A cult leader jailed for sex attacks on children escaped in a helicopter from a prison on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion on Monday, the regional administration said. Juliano Verbard, who was serving a 15-year term for rapes and sex assaults on children, and two of his jailed followers were hauled on board a chopper hijacked by three accomplices, said senior official Jean-Francois Moniotte.

"All our search procedures have been put into action to find them," said Moniotte, who is chief of staff to Reunion's prefect, the central government's representative and police chief on the island.

The helicopter landed on waste ground a few hundred metres (yards) away and the gang escaped in a van that had been waiting for them, he said. The two crew members were unhurt and are assisting police.

Earlier, the hijackers had boarded the chopper pretending to be tourists, before seizing control and directing the pilots to Domenjod prison, where it landed in the exercise yard and took on the escapees.

He was jailed in February 2008 for attacks on children aged nine and 13, whose mother was the sect's treasurer. He is also under investigation in two other cases, another alleged sex attack and the kidnap of a 12-year-old.

Authorities attempted to dismantle the sect after it was implicated in the kidnap of 12-year-old Alexandre, a boy that Verbard claimed was destined to become his successor at the head of the group.

Spectacular helicopter escapes have become a regular embarrassment for French penal authorities and, unlike Reunion's Domenjod, jails in mainland France now often have protective nets over their exercise yards.

Since 1986, there have been 10 escapes from French jails in helicopters, most recently in July 2007 when gangster and murderer Pascal Payet managed to get out of Grasse prison in a hijacked chopper.