Transcript for:
Word of Faith Fellowship Investigation

The world of prosperity preachers is a very dark place. These people use religion as a means to manipulate thousands of vulnerable innocent people out of their hard-earned money. Believers are told that if they just give a little bit more, God will bless them and make their lives better. People suffering with debilitating illnesses, put their faith in these prosperity preachers, desperate to finally be cured of their ailments. So many allegations have come out against these preachers over the years. But Pastor Jane Whley might be the worst of the worst. Jane Whe is the leader and self-proclaimed prophet of a church called Word of Faith Fellowship. And countless horrifying stories have come out about this church dating back to the early 90s. But despite all of the allegations, Jane seems to be basically untouchable. And her secretive, disturbing church, which is considered a cult by most, is still active today. Hey everyone, I'm sorry that it's been forever. This case took me a really long time to put together. There is so much information about this organization. Today we are talking about the Word of Faith Fellowship led by Pastor Jane Whley and like I said in the intro, there are literal decades worth of horrific allegations about this church. They have been accused of pretty much anything you can think of. Abuse, mind control, kidnapping, human trafficking. There have even been deaths associated with this church. And the leader, Jane Whley, might look like a sweet little old lady, but this woman is scary. We have so much to get into. So, let's go ahead and talk about our sponsor real quick and get into the case. This video is sponsored by Trade. We're quickly moving into the warmer months of the year, which means that we are heading into cold brew weather. I love cold brew coffee. I drink it all year round, actually, even during the colder months. 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And for a limited time, Trade is giving away a free Hario cold brewer when you sign up for a cold brew subscription. Just go to drinktrade.com/summer to get your free cold brew maker with select cold brew subscriptions. That's drinktrade.com/summer or you can scan the QR code on the screen. A huge thank you to Trade for their continued support on this channel. And now, let's get into the case. Margaret Jane Brock was born on October 22nd, 1939 in Forest City, North Carolina. She was a second of three children. She had two brothers and she seemed to have a pretty uneventful upbringing. There's no mention of abuse in the family or anything like that. The family attended a Baptist church and they were very religious. Jane has said that from a young age her parents put god-fearing into their kids. She was described as a shy, quiet kid, which is insane when you see what she grows up to be. Jane attended the Appalachin State Teachers College in Boone, North Carolina, where she joined the swim team and the soccer team. She graduated with degrees in mathematics and physical education, and she landed a job as a middle school math teacher at Colewood Junior High. And then in 1962, Jane's brother introduced her to a man named Sam Whe. Sam was working for Jane's brother at the time, and he thought that they might be a good match. And so he introduced them and Sam spent their first date talking all about his faith. He had grown up in the Methodist church and he told Jane that he felt like God had big plans for him. He knew that one day he would devote his entire life to spreading God's word. And Jane immediately fell completely head over heels for Sam. And the feeling was mutual. Just 6 months after that first date, they were married. They had a daughter in 1974 who they named Robin. Jane quit her teaching job so that she could stay home and take care of her daughter. And life was pretty calm at this point, but it would not stay like that for long. So remember Sam had told Jane on their first date that he felt like God wanted him to devote his life to spreading the word. Well, in the mid70s, Sam decided that it was finally time for him to act. He quit his job and he enrolled at the Remma Bible Training College in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And this is where we take our first little side quest on this journey. There are a lot of players in this story, so just bear with me. Kenneth Hagen, who some of you may have heard of, is considered by many to be the father of the word of faith movement, which is different than the word of faith fellowship. And the word of faith movement is a form of prosperity gospel. Now, there is some evidence that Kenneth Hagen actually plagiarized a 19th century pastor named EW Kenyon, who is thought to be the true father of the prosperity gospel, but just for the sake of time and clarity, we're not going to get into that part of the story. So for those who are not familiar, prosperity gospel is the teaching that you know positive thinking and monetary donations to their church or tithes will bring you wealth and good health. So you basically give a portion of your income to the church and the idea is that you will be blessed. God will bless you with success in your life. Maybe you'll stumble across some extra money or you might be sick and so God will cure you of your illnesses. Thousands of desperate people turn to these prosperity preachers for help. truly believing that they will receive a miracle if they just dedicate more of their time and money to their church. We see this type of stuff all the time, especially in the televangelist community. There's Joel Ostein at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, pulling in over $40 million a year in donations alone. You got Kenneth Copelan and the Eagle Mountain International Church, reportedly worth a whopping $750 million. And it gets I think we've all seen this famous clip of Kenneth Copelan literally turning into a demon while he's being interviewed by Inside Edition. You said that you don't like to fly commercial because you don't want to get into a tube with a bunch of demons. Do you really believe that human beings are demons? No, I do not. And don't you ever say I did. Will you wrestle not with flesh and blood? Paula White, who is Donald Trump's current senior adviser to the White House Faith Office, is another prosperity preacher, also worth millions. And I believe that when you honor God on Passover, starting on April 12th at sundown through Good Friday on the 18th and concluding on Easter Sunday, you can receive these seven supernatural blessings. God will assign an angel to you. He'll be an enemy to your enemies. He'll give you prosperity. He'll take sickness away from you. He will give you long life. He'll bring increase in inheritance. And he'll give a special year of blessing. You're not doing this to get something, but you're doing it in honor to God, realizing what you can receive. For your special Passover offering of $1,000 or more as the Holy Spirit leads, you will also receive the beautiful 10-in Waterford Crystal Cross. Don't miss your moment to release seven supernatural blessings and provision into your life. Now, there are obvious issues with this type of teaching. The biggest issue being that it's religious manipulation and exploitation. People are giving a portion of their hard-earned money, many people who cannot afford this, in the hopes that God's going to bless them. And in a lot of these cases, the preachers are just taking the money for themselves. I mean, there's no reason why a preacher should be worth $750 million. For a pastor, you are living a life of luxury. You've got great homes. You've got great planes. You do you drive in limos and a very wealthy man. And Kenneth Hagen or brother Hagen as his followers called him taught that if you want something, you have to speak it into existence. But you first had to find a verse from the Bible that applied to whatever it was that you wanted. Once you found your verse, you would then repeatedly and very loudly speak it. You do this over and over again. You pray constantly and maybe donate a little extra to the church. And eventually God will bless you with whatever you desire. Kenneth Hagen died back in 2003, but I did find some old videos of his services here on YouTube and they are interesting to say the least. There's a lot going on. People speaking in tongues, dancing, convulsing, people randomly collapsing. And Kenneth would also invoke something called the holy laughter at these services, which is really bizarre. [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Laughter] So when Sam whe heard that the Kenneth Hagen had a Bible school in Oklahoma. He knew that this was the place. God was calling him to go to Kenneth Hagen school. And that's exactly what he did. He and Jane and Robin packed up and they moved to Oklahoma and Sam enrolled in the Bible school. Jane really took an interest in Kenneth Hagen's teachings as well. And when Sam would bring home recordings of the teachings that he was being given from the school, Jane would sit and listen and she would take notes and stuff. And after Sam graduated, he and Jane spent the next few years traveling all over the world ministering at little churches. Then in 1979, they moved back to North Carolina, and they founded their very own church in a small town called Spindell, and they called it the Word of Faith Fellowship. This was Sam's first time preaching in his very own church, and he was over the moon. But not long after the church opened, Sam got a job offer that he couldn't refuse. He was offered a teaching position at Kenneth Hagen's Bible School back in Oklahoma. At this point, Word of Faith Fellowship was still pretty small. There weren't very many members just yet. So Sam and Jane left the church in the hands of some of their friends and family and they moved back to Oklahoma. Sam was now working this dream job. He's teaching at the Kenneth Hagen school. He was bringing in more money for the family. But even though things seemed to be going pretty great for the family, Jane wasn't really happy with their new situation. She felt like she didn't really fit in with the other wives. Like they were the wives of these really big religious figures and televangelists and they had a lot of money. They wore really nice clothes. They drove fancy cars. And Jane felt really out of place because she didn't have nice things like that. This made her feel really insecure. Plus, she claims that the other wives were kind of mean to her, like they had their little click of pastor's wives and she wasn't allowed to join. And this actually motivated Jane. She decided that she was going to start a religious group of her own. She met up with a few friends that she had managed to make in Oklahoma and she hosted Bible studies out of her friend's homes. She developed her own unique style of preaching. And over time, these Bible studies got bigger and bigger. Word of this very charismatic, well-spoken woman preaching the word spread fast. And people, especially women, were really into Jane's teachings. She attracted single mothers, women who were struggling with their sexuality, stay-at-home moms who just felt underappreciated. She became like a mother to these women. In fact, eventually, everybody does start referring to Jane as mother or grandmother, depending on like how old they were. And this is when Jane laid the foundation of what would later become her cult. The Bible study sessions would take place on Friday nights starting at 8. And oftent times they would last till well after midnight. Jane would give these super intense sermons and sometimes a member would be placed in something called a deliverance circle. This person would stand in this circle and all the members would gather around and they would put their hands on the person's head or shoulders and they would start praying extremely loudly, screaming really. And Jane would claim that they were screaming the demons out of these people. This practice is called blasting and it becomes central to Jane's teachings. Blasting out Jesus. a screaming prayer to drive out demons. And Jane is extremely into demons. Like she talks about demons a lot. Demonic possessions. Everyone's possessed by demons, even babies, which we will talk about later. But this blasting practice is essentially an exorcism. And it would go on for hours and hours at a time until the person had what they referred to as a breakthrough where they would start yelling out their sins and their secrets and begging for God's forgiveness. And the people who attended Jane's services really took to blasting. They felt super connected to God after being blasted. They felt like their souls had been cleansed. Now, some of the people who attended Jane's meetings were actually students at Kenneth Hagen's Bible School where Sam was still employed. And when Kenneth Hagen found out about what Jane was doing, that she had basically started her own church, he wasn't very happy. In his mind, Jane was corrupting his students with her chaotic, disturbing ways of teaching. And just a reminder, this is footage of a Kenneth Hagen service. So one day, Kenneth Hagen called Sam Whe into his office and he was like, "Look, you have to get control over your wife. You have to get her to stop holding these services. And if you don't, you're going to have to leave." And without any hesitation, Sam left his job at Kenneth Hagen's Bible School. And from that day on, Jane