Almost all details about the religious group to which Lisa Webb's family belonged were hidden from the outside world. Its followers met in homes rather than churches. Its leadership structure was hard to discern; its finances, opaque. It didn't even have an official name. But for decades, no secret was as well kept as the identity of the sexual predators within the group known as 'Two by Two.'
Now, a growing number of public allegations from around the world have led to a broad FBI investigation and have put an uncomfortable spotlight on the Christian sect, which has long remained silent. Survivors claim that the group's leaders protected ministers who abused minors by pressuring victims to forgive, ignoring legal reporting requirements, and moving abusers to new locations to live with unsuspecting families. Ministry leaders have publicly condemned the abuses, but several refused to answer questions from The Associated Press.
For Webb, who suffered sexual abuse by one of the group's ministers as a child, the attention has brought an unexpected sense of "strength in numbers": "There are many who feel frustrated and disheartened," Webb says.
A website, a hotline, and social media pages created by victims have documented reports against more than 900 abusers, with survivors in over 30 countries and cases still emerging. In the past year, news and a Hulu documentary have focused on the sect's predatory preachers and the leaders who enabled them.
While perpetrators have been imprisoned in isolated cases, the sect has largely avoided legal repercussions, shielded by its decentralized structure, hidden finances, and state laws limiting the time to file criminal charges. The sect, also known by its members as 'The Way' or 'The Truth,' was founded in Ireland in 1897 by William Irvine, who opposed the existence of churches. He believed the only way to spread Christianity was to do what Jesus commanded in the Book of Matthew: send apostles to live among those they wanted to convert.
The sect grew as volunteer preachers - known as workers - went "two by two" to live in the homes of followers' families for days or weeks. Sect historians claim that a few decades ago there were up to a few million members, but current estimates put the number between 75,000 and 85,000 worldwide.
Unlike the Boy Scouts or the Catholic Church, which have paid out billions to victims of sexual abuse, the sect's aversion to property leaves it without apparent assets to use for compensation, legal experts say. Workers are supposed to shun worldly possessions, relying on followers for food, shelter, and transportation.
Webb suffered abuse from a preacher who stayed with her family in Michigan when she was 11 years old. The man, Peter Mousseau, was convicted much later, after expressing interest in visiting her in 2008 and she decided to press charges against him. A regional supervisor she had reported the abuse to was later convicted for not reporting another local worker. "You have the idea that they are angels in your home. They can't do anything wrong, so you don't put up any kind of wall," she says. "It just created the perfect storm, the perfect recipe for this kind of behavior."
Sheri Autrey had just turned 14 when a 28-year-old preacher moved into her family's home in Visalia, California, for two months. He began abusing her immediately, sneaking into her room at night and taking her for car rides during the day. He would turn on the radio every time the song 'Maneater' by Hall & Oates played and sing, "Watch out, boy, she'll chew you up."
When Autrey revealed the abuse to her mother a few years later, she reported it to the sect's regional supervisor, who was in charge of all workers in the area. The supervisor refused to alert other families and sent the preacher to Autrey's home to apologize.
Autrey, raised to be compliant, exploded. Her family took her to the district attorney's office, but they refused to take the case to trial: "I would have to explain, explicitly, what happened," Autrey said. "And I wasn't prepared for that." Decades later, Autrey was at a baseball game when 'Maneater' played. She had to walk around the stadium to calm down and decided to send a letter about the abuse to hundreds of sect members. "I wanted any other victim to know they're not alone," Autrey said. "To know there is help."
A Peruvian preacher, Américo Quispe, was sent to Garland, Texas, in the early 2000s after being accused of misconduct in his country. He soon found new victims, some of whose families went to the police. Quispe returned to Peru before he could be arrested and was convicted of sexual abuse in Peru and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Another worker, Rubén Mata, abused dozens of children, including Douglas Patterson, 10, who was taken away from his family during a sect convention in the early 1990s. Patterson said he kept quiet because he feared his family would leave the sect - and thus be excluded from eternal salvation - if he spoke up. Mata was finally convicted in 2006 in another case of sexual abuse. Months before Mata's trial, the supervisor in Saskatchewan, Canada, Dale Shultz, sent two letters to his colleagues.
