Army of Jesus: Survivors reveal what the routine of Christian sect abuse was like to create a sky on earth

Jon Ironmonger met with BBC’s new documentary director Ellena Wood at the Bugbrooke Chapel in Northamptonshire, England. There was founded the fraternity of Jesus in 1969. BBC hundreds of people are still traumatized by the abuses suffered in the hands of an ancient religious movement that fell into disgrace. Jon Ironmonger investigated the group known as the army of Jesus before his closure, five years ago. He met the director of a new BBC documentary series to tell his story. At first glance, the army of Jesus seemed to be an enthusiastic church in the rural region of NorthamptonShire, England. She gathered 2 or 3,000 members, who wore a flashy military uniform, and had a bus fleet with rainbow colors. But the reality was very different. ✅ Click here to follow the G1 international news channel on WhatsApp in 2016, I started a journey that lasted years to expose one of the UK’s most abusive sects. At the time, there were reports of dubious practices and unlawful deaths, such as that of a young man whose body was found on a train line. Months later, as we had tea at St. Pancras station in London, a woman who had fled the group when she was a teenager revealed the true scale of damage caused by the service. She asked to remain anonymous. “How many victims got in touch with you,” I asked her. I expected an answer perhaps in the two -digit house. “Near 600 or 700,” she answered calmly. I was gaping. Two years followed by interviews and investigations until the BBC published our findings. They detail the widespread abuse of children and show evidence of concealment of cases by the group’s high leadership. Formally known as the Brotherhood of Jesus, the Church closed a year later. The documentary reveals that the founder and leader of the army of Jesus, Noel Stanton (1926-2009), was inadequately behaved in the presence of young men of the BBC/docsville groups intrigued by the news in the press on the scandal that was revealed, the director of documentaries Ellena Wood began her own investigation into the army of Jesus in 2022. survivors, as well as relatives of the victims. Divided into two parts, the film is engaging and, in certain parts, distressing. “In many cases, I was the first person with whom they shared their experiences,” she says, “and almost all were still traumatized. To a large extent, it was a live process for them.” “One of the points that surprised me was that they describe what we know as sexual abuse, but without understanding it as such, or blaming themselves for that.” “And as a filmmaker, I wanted to convey to the public that you don’t just leave a sect and go on with your life,” Wood continues. “She can inform you all about you, your decisions, your way of thinking, your guilt, your relationships.” Wood says he set out to question the assumptions about the reasons why people remain in sects. She compares the situation with the idea of leaving a domestic relationship, aggravated by the anguish of abandoning family, friends, money, employment and support system, as well as the inherent threat of going to hell. She says, for example, that a group collaborator, Nathan, “even struggling to accept the fact that she was sexually enlisted and abused, she admitted that she would probably return to Jesus’ army if he reopened.” The army of Jesus performed weekly marches in large and small cities throughout England, to recruit people for their BBC/Docsville Studios movement for children in particular, life in the various communal houses of cult spread across central England was intense and full of dangers. About one in six children suffered sexual abuse, according to an analysis of complaints for damage presented by about 600 individuals. The children were separated from their parents. Often they slept in dormitories next to travelers aimlessly and drug -dependent. Many were subjected to daily beating and faced long sessions of worship, with exorcisms and sins retractions. Nathan, dressed in blue, gathers other people in the army of Jesus in a group therapy session for survivors of cultural cults and abuse docsville studios heard the survivor’s report brought an emotional load to Wood. “I had just been a mother and had detailed two or three hours conversations about abuse, sometimes involving incest,” she explains. “Then my son came from the nursery and all these mental images were in my head.” “You are forming these relationships that involve a lot of contact, very comforting, and try to do the right one. So sometimes the load is very large.” After Jesus’ army was dissolved, the BBC revealed that its founder, Noel Stanton (1926-2009), and his so-called five apostles covered the abuse of women and children, manipulating the complaints. An old elder described the church leader as “predatory pedophile.” He handed me a file full of revelations and accused him of rape and sexual abuse. Stanton died in 2009, without responding for any of the accusations. Wood states that “people were terrified and admiral for him to equal measure. Children mainly were completely terrified.” But was Stanton’s sect totally bad or has it started like something good and turned into something terrible? “If I were going to try to guess, I would say the second option,” says Wood. “I think the more power Noel had about someone, the more control he felt he would have to have.” “But I think the biggest problem was not reporting the abuses. The victims were forgotten and often suffered Gaslighting. There are no excuses for that.” Ellena Wood knows that many people in the army of Jesus had positive experiences. “It was not horrible for everyone, all the time,” she explains, “and we need to recognize that nothing is black or white in the world.” In a moving scene of the documentary, David, a former strong advocate of the group, erupts in tears with Wood’s careful questions. “He acknowledges that he needs to start believing that what people have faced is real,” she says. “And it was the first time any leader in that church said that, it was a very important moment.” Ellena Wood previously drove ‘The Ripper (2020)’, a series in four episodes that details police failures on the British serial killer hunt Peter Sutcliffe (1946-2020) BBC The Fraternity of Jesus Foundation, liquidator of the army of the army of Jesus, said she was perplexed with the abuses occurred and offered an apology request to all people affected. Last year, a repair scheme, partially financed by insurance, paid individual damage to hundreds of victims, an average of about 12,000 pounds (about $ 89.5 thousand). Listen to the BBC in Detail Podcast episode: The Jesus Army Cult, which gave rise to this report on the BBC Audio website.

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