The Disciples: 7. Beware of blasphemers
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Before we start, some episodes in this series of World of Secrets contain graphic descriptions of sexual and physical violence, including sexual assault, rape, and the language associated with it. It's 2008. A strange, slightly funny, slightly disturbing video has surfaced on the internet. It was her voice that was heard the world over, proclaiming the miracles and greatness of a master.

Bisola, one of TB Joshua's closest and longest-serving disciples, has recently left the church. That same voice today is crying out to the world to expose the darkness, tricks and evil manipulations of TB Joshua. And from an unknown location, hiding, she's published a video on YouTube.

Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing. It's difficult to follow at times. But inwardly, they are devouring wolves. But here's the crux of what she says. The man she once saw as the prophet was faking miracles and sexually assaulting women. Ambisola calls this video Deception of the Age. I created...

Bissola was one of the last people TB Joshua ever expected to leave. His chief video editor, one of his closest disciples. In her own words, a loyalist to the core. Why should the world not listen to this? Like David and Goliath. Because he has all it takes to crush anyone.

He needed to do all he could to stop her. At this time, I couldn't even walk on the streets because everywhere I go, look at that lady that blasphemed TB Joshua. Everywhere I turn to, nobody wants to help. This is World of Secrets. Season 2, The Disciples. A BBC World Service investigation. With me, Yemi Siadegoke. And me, Charlie Northcote.

Episode 7, Beware of Blasphemers. He used to talk about being bulletproof. Ray was a disciple under TB Joshua for over a decade. Being bulletproof for God, you know, that he was impenetrable. He really genuinely believed that it was only him and God and everybody else was a minion. He, in that respect, was pretty infallible in his mind. When Bistler spoke out against TB Joshua...

She knew there would be backlash. Beware, beware, beware. She even knew the techniques. Before I left synagogue, I've packaged something like this. Touch not my immunity and do my proper... So when I saw it, I just laughed.

What goes round turns round. They packaged it as a DVD called Beware of Blasphemers. Ray remembers it being made. This is a woman who tried using different means to spread a web of lies and deceit. This thing went all over YouTube. It's still there today. It was sent all around the world. The one who...

TB Joshua is actually using Bistler's attempts to speak out against him as an opportunity to make himself look even more Christ-like. There's a Judas in his midst. It goes on to show extensive confessions made by Bistler during her time inside the church. What is the problem you have with your brain? I always have a terrible headache and any time it happens, I always misbehave.

She's often crying, she looks distressed. Please help me. And the voiceover essentially tries to trash her credibility. This is Bissella Johnson, an insecure and unstable young woman. Beware, beware, beware. Throughout his life, TB Joshua meticulously recorded and kept video footage. And this is the first time we're getting a sense of how

That video footage is not just marketing. At times, it can also be weaponised. And every disciple who was there made confessions. That is the evidence used to undermine their credibility. He had dirt on people. A lot, a lot. I asked Ada Juwan, one of the journalists who investigated TB Joshua, about this.

And a lot of those deaths he had on people came from the place of people coming to church, believing that they were in a safe space where they could tell the story of their life. He knew from day one that he was going to manipulate them, so every interaction he had with them was recorded.

And so when they spoke about their troubles, when they spoke about anything that was wrong with them, gets them to say certain things about themselves, he had it recorded. Money is for me, everything is for me. And he kept those recordings. I smoked for 14 years.

So on the day when something goes wrong with the relationship, he then brings back those videos to manipulate them, to blackmail them, to discredit them. So it's standard practice. It's something that's done repeatedly to different people. He perfected this scheme. To the disciples still inside the compound, the destruction of Bisola was a warning. That if you do that, if you leave, if you speak about the things you've seen and heard and we all held secrets...

But Bisola was undeterred and she kept on speaking out to get people to listen to what she had to say. It didn't matter where she was, everywhere TB Joshua had followers became dangerous. We are in a society whereby if a victim comes out, the society will judge the victim.

Bisola claims people started following her and that one day as she was walking down the street, a mob of people attacked her, brutally beating her. She recorded videos at the time. TB Joshua continues sending different people to threaten my life. She showed us a photo of the aftermath. She looks thin, exhausted and broken. Blood is pouring from her head.

And this was just the beginning of years living on the run. Bisola spent much of this time in disguise. I'm not a Muslim, but I have to put on hijab in order to cover my identity. Exposing TB Joshua meant Bisola risked a lot. Not only was she on the run with her reputation in pieces, but Bisola risked exposing her own past. Her role as coordinator of youth, tasked by TB Joshua to look out for young women.

