2024-01-17 01:10:00
BBC reveals how late megachurch leader TB Joshua, accused of committing large-scale sex crimes, locked up his own daughter and tortured her for years before leaving her homeless on the streets of Lagos, Nigeria. And how she ended up confronting him and uncovering the abuse within the church.
“My father was afraid, a constant fear. He was very afraid that someone would speak,” says Ajoke, one of the pastor’s daughters and the first whistleblower to contact the BBC about the abuse she witnessed in her father’s church, the Synagogue Church of All Nations (Scoan).
TB Joshua (Temitope Balogun Joshua), who died in 2021 at age 57, is accused of widespread abuse and torture over almost 20 years.
Ajoke, now 27 years old, lives in hiding and does not use her last name “Joshua”; The BBC decided not to publish her new name.
Little is known about Ajoke’s biological mother, who was believed to be one of TB Joshua’s parishioners.
Ajoke says she was raised by Evelyn, Joshua’s widow, for as long as she can remember.
Until he was 7 years old, he says he had a very happy childhood, going on vacation with the Joshua family to places like Dubai.
But one day everything changed.
She was suspended from school for a minor offense and a local journalist wrote an article referring to her as TB Joshua’s illegitimate daughter.
She was taken from the school and taken to the Scoan complex in Lagos.
“They forced me to move to the disciples’ room. I didn’t volunteer to be a disciple. They forced me to join“he emphasizes.
Beatings and humiliations
AFP Ajoke says that after years of abuse, he stopped being afraid of his father.
The disciples were an elite group of followers dedicated people who served TB Joshua and lived with him within the labyrinthine structure of the church.
They came from all over the world and many remained in the complex for decades.
They lived under a strict set of rules: they were prohibited from sleeping for more than a few hours at a time, using their own phones or accessing their personal emails, and They were forced to call TB Joshua “dad”.
“The disciples were brainwashed and did what they were told. They all obeyed orders, like zombies. Nobody questioned anything,” he says.
Ajoke, who was just a child, did not follow the rules like the other disciples: she refused to stand up when the pastor entered the room and rebelled against the severe orders to sleep.
The abuse began shortly after.
She remembers that shortly after arriving, she was beaten for wetting the bed and then forced to walk around the complex with a sign around her neck that said, “I wet the bed.”
“The message about Ajoke was that he had terrible evil spirits that needed to be expelled,” says a former disciple.
“There was a time in the disciples’ meetings when he [Joshua] she said people could hit her. “Anyone in the women’s dormitory could hit her and I remember seeing people slapping her as they walked by,” she says.
From the moment Ajoke moved to the church in the Ikotun neighborhood of Lagos, she was treated like an outcast.
“She was labeled the black sheep of the family,” says Rae, from the United Kingdom, who spent 12 years living in the church as a disciple. Like most of the former disciples interviewed by the BBC, she chose to use only her first name.
Rae remembers a time when Ajoke slept too much and Joshua yelled at him to get up.
Another disciple took her to the shower and “hit her with an electrical cord and then turned on the hot water,” she says.
Recalling the incident, Ajoke says: “I screamed at the top of my lungs and they let the water run over my head for a long time.”
That abuse was endless, he says.
“We’re talking about years and years of abuse. Constant abuse. My existence as the daughter of another mother undermined everything he [TB Joshua] said to defend“.
“Why do you hurt all those women?”
BBC Jessica Kaimu claimed that she was not only raped multiple times by the late preacher, but also forced to have an abortion on five occasions.
The abuse escalated when she was 17 years old. and confronted his father about “accounts, firsthand, of people who had experienced sexual abuse.”
“I saw female disciples go up to his room. They would stay for hours. I heard things: ‘Oh, that happened to me. He tried to sleep with me.’ Too many people said the same thing,” she says.
The BBC spoke to more than 25 former disciples (from the United Kingdom, Nigeria, the United States, South Africa, Ghana, Namibia and Germany) who shared harsh, consistent testimonies about sexual abuse they experienced or witnessed.
“I couldn’t take it anymore. I walked right into his office that same day. I screamed at the top of my lungs, ‘Why are you doing that? Why are you hurting all those women?’ He had lost every last iota of fear of that man. He tried to intimidate me with his gaze, but I looked him straight in the eyes,” he says.
Emmanuel, who was part of the church for 21 years and spent more than a decade living on campus as a disciple, remembers that day clearly.
“He [TB Joshua] “He was the first person who started hitting her… then other people joined him.”dice.
“He was like, ‘Can you believe what he’s saying about me?’ Even though they beat her, she kept saying the same thing.”
Ajoke says she was dragged out of her office and put in a room away from the rest of the church members, where lived in social confinement for more than a year.
It’s a form of punishment within Scoan known as “adaba”, something Rae also experienced for two years.
During this time, Ajoke explains that she was repeatedly beaten with belts and chains, often daily.
“I wonder how I survived that time. I couldn’t even get up for days after those beatings. She couldn’t even shower me. He was trying with all his might not to let people listen to me.”
Expelled
Getty Images TB Joshua, one of Africa’s most influential preachers with millions of followers on television and social media, founded the Christian megachurch in Lagos.
One day, when Ajoke was 19, she was escorted to the front doors of the church and left there.
Church security, who were armed, were told they would never be allowed inside again.
That was six years before his father died.
“I was left homeless. I had no one to turn to. Nobody would believe me. Nothing prepared me for that life,” she says.
Ajoke did what he could to survive and spent many years on the streets.
He first contacted the BBC in 2019 after watching a BBC Africa Eye expose, and so began a long BBC investigation to uncover abuse in Scoan.
The BBC contacted Scoan with the allegations in this investigation. He received no response, but the church denied previous accusations against TB Joshua.
“Making baseless accusations against Prophet TB Joshua is not something new… None of the accusations were substantiated“, they pointed out.
With the help of former disciples and some close friends, Ajoke recently managed to get off the streets. But his mental health has been affected.
However, after everything she has been through, she is still determined to tell the truth about her father.
“Every time I was beaten, every time I was humiliated, I remembered that something was wrong in the system,” he says.
Former disciples told the BBC that seeing Ajoke confront this man was one of the main reasons they began to doubt their faith in TB Joshua.
“He kept us all in slavery, absolute and total slavery“says Emmanuel.
“Ajoke was bold enough to stand up to him. I see her as a hero.”
The truth, Ajoke says, is the most important thing to her: “I lost everything, my home, my family, but for me it all comes down to the truth.”
“Y As long as I have breath, I will defend the truth, until the end“.
His dream is to one day return to school and finish his education.
This Africa Eye investigation was carried out by Charlie Northcott, Helen Spooner, Maggie Andresen, Yemisi Adegoke and Ines Ward.
BBC
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