Patricia's cousin Noelia Bru, says they are all 'immensely happy' and that Patricia is 'very much looking forward to seeing her family and friends'.
She was due to board a plane along with her baby and her father last night (Friday) for a 10-hour flight to Madrid and then a connection to Alicante of around another hour, meaning she is likely to have landed by now and be on her way back to her family home.
Her parents and cousin Noelia will give a press conference in Elche town hall on Monday, but Patricia, who is still recovering physically and psychologically, will not be present.
The first photograph shown here is the only official one to be released of Patricia after she was freed from the cult, and shows her father Alberto Aguilar and baby daughter, whose name is not yet known.
