A survivor of the Jesus Fellowship Church – formerly known as the Jesus Army – has spoken out in a powerful new BBC documentary about her experience of abuse, control and identity loss after joining the group as a teenager.
Sarah, who moved from Birmingham to into the group’s communal house in Bugbrooke – where the Jesus Army was founded – said she joined the church aged 17 during a vulnerable period in her life.
“I was lost,” she told the Channel 4 documentary at the time, shown in archive footage. “Things in my life, I knew that I was lonely, that things that I'd built up were just shallow... My parents had passed away. Losing my parents, I had to feel like there was somewhere for them to go, so I had a kind of God thing anyway.”
Speaking in the new BBC Two documentary Inside the Cult of the Jesus Army, Sarah described her first impressions of the church.
She said: “I was just buzzing. It was just like a high, like a natural high. There were so many young people there. I've never been to a church where you get worship like that. Never, never, never. There was something that felt like a movement in it.
“I was quite an impulsive young girl. So I was just like, I really like it. I'm going to move into community. I just did that. I chose the house that I was going to stay at.”
But within a year, she said she was being sexually abused by a church elder.
Speaking to the BBC, she said: “Like, he would put his hand on my thigh, under the table, whilst his wife was opposite. He would intimidate you and he would belittle you. And who's going to believe you? If you say it. You know, it's the personal authority. He just shut me down and shut me down. Until I felt like it was my fault.”
She described how she tried to appease her abuser, hoping to avoid further harm. “I knew that was the behaviour that I did. I would do things to appease him. And then it just... oh, it started again.”
During the group therapy session with other survivors, Sarah broke down in tears as she shared her story.
She also spoke about how the group pushed her to suppress her personality and accept a role of obedience.
“I was a very individual person. I was very dominant. I always wanted to be in charge and in control. But underneath it all, I think I desperately wanted to be led,” she said in the old Channel 4 documentary when she was 17.
Reflecting on that in the BBC documentary, she said: “Submissive… that was my virtue name. I never was before I joined the church. I am not submissive.”
Sarah’s story is one of many told in Inside the Cult of the Jesus Army, a two-part BBC Two documentary broadcast on July 27 and August 3 and now available on iPlayer.
A six-part BBC podcast to accompany the documentary will also be available on BBC iPlayer from Monday July 28. Both episodes of the documentary will be available to stream on iPlayer following the first broadcast.
The timing of the documentary comes less than a year after the release of a major report by the Jesus Fellowship Community Trust (JFCT), which ran a redress scheme for survivors. Published in September 2024, the report revealed widespread and long-term abuse within the church, dating back to the 1970s.
Key findings from the JFCT report
- About one in six children within the Jesus Fellowship experienced sexual abuse.
- The scheme identified 539 individuals as alleged abusers, including 162 former leaders.
- The Trust accepted responsibility for 264 alleged abusers, with 61 percent of them being former leaders.
- 31 incidents of abuse were directly attributed to founder Noel Stanton, involving both children and adults.
- 601 applications were submitted to the scheme, and a total of £7.7 million was paid to applicants.
