Abuse within the Jesus Army
On this page:- Child Abuse and the Vetting and Barring Scheme
- The Jesus Army Lifestyle and its Dangers
- The Jesus Army and the Slovakian Gypsies
- Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults
Child Abuse and the Vetting and Barring Scheme
Although under review, measures contained within the controversial "vetting and barring scheme" have begun to take effect throughout 2010. The scheme was introduced as a response to the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, and aspects of it have a direct effect on the operational activities of the JA; especially the Jesus Centres. Whether or not the likes of Philip Pullman will end up needing to have a CRB check before they can visit schools to talk with children about literature remains to be seen, especially as the Con-Lib Alliance have pledged to ensure that the scheme's restrictions are altered to ensure they comply with 'common sense'.
Many will welcome such a review, myself included. The prospect of my own eighty-year old mother needing to have such checks in order to continue helping out at the local village school with one-to-one reading sessions seemed to be the height of absurdity. But let's hope that the proverbial baby isn't thrown out with proverbial bathwater.
For all its absurdities, the Vetting and Barring scheme has the potential to ensure that sexual abuse within the JA is never again allowed to stain the lives of those who innocently felt such things belonged to an entirely different world.
In May 2010, the Northampton Chronicle and Echo wrote an article about the conviction of a man for paedophilic offences against children who were part of the Jesus Fellowship (the 'official' name for the organisation).
Judge Wide QC warned that children living within the Jesus Fellowship were 'plainly at risk of abuse' unless the organisation changes its child protection systems.
His comments came as no surprise to those of us who have, for many years, tried to highlight the dangers inherent in the lifestyle of the JA.
During their investigations into this particular case, the police apparently established that
"volunteers within the community did not undergo Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks before working with children". And unless suitable checks are made on those who are invited to
stay in any of the Jesus Army households or Jesus Centres, then there is no way of knowing whether those with criminal records are actually
sleeping under the same roof as children and vulnerable adults!
The Jesus Army Lifestyle and its Dangers
An encounter with members of the JA isn't one that will be quickly forgotten, not least because of the brightly coloured pseudo combat uniforms they wear and the equally garish buses that are used for transport and mobile operations centres. At the heart of the JA structure is an organisation called the New Creation Christian Community (NCCC), where many hundreds of people practice a communal lifestyle within the seventy properties owned by the sect. Varied in size - the larger properties such as Cornhill Manor, an ex-country hotel, can accommodate over 60 residents - they are spread across the land from Leeds to Brighton. Some of the urban properties are integrated with what are known as Jesus Centres, the focal point for the sect's evangelistic recruitment - which is targeted to a greater or lesser extent at some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
The communal lifestyle of the NCCC, the epicentre of the JA, involves the renunciation of 'worldy' goods and allegiances. Its mission, expressed theologically, is to be a representation of the Kingdom of God here on Earth. This is achieved through the denial of 'I' or 'me' in favour of 'us'. As such, each 'brother' and 'sister' renounces their entitlement to the individual ownership of material possessions and control over their own destiny. All possessions and income are surrendered to a central trust, and entitlement to make key lifestyle decisions on matters such as career, marriage and leisure activities are surrendered to community leaders, known as 'elders'. Although there are different layers of membership within the JA, those within the very inner circle have made a pledge of lifelong commitment to the sect; and those on the periphery, whether they realise it or not, are being carefully drawn inwards.
I know something of the JA from direct experience, having been a member of the sect for about five years from 1976 until 1981. Whilst a member, I was persuaded by the sect's leader, Noel Stanton, to enrol for doctoral study at Warwick University with a view to producing a sociologically-validated thesis that would exonerate the lifestyle pursued by the NCCC. The plan backfired somewhat: my studies were a contributory factor to concluding that the sect was more akin to a cult than a conventional, albeit radical, expression of Christianity. Since leaving and 'coming out' as a key opponent to the JA lifestyle, I've kept my finger tightly on their pulse and contributed to numerous media features and documentaries. Through a website which I established as a resource to provide information and help to those who had been affected either directly (as members) or indirectly (as friends and family of members), I've frequently been contacted by disillusioned members with stories of abuse and control that have occasionally left me tearful.
