Banyule and Nillumbik Weekly - Victoria, Australia April 5, 2011
No class for excluded Brethren students
BY ALANA SCHETZER
CONTROVERSIAL sect Exclusive Brethren bans members from attending university on campus, despite its students being high academic achievers.
According to the federal government’s My School website, students at the sect-run Glenvale School achieved above average scores across all five areas of the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy tests last year – writing, spelling, reading, numeracy, and grammar and punctuation.
Diamond Valley is home to one of the biggest Brethren communities in Australia.
Despite the high scores, students cannot attend university on-campus as, according to the sect, it would ‘‘…put them in conflict with their church fellowship’’.
Brethren spokesman Bob Lawrence, from PR firm Jackson Wells, told BNW, students who wish to continue their education can only do so via online courses or off-campus ‘‘delivery mechanisms’’.
Fifty per cent of the class of 2010 went on to tertiary education, and the other 50 per cent found jobs.
The school spends $19,965 per student, almost double what the average state school spends. My School revealed more than
$7 million of the school’s $11.7 million annual budget came from private donations.
Despite its private wealth, the school’s Community Socio-Education Advantage index is below the average.
Mr Lawrence said the school relies on a ‘‘high level of support from the community’’.
‘‘That support includes capital infrastructure which in all independent schools is mainly privately funded. Glenvale School has had an increased capital expenditure program to provide necessary education facilities for the students,’’ he said.
Last year, the sect won a controversial VCAT battle with residents to build its Melbourne headquarters, a 2000-seat ‘‘mega-church’’ in Diamond Creek. The sect also operates five smaller churches in the area.
Detractors, including former members, have labelled the religion a cult, saying it controls member’s lives and forbids them from engaging in society.
The school, which has 611 students across 13 campuses in Victoria, teaches grades three to year 12.
The sect also runs six other schools throughout Australia.
This article was found at:
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Posts
Evangelical woman wants CBC to stop reporting about messy divorce and husband's excommunication
ReplyDeleteBy SUE MONTGOMERY, The Gazette September 30, 2011
A West Island woman belonging to an evangelical church that forbids radio, television and the Internet is seeking an injunction to stop CBC from reporting on the woman's messy divorce from her husband and his excommunication from the closed religious community.
The motion, which is to be heard in Quebec Superior Court on Friday, says the couple was married in New York in 1996 and vowed to raise their children according to the followings of the exclusive Plymouth Brethren, of which there are about 106 members in Montreal.
The airing of the program would be prejudicial to the children, who "dress somewhat differently than other children," the motion says. Members of the group, including children, don't socialize or eat with people outside the community.
The woman, who can't be identified to protect the identity of the couple's five children, says the marriage fell apart when her husband "became obsessed with porn, strip bars and prostitutes."
"The last straw was when he throttled me to the point I thought I was a goner," she wrote in a letter to Hubert Lacroix, president and CEO of CBC.
The mother asked the court this year to order that the children follow the Brethren's code of conduct when they were with their father, but a Superior Court judge refused.
In her June judgment, Justice Hélène Le Bel called the husband a good parent who "will not behave in such a way as to offend the religious beliefs or sensitivities of the children."
The father is seeking sole custody of the children. A trial is scheduled for two weeks in November.
During his visits with the children after the 2007 marital breakup, the father exposed the children to television and radio as well as "violent age-16-and-up videos," says the mother's letter attached to the motion. "His aim is to alienate and turn them against their friends within the Christian Fellowship."
According to their website, the Plymouth Brethren have 40,000 members worldwide. They don't vote, but "hold government in the highest respect as God's ministers, used by Him to restrain evil and provide conditions for the promotion of the glad tidings."
They have their own government-recognized schools for children ages 11-17.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Evangelical+woman+seeks+injunction/5480324/story.html
Evangelical group focus of child custody fight
ReplyDeleteEx-communicated father seeks sole custody of five children
CBC News Oct 3, 2011
A father who used to belong to a little-known Evangelical Christian group is fighting for sole custody of his five children, who remain in the closed community with their mother.
The father, who cannot be identified, was ex-communicated from The Exclusive Brethren, also known as the Plymouth Brethren, a religious group that bans contact with the outside world.
He currently sees his children every other weekend and every Wednesday, but he told CBC News that he's seeking sole custody because he wants them to be free.
"I want them to have the opportunity to choose their lifestyle rather than having it forced on them," the father said.
The Exclusive Brethren has 40,000 followers worldwide and about 100 in the Montreal region. They have two churches and a government-recognized school in Baie d'Urfé, on Montreal's West Island.
The group believes women belong at home and does not allow its members to be educated beyond a high school diploma. It also forbids socializing outside the community, using the Internet, and going to the cinema.
The 35-year-old father grew up in Winnipeg within the Exclusive Brethren community, but moved to Montreal in 1994 to help build the group's presence in the city. Two years later, he met and married his ex-wife and they had five children. The father said he became increasingly dissatisfied with the religious group, and the control it exerted over its members. He said he worries for his children, saying their lives are decided for them if they stay in the community.
