A church elder and deacons who went on trial on charges of brainwashing a fellow congregant to falsely accuse her biological father of past rape were acquitted by the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court's Second Division (presiding Justice Eom Sang-pil) said on the 4th that it upheld a lower court ruling from Dec. 24 last year that acquitted A, who had been indicted on false-accusation charges. A is a prosecution investigation secretary and an elder at a church. A's wife, B, a deaconess at the church, and C, a deacon at the same church, were also acquitted.
From February to August 2019, A and others were accused of implanting and persuading three sisters, female congregants at the same church, to believe the false memory that they had been continuously raped by their biological father since they were 4–5 years old, and of inducing them to falsely accuse their father that August.
They were also accused of implanting a false memory in January 2019 in another female congregant at the same church that she had been raped by her maternal uncle. That congregant filed a false accusation against her uncle in August of the same year.
These false accusations were found to have occurred when the sisters' father and the female congregant's uncle raised suspicions that the church was a cult.
Among the church's congregants, A was regarded as having the ability to drive out demons or heal illnesses through prayer. B was regarded as able to find the source of suffering by seeing visions or hearing auditory hallucinations. C had previously worked as a counselor at a sexual violence counseling center, and congregants thought C was an expert in sexual violence counseling. The congregants were devout enough to attend church throughout the week.
In court, A and others denied the charges, saying, "We did not know the victims' statements were false. We had no intention of causing the falsely accused to face criminal punishment."
In the first trial, the court sentenced A and his wife, B, to four years in prison each, and C to three years, and took them into custody in the courtroom. The first trial panel said, "The defendants exploited religious authority to completely destroy the falsely accused persons' lives and the peace of their families."
However, on appeal all defendants were acquitted. The appellate court found that the rape claims were false and recognized that, during A and others' sexual counseling process, false memories were formed in the church congregants through leading and suggestion.
It added, "There are multiple circumstances indicating the defendants actually believed, or could not help but believe, the claims of victimization," and said, "There is ample room to view that the false memories were wrongly induced, amplified, and reproduced among the parties by shared beliefs between the defendants and the complainants, distorted sexual values, and inappropriate counseling methods."
The Supreme Court held that the lower court did not misunderstand the legal principles.