Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Missing boy, plan for exorcism part of probe into filthy camp
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A raid on a New Mexico desert compound turned up 11 children wearing rags and living in filth, and also broke open a bizarre tale of guns, exorcism and a search for a missing young boy who suffers from seizures and is nowhere to be found.
The boy’s father was among five people arrested after the raid near the border with Colorado, and documents made public in a court filing Monday said the father told the boy’s mother before fleeing Georgia that he wanted to perform an exorcism on the child because he believed he was possessed by the devil.
Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said deputies arrested the father, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, and four other adults on child abuse charges after finding the 11 children inside a filthy makeshift compound littered with “odorous trash” and lacking clean water in the tiny community of Amalia.
Wahhaj’s son, Abdulghani, who was 3 when he disappeared last December, was not among the children found, but Hogrefe said authorities have reason to believe the boy was at the compound several weeks ago.
Hogrefe’s deputies are searching for the child, along with the FBI and Georgia authorities in Clayton County, where officials say the boy was living before his father took him around Dec. 1, 2017.
The boy’s mother told authorities the boy suffers from seizures, cannot walk due to severe medical issues and requires constant attention.
She told police in December that Wahhaj had taken the boy for a trip to a park and never returned.
Georgia authorities said Wahhaj was traveling through Chilton County, Ala., on Dec. 13 with seven children and another adult when their car overturned. Wahhaj told police the group was traveling from Georgia to New Mexico to go camping.
The trooper who wrote the report said he found no camping equipment in or near the vehicle but that Wahhaj was in possession of three handguns, two rifles, a bag of ammunition and a bulletproof vest. Wahhaj told the trooper that he owned the guns legally and had a permit to carry concealed weapons.
“Mr. Wahhaj seemed to be very concerned about his weapons,” the report said.
It was not immediately known Monday whether Wahhaj and the others charged in the child abuse case in New Mexico —another man and three women believed to be the mothers of the 11 children — had retained attorneys.
A message that people were starving, believed sent by someone inside the compound to a third party and forwarded to authorities, led to the discovery of the children ranging in age from 1 to 15. They were turned over to state childwelfare workers.
During the search of the compound, authorities found what Hogrefe called “the saddest living conditions and poverty” he has seen in 30 years on the job.
There was little food in the compound, which Hogrefe said consisted of a small travel trailer buried in the ground and covered by plastic with no water, plumbing or electricity.
Hogrefe said the adults and children wore dirty rags and “looked like Third World country refugees.”