TB Joshua accused of raping and torturing his congregants

The BBC has discovered evidence of extensive abuse and torture committed by the founder of one of the largest Christian evangelical groups in the world. Numerous former members of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, including five British ones, have accused the late Nigerian TB Joshua of crimes including forced abortions and rape. Nearly two decades have passed since the abuse claims at a private Lagos property began.

The Synagogue Church of All Nations stated that earlier assertions were baseless but did not address the current accusations. The charismatic and incredibly popular preacher and televangelist TB Joshua passed away in 2021, leaving behind a sizable worldwide following.

After a two-year study, the BBC found the following:

Numerous eyewitness reports of Joshua’s physical abuse and torture, including incidents involving the flogging and shackling of children. Many women who report that Joshua sexually attacked them, some of whom allege they were raped for years on end inside the compound.

Following Joshua’s alleged rapes, there have been numerous allegations of forced abortions inside the church; one lady claims to have had five terminations. Numerous first-hand reports that were televised to millions of people worldwide explaining how Joshua staged his “miracle healings”.

One of the victims, Rae, was a British woman who was 21 years old when she left Brighton University in 2002 to join the religion after being accepted.

She was one of Joshua’s alleged “disciples” for the following twelve years, living inside his convoluted concrete fortress in Lagos. “We all thought we were in heaven, but we were in hell, and in hell terrible things happen,” she stated to the BBC.

Rae claims that Joshua violated her sexually and kept her in a kind of solitary confinement for two years. She claims she made several attempts at suicide inside the property because of the extreme mistreatment.

With millions of followers on social media and a Christian TV program named Emmanuel TV, the Synagogue Church of All Nations [Scoan] has a large global following.

Tens of thousands of pilgrims from Europe, the Americas, South East Asia, and Africa visited the church in Nigeria in the 1990s and early 2000s in order to see Joshua perform “healing miracles”. Within his Lagos property, at least 150 guests lived with him as disciples, sometimes for decades at a time.

More than 25 former “disciples” shared compelling, corroborated testimonies with the BBC about their experiences inside the church, with the most recent events occurring in 2019. They spoke to the BBC from the UK, Nigeria, US, South Africa, Ghana, Namibia, and Germany. When they initially joined, many victims were in their teens. In a few of the British situations, Joshua coordinated with other UK churches to cover the cost of their transportation to Lagos.

Rae and a number of other respondents likened their experiences to belonging to a cult. Namibian Jessica Kaimu claims that her torture lasted for more than five years. She claims that Joshua first sexually assaulted her when she was seventeen years old, and that as a result of several rapes by TB Joshua, she had five forced abortions while she was there.

“These were backdoor type… medical treatments that we were going through… it could have killed us,” she stated to the BBC. According to other interviewees, they were constantly deprived of sleep and undressed, tortured with electrical cords and horse whips.