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Despite the ALL CAPS warnings on social media, police say there’s no evidence that a group of evangelists who’ve been hitting the streets of Hampton Roads are trying to kidnap people for sex trafficking.
But in the wake of last week’s news about leaders of a Filipino megachurch, Kingdom of Jesus Christ, being arrested on human trafficking charges, it’s easy to be confused — and spooked.
These evangelists are from a different religion: the World Mission Society Church of God, a faith from Korea that now has thousands of locations, including one in Virginia, a 3-year-old church on Menchville Road in Newport News.
And the rumors are nothing new. Accusations of sex trafficking have dogged the World Mission Society for several years, rising like smoke signals from Oregon to Florida to New York.
Local suspicions — and calls to police — were ignited in December when folks connected to the Newport News church fanned out to spread the word as they see it, hoping to generate new members.
Part of the problem: the church’s tactics. Complaints often come from women who’ve been approached with persistence in stores, malls, parking lots and on college campuses.
Also: The group has an unconventional message.
“Can I talk to you about God the Mother?” asked a young woman who recently approached this reporter in a department store.
The church, a sect of a religion born in the 1960s, believes in the existence of a God the Father and a God the Mother. They believe the church’s late founder, a South Korean named Ahn Sahng-hong, was actually Christ, returned to Earth for the Second Coming. A 76-year-old woman named Jang Gil-Ja is regarded as God the Mother.
Google “God the Mother” and stories pop up from across the country: news outlets quoting police trying to debunk social media posts that accuse the evangelists of being sex traffickers, urging women and those with small children to “BE CAREFUL.”
Tonya Pierce, spokeswoman for Virginia Beach police, said her department has been getting calls from alarmed locals: “We’ve looked into it and there’s nothing to validate what’s being said on social media.”
Brandon Maynard at Newport News police said the same: “As far as we can tell, it’s just a group that just wants citizens to attend their church.”
The website of the World Mission Society Church of God says the religion has 2.7 million registered members in 175 countries and describes itself as “Christian non-denominational.”
Victor Lozada, an elder at the main U.S. church in New Windsor, New York, responded to a message sent through the church’s website.
"Ever since the rumors started, I’ve been the one who’s pretty much dealing with this issue,” Lozada said. “There’ve been incidents of our members being threatened. I almost got run over. Some of our members had to change their phone numbers because people were calling at all hours of the night leaving threatening messages. We had to have a police vehicle stay at our church. All because people are scared or angry about these rumors.”
Lozada said the faith has always emphasized evangelizing — “it’s just something we do” — but the trouble started a few years ago in the Orlando area of Florida, as best he can tell.
According to Lozada, residents were on edge after several people — unrelated to the church — were charged with human trafficking in the area. In the midst of such headlines, an evangelist’s overtures rattled a woman in a supermarket.
“Our member says she was just trying to spark conversation, like ‘Oh, your child is so cute,’ but the lady felt like she was inspecting the child to take it away.”
Social media did the rest, blending a post about that encounter into worried comments about trafficking until “somehow our member trying to invite that lady to Bible study became associated with that. And the more we approached people, the more it spread.”
The faith’s zeal for evangelizing and the strategies employed are “uncomfortable to the modern American,” said Aaron Nachtigal, a lecturer in the philosophy and religious studies department at Old Dominion University, where the church has a Bible study group.
It’s unnerving enough to be buttonholed by strangers, but the church’s evangelists can be tenacious, trailing along and continuing to talk to people trying to scurry away.
Members have been barred from at least one college campus, the University of Memphis, for being too pushy with students.
Lozada, the elder, said the church has tried to ward off pitfalls. Female members are encouraged to only approach women, male members to only approach men — an effort to avoid a different kind of misunderstanding.
The church has no plans to stop evangelizing.
“We’re not doing anything wrong,” Lozada said, “and if we go and hide now, it might seem like we are.”
But they’re considering a shift to more “tabling events,” settings that allow outsiders to make the first move.
Other religions evangelize — preach in public places, hand out literature, knock on doors — but their names and creeds are more familiar.
“We’ve realized that one reason people are so quick to make judgement is that people don’t really know our church,” Lozada said.
Alex Post, a missionary with the Newport News branch, says the congregation has started reaching out to locals who’ve posted social media warnings, inviting them to come see for themselves that "we’re just members of the community, just like like them, with families and children and jobs.”
Still, when it comes to any form of human trafficking, police don’t downplay concerns. Last year, 48 victims were confirmed locally, according to the Hampton Roads Human Trafficking Task Force.
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A tips line (1-866-DHS-2ICE) is manned 24/7, and all reports are investigated.
In the case of the Filipino church — which has a location in Virginia Beach — federal investigators say forced labor was at the heart of the trafficking. Church leaders are being accused of luring members from the Philippines, seizing their passports and making them raise money for a scam charity.
Human trafficking typically includes some sort of “grooming” phase. Sex trafficking, in particular, rarely occurs as it’s portrayed in movies like “Taken.”
"It isn’t typically a snatch-and-grab thing,” said Pierce, the Virginia Beach police spokeswoman. Sex traffickers tend to “build up a rapport with their victims, befriending them, molding them over a period of time.”
Caution is always wise, but there’s a fine line, Pierce said:
“We want people to be aware of their surroundings but not paranoid.”
Joanne Kimberlin, 757-446-2338, joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com