became the religious leader in the family. So, in 1985, Sam and Jane along with 22 of Jane's followers headed to North Carolina where Jane and Sam took back their church. And this time, Jane was going to be the leader. Sam really takes a backseat now. He's still present, but he's more of a supporting character in this story from now on. Unfortunately, Jane is now the star at Word of Faith Fellowship, and this is when things take a very dark turn. Allegations of extreme abuse, false imprisonment, human trafficking, even kidnapping, just to name a few, would constantly surround the church and its leadership over the years. Now, there are tons of allegations against the Word of Faith Fellowship. So many that I could probably do an entire series on this church alone. I'm not going to be able to talk about every single allegation, of course, but I do want you to leave this video with a very strong understanding of just how dangerous this cult is. You're going to hear about the extreme abuse that children as young as 6 months old are subjected to. You're going to hear how men and boys were imprisoned in a secret building on church property. You're going to hear about how children in the church are ripped from their parents and rehomed to highranking members at Jane Whley's direction. You'll hear about arranged marriages and how every single decision down to when and how couples have sex is decided by Jane. Why? And you'll also hear about how the church has high-ranking members who are elected officials in Rutherford County, North Carolina, which is where the church is located. And as you listen to this video, I want you to keep in mind that this church, this cult is still very active. This is not something of the past. This is happening right now today. I'm going to go ahead and put a disclaimer here just to kind of cover myself that most of what I'm going to tell you in this video is alleged. These are claims that former members have come out with. I have to say that it's all alleged because a lot of times there have been no convictions if it actually even makes it to the courts in the first place. And there are reasons that a lot of this has just been shot down in the courts or just completely stopped dead in its tracks before it even makes it to the court. So, first of all, Jane is known as a prophet by her followers. And so, she claims that she can speak to God and she also receives messages from God. And her teachings have a very dark fire and brimstone tone. Lots of demons, like I said, lots of demonic possessions, burning in hell for all eternity type of stuff. If you don't follow me and do everything I say, you're going to get struck by lightning. You are going to get cancer. You're going to just drop dead one day. That kind of stuff. Jane's entire belief system works under the idea that there are legions of invisible demons roaming around the earth attaching themselves to innocent people. And the demons will manipulate the people into doing very sinful things. So, for example, if you are struggling with alcoholism or drug addiction, it's because a literal demon is attached to you. If you have heart problems, you don't actually have heart problems. That's actually a demon. There are different types of demons. According to Jane, if you are focusing too much of your time and energy on watching or playing sports, you have what she calls a soccer devil. I grew up genuinely believing that I was an evil person and that I was a rebellious child because I liked sports. If you are too inquisitive, you ask too many questions, you have a sneaky devil. If you aren't donating enough of your money to the church, you have a greedy devil. If a boy in the church happens to carry themselves in a way that the others find effeminite, you are said to have a homosexual demon. And the one type of demon that Jane consistently claims everyone has, especially children, is what she calls the unclean demon. This is a demon that allegedly attaches itself to anyone who has any sexual urges or sexual thoughts whatsoever. Jane will constantly be accusing the children in the church of having an unclean demon, especially teenage boys. Let me tell you, it's the unclean that has driven every one of them out of here. I was being accused of unclean, which is this vague, you know, accusation that we got all the time. She would get up in the pulpit and be like, "Throw them into the floor and get their devils out." Now, Jane, like I said, is the prophet. She is the leader of this church, cult, whatever you want to call it. She is the final authority on everything, but she does have select members who are like in her close inner circle, and those people have power in the church as well. These are ministers within the church who oversee assigned church members. And these are the people that Jane has deemed worthy enough to join her closest inner ranks. The ministers are assigned certain families that they are to watch over and they are essentially Jane's eyes and ears within the church and they are to report any rulebreaking directly to Jane. And we will be getting into what exactly those rules are in just a bit. And let me just say Jane why is an extremely strict authoritarian leader and some of these rules are just downright weird. It's not just the ministers who are instructed to run to Jane and tattle on the other congregants. The members are instructed to report any wrongdoing to Jane or their assigned minister. And the wrongdoings can be as small as just thinking that another member is having an impure thought. The person doesn't even have to come out and admit that they are having these thoughts. If a minister or another member of the church is even suspicious that you are having a sexual thought whatsoever, you are reported and you are dealt with. So there is no trust within the Word of Faith Fellowship. Even spouses are told to report on each other for the tiniest things. And Jane has files on her members and she keeps records of any secrets that that person has so she can use it against them if they try to leave. And what happens when someone is reported on for breaking church rules? Well, this is where those blasting sessions really come into play. Screaming into the so-called possessed person's face would drive their demons straight back to hell. the person would be made to sit or sometimes the members would hold them down and everyone is just screaming at the top of their lungs in the person's face. I cannot describe just how intense these blasting sessions are. These sessions will often go on for hours and hours at a time. It gets so intense that sometimes people pass out. Sometimes they just start convulsing and sometimes they even start vomiting. Like they have to keep buckets nearby for when people start throwing up because it's just such an intense experience. It makes people physically ill. And by the time the person who is being blasted finally has their breakthrough and their demon has been successfully driven out, they are completely exhausted. Their ears are ringing. They're all sweaty. Their voices are nearly gone. This is a regular occurrence at Word of Faith Fellowship. And it only goes downhill from here. Children as young as 6 months old are subjected to blasting sessions as well. If a baby starts crying, like an infant baby starts crying during service, it's not because they're hungry. It's not because they need a diaper change. No, Jane says that it's because a demon is attempting to attach itself to the baby. So, in order to drive out the demon, these babies will be blasted by the other members, including their own parents. I have seen even u the smaller infants blasted up infants. And of course, the babies are terrified while this is happening, which only causes them to cry more, which only causes everyone else to scream more. They start blasting kids when they're babies, like, you know, yelling at them. Um, if like babies are crying for too long, they'll say, you know, uh, like instead of thinking, oh, maybe they need like food or that, you know, they're uncomfortable, it's, oh, like the devil's possessing them. And eventually the babies will completely exhaust themselves and they'll either fall asleep or pass out. And Jane and the other members would take this as a sign that the demon had been scared away like it was this great success. As disturbing as the blasting practice is already over the years it morphs into something extremely violent and very dangerous and it would nearly cause the death of more than one member. Jane at one point even started instructing her followers to start blasting themselves to scare out their own demons. And they were supposed to do this no matter where they were at that moment. So like if someone was having a sexual thought at work or school, they were supposed to stop everything they were doing and start screaming prayers at the top of their lungs to expel their own demons. This practice didn't stick for too long though because it started becoming really disruptive at the church services. Jane would be up preaching and people would just start randomly screaming in the middle of the services anytime they had like any impure thought. So now let's talk about some of the rules of the church. And there are a ton of rules. According to a list that I found on families against cultthreats.com there are five dos and 145 don'ts and counting that the congregants have to obey. You're required to attend every service. You will be required to tithe. That's 10% of your gross earnings and give offerings. Jane will even check your records from time to time just to make sure you're donating as much as you should be. And this is where the prosperity theology comes into play. Parishioners crowd into group homes while they help pay for the perks that allow the pastors to live like royalty. And Jane and Sam live extremely comfortably off of their donations. They have a really nice house. Jane is always in the nicest clothes. She goes on these like huge shopping sprees. You will be required to smile on command. This is called keeping your happy face. You'll be required to participate in group work projects. After each service, you are required to clean the church and fellowship hall on a rotating basis. So, those were the dos. Not that many of them, some of them pretty strict. So, let's talk about the don'ts. Of course, it includes things like don't drink alcohol, don't smoke, don't associate with people who do. She has a lot of drinks on here that you're not allowed to have. Um, you're not allowed to drink root beer, ginger ale, and I don't see this on here, but apparently you're not allowed to drink Sprite either, according to one of the former members, because Jane Whe said a sprite is like a demon, which I don't think that's true, right? Okay, it says in folklore, a sprite is a small, often mischievous supernatural being such as an elf, fairy, or goblin. Okay, so she's not down with sprite because of the name. No movies unless Jane approves. No radio, no TV. You're not allowed to read the newspaper, even the headlines. Women are instructed not to get their hearts set on a specific dress unless they check with the other women to make sure they don't already own that dress. You will be reforced to return that dress if someone else already owns it. Like, what? Members are not allowed to wear Nike clothing items because Jane thinks that the Nike symbol is the devil or something. Members aren't allowed to accept a job offer unless Jane approves it first. They're not allowed to buy or sell a car or a house without church permission. No birthdays, no Christmas, no holidays in general, really. Not sure what a dingle dangle is, but none of those either. And no playing air guitar. Like, why is that on here? You can't talk to members who have left the church unless you are given permission. Word of faith kids are explicitly forbidden to associate with non-wordofa kids. members must get permission from Jane to get married, and she has a huge say on who you get with. It's all controlled by the church. And the last and final rule on this list is don't question Jane's authority to run Word of Faith Fellowship. So hopefully that gives you a good idea of just how controlling this cult is. Obviously, this is not your typical church. You know, you sit and listen to the preacher preach for a couple of hours and then you go home to your own lives where you decide who your friends are, who you date, where you work, what car you drive. Jane expects undying loyalty. Members are required to live and breathe for Jane whe Jane decides where members live as well. And many of the congregants live within the same little communities. And a lot of the members actually all live together. Like she'll assign several families to live together in one house. And so some households consist of multiple church families like a little commune. So her followers can't even be themselves within the walls of their own homes because if they do something that is against church rules, there are spies literally living in their homes with them and they'll just run and tell Jane. Jane. Why lives here on 65 acres with her family and a number of unrelated church members, but it's not unusual for her to tell other families to split up and scatter among several communal homes. Parents separated from children, brothers from sisters. Most leaders live in big houses and drive fine cars. While members have been known to crowd into their basements and hallways, more than a dozen to a