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Undercover probe exposes church offering cancer cure

A reporter at a regional daily carried out an undercover investigation which exposed a church claiming to cure cancer with a mixture of blackcurrant squash and olive oil.

Richard Wheatstone, from the Manchester Evening News, went undercover at the Victorious Pentecostal Assembly in Gorton after reading claims on the church’s website about curing cancer, HIV and diabetes.

He posed as someone who had an uncle with cancer and within 15 minutes of entering the church, was offered the “miracle cure”.

A church leader who identified himself as “Pastor Mbenga” offered to sell Richard a one litre bottle of blackcurrant squash and a 500ml bottle of olive oil for £14 – despite them costing less than £6 in supermarkets.

Richard was told that if his terminally-ill family member drank a mixture of the squash and the olive oil once a day after it was blessed by a pastor, the cancer would be cured.

He has now written about his investigation, saying he was shocked by how quickly he was offered the cure after entering the church.

Said Richard: “The mark-up of more than 200 per cent on these products – which could end up costing several hundreds of pounds over a period of just a few months – in the middle of one of Manchester’s most deprived communities, felt questionable at best.

“I respect that people are free to pursue their own beliefs but felt that in a vulnerable position I was offered the guarantee of a miracle cure in a bid to get me into the church.

“Encouraging people to part with their cash promising a quick fix for a savage illness seems wrong, irrespective of belief. There are laws against it for a reason – to protect people when they feel at their most vulnerable.”

Since Richard’s investigation, the church has been slammed by cancer organisations for exploiting vulnerable people.

The church, on Hyde Road, opened last year and is the first northern base of the VPA, which has three other churches in Hackney, Luton and Barking.

The organisation has previously been fined by Ofcom for making similar claims on its television channel Believe TV.

Any advertisement, including verbal claims, promoting products as treatments or cures for cancer is illegal under the Cancer Act 1939.

When confronted by the newspaper outside the church, Pastor Mbenga defended the practice but said he was not aware the church was breaking the law.

13 comments

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  • August 15, 2012 at 9:19 am
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    Brilliant to see such an excellent piece of journalism. This story would make me buy the local paper. Well done.

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  • August 15, 2012 at 9:37 am
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    Good work.
    Nice to see examples of proper journalism on here rather than just job cuts.

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  • August 15, 2012 at 10:16 am
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    Great journalism, but isn’t the false hope more damaging than the monetary cost of the mark up?
    And once again, a journalist failing at maths. £6 to £14 is not a mark up of more than 200 per cent. The mark up is £8 – the orignal cost is £6 so the percentage mark up is 133 per cent.
    It always frustrates and amazes me that the majority of journalists bandy around figures and statistics without really understanding them or checking that they are correct.
    We’d be wrung out to dry by an editor if we got names wrong, why do they not care when we get figures wrong? (A: probably because the majority of them don’t understand either)

    Sounds like a whinging post (which it is), but still a great bit of work from the journo in terms of getting the story.

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  • August 15, 2012 at 11:09 am
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    Great job Richard and the MEN. Excellent example of what a local/regional journalism can achieve.

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  • August 15, 2012 at 11:21 am
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    Went to find this story on the MEN website to read it in full and have to say what a great bit of journalism. Good to see a bit of ambition mixed with old-fashioned digging.

    Well done Richard.

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  • August 15, 2012 at 11:22 am
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    A proper piece of local journalism, well done (dodgy figures apart!).

    Unfortunately Richard’s in increasingly slim company nowadays.

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  • August 15, 2012 at 12:16 pm
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    I think any journalist in any town or city where these kind of pentecostal churches operate will find similar stories of witch craft, claims of miracle cures and the like. My own experience dictates that many are also places where claims for visas are backed up by the ‘reverends’ and celebrated by the congregation.

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  • August 16, 2012 at 10:22 am
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    An excellent old-fashioned exclusive. Shame I have to call it old fashioned but these days reporters are not given time to dig or even leave their desks. Archant should take note but I doubt if they will.

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  • August 16, 2012 at 1:01 pm
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    Rob –

    “It always frustrates and amazes me that the majority of journalists bandy around figures and statistics without really understanding them or checking that they are correct.”

    I assume, therefore, that you have stats to back up your claim that the “majority of journalists” do this. Unless this was supposed to be ironic?

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  • August 17, 2012 at 12:20 pm
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    Great story. Now then, JP…how many of your “content gatherers” would be given the time or the expertise to get a tale like that?

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  • August 17, 2012 at 1:04 pm
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    Touché, Charles in Leeds. No statistics to prove or disprove my assertion. Just a turn of phrase on a comment page based on teh fact that the majority of journos I have worked with don’t have a clue about maths and figures. plenty of times when I’ve been on a newsdesk and I’ve queried a reporter and they admit they didn’t really understand it.
    You’ve not actually said whether you agree or not – secretely I think you know I’m 110 per cent right.

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