IICSA: Jesus Fellowship's 'cycle of forgiveness' — victims told to forgive, proven allegations answered with repentance, and convicted perpetrators welcomed back into leadership

Proceedings

1. 2021-09-02 · statutory inquiry investigation report published

   Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), England and Wales. The Inquiry heard evidence from the Jesus Fellowship Survivors Association about children who grew up in communes run by the Jesus Fellowship Church — roughly 2,000 members, most living communally with property, money and possessions shared, which broke from the Baptist Union and Evangelical Alliance in 1986. Its central finding on this Church concerns how disclosures were answered. The Inquiry recorded that 'placing pressure on individuals to forgive may also prevent any disclosures from being properly dealt with', and that within the Jesus Fellowship Church there was a 'cycle of forgiveness' in which victims were 'told to forgive, told to pray or told it was God's will or God alone would judge'; that where there was a PROVEN allegation the perpetrator was forgiven — 'they would say, well, it's repentance, reconciliation' — and that CONVICTED perpetrators 'would be welcomed back into the Church and into another leadership role' (¶62). Disclosure was in any event 'impossible' for children, because 'they weren't believed, nothing happened … Or the abuser would have been spoken to, prayed over, possibly moved to another house with other children', and it was seen as the children's fault (¶13.4). Those who tried to leave were 'spoken ill of, cursed' and 'prayed over very, very heavily by groups of men, rebuked in public, shouted at, screamed at', so that a child witnessing it feared 'that, if you left, awful things would happen to you' (¶13.1). The community had 'next to no contact with wider society' — 'Even the GP was part of the church' — and members were taught to be 'very suspicious of outside organisations' (¶46). All leaders were men, ten of them 'apostolic leaders' at the highest level with Noel Stanton at the very top; women and children were 'very much bottom of the rung', and women were seen as a 'temptation to men' subject to strict modesty rules (¶36). After the Church publicly invited disclosures in 2013 at the request of its insurers, Northamptonshire Police began Operation Lifeboat in 2014: eleven suspects were arrested and seven interviewed without arrest; seven were tried for child sexual offences including buggery, indecent assault of a child and sexual assault; and six were convicted of offences relating to eleven children (¶13.5). A further police investigation into the Church's alleged failures to protect those in its care, including failures to report allegations of abuse, was ongoing as at the date of the report (¶13.6).

Documented coercion mechanisms

• a 'cycle of forgiveness' in which victims who disclosed were 'told to forgive, told to pray or told it was God's will or God alone would judge'
• a proven allegation answered with 'repentance, reconciliation' for the perpetrator, and convicted perpetrators welcomed back into the Church and into another leadership role
• disclosure met with the abuser being 'spoken to, prayed over, possibly moved to another house with other children' rather than reported
• those who tried to leave 'spoken ill of, cursed', and 'prayed over very, very heavily by groups of men, rebuked in public, shouted at, screamed at'
• children taught that awful things would happen to them if they left
• a community with 'next to no contact with wider society' in which even the GP belonged to the church, and members were taught to be 'very suspicious of outside organisations'
• a hierarchy in which women and children were 'very much bottom of the rung' and women were seen as a 'temptation to men'