An investigative documentary comprising three parts on the alleged sexual harassment of women by the late TB Joshua will air on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
The three-part series revealed the secretive lifestyle of the now-deceased SCOAN founder. It included gruesome stories of fraud, rape, abuse, and staged healings.
Sources told the BBC that the church knew about all the allegations but never investigated them. They claimed that the sexual crime occurred more than 20 years ago.
A section of the film showed how SCOAN concealed information from its members regarding the 2014 collapse of one of the guesthouses owned by the church. Members saw a short film on Emmanuel TV that showed the building with what looked to be an aircraft flying over it.
“On television, they were showing us the building had been bombed,” one of the sources who lost her daughter in the collapsed building told the BBC.
“They told us don’t tell what you know,” Emmanuel, another worker at SCOAN said in the film. “They knew something was wrong with the building but they were managing it.”
SCOAN later paid the families of the victims cash as compensation which they interpreted to be “hush money”. A church worker who was part of those who handed the money to victims’ families in South Africa said TB Joshua asked that she instruct the grieving families not to speak to the media. Then, Joshua personally threatened families who refused the money, sources told the BBC.