Cult leaders should be prosecuted like abusive spouses, say MPs

Cult leaders should be prosecuted under the same laws as abusive spouses, MPs have said.

Controlling or coercive behaviour in the home is a crime in the UK punishable by up to five years in prison.

However, victims of cult leaders don’t have the same protections under the law.

Now politicians are considering broadening its scope to include those who set up abusive communes.

Sam Carling, a Labour MP and former Jehovah’s Witness, is lined up to be chairman of a new All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) looking into spiritual and cultic abuse.

He said: “A key focus will be legislative changes to the coercive control laws, and to remove the automatic right of any group that sets itself up as a religion to be given charitable status.

“We need to raise awareness of the tactics cults use to harm and manipulate people.”

The push to change the law is led by survivors of the Jesus Fellowship, also known as the Jesus Army, which was set up in 1969 in Northamptonshire by Noel Stanton, a pastor of a Baptist church.

By 2007 the cult had 3,500 members in 24 congregations, with another 50 communal houses, mostly in cities.

After Stanton died in 2009, allegations of sexual abuse began to surface and the cult closed down in 2019.

While 539 claims of abuse were made against its leaders – including the late Stanton himself who abused young boys – only 11 men were convicted. It is now known that one in six children were sexually abused.

Cult experts, survivors and campaigners gathered in Westminster this month to view the BBC documentary Inside the Cult of the Jesus Army, with several of the survivors present to call for changes to the legislation around coercive control.

Children as young as two were beaten or “rodded” regularly for misdemeanours such as eating crisps, and women were routinely abused.

Kathleen Hallisey, a lawyer specialising in cults, has won compensation for survivors who were groomed and coerced into having sex with cult leaders.

Some 75 Jesus Army survivors have contacted her since the documentary was screened last summer to join the 50 she was already helping.

If the coercive control which enabled the abuse had been illegal, as it has been in a domestic setting since 2015 in the UK, it may not have happened.

Katie Buchanan, producer of the BBC documentary, said: “Sexual abuse crimes are of course illegal, but the coercive control that enables it isn’t.”

Reports of this kind of abuse have been increasing. In the past seven years there has been a 53 per cent increase in reports of spiritual and religious abuse among children, according to the National Working Group on Spiritual and Religious Abuse.

Campaigners at the Family Survival Trust (FST) and the National Working Group on Spiritual and Religious Abuse are also behind the push to change the law to protect those recruited into cults and sects.

Dr Alexandra Stein, 71, an FST board member, has been a key player in establishing the new APPG. She said: “Minors are trapped in these closed organisations. We need legislation that will allow the authorities to investigate their abuse – their parents have no means to protect their children when the cult leaders have taken over the parenting role.

“Current legislation defies judicial logic – my spouse can be convicted of coercive control, but if my neighbour does it, it’s legal? It makes no sense.”

Philippa Barnes, a Jesus Army survivor who helped to expose the scale of the sexual abuse, said at last week’s event that teenage girls were regarded as “Jezebels” and blamed for what happened to them.

A survivor called Nathan talked of how he became suicidal during the lengthy wait for the trial of his childhood abuser, and how he struggles to detach himself from the abuse. He said: “If I had left the Jesus Army earlier than I did, I would have a different life now.”

‘Jesus Army trawled around London looking for vulnerable recruits’

My brother Stephen did some pretty stupid things in his short life. He took Class A drugs and stole to fund his habit, and was in and out of young offenders’ institutions as often as he was in drug rehab.

He was targeted and recruited by the Jesus Army, and the targets are often homeless and addicted to drugs or alcohol, like Stephen.

My brother became a sex worker in central London aged 20 to fund his habit and was picked up in late November 1979 in Piccadilly by the Jesus Army who trawled around London looking for vulnerable new recruits.

My parents and I visited Stephen in Clapham where he lived, but we couldn’t visit his commune, so we met him in a restaurant.

Anxious and unhappy, he complained about having to do lots of “chores”. Stephen mentioned a “chaplain” called Michael he had become close to.

Stephen was listless and depressed when he visited us that Christmas. A fortnight later police found him dead in Leicester Square on Jan 14, 1980, aged just 24.

I don’t know what Stephen endured at the hands of the Jesus Army, but they didn’t help him.