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Rachael Reign, 29, recalls feeling nervous the first time she recorded on Instagram Live. She was about to begin speaking publicly about a group she says had consumed her virtually her entire life: the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG).
When she was 13 years old walking the street in South London, Raine was approached by a church member who told her about the Victory Youth Group (VYG), a part of the church that offers activities for young people.
At first she enjoyed the group, but after a few weeks began to feel pressured to attend more often, she said. “It didn’t take long for me to fully immerse myself in UCKG life.” When, at age 15, she was made an assistant — an unpaid, official position in the church hierarchy — she said she was in church almost every day. In this position she said she was responsible for constant fundraising and helping to pray strongly, summoning demons at meetings.
Reign spent seven years as an active member and left at the age of 20. She said it was only after she left that she began to reevaluate what she had experienced: “I was exposed to some horrible things that I just shouldn’t have been exposed to.”
She said it took the regime several years to process what she had experienced. It was then that she met others who had left the church and decided to start speaking to Raine.
She started Surviving Universal UK and said she was overwhelmed by other young people who had left the church.
The Guardian has interviewed more than 30 former members of VYG. Majority contacted Raj. Some independently posted about their experiences online. They all attended church and youth group at some point between 2003 and 2022, many in the last four years.
Some said they had made friends at church and enjoyed the activities VYG did, but almost all interviewees complained of feeling pressured to donate large amounts of money. Others talked about or were told about feeling encouraged to cut ties with friends and family Demon possession was the cause of mental health problems or their sexuality. Some were shown graphic images of dead bodies, they said, as a warning of what would happen to those who left the church.
The UCKG is an evangelical, Pentecostal church that first started in Brazil. It now has a worldwide presence, including more than 50 full- and part-time branches in the UK, the most recent of which opened in Nottingham this month. Many are located in the most economically deprived parts of the country.
Adir Macedo, the Brazilian founder of the church, has been included in the Forbes list of billionaires. Twice this year he has flown around the UK and Europe on a church-owned private jet. In Brazil, congregation donations were used to build a temple as tall as an 18-story building in Sao Paulo.
VYG is very active in the UK. It holds meetings twice a week and holds regular events where hundreds of teenagers gather. Its 1,330 regular members are primarily black teenagers and young adults.
UCKG responded to questions from the Guardian, saying it takes allegations and complaints “very seriously” but that the complaints have not been raised directly with it.
“We know regrettably that some former members promote hatred against the Church on social media and defame its beliefs and practices. Many of our current members appreciate the church and the good it does, and will tell a different story,” said a spokesperson.
Feel pressured to donate money
Maria* was one of the first to join Raj in her Instagram videos. She was 15 and in foster care when she first entered the church about 10 years ago. Like Raine, she remembers finding it welcoming but said she was soon receiving frequent phone calls from officials encouraging her to attend several times a week. She remembers feeling pressured to donate money almost immediately.
Like many churches, UCKG asks congregants for a tithe, or 10% of any income. For some young people, this includes giving part of their pocket money or lunch fund. In recent years, some youth group sessions have introduced card-reader machines.
Then, there is the worldwide, bi-annual Campaign of Israel, where the church encourages congregations to make large, personal sacrifices in exchange for God’s blessings. During the summer campaign, former members said videos were played at VYG sessions of people talking about selling their possessions, all their savings or giving money to the church for visa renewals.
“They would bombard us with these testimonies at every service, and the priests would preach that if you’ve got savings in your account, it’s time to put it on the altar,” Maria said. She remembers selling her local authority-issued laptop to donate money to the church when she was about 15, and later described as “one of the lowest points of my life” when she was at sixth form college in the snow wearing only light summer shoes. was leaving because she had no money left over from all her donations.
Young people the Guardian spoke to described how, as teenagers, they sold clothes, phones or jewelery for charity money. One person said their church’s donations left them relying on a credit card, another said they only owed their student loans, and one said she had to ask for donations from the church’s own food bank.
The UCKG told the Guardian that no one is forced or forced to give, and that it does not keep tithe records or control in any way who does and who does not.