house. This not only keeps Jane in the know about everything that goes on within her followers lives, but it also places Jane as the only one that they feel like they can go to. Jane becomes the most important person in everyone's lives, exactly like she wants it to be. Parents are supposed to report on their children. Children report on their parents. No one can be trusted. And sometimes Jane actually takes children from their parents and places them in the homes of cult ministers. So parents are effectively cut off from their kids. You know, if I did something that the other person's required to tell on me. But the control didn't stop there. Ben says that he was given new parents within the church because of demonic behavior. That Jane picked out the ring that would serve as a promise for Micah and that it was Jane who insisted she was one of the first to hold their newborn. All steps of mind control over members lives. Medical intervention is extremely discouraged. Illness is of the devil and so a hearty dose of blasting and an extra donation to the church should be able to fix you right up. The followers including children are taught to smile on command like we saw in the rules. Everyone needs to appear happy all the time. Childhood photos show a beaming happying little boy. Anderson says those pictures are a lie. This was like a programmed thing of always be smiling, always have this happy face. It's the life of God is what they would call it. And if you are walking around without a smile, there's something wrong and they're going to deal with you until you can have a smile. Jane controls her follower sex lives. Sex is considered a duty. It's not something that's supposed to be done for enjoyment. Any plan to have sex has to be discussed and scheduled ahead of time. It can never be spontaneous. You're also not allowed to have sex more than once per week and never more than three times per month. And Jane says that everyone should be able to go 3 months without having sex. And if you wanted more than that, then she says you've, you know, given into lust and you have the unclean demon. And according to some former members, Jane typically only allows a kiss on a couple's wedding night. This next part I actually find kind of funny and weird, but according to some former members, two highranking members of the church, I believe they're both ministers, Brooke Coington and a woman named Carol Reynolds. And Brooke and Carol will counsel married couples within the church. Sometimes allegedly they will demonstrate the proper godly way to have sex. And they demonstrate this on each other. So missionary position is of course the only church approved position. And the only church approved sounds that you can make during sex are cries out to God. And the lights have to be off. Like it has to be pitch black in the room. You're not going to see anything. So Brooke Coington and Crystal Reynolds got into the missionary position right there in front of the people at the counseling session and they started simulating the church approved way to have sex. Brooke even showed them the proper way to cry out to God during sex. She reportedly said, "Oh, I can't say." She reportedly said, "Oh Jesus, oh Jesus," over and over again until it sounded like she had climaxed. It's weird, right? That's weird. Jane also says, "You're not allowed to conceive a child without her permission." There is at least one child that I know of who was conceived by a couple, and they had not asked Jane for permission to get pregnant beforehand. Michael was born with some issues, and Jane would tell his parents that it was because they were being punished by God for not talking to her first and getting her permission to have a child. That's why their child was struggling. This little boy's name is Michael Lowry, and we will talk more about him later because his experience in this church is extremely disturbing. So, we're going to circle back to that when we start talking about all the allegations and stuff. Now, in addition to the multiple very long church services during the week, followers are also expected to work on church projects after services were over. So, there are nights where these people do not get home until like 1 or 2:00 in the morning. If she keeps them all busy with the church stuff, they won't have any spare time to do anything else or think about anything else. Higher up members of the church own multiple businesses around North Carolina, including a plastics factory and diners and multiple rental properties, and members would sometimes have to work at these establishments with little to no pay. So things go on like this for a while. you know, lots of rolls and control, constant intense blasting sessions, and there were times where people would be hit, maybe kicked a little bit. Um, but that's it for now. Even though that's bad, but it gets so much worse. So, for now, that's what's going on. But something happened that triggered a violent shift in the practices within the church. A man named Joe English was a member of the church, and he had been struggling to fully commit and really settle in. He would sometimes manage to escape and he would make it all the way to the airport and then he would panic and he would have to call his wife to come pick him up. Now, some of you might recognize the name Joe English if you are a Paul McCartney fan. In the 1970s, Joe English was the drummer and occasional vocalist for Paul McCartney and Wings. He eventually left that life behind though. He became super religious. He formed a Christian band. And by the 1990s, he had somehow found his way to the Word of Faith Fellowship. And Jane really liked having celebrity members within her ranks and she did not want Joe to leave. So one day Joe had made yet another attempt to leave. He ended up coming back though. And this day was going to be different because his minister, a woman named Carla Peterman, finally had a breakthrough with Joe when she threw him across the room and onto the ground and basically started beating him to expel his demons. And according to Carla, that did it. you know that his demons finally left him after she violently threw him across the room. And so Jane announces this to the congregation during church services one day. She says, "You all know that Joe has had a lot of demons, but we finally have had a breakthrough." Carla threw him across the room and, you know, roughed him up a little bit and the demons finally left. And Jane was praising Carla for this. She said, "Sometimes you have to cause a little bit of pain in order to expel the demons." And as soon as Jane put her seal of approval on this type of violence, things got so much worse for everyone in the cult. Beatings, holding people down against their will, shoving them against walls, throwing them to the ground, literally sitting on top of them, punching them relentlessly in the chest, all while screaming at the top of their lungs in their faces. This all became the norm at Word of Faith Fellowship. And everyone would get so exhausted from beating and screaming at this person that the members would have to take breaks and like alternate because they were just getting so worn out and it just went on for hours and hours. People have described church services at Word of Faith Fellowship as Wrestlemania. Jane formed a group called the young ministers and this involves cult ministers taking younger members of the church under their wing, you know, just to kind of train them up to eventually become ministers themselves. And according to a former member named John Cooper, there is a ton of violence that goes on within the young ministers group. It's described as just one giant blasting session. And once when John was a child, he was attending a young minister's meeting. And someone called him out during this meeting. They basically pointed at John and they said, "You're hiding something. You're not giving your whole heart to God." And they all just proceeded to blast the [ __ ] out of this kid. They screamed at him. They punched him, slapped him. These people in this church, they quickly learned that they just needed to make something up if they didn't know what they were supposed to be confessing. And so John confessed that he had once gotten an erection. And the beating and the blasting finally stopped once he had confessed. This is so harmful, especially to children. They are being made to feel disgusting and evil for experiencing normal things that human beings have no control over. Now, as you probably guessed, all of the children are educated right there at the church. Word of Faith Fellowship kids are not allowed to talk to kids outside of their church. So, of course, Jane requires them all to be schooled right there. They have a school and a preschool/ daycare right there on church property. And the kids are not allowed to have toys or play. And former members have reported abuse within the schools as well. The children were being tied to their chairs with bed sheets in order to keep them from getting up. And Jane told the teachers to refer to the restraints as their seat belts to make it sound less abusive. Eddie Taylor, who just left the church after six years, says he got the shock of his life one Sunday morning when he just happened to go to a part of the church he'd never visited before. Why? One time I walked in the nursery and all the kids were tied in the chair with a cloth behind him, tied to the chair or the kids couldn't get out and play. I don't really know. I mean, they were just sitting there. Roberta Priest knows she worked in the nursery where no matter how young or fussy, children who are brought here are regularly restrained with their bed sheets at the direction of church leaders. Why tie them up? Because they got out of their chairs if you didn't. And and according to Jane, that was the restraints of God. In fact, something was said about how we tie the children up in the in the nursery. and she came back within the next day or two saying, "Don't ever say that. Just say that's their seat belts." The children are also taken into bathrooms and blasted by the teachers. The screams you hear are the prayers they're subjected to in a nearby bathroom when they won't sit completely still. And you might be wondering how we have all of this footage in the first place. Surely Jane would not allow any recordings of any kind to take place within the walls of the church when this type of stuff was happening. Well, this was actually footage that was obtained by an undercover reporter for the Trinity Foundation named Pete Evans. And this is actually what led to the first major scandal for the church. The Trinity Foundation is a watchdog group located in Dallas, Texas. And their entire mission is to expose religious abuse. And in 1994, Evans and a pastor named Oolie Anthony went undercover to find a disgraced televangelist named Robert Tilton, who was rumored to be in North Carolina with Jane. Why attending her church, Robert Tilton had been a very popular televangelist. He was another prosperity preacher, receiving tons of money in donations. His church was estimated to be worth over $80 million. He would tell people to mail him their prayer requests with a cash donation attached, of course, and he would personally pray for them. But instead of actually praying for these people, Robert Tilton would take the money out of the envelopes and just throw the prayers away. Well, in the early 90s, word of this made its way to the Trinity Foundation, and they investigated and discovered that the allegations were true. Last December, Anthony detailed a six-month investigation that he says tracked how Tilton extracted millions of dollars from followers by promising miracles from his personally praying over their prayer requests. Prayer requests found untouched by Tilton at a Tulsa paper recycling plant. So, the Trinity Foundation went to the media with all of their findings and Robert Tilton got exposed. An ABC prime time episode aired and it triggered a federal investigation. But in the meantime, Robert Tilton had pretty much disappeared. And now the Trinity Foundation was hearing whispers that he was involved with another shady religious organization in North Carolina called the Word of Faith Fellowship. So, in addition to his mission to find out if Robert Tilton was involved with Word of Faith, Evans would also be investigating Word of Faith themselves. The Trinity Foundation had been hearing about some abuse allegations surrounding Word of Faith Fellowship. And so, this undercover operation could take down two abusive churches as long as everything went to plan. Evans went deep undercover and he totally infiltrated this cult. I don't think that I've mentioned this yet, but Word of Faith Fellowship is closed to the public. You have to either be invited in by a member or by Jane herself or you can attend a week-long seminar that the church puts on a few times a year. So Evans traveled to Spendell with this madeup backstory that he was a guy down on his luck. He was trying to get his life back on track, a cult's dream, a vulnerable person to pray on. And over the next few weeks, Evans totally blended in. He managed to even get a job at a mechanic shop. And you know, he was becoming part of the community. and Ollie Anthony was stationed at a nearby hotel just in case something crazy happened, he could just swoop in and save Evans. So, in an attempt to finally get invited into Word of Faith Fellowship, Evans