This is the Guardian. The Guardian Archive Long Read. Hi my name is Matthew McNaught.

Hi my name is Matthew McNaught, I'm a writer and a therapist and I wrote the article from

Lagost to Winchester, how a divisive Nigerian pastor built a global following which was published in 2021.

So I have kind of a long history with a story of TB Joshua and I first started

writing a blog with my brother Ian back in about 2011.

When we reconnected with some old church friends, we were brought up in an evangelical church in Winchester,

who had spent over a decade as decisement. an evangelical that it was essentially a cult, you know, they're left with terrible stories of abuse and

deception and torture and psychological manipulation. So this prompted us along with some old church friends to try and publicize the darker

side of what was going on in the synagogue church of all nations in Lagos and I

came back to the story probably in about 2016 where I put together a proposal for a book about

TB Joshua and the kind of unusual and unexpected link with this very kind of middle England church in in

Winchester trying to really get my head around how my old church friends were

drawn in to such a strange and extreme place.

And I was almost kind of finished with the book

when TB Joshua suddenly died.

The BBC investigation that came out in January,

you know, really had a lot of very shocking

testimonies, the extent of the abuse and the cruelty, you know even surprised me

even though I'd heard a lot of these stories, I had rumors of some of the other stuff.

Reading the article back, one thing that stands out is that the abuse isn't front and center in the article the really dark and troubling

side of Scohan you know I talk about it but in a sense it's not the headline that

is buried part way through The story is so bizarre and so extreme.

...