The sinister Scottish cult at the centre of a global FBI probe into thousands of abuse cases

As a little girl, Sally would lie in bed, staving off sleep, ­terrified she might die in the night and be cast to the fires of Hell. 

This paralysing fear wasn’t just childish imagination but had been drummed into her by the fire and brimstone teachings of the underground Christian cult in which she grew up.

It is a secretive religious group with no official name and few outside its membership have heard of it, yet its tentacles reach across multiple continents and its control over its devotees is absolute.

Sally said: ‘As a child I just remember being made to feel scared all the time, convinced I must have done something wrong, and I was going to Hell.

‘We were threatened with damnation for the smallest infraction. It was a way of controlling followers and it traumatised us as children.’

Valerie McMorris when she was still in the cult

This cult has no church buildings, formal leadership or published doctrine and no financial paper trail or headquarters.

It dictates followers must suffer for salvation: TV, radio, the internet and music is banned, as is voting and any independent thought.

Women and girls are subjugated, told they can’t wear trousers, make-up or cut their hair, and men are their masters.

This sect has many informal labels: The Church with No Name; The Two by Twos; The Truth; The Way; and in Scotland’s North-East, where Sally was raised, the vernacular is The Workers and Friends.

Whatever the label, it is a cult which has devastated lives and stolen childhoods, through coercive control and sexual abuse.

But now, this insular sect is facing a very modern-day reckoning after the FBI launched an international investigation into multiple allegations of child sex abuse from former followers.

The Bureau has taken the unusual step of making a public appeal for help in identifying victims and perpetrators of abuse which goes back generations.

Authorities in numerous jurisdictions, including Scotland, have received ­complaints and more than 2,000 victims have reported upwards of 900 alleged predators to one international survivors’ hotline alone.

The hotline is run by Advocates for the Truth (AFTT), which claims there are alleged abusers in 21 ­countries including the Americas, the UK, Ireland, Australia and Russia.

The AFTT said: ‘The FBI investigation brings validation and potential justice to survivors that have been silenced by their community for generations.

‘A community that should have been wrapped around survivors with unconditional love, safety and communal care.’

This cult was founded in the late 19th century by Scotsman William Irvine, and his fundamental­ist dogma still ­dominates the movement.

Irvine, from Kilsyth in Lanarkshire, was a charismatic and talented orator who had been an outreach preacher for the evangelical­ Faith Mission in Edinburgh. 

But as his success in conversions grew, so did his delusion.

While on a mission to Ireland in 1897, he renounced all organised religion, declared himself a prophet and formed his own exclusive movement of ‘God’s chosen’.

Irvine recruited a devoted band of itinerant, celibate ministers, called Workers, who travelled in pairs (two by two), renounced possessions and subsisted on the hospitality and donations of members, called Friends.

The Workers proselytised that only those who heard the word directly from their lips could be saved, and their message spread across the globe to America, ­Australia and beyond.

Irvine grew increasingly unhinged and, after being excommunicated in 1914, he was completely erased from the group’s history.

To this day preachers of the faith still claim the group is directly descended from Jesus and is the only church not founded by man.

From left, preachers of The Truth William Gill, sect’s Scots founder and ‘prophet’ William Irvine, and George Walker

From its earliest days, this is a movement with a leadership ­mendacious to its core.

Sally said: ‘We were never told about Irvine. Everything we were taught, all the terrible things we endured, was based on a lie.

‘The whole thing came from men who twisted scripture to suit their own ends.’

Sally left the group three decades ago fearful of raising her children in it, but deep psychological scars remain.

Conscious of the impact on family still in the faith, she doesn’t want to be identified.

But she is hopeful the more the group is dragged into the light, the greater the chances of justice for victims. 

She said: ‘My worry is the children still in the group. Who is protecting them?’

Membership has dwindled and believed to be around 150,000 worldwide, but it is impossible to get exact figures as nothing is documented.

Sally grieves for the children who, like her, grew up in the cult, oppressed and imprisoned by doctrine, every aspect of their lives dictated by the edicts of powerful and pious Workers.

Although followers lived in mainstream communities, they were instructed to be suspicious of outsiders and all other faiths, all of which were deemed to be ‘false’.

Sally said: ‘We thought that every­one on the outside was going to Hell. I used to feel sorry for ­people outside of the group.’

Girls were forced to wear restrictive modest clothing: tights; dresses and skirts below the knee; no bright colours or trousers. 

It meant they couldn’t play sports or climb trees like other girls.

The normal pleasures youngsters enjoy, such as pop music, TV shows and movies, were deemed sinful, and the group’s children stood out as cultural oddities. 

They were teased relentlessly at school.

Sally said: ‘We were very different and very isolated. We were embarrassed as children and ashamed. 

‘Our parents saw it as a mark of pride that we didn’t fit in, and we were told we were lucky and to suck it up.’

Though the group denies any kind of central leadership, there is a hidden hierarchy, led by male ‘Overseers’, who have absolute command and keep the sect in a stranglehold of patriarchy.

Females are considered inferior chattels who must obey without question and, as a result, domestic abuse is rife.

Sally said: ‘We always knew that men dictated the terms and women were only there to serve. Girls were treated differently. Boys were much freer. I was taught to be seen and not heard, to be a “good girl”.

‘We were ordered not to question and to accept our lot. I was always being told off. 

