FIJI – A 75 year old leader and pastor of a breakaway church group in Fiji has been sentenced to 14 years 2 months imprisonment.

Vakadranu raped two members of his church between October, 2012 and August, 2014 in Labasa and Tailevu.

High Court Judge Justice Vincent Perera had earlier found Vakadranu guilty of four counts of rape.

Back to Eden church was founded in 2006 by Vakadranu, as a breakaway group from the mainstream Seventh Day Adventist Church.

While sentencing Vakadranu, Justice Perera said that Vakadranu had persuaded the victims to leave formal education to take advantage of their ignorance.

The judge said Vakadranu had conditioned the minds of the victims systematically over time so that they could believe everything he said.

Vakadranu who is a father of four, was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment but his sentence was set at 14 years 2 months as he has already been in custody for 10 months.

The non-parole period has been set at 12 years 2 months.

Vakadranu told the High Court that he had sex with two of his followers, and it was consensual. He said that he did not commit rape as he did it for a purpose.

Vakadranu said he advised the women from the Bible and his advice was based from a programme on what they were going to study.

Vakadranu said that the two women, who were state witnesses, had given their full consent to have sex.

When asked on why this was being done, Vakadranu said the women were being prepared for a mission not to commit adultery.

He did it so they would know the taste of it and would not go and do it outside but only do it with him.

He told them that he was the only one who should do it as he was their leader and advisor.

Vakadranu said that he would not have had sex with them if any of the two would have refused to do it.

However one of the witnesses told the High Court that she did not give Vakadranu permission to have sexual intercourse with her.

The 23-year-old woman said she was 19-years-old during the time of the alleged incident in Vunika, Labasa.

The woman said that she had one on one sessions with Vakadranu. In one of those sessions she said that he told her to take off her clothes and he then had sex with her. The victim said that she cried and could not do anything.

The woman told the court that the leader of Back to Eden Church then told her to be strong and that is what God had appointed him to do.

She said that she did not give permission to him to have sex with her.

Vakadranu had told the court that he was preparing the women he raped to go on a mission.

“You cannot preach something you don’t know, we are teaching our youths and giving them some tests because we want them to know what is there in the world,” a church spokesperson said after the sentencing.

“You can’t be preaching about fornication if you don’t know what fornication is, because you don’t know the feelings and consequences.

“So for that we need to test the youths to see how loyal they are to the Gospel and these tests will only be done by the pastor because he is anointed,” she said.

“There is a message that we cannot expose in court and that is preparing the youth for the mission especially those that have posts in the youth ministry. There are three girls who are called the commander of the mission, one is the youth leader, her assistant and the third one is the treasurer of health reformer.

“These three girls are well trained but before the act is done to them they had to give their consent which they did, and that’s their right – so what the law is doing now is that they are restricting people’s rights.”

Loyal members of Fiji’s Back To Eden Church say they are prepared to die for their church pastor, now a convicted rapist.

Some of his faithful followers were present in the High Court in Suva and afterwards told reporters that “Vakadranu is immortal” and they believe he will return to rejoin them one day.

A female spokesperson from the church’s commune near Veinuqa Village in Tailevu, who wished to remain anonymous, said the court case would not change the group’s teachings.

“Even if they take our pastor or the church to jail our teaching will continue and no one can change it. Our pastor might spend 50 years in jail, but he will come back and live to the end of the world.”

The spokesperson said: “The law of the government is different and the law of the church is different, we are sitting on the law of the Bible.”

She said the church aimed at getting their messages across the world and they trained their youth to deliver these messages.

They believed one needed to understand the teachings before preaching

“We believe in healthy living, our pastor is a health reformer and we are very strict with our health,” a spokesperon said.

“We only eat twice a day, including our young ones, we do exercises every day and we pray every morning and evening Our kids do go to school until they’re 15 or 16 then they’ll join the mission team and our kindergarten is run by Mrs Vakadranu,” she added

In the wake of Pastor Vakadranu’s conviction, five families had withdrawn from the church, she said.

She could not give the exact number but she said 12 loyal members remained on the commune.

The spokesperson said: “The committee of the church will have a meeting, after the sentencing of our Pastor, then we will appoint who will take over, but this will not change the teachings of this church.”

“God will provide,” said the spokesperson.

However, tension was high at Veinuqa village in Tailevu after the jailing of the pastor.

A village chief told the pastor’s wife that her husband should never return to the village.

The chief said the Back to Eden Church, did not belong to Veinuqa and they were not part of the village. He said they did not want to be associated with the small church commune.

The chief also criticised the Fiji Sun for writing that the church was at Veinuqa.

He said the church had brought disrepute to the village. - PNC