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Teachers at Christian fundamentalist schools in Britain allegedly performed exorcisms on pupils, beat children in religious rituals and “groomed” girls for marriage, according to former students who say they have decided to speak out now after years of suffering in silence.

The former pupils told The Independent such treatment of children was a “terrifying” part of life at schools in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s in an environment where they felt too afraid to complain for fear of retribution from school staff, evangelical parents and their close-knit Baptist faith community.

One former pupil alleged that in the 1990s pupils at school assemblies would start convulsing amid “blood curdling screams” as prayers were said for the holy spirit to rid children of demons. The alleged abuse is said to have taken place many years ago at a number of schools in the UK that follow the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum, a form of learning that originated in the southern Baptist states of the US.

The former pupils contacted The Independent after reading our June report revealing that some of these schools still teach children that girls must submit to men, homosexuality is unnatural and that creationism is a fact. They said the article jolted their memories of their own experiences.

More than 1,000 4-18 year olds are currently taught in 30 ACE schools in the UK, all of them registered as private institutions. Although the schools are bound by the same safeguarding and child protection regulations as the state sector, former pupils want assurances that monitoring of these schools is more effective than when they attended.

One told The Independent that during his time at an ACE school in the 1990s: “We were told that we were the children of God and the world was out to get us. So we were isolated and couldn’t speak out. There was nobody checking on us. I just took it.”

Pupils who have traditionally attended the schools tend to come from Christian families who follow a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Former pupils said many of the children will have limited interaction with mainstream society.

One former pupil, who attended a school in the 1990s and who has asked not to be named, said: “Exorcisms used to happen at school assemblies sometimes. There would be 20 or so children and perhaps five adults. We were told that the holy spirit would come through children. I started convulsing and I couldn’t stop. Even when I went to bed I kept convulsing. I was terrified, I really thought it was the holy spirit.

“We would all begin convulsing. I remember them screaming blood curdling screams and then we’d all pray rigorously to get the demons out. Teachers would physically push us. They’d lay their hands on us when we prayed and they’d push us down. If you didn’t fall it was said that you weren’t really ‘feeling the Lord’. It was a very dark thing. It really was insanity. It got completely out of control.”

Two other former pupils from the 1990s and 2000s alleged they witnessed exorcisms performed on some occasions at other schools, where children were encouraged to “speak in tongues”.

Allegations from ex-pupils include other potential concerns. At some schools, girls were groomed for marriage from a young age, two former students said. They claimed the grooming was done by the church communities that run the schools and by teachers. Methods were said to include controlling girls’ sexuality and isolating them from boys their own age so they might later be married to much older male members of the church groups.

In some schools they were allegedly encouraged to marry soon after they turned 16, as church leaders told them it was “God’s will”.

One woman, who attended a school between the late 1990s and early 2000s, said: “There was one girl I knew who married someone more than 20 years older. The man she married had known her since she was seven years old and he was 30. She’d sit on his knee when she was a child. He’d played with her when she was a child. Now they’re married. It’s just really creepy.

“As a young girl, you were told you were not allowed to talk to boys your own age, you had to stand six inches apart from boys at all times at schools, teachers told you they’d hit you with a wooden paddle if you kiss a boy. So you didn’t get to meet anyone else and then you’re shown sexual interest for the first time and it’s some creepy old man. It was so sexualised, they were sexualising children.”

Another former pupil who attended an ACE school in the 1990s said a girl at her school had married a man at 16, when he was in his 40s, and who she had met when he began teaching at her school.

She said: “You were told from a young age that your role is to support a man and God will lead you to him. The role of women in these religious groups is quite clear. You’re told God has chosen a husband for you and God will lead this man to you. But in reality, pastors and church leaders guide men to you. It’s grooming.”

She added: “When I was 18, I experienced it. From the age of 14, the church had been pushing me towards a man in the church group who was eight years older. I was actively encouraged to work with him. They were very pushy about marriage, it was very intimidating. It’s very closed and isolating.

“As a girl, you’re left feeling redundant if you don’t get married. You’re told it’s God’s will and you’re just wasting time until you get married – it’s your ultimate goal.”

She said that none of the girls married before the legal age of consent, adding: “They are very keen to ensure nothing illegal happened, but the conditioning was around a long time before that.”

Although all the claims made by former pupils for this article relate to historic incidents, textbooks still used by the schools – and seen by The Independent – raise current concerns.

