Man who says religious group beat him wants prosecutor removed after long wait for retrial

A man who says members of a secretive North Carolina religious group held him down and beat him wants the prosecutor kicked off his case, accusing the district attorney of siding with a church that dozens of former congregants have said abused them.

Matthew Fenner said in court documents that he has waited more than eight years for a retrial in the kidnapping and assault case involving Word of Faith Fellowship only for District Attorney Ted Bell to schedule the second trial for a church leader during the week Fenner had interviews for a medical residency. Fenner said Bell has refused to delay it.

In a sworn statement, Fenner said Bell wants to stay on Word of Faith’s good side because he supports the locally influential church and its hundreds of members in the small county who could stay in his favor for his reelection bid in 2026.

Bell said the allegations about how he has handled the case are all false and that he will respond to all of Fenner’s allegations in court.

“I remain committed to fulfilling my duties with integrity, professionalism, and an unwavering dedication to justice,” Bell said in a written statement.

Fenner alleges Bell stopped talking to him, refused to interview new witnesses and investigate new evidence, and asked him to drop the case.

“If the Court does not intervene and remove Bell from this case, the trial will be lost before it begins. And it will be lost not because of a fair adjudication of the merits; rather, it will be lost due to DA Bell’s actions that manufactured that result,” Fenner’s lawyer wrote in court papers.

A leader of Word of Faith, Brooke Covington, was scheduled to stand trial this week on second-degree kidnapping and simple assault charges, but that has been delayed to consider Fenner’s request. Covington’s previous trial on the same charges ended in a mistrial after the jury foreman brought his own research into deliberations. Covington has maintained she is innocent.

Fenner joined Word of Faith as a teenager in 2010 with his mother. He was at a service at the church’s compound in Spindale, North Carolina, when members including Covington started what the church called a “blasting” session on him, according to Fenner. Members held him down and choked and beat him for two hours while others prayed to expel “homosexual demons,” Fenner said.

The judge at the 2017 trial wanted to retry the case in months. Initial delays were because a lawyer had health problems. The court record does not provide information about other delays. Other documents in the court file are related to efforts to move the case from small, rural Rutherford County where the Word of Faith is headquartered to Buncombe County and more populous and urban Asheville.

A judge placed a gag order on Fenner, Covington, the lawyers and potential witnesses.

Fenner alleges in his sworn statement that the district attorney did not oppose the gag order because he wanted to weaken the case and put pressure on Fenner to give up.

An attorney for Covington had no comment on the delay or Fenner’s allegations.

Word of Faith is a nondenominational Protestant church that was founded in 1979 by Sam and Jane Whaley in the foothills of Blue Ridge Mountains between Charlotte and Asheville. Members consider Jane Whaley a prophet.

In 2017, The Associated Press published a series of stories about Word of Faith that detailed former church members’ allegations of abuse. The AP spoke dozens of former congregants around the world, listened to hours secretly recorded conversations with church leaders, and reviewed hundreds of pages of law enforcement, court and child welfare documents.

The AP reported that the church controlled almost every aspect of their members’ lives including who they married, what subjects they studied in school and whether they could go to college. Members were regularly slapped, choked and thrown to the floor during high-decibel group prayer.

The AP investigation found that the church and its hundreds of followers controlled law enforcement and social services, preventing fair investigations.

Whaley has denied that she or other church leaders ever abused Word of Faith members. She has also said that any discipline would be protected by the Constitution’s freedom of religion tenet.

The church said the allegations made to the AP were false and made by “certain former members” out to target the church and that it does not condone abuse.