Survivor recounts chaotic Panama cult rite
Woman recalls being blindfolded, beaten and told daughter was dead
SANTIAGO, PANAMA— A survivor of the cult ceremony that killed seven people in a remote village in Panama says she was ordered to close her eyes, beaten and knocked unconscious during the ritual. The account Monday by Dina Blanco suggests the14 surviving participants were helpless — bound, unconscious or sightless much of the time.
The truth about what happened in the bizarre ceremony may only come out at the trials of nine villagers charged with killing their neighbours in the hamlet of El Terron last week.
Blanco said from her hospital bed in Santiago that she had gone to previous prayer meetings at the improvised church.
But this time, she didn’t go willingly.
Blanco, 24, said a neighbour, Olivia, came to call her to the meeting of “the New Light of
God” sect on Jan. 13, saying she would have to come “whether you like it or not.” She went — along with her nine-year-old daughter, who had epilepsy; her 15-year-old son; and her father. Her father and her son managed to escape. When they arrived, they were told not to open their eyes, and to grab each others’ hands and pray.
“I felt something hit my head, and then I don’t know what happened to me. I dropped to my knees,” Blanco said. “When I came to, they kept telling me not to open my eyes,” she recalled. “I heard drums, an accordion, screams, crying. I was tied up.”
Later, a sect member told her that her daughter Inés had died. “The birds of the fields shall dispose of her body,” the voice said.