The ideological appeal of what the JA represents, and the genuine sense that many experience of belonging to a loving society, means that the very mention of words such as abuse - spiritual, psychological or physical - is dismissed by some of the brothers and sisters, and especially the elders, to be no more than the language of persecution from those who are opposed to their lifestyle. Or else they feel that it was all something that used to happen and has now been sorted out. Take the thrashing of children with wooden rods as a case in point. Noel Stanton used to often rant about the need for physical discipline: the danger of 'sparing the rod and spoiling the child'. Wooden canes were kept in hidden, but well-known, locations in every community household - often above the toilet or bathroom door architrave. The sound of a young child screaming in pain as his father beat him mercilessly is one which still haunts my memory. But it wasn't just parents who used the rod: there were many un-related brothers and sisters who were entitled to use this corrective facility when necessary.
Following the sect's dismissal from the Evangelical Alliance of Great Britain in the 1985, it appears that that this was one of the practices that was quietly 'sorted out' whilst they tried to gain readmission. Too late, though, for those poor children who had been psychologically scarred for life. Too late for the psychological damage done to those of us who witnessed what was going on and were unable to do anything about it!
Nor, given the living arrangements within the NCCC and the damaged people who live there, should it be any surprise that sexual abuse took place. I was a near-victim myself. I remember only too clearly the day when a brother called Gary told me that he had woken up in the night to find that another brother, Peter, had his hand underneath the bed cover and was masturbating him. Come daylight, he wondered whether it had all perhaps been a dream. Incredulous that this could have really happened, he told me about what had happened. I assured him that a dream was the most likely explanation. And that's what I myself believed! Until, that is, I was disturbed one night soon after by the feeling of a hand on my body. Awakened in a flash, I managed to run after Peter and catch him before he'd made his escape. Being something of a gentle, 'pretty' and effeminate young man, it wasn't the only time I'd attracted unwanted homosexual attention. I was over eighteen at the time; but there were often brothers in the household who were minors. And there was nearly always someone living in each of our various households who would have been defined within the vetting and barring scheme as being a 'vulnerable adult'.
I don't think that what happened had any lasting impact on me. I can't say the same for Gary, nor for those victims whom I don't know about. Pity the young man who wrote to me recently and told me stories of being dragged upstairs by his ears by one of the so-called leaders and made to parade the streets in Jesus Army clothing and suffer the taunts of his school friends in order to teach him how to identify with the suffering of Christ himself. Worse still, he too was 'touched' in the night-time by someone who had been brought into the house as a result of the JA evangelistic outreach. His whole family were JA members; and when he told his father about what had happened, he was simply told that he needed to forgive the abuser.
Spare a thought, too, for the sexually abused pin-down child survivor who tells the story of being paired off with a homosexual man in order to help him overcome his 'problem'.
"I found out that I had been virtually put up for auction by JA elders - a homosexual man told me that he had been encouraged to have a relationship with me, to try to wean him off being gay! I was so hurt by the way I was treated, I knew nothing about this until this man told me, and I had trusted and liked some of these elders, I had thought of them as my spiritual brothers. I was outraged that my Christian family should treat me in such a disrespectful way."
The vivid accounts which people give of what has happened to them whilst being members of the JA are too detailed, too similar, and too poignant to disregard. The most recent account I have of life as a community member within the JA comes from a young woman, Naomi, who left in the recent past. She talks about being made to feel like a celebrity when she first moved in and how she initially felt that the loneliness of being a single parent would be consigned to the past. With the passage of time, however, she became aware of more and more rules that she was expected to comply with. Some of them were trivial, such as not being allowed to buy coffee from a vending machine; others, such as the prohibition on reading any 'secular' books, were far more demanding.
Naomi writes of how she came to live in fear of inadvertently breaking yet another rule and the reprimand that would follow from the household elder when she did:
"More and more new rules and regulations emerged, and the first time I heard of them was when I broke them."
One day, a document was put on the household notice board that she refers to as having 'scared the living daylights out of me'. It was called the New Creation Christian Community Charter and was a 'breathtaking' ten page document of dos and don'ts - the later being far longer than the first. Naomi was shocked to realise that she was breaking about 70% of the rules. She dreaded having to have one of the requisite 'performance review' that would then be posted on the notice board for all to see.
Worse still was the fact that she was hardly getting any time alone with her young boy. She was expected to perform domestic household duties throughout the day and then, on most evenings, attend a 'worship meeting' that went on until ten; either that or engage in some other 'ministry' such as helping out at one of Jesus Centres or street evangelism. She became desperately worried that her son was being neglected; even more worried as she thought about what lay ahead for both of them as a requirement of living within a New Creation Christian Community household.
