Will be sentenced later this month
The New Mexico cult leader convicted of sex abuse charges on Monday continues to claim he’s being persecuted.
Wayne Bent, who calls himself the Messiah, posted a long rant on his website.
“It is not illegal for a minor to lie naked on a bed next to an old man, but the social taboos forbid it,” Bent said in a statement on his website.
Bent continues to deny that he touched the two teenage sisters who climbed into his bed naked.
He was found guilty for molesting one of the sisters. He still says it was a religious ceremony.
On the site, Bent continues to claim he was crucified and falsely convicted like Christ.
“The jury was a very good picture of the world and by convicting the Son of God for a crime that he did not commit, as they did with Jesus Christ, they have convicted themselves,” Bent said in the statement.
The cult leader has said he will starve himself in prison.
At the end of this month, a judge in Las Vegas, New Mexico could sentence Bent to 18 years in prison.
For now, Bent remains at his cult compound in northeast New Mexico under house arrest until his court date.
Bent writes in part:
The Trial and My Resolution
…When I had previously considered the possibility of being acquitted, I had felt that it would not work to fulfill the Father’s purposes at this end of the world. If the jury had acquitted me for my offenses to them, then God would have to forgive the world for its offenses. My Father in heaven works in symbols, tokens and omens, and this trial is one of the signs for mankind. I had also felt that if there was a hung jury, that would mean that there were still some honest hearts, and if that were the case then the world must necessarily go on. But now that it was unanimous, and all twelve jurors convicted me for a crime that did not actually occur, as was clearly attested to by the DA’s own witnesses, they have judged the world as unworthy of forgiveness from my Father. Their day of destruction was assured. The Father in heaven will now judge them as guilty because they have judged His Son as guilty, calling His Son an impostor, blasphemer, and demon possessed, just as it was at his first appearing nearly 2000 years ago. Now at Christmas time 2008, they have crucified the Son of God afresh. Their Christmas trees and gifts and bright lights will all shout, “Hypocrisy, hypocrisy.” They will have murdered the Christ Child that spoke to them from me, and from within themselves, while professing to worship him.
[…]