Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Other or denomination not established San Jose, California, USA · 2006

United States: 2×2 worker Ruben Mata convicted — 36 years to life — for abusing boys of host families

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

itinerant minister ('worker') of the nameless 2×2 sect

Organization

'Two by Twos' / 'The Truth' (nameless sect)

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The same canonical 2×2 nexus as Severud and Mousseau: a homeless itinerant minister lodged inside member families' homes as an act of faith, with the families' total spiritual trust.

Pastoral or clerical authority
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2006-11-01 · jury conviction and sentence; died in custody

Santa Clara County Superior Court, California, USA. Ruben Mata, a longtime 2×2 travelling worker reported to have abused dozens of boys across his ministry, was convicted by a Santa Clara County jury in November 2006 on counts including forcible lewd acts on a child and aggravated sexual assault of a child under fourteen, and sentenced in January 2007 to 36 years to life. Court records give the case number as CC628419, filed 4 May 2006, with bail denied and no parole available. He died in prison on 2 October 2007.

Documented coercion mechanisms

the sect's practice of housing workers in member families' homes
spiritual standing over host families across decades of ministry

Cited record

Sources

national news agency investigative and conviction report Rebecca Boone, 'Survivors seek a reckoning as FBI investigates child sex abuse in little-known Christian sect', Associated Press, 16 Dec. 2024.: AP investigation confirming Mata's 2006 conviction and death in a California prison.
documentation archive court record compilation 2x2ministry.org case-documentation page for Ruben Mata, archived 14 Aug. 2019.: Documentation-site compilation of the court record, retrieved via the Wayback Machine (paired with the AP anchor; index use).

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://sentinelcolorado.com/nation-world/nation/survivors-seek-a-reckoning-as-fbi-investigates-child-sex-abuse-in-little-known-christian-sect/ Corpus classification: national-news-agency; evidentiary role: investigative-and-conviction-report. SHA-256 f6683281ea819bb93264abf03a644543ded19354fb178a8a814aa1c3cf86d2f3
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: http://web.archive.org/web/20190814121147/http://2x2ministry.org/workers/Ruben_Mata.php Corpus classification: documentation-archive; evidentiary role: court-record-compilation. SHA-256 73a2c45f889592ec309f7738392aadda857d0fca72270523ccdfb762379d2fe4
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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