Twelve Tribes families left the country for Austria
Augburger Allgemeine
June 5, 2014
Translated from the German
Several parents and their children of the controversial sect “Twelve Tribes” seem to have left Germany. At the end of April five teenagers moved with their parents to Austria said the Donau-Ries District Office on Wednesday. The young people were brought in September 2013 along with 35 other minors to a large-scale police operation from their families and were temporarily housed in nursing facilities. The parents are accused of violence against their children. The Twelve Tribes believe in punishing their children for religious reasons.
A court awarded parental custody back to the parents. In two other cases the parents lost custody because they needed to prove their children were enrolled in state-approved schools. In the fifth case, the parents received full custody of their adolescents back unconditionally. The sect members live in Klosterzimmern and in Wörnitz in Ansbach district. Child abuse allegations against the “Twelve Tribes” have lingered. The sect was founded in Chattanooga, Tennessee in the 1970s. The number of members is estimated at 2,000.