"The court will judge which parent can offer these children the best possible development in their lives," said Marie Annik Walsh, the lawyer representing the father in the custody battle. She added that the question of education will also be a factor.
Earlier this year, the mother requested a court order that the children follow the Brethren's code of conduct when they were with their father, but a Superior Court judge refused.
That same judge, Justice Hélène Le Bel, said the custody trial will look at the role religion should play in the lives of the children.
The case will go before a Quebec Superior Court on Nov. 10.
The Exclusive Brethren have hired three lawyers to argue the mother's case. The community and the mother refused to speak to CBC News, and filed a failed injunction to stop the story from going to air.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2011/10/03/quebec-brethren-custody-battle.html
Mark Craddock, Christian Sect Doctor, Banned For Prescribing 'Gay Cure' Drug Used For Castration
ReplyDeleteBy Cavan Sieczkowski The Huffington Post August 5, 2012
An Australian doctor and member of a conservative Christian sect has been banned from practicing medicine after he prescribed a teenager a chemical castration drug to be used as a "gay cure."
Dr. Mark Craddock of Sydney, who is also a member of the Exclusive Brethren Christian Fellowship sect, prescribed an 18-year-old man who was also part of the sect with the drug after he came out as gay, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
In a letter to the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission, the unnamed man, who is now 24, said that when he came out as gay, a church leader told him ''there's medication you can go on." He continued, ''He recommended that I speak to Dr Craddock on the matter with a view to my being placed on medication to help me with my 'problem','' the New Zealand resident said, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
The teen went to visit the 75-year-old doctor who then prescribed him with a "gay cure": the anti-androgen therapy cyproterone acetate, sold under the brand name Cyprostat, along with five repeats, according to ninemsn. He said the doctor did not refer him to a psychologist or discuss the drug's side effects.
Cyprostat is a form of hormone therapy used to treat prostate cancer. The drug will "work by stopping testosterone from reaching the cancer cells. Without testosterone the prostate cancer cells are not able to grow," according to the UK's Prostate Cancer Charity. Hormone suppressants have been used to "chemically castrate" sex offenders, the Guardian notes.
A hearing by the Medical Council of the Australian State of New South Wales determined, "Dr Craddock failed to adequately assess the patient and failed to provide appropriate medical management of the patients therapeutic needs," in an excerpt obtained by Gay Star News. The committee found that Craddock was guilty of "unsatisfactory processional conduct. He was severely reprimanded and practice restrictions were placed on his registration."
There are more than 40,000 Exclusive Brethren around the world, according to the sect's official website. They "believe strongly in the traditional family unit. Marriage is held in the greatest [honor], as one of God's original thoughts of blessing for the human race."
Some doctors, like Craddock, have taken somewhat dangerous steps in an attempt to "cure" homosexuality. In 2010, Dr. Maria New of New York City's Mount Sinai was reportedly experimenting with injecting fetuses with steroids to potentially make girls "more feminine" and reduce odds they turn out gay, the Oregonian reported at the time.
The American Psychiatric Association has condemned the "treatment" of homosexuality, according to GLAAD, saying, "The potential risks of 'reparative therapy' are great, including depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient."
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ReplyDeleteActivists have championed against "gay cures" in the United Kingdom, which includes Conversion Therapy. Last year, Apple pulled Exodus International's "Gay Cure" app from its collection.
Below, see 11 horrific "cures" for homosexuality:
Exorcism
In 2009 Manifested Glory Ministries came under fire when a 20-minute video posted on YouTube showed a 16 year old being subjected to an exorcism to "cure" him of his homosexuality. The boy is shown writhing as church members stand on his feet, hold him under the arms and scream, "Come on, you homosexual demon! You homosexual spirit, we call you out right now! Loose your grip, Lucifer!"
Electrocution
Electrocution has long been a go-to tool for "curing" homosexuality and is still used to this day. In October Nathan Manske, the founder and Executive Director of I'm From Driftwood, a 501(c)(3) non-profit forum for true lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer stories, shared the story of Samuel Brinton on HuffPost Gay Voices. Brinton was raised in rural Iowa and he spoke of growing up gay in a conservative, Southern Baptist family that subjected him to forced Christian conversion therapy. "We then went into the 'Month of Hell,'" Brinton explains in the video above. "The 'Month of Hell' consisted of tiny needles being stuck into my fingers and then pictures of explicit acts between men would be shown and I'd be electrocuted."
Prostitution
Baron Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, a German psychiatrist who practiced during the 19th century, prescribed a trip to a brothel, preceded by lots of drinking, to cure men of their homosexuality. Women who were "afflicted," it's noted, "were referred only to their husbands."