"You were expected to share your room with any guest of the same sex. I have always been a light sleeper and if I had to sleep in the same room with anyone who snores, I wouldn't be able to sleep a wink. I could see just how I could get more tired than I already was.
My son would be moving into the brothers' quarters when he reached 13, and in the same way he would be expected to share his room with any male guests. I shuddered to think of this! I knew nothing about the men who came to stay in the house for holidays or for weekends, and there was no guarantee that none of them had unhealthy interests. Even if my son wasn't sharing a room with a total stranger, there were no locks in any of the doors. I just didn't feel safe there any more."
The Jesus Army and the Slovakian Gypsies
Many of those who live within the NCCC have jobs in the outside world, probably the majority. But many also work for what are often described as 'Kingdom Businesses'. The JA owns a range of companies which, taken collectively, can only legitimately be called something of an empire. It includes a medical practice, a legal practice, a string of farms, a chain of builders merchants, a building and heating company, a commercial craft workshop, and a massive wholesale food company. Each company is owned by the parent, the House of Goodness Ltd., whose turnover before the recession in 2005 was forty-one million pounds. In 2006 it dropped to a measly 20 million due to a major reorganisation of product range; and the latest set of returns for 2008 show a rise to 22 million. The House of Goodness companies were, however, better placed than many to ride out the recession: the average wage is a fraction of what it what it would be in comparable occupations.
With a healthy income from the businesses, and the donation of capital and income from many hundreds, the JA is in a good position to attract people with its offer of shelter, work and enough fraternal love to strengthen the most fragile of egos. If it's not possible to place someone within one of the House of Goodness businesses, then the sect will use its resources, human and material, to help the unemployed find work elsewhere. It's a package that had great appeal to a group of Romanies from a resettlement village in Slovakia.
As a follow up to her award winning film, Gypsy Tears, Austrian film maker Zuzana Brejcha spent over a year making a documentary about what happened to a group of Slovakian Gypsies who had been recruited to become part of the Jesus Army movement in Sheffield. The resulting film might just as well be called 'Gypsy Tears - part two'. Despite enough journeys between Slovakia and Sheffield to make Lewis Hamilton's carbon footprint appear insignificant, the vast majority of Gypsy 'converts' ultimately returned to their home village in Slovakia with the feeling that they'd been cheated by the JA.
What happened to them followed a pattern that has become extremely familiar to those of us who have been observers over many years. It all starts off as very nearly too good to be true: a real life fairy tale. That's certainly how many of the Romanies saw it. Coming from a background of desperate poverty and welfare dependency, where the monthly welfare payment was almost immediately handed over to usurers, this was Shangri-La indeed. The menfolk were thrilled to have jobs, be it as delivery drivers or cleaners.
It was only when the reality of what belonging to the JA really meant, and what the JA really wanted, that the rot began to set in. What was being demanded of them was nothing short of a complete and radical change of lifestyle: a lifestyle that would have overturned centuries of Romany culture. The sense of frustration, sorrow and anger as the Romanies started coming to grips with their sense of imprisonment is all too clear in the film. Some of the men began returning to their old ways of doing things.
When a couple of them lost their jobs as cleaners, they took their revenge on the boss with their fists. Zuzana told me about an incident which more or less summed everything up, for her and myself alike.
A young, pregnant Romany woman, Sophia, hadn't been eating very well and the family were worried about her. Her mother had been cooking schnitzels and there was great delight when the Sophia was the first to help herself and start munching. Her husband, a young JA member who had embarked on the relationship with Sophia against the traditional approval of the family (nor, for that matter, the approval of the JA - and therein lies another issue beyond the scope of this present article), tried to take the schnitzel away from her, complaining that it wasn't good food to eat. When Zuzana tried to intervene, she was told that if Sophia wanted to be part of the JA then she had to do as she was told: she had to 'adjust and follow'.
The bitterly sad ending to the film featured one of key characters, Joseph, reminiscing on where it had all gone wrong. Lying on his bed, this tough Romany man was close to tears. His verdict?
'They fooled us!'
