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Police have arrested the pastor of a defunct church in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, his wife and six former congregants in a sexual abuse case involving as many as 24 children, authorities said.

Authorities said they have interviewed five possible victims in the case. Victims may range in age from toddlers to teens, authorities said.

CNN does not identify children involved in sex abuse cases and has chosen not to identify adult defendants because they may share family names with the alleged victims.

Investigators believe the abuse took place between 1999 and 2002 and involved a “select few” congregants of the now-defunct Hosanna Church, Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s spokeswoman Laura Covington said.

On Saturday, law enforcement authorities issued an arrest warrant for a ninth person in the case, said sheriff’s deputies in Tangipahoa Parish, where the church was located.

The church’s former pastor told deputies Tuesday in nearby Livingston Parish—where the pastor lives—that adults were sexually abusing children, parish sheriff’s Detective Stan Carpenter said.

The former pastor told deputies he had been having sex with children for many years and “also educated the children as to how to perform sexual acts with each other and with animals,” Carpenter said.

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Filed under: Law