You have all these people who have looked the other way, who know what's going on, and they're just not doing their job. And Matthew Fenner's waiting for justice. But, so far, nobody has been convicted in that case. Matthew Fenner, who says that he was beaten to expel his homosexual demons back in 2013. Mohr: There are five people currently charged with assaulting a former member of the church. On whether anyone has been held accountable for the alleged abuse They can't get rid of those images, those nightmares. But it's those beatings that really still seared into their brains now. They couldn't be treated because they knew what would happen. That's where the people who've recounted their stories would break down to us. And that's when it became extremely violent. You had to do everything possible to get rid of that devil. You had to hold them down and restrain them. It wasn't enough just to scream, to scare the devils out of people. Over time, it became more and more violent. So you would have groups of people surrounding an infant and screaming until that baby would just get tired and finally, you know, go to sleep.Īnd that's how she started at the beginning with her congregants. It was because there was a devil inside them that was making them cry. If babies cried, it wasn't because they were hungry or they had a dirty diaper. And so what she would do is it was called Devils in Deliverance, where they would have people surround you and scream at you to get the devils out. If you're having an affair, it's the same thing. If, you know, you're an alcoholic - the same. And if you're a drug addict, it's because you have this drug devil. The doctrine is really pretty simple - devils are real. And you have to understand what her philosophy is. Weiss: Yes, it was something that really got worse over time. On reconstructing a pattern of violent physical abuse And if they threatened to leave or did something wrong, she had all the evidence she needed there to keep them in line. And then she kept a file of those secrets. It was, in a way, she would have them tell her their deepest, darkest secrets. And the reason they did that was because that was the godly way of doing things. And one of the techniques that she used was that she had everybody inform on each other. Weiss: You have to realize they believe that Jane Whaley was a prophet, that God spoke to her and everything she said was the gospel. On using family members against one another We're gonna take your television, magazines, radio, all that away from you and institute all these rules. So it's not a quick thing where you just walk in the door and they say, hey, come on in. So it makes it difficult for families to leave. And what that does is over time, sometimes those kids care more about the ministers than their own parents. In fact, a lot of times they'll remove children from their family's home and place them with ministers to be raised. But over time, Jane Whaley and her other ministers, they take more and more control of your lives. So I think when a lot of families first go there, everything seems great. You know, the members of this church, they live in nice homes. Mohr: I think that in the beginning, when people would go to the church, they were shown a lot of love. On what people saw in church pastor Jane Whaley Pulitzer Prize winner Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr, journalists who have been exposing these stories, spent time interviewing hundreds of people who have been connected to the church over the years - and also acquired secret recordings, videos and documents for their new book Broken Faith: Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, One of America's Most Dangerous Cults. In recent years, the organization has been investigated for alleged abuse of its congregants - and has faced other charges ranging from fraud to human trafficking. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Broken Faith Subtitle Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, One of America's Most Dangerous Cults Author Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr
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