Survivor speaks out in powerful BBC documentary about sexual abuse inside Northamptonshire religious cult
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A survivor of the Jesus Fellowship Church – formerly known as the Jesus Army – has spoken out in a powerful new BBC documentary about her experience of abuse, control and identity loss after joining the group as a teenager.
Sarah, who moved from Birmingham to into the group’s communal house in Bugbrooke – where the Jesus Army was founded – said she joined the church aged 17 during a vulnerable period in her life.
“I was lost,” she told the Channel 4 documentary at the time, shown in archive footage. “Things in my life, I knew that I was lonely, that things that I’d built up were just shallow… My parents had passed away. Losing my parents, I had to feel like there was somewhere for them to go, so I had a kind of God thing anyway.”
She said: “I was just buzzing. It was just like a high, like a natural high. There were so many young people there. I’ve never been to a church where you get worship like that. Never, never, never. There was something that felt like a movement in it.
“I was quite an impulsive young girl. So I was just like, I really like it. I’m going to move into community. I just did that. I chose the house that I was going to stay at.”
But within a year, she said she was being sexually abused by a church elder.
Content retrieved from: https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/people/survivor-speaks-out-in-powerful-bbc-documentary-about-sexual-abuse-inside-northamptonshire-religious-cult-5248036.
