We Brits don't think of ourselves as susceptible to religious cults, said Ben Dowell in The Times . But this harrowing BBC2 documentary serves to shatter that complacency. Its focus is the Jesus Army, a sect established in Northamptonshire in 1969 by a charismatic preacher named Noel Stanton.
Hundreds of people flocked to hear his sermons, and many gave up their livelihoods and possessions to join his "evangelical rural community". Stanton, however, exploited rather than helped his followers, many of whom were young or otherwise vulnerable. He subjected them to an "increasingly doctrinaire" set of rules and punishments, based on strictly patriarchal values, and initiated a horrifying culture of ritualised sexual abuse.
As early as 1978, a cult member who'd been punished for reading boo