Shame and Speaker Moore: not on speaking terms.

Right on North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore's doorstep, "children have been introduced to sometimes violent church practices that run counter to the North Carolina laws designed to protect them, the AP found in its latest story on Spindale, NC-based Word of Faith Fellowship.

"The state promotes 'family preservation,' designed to prevent the 'unnecessary placement of children away from their families.' But the AP found that some young congregants have been separated from their parents for up to a decade — bounced from family to family — as leaders strive to keep them in the church.

"In addition, three single mothers told the AP that a longtime Word of Faith Fellowship member who was a county court clerk bypassed the foster system and eventually won permanent custody of their children, even though a judge called the clerk’s conduct inappropriate. Two of the mothers said the clerk approached them and offered to temporarily keep the children while they served their jail time."

The scandal includes efforts by social workers employed by Cleveland County- whose county attorney is Speaker Moore- to "game the system" for Word of Faith to heist at-risk kids.

Word of Faith Fellowship also uses its overseas branches as a supply conduit for free, slave-like labor. And their leader, Brooke Covington, was tried this year for kidnapping and trying to beat the gay out of congregants thought to be homosexualists.

Her lawyer said the victim wanted the beatings. A mistrial was declared after a local man tried tampering with the jury and a juror was held in contempt for bringing in outside materials to influence deliberations.

Covington regulates who can marry, and when, and where they live.

Word of Faith leaders are prominent western North Carolina Republicans, as this 2016 photo demonstrates:


Robin Webster, second from left, with fellow ministers from Word of Faith 
Fellowship in Spindale, NC, attend a rally for then-Republican 
presidential candidate Donald J. Trump on November 7, 2016 at Dorton 
Arena in Raleigh, NC.

More recently, Robin Webster was seen at a Forest City fundraiser for NC Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, one of the state's most right-wing politicians and a dead-cert Republican candidate for governor in 2020. The News & Observer reports:

Webster is the daughter of church founder Jane Whaley and wife of Frank Webster, a church leader and lawyer who served as a western N.C. district attorney until he was accused of helping derail investigations into the church.

Speaker Moore, who cut his college Republican teeth suing to deny funding to a UNC-Chapel Hill LGBT club because its existence meant members must be violating state crimes against nature laws- and who jammed HB2 through the State House in a couple of hours- has not had anything to say about Word of Faith