Hypnosis
Hypnotism was a common tool used during the 19th century to "cure" homosexuals. When Schrenck-Notzing wasn't busy sending gay men to brothels, he was hypnotizing them. In 1892 the German psychiatrist reported success in treating 32 cases of "sexual perversions." Of the 32 cases, 12 were classified as "cured," meaning "the patients were completely able to 'combat fixed ideas [about homosexuality], deepen a sense of duty, self-control, and right-mindedness.'"
Fetal Intervention
Günther Dorner, who worked with the Institute for Experimental Endocrinology in the middle of the 20th century, believed that homosexuality is "determined by prenatal gendering of the brain caused by endocrinological disturbances." He hypothesized that if you could alter any hormonal imbalances present in the womb -- as he attempted to do with fetal rats -- homosexuality could be prevented before it even developed.
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ReplyDelete'Overdosing' On Homosexuality
In the 1960s British psychologist I. Oswald would pump a gay man full of nausea-inducing drugs before surrounding him with glasses of urine and playing audio recordings of men having sex. Oswald was attempting to "overdose" gay men on homosexuality in hopes that they would "turn to women for relief."
Bicycling
American neurologist Graeme M. Hammond suggests bicycling as a cure for homosexuality. He believed "homosexuality was rooted in nervous exhaustion and that bicycle exercise would restore health and heterosexuality."
Cold Showers
In June of 2011 Hong Kong reportedly hired a psychiatrist to give a government-sponsored training session on conversion therapy. Among the techniques Hong Kwai-wah suggested for "curing" homosexuality were cold showers, prayer, and abstinence.
Transplants
Eugen Steinach (1861-1944), director of the Biological Institute in Vienna, believed that homosexuality was the result of hormonal imbalances. To prove his hypothesis, the scientist implanted sex organs in neutered rats and Guinea pigs and claimed to have conducted successful "sex change" operations on the rodents. Steinach's research didn't end with animals. He also transplanted testicles from heterosexual men into gay men in hopes of "remasculizing the recipient."
Cocaine, Strychnine, Genital Mutilation
Physician Denslow Lewis believed that women brought up in wealthy 19th century homes could develop "sexual hyperesthesia [excessive sensitivity to stimuli]" and become lesbians. In order to cure these women he prescribed "cocaine solutions, saline cathartics, the surgical "liberation" of adherent clitorises, or even the administration of strychnine by hypodermic." Though he claimed that some of his patients were "cured" and became wives and mothers, one went insane and died in an asylum.
Praying
"Pray the gay away!" has become the battle cry of the conversion therapy movement. From Marcus Bachmann's alleged conversion clinic to an ex-gay iPhone app, those who believe homosexuality is not only wrong but curable rely on the power of prayer to make a miracle happen.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/05/mark-craddock-christian-doctor-gay-cure-prostate-cancer_n_1857571.html
Probe into strict Christian sect school that 'shut up' girl pupil for 37 days... for making Facebook page
ReplyDeleteBy Mark Nicol UK Daily Mail January 20, 2013
A fundamentalist Christian church at the centre of a multi-million-pound dispute over charitable status is being investigated about claims of child cruelty.
The Exclusive Brethren, which has 16,000 UK followers, has gained the support of more than 50 MPs in its bid to retain its charitable status – and the entitlement to tax relief on donations.
But this newspaper has uncovered allegations of a shocking regime inside Exclusive Brethren schools – including pupils being confined at home for using the internet, elders tearing pages from textbooks to remove material about gay rights or sexually transmitted diseases, and teenage boys and girls being banned from talking to each other.
Yesterday a local education authority confirmed it was investigating allegations of child cruelty and failures to teach the National Curriculum at an Exclusive Brethren school in Wiltshire. Wilton Park School, near Salisbury, opened in September 2011 as an independent day school for boys and girls aged from 11 to 18.
The probe, by Wiltshire County Council, local police officers and the Department for Education’s Due Diligence Team was triggered by a teacher at Wilton Park handing over a dossier describing alleged abuses.
These claims include the punishments imposed upon six pupils for setting up a Facebook page.
Elders from the church are said to have responded so harshly because of the Exclusive Brethren’s teachings on modern technology – laptops are considered instruments of evil and internet access is tightly controlled to protect followers from defiling material.
Pupils are also banned from emailing each other because, according to a school memo, ‘such communications promote special friendships and are beneath the dignity of our calling’.
The dossier states that, on the elders’ instruction, six pupils were withdrawn, confined to their homes and forbidden to have any communication with anyone outside their close families. Inside the Exclusive Brethren community these punishments are called ‘shutting up’.
The teacher, who is not a member of the Exclusive Brethren, wrote: ‘As an employee I have known of families that have been “shut up’’ for different lengths of time. I have never witnessed pupils being shut up before.
‘The pupils were shut up between the months of May and July 2012. The only girl was shut up for the longest number of days and was recorded to have had 37 days off out of a possible 70 [school] days between May 4th and July 22nd [when the school term ended]. All of her absences were recorded as authorised absences.
