Survivors seek a reckoning as FBI investigates child sex abuse in little-known Christian sect

Nearly every detail about the religious group Lisa Webb’s family belonged to was hidden from the outside world. The sect grew as volunteer preachers — known as workers — went “two by two” to live in the family homes of followers for days or weeks at a time. He turned up the radio whenever the Hall & Oates song “Maneater” came on, singing: “Watch out boy, she’ll chew you up.” When Ms. Autrey revealed the abuse to her mother a few years later, her mom reported it to the sect's Regional overseer, who was in charge of all the workers in the area. In another case, a regional overseer for Arizona, Ed Alexander, wrote a letter to a child-molesting elder in 2005 observing that “we love our people very much and don’t want to report their misdeeds.” The letter suggested the sect could fulfill its mandatory abuse-reporting obligations by recommending offenders get professional counseling, because then the counselors — rather than sect leaders — would be obligated to make the reports to police. It was only after Ms. Autrey, another abuse survivor, and private investigator Cynthia Liles — all former sect members — pressured Mr. Smith that he turned Bruer’s laptop over to detectives, Ms. Autrey told the AP.