I gave years to the UCKG evangelical church before realising I had to escape its clutches

Rachael Reign, outside the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God’s centre in Finsbury Park, north London. Photograph: Teri Pengilley/The Guardian

It was a Sunday, and I was out and about in west Croydon. I was 13. A young stranger called out to me, “Hey! What are you doing now? Why don’t you come in, we are having an event now. There will be singing and dancing, it’s really fun, come in!”

Never in a hundred years would I have thought that accepting their invitation would change the course of my life, twice.