The same theme ran through a documentary made by Leo Regan about eight or nine years ago for the 'True Stories' series on Channel Four. It features the London Jesus Centre, otherwise known as 'Battle Centre'. If ever there was a clear documented example of the living arrangements which afford opportunity for close contact with children and vulnerable adults, then this is it. Indeed, one of the central characters is a young boy called Keith, who becomes a member of the Battle Centre household before he has turned eighteen. And it clearly illustrates the way in which young men like Keith are targeted by the JA, not least when you see one of the elders, Steve, talking about how his heart bleeds for all the 'broken, hurting, people out there on the streets of London'. When, however, everything turns sour and Keith is unable to conform with the Jesus Army lifestyle, he is ceremoniously dumped back onto the same streets - at which point Steve-the-elder explains that he cannot take responsibility for everyone who they invite back to Battle Centre, nor can he take the weight of the world on his shoulder.
In actual fact, I would suggest that under the terms of vetting and barring scheme, along with many others in the Jesus Army, Steve is designated as being a 'Regulated Activity Provider'. As such, he has legal duties to observe. This includes the need to inform the Independent Safeguarding Authority of anyone whom he has any reason to suspect might pose a threat to children or vulnerable adults. If he's unwilling to take the weight of the world on his shoulders, then he must at least take the weight of the law on them.
Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults
So what exactly is 'regulated activity'? Quite simply, it's any activity undertaken, either professionally or voluntarily, that involves working closely with children or vulnerable adults on a regular basis. It's time to mention the Jesus Army Charitable Trust. This is the trust that has been set up to fund the 'charitable' activities of the sect. The objectives of the trust are clearly set out in its financial statements, as are the means of fulfilling them:
'The objectives of the charity are to assist people in need or suffering hardship because of their social and economic circumstances, to advance the Christian religion through the provision of places of worship and to provide facilities for recreation in the interests of social welfare.
The current strategy for meeting these objects is operating Jesus Centres providing care, worship and social facilities in major towns and cities around the United Kingdom.'
There can be little doubt that those responsible for the running of the Jesus Centres, and, I would suggest, any community household that has children and vulnerable adults living in it, are providers of regulated activity. Explicitly: if the Jesus Centres are providing assistance to people who are 'in need or suffering hardship because of their social and economic circumstances', then they are providing assistance to vulnerable adults. Likewise, any sect member, or visitor, who engages with children in a context of instruction, supervision or care is engaging in regulated activity.
Although the fine detail of the vetting and barring scheme is quite complex, the basic situation insofar as it applies to regulated activity is quite straightforward. Those organisations which provide regulated activity (e.g. schools, Sunday schools, Scouts and the JA) have a legal - let alone moral - duty to establish a procedure of due diligence to ensure that their staff, members and volunteers pose no threat. This involves processes such as obtaining CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) checks and enquiring into people's background. Anyone who is subsequently suspected to pose a threat to children or vulnerable adults must be referred to the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA).
If any JA member who is engaged in delivering the objectives of the Jesus Army Charitable hasn't been suitably screened, then those who are responsible for providing the regulated activity will, according to my understanding of the legislation, be committing a serious criminal offence.
One ex-JA member has often asked me how it can be possible that a convicted sex offender can be allowed to live and work within one of the Jesus Centres. Unless this man has been referred to the ISA and given clearance, then my answer is that - so far as I myself understand the terms of the scheme - he is doing so in flagrant violation of the law. I certainly won't be the only one asking how it can be that a somewhat frail eighty-year-old lady (such as my own mother) will soon need to receive formal approval from the ISA if she is to carry on reading to school children while a convicted sex offender can play an active role within a Jesus Centre and, if nothing worse, be allowed to drag a child up the stairs by his ears?
Unless the relevant authorities take action, then there will be many who remain at risk.
Over the past 30 years there have been what many would feel to be quite a large number of tragic deaths involving those who have either been Jesus Army members or were closely related to the sect. To date, none of them have been conclusively identified by the relevant coroners as being 'suspicious'. Many people, however, including the coroners themselves, have acknowledged that there are still questions to ask about some of these deaths. According to Naomi's testimony, the recent suicide of a JA sister was glossed over and hushed up within the sect. During my own time of membership, when I lived at New Creation Farm along with the sect's founder and leader, Noel Stanton, the death of my room-mate attracted considerable publicity and couldn't have been hushed up: the decapitated body of Stephen Orchard was found on the nearby East Coast railway line. We were constantly reassured by the leadership in the days that followed of what a wonderfully devoted and contented community member he'd been. It was never referred to publically, and yet I personally overheard him having a heated argument with the Stanton shortly before his death. My last memory of Steve is the one of him storming off down the stairs with Stanton pleading with him to come back.
Stanton himself died of natural causes in June 2010.