Three men have each been sentenced to 200 hours of community service for harassing BBC journalist Catrin Nye, who presented the podcast series and documentary, A Very British Cult.
Kristofer Deichler, 47, Jatinder Kamra, 46 and Sukhraj Singh, 39, were also given a restraining order banning them from contacting or approaching Nye or her partner for 10 years.
The men were also banned from entering the London borough where the couple live for a decade.
The defendants were all convicted last month at Stratford Magistrates’ Court of harassment without violence.
All three are members of Lighthouse, which was investigated for the 2023 documentary and podcast fronted by Nye.
The BBC programmes raised concerns about Lighthouse and reported allegations about the way its leadership treated people who tried to leave it.
Judge Holdham at Stratford Magistrates Court heard how the men held demonstrations outside the BBC and on three occasions turned up to Nye’s home, claiming to be delivering a Bible and a letter.
In her verdict, Judge Holdham said she did not believe the men’s visits to Nye’s home had really been manifesting their religious beliefs because despite their repeated returns they had not actually left the Bible.
She said their actions were “more performative than real” and that the defendants had really wanted to film footage of a confrontation with Nye and them giving her the Bible.
She added that despite the men’s claims to the contrary, their behaviour had been “intended to cause alarm and distress”.
The defendants were also each ordered to pay £650 costs plus £114 victim’s surcharge.
The men claimed they had been attempting to produce their own documentary in response to A Very British Cult and said they had been acting as “citizen journalists”.
In the trial, both Nye and her partner gave evidence from behind a screen about the effects the visits had on them and their children.
Nye said Lighthouse had been given “multiple opportunities and deadline extensions to involve themselves in the production of the programme, and these were not responded to”.
She added: “Terrifying people in their neighbourhood and terrifying their children is not how you respond to an organisation.
“They distributed leaflets with my name and picture on it, said the most awful things possible, saying that I destroyed businesses and protected child abusers.”
The couple installed a Ring doorbell and CCTV in their house and Nye told the court how she became unwilling to leave home with her children, even for short trips. She was reduced to a “paranoid” state, the court heard.
@ BBC
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