The Founder of the RIG Nation and Pioneers Church, UK-based Nigerian prophet Tomi Arayomi, has shared his harrowing experience of being sexually abused at the age of five.
In an interview with Dr. Sharon Stone, which aired on his YouTube channel on Friday, he also discussed his ongoing battle with addiction and the path to his healing and deliverance.
Arayomi recounted the traumatic event, revealing that he was sexually abused by a family friend while dealing with health challenges, stating, “I was born with rickets, I had leg disease which made me fairly immobile and there was a sexual exploitation that took place when I was five.
“A friend of the family who at times took care of us would sexually molest me. I didn’t know what he was doing at that age, really because I wasn’t in any way awakened sexually but I knew it wasn’t right because he made sure that whenever my parents came home I didn’t tell them what happened.”
The abuse led to overwhelming feelings of shame and confusion, particularly after an interaction with his mother following a news piece on homosexuality.
He recalled, “I asked my mum who was glued to the television ironing, ‘Mum what happens to homosexuals?’ to which she laughed and she said in a charismatic way, ‘Oh, they go to hell.’”
This moment plunged him into a deep internal struggle, as he recalled thinking, “Now, I’m going to hell.”
Describing his stand against the abuse, he shared, “I remember my last encounter with that man. My parents had left the house, again we were in the house by ourselves, and he cornered me in the bathroom and told me to pull my trousers down and I remember I just said no to him for the first time.
“I pushed him into the bathtub and I ran down the street crying my heart out because I didn’t know what was going to happen next.”
Despite finding salvation and a sense of affirmation in his Christian faith, Arayomi struggled with unresolved trauma and issues related to his sexual identity.
“When I got saved or born again, there was a new sense of affirmation. I got saved and I started serving almost right away. So, there’s a new sense of affirmation, this is a different Tomi Arayomi and it’s not that shameful five-year-old that was sexually abused,” he explained.
“However, he acknowledged that he battled with his sexual identity and addiction, stating, “I think I tried to prove to myself that I wasn’t homosexual.”
He detailed the complicated nature of his struggle with pornography, stating, “I got introduced to it by my school teacher, and all of a sudden what became a remedy for a diagnosis from BBC became an addiction that once saved the addiction didn’t go away, it just got suppressed.”
He carried the burden of his secret for years, not sharing it with his parents or even his twin brother until he was around 17 or 18.
As young pastors, both Arayomi and his twin brother faced mounting pressures in ministry.
“The pressure of ministry turned the crack into a crater, it just made it bigger and bigger,” he reflected, revealing the disconnect between his public persona and private struggles.
“People knew me as some pastor with a prophetic voice and it was completely different from the person I came to at home, who was struggling with sexual sin and sexual identity.”
To process his experiences, Arayomi authored a book detailing his struggles, stating, “In fact, the back of the book read, ‘I’d rather embarrass my mess than my mess embarrass me.’”
Reflecting on his ongoing journey, he concluded, “I don’t know if it dealt with my struggle but it definitely dealt with my shame.”
