During a recent investigation, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) discovered evidence of widespread abuse and torture by the founder of one of the world’s largest Christian evangelical groups.

The BBC aired a programme on Monday morning on the experiences of multiple former Synagogue Church of All Nations members, including five British members, who accused the late Nigerian TB Joshua of crimes including as forced abortions and rape.

Nearly two decades have passed since abuse allegations at a private Lagos property surfaced.

The Synagogue Church of All Nations stated that earlier assertions were baseless but did not address the current accusations.

The charismatic and incredibly popular preacher and televangelist TB Joshua passed away in 2021, leaving behind a sizable worldwide following.

Following a two-year investigation, the BBC discovered numerous eyewitness accounts of Joshua employing physical force or torturing people, including beating and chaining children.

There were also other women who said Joshua had assaulted them; some claimed they had been raped for years on the property.

In addition to multiple stories of forced abortions inside the church after Joshua was accused of raping women, there were firsthand accounts of Joshua’s “miracle healings” witnessed by millions of people around the world.

British lady who was 21 years old when she left Brighton University in 2002 to join the religion after being accepted. She was one of Joshua’s alleged “disciples” for the following twelve years, living inside his convoluted concrete building in Lagos.

Speaking to the BBC, Rae said, “We all thought we were in heaven, but we were in hell, and in hell terrible things happen.”

Rae claimed that Joshua abused her sexually and kept her in a kind of solitary confinement for two years. She also said that she made many attempts at suicide inside the property because of the extreme mistreatment.

With millions of followers on social media and a Christian TV programme named Emmanuel TV, the Synagogue Church of All Nations [SCOAN] has a large global following. Tens of thousands of pilgrims from Europe, the Americas, South East Asia, and Africa visited the church in Nigeria in the 1990s and early 2000s in order to see Joshua perform “healing miracles”. Within his Lagos property, at least 150 guests lived with him as followers, sometimes for decades at a time.

More than 25 former “disciples” shared compelling, verifiable stories with the BBC about their experiences inside the church, the most recent of which occurred in 2019. They spoke to the BBC from the UK, Nigeria, the United States, South Africa, Ghana, Namibia, and Germany. When they first joined, many of the victims were in their teens. In a handful of the British cases, Joshua worked with other churches to subsidise the expense of their travel to Lagos.

Rae and several other respondents compared their experiences to being part of a cult.

Jessica Kaimu, a Namibian, said her trauma lasted more than five years. She claims that Joshua first sexually abused her when she was seventeen years old, and that as a result of multiple assaults by TB Joshua, she underwent five forced abortions while there.

She said to BBC, “These were backdoor type… medical treatments that we were going through… it could have killed us.”

Other interviewees said they were constantly deprived of sleep and undressed, and beaten with horse whips.

TB Joshua was acclaimed one of the most influential preachers in African history upon his passing in June 2021. Rising out of poverty, he established an evangelical empire that was associated with scores of celebrities, government figures, and international football players.

During his lifetime, he did, however, come under fire after a hostel for Catholic pilgrims collapsed in 2014, killing 116 people at least.

Several former church insiders had never before spoken up on the record, until now, thanks to the BBC’s investigation, which was done in conjunction with the worldwide media platform Open Democracy. They believe that after years of warnings, they have been mostly ignored.

Many witnesses in Nigeria claim that after speaking out against the abuse and posting videos on YouTube with charges, they were physically attacked and, in one case, shot at.

In March 2022, when a BBC team attempted to video the church’s Lagos compound from a public street, the church’s guards opened fire on them and kept them for many hours.

The BBC subsequently contacted SCOAN with the claims based on their findings. Although it denied earlier allegations against TB Joshua, it did not respond to them.

SCOAN wrote, “Making unfounded allegations against Prophet TB Joshua is not a new occurrence… None of the allegations was ever substantiated.”