would just talk to anyone and everyone he could find around town, you know, hoping that one of them would be a member and he could tell them his backstory that he was just trying to get his life back on track and someone would finally invite him in. And eventually he came into contact with some Word of Faith Fellowship members who owned a diner in town and they invited him to attend a service. So he was finally in. Evans always carried around a backpack. He was just kind of known to always have a backpack with him and so he brought that in when he went to the church service. Now at first he only kept a Bible and a notepad inside of his backpack because he knew that people didn't trust him yet and they would probably search his backpack when they thought he wasn't looking and which they did. He did find out that they did search his backpack. But as time went on and he started attending more and more meetings and he started being noticed by Jane herself. He was becoming a regular face of the church. Evans let his guard down a little bit. He got a little bit more confident and he started putting a secret camera inside of his backpack. He cut a small opening in the backpack and he would aim the camera out of that hole to film. And this is how we have so much footage of the blasting sessions. It's all thanks to Pete's undercover work. But even though Pete Evans is attending all of these services and he's being noticed by Jane, he still isn't a full member. Jane decides when you're officially in and she has not officially invited him in as a full-fledged member, which was actually a good thing. Since he's not a member, he isn't being watched as closely. He doesn't live in one of the church homes. His calls are not being monitored. So, this means that he can keep in contact with the Trinity Foundation to give them updates on the case. So, the operation is successful for a while, but then a few months later, it all fell apart. Robert Tilton, the missing disgraced televangelist, finally made an appearance at one of the church services. He actually walked up on stage with Jane that night, followed by several of his own followers who had made the move to Word of Faith with him. The entire congregation, which at that point totaled over 600 people, started blasting Tilton with prayers. Now, Evans knew that he could not let Robert Tilton see him because he knew who he was. Evans had been involved in that Trinity Foundation investigation a few years earlier. And if Robert Tilton saw him, he knew that his cover would be blown. And so, he tried to just blend in with the audience as best as he could while he was filming the blasting session. Unfortunately though, something happened with his camera and it didn't capture any of Tilton's blasting session. But Pete Evans had seen the whole thing. And so as soon as he got back home that night, he wrote his eyewitness account down and he sent that information back to the Trinity Foundation. And now he had confirmed that Tilton was in fact mixed up with the Word of Faith Fellowship. But Pete Evans felt like he really needed to get a little more information on Word of Faith Fellowship. So against his better judgment, he remained undercover for another few months. He knew that this would be risky because with Tilton roaming around, he might finally notice him. And that's exactly what happened. One day, as Evans was walking down the hallway, none other than Robert Tilton himself came walking down the same hallway, headed in the opposite direction, putting Evans and Tilton face to face with one another. Evans tried to play it off. He just kind of walked past him and walked into a prayer room, but he knew that Robert Tilton had recognized him. He could tell by the look on his face, and Robert Tilton told Jane immediately. It didn't matter though because Pete had pretty much everything he needed and he turned over all of the evidence, all of the recordings to Inside Edition. Inside Edition had already investigated other corrupt churches and they were pretty eager to get their hands on Pete's footage. And in 1995, Jane's worst nightmare came true. The world was going to get a raw, unfiltered look into her cultlike church. The beautiful foothills of western North Carolina have provided what may have been the perfect hiding place for the dirty little secrets you're about to see. You have to live with the guilt of the things that you allowed to go on and the things that you witnessed and never said anything about. She's hiding her face not just in shame for what she's done, but also in fear of what others might do to her for telling what's been going on inside their church. The Word of Faith Fellowship here in Spindale, North Carolina. Outsiders seldom see the decidedly different way this secretive sect worships God. Regularly screaming to split the ears of devils, delivering this man and others from demons inside them so they can walk with God. Until now, many of the members may have been kept in the dark about allegations of child abuse, sexual molestation, unlawful imprisonment, and cult-like mind control techniques. Their leader is 55-year-old Jane Why, a former school teacher with no formal theological training. And according to former church members like Robera Priest, a woman with little patience for followers who won't follow. What what she would do is say, "This is what this is the way that I believe God wants us to go and everybody just went." Jane does what any good cult leader would do and she tells her followers that Satan was out to destroy them and she was just trying to do damage control. But outside of her followers, Jane couldn't control what anyone else in town watched. And so people in Spindell were now fully aware of the weird abusive things that were going on in that church. Citizens throughout North Carolina have also responded with concern and information that's helped our investigation continue. They can't be a church or any place like that that cannot be investigated somehow or another. Up to that point, the locals were aware of Word of Faith Fellowship, but they had no clue that anything bad was happening in there. It was just seen as this very secretive kind of closed off church. And that inside edition segment brought to light a lot of allegations, even a death that happened within the church. An elderly member of the church named Harold Lloyd had been told by church leaders to stop taking his heart medication. He had a condition that required daily medication, but remember the church urges people not to use any medical intervention. They say that it's a demon that's making him have heart problems. And so their cure was just to keep blasting him until the demon finally left. According to witnesses, 2 weeks before his death, Harold's medicine had been taken away and he had been repeatedly blasted by the other members. Anytime he would have an episode, like if his chest started hurting or he got shortness of breath or anything like that, he would just be blasted by the other members. And just 2 weeks after his medication had been taken away, he suffered a heart attack. And instead of calling for help while he was literally dying, his wife and other members started blasting him. That was the last thing that Harold experienced before he died. The screaming faces of his loved ones. Harold's son, who was not a Word of Faith Fellowship member and who had always been skeptical of the organization totally blamed his father's death on Jane why. After suffering a massive heart attack, Harold Lloyd died in the arms of his son who is still plenty bitter about how his father was treated at the Word of Faith Church here in Spindale, North Carolina. Four people that I've talked to, they've agreed to sign affidavit saying that they witnessed for 2 weeks prior to his death that medication was withheld from him. And when his father collapsed at a family dinner, Darren and his wife, who are not involved with the church, tried desperately to save him. As for his mother, sister, and another church member, what were they doing while he was sitting there? Yelling for the demons to get out of him. Blast. They were blasting. They were blasting him. This was called blasting up here. They're just blasting him. And instead of calling an ambulance to save him, they're calling church members. I didn't know it cuz I'm trying to give my dad mouth to mouth and trying to get him living. You know, he's sitting there dying. He's purple. And so I started yelling at mom. Says, you know, give him his medicine. Get him his medicine. He needs his medicine. And they start just yelling for demons to get at him. They're screaming and hollering, you know, I loose you Satan. Get out of you evil spirits. And they're just screaming at him. Sickness and death is of the devil according to the church. Go to medical help and it's the last resort. It also came out that Word of Faith Fellowship had reached out to a couple of other churches in North Carolina and they had kind of formed like an alliance and Jane brought some of her church's flavor into these churches. They were the New Jerusalem Outreach and the New Covenant Full Gospel Church. And there were allegations of widespread abuse happening within the walls of these churches as well. Blastings, beatings, sexual abuse of the children. And everything was covered up by the leadership. And since our initial report, we've confirmed the Word of Faith in Spindale is only the mother church for a whole string of related congregations like the New Jerusalem outreach here on North Carolina's Eastern Shore. I've seen the people throwing up in the dish pans, people being restrained, held down, uh people just become violent and have to be like five and six grown men holding women down. And all of this after the Whies came into your church, right? It it did not start until the Whies came. When Jane Whley and her husband Sam there formed an alliance with two churches near Wilmington, North Carolina, these folks say they got an eyeful of the exact same kind of things we uncovered 300 miles away in Spindale. I've seen adults come in with black eyes. I've seen um adults come in with injuries on their arms. I have a young grandson that was in this ministry and I could see things that began to happen. Yavon Bride says she noticed a distinct change in little Caleb's behavior when she left him with a babysitter at the church. And then the babysitter finally left the church and she told us that he had been blasted and that I was right at these times. You know that I knew that something had happened to him. And Caleb was how old? One and a half years old approximately. As for church pastor Buddy Dawson, who is said to lead such abusive behavior in the name of God. Can I talk to you for a second, sir? He wasn't eager to make any statements either. You know, some folks have made some pretty serious charges about you and the church about how you've been treating some of the children. Quartered by a local reporter earlier, the good reverend seemed genuinely perplexed about blasting babies or anyone else. I don't think about blasting or explain. And now that news had spread about the abuse within the church, officials had no choice but to investigate. So, a formal investigation was launched by the FBI and former members started coming forward to tell their horror stories. One woman said that she had tried to escape one night and she was locked in a basement by other members and choked out. There was another woman named Carol Pullen who had experienced 13 days of pure hell at the hands of the church. Carol had suddenly started acting bizarre and when her husband asked the church for guidance, they immediately diagnosed Carol with a demonic possession. They brought Carol to the home of some of the other church members. They tied her up and they repeatedly blasted her for 13 days straight. This was absolute torture. And as we all know, Carol was not possessed by a demon. After 13 days of blasting, church leaders finally broke down and they allowed Carol to go to the hospital. And the doctors there quickly discovered the actual cause of Carol's sudden bizarre behavior. She had been suffering from the flu in the days leading up to this episode, and she'd started taking some over-the-counter flu medication. It turns out that Carol was actually having a severe allergic reaction to that medication, and it had caused her to act differently. And then being imprisoned and restrained and blasted for 13 days straight only made her condition worse. And so she was just increasingly getting more and more confused and terrified. For years, locals say the sheriff has ignored claims of other illegal activities inside the church, like details in this letter from a woman who says she was tied and held captive by church members for 2 weeks. And this former church member says that's true. She says she and a number of fellow parishioners were there along with their pastor, Jane Whe. I didn't really feel good about it. I believed that uh she was getting help because that's what we were told. Thankfully, Carol ended up making a full recovery and she and her husband did leave the church. Another victim was a 13-year-old girl named Crystal Taylor. Crystal had a really tough childhood. Her mother had recently passed away and she didn't know her dad and she had been sexually abused by multiple family members over the years. Eventually, Crystal was sent to live with a relative who was a Word of Faith Fellowship member. Now, remember earlier