Last year, the church’s income was recorded £14m in the UK, mostly from donations and gift aid. Almost all was spent on charitable activities, according to its accounts, including the church’s telephone helpline and community outreach programs.
An analysis of the church’s five-year accounts showed it maintained cash reserves of around £11m-14m per year, far more than other churches of comparable size.
The Guardian has learned that complaints about the church have been made to the Charity Commission. According to a freedom of information request, eight complaints were registered during 2020 and 2021. Three of them focus on “serious harm to beneficiaries and, in particular, vulnerable beneficiaries”. The commission said the complaints did not call for a statutory inquiry but advised church trustees. The church confirmed that it had received this guidance, and said it did not need to make changes.
‘They said I had a demon’
Maria left the church after seven years, saying she would have left sooner but was afraid of what would happen. She said that as a teenager “we were shown videos of corpses, people who left the church, look what happened to them, they died, they hanged themselves. And so that thought continues to haunt me.
The Guardian has seen videos of people allegedly occupied describing the fate of those who left. Some of the people we spoke to were shown these videos when they were 14 years old. This includes four people who independently described a graphic video of the former officer in the immediate aftermath of a fatal motorbike accident, in which his heart was outside his body.
“I was 14 when I saw the video,” said Annie, who had been in the East London VYG group for eight years. “I kept seeing pictures of people who had hanged themselves and these are really graphic images. So if you are constantly saying to someone: ‘This person left and now he is dead’, you think … if I leave this will happen to me!
Julie* was 19 and struggling with her mental health when she told a church helper that she was having vivid suicidal thoughts. “They said I had a demon … They didn’t say, talk to a doctor or other services,” she said. Instead she was encouraged to attend Friday services where officers “pray fervently” to “reveal” the demons.
During a powerful prayer the church official can lay his hands on the congregation and call out the “demons” that cause bad things in their lives. On some occasions the person being prayed for may manifest a demon and the officiant will then speak directly to them, visiting the demon in public.
Julie said the officer who prayed strongly over her was someone other than the person she confided in about her suicidal thoughts.
church Said: “No prayer, powerful or otherwise, is ever promoted as a replacement for medical or any other professional help,” adding that it has a security team to help with referrals.
The Church’s Beat Depression Service recommends “spiritual cleansing sessions” to address mental health issues. Former VYG members said they heard self-harm, depression and suicidal ideation linked to demons. UCKG said its promotional materials contain a disclaimer that prayer is not a substitute for medical or professional help. There is no such clear warning on the Beat Depression web page.
Former members said the church had a rule that strong prayers should not be directed at people under the age of 16, although the church did not respond to the Guardian’s query on this. Four former members said they experienced prayer when they were 14 years old. In other cases, people under the age of 16 were made to stay at VYG meetings when they were done to older members.
Joshua* said that a few years ago, when he was 13, he confessed to a church helper that he was gay. He said he was told: “You have been beaten by the demon inside you.” The official said a strong prayer, summoning the demon and making him homosexual. “She was just saying things like, ‘How are you in her life? What are you trying to do in her life?’ She was basically talking to demons. I was so scared and I wanted it to stop. She said the experience left her confused and humiliated.
The Guardian has seen several official UCKG videos published in Portuguese and Spanish, in which people talk about being LGBTQ+ before coming to the church and changing their sexuality.
Two people described their experiences as similar to conversion practices, with one saying the long-term effects were “like post-traumatic stress disorder”.
UCKG UK told the Guardian that it “does not perform or believe in the efficacy of conversion therapy” and that “if gender issues are brought to our attention, we advise people to pray and seek guidance from God’s Word”.
The church also said: “We take allegations and complaints very seriously,” but could only answer the Guardian’s questions “in general” without specific details.
Raine said she was struck by the number of people who got in touch to describe their experiences at the church. “If people feel like they’re there every day, they have to give up financially, they can’t express their true sexuality … it’s not just a healthy environment, it’s toxic,” she said.
And she noted that most of those attending VYG sessions were black teenagers from relatively economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. She said she thinks that’s part of the reason the church’s actions haven’t received much attention until now. “I think if it was a group of white people … the attention would be there. But because it’s not, it’s like nobody cares.”
* Some names have been changed
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