Investigating one of the UK’s most abusive cults

Hundreds of people are still traumatised as a result of abuse they suffered at the hands of a now-disgraced evangelical movement. Jon Ironmonger, who investigated the Jesus Army group prior to its closure five years ago, has been to meet the director of a new BBC documentary series telling its story.

At first glance, the Jesus Army seemed a “happy-clappy” church set in the Northamptonshire countryside, with two- or three thousand members, a gaudy military-style uniform, and a fleet of rainbow-coloured battle buses.

The reality was very different.

In 2016 I found myself embarking on a years-long journey to expose one of the UK’s most abusive cults.

There had been reports already about dubious practices and unexplained deaths, including that of a young man whose body was found on a railway track.

But months later, over tea at St Pancras Station, a woman who had fled the group as a teenager and wanted to remain anonymous, revealed the true scale of the damage it had caused.

“How many victims have contacted you?” I asked, expecting an answer perhaps in double figures.

“In the region of six- or seven hundred,” she replied calmly.

My mind was blown. Two years of interviews and investigations followed before the BBC published our findings detailing the widespread abuse of children, and evidence of a cover-up by the senior leadership.

The church, known formally as the Jesus Fellowship, closed a year later.

Intrigued by media reports of the unfolding scandal, in 2022 documentary director Ellena Wood began her own investigation into the Jesus Army.

She spoke to more than 80 survivors, as well as relatives and family members. The result is a gripping, sometimes harrowing, two-part film.

“I was often the first person they had shared their experiences with and nearly everyone was still traumatised. It was very much a live process for them,” she says.

“One of the things that struck me was they would describe what we know as sexual abuse, but wouldn’t understand it as that, or would blame themselves for it.

“And, as a filmmaker, I wanted to convey to an audience that you don’t just leave a cult and move on with your life, it can inform everything about you; your decisions; your way of thinking; your guilt; your relationships”.

Ellena says she set out to challenge assumptions about the reasons people stay in cults.

She compares it to the thought of leaving a domestic relationship, with the additional anguish of abandoning one’s family, friends, money, job, and support system, along with the inherent threat of going to hell.

For instance, she says one contributor, Nathan, “despite struggling to come to terms with the fact he was groomed and sexually assaulted, admitted he would likely return to the Jesus Army if it reopened”.

• Details of help and support with child sexual abuse and sexual abuse or violence are available in the UK at BBC Action Line

For children in particular, life in the cult’s many communal houses throughout central England was intense and fraught with danger.

About one in six was sexually abused, according to a review of the damages claims of some 600 individuals.

Children were separated from their parents and often slept in dorms with drifters and drug addicts.

Many were subjected to daily beatings and endured long worship sessions with exorcisms and the recanting of sins.

Listening to the survivors’ accounts took an emotional toll on Ellena.

“I had just become a mother and was having two- or three-hour detailed conversations about abuse, sometimes involving incest, and then my son would come in from nursery, and all these mental images would be in my head,” she says.

“You’re forming these relationships that involve a lot of contact, a lot of reassurance, and you’re trying to do the right thing by everyone, so it’s a lot to carry sometimes.”

After the Jesus Army disbanded, the BBC revealed its founder, Noel Stanton, along with his five so-called apostles, had covered up the abuse of women and children through their handling of complaints.

One former elder described the leader of the church as a “predatory paedophile” and handed me a file of disclosures, accusing him of rape and sexual assaults.

But Stanton died in 2009, before he could answer any of the claims.

Of Stanton, Ellena says “people were terrified of him and in awe of him in equal measure. Children, in particular, were utterly terrified.”

But was Stanton’s cult always evil, or did it start as something good and morph into something evil?

“If I had to guess, I’d say the latter,” says Ellena.

“I think the more power Noel had over everyone, the more control he felt he had to have.

“But I think the biggest problem was not reporting abuse; victims were forgiven and often gaslighted. There’s no excuse for it.”

Ellena is clear many people who were in the Jesus Army had positive experiences: “It wasn’t awful for everyone all of the time, and we have to recognise things aren’t black and white in the world”.

In a poignant scene in the documentary, David, a former elder who is largely supportive of the group, breaks down in tears under Ellena’s careful questioning.

“He acknowledges he has to start from a place of believing what people went through is real, and it’s the first time any leader has ever said that from the church, so it was a huge moment,” she says.

The Jesus Fellowship Trust, which is winding up the affairs of the Jesus Army, said it was appalled by the abuse that occurred, and offered an unreserved apology to all those affected.

Last year a redress scheme, funded in part through insurance, paid individual damages averaging about £12,000 to hundreds of victims.

Inside the Cult of the Jesus Army is on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer at 21:00 BST on Sunday 27 July.

An accompanying podcast, In Detail: The Jesus Army Cult will launch on BBC Sounds on Monday 28 July.