NEW YORK Ten years ago, Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones sat down to interview a pastor in the classic style of the program the correspondent played straight while talking to someone with ridiculous ideas. The interviewee, James Manning, had plenty.

Manning, the pastor at Atlah World Missionary Church in Harlem, was famous for his fiery attacks on then-President Barack Obama someone he called a long-legged mack daddy who had been born trash. The highlight of the interview was Manning telling Jones he thought Obama was the next Hitler.

Another correspondent, Jessica Williams, interviewed Manning a few years later. His latest argument? That Starbucks was flavoring its lattes with human semen. Williams interviewed him one more time after that , three years ago. Mannings church, which by then had been classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ hate group, owed over $1 million in bills and back taxes, according to creditors. A homeless shelter for LGBTQ youth hoped to take over the space.

It felt like poetic justice was coming. But Manning retained control of the building, and what the public knew about his outlandish behavior only scratched the surface.

Manning isnt just an outrageous character, perfect fodder for a satirical late-night show and click-baity internet headlines. He also runs a K-12 private school at the church, the two units of which are called Great Tomorrows USA Elementary/Middle and Atlah High School. His persona there is anything but an entertaining spectacle.

Around the same time Manning was gaining notoriety for his dangerous rhetoric, he locked a teenage boy named Sharif Hassan in the churchs basement, according to Hassan and several other congregants and students from that time.

For three full school days in 2011, a church leader would take Hassan to the pitch-black basement in the morning, locking the door and leaving him there for eight hours. Hassan, then 17 and a junior at Atlah High School, sat on a grimy bench in total darkness. His lungs filled with dirty air from the nearby boiler. Bugs and rodents crawled around him. Each passing minute felt heavy and lingering, and each hour felt like it dragged on for days.