‘She was not allowed to have any communication with anyone apart from immediate family members, i.e. those who she shared a house with. She suffered both mentally and physically from this controlled withdrawal from her friends; she lost weight and was emotionally distressed.
‘When it was decided that she would be allowed back to school, it was controlled by the EB [Exclusive Brethren] elders. She was dropped off and escorted into a classroom.
'She remained there with work to do all day. She was not allowed to have contact with anyone apart from one or two teachers. They were not allowed to have any form of conversation with her unless it was study related.
‘At the end of the day she was picked up by a parent and taken home. She remained in her home until the following school day.’
A Brethren spokesman said: ‘Shutting up is not intended as a punishment but is meant to encourage people to consider the consequences of their actions. Where young persons are involved this decision is taken ultimately by their parents, though the advice of elders may be sought.
‘The trustees – all Brethren – decide what is best for the school based on their religious and moral beliefs.’
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The six pupils were in Wilton Park’s sixth form. These boys and girls, aged 16 to 18, are subjected to gender segregation at all times – to reflect the school’s commitment to biblical values. Liaisons and relationships between pupils are prohibited and monitored using CCTV.
ReplyDeleteOther stipulations include teenagers being forbidden to attend university or public events such as Premiership football matches.
Pupils seldom play any competitive sport and have been banned from playing rugby by the church’s Australian leadership.
As the dossier compiled by the Wilton Park teacher reads: ‘The sixth-form boys at the school are a very athletic group and they wanted to start playing full-contact rugby. They put forward a very articulate and well-thought-through presentation as to why they felt this was necessary. The trustees told them they would come back with an answer within 24 hours.
‘Their answer, as dictated to them by “Australia”, was clear that full-contact rugby should not be played as it promotes savagery. So for Exclusive Brethren schools in the UK, decisions are no longer made locally or even nationally.’
Teaching staff at Wilton Park must also abide by strict codes of conduct and dress, as set out by the school: ‘Female staff must wear dresses or skirts (at least knee-length) and clothing must be modest and not revealing or low-cut.’ Male teachers must have short hair and shave.
The launch of the investigation comes just weeks before the Exclusive Brethren’s appeal against the Charity Commission is heard by a legal tribunal. The Commission recently decided the church did not qualify for charitable status.
Unless the verdict is overturned, the Exclusive Brethren stands to lose its entitlement to tax relief. As a charity, the church currently claims 25p from the Inland Revenue for every £1 received in donations under the Gift Aid scheme.
The case is worth so much to the church that it has spent £1.5 million on a legal campaign.
THE five-day tribunal in March will hear evidence about the church’s charitable works. But other witnesses, including former members of the Exclusive Brethren, may gave their testimonies from behind screens – such is their fear of the potential consequences.
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An Education Department spokeswoman confirmed she was aware of the dossier and added: ‘We are working with police and local council to take any action necessary.’
ReplyDeleteA spokesman for Wiltshire Council said: ‘An allegation has been received in relation to this school.
‘The council is committed to protecting and safeguarding every child in Wiltshire. We take all allegations of child abuse seriously.’
An insider's view of the notoriously strict Plymouth Brethren schools
AS part of our investigation, The Mail on Sunday was given unprecedented access to another Exclusive Brethren school.
All 192 pupils at Linton Park School, near Maidstone, Kent, come from Exclusive Brethren families – in keeping with the church’s stance of separation from the community, including other Christian groups. The pupils are aged from seven to 18.
Deputy head teacher John Welch admitted that his staff – who don’t belong to the controversial church – censor books to remove content that the school’s trustees consider incompatible with their faith.
He also admitted the Exclusive Brethren’s stance on issues such as gay rights and abortion made teaching ‘delicate’.
Mr Welch, a former policeman, said: ‘I’ve been working in Brethren schools since 2001 so by now I know the areas that are sensitive.
But today I still have to get approval for resources such as DVDs. Blasphemy is another area so we blank out any swear words.
‘Recently I was teaching post-1945 British history and the legalisation by Harold Wilson’s government of abortion and homosexuality. Many communities would say these were advances in society, the Brethren would not. It is delicate.’
According to pupil Nathan Woodcock, 15, his community is being unfairly targeted.
He said: ‘We do a lot of work for the public benefit and I really enjoy helping the less fortunate. For instance, we put on “Pie Days”, when the homeless come to our meeting hall and we feed them.
'The public don’t understand we only eat and drink with people with whom we share the Lord’s Supper.’
The Exclusive Brethren, which has 16,000 followers in the UK and 46,000 worldwide, formed in 1848.
In that year they broke off from the much larger Plymouth Brethren – an evangelical Christian church founded in 1832.
The church’s worldwide leader Bruce Hales, based in Sydney, Australia, assumed the leadership after the death of his father.