One was to be shown to affected members. It acknowledged that Mata was a pedophile and that workers had been alerted to his abuses at least three times. According to the letter, the sect only notified authorities after Mata resigned. The second was for staff, telling them not to make copies of the first. "The purpose of the letter is to assist those who have concerns, not to announce a kingdom problem to those who do not know or have no issues with it," Shultz wrote.
In another case, a regional supervisor in Arizona, Ed Alexander, wrote a letter to an elderly pedophile in 2005 telling him that "we love our people very much and do not want to report their misdeeds."
The letter suggested that the sect could fulfill its mandatory reporting obligations for abuse by recommending offenders seek professional counseling, as then the counselors - rather than sect leaders - would be obligated to report to the police. "They believe that sexual assault on minors is just a sin. You are a sinner, they are sinners, everything is sin," says Eileen Dickey, one of the man's victims. She reported the abuse to sect leaders because she was concerned other children might be targeted: "They told me never to speak of it," she said. Alexander declined to speak with The Associated Press: "Unfortunately, the media coverage has been so negative and one-sided that I will have to decline an interview," he texted.
Sheri Autrey, Pam Walton, and Lisa Webb, accusers of sexual abuseTony Gutierrez | Mengshin Lin | Mike StewartAP
Jared Snyder spent over two decades as an itinerant minister before becoming disillusioned and leaving. According to Snyder, no one directly spoke to him about abuses, but he occasionally heard rumors. The sect's culture, which considers gossip taboo and heavily pressures members to be merciful, downplayed misdeeds, big or small. "A foreman explicitly told me: 'The less you know, the better off you'll be,'" he says. As a worker, Snyder received no pay, retirement benefits, or health insurance, and was discouraged from using banks. But he never lacked money to spend: Followers regularly offered cash to workers, and Snyder said he often had thousands of dollars in his pockets. Most of that money would be spent on construction materials, food, or other supplies at regional conventions, Snyder said.
In June 2022, a regional supervisor named Dean Bruer died in a motel room in Oregon. Bruer, 67, had served in at least 22 states and territories and seven countries since 1976, according to a timeline compiled by Pam Walton, a former member who has used historical records and photographs to track the movements of predatory preachers.
Nine months after Bruer's death, Doyle Smith, the supervisor for Idaho and Oregon, wrote a letter to the members. "The evidence found on Bruer's phone and laptop showed that he had violated and abused multiple underage victims," wrote Smith. "Dean was a sexual predator," Smith wrote.
"We never condoned or defended such inappropriate behavior among us. There is a strong consensus among us that the only thing to do is to be transparent with all of you for obvious reasons, although this is very difficult."
That transparency did not extend to relations with the local police. Only after Autrey, another abuse survivor, and private investigator Cynthia Liles - both former sect members - pressured Smith, did he hand over Bruer's laptop to the detectives, as Autrey told the AP.
By then, the computer had been tampered with, according to records from the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office in Oregon. The web browser search history had been deleted. Bruer's Apple ID had been changed, and files had been transferred from his DropBox account. Bruer's phone was never provided to the police, and the 'Find My iPhone' function had been deactivated.
"What web browsing history was present on the laptop that someone did not want anyone else to know about?" wrote Detective Jeffrey Burlew in a police report. Unable to find evidence of a crime within their jurisdiction, the office closed the investigation. Smith did not respond to AP's phone messages. Although Autrey and others had been seeking reforms within the sect for some time, Bruer's death turned out to be a catalyst. Autrey, Liles, and another survivor launched a hotline, a website, and Facebook pages for survivors. In February, the FBI office in Omaha, Nebraska, announced an investigation.
The outcry led some sect leaders to condemn the abuses and seek advice from consultants on how to better protect members. But at least some regional supervisors ultimately refused to adopt recommended child abuse prevention policies, claiming that the only true code of conduct is the New Testament. And some leaders still warn their members not to criticize the sect.
At a convention held in August in Duncan, British Columbia, a worker helping to lead the event did not directly mention the abuse scandal but told members to set aside "harsh words": "It is easier to be critical than correct," preached Robert Doecke, a worker from Australia. "If you feed on problems, you will only create more problems. But if you focus on the Lord, it will lead you to solutions."