Women like Ray, Annika and Jessica, who allege they were sexually abused by TB Joshua. And now we're about to learn. So was Bisola. When I got in there, he invited me to his room and assured me that it's OK, God is not upset. At the beginning, I was not cooperative with him, but he kept forcing himself on me. He said...

It's OK. God is not upset about it. Bisola may have been asked by TB Joshua to find young women, but she says she was a victim too, that she was repeatedly raped by TB Joshua. Most of the sexual assaults that Bisola describes are just too graphic to broadcast.

Under threat of violence, she says she was subjected to humiliation too. I saw that he has scar across his chest. He usually asks us to use our tongue to be licking the chest because he always said that they are itching him. I couldn't say no. I would just be subject to that debasement. I talked to on St. Gaud.

What did my forefathers did wrong? They have to be going through this. I wanted love. I wanted love. I believe every human being wants love. That's why I stayed there. That's why I keep trying. What happened to me and to others shouldn't happen to any human being. That is why for many years I've been talking.

So that my past will not become somebody's future. What happened to me? That anytime you go to church, please don't forget your brains at home. Should I follow what the prophet says? Should I follow my heart or swim?

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The Me Too movement hasn't taken off in Nigeria in the same way that it has in the West. And, you know, victim shaming, blaming is still a huge thing. People have tried to speak up about sexual abuse in other churches in the country and have faced immense backlash, threats to their safety. So it's not easy trying to go up against an institution like this. You know, we're talking about

A country where, you know, sexual assault, sexual violence, it's huge. And places that you would normally sort of go to for support, you know, they're not really there. In Winchester, Matt McNaught was hearing some of the stories trickling out of the compound in Lagos. He was starting to piece together what was going on, blogging away from an English pub.

I would arrive at work early and sit in the Wetherspoons next to my work and just bang out a little post about this topic or that topic and press publish.

Matt knew many people from his church in Winchester who were leaving for Lagos. In late 2010, he'd set up a blog that pulled together disparate bits of information about TB Joshua, which he was receiving from people in Nigeria. As he published, it became clear he was dealing with a man trying hard to control his image.

We knew that they were reading them on some level, whether or not he was or other people, because almost as soon as the blog started, there were all these copycat blogs. So we were called TV Joshua Watch. And then there was a Watch TV Joshua, and there was Watching TV Joshua, and all sorts of variations. It was classic. To make it harder to find. Exactly. It's very cool.

And every single day, you would get new posts that were just puff, you know, just complete puff pieces about this healing, that healing, and it'd be copy-pasted from one to another, but it would just flood the internet with this stuff. And the apparent attempt to suppress the blog seemed to work. Matt's blog didn't seem to provoke much of a response.

Early on, we had some conversations with people like the concerned families of some of the disciples who had been raising the alarm about, well, what can we do to escalate concern about this? The sense I get was that because it was in Nigeria, there was very little you could do about it. If there was more going on in the UK, then there would be a little bit more scrutiny. This was what Annika told us. The police couldn't do anything because it was in a different jurisdiction.

We were very aware that a lot of people became disciples after their pastors, after their kind of churches had been enthusing about this ministry, you know, bringing materials and videos and just encouraging people to go out and have visits to this place.

So surely those same people that were selling this place would be interested in actually what's really going on there and putting the record straight to their congregations. And I can't say that we put loads and loads of time and effort into this, but we did reach out to some evangelical church kind of umbrella organisations and say, look, this is the evidence we have that dodgy things are happening. This is quite a common destination for people from the UK to

And we just got very little interest. The sense of it was pastors and men of God can infuse about something and encourage people to go out. And then when things turn out bad, they kind of just back away slowly. Are you aware of the police ever investigating this? Did the police ever contact you guys, given you were collating all of these testimonies and putting them in the public domain? No, we were never contacted by the police or anyone else.

Do you know that people were reporting this to the police? I know that several disciples on return to the UK did report crimes to the police. Nothing happened. At the beginning of the series, Ray told us how she'd also tried the police, church authorities and Interpol before she and Annika came to meet us in the pub. She thinks she knows why. The crux of why I wasn't listened to is the worst of it all.

because it was in Africa and nobody gave a damn. I think we have to ask the question of how is it possible that we're in a situation here where potentially dozens of women from multiple countries around the world were undergoing horrific abuse for years and they tried to speak out and nothing happened. They went to the police, they went to the media and nothing happened.

I think it speaks to how, you know, society treats women who are victims of sexual violence broadly. And also, as Ray said, because it happened in Africa, and I'm pretty sure if this had happened in a church somewhere in America, no matter how small, it would have been international news. And that's quite depressing. I'd also say that, you know, Bissler had been speaking out for a long time, but it wasn't until...