Hales preaches that the world is ‘evil’ and that separation from it is the ‘greatest thing that the Lord has provided’.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2265258/Probe-strict-Christian-sect-school-shut-girl-pupil-37-days--making-Facebook-page.html
Charity Commission accepts Plymouth Brethren application
ReplyDeleteby Michael Trimmer, Christian Today January 10, 2014
The Preston Down Trust, part of the Devon-based Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, has had its application for charitable status accepted after agreeing to make changes to its governing document.
The approval by the Charity Commission marks the end of a long process of debate, appeal and evolution at the Plymouth Brethren.
The Charity Commission's initial refusal in 2012 led to an appeal which had to be temporarily halted because of legal fee issues, before eventually resulting in a decision in favour of the Church on Thursday.
The controversy rested on whether the trust's religious activities could be described as "advancement of religion for public benefit", part of the criteria for the Charity Commission's acceptance of religious organisations.
In official documentation on the subject, the Charity Commission states that in order for a religious organisation to be recognised as charitable, they have to demonstrate that their aims are for the public benefit.
"It would not be sufficient for any such organisation to show that it is established solely for the benefit of the followers or adherents of the religion," the guidance states.
In its decision document on the Plymouth Brethren, the Charity Commission outlined concerns about "the doctrine of separation from evil, which… resulted in (i) both a moral and physical separation from the wider community and (ii) limited interaction between the Brethren and the wider public".
This doctrine resulted in policies such as limiting the attendance of church services to those who were already considered members and forbidding members to socialise in any way with non-members.
The commission said it had received evidence relating to allegations of "detriment, harm or disbenefit" following its 2012 decision to refuse charitable status to the Plymouth Brethren.
Disciplinary procedures against members were found to include the controversial practice of "shutting up", where members of the congregation are not permitted to speak to a particular individual.
The possibility that this practice was inflicted upon children was investigated in early 2013 by Parliamentarians.
This practice had previously resulted in the physical separation of family members to such an extent that non-Brethren family members were not permitted to attend their Brethren relatives' funerals.
The decision document also claims of legal action against former members, and members who left the Church being "ostracised and consequently treated differently from other members of the public".
Dialogue between the Preston Down Trust and the Charity Commission resulted to changes to the trust's governing document and the Commission being satisfied that it met the requirements for charitable status.
It is uncommon for the Charity Commission to take such an approach, a fact that was remarked upon by Tory peer Baroness Berridge, who was involved in gathering evidence in relation to the Church.
"The grave concerns of the Charity Commission should not be underestimated as they have required the EB (Exclusive Brethren) to agree to a 'faith in practice' document and it is remarkable for them to require a religious group to, in effect, alter its practice and doctrine to qualify for charitable status," she said.
She also echoed concerns about the Plymouth Brethren's practices, saying: "This religion is not one I recognise as Christian."
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The Plymouth Brethren welcomed the outcome in a statement that read: "This decision is a great relief to us and we are hugely encouraged and comforted, that after a thorough explanation of our Christian beliefs and practices, which are based on the infallible and eternal Word of God as set out in Holy Scripture, the Charity Commission has agreed that the doctrines and practices of our Church advance religion for the public benefit."
ReplyDeleteThe decision to grant charitable status could still be appealed and the Charity Commission will be reviewing the status in a year's time.
Baroness Berridge added: "I recognise that those harmed by their experience of the EB may be disappointed by today's decision and may have relevant standing to appeal the decision."
Explaining its decision to grant charitable status, the Charity Commission said the trust had "demonstrated a willingness to make amends and to do what it could as a Christian organisation to ensure, as far as it was consistent with its religious beliefs, it would act with Christian compassion in the future".
Changes include ensuring worship services are open to all members of the public and making it public what the accepted dress code is to those who wish to attend.
In a section of the new governing documents entitled "Compassion", the trust sets out how that pastoral care should be provided "including but not limited to where fault occurs".
"No action should be taken in any way to treat vindictively, maliciously or unfairly persons whether within or outside the community, including those who were within the community and who are leaving or have left the community," it says.
"Every care should be taken to provide for and support the welfare and education of children and young persons within the community.
"Where persons seek to leave the community, reasonable assistance should be afforded to them in terms of support and/or financial assistance relating to employment or other matters, where they have been dependent on the community for that support."
The new governing document also states that "reasonable steps" should be taken to allow the continuation of family relationships when a family member leaves community, including providing access to family members, especially children.
The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church welcomed the Charity Commission's decision in a statement, despite noting that it did not agree with all aspects of its opinion.
Spokesperson for the Plymouth Brethren, Gerry Devenish, refused to be drawn on the specifics of what they disagreed with but told Christian Today that their core values "as a mainstream Christian church remain unchanged".
He said the Charity Commission's opinion document "speaks for itself" and was positive about the new governing document making the Church "more accountable".
William Shawcross, chair of the Charity Commission, was quoted on ThirdSector.co.uk as saying: "I am pleased that the PDT has agreed to adopt a new governing document and am confident that the organisation now qualifies for charitable status.