The books suggest pupils are still taught that “the wife is to obey, respect and submit to the leadership of her husband, serving as a helper to him” and “God desires for [women] to submit to husband.”

~~Other pupils told The Independent there were also historic concerns about corporal punishment, which they say took on a religious characteristic at the ACE schools.~~

They claimed children were beaten with a wooden paddle and then forced into a ritualised religious quasi-ceremony in which prayers were said for their salvation in the 1980s and 1990s. They said that the church groups believed at the time that corporal punishment was “God’s will” as it stopped children from sinning.

~~Corporal punishment was outlawed in UK private schools in 1998 and there is no suggestion the ACE schools breached that law.~~

David Waldock who attended an ACE school between the ages of 11 and 16 prior to 1998 said: “I was beaten with a cane by teachers while a pupil at an ACE school. The school was in the basement of the church. The cane was kept in the vestry. You would be led up to the vestry to a fold down desk, inside was a cardboard case and in that was the cane.

“The teachers explained to you your ‘offence’. You were told to take your trousers down. Then you were bent over a chair with your trousers down and wearing just your underwear. Then you were caned. And then you prayed for forgiveness.

~~“It was very ritualised. It was a ritual of confession, administration and prayer for forgiveness.”~~

One former pupil who attended an ACE school in the 1990s said a four-year-old boy at her school had special needs which caused him to urinate and defecate uncontrollably in class. She claims the child would be routinely taken to be beaten by the headmaster with a wooden paddle to punish this “bad behaviour”.

~~She says knowing corporal punishment was happening to other children was extremely distressing: “I remember feeling sick. I was so frightened I dug my nails into my hands.”~~

A 1993 copy of the ACE teachers’ training manual, seen by The Independent, appears to instruct teachers in how to administer corporal punishment when children have “sinned” in ritualised religious ceremonies. It says: “Demerits are for procedural violations; the paddle is for moral violations.”

~~The manual then lists a step by step process for hitting children.~~

“Using Bible verses, explain to the child the principles he has violated. Make sure he clearly understands what he has done wrong — position the child so he is leaning forward with his hands on a desk or chair and with his feet spread. Keep the paddle, switch, or belt low to avoid hitting the spine.

“Pray with the child following corporal correction. Review the offense and show him Hebrews 13.17. Request that he ask the Lord to forgive him for _____ (name the violation) and help him obey God’s Word and those people God has placed in his life to train him.”

An updated edition of the teacher training manual compiled after 1998 stops advocating corporal punishment by teachers at ACE schools. Christian Education Europe, an organisational body that runs and promotes ACE schools, say stocks of teaching manuals are regularly checked to ensure they are up to date.

A former pupil who attended an ACE school in the 1990s said: “The kind of people who send their children to schools like these believe in it absolutely. The pastor had absolute power and they could do anything.”

Holocaust denier David Irving spoke alongside other anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists at a secret meeting of the “neo-Nazi, white supremacist” London Forum, where it was claimed Auschwitz was “like Disneyland” and that the Holocaust was “gossip”, “propaganda” and a “rumour", The Independent can reveal.

Mr Irving, whose defeat in a libel trial is dramatised in 2017 blockbuster Denial, began by praising the organisers for ensuring there were “only white faces in the audience”.

Fellow speakers delivered anti-Semitic jokes and coded references to Adolf Hitler to a receptive crowd of around 100 at the meeting, which was attended by an undercover reporter.

One attendee told this reporter the murder of MP Jo Cox was “cheery news”. Another claimed there were Jews controlling “all 193 states” and a third said life for African-Americans was “better before the end of slavery”.

Far-right luminaries appearing alongside Mr Irving included Vincent Reynouard, a Frenchman who like Mr Irving has been imprisoned for Holocaust denial; Alison Chabloz, whose anti-Semitic songs have seen her banned from the Edinburgh Fringe; and David Shayler, an MI5 agent turned 9/11 truther who has claimed he is the Messiah.

Attendees rang a private phone number and were instructed to meet in Green Park, before being shepherded on the Underground to the Swedish Seamen’s Church in Rotherhithe for the meeting in February. The listed building closed to the public in 2012, and has since been sold to developers.

The security measures were put in place after a London Forum event in January this year was shut down by an anti-fascist demonstration. Speaking to The Independent at the time, London Anti-Fascists described the group as a “Neo-Nazi, white supremacist” organisation.