‘I didn’t even know what I was supposed to have done wrong most of the time. That mindset of never being good enough is one I still have today.’

Corporal punishment such as smacking and slippering was dished out liberally, with some children subjected to beatings.

Religious meetings were in homes or hired halls, held three times a week and lasted at least an hour. 

They were sombre, ­funereal affairs which all children had to attend, even babies.

Sally said: ‘You weren’t allowed to take anything like a book or a toy. You had to sit there, still, and not make a sound. 

‘If you even dropped a Bible, you knew you were in trouble later because it disturbed the meeting.

‘I remember toddlers being taken out if they made a noise and you would hear them being smacked. Mothers were beside themselves trying to keep a child that quiet for that long. It was unnatural and cruel. It was abusive.’

The day of rest began on Saturday evening and children were confined to their homes and not allowed to play.

Most harrowing of all was the sexual abuse perpetrated by so-called holy men. 

Some believe the church didn’t only conceal the abuse; it fostered a culture that encouraged it. 

Critics say the entire system on which the group is founded has created the perfect conditions for child abusers.

Unmarried, celibate male workers stay in different homes every few weeks, living next to sleeping children. Those who are predators inevitably take advantage.

When Sally was in the group, rumours of abuse by Workers and Elders were prevalent but she said children were too scared to speak out and any reports were usually swept aside by parents conditioned to idolise powerful preachers.

Sally said: ‘The repercussions of telling would have been enormous. We were raised to not make a fuss, told not to rock the boat.

‘I know there were girls who were being abused who didn’t speak up. 

‘I think victims hoped that someone would deal with it from within the organisation but that is not what happened.

‘These men think they are untouchable. They are held up as idols. The group always prioritises how the men are affected by allegations. The victims don’t matter.’

Among those who suffered abuse, ‘cover-up’ is a common refrain.

One Scottish leader who is the focus of rumour and allegation was simply moved abroad but has been allowed to return to the UK for special annual gatherings.

The FBI launched an investigation of child abuse claims

Many like Sally, now in her mid-50s, eventually left the group, as the truth of it began to be exposed in books and on the internet.

Sally remembers being astonished when she Googled the cult.

She said: ‘Even though I was looking at it on a screen, I just couldn’t believe it, that there was all this information out there about how wrong this group was, about the abuse and the pain it had caused.

‘And I had no idea about William Irvine, that all the suffering was because of a man. It was all so massive. There was a huge amount of anger. 

‘How could all these people I had complete trust in as a child have lied to me? To this day I really don’t understand why.’

Those who leave are shunned, cut off from the only community they have ever really known. But, free from the sect, they invariably have their own awakening.

Valerie McMorris, 74, was excommunicated from the group in the 1980s, when she transgressed by marrying a divorcee, following the death of her first husband.

She said: ‘I look back and I am grateful that I was excommunicated. My eyes are now open to how wrong it was.’

Born into the group in Ireland, Valerie carried on in the faith when she moved to study midwifery in Bellshill, Lanarkshire.

Valerie said: ‘I really believed in everything they told us. I never would have left had I not been thrown out. To leave the only thing you have known your whole life is horrendous. 

‘We were taught that to be outside the group meant we would burn in Hell, be lost to all eternity. It was terrifying.’

For her, abuse was not something she was aware of until rumours started to spread about Noel Tanner, a Worker in Ireland.

Valerie had known him and when she heard whispers he had been abusing boys, she initially couldn’t believe it. 

After she was widowed and living with her children in Scotland, Tanner wanted to stay at her home and minister.

But though she wasn’t convinced he was predatory, she was suspicious enough to put off the visit.

He was convicted in 1988 and in 1991 for molesting male teenagers and in 2016 Tanner, who was 74, was jailed for a year for historical abuse of a boy while he was staying at the child’s home in the 1970s.

The victim said he reported the abuse to senior Workers but ­Tanner was simply moved across the border to southern Ireland.

Valerie said: ‘Nothing was discussed in the group and if anything wrong happened it was just swept under the carpet. The Workers were so powerful and we were taught to trust them implicitly. 

‘I only hope that more people will leave now that so many allegations are out there. There are so many good people still trapped in it.’

For Valerie, the mental conditioning was so embedded that even after her expulsion, she continued to live as she had, dressing modestly and avoiding anything the group deemed sinful.

She said: ‘It is hard to understand what it is, to be completely indoctrinated. It took me more than a decade after I left to shake off that brainwashing.’

Her son Paul, 48, was born in Scotland and was in the group until he was 14 years old. 

While he admits restrictions were less for boys, he still often felt like a misfit. 

He said: ‘I didn’t know anything about TV shows or films the kids at school were talking about. I did feel different.

‘Other kids didn’t have to sit still in long meetings on a Sunday that were full of threats of Hell.

‘For us, we lived with a culture of fear to keep us in our place. It was mental abuse.’

Recently there has been an explosion of media exposés of child sex abuse in the group in America and Australia.

International support groups have been set up and former ­followers are sharing their stories and filing criminal complaints, determined to find justice. 

­Several prosecutions are pending.

Paul said: ‘The group created the perfect environment for abusers. I am shocked but not surprised by everything that is being exposed. 

‘I consider getting out to be a lucky escape. I think more will leave and only the dying embers will remain.

‘It is an organisation that professes to be so pure and good, but the truth is it is the opposite.’