"This was a complex and sensitive case, which involved strong views and feelings on both sides of the argument. I am grateful to all those who shared information with us, and for their patience in awaiting today's decision.
"I hope that the organisation's new explicit focus on compassion and forgiveness will help allay the concerns of people who remain uncomfortable with some of the practices of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church."
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/charity.commission.accepts.plymouth.brethren.application/35326.htm
THE CLOSED-DOOR CHURCH
ReplyDeleteINSIDE THE SECRETIVE AND STRICT PLYMOUTH BRETHREN SECT IN MANITOBA
The Plymouth Brethren discourage interaction between their followers and outsiders, and the church encompasses all aspects of social and professional life for its members. Critics say it has gone from being a Christian sect to full-blown cult.
By: Bill Redekop, Winnipeg Free Press May 10, 2014
STONEWALL — Quietly, and out of earshot of Winnipeg, Stonewall had its own mini "British Invasion" a decade ago.
Newcomers from England started to descend on this town just north of Winnipeg that has historically been a limestone quarry and agricultural service centre.
They bought homes, started businesses, built a church — all the usual stuff.
Stonewall councillors were pleased their town was chosen by the English-speaking immigrants. Local residents were charmed, as North Americans tend to be, by how the newcomers snapped off their words with British accents.
But residents soon found there was something different about the newcomers. They didn’t want much to do with the townsfolk. They wouldn’t socialize with them, other than a few words on the street or in a store. It wasn’t long before local people started to regard them as "standoffish," as one Stonewall resident put it.
In time, the community learned the newcomers were from the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church (PBCC), a religious sect that practises "separateness" from the rest of society. The two-metre-high rod-iron fence around their church attests to that.
It’s one of the few physical barriers. Most Plymouth Brethren barriers are social. They won’t eat in the same room as non-members, including in restaurants.
Brethren are not even allowed to visit the homes of non-Brethren, or "worldly people." They don’t go to the cinema, the theatre or sporting events.
Plymouth Brethren are sometimes thought of as a British version of Hutterites, without the colonies. Both are conscientious objectors to military service; neither group votes; both forbid television and radio in their homes. The Brethren forbid computers with anything other than email functions and some business software, and all their computers and programs are purchased from a Brethren-owned company.
Plymouth Brethren also maintain a dress code, but not one as rustic or obvious as that of Hutterites.
Brethren women are required to wear ankle-length skirts, long hair and some kind of head covering — it used to be a kerchief but now is often a ribbon. The attire is urban, individualized, and becoming less strict to the point where women are now seen wearing designer clothes with hem lines climbing to knee level.
Men dress business casual. They keep their hair short and are clean-shaven — not even sideburns are allowed. While that doesn’t sound like it would set the men apart, it does.
"They are conspicuously well-scrubbed," said a Stonewall resident who has had dealings with the Brethren.
This "new" Christian sect has actually been in Manitoba since the 1880s. The Stonewall group was only the most recent wave. Plymouth Brethren are also in Winnipeg (Charleswood) and the village of Woodlands, not far from Stonewall in the Interlake.
It’s a group that shows quite remarkable business acumen. The Plymouth Brethren bought up half of Stonewall’s industrial park upon arrival, and immediately set up a cluster of companies.
But attempts to learn more about the sect and interview its members showed how it has managed to stay under the radar.
continue reading this in-depth article at:
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/The-closed-door-church-258336281.html
Charity Commission chair calls for evidence about Plymouth Brethren congregations
ReplyDeleteby Sam Burne James, Third Sector March 19, 2015
In a letter to The Times, William Shawcross says the regulator's decision on the Preston Down Trust was independent and robust, and urges people to contact the commission with evidence about the activities of Brethren congregations
The chair of the Charity Commission has invited anyone with evidence about Plymouth Brethren congregations to present it to the regulator as part of its ongoing monitoring of Brethren charities.
In a letter to The Times published today, William Shawcross says that the regulator’s 2014 decision to register as a charity the Preston Down Trust, a Devon-based congregation of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, had been "independent and robust".
His letter comes in response to an article in the Tuesday edition of the newspaper that documented the campaigning efforts of the church in the five-year legal battle that led to the PDT being registered.
In response to the article, the commission confirmed that its officials had been followed by members of the church, which adheres to a doctrine of separation and has been accused of breaking up families and using harsh disciplinary practices. The commission said it was sent letters by more than 3,000 of the church’s members and 200 MPs after initially refusing to register the PDT.
Shawcross’s Times letter says: "Anyone reading our published decision will see it was independent and robust. We were the first public authority to put on record the ‘detriment and harm’ caused by the doctrines and practices of the brethren.
"We recognised the Preston Down Trust as charitable only after it satisfied us that it met the public benefit requirement by accepting a new deed setting out its core religious doctrines and practices, acknowledged past mistakes and agreed to greater engagement with the wider public.
