How could this alleged child slavery happen? Religious freedom helped it stay hidden.

FAYETTEVILLE -- John C. McCollum had a tractor-trailer for hauling around his giant blue-and-white-striped tent and folding chairs. When he set up for a religious revival, he’d park the truck nearby like a billboard to draw people in.

On the side, it had a color portrait of him with a microphone in his right hand and flames at his feet. “Old Time Tent Revival,” it said. “Brother John C. McCollum. Bring the sick. Bring the poor. Bring those that are in need. And Jesus will set you free.”

The problem, Cumberland County Sheriff’s investigators and some of McCollum’s former followers say, is that while Jesus may set people free, sometimes McCollum did not.

Over three decades, they say, he persuaded about 120 people, many of them children brought by their parents, to live with him on a compound in Godwin known as McCollum Ranch, a sandy 40-acre spread between U.S. 301 and Interstate 95 where he gradually took control of nearly every aspect of their lives.

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