CHIHUAHUA, Mexico - (AP) -- A judge late Tuesday found former Mexican pop superstar Gloria Trevi innocent of rape, kidnapping and corruption of minors charges and ordered her immediate release from prison.

After more than a month of weighing evidence, Judge Javier Pineda read his decision in front of a courtroom cage holding the 36-year-old fallen icon and two backup-singers, who were also absolved of the same charges. They faced sentences of up to 25 years.

Prosecutors had alleged that Trevi, backup singer María Raquenel Portillo and their manager, Sergio Andrade, sexually abused girls who joined their globe-trotting entourage looking for musical training. When officials discovered that Andrade's troupe had abandoned a child in Spain in 1998, the three disappeared, touching off a Latin America-wide manhunt.

They were arrested in Brazil in January 2000. After years of vowing to fight extradition, Trevi suddenly decided she wanted to have her day in court and was flown to Mexico in December 2002.

Trevi, ''Mexico's Madonna,'' was one of Mexico's biggest pop stars in the 1990s.