"We will make public the conclusions of our monitoring of those Brethren halls that we registered as charities. If any member of the public has evidence relating to these charities, we would be glad to receive it."
Since the registration of the PDT, a further 69 Plymouth Brethren congregations have been granted charitable status by the commission. When it registered the PDT, the commission said it would monitor the new charity’s compliance with its governing documents and that the commission "regularly monitors charities that were the subject of a complex or high-risk registration process to ensure that they are operating in line with their trusts and charity law".
Two further letters on the subject of the Brethren are also published in The Times today. Harry Adam of Atworth in Wiltshire says that the church’s practices "do not reflect any generally accepted view of ‘Christian’ behaviour". Another, from Jake Whiteside, a spokesman for the PBCC, says that the PDT decision "was taken after extensive examination of evidence, lasting more than 12 months". He responds to criticism of Brethren schools made in Tuesday’s Times story by saying: "They are unusual in one area: they are particularly successful."
http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/charity-commission-chair-calls-evidence-plymouth-brethren-congregations/governance/article/1339044
Extreme sect secures £13m tax breaks
ReplyDeleteby Alexi Mostrous Special Correspondent Billy Kenber Investigations Reporter, The Times, UK March 17, 2015
The charity regulator secured tax breaks worth millions of pounds a year for a hardline Christian sect despite finding that its practices caused harm and broke up families.
The Charity Commission struck a deal with the Exclusive Brethren, which has 17,000 followers in Britain and enjoys charitable tax relief worth up to £13 million a year, after the group’s Australian leader called for “extreme pressure” to be put on William Shawcross, the head of the regulator.
British members of the sect, also known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, work for Brethren businesses, shun outsiders socially and make yearly cash payments totalling an estimated £350,000 to Bruce Hales, a secretive accountant who travels by private jet and runs the group from a wealthy Sydney suburb.
Under its strict disciplinary practices, followers of the sect, which has been described by some as a cult, have been ostracised or thrown out for minor transgressions. Many claim they have been torn away from their families, in some cases for decades.
Leaked documents obtained by The Times lay bare the extraordinary lobbying campaign prepared a draft presentation showing a photograph of a car being crushed by a brick wall accompanied with the words: “This must be our aim. No mercy. Nothing else will do.”
Your wish is my command, MP assured church
More than 200 MPs, many of whom had been persuaded that the Brethren were an innocuous Christian church, wrote to the regulator on its behalf and several tabled supportive motions, organised debates and hosted parliamentary events. Peter Bone, the MP for Wellingborough who is one of the Brethren’s strongest supporters, assured the sect: “Your wish is my command.”
Five MPs wrote to Alison McKenna, the principal judge of the charity tribunal, to influence her decision in the Brethren’s favour. A spokesman for Ms McKenna said that she had “made it clear that it was not appropriate to write to a judge during the hearing”.
By late 2012, the tribunal was set to hear testimony from ex-members describing how they had suffered emotional and in some cases physical abuse.
However, less than two months after Mr Hales had told his enforcers to get “Shawcross to review the [case] without going to tribunal”, according to a note of an internal meeting, the Charity Commission agreed to stay the case. Regulators instead negotiated a deal with the Brethren behind closed doors. The Brethren said that they had received advice that the regulator’s “challenge to [the group’s] charitable status was misguided and that a collaborative dialogue might be possible to resolve this.”
In January last year the sect, which some ex-members and Kevin Rudd, the former prime minister of Australia, have denounced as an “extremist cult” which “breaks up families” and tightly controls members’ lives, was granted charitable status. “I think the Charity Commission has questions to answer over whether it buckled under pressure from what appears to have been a particularly aggressive lobbying campaign,” Margaret Hodge, chairwoman of the public accounts committee, said.
Several MPs who supported the Brethren also received significant help from Brethren volunteers in the run-up to the 2010 election and in by-elections. Mr Bone, Robert Halfon, and Michael Ellis, who all made speeches, tabled questions or hosted debates on the Brethren’s behalf, received such help.
The Charity Commission says it withdrew the case from the tribunal because of costs — despite only spending £14,000 on the case. By signing a Deed of Variation, which compels the Brethren to support members who wish to leave, the sect’s meeting halls fulfilled charitable status, it was decided.
The Brethren described the leaked minutes as unapproved and possibly inaccurate, denied that they are a cult and said they are a “force for good."
[no link available for this article; it originally was published behind a subscription wall]
Secretive leader with private jet is God’s man on earth
ReplyDeleteby Billy Kenber and Alexi Mostrous, The Times UK March 17 2015
A publicityshy,62yearold
Australian accountant wields great power over the lives of 45,000 worldwide members of the
Exclusive Brethren “cult”.
Bruce David Hales, who lives in a large house in a Sydney enclave and uses a private jet to travel around the world, has led the
sect since he took over from his father in 2002.
