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The BBC reveals how the late megachurch leader TB Joshua, who is accused of committing sexual crimes on a mass scale, locked up his own daughter and tortured her for years before leaving her homeless on the streets of Lagos, Nigeria.<\/strong><\/p>\n Warning: Contains details some readers may find distressing<\/p>\n \u201cMy dad had fear, constant fear. He was very afraid that someone would speak up,\u201d says one of the pastor\u2019s daughters, Ajoke \u2013 the first whistle-blower to reach out to the BBC about the abuse she witnessed at her father\u2019s church, the Synagogue Church of All Nations (Scoan).<\/p>\n TB Joshua, who died in 2021 at the age of 57, is accused of widespread abuse and torture spanning almost 20 years.<\/p>\n Now aged 27, Ajoke lives in hiding and has dropped her surname \u201cJoshua\u201d \u2013 the BBC is not publishing her new name.<\/p>\n Little is known about Ajoke\u2019s birth mother, who was believed to be one of TB Joshua\u2019s congregants. Ajoke says she was raised by Evelyn, Joshua\u2019s widow, from as early as she can remember.<\/p>\n Until the age of seven, Ajoke says she had a very happy childhood, going on holiday with the Joshua family to places like Dubai.<\/p>\n But one day everything changed. She was suspended from school for a misdemeanour, and a local journalist wrote an article referring to her as the illegitimate child of TB Joshua. She was pulled out of school and taken to the Scoan compound in Lagos.<\/p>\n \u201cI was made to move to the disciples\u2019 room. I didn\u2019t volunteer to be a disciple. I was made to join,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The disciples were an elite group of dedicated followers who served TB Joshua and lived with him inside the maze-like structure of the church. They came from all over the world, many staying at the compound for decades.<\/p>\n They lived under a strict set of rules: forbidden to sleep for more than a few hours at a time, prohibited from using their own phones or having access to their personal emails, and forced to call TB Joshua \u201cDaddy\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe disciples were both brainwashed and enablers. Everybody was just acting based on command \u2013 like zombies. Nobody was questioning anything,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Just a child, Ajoke would not follow the rules like the other disciples: she refused to stand up when the pastor came into the room and rebelled against the severe sleeping orders.<\/p>\n The abuse started soon after.<\/p>\n Not long after arriving, aged seven, she remembers being beaten for wetting the bed and then being forced to walk around the compound with a sign around her neck saying \u201cI am a bedwetter.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe message about Ajoke was that she had terrible evil spirits that needed to be driven out,\u201d says one former female disciple.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a time in the disciple meetings \u2013 he [Joshua] said people could beat her. Anyone in the female dormitory could just hit her and I remember just seeing people slapping her as they walked past,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n From the moment Ajoke moved to the church in the Ikotun neighbourhood of Lagos, she was treated like an outcast.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was, like, kind of labelled the black sheep of the family,\u201d says Rae, from the UK, who spent 12 years living in the church as a disciple. Like most of the former disciples interviewed by the BBC, she opted to only use her first name.<\/p>\n Rae remembers a time when Ajoke slept for too long, and Joshua shouted at her to get up.<\/p>\n Another disciple took her to the shower and \u201cwhipped her with an electrical cord and then turned the hot water on\u201d, she says.<\/p>\n Recalling the incident, Ajoke says: \u201cI was screaming at the top of my voice, and they just let the water run on my head for a very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n Such abuse was never-ending, she says.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re talking about years and years of abuse. Consistent abuse. My existence as a child from another mother undermined everything he [TB Joshua] claimed to stand for.\u201d<\/p>\n The abuse escalated to a different scale when she was aged 17 and confronted her dad about \u201caccounts, first hand, of people who had experienced sexual abuse\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw female disciples go up to his room. They were going away for hours. I was hearing things: \u2018Oh this happened to me. He tried sleeping with me.\u2019 Too many people were saying the same thing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The BBC spoke to more than 25 former disciples \u2013 from the UK, Nigeria, US, South Africa, Ghana, Namibia and Germany \u2013 who gave powerful corroborating testimony of experiencing or witnessing sexual abuse.<\/p>\n \u201cI couldn\u2019t take it any more. I walked directly into his office on that very day. I shouted at the top of my voice: \u2018Why are you doing this? Why are you hurting all these women?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI had lost every iota of fear for this man. He tried to stare me down, but I was looking in his eyes,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Emmanuel, who was part of the church for 21 years and spent more than a decade living in the compound as a disciple, remembers that day clearly.<\/p>\n \u201cHe [TB Joshua] was the first person that started hitting her\u2026 then other people joined,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was saying: \u2018Can you imagine what she\u2019s saying about me?\u2019 Even as much as they were hitting her, beating her, she was still saying the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n About the late TB Joshua<\/strong><\/p>\n Temitope Balogun Joshua, popularly known as T. B. Joshua, was a Nigerian charismatic pastor, televangelist, and philanthropist.<\/p>\n He was the leader and founder of SCOAN, one of the continent\u2019s leading megachurches that runs the Emmanuel TV television station from Lagos. Born on June 12, 1963 in Ondo, Nigeria, Joshua died on June 5, 2021, at his base in Lagos, Nigeria.<\/p>\n Watch the three-part BBC investigative documentary on TB Joshua titled \u2018Disciples\u2019:<\/strong><\/p>\n