Some of the white disciples started speaking out that this investigation got underway. People like Bisola did everything they could to speak out, but nobody listened. I want people to learn from my story. It's a lesson for everyday people. But because of the fear of the society...

Many people remain silent. The culture of silence and secrecy needs to be broken. Women are the most disadvantaged. So I want to encourage people to come out, no matter how little or big your story. Maybe it happened in your family set up, or in neighborhood, or in religious places.

Come out. Let's tell this story. One of the most interesting questions for all the disciples we spoke to was what was it that made you leave? And for many of them, after spending decades inside the compound, they could identify a specific moment, a single misstep in TB Joshua's actions that began to unravel the indoctrination that had consumed their minds. The whole system worked on a punishment and praise basis.

dealt out by TB Joshua. So for me, my punishment was isolation. And he used to say that isolation was the best way to receive Jesus. For Ray, her breaking point came during a period of brutal punishment the disciples call Adaba. I spent two years in the compound, isolated. I wasn't in a room like you would find in a prison. But no one was allowed to speak to me.

I wasn't allowed in his office, I wasn't allowed in a department and I couldn't get out of the compound. So I would wake up in the morning, I'd have nothing to do. He wouldn't see me so he couldn't get into his office to try and talk to him, which was rare anyway. And no one else would speak to me. I was basically in social isolation for two years and I had a complete breakdown. I tried to commit suicide. Yeah, it's probably like the worst, darkest time of my life.

This terrible period in Ray's journey was actually the moment that saved her. In the midst of her despair, she had a realisation. TB Joshua wasn't the man he claimed to be. I'd come out of that and I kind of want to say he made a massive mistake because he lost control of me and I regained a little bit of my own mind. And it was that chink in the armour that allowed me to begin to think and make decisions for myself.

When Ray first travelled to the church, she thought TB Joshua would solve the biggest problem in her life, her sexuality. Twelve years later, after countless so-called deliverances, promising to cast out the demon of her sexuality, her feelings hadn't changed. At that point, I was like, what, 30 years?

like maybe 32 I'd never had a girlfriend I'd never permitted myself to actually have any physical relationship with a person I was attracted to or had fallen in love with and I got tired I was just exhausted and I decided that I'd like give it one last shot at deliverance and that if it didn't work I was leaving and you know in essence that's what happened they delivered me didn't work and I was like I'm leaving no matter how much she tried to bury it

Ray realised the thing that she'd been most afraid of, her sexuality, was a fundamental part of who she was. But she still had to leave. I wrote him a letter and told him that I did not want to stay there anymore and that I'm gay and I always will be. He asked me to see him and I did. He tried to bribe me. After more than 12 years under TB Joshua's rule, the spell on Ray was finally breaking.

The scales were beginning to fall from her eyes, and for the first time since she was 21 years old, the prophet's charm, threats and persuasion failed to work. Even though Ray would physically leave the compound that day, it would take much longer to free herself from the hold TB Joshua had over her mind. I'd physically left, but a cult is psychological. It's not just a physical place. I still thought I was part of an amazing church.

I didn't leave because I suddenly had this profound understanding that TB Joshua was a psychopathic predator. And so I walked away and it took a further two years for me to actually leave. Ray was out, but hundreds of people were still inside those compound walls. And while Ray was trying to detach her life fully from the church, disaster strikes.

I remember I was working from home at the time, getting a telephone call. Please, please, can you pray for us? Pray for TB Joshua. Please, please pray for us. Next time. Here, you can see for yourself what happened to the building at the Synagogue Church of All Nations on September 12th, 2014. You could hear people and their voices are fainting from louder, it's getting weaker.

We approached the Synagogue Church of All Nations with the allegations made in this series. They did not offer a response or address any of the claims directly, but in an earlier email told us that making unfounded allegations against Prophet TB Joshua is not a new occurrence. None of the allegations was ever substantiated. Thanks for listening to World of Secrets, Season 2, The Disciples, from the BBC World Service. This is Episode 7 of 9.

Thank you to everyone around the world who spoke to us and shared their stories for this investigation. We want as many people as possible to hear their stories, so please do tell others about World of Secrets. And where you can do, rate and leave a review. We'd be really grateful and it really does help. This season of World of Secrets is produced by BBC Audio Documentaries and is presented by me, Yemi Siadigoke, and Charlie Northcott.

It's been made in collaboration with BBC Africa Eye, with original investigation by Charlie Northcott and Helen Spooner. The producer is Rob Byrne. The executive producer is Georgia Katt. The series editor is Philip Sellers. At the BBC World Service, the senior podcast producer is Lee Trung. And the podcast commissioning editor is John Manel. Thank you again for listening. The most powerful designer drugs...

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