Gay man says church members beat, choked him for hours to expel ‘homosexual demons’

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Matthew Fenner was leaving a Sunday prayer service in January
2013 when a group of church members surrounded him.

As he told police, a church leader and more than 20 other
members of the Word of Faith Fellowship — based in the foothills
of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Spindale, N.C. — repeatedly
punched, beat and knocked him down for about two hours. At one
point, someone grabbed him by the throat and shook him, he said.

That attacks took place “to break me free of the homosexual
demons they so viciously despise,” Fenner, who identifies as
gay, told television station WSPA a year later. After the
episode, he left the fellowship.

In December 2014, a minister and four members of the Rutherford
County church were indicted on charges that they kidnapped, beat
and strangled Fenner, then 21. They pleaded not guilty.

And on Thursday, Fenner was the first person to testify in the
trial of Brooke Covington, 58, the church minister accused of
leading the alleged kidnapping and assault of Fenner on that
day, more than four years ago. She is the first of five church
members to face trial in the case, the Associated Press
reported. If convicted, she faces up to two years in prison.

Fenner said he thought he was “going to die” while the church
members beat and choked him. He accused Covington of telling
him, “God said there is something wrong in your life.”

“I’m frail and in my mind, I’m thinking, ‘Is my neck going to
break, am I going to die?’” Fenner said, adding he had cancer as
a child and underwent a biopsy a week before the attack took
place, the Associated Press reported.

When Fenner brought the allegations three years ago, it was not
the first time the church had been accused of beating members
over their sexual orientation. Two years earlier, former church
member Michael Lowry said he was beaten and held against his
will at the church as an effort to eliminate his gay demons.

Lowry testified before a grand jury, but about a year later, the
same month Fenner says he was beaten and strangled, Lowry
rejoined Word of Faith and took back his allegations. He has
since left the church, and later said in a statement that his
original claims are true.

The Word of Faith, opened by Jane and Sam Whaley in 1979 in a
former steakhouse, began with a handful of followers and grew to
a 750-member congregation in North Carolina. Eventually another
2,000 members would join affiliated churches in Brazil, Ghana
and other countries.

The church was described in a 2012 profile in the Charlotte
Observer as a diverse and close-knit congregation with an
ecstatic style of worship. Sometimes members would hop, sway,
shout prayer songs and speak in tongues. “God has freed us” to
be loud, Whaley would say.

In the four decades since the Word of Faith was founded, it has
been entangled in a series of lawsuits, criminal charges and
custody fights surrounding its treatment of children. More than
15 years ago, the state and Rutherford County Department of
Social Services launched a series of investigations into
allegations the church abused children, the Charlotte Observer
reported. Jane Whaley was charged with assaulting one of her
followers, but the charges were later dismissed.

Brooke Covington, the minister accused in the assault of Fenner,
is the daughter of Jane and Sam Whaley, according to the
Charlotte Observer.

In an Associated Press investigation in February, which relied
on interviews with dozens of members, documents and secret
recordings, the agency reported that Word of Faith congregants
were routinely punched, smacked, choked, slammed to the floor or
thrown through walls “in a violent form of deliverance meant to
‘purify’ sinners by beating out devils.”

The church’s strict set of rules mandate whether its congregants
can marry or have children. Members can’t watch television, go
to the movies, read newspapers or eat in restaurants that play
music or serve alcohol, the Associated Press reported.

Covington’s lawyer, David Teddy, argued that Fenner once
publicly commended the church for releasing him from a life
“filled with sin” and praised it in his high school graduation
speech. Teddy also said Fenner never told anyone to stop hitting
him, to which Fenner responded by saying that complaining would
have made the physical abuse worse.

“We are adamant that no one ever physically harmed Mr. Fenner,”
attorney Josh Farmer wrote to WSPA in 2014. “The church does NOT
target members who are gay.”

At a grand jury hearing in 2014, Fenner’s mother and brother,
who were then still members of the church, were among the
witnesses who testified against him.

Recounting his alleged attack in a WSPA interview that year,
Fenner said his attackers caused his head to fling back, and his
vision to blur.

“I couldn’t breathe,” Fenner said. “I’m sitting here thinking if
I don’t get out of this, I’m probably going to die.”

Too bad you didn't.

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