Robert Corfield, a man who sexually abused a boy in a secret Christian church in the 1980s, has decided to speak out for the first time about the case.
The BBC confronted him as part of a wide-ranging investigation into allegations of child sexual abuse that allegedly spanned decades. within that church, known as The Truth.
His name is just one of more than 700 reported by a large number of people through a hotline created to report sexual abuse within the church.
The group says it addresses all allegations of abuse.
The church, which has no official name but is known as The Truth or The Way, is believed to have about 100,000 members worldwide, most of them in North America.
A church shrouded in secrecy
The church was founded in 1897 in Ireland by a Scottish evangelist and operates through “ministers” who spread the teachings of the New Testament by word of mouth.
Ministers are stripped of their belongings and then must be welcomed by church members as they travel spreading the gospel.
This makes children living in the homes in which they are fostered vulnerable to abuse, according to experts.
The potential magnitude of the problem was gleaned from a hotline created last year by two women who say they were sexually abused by a church leader as children.
Several people contacted by phone stating that they also suffered abuse, with testimonies recounting cases that would have occurred decades ago and others more recently.
The secretive and insular nature of the church helped lead to the abuse, according to witnesses who spoke to the BBC.
The religious group has many rules that are known, but are not written.
One of them is that followers must marry someone in the group and avoid mixing with strangers in the least.
“I felt dirty and I still feel dirty”
Michael Havet, 54, who was a member of the church, told the BBC that Robert Corfield abused him in the 1980s, when he was 12 years old.
“People called me 'Robert's little sidekick.' I felt dirty and I still feel dirty,” says Havet, speaking from his home in Ottawa, Canada.
After abusing him, Havet says Corfield forced him to kneel beside him and pray.
“I had to work hard to overcome that and find my prayer life again,” he says.
When asked by the BBC about the child abuse allegations, Corfield admitted they took place over about six years in the 1980s.
“I have to admit that it is true,” he accepted.
Corfield was a minister (known within the church as a “worker”) in Saskatchewan, Canada, when the abuse occurred.
This is the first time he has publicly admitted to abusing minors.
In the past he was confronted by church members. He wrote two private letters to Havet in 2004 and 2005 in which he apologized and stated that he was seeing a therapist.
In one of the letters, Corfield wrote that he was “making a list of victims.”
“I don't want anyone missing who has been a victim of my actions,” he said.
When asked about this by the BBC, Corfield said there were no other victims like Michael, and that he had massaged two or three other teenagers.
A “new beginning” for the aggressor
Havet is among a dozen people who have told the BBC that widespread abuse has been ignored or covered up by the Truth church for decades.
They also claim that some of the defendants remained in positions of power for years.
The way the church handled its own case is a good example, according to Havet.
He reported his abuse in 1993 to “overseer” Dale Shultz, the highest-ranking church leader in Saskatchewan, Canada.
Overseers are the highest-ranking members of the church, and there is one for each U.S. state and each Canadian province where active followers live.
But Shultz did not go to the police and, according to Havet, violently attacked him a few weeks later because she thought he had told other people what had happened.
“He grabbed me by the shoulders while shouting at me and slammed my head against a concrete column,” Havet recalls: “He made me bleed.”
Havet says Shultz then “encouraged” him to leave the church, while his attacker, Robert Corfield, was transferred to the US state of Montana, where he became a minister.
Corfield told the BBC that he believes it was Shultz who decided to send him to Montana, where he remained in office for 25 years.
“He suggested it would be a new beginning and would probably also create space between me and the victim,” he said.
Corfield was removed as minister last year after another member of the congregation confronted him about Michael's abuse, according to internal church emails seen by the BBC.
An email also suggested that “there may be other victims.”
The former minister told the BBC he “voluntarily resigned” when allegations were made against him regarding Michael's abuse.
He also stated that he “was not informed of any accusation beyond that.”
When contacted by the BBC, Dale Shultz said by email that “much of the information they have received about me is distorted and inaccurate.”
He declined to go into further details.
A global crisis
Havet is one of more than 1,000 current and former members of the cult who have contacted a hotline set up by campaign group Advocates for The Truth.
The group was founded last year by Americans Cynthia Liles, Lauren Rohs and Sheri Autrey.
They say they have been given the names of more than 700 alleged perpetrators in 21 countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and Russia.
They plan to file cases against those on the list and take them to the police.
The three women belonged to the La Verdad church. Lauren Rohs and Sheri Autrey claim they were abused by the same man.
