Life was harder than has generally been known for some of the women who lived and worked behind the brick walls of Your Black Muslim Bakery on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland.

While Yusuf Bey, owner of Your Black Muslim Bakery, was holding himself up to the community as a successful religious and business leader who gave downtrodden blacks a second chance, the view inside the bakery during its four decades as an East Bay institution was quite different.

Some women and girls worked long hours while Bey regularly raped and beat them, according to five women’s testimony. The names of four of the women have not been released because of the sensitive nature of their allegations.

Though he called himself a self-made millionaire, Bey built his fortune in part on the money he saved by using child labor, by not always paying wages and Social Security and by having his women and children qualify for welfare benefits, the women, the women testified and a caller reported to police in 2002.

“Just being a slave. That’s what we were. Slaves,” one of the women, called Jane Doe 2, testified in a sworn deposition in 2005.

The general nature of the stories told by the five women has been known since 2002, when the Alameda County District Attorney arrested Bey and charged him with sexually preying on young girls for decades. Bey died of cancer the following year, before trial.

But new research by The Chauncey Bailey Project into the reports the women made to police in 2002, into their sworn depositions in 2005, and into related reports prepared by police, the county social services agency and the courts reveals a hidden world at the bakery in far greater detail than has been previously known.

The women’s claims are at odds with those who say Yusuf Bey did years of good work among the downtrodden and needy in Oakland, and they contrast with the view of those in Bey’s large family who love and revere him.

Bey had at least 42 children with 14 women and girls, the Chauncey Bailey Project has confirmed through interviews, birth certificates, sworn depositions and other records in Alameda and surrounding counties.

Some family members remember fondly their years in the compound adjoining the bakery, where they say Yusuf Bey, several of his women and many children lived in harmony, committed to each other and their Black Muslim faith, according to two family members contacted by the Chauncey Bailey Project.

They believe their work at the bakery taught them self-reliance. They accepted Bey’s promiscuity because it produced the large family they love. They say the women who testified about Bey’s abuse were lying, part of a scheme to make Bey give them money.

“I loved the atmosphere and the people at the bakery. I have nothing but love for the bakery and what Dr. Yusuf Bey did for his people and Oakland,” his daughter, Rasheeda Bey, 29, said by e-mail to the Chauncey Bailey Project. “I guess you just have money-hungry people, who will do anything to get it.”

The view inside

The testimony of the five women tells a story that begins in about 1968, when 14-year-old Nora Bey ran away ...