boise, idaho – Almost every detail about the religious group to which Lisa Webb's family belonged was hidden from the outside world. Its followers met in homes instead of churches. Its leadership structure was difficult to identify, its finances opaque. It didn't even have any official name.
But for decades, no secret was so closely guarded as the identity of the sexual predators inside the group known as “Two by Twos.”
Now, a growing number of public allegations from around the world have prompted a sweeping investigation by the FBI and put an uncomfortable spotlight on the long-quiet Christian sect. Survivors say group leaders minister to child abusers by pressuring victims to forgive, ignoring legal reporting requirements and transferring abusers to new locations to live with unsuspecting families. Protected.
Ministry leaders have publicly condemned the abuses but many declined to answer questions from The Associated Press.
For Webb, who was sexually abused as a child by a minister in the group, the attention has brought an unexpected feeling of “strength in numbers.”
“There are a lot of people who are frustrated and disappointed,” Webb said. “But there's also camaraderie and support.”
A website, a hotline and social media pages set up by victims have documented allegations against more than 900 abusers, with survivors in more than 30 countries and cases continuing to be reported. In the past year, news stories and a Hulu documentary have focused on the sect's predatory preachers and the leaders who enable them.
How did the sect keep the allegations out of the headlines?
While criminals have been sentenced to prison in isolated cases, the sect has largely avoided legal repercussions, protected by its decentralized structure, hidden finances and state laws that limit time limits for criminal charges. Let's limit.
This sect, also known to its members as “The Way” or “The Truth”, was founded in Ireland in 1897 by William Irwin, who spoke out against the existence of churches. He argued that the only way to spread Christianity was to do as Jesus instructed in the Book of Matthew: sending the apostles to live among the people they wished to convert.
Tony Gutierrez, Mengshin Lin, Mike Stewart/AP
The sect developed as volunteer preachers – known as workers – would go “by twos” to stay in followers' family homes for days or weeks at a time. Historians of the sect say there were a few million members a few decades ago, but current estimates put the figure at 75,000 to 85,000 worldwide.
Unlike the Boy Scouts or the Catholic Church, which has paid billions to sex abuse victims, the sect's aversion to property does not have explicit assets that could be used for settlements, legal experts say.
Workers are expected to give up worldly possessions and rely on followers for food, shelter, and transportation. But it also ensures that abused workers have access to potential victims.
Alleged abuse – and coverup – exposed
Webb was abused by a preacher who lived with his family in Michigan when he was 11 years old. That man, Peter Musso, was convicted much later – after she had expressed interest in meeting him in 2008 and he decided to pursue charges. The regional supervisor to whom she first reported the abuse was later convicted of failing to report allegations of abuse against another local worker.
“You have this mentality that they are angels in your house. They can do no wrong, so there are no walls standing in front of you,” he said. “This perfect storm was created, the perfect recipe for this kind of behavior.”
Sherry Autrey had just turned 14 when a 28-year-old activist went to her family's home in Visalia, California, for two months.
He immediately started misbehaving with her, sneaking into her room at night and taking her for walks during the day. Whenever Hall & Oates' song “Maneater” came on he would turn on the radio and sing: “Look out boy, she's gonna chew you up.”
When Autrey told her mother about the abuse a few years later, her mother reported it to the sect's regional supervisor, who was in charge of all workers in the region.
The overseer refused to warn other families. Instead, he sent the worker back to Autrey's house to apologize.
Autrey, who had been brought up to be meek, burst into tears. His family took him to the district attorney's office but declined to prosecute him.
“I have to explain clearly what happened,” Autrey said. “And I was in no way prepared for this.”
Decades later, Autrey was at a baseball game when “Maneater” arrived. She had to walk around the stadium to calm herself and resolved to send a letter to hundreds of sect members about the abuse.
“I wanted anyone else suffering to know they're not alone,” Autrey said. “He needs to know there is help.”
Americo Quispe, a Peruvian employee, was deported to Garland, Texas in the early 2000s after facing allegations of inappropriate behavior in his home country. They soon found new victims, the families of some of whom went to the police. He returned to Peru before being arrested.
Quispe was later convicted of molestation in Peru and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He never faced charges in Texas.
Another activist, Ruben Mata, abused dozens of boys, among them 10-year-old Douglas Patterson, who was lured away from his family during a sect conference in the early 1990s. Patterson said he kept quiet about it because he feared that if he told, his family would leave the sect – and thus be denied eternal salvation.