I mentioned that Jane would often separate children from their families and place them into the homes of ministers. Well, Crystal was moved around to a few different ministers homes, and one of those homes belonged to the Grindstaff family. William Keith Grindstaff and his wife had taken Crystal in, and it took no time at all for William to start sexually abusing her. He would wait for Crystal to walk into a room alone, and then he would follow her inside and assault her. And he would do this with multiple people in the house, including his wife. Crystal said that while this horrific thing was happening to her, she could clearly hear conversations going on outside of the door. So that's how close the others were. And she said she would pray that someone would walk in and catch him in the act, but unfortunately that never happened. Crystal did finally tell her grandmother what was going on and she did take her to go file a police report. But as soon as Jane Whley caught wind of the situation, she called Crystal in for a meeting and she blamed the entire thing on her, the 13-year-old child. She screamed at Crystal that it was all her fault that she was possessed with unclean demons and she had led the minister on. Jane blasted her for hours. She called her a harlot. And Jane then forced Crystal to call the prosecutor's office right then and there and tell them that it was all her fault. She told them that she had come on to the minister, so they should blame her for what happened and not go too hard on him. And this next part I'm going to read verbatim from the book that I read on this case. So years after that call to the prosecutor's office, Jane would recount that meeting in a three-hour long conversation with a former congregant that was recorded without her knowledge. On the recording, Jane Whe acknowledged that she was aware of several instances of sexual abuse at Word of Faith Fellowship, but said that she didn't have to report them because of ministerial confidentiality. So she admitted that she knew about the abuse of multiple child victims and did nothing about it. The sheriff's office did look into complaints of child molestation involving this member. I have nothing to say. Does that kind of thing go on in the church fairly regularly? Or Keith Grinstaff pleaded guilty to two felony charges of indecent liberties with a child, but his pastor Jane Whley kept it quiet. The pastor has also privately admitted to us that she's kept the lid on other sexual affairs involving young girls and other church members, but she's refused our repeated request to talk about anything on camera. and Grind Staff got a slap on the wrist. He pleaded guilty to two felony counts of taking indecent liberties with a child and he was sentenced to six years, but that was suspended to just 5 years of probation and 200 hours of community service. He was also barred from going anywhere near Crystal. But Grindap did not obey these conditions. In fact, he would deliberately sit behind Crystal during church services just to make her uncomfortable and probably to show her that he is untouchable because Jane Whley will always protect him over her. So investigators are gathering all of these accounts of abuse and it's looking really bad for Word of Faith Fellowship. These are a lot of really disturbing stories, but now it's time for them to interview Jane and her followers about these allegations. Well, the followers did as they were told and they just lied their asses off. They just made up any story they could think of to explain away these allegations. And Jane just denied, denied, denied. She had to admit some stuff because it was caught on camera, but she would spin it to sound like this is just freedom of religion. We're not doing anything wrong here. There is no abuse. We say every accusation has been entirely true, entirely untrue, no truth in it whatsoever, and were created to enhance a sensational and a very emotional story. By the end of that investigation, they had 315 pages worth of testimony and at least 12 former members who were willing to testify in court. And so prosecutors felt like they had solid grounds to go after Jane in the church at this point. However, somehow in the end, the district attorney decided against prosecuting. His reason? Well, in the 315 page report, the investigators wrote a line that read, "Most victims were reluctant to come forward, and many indicated that they did not wish to pursue any criminal prosecution. This is why he decided not to prosecute." Again, there are 12 people who did agree to testify. But because the others didn't want to get involved, probably for fear of retaliation, the DA, a man named Jeff Hunt, declined to prosecute the case. And that was it. The investigation was over. And this would only embolden Jane to be even more controlling, even more abusive because she felt untouchable. And decades later, Pete Evans, that Trinity Foundation spy, he found out that someone had falsified some of the information in that 315 page report. Someone had lied to investigators, claiming that they had questioned Pete Evans, and he had told them that he never witnessed any abuse of any kind during his time in the Word of Faith, which is of course 100% a lie. Not only did Pete witness it, but he was the one who had provided all of the tapes of the blasting sessions. So, did someone working on the case help to stifle the investigation into the church? Jane has followers in high places, including lawyers, social workers, and even people involved in local politics. Sheriff Dan Good has no knowledge of what you just now said. Have you looked hard enough? Have you asked enough questions? Have you done your job? I don't know how else to put it. Well, I think the citizens of this county will tell you that Dan Good does his job and he's going to continue doing his job regardless of who is involved. Is he in their pocket? I believe so. Several in the area have told us they believe the sheriff may have told his deputies to look the other way because it's the support of church members that put him into office. That's why there's no investigation. I believe that's right. Jane actually had members of her church who were district attorneys. I couldn't find whether or not Jeff Hunt, the district attorney that was looking into this case, if he was a member, but it would make sense if he had some affiliation to the church because this whole thing was shot down so fast. Over one line about some people not wanting to come forward. 315 pages. A 315page report might as well just been worthless. A man named Bryson Smith is affiliated with Word of Faith Fellowship in some way. I've read that he was an associate, so I don't really know what that means, if he's an official member or what, but he's somehow affiliated with them, and he's also the current chairman of the Rutherford County Republican Party. Recent allegations have come out about Bryson Smith involving the church. There are accusations as recent as 2024 that Bryson and some of the other members of the committee will only endorse candidates who pledge loyalty to Jane why and Word of Faith Fellowship. And these allegations are coming from Bryson's own political party, the Republican party. With Spindel being so small, a large congregation like Word of Faith Fellowship could easily tip the scales in favor of one candidate over another. Jane can just tell her followers to go vote for this loyalist or that one and they will always do what she says. She needs people like Bryson Smith in positions of power like this so they can protect the church and keep them out of the public eye so they can just continue to do all of the disturbing stuff that they do. In fact, Jane's own son-in-law was a local prosecutor, but he resigned after an AP investigation revealed that he and a fellow prosecutor and fellow church member meddled in a child abuse investigation. And the extreme abuse just continued and got worse. In 2002, a group of freshman boys became targets for Jane. They are known as the five boys, and they've become infamous in the Word of Faith Fellowship lore. Jamie Anderson, Liam Guy, Peter Cooper, Micah Gwartney, and John Bllandon were all friends in their freshman year of school at Word of Faith Fellowship. And they were considered kind of rebellious as far as Word of Faith kids go. They weren't doing anything bad, like they weren't smoking or drinking or anything like that. They were just acting like kids, but that wasn't allowed. So, that was seen as rebellious. They would be caught making funny faces at one another. Sometimes they would be overheard telling jokes, just literally normal kid stuff. and Jane hated it. And she also hated the fact that these boys would never tell on each other. To Jane, this meant that they had formed a bond. She was not the most important person in their lives. So one day, it's the middle of a school day, Jane randomly calls an assembly and she orders everyone to be there. And during the assembly, Jane pointed out the five boys and she told everyone that they were all possessed by demons and they needed to be punished. But not in the typical way by just, you know, having a blasting session and moving on. No, Jane was going to make an example out of these boys. So, Jane orders the ministers to separate the boys. They're taken into different parts of the church. And they were forced to write down their deepest, darkest secrets. They were forced to write down if they were sexually attracted to boys or girls, if they had ever masturbated, what their fantasies were. And the ministers told them to go into graphic detail. And they said, "You better write down everything because your friends have already told us all of your secrets, and so we'll know if you're lying." when in reality the boys never told on each other. So these boys who were only like 13 or 14 at the time were forced to write in great detail all of this sexual stuff and most of it if not all of it was completely made up. One of the boys later said that he didn't even know what masturbation was exactly. But he confessed that he had done it just to get the ministers off his back. Then after they had written these false confessions, the boys were punished even further. They were no longer allowed to attend regular school classes. Instead, they would be locked in a room all day long and forced to listen to hours and hours of Jane Whley's sermons. They couldn't even come out to eat lunch. They were just slipped a tray of food through the door. They were repeatedly blasted and beaten on a regular basis by the ministers. If they even moved wrong, a minister would beat them. Then, after being subjected to that for several hours a day, they would then be sent home and forced straight into their rooms, and they weren't even allowed to talk to their families. It was like everyone was instructed to shun them for an entire year. These five boys lived in total isolation. The so-called five boys were taken out of school and isolated in different parts of the church compound for more than a year. When he was 14, Anderson says founder Jane Why accused him and four classmates of undermining church authority. It it made everybody else all the other kids like we're going to like walk the line because we don't want that to happen to us. At the age of 13, things changed. Cooper broke the church's rules and listened to the radio. Probably listened to a grand total of several minutes. That instance, coupled with smiling and laughing in class, got Cooper and four of his friends kicked out of the church for almost a year. They always called it a satanic alliance in our relationship where we would, you know, basically quote enable each other to break the rules. Cooper says their punishment was isolation, being pulled from class to have God monitor what was in their heart. They had a tapes running non-stop and when they one would end of they were all tapes of Jane preaching or one of the other ministers preaching. For that time, Cooper says he wasn't allowed to speak to anyone but his mother eating alone and only being allowed to read the Bible. There was one time about 6 months after all of this started that one of the boys, Peter Cooper, was seen doing exercises in his room. Someone saw him through his window. That person went and reported him to his mother and his own mom went and turned him into Jane for doing exercises in his room. His minister was sent over and Peter was brutally beaten with a wooden paddle until he confessed that he had what they called a bodybuilding demon. After he finally confessed to having this demon, the beating stopped. This went on for an entire year. Like I said, these boys were completely isolated. They were constantly beaten down. Jaime Anderson eventually escaped and he has become very outspoken against the church and he's done several interviews where he recounts his worst moments growing up. Walking past his old bedroom window, the memories come flooding back of the constant beatings and blasting prayers that he says were meant to drive the demons from his little body. Anderson was just a little boy when his family joined the church, but he says he never quite fit in. When he cut his head while fooling around, his mother said he'd been marked like the biblical Cain who killed his brother Abel. I was Cain. I was Anathema. I was a cursed. I was all of these things. And I didn't know what I actually did to des to deserve those names. It seemed he was always being punished for something. Once