Christina Bryant was 11 years old when she traveled with her mother and siblings from Jacksonville, Florida, to the Word of Faith Fellowship church in North Carolina.
Church members had reached out to the family: They’d heard Bryant’s mom was sick, so they shared an audiotape of services and invited them to visit.
But for Bryant, the visit to Word of Faith quickly became disorienting, she says inPeople Magazine Investigates: Cults,which airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET onInvestigation Discovery. (An exclusive clip is shown above.)
“I don’t remember how the prayers started,” she says. “I just remember people started screaming all around me … like, I don’t know what to do here, I’m scared.”
That’s where Bryant’s family encountered Whaley’s practice of a form of prayer called “blasting,” in which church members loudly shout and allegedly circle and verbally and physically assault others in an effort to drive out perceived demons.
Bryant was horrified to find her 2-year-old brother targeted as the volume around them rose.
“He started screaming hysterically,” she says. “He was terrified. And they told my mom that those were the devils in him, and they held him down, and I’ll never forget his face being covered in sweat, him being beet-red, crying until he passed out, and I just remember thinking if I fight this, this is gonna happen to me, so I might as well start making sounds like they are.”
Peyton Fulford
But he and his family both were seeking new starts. His divorced mom was ill and struggling financially; Fenner himself was working through the coming-out process as a gay teen, and had been met with a contentious response at home. Welcomed to a youth fellowship event, “I was made to feel important,” he says. “I didn’t feel judged.”
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He enrolled in the church’s school, in which fellow church member Danielle Cordes had grown up and become accustomed to rigid rules — enforced with corporal punishment both in school and at home — that banned most interactions with people and influences outside of the church.
“I did not know exactly the definition of a cult, but I felt trapped,” says Cordes. “Our parents really didn’t make decisions for us. Ministers did. I always knew we were different, and I wanted to know why. To me it was a form of them controlling us.”
Word of Faith Fellowship pastor Jane Whaley.PMI Investigates
Yet both Fenner and Cordes tried to keep their heads low. They became friends, and after reaching a milestone where the church relaxed enforced barriers between boys and girls, they paired off in what Cordes, unaware of Fenner’s sexual orientation, believed would be a path toward marriage.
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But any notion the pair would remain together within the church ended in 2013, when Fenner was allegedly violently assaulted for more than two hours under the guise of prayer. At least one of those involved invoked Fenner’s “homosexual demons.” A day later Fenner fled the church, as well as the home where he and his family lived with a church leader.
Matthew Fenner, at left, and Danielle Cordes.Peyton Fulford
He, Cordes, Bryant and Bryant’s mother have all renounced their church membership. Current and past church members accused of assault have denied the allegations against them.
People Magazine Investigates: Cults, Word of Faith, premieres tonight on Investigation Discovery (8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT).
source: people.com
