An investigation by BBC’s Africa Eye has exposed how late televangelist and founder of Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) T. B Joshua brainwashed, tortured and sexually assaulted some church members mostly teenagers at the time of their ordeals.
The more than two years investigation, which began even before the man affectionately called Prophet T. B Joshua died in June 2021, gathered evidence from former senior members of the church, who worked closely with Joshua, and victims from different countries including the UK, who were members of the “disciples”.
The evidence alleged atrocities including rape, forced abortions and physical abuse perpetrated by the deceased pastor.
One of the ex senior members Agomoh Paul who said he was in charge of “miracles” production, revealed how T. B Joshua faked miracles and ensured they were recorded and spread to evangelical churches across the globe.
These video tapes were targeted at attracting particularly white people to market his brand and to enslave them in retaliation of the Atlantic Slave Trade, Agomoh and Bisola, another ex senior member of SCOAN said.
Rae, a British citizen, was inspired by the tapes of Joshua’s healings in 2002 to abandon her studies and run to Nigeria with her friend in search of T. B Joshua.
Though Rae and her friend had planned to spend just a week in Lagos, Africa’s largest city, where the church is headquartered, she did not return home for more than a decade.
She was recruited into T. B Joshua’s disciple and had to spend 12 years confined in his compound, where she suffered various abuses in the hands of the so-called prophet.
Her friend was, however, lucky to return home as planned.
Rae told the BBC how the deceased pastor sexually assaulted and raped her repeatedly.
She was also physically and emotionally abused including being given silent treatment as a punishment for 2 years while confined in the compound. She became suicidal, she recounted.
Jessica Kaimu, now a broadcast journalist in Namibia, told the BBC investigative team that she was just 17 and a virgin when T. B Joshua raped her in a bathroom in his house and subsequently, forced her to commit abortion on 5 different occasions when she got pregnant for him.
Jessica and Rae’s ordeals mirror what many of the disciples, an elite group of followers who served the late televangelist and lived with him inside his compound, went through in his hands, BBC’s Africa Eye found.
More than dozen of them, who were interviewed, revealed how they worked for long hours without pay and sleep.
They needed permission to sleep. Or else, T. B Joshua, whom, some of the interviewees described as temperamental, would physically abuse them.
They were also forced to cut ties with their families and friends.
Some of them recounted being violently raped and left bleeding or struggling to breath.
Many recalled being stripped naked and raped with objects while others were stripped naked and made to whip one another with electrical cables.
An alleged rape victim, Victoria (not her real name), said the pastor had a team in place that searched and handpicked his victims from the congregation. After she was repeatedly raped, she was made a member of the team.
Bisola, who worked for Joshua for 14 years, said he ordered her to “recruit virgins for him… So that he could bring them into the disciple-fold and disvirgin them”.
The investigation revealed Joshua did perpetrate the alleged sex crimes against not only unmarried teenagers, but also married women, too.
A British man, who and his wife fled the church in 2010 after being held at gunpoint by members of SCOAN, who described themselves as police officers, described how T. B Joshua raped his wife several times.
T. B Joshua was very influential during his lifetime and made millions of dollars through his SCOAN, according to ex senior members of the church who were his right-hand men and women.
His supposed healing powers attracted people from all walks of life including top politicians and celebrities.
One of them was late former Ghanaian leader Prof. Evans Atta-Mills, who returned to Joshua’s church after his victory in the 2008 Ghana’s elections, to give testimony of how the pastor had prayed for him and predicted his victory.