when he was about nine, he says a church member held his arms outstretched while his mother sat on his legs and thrashed him with a wooden paddle. It hit me in many other places than where it was supposed to, but they didn't stop because I needed a breakthrough. The demons were taking me over. When the beatings didn't have the desired effect, Anderson says he was shut in a dank, windowless basement storage room. Curled up in the dark, he lost all hope. When he was 18, Anderson left Word of Faith. His family disowned him. He managed to make it through college, then law school. But church leaders told the friends and family he'd left behind that Anderson was a drug addict who'd flunked out of college. Jaime left the church. Um, he had made his decision, turned his back on God, and he was going to hell. I totally believe that. But it didn't stop there. Late last year, about a month into his first law firm job. His older brother, who was still in word of faith, accused Anderson of trespassing on his property back in Spindale. Anderson easily proved that he was having dinner with friends in Charlotte, 70 m away. The charges were expuned. It's it's a cult and they're brainwashed, but I don't know if I can if I'm capable of forgiving them for for what they've done. His family are still members of the Word of Faith Fellowship and they have spread so many lies about Jaime just in an attempt to discredit him. They have made response videos that are still up on the church's YouTube channel. And in the videos, Jaime's family just completely tears him down. They just pushed this narrative that he was this problem kid who they tried to help but he just couldn't be helped. I'm Patty Dolan. This is my mom Dot and my daughter Allison. And I also have two sons, Nick Anderson and Jamie Anderson. I'm here today because Jamie has gone to the Associated Press. And what he has said, even though he's very articulate and may be believable to you, but what he says is lies. Let me make it really clear. I am Jaime's mother. I love Jamie. I have always loved Jamie. My whole family loved Jamie. We tried everything to help him. And time after time again, he just would not be helped. He was not abused. He always exaggerated. He exaggerated anything that went on. He was extreme. He lied. And now he's with people that lie. Now, as far as Jaime is concerned, I came into Jaime's life when he was around 11 when my parents married. I was about 28 at the time. I had never met such an ungrateful, disrespectful little boy. Jaime and his classmates were troublemakers. They harassed teachers, harassed teachers assistants, came after them, came after authority. He has this alleged story that Jane Whe came in and screamed at them for hours and then took the five of them and locked them in a room. That is not what happened. There are so many of these creepy videos of family members speaking out against their loved ones. And all of these response videos are the same. They claim that the person who escaped is out to just slander the church. They're addicted to drugs. They're messed up in the head. Anything to discredit that person. And the allegations of Word of Faith Fellowship just get more and more disturbing. The church has been accused of essentially kidnapping children. Laura Bridges was a Rutherford County clerk and she was also a member of the Word of Faith Fellowship. And one day while Laura was on duty, she spotted a pregnant woman named Kila Blandon walking out of a courtroom. Kila had been handed a short sentence for some minor charges. And as she was being hauled off, Laura Bridges approached her with an offer that Kela couldn't pass up. She offered to care for Kela's baby after he's born, just until Kila got out of jail and back on her feet so the child wouldn't have to go into state care. And like I said, Kela jumped at this opportunity because she really did not want her child going into the system. So after the baby was born, Laura took custody of him. But what Kila didn't know was that Laura had no intentions to give that baby back to her. It had all been a lie. Kila spent years trying to get her son back. She took Laura to court. But in the end, the judge ruled that even though Laura was in the wrong for approaching Kila with that offer in the first place, she was granted custody of Kela's son. Pregnant and facing months in jail on drug and other charges, Blandon says she was being led out of a courtroom in handcuffs when a court clerk, a Word of Faith member, offered to care for her baby until she was out and back on her feet. So my baby wouldn't go into state custody. That was 9 years ago. A judge found that the clerk, Laura Bridges, acted inappropriately by approaching Blandon, but he ruled that the boy had bonded with the family and it was in his best interest to remain. Bllandon says she hasn't laid eyes on her son in 5 years. She longs to see him. Bridges told the AP that Blandon had abandoned her son and that it was quote a false accusation that she had misused her job to obtain her children. Jane did whatever it took to keep cult kids in the cult even if their parents left. There are stories about families who have tried to flee in the middle of a church service and ministers will literally try to corral the children away from the parents to hold them against their will until either the parents give up and just stay in the church or they give up and leave without their children. It's just so [ __ ] up. Shannon Muse was a mother of four who had been in trouble with the law for drugs and writing bad checks. And in the year 2000, she was looking for a fresh start to give her children a better life. Shana had two sisters who were members of Word of Faith Fellowship, Suzanne Cooper and Cindy Cordez, and they invited her into the fold. Shana ended up moving in with them and joining the church, but she felt like she didn't really fit in. She never really bought into all of Jane's BS, and all of the blastings and the beatings really bothered her. And so, she started making plans to take her kids and leave the church. But when Jane found out about her plans, she ordered Shana's own sister, Suzanne Cooper, to make false claims that she had witnessed Shana abuse her children. The sheriff got involved, and when Shana eventually did try to leave the church in 2002, officers would not let her take her own children. They told her that they needed to look into the allegations a little bit further before they would allow her to take her kids. So, Shana had no choice but to leave without her kids, and she was totally devastated. She spent years fighting the church and the courts to get her kids back, but her children had been brainwashed into cooperating the false abuse allegations against her. Even after more than 10 years, the videos of her children are still emotionally wrenching for Shannon Muse. We want nothing against we. After years of court battles and hearing her four children call another woman mom, Muse decided she couldn't take it any longer. But finally, hope just left me and I didn't want to live anymore. The single mother was in search of a way out for herself and her kids. Two of her sisters were word of faith members and they said the church could help. In 2000, Muse and her kids moved to Spindale. Muse says her own sister, Suzanne Cooper, falsified abuse allegations against her. She says the children were coached to back up those lies. After six bitter years of hearings and increasingly awkward visitations, Muse decided to walk away. I was done and I was a dead person. Her kids ultimately ended up with Minister Brooke Cington and her husband Kent. These people get brought up a lot in this video. It wasn't until 2013, 11 years after Shana left the cult, that her kids started realizing that they had been brainwashed against their mother and they started leaving on their own. Shana now has reconnected with three of her four children. It's only her youngest son, who now goes by Justin Coington, who remains in the church. In the last four years, first Patrick, then Rachel, then Sarah, have left Word of Faith and reunited with their mother. But Muse's youngest, Justin, is still inside Word of Faith. She says she's reconnected with God, a kind God, and is praying Justin will come out soon. Shana's sister, Suzanne Cooper, escaped the cult in 2014. The Cooper family, which also includes Peter Cooper, one of the five boys that we just talked about, they were very, very involved in this church, and there are a ton of Coopers. And I'm happy to report that almost that entire family has managed to escape the cult. Musa's sister Suzanne, also left the church. She's admitted that she lied and has been forgiven. A true Christian, a true uh godly person wouldn't do what I did. And Jane and the others have made so many videos bashing this family, trying to make it like the entire Cooper family is just out to get them. And now we need to talk about a very scary place called the Lower Building. The Lower Building is an old church schoolhouse/storage building that sits on the church property. And in 2010, Jane started imprisoning her most sinful followers in the lower building. Men and boys were sent there for weeks or months at a time. There were even instances where Jane would keep people locked in there for over a year. This is seen as one of the most disturbing aspects in the church's history. And what could these men and boys possibly be doing that was so horrible that they would be imprisoned in the lower building? Well, they were having sexual thoughts. Of course, Jane started to notice that there were a lot of men and boys in her congregation who were having these sinful thoughts and urges. It had become a plague on the church and the lower building was going to help to exercise those sexual demons out of them once and for all. One of the members had actually come to Jane and confessed that he had had a sexual thought when he saw her daughter exercising one day. And so this guy was sent straight to the lower building. The building was not very big. It only had four bedrooms and one bathroom. And sometimes there would be more than 30 people living there at one time. There were some beds, but a lot of people did have to sleep on the floor. And all day long, the followers would be expected to pass the time by constantly reading the Bible. They weren't allowed to talk. They could not eat unless they asked permission first. If they had any sexual thoughts at all, they were to immediately start blasting themselves. And the others were supposed to join in and start blasting with them and even beat them up if it came to that, which it almost always did. There was a shocking amount of physical violence that went on down in the lower building. It was just an absolutely horrific place. There are reports of children as young as 8 years old being sent to live in the lower building away from their parents with grown adult men. And we already know that there's widespread unchecked sexual abuse happening within this church. So, who knows what was going on down there. And remember earlier when I mentioned a boy named Michael Lowry, he was the boy who was picked on by Jane because his parents, you know, had him without asking her permission first. Well, one of the reasons that Michael was picked on so much and singled out by the others is because everyone thought that Michael was gay. And if you haven't guessed it by now, Jane hates gay people. The pastor said to find out what my darkest secret was. And I was like, I'm never telling. And Michael Lowry says that secret word of faith learned is that he's gay. Michael was sent to the lower building on multiple occasions throughout his childhood. and he'd be forced to live there for months. And while Michael was down there, he was basically tortured by the others. He was beaten, blasted, and once the others even forced him to sleep outside in the cold. And by the time they finally let him back inside the building, he was so cold that he was going numb. Now, like I said, the lower building only had one bathroom that all of these people had to share. And so, one morning, Michael decided that he was going to wake up super early so that he could jump in and take a quick shower. And I do mean quick. This was like a 2-minute long shower. He got out. He wrapped himself up with a towel. He cleaned up after himself. And then he walked out of the bathroom. And as Michael was walking out of the bathroom, he was confronted by some of the other guys. And they were accusing him of taking too long in the shower, which meant that he must have been masturbating. Michael tried to tell them that he had only taken a shower. That was it. But they didn't believe him. Or maybe they just wanted to beat him up. They all ganged up on him. They threw him against the wall. They gave Michael the worst beating of his life. And he ended up blacking out. And when he finally came to, his body was completely battered. He was bruised and bloody and disoriented. They hit my head with fist and I was out on the floor, held my hands and feet down and pushing on my chest. I could barely breathe. Cooper described a place called the lower building where those in trouble were often placed with no outside communication to be taught a lesson. It's there where he says he saw a bloody beating by a minister. Um after berating him, he literally walked up to him, started shoving the boy, just like smacking him really, really hard in the chest. Then he threw him to the floor. Um the