Mata was ultimately convicted in a separate sexual abuse case in 2006. He died in prison in California.
A few months before Mata's trial, Dale Schultz, a Saskatchewan, Canada, overseer, sent two letters to colleagues.
One was to be shown to any member concerned. It admitted that the mother was a pedophile and that staff had been alerted to his abuse at least three times. According to the letter, the sect informed the authorities only after the mother resigned.
The second was for the staff. It states that no copy of the first letter should be made.
Schultz wrote, “The purpose of the letter is to help those who have concerns, not to advertise the state's problem to people who either don't know about it or don't have a problem with it.”
In another case, Ed Alexander, a regional supervisor in Arizona, wrote a 2005 letter to a veteran accused of molesting children, saying “We love our people too much to report their misdeeds.”
The letter suggests that cults could meet their mandatory abuse-reporting obligations by recommending perpetrators receive professional counseling because then counselors – rather than cult leaders – would be obligated to report to police.
“He believes child sexual abuse is just a sin. Like, you're a sinner, they're a sinner, it's all just a sin,” said Eileen Dickey, one of the man's victims. She reported the abuse to sect leaders because she was concerned that other children would be targeted.
“I was told never to talk about it,” he said.
Alexander would not speak to The Associated Press: “Unfortunately, the media coverage has been so negative and one-sided that I must decline an interview,” he wrote.
Jared Snyder spent more than two decades as an itinerant minister before becoming disillusioned and quitting. No one told him directly about the abuse, Snyder said, but he occasionally heard rumors.
The sect's culture — which makes gossip taboo and puts tremendous pressure on members to be kind — means that misdeeds, big or small, are given less importance, he said.
“An overseer told me bluntly, 'The less you know, the better off you are,'” he said.
As an employee, Snyder received no pay check, retirement benefits or health insurance benefits and was discouraged from using banks. But he never lived without spending money: Followers regularly offered cash to workers, and Snyder said he often had thousands of dollars in his pocket.
Snyder said most of that money will be spent on building materials, food or other supplies at regional conventions.
In June 2022, a regional overseer named Dean Brewer died in an Oregon motel room. Brewer, 67, has served in at least 22 states and territories and seven countries since 1976, according to a timeline compiled by former member Pam Walton, who uses historical records and photographs to track the activities of hunter campaigners.
Mengshin Lin/AP
Nine months after Brewer's death, Idaho and Oregon Supervisor Doyle Smith wrote a letter to members. Evidence left on Brewer's phone and laptop showed that he had raped and abused multiple underage victims, Smith wrote.
“Dean was a sexual predator,” Smith wrote. “We have never respected or defended such completely inappropriate behavior among us. There is a very united consensus among us that for obvious reasons the only thing to do is to be transparent with all of you, however difficult it is ”
That transparency did not extend to dealings with local police. Autrey, another abuse survivor, and private investigator Cynthia Liles – all former cult members – pressured Smith into turning over Brewer's laptop to detectives, Autrey told the AP.
According to records from the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office in Oregon, the computer had by then been tampered with. The web browser search history was cleared. Brewer's Apple ID was changed and files were transferred from his Dropbox account. Breuer's phone was never provided to police and the “Find My iPhone” feature was disabled.
“What web browsing history was there on the laptop that no one wanted anyone else to know about?” Detective Jeffrey Burlew wrote in a police report. Finding no evidence of a crime within its jurisdiction, the office closed the investigation.
Smith did not respond to phone messages from the AP.
partial change
Although Autrey and others had long sought reform in the denomination, Brewer's death proved to be a catalyst. Autrey, Liles and another survivor launched a hotline, website and Facebook page for survivors.
In February, the FBI field office in Omaha, Nebraska announced an investigation.
The outcry prompted some sect leaders to condemn the abuses and seek advice from counselors about how to better protect members. But at least some regional observers have ultimately refused to adopt the recommended child abuse prevention policies – saying that the only true code of conduct is the New Testament.
And some leaders still warn members against criticizing the sect.
At an August conference in Duncan, British Columbia, an activist who helped lead the program did not directly mention the abuse scandal, but told members to leave out the “bad things.”
Robert Doecke, an Australian activist, preached, “It is easier to be critical than to be right.” “If you focus on problems, it will only create more problems. But if you focus on God, it will lead to solutions.”