![]() ![]() She and other former members said people who complained about almost anything were punished. “The fear of the unknown of what would happen if I would tell somebody was bigger than the fear of the abuse,” she said. ![]() One young woman, who asked not to be identified, told FOX4 the church taught her to be so afraid to make anyone angry that when a teenage boy, who was also a church member, started sexually abusing her when she was 5 years old, she never said a word. “Anything that showed any kind of emotion that wasn’t happy was punished.” “Rolling my eyes, clenching my fists if I was angry,” Molly recalled. It was used as punishment for almost any behavior. Molly said in her house that fast, which allowed only vegetables and water, could last weeks. “How about a fast until we break all these rotten attitudes?” the manual stated. “He pulled me into one of the rooms and grabbed a ruler and spanked me with that,” she said.Īlthough World Revival Church denied that abuse is tolerated, a church training manual provided to FOX4 by a former member touted the benefits of withholding food from any child who’s not behaving. Molly said her father was upset with her for not jumping up and down and waving her arms in the front of the sanctuary during the service. “Throughout the night you would hear kids getting hit, at least some 20 times,” said Claire, who asked FOX4 to use only her first name.Ĭlaire’s sister Molly was one of those kids who got in trouble for not following the church’s strict set of rules. That’s a claim the church denied, but Phelps isn’t the only who witnessed it. “Their parents get called and come down and beat them in the bathroom and send them back to class.” “Countless times, I would hear people physically abusing toddlers in the bathroom because they weren’t standing on their mats,” Phelps said. If they didn’t comply, their parents were notified. She said children as young as 2 years old had to stand on carpet squares when songs were sung during services (five times a week) and hold their hands in the air. ![]() “People are almost put on a pedestal for being abusive to their kids,” said Carrie Phelps, who is still haunted by her time working in the church nursery. He started the charismatic church more than 20 years ago in Smithton, Missouri, before moving to Kansas City where the church expanded its outreach, opening a seminary and a K-12 school – Lee’s Summit Academy.Īlthough the church outwardly appears to be a family-friendly environment, former members say it’s dangerous for children. The founder and lead pastor of this mostly family-run church is Steve Gray. World Revival Church, which has a congregation estimated at 400, operates out of a sprawling gated complex in Kansas City. “I want them to be closed down,” she said. “You don’t have to suffer like that anymore.”įor others, like Taylor Brown, just sounding a warning is not enough. “I want to speak out to not just help people that are there to get out, but to help people find healing and find out that you can have a better life,” Carrie Phelps said. Shapiro was one of more than a dozen former members who spoke to FOX4 Problem Solvers to sound an alarm about a church that they now believe is a cult. – “It’s kind of like a Christian Disneyland,” said Mia Shapiro, recalling what first impressed her about World Revival Church. ![]()
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