whole time he's screaming at him. Um got on top of him and like started slamming him down the ground like face first. Um and they're going to say he had to do this because Jesus told him, correct? Yeah. He was This was showing this young man the love of God. It was one of those beatings that spurred this conversation with the church's founder that Ben Cooper decided to secretly record. We went to her to confront her about um why this minister did this and why she hadn't done anything about that minister doing it. Um so that's what this meeting is about. Right. But it's not right to use force like that. That's what I that could have caused Blair. Stop it. You wouldn't be serving God today if if some force were not used to you. That's the devil himself speaking out of you. One of the people involved in that beating later admitted that Michael was singled out a lot by the others. He said, "We beat him like a dog. I know it's hard to understand, but if you didn't take part, they'd target you. It was how you survived." Michael did manage to escape not long after that incident. And once he got out, he ended up connecting with another former member named John Huddle. John had left the church in 2008, leaving behind his wife and kids, and he was publicly speaking out against the church. He became very vocal about the abuse and control within the church. He did interviews. He wrote a book about his experiences. Religious freedom stops when abuse starts. And in my opinion, the abuses have long since outrun the defense of religious freedom. John Huddle's wife and kids filmed a response video to all of his allegations. And this video had the same sort of vibe as all the other response videos. He's terrible. He's the problem. He's a liar. He's just out to get us. Everything is actually amazing here. It's sunshine and rainbows. I'm John Huddle's ex-wife. I was married to him for over 20 years and we're very sad at what he's turned out to be. It was hard to live with him when he lived with us, but to see what has happened to him now, it's just really heartbreaking. And really, enough is enough of all that he's had to say about the word of faith. He's made up all of this. He's made a world for himself of what he believes is happening at the Word of Faith that really isn't happening at all. John Huddle has a vicious hatred for Jane. Why he blames her for all of his troubles. He says that she's a dictator, that she controls us all, but she really does not do that at all. Now, in addition to former members speaking out against the church, a woman named Nancy Bernett has become a very outspoken opponent of Janes. Nancy was never a member of the church. She was a courtappointed advocate for children who are placed in foster care. She actually didn't even know the church existed until she was put in charge of two children who were eventually fostered out by a church couple. A social worker named Lorie Cornelius was a member of the Word of Faith Fellowship. And she has been accused of doing some shady stuff in order to get foster kids into the hands of fellow church members. And it was Lorie Cornelius who had facilitated the fostering of those two kids that Nancy was advocating for. Right from the start, Nancy found this church couple super weird. When she would make surprise visits to the home to check on the kids, they would seem completely out of it. The children looked like they were drugged. And before Nancy would leave, the kids would beg her to take them with her. But unfortunately, NY's hands were tied. But she did vow that she would do whatever it took to get those kids out of that house. And she did. She really advocated to get those kids out of that house. She knew something was off. She even showed up at the church once and Jane Wheel got in NY's face. She became public enemy number one for Jane, but Nancy was not backing down. She continued to dig and investigate past allegations of the church, and she did her best to sound the alarm, but eventually NY's boss pulled her off the case, and in the end, those kids were forced to stay in that church home. Nancy has since become an advocate for Word of Faith members who have escaped, and she continues to push for investigations into the allegations of child abuse at the church. Former court-appointed guardian Nancy Bernett says that children like Muses had been introduced to sometimes violent church practices. There is no way that these children are being protected there. And you can imagine how Jane and the others responded to all this. They spread lies about Nancy and her family. They tried to get her husband fired from his job. They've allegedly sent people to follow and intimidate her. There is a really amazing podcast series about this case. It's on the pretend podcast and the host Javier Leva devoted an entire season of that podcast to researching Word of Faith Fellowship. He even traveled to North Carolina and managed to get into the church and have a meeting with Jane herself. And while Javier was in Spindel investigating, he attended a meeting that was put on by some former Word of Faith members. Well, I guess Jane found out about it and so about a dozen or so current members were sent to sit in on that meeting. They just showed up unannounced, did not utter a single word, and sat in the back of the room and just stared at everyone, which honestly sounds super creepy. One of the former members had family members who were still in the church, and he had not seen them in years. And as he stood up to give his testimony, he spotted his mother sitting in the back with the current members, and he actually addressed her in front of everyone. But she never said a word. After it was over, Jane's people just silently got up and they left. It's heartbreaking and mind-boggling that this one twisted old woman has managed to destroy so many families. And this is not a small church. Jane currently has almost 800 members in Spindel. And she also has two churches in Brazil and one in Ghana with over 2,000 members. Which brings us to the allegations of human trafficking within the church. Jane allegedly uses her churches in Brazil to funnel tons of unpaid workers into the church in North Carolina where they are forced to work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for little to no pay at churchowned businesses. Jane offers church members in other countries, mostly Brazil, to come to Spendell on student or tourist visas. And at first they think this will be a great opportunity. You know, they'll get all this experience. Some of them will attend college in America. And so they jump at this opportunity. They would have all these dreams of how great the experience was going to be. But once they arrived in North Carolina, they realized that they had been lied to. First of all, the Brazilian members would be placed in the home of a minister, and they were forced to hand over their passports as soon as they arrived. Some of them would enroll at the local church approved college, and when they weren't in class, they would be forced to do hard manual labor or become domestic servants for the ministers in the church. One man who was 18 at the time named Louise Vargas was sent from Brazil to North Carolina on a student visa. His family was very involved in one of Jane's churches in Brazil. And Louisa's father even donated $90,000 per year to the church. Louise arrived with some other Brazilian students and they were all placed in the home of Brooke Cington. Remember Brooke? She keeps coming up in this case cuz she's terrible. And as soon as Louise and the others arrived, Brooke forced them to hand over their passports. He enrolled at Isothermal Community College and he started attending classes. And when he was not in class, he was forced to do backbreaking work for a member named David Cer who was a prominent real estate developer. They would be forced to work until sundown with only a 30inut break. And they did not get paid, not one dime. And the church monitored their phone calls, so they couldn't even call their families back in Brazil to tell them what was happening. And they would be moved around to various businesses. During this time, Louise was eventually sent to work at a plastics factory owned by Brooke and Kent Coington, and he was worked for so many hours per day, again, for no pay. At least 16 people have come forward with allegations of forced labor and what many consider human trafficking. An Associated Press investigation found evidence of the Word of Faith Fellowship using its two churches in Brazil to funnel hundreds of young laborers to the United States to work for little or no pay in businesses owned by church ministers. It was a horror living there. A former Word of Faith Fellowship member, she moved there in 2009 on a student visa, had her passport taken, and was put to work for little or no pay in a church family's home. We are made to get up early, make the kids breakfast, um, cook, you know, do their beds, pick up their laundry. 16 former church members tell the AP they face verbal or physical abuse at the hands of church ministers in the US and in Brazil during screaming prayers called blasting. Thiago Silva did backbreaking work such as construction. Basically, we were there working, but we never got paid. If you're not paid for something, even for your food, I would say that you're a slave. Over 20 years, Anna Albuquerque traveled 11 times from Brazil to North Carolina. She asked that we not show her face. The first The first time you go, they treat you well, but afterwards, they start treating you bad. A human pipeline going unchecked for years. These people were being worked to the bone and they were exhausted all the time. They were either at school, working, or at church. And Jane would still expect them to work on church projects. Louisa said that he and the others were running on just like a couple of hours of sleep per night, and they would literally be falling asleep during church services, which if they got caught, they'd probably be in really big trouble for. Spenddale police officer knows that can happen. He once helped a Brazilian man who was desperate to get away, but he had no transportation and the church was holding his things. He was trying to uh to leave and they wouldn't uh take him anywhere. They wouldn't help him get his baggage. Now, since the church is just outside the city limits, the officer went off duty to pick up the man who wanted out. Where I made the mistake is I went to a travel agency uh a few minutes afterwards and he got plane tickets to go to New York. But then when church members telephoned the Rutherford County Sheriff's Department to claim the Brazilian man was a missing person, the case took a rather unconventional turn, deputies investigated and found out the man was indeed headed out of here and on to New York. And then that information was leaked right back to the church. And the next morning, the officer says a church member ambushed them at the airport to insist unsuccessfully that the man return to the Word of Faith. The local sheriff says that's news to him. Sheriff Dan Good has no knowledge of what you just now said. Once this all came out, there was a push to get the churches in Brazil shut down. But in 2018, the case was dismissed. And as far as I can tell, there are no current investigations. In 2010, 16-year-old Matthew Finner along with his mother and brother joined the Word of Faith Fellowship, hoping that the church could help them in their time of need. Matthew's mother was dealing with some health and financial issues. She was recently divorced. and Matthew had just come out to her, which was something that his mom did not support at the time. And so, she felt like her family could use a little more God in their lives to get them all back on track. And that's when she joined Word of Faith. Matthew was quickly made aware that the church was not cool with gay people. And so, he tried to blend in as best as he could, and he attempted to suppress his true feelings just to keep his mother and Jane in the church happy. and he just tried to, you know, focus on his studies and his worship. Jane decided to pair Matthew up with a girl named Danielle Cordez, who was another teen in the church. Danielle had been in the church since she was a baby. She didn't know any other way of life. So over the years, she had been blasted, brutally beaten by ministers. Once her mother called her minister on her for misbehaving, and her minister beat her for 5 hours straight with a wooden paddle. And Danielle was only 8 years old at the time. There'd be like 20 to 40 people at least all screaming. So like just to the top floor of their lungs just basically screaming as loud as you possibly can while they are hitting you. It went on for hours and hours and I was just like so sore from like just bruises covered in bruises. So Matthew and Danielle are paired up. I think Jane probably thought that if she paired him up with Danielle maybe she could like help him fight off these homosexual demons. And so they started doing something that the church calls walking out of friendship, which is basically like what they call courting or dating. All very supervised. Danielle did eventually start to have feelings for Matthew. And Matthew was trying his best, like I said, to please his mother and Jane and be who they wanted him to be, which is so sad cuz he was being forced to live a lie. Then in 2013, a rumor started going around that made its way to Jane. There were whispers that Matthew was having romantic feelings towards another guy in the church. Now, I don't know if this was even true or not. They could have just made this whole thing up. They were always accusing people of having impure thoughts. So, who knows if this was actually true, but it didn't matter because Jane and the ministers thought that it was true. So, on January 27th, 2013, after a late night service, Matthew's minister, Brooke Cington, asked him to stay back so they could talk. But what actually occurred was hours of blasting and extreme violence. Matthew Finner was beaten for hours by church members at the direction of Minister Brooke Cington. And Danielle was there and she was freaking out because she could tell Matthew was struggling even to take in air. People were pushing down his chest and punching him and kicking him. It was absolutely brutal. Danielle, who has grown up in the church and seen a lot of [ __ ] has said that that was the worst beating she had ever witnessed. And by the time it was over, Matthew was completely battered and bloody. My head was being flung back. My vision was going like brown and black. I honestly thought I was going to die. Thankfully, Matthew managed to escape the very next night. He waited until nightfall. He took his mother's car and he drove to a nearby town where his grandmother lived. And this really put things into perspective for Danielle. Like this was a wakeup call for her as well. And so just a few weeks later, with Matthew's help, Danielle also escaped. and their families completely turned their backs on them after they left. But the most important thing is that they did manage to leave. However, Matthew was not going to let Brooke Coington get away with what she'd done. And so, he reported everything to the police. And it really seems like the police did not want to do anything about this. Delay after delay after delay occurred. But finally, in 2017, 4 years after the incident, five members of the Word of Faith Fellowship, including Brooke Cington, were charged with kidnapping and assault. And two of the other people charged are Sarah Anderson and Justin Coington. Justin and Sarah are actually brother and sister and they are two of the four kids who were taken from Shana Muse back in 2002 and given to Brooke and Kent Coington. Sarah has since left the church. She's the daughter pictured here with Shana. She left after Brooke became abusive towards her one-year-old son. Sarah was married to Jaime Anderson's brother, by the way. Everyone is connected in this cult and it gets really confusing, so I'm sorry. Sarah testified during Brooke Cington's trial and she backed up everything that Matthew had said. She also testified that some of the church leaders, including Brooke herself, tried to coersse her into lying on the stand. Jane was not charged, even though everyone says that that order for that extreme of a beating had to have come from Jane. People don't do things like that unless Jane approves it first. So, she was likely the mastermind behind what happened to Matthew Fenner that night. Each of the five people were tried separately, but Brooke was the main one. Like, she was the big fish with her having super close ties with Jane. Why if she were to be found guilty, maybe that would show Jane that her church is not that untouchable after all, and maybe it would open the door for more investigations. Unfortunately, Brook's initial trial ended in a mistrial after one of the jurors was held in contempt of court. And I can't find any information about a second trial. Like I said, many people believe that the church has their hands in the legal system. Two of the higherup members are defense attorneys in Rutherford County, both very close to Jane. Why in 2018, Matthew's mother finally escaped the cult, and they reconnected. She feels very sorry for getting her children involved in the cult, and she says that she now fully supports her son. As of 2019, Danielle's parents were still members of the Word of Faith Fellowship. I mean, I love my parents and there's nothing I can do to even to get that back right now. I completely block them out of my mind just as a coping mechanism. And then there's other days that I mean, I'll just like break down and cry because it's like I don't know. And these next allegations I find so creepy and weird. So, the church has what they refer to as medical ministers. These are the people that you go to if you're sick instead of going to the doctor and they will guide you on what you need to do. And one of the medical ministers was a man named Jerry Gross and he was a podiatrist. And this man single-handedly botched multiple unnecessary surgeries on several members of the church. A former member named Christina Bryant has said that when she was 17 years old, she started having some pain in her feet. And so she was sent to the medical minister to, you know, ask what she needed to do about it. And he said, "Oh, I need to operate on your foot and also your Achilles tendon is a little too tight, so we need to go ahead and lengthen that as well." Now, Christina is only 17 at the time, and she's been taught to just go along with whatever the church ministers say. She was taught not to ever question anyone with authority in that church. And so she ended up going through with the surgery. He started by putting a pin in her left ankle. Then he told her that he needed to do the same thing for the other ankle. So she had another surgery. This time though, the ankle rejected the pin and this set off a chain reaction that led to years of pain because she ended up having to have more surgeries to repair what he had done. In total, this man worked on Christina's feet 17 times. And keep in mind that she likely never needed surgery in the first place. There have been at least seven other former members who have come forward with the same claims that this doctor did the same thing to them. I even saw this when I was researching Joe English. There is a mention of him suffering from ankle problems. So, was he another one of Dr. Gross's victims? These people spent years being sent back to this man for multiple surgeries. And it's believed that this was done intentionally for monetary gain and that Jane Whe was getting a kickback for every procedure. Like he was using her followers as surgical fodder. In 2019, Dr. Jerry Gross and his son Jason both pleaded guilty to fraud at Jerry's podiatry clinic. Jerry and his son had their employees claim that they had been laid off so they could collect unemployment, but they were actually still working. This would allow them to collect unemployment benefits from all of their employees. And that money went directly to the church. This idea was actually hatched by Jane. Why herself and she claimed that it was done to keep the church afloat during economic downturns. The fraudulent unemployment payments would bring in enough money to allow cult business owners to continue giving Jane 10% of their income. Dr. Jerry Gross and his son Jason were both sentenced to 3 years of probation and they were ordered to pay $160,000 in restitution. Kent Cington did the same thing at his business, but his sentence was harsher. Maybe because he got more money out of it in the end. I don't really know. Kent was sentenced to 34 months in prison for conspiracy to commit mail fraud, and he was released in 2021. But as far as the church actually being held accountable, that's pretty much the extent of it, which is extremely frustrating. There have been dozens of people come forward with horror stories. There is video footage of abuse happening in this church. There is so much proof that the followers are in danger, but still nothing significant has ever been done. And Jane Whley and the Word of Faith Fellowship are just free to continue their pattern of abuse. Jane and Sam are pretty old now, so they might not be around for much longer, but I'm sure that Jane already has a successor lined up and trained for when that day comes. If you Google the church, you'll see that they have almost 150 reviews and they are sitting at a 2.7 star rating. Still way too high in my opinion. So many of the five-star reviews mentioned Sam and Jane specifically, how amazing they are, how the media is just the enemy, or they say that the former members are just miserable and want to make up lies about the church, which makes no sense. This reviewer admits that they're not even a member, but somehow they know all of this information about Jane and Sam, and everyone else is just lying. They end the review by saying, "We love you, Pastor Sam and Jane. Why?" Most of the five-star reviews were posted 8 years ago. And it turns out that around the same time that these overwhelmingly positive reviews started popping up was right around the time that the Associated Press started a 2-yearong investigation into the church, which has been a great source of information in my research for this video. There are tons of one-star reviews as well. People giving warnings not to attend because they'll try to trap you inside and they won't let you leave. This reviewer says, "This is a cult, but some people are bringing Trump into the argument as if he has ever mentioned this abomination, let alone even know they exist. Get out of here with this misinformation. We don't want these clowns in our circles." But there is proof that Trump does know who these people are. See, Jane Wheatly adores Donald Trump, and so do her followers. So much so that Word of Faith Fellowship members have attended or volunteered at 249 Trump rallies over the course of his three presidential campaigns. They even had t-shirts made with team Trump printed on the front. And when a Word of Faith Fellowship lawyer was asked about why they were attending so many Trump rallies, he said, "God has spoken to our hearts that President Trump is the person who will lead this country in the right direction." And leading up to the January 6th insurrection, where hundreds of Trump supporters stormed into the Capitol in defiance of the 2020 Democratic victory, a Word of Faith member named Bryson Smith tweeted out, "Calling all patriots, our country needs you. The time is now." Remember, I mentioned Bryson Smith earlier in this video. He's the Rutherford County Republican Party chairman, who is currently dealing with his own allegations of corruption. Another cult member named Hi Morris, who is actually the wife of one of the higherups in the cult, tweeted, "No true Christian could ever vote for Joe Biden." And then just days before the insurrection, she tweeted, "See you in Washington DC at real Donald Trump." Now, I'm sure that a lot of people volunteer at these rallies. So, what makes me think that Trump might actually know who these people are? Well, Donald Trump will often shout out the Word of Faith Fellowship members during these rallies. At one rally on September 9th, 2024, Trump acknowledged some Word of Faith women by saying, "Those beautiful ladies from North Carolina are here again without their husbands." The women were seen blowing him kisses and waving. And Trump then said, "249 or something in reference to the number of rallies that the women had attended." Then he continued with, "That means they have money." He's also said, "They look so wealthy and beautiful." Now, does Trump actually know all of the horrific allegations that have been brought against this church over the years? I can't say for sure. Does he realize that Word of Faith is considered a cult by most people on the outside? I don't know. As far as my research could find, he has never publicly acknowledged any wrongdoing by the church. Jane and her followers also strongly endorsed North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson. They even hosted a fundraising event to raise money for his campaign last summer in 2024. This is the man who has been very outspoken against gay and transgender rights and abortion and has referred to himself as a black Nazi all while hiding a past of enjoying porn featuring transgender individuals and referring to himself on porn message boards as quote a perve despite so many allegations against them starting in the mid '9s. Little has been done by Rutherford County or the city of Spindel to even look into what's going on. The allegations have slowed down in the last few years as far as I could tell. But I don't think for one second that anything has actually changed within the church. I think the abuse is still happening. But I absolutely believe that we will be hearing more allegations in the future. It's highly likely that there are children in that church today still being abused. So I really hope that one day an investigation opens up. Maybe the right person, the right DA, the right sheriff will come through and actually take a really deep look into this cult. This is happening and it's going to continue to happen until someone stops it or Jane tells everyone to drink the Kool-Aid, everyone does it and dies. And that is all I have on this case. Let me know what you guys think about this one down in the comments and keep your eyes and ears open for anything new that happens to come out about this cult. Like I said, I don't think that we've heard the last of them. Don't forget to click the link in the description box or go to drinktrade.com/summer to get your free Hario cold brew maker with select cold brew subscriptions. And as always, I appreciate each and every one of you for watching and I will see you next time.