Cult leader ‘raped followers in maze-like concrete base’
British former members of the group claim TB Joshua sexually assaulted and tortured his devotees
‘We all thought we were in heaven, but we were in hell and in hell, terrible things happen’
BRITISH members of a global evangelical church linked to Constance Marten have spoken out amid claims its leader raped and tortured followers, forcing some to undergo abortions.
Dozens of former members of the Synagogue Church of all Nations (SCOAN) – five of whom are British – claim its leader, the late Temitope Balogun Joshua, known as TB Joshua, who claimed to have hundreds of millions of followers, ran a cult which enabled his abuse.
Joshua found international fame and recruited thousands of people from across the world, including the UK and other European countries, to his church in Nigeria. He was worshipped and revered as a Christian preacher who claimed to perform miracles, exorcisms, and healing cures and who could commune directly with God.
Constance Marten, 37, the aristocrat accused of the manslaughter of her baby alongside her partner, Mark Gordon, 49, was reportedly a former member of SCOAN. Marten, who grew up on a £100million estate in Dorset, and whose grandmother was goddaughter of the late Queen Mother, is thought to have gone to Lagos to join SCOAN as a teenager.
Marten and Gordon are due to stand trial later this month and deny the charges against them.
The allegations of physical and sexual abuse against TB Joshua’s followers – revealed in a new BBC documentary, The Disciples – took place in a secretive compound in Lagos, Nigeria, over a period of almost 30 years. More than 25 former church members hailing from the UK, Nigeria, US, South Africa, Ghana, Namibia and Germany spoke to the BBC. The British victims were all aged between 15 and 21 years old when they joined the church.
Four of the British citizens who spoke to the BBC say they reported the alleged abuse to the UK police after escaping the church, and were referred to Interpol. They claim no further action was taken.
One of the victims, a British woman called Rae, was 21 when she abandoned her degree in 2022 at Brighton University and joined SCOAN.
Rae spent the next 12 years as one of Joshua’s so-called “disciples” inside his maze-like concrete compound.
“We all thought we were in heaven, but we were in hell, and in hell terrible things happen,” she told the BBC.
Rae said that Joshua sexually assaulted her and subjected her to a form of solitary confinement for two years. She said that the abuse was so severe that she attempted suicide multiple times. Jessica Kaimu, from Namibia, claimed that her ordeal lasted more than five years. She said that she was first raped by Joshua when she was 17, and that repeated rapes by him led to her having five forced abortions while there. “These were backdoor type … it could have killed us,” she said.
Other interviewees say they were stripped and beaten with electrical cables and horse whips, and routinely denied sleep. There are also dozens of eyewitness accounts of physical violence or torture carried out by Joshua, including instances of child abuse and people being whipped and chained.
A number of witnesses in Nigeria claim they were physically attacked, and in one case shot at, after speaking out against the abuse and posting videos containing allegations. A BBC crew that attempted to record footage of the church’s Lagos compound from a public street in March 2022 was also fired at by the church’s security, and was detained at gunpoint for hours.
The BBC Africa Eye two-year investigation, which was carried out alongside international media platform open-democracy, is the first time that multiple former church insiders have come forward to speak on the record. They claim that they have repeatedly tried to raise the alarm over a number of years, but have effectively been silenced.
Joshua died aged 57 in June 2021, hailed as one of the most influential pastors in African history. He grew up in poverty, and built an evangelical empire that included dozens of political leaders, celebrities and international footballers. An interview with Nelson Mandela’s daughter in 2013 shows a portrait of Joshua sitting on the former South African president’s desk.
SCOAN continues to thrive today, under the leadership of Joshua’s wife, Evelyn, who last year led a tour of Spain.
The SCOAN website is currently down. However, the BBC contacted the current leadership of the Synagogue Church of All Nations with the allegations in this film. They replied: “Making unfounded allegations against Prophet TB Joshua is not a new occurrence [...] None of the allegations was ever substantiated [...]”. They did not respond to the details of the allegations.
A spokesperson for UK’S Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: “We take all reports of crime, including sexual assault and violence against British nationals overseas, very seriously […] We always encourage British nationals who want to raise rape and sexual assault allegations, whether current or historic, to contact our consular teams who can support them to report these to the authorities.”