Alleged abusers may get share of Jesus Army wealth
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People accused of child abuse could receive significantly larger payments than their alleged victims under plans to share the fortune of a disgraced evangelical sect.
The organisation, known as the Jesus Army, has already paid out compensation to hundreds of people as part of a damages scheme.
Legal submissions, seen by the BBC, reveal it has £25m left which it intends to divide among loyal members. Survivors described the proposals as sickening.
A spokesperson for the Jesus Fellowship Community Trust (JFCT), which is winding up the affairs of the group, insisted the trustees had acted “in accordance with the trust deed”.
One of the UK’s largest and most abusive cults, the Jesus Army, or Jesus Fellowship Church, was founded by Noel Stanton, the late pastor of Bugbrooke Chapel, in Northamptonshire in 1969.
In 2017, three years prior to the group disbanding, documents seen by the BBC showed the estimated total value of its assets was £58.6m.
These included businesses and 55 large houses throughout England, which have since been sold.’
Last year, under a redress scheme organised by the JFCT trustees, a compensation payment of £7.7m was shared among 601 individuals who said they suffered sexual, physical and emotional abuse in the fellowship’s strict communal houses.
But claimants, most of whom were child victims, have criticised the scheme as ungenerous given it was almost entirely funded by insurers and is understood to have cost the trust about 5% of the total value of its assets.
“I don’t think it followed any Christian code whatsoever,” says Graham Lewis, 66, who worked as a nurse practitioner for the sect.
He left in 1996 because gay relationships were forbidden.
Mr Lewis says he believes those who remained members of the fellowship until the end have been “trying to protect themselves and feather their own nests”.
As a victim of emotional and sexual abuse, he was paid £25,000 under the redress scheme.
“It doesn’t compensate for the harm I suffered, and it also doesn’t cover the financial losses I incurred; the 15 years I couldn’t pay into a pension for example,” he said.
Content retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqjqxrz5yd0o.
