A TEENAGER in hiding with members of a religious sect has told how he wants to spend the rest of his life with them and denied that he had been "brainwashed".
Bobby Kelly, 16, disappeared from his grandmother's home in Romford, Essex, four weeks ago after he met representatives of the Jesus Christians handing out leaflets at a shopping centre.
In a radio interview broadcast yesterday, the boy, who has been made a ward of court, told the BBC he was staying with the group voluntarily and had no plans to move back "permanently" with his grandmother.
His comments were recorded last week but broadcast only after the BBC successfully challenged a High Court order that prevented interviews with him or the sect's members being printed or broadcast. The injunction was lifted on Tuesday.
The boy told the Today programme: "I am very homesick. I miss my mum and my nan and my sister and other friends a lot but it says in the Bible that you have to give everything up to work for God. I know exactly what I am doing and why I joined."