Known variously as the Elect Vessel, the Great Man, the Paul of our Day, Minister in the Lord in Recovery, and Mr Bruce, Mr
Hales’s word is considered unimpeachable. His photograph, along with those of the six former universal leaders, hangs in the
living room of nearly every Brethren household. Mr Hales’ sermons are recorded in “ministry” documents to which every
member is expected to subscribe and Brethren children learn about his life in school.
When he speaks at special meetings attended by members from several countries he has his own security team and former
adherents have described waiting up to 90 minutes for him to arrive. Mr Hales has ultimate authority in disciplining
members and can change the group’s many rules at his discretion, as happened in the last decade with access to computers,
mobile phones and a limited version of the internet.
Three former members said he even approves marriages, a claim the Brethren denies. One who spoke to him in 2007 was
disappointed not to receive his blessing and his Brethren fiancée broke off the engagement.
Brethren members in the UK donate an estimated £32,000 a month to Mr Hales in cash and he is thought to receive as much
as £1 million a year from worldwide members. Members claim they vary the exact amount and regularity of the payments to
reduce the risk of these gifts being seen as taxable. The Brethren said individual donors paid tax on donations and that they
were confident that Mr Hales paid all necessary tax. The Brethren deny the church is centrally organised, a claim refuted by
scores of current and former members contacted by The Times.
When a reporter sought to attend a Bible reading at a gospel hall in Paignton, Devon, as a member of the public he was made
to sign a form disclosing his name but not his occupation. A reporter seeking to attend another of the 342 halls in Kent on the
same basis was questioned about her connections to the first reporter less than 10 minutes later.
The Brethren said it was a “complete coincidence”.
[no link available for this article; it was originally published behind a subscription wall]
Exclusive Brethren preaches hatred of world and pipelines of filth
ReplyDeleteby Billy Kenber and Alexi Mostrous, The Times UK March 17 2015
For the 17,000 British members of the Exclusive Brethren, life is highly restricted and tightly controlled.
Behind security gates, inside one of 340 windowless meeting rooms across the country, members gather daily for gospel
preachings, prayers and Bible readings. On Sundays, the first of four meetings begins at 6am.
The Brethren believe the rest of the world is evil and shun modern conveniences such as television, radio and Google as the
“pipelines of filth”. Christmas is viewed as a pagan ritual and is not celebrated.
Members are expected to socialise only with each other, live in detached houses and refrain from eating or drinking with
outsiders. “We have to get a hatred, an utter hatred of the world,” Bruce Hales, the Australian accountant who leads the sect’s
45,000strong
worldwide congregation, said in 2006. “Unless you’ve come to a hatred of the world you’re likely to be sucked
in by it, and seduced by it.”
Although members practise street preaching, they do not seek new followers. Almost all are born into the sect and from birth
the path is a clear one: education at a Brethren school, employment at a Brethren business, marriage to a Brethren partner.
By combining resources, the sect has overcome its small size to amass extraordinary wealth. Brethren charities in the UK
recorded £138 million in income in 2013 alone. More than 1,000 British Brethrenrun
businesses turn over £2 billion a year.
The church receives as much as £13 million a year in tax reliefs and rate exemptions from the British taxpayer.
All this might be regarded as no more than eccentric were it not for the Brethren’s most controversial practice. Any member
who breaches its strict rules, by owning an unauthorised computer, for example, risks being ostracised through a twostep
process known as “shutting up” and “withdrawing from”.
If a Brethren member is shut up, no one except local elders can talk to them. Children move out of the homes of shutup
parents to live with other members of the community, often for months. If breaches continue, the shutup
member is withdrawn from. Under this ultimate sanction, it is often found that nobody in the sect will speak to that member again.
Former members say the policy rips families apart and has been unfairly implemented for minor transgressions including
talking to outsiders, visiting a pub or setting up a Facebook page.
The Brethren say it is limited to “serious offences” and would not include the possession of an unauthorised computer. A
spokesman said: “Pastoral care is based on the teaching of scripture. Any discipline is rare and only contemplated as a last
resort.”
Yet Glen Gulley, a member who was convicted of two sexual assaults on a four year old child in 2011, remains in the sect and
has not been excommunicated. He has been allowed to remain in the group because he admitted guilt and disavowed his
wrongdoing, The Times understands.
Even though the number of “shutting ups” has fallen since 2012, when the sect began a highprofile
lobbying campaign to ensure that it retained charitable status, current members have been told in the privacy of the meeting rooms that “nothing has changed”.
continued below
One former member says he is compiling a dossier of cases where members have allegedly been shut up or former members
ReplyDeleteallegedly prevented from seeing relatives in the sect.
In one case, a gay Brethren member claims that he was excommunicated last June, four months after the Brethren’s promise
to reform, because he used Facebook to contact former members. His brother, who remains “in”, suffered a brain
haemorrhage in mid January but the exmember says he was not told for eight weeks and his parents refused to tell him
which hospital his sibling was in so that he could visit. The family said that church elders had