The attacker was Lauren's father, a high-ranking minister named Steve Rohs, they say.
Lauren Rohs tracked down Sheri after reading her anonymous online account of child sexual abuse in 2019.
In the post, Sheri detailed how her attacker sang Maneater by the 80s pop duo Hall & Oates to her every night while she rested in her room.
Lauren knew immediately that the man Sheri described as her attacker was her own father, as it was the same song she remembers him singing to her as a child.
“I was stunned,” says the now 35-year-old woman. “She disoriented me beyond what you can imagine.”
She says that for as long as she can remember she was a victim of her father, who subjected her to years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse.
For her part, Sheri remembers that Steve Rohs stayed at her family's home in Tulare County, California, for two months in 1982 – when she was 14 years old – and sexually abused her every day.
The 54-year-old maintains that he sang Maneater to her because “part of the manipulation was that I was a wild seductress.”
There is an age difference of 20 years between both women.
By the time his daughter was born, Steve Rohs had abandoned his role as a minister and established his family in San Diego, California.
They later moved to Washington, Idaho and Colorado.
Lauren Rohs says her father used to give various reasons for his constant moves, including that “God needs us in a new place.”
The BBC relayed all the allegations to Steve Rohs via emails and social media messages, but the accused did not respond.
The culture of abuse persists
Lauren relates that during her time in the church in the 1990s and 2000s, workers were like “demigods” and were never questioned, and that those who contacted via the abuse hotline confirm that this culture persists today .
Like Michael Havet, Sheri claims she reported her attacker, but he was protected.
In 1986, she confided in her mother that Steve Rohs had abused her.
“I felt scared, dirty, ashamed and ashamed, and guilty,” says Autrey, who was 17 at the time and believed she would be in “big trouble.”
But her mother believed her immediately and reported the man, confiding the matter to the California state supervisor, who is now dead.
In a letter dated May 11, 1986, written by Mr. Rohs and seen by the BBC, the man tells the supervisor that he and the teenager “kissed and touched each other intimately” and that he had since “begged for forgiveness.”
Workers later took Rohs to Sheri's house, where he apologized to her.
“I responded that he didn't regret what he had done, otherwise he would have apologized much sooner,” Autrey recalls.
Despite admitting to child abuse, Steve Rohs remained a respected and influential member of the church.
His daughter says he was even promoted in 1994 to “church elder,” a person who has seniority and holds meetings in his own home.
According to sources, Rohs currently lives in Minnesota with Lauren's mother; who has no contact with either of them.
He works as an insurance agent and was an active member of La Verdad until April of last year, when his daughter and Sheri brought their allegations to the state supervisor and he was expelled from meetings.
The catalyst for the hotline's creation was the death of Oregon Supervisor Dean Bruer in 2022.
He was one of La Verdad's most respected leaders and had worked for the group for 46 years in six states in the United States.
His successor wrote an internal letter claiming Bruer had a history of abuse that included “rape and abuse of underage victims.”
It's unclear what the motivation was behind writing the letter, but it was leaked and made its way to Facebook and TikTok.
Then more people began to tell their own stories of abuse.
“I think we thought the hotline was only for Dean Bruer's victims, but what it did was just open other floodgates,” Ms. Rohs says.
Now they want the kind of justice they couldn't get.
“It's been difficult as survivors to go back and hear the amount of filth and evil,” Sheri notes.
“What happened to us was very bad, but seeing other people in such terrible situations is even more outrageous. It has been difficult, but also very rewarding.”
Because The Truth has no official leader, the BBC sent the allegations to more than 20 supervisors in North America, via email.
The only one who responded was Rob Newman, the California supervisor.
“We actively address all allegations of abuse involving participants in our community,” he wrote in an email, before Corfield's confession.
“Our main concern is that victims receive the professional help they need.
“We take all allegations of abuse seriously, strongly encourage everyone to undergo mandatory whistleblower training, and encourage everyone to report issues to the appropriate legal authorities.”
Sheri Autrey believes change won't come before the guilty supervisors are behind bars.
“It's a very well-oiled machine for criminals,” he says.
“It's a fine-tuned system that's been around for 12 decades.”
Click here to read more stories from BBC News Mundo.
And remember that you can receive notifications. Download the latest version of our app and activate them so you don't miss our best content.
BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/czd7enyp22lo, IMPORTING DATE: 2024-01-31 00:37:03
#confession #sexual #abuse #minister #secret #Christian #church