Fletcher Brothers


Pastor Fletcher A. Brothers is a fundamentalist preacher and author from Rochester, New York, USA.

Freedom Village

He is best known as the founder of Freedom Village, a home for troubled teens operated from a Christian Fundamentalist perspective and founded in Lakemont, New York in 1981. The campus was the site of the Lakemont Academy, a secular boys boarding school. Freedom Village also operated an office in Burlington, Ontario and it had many students from Canada.
Representatives of FV have been invited to speak at public schools in the United States and Canada.
Parents are allowed to visit their children on a prearranged basis every month after the first three months, and students are asked to commit to remain in the program for one year. Children are required to write one letter a week to their families. Phone calls are limited to one call a week which is made in the presence of a staff member.
The intake process is the interview process where children individually meet with a staff member who will ask them several questions regarding their application to Freedom Village. While information about past criminal history, drug use, etc., is factored into the decision to accept a child, the primary criteria for acceptance is a stated willingness to follow the rules and guidelines of the program as well as a commitment to complete twelve full months of enrollment.
Students are ranked according to a system of levels which ranges from no-level to Junior Staff. Students enter the program on C-Level and they can progress either upward or downward in the levels based on their behavior.
During all meals, chapel sessions, school and church sessions the teenagers are segregated by gender. Dating is only allowed among program students who have obtained a certain privilege level and staff approval.
Freedom Village abides by very formal standards of personal dress and conduct. Young people are required to wear loose fitting, baggy apparel. Pastor Brothers also preaches against secular music and he has even been outspoken against "Christian rock."
FV produces the daily 30-minute "Victory Today" radio show, featuring Fletcher Brothers's preaching and occasional interviews with FV staff or students. His theological outlook is generally informed by an apocalyptic form of fundamentalism which teaches that the imminent return of Christ will occur within his own lifetime, a view that is common in fundamentalism.
Brothers has often spoken out very loudly against adultery; however, Fletcher Brothers has been married 4 times. During his third marriage, this time to Linda, he had an affair with Carrie McCandless, who was also married at the time. Extensive measures were taken to cover up the affair. Brothers even went so far as to inform her then husband that Freedom Village was not God’s will for him, sending him off into the world to find God’s will but informing him that Carrie’s calling was to work at Freedom Village and convincing him to leave her there so she could “serve God”. They were later married and she became his third wife.