When asked at the time to respond to allegations of anti-Semitism, the London Forum said: “We abhor the criminalisation of opinions and defend the right of anyone to question the conventional narrative concerning any events that took place in any period of history; and we regard the nature of Zionism, the role of Israel in international affairs and the influence of the Jewish Diaspora upon culture and politics as being legitimate subjects for discussion.”

At the recent meeting, shaven-headed security guards stood by the heavy copper doors of the church, and an event organiser claimed a “group of Millwall fans” were waiting in a nearby pub as back-up in case of violence.

As people browsed bookstalls and drank coffee from polystyrene cups, discussion ranged from Jewish plots to take over the Houses of Parliament to defences of slavery and segregation.

One man showed The Independent a copy of the Evening Standard, saying a front-page story describing the rise of the far right was “cheery news”.

“A lot of people talk the talk but don’t actually do anything, but that’s starting to change,” he said. Asked what he meant, he pointed to a story inside the paper discussing the murder of MP Jo Cox by far-right extremist Thomas Mair.

Alongside Mr Irving’s self-published works, other books on sale included The Biology of the Race Problem, The Rise of Hitler, Epic: The Story of the Waffen SS and SS Man, Be Fruitful – a booklet originally published by the paramilitary fascists who served as Adolf Hitler’s personal bodyguards.

The event was compèred by London Forum chief, Jeremy “Jez” Bedford-Turner, Britain’s third-most influential right-wing extremist, according to campaign group Hope not Hate.

Clad in a tweed suit and speaking in a cut-glass upper-class accent, he said: “The West is degenerate, decaying and deracinated. This is the last home of free speech.”

He then pulled out a Donald Trump mask and performed an impersonation of the incumbent US President, sending good wishes to the organisation.

Mr Reynouard, who is wanted in France to serve a second sentence for Holocaust denial, was the first speaker.

He claimed the Allies “orchestrated propaganda in the Soviet style”, that gas chambers at Nazi death camps were in fact used to delouse prisoners, and that the Holocaust was simply “a rumour”.

He ended by telling the crowd that “defence is the best form of attack”, and urged them to block the construction of a planned Holocaust memorial in Westminster.

Next up was David Shayler. The former MI5 man has previously claimed he is the Messiah, and told the London Forum he was on a “divine mission” from God.

“I’ve survived 10 assassination attempts because someone up there likes me,” he said.

Similarly, Mr Irving told The Independent that “Hitler appointed me his biographer,” saying he felt a mystical connection with the Nazi leader and describing himself as “The Messiah".

Mr Shayler said the Holocaust was beneficial to Jews as they could “claim compensation”, and described the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund as “Zionist front organisations”.

He further claimed the 9/11 terror attacks were orchestrated by Zionist agents, and that MI5 embezzled money from drug stings to fund “false flag” terror attacks on British citizens.

Ms Chabloz is currently out on bail, accused of posting a song on YouTube including the lyric: “Did the Holocaust ever happen?”

She used her performance before the London Forum to defend herself, saying she was in trouble “just for writing a few offensive songs about Jews”.

When she suggested the judge hearing her case had Jewish ties, using the euphemistic term “one of our friends”, one audience member called out: “Could you tell by the size of his nose?”

Another shouted “there’s no business like Shoah business”, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.

She described performing at the 88th birthday party of Robert Faurisson, the pre-eminent French holocaust denier.

“An 88th? in Vichy? Come on,” she said, in a reference to the Nazi-collaborating Vichy government and a Neo-Nazi code number signifying Heil Hitler.

To close out her appearance she performed a parody of Edith Piaf’s “I Regret Nothing” on a malfunctioning keyboard, and said she was ready to be sent to jail for her beliefs. As the crowd applauded she performed an anti-Semitic quenelle salute.

Finally, Mr Irving took the stage. His rambling speech focused on his life story and complaints that Denial misrepresented details of the court case.

Discussing negative media coverage of his work, he used the Nazi term “Lügenpresse”, or “lying press”, and when criticising Denial he described the actress Rachel Weisz as “Jewish but good-looking".

Moving on to his hallmark claims that only 300,000 people of all religions died in the entirety of the Holocaust, he described Auschwitz as “small beer” and now “like Disneyland”.

In conclusion, he declared: “I am still standing, the fight goes on, and I will continue writing true history as I find it to be true.”

The crowd responded with a standing ovation.