Jul 3, 2025
A Siberian cult leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ has been sentenced to 12 years in a Russian prison camp for exploiting and harming his followers. Sergei Torop, a 64-year-old former traffic officer who went by the name “Vissarion,” was convicted alongside two aides for using psychological manipulation to extract money and inflict serious mental and physical damage on members of his sect. Torop founded the Church of the Last Testament in 1991, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, attracting thousands of followers to a remote commune in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia.
The group, which settled in an area called the “Abode of Dawn,” promoted strict rules such as abstaining from meat, alcohol, money, and swearing. Torop and co-defendants Vladimir Vedernikov and Vadim Redkin were arrested in 2020 during a dramatic helicopter raid involving Russia’s FSB, the successor to the KGB. On Monday, a court in Novosibirsk handed down prison sentences of 12 years to Torop and Vedernikov, and 11 years to Redkin. Investigators reported that their actions caused moral harm to 16 individuals and varying degrees of physical harm to several others, reinforcing the cult’s dark legacy of spiritual abuse masked as divine authority.
Stay Awake. Keep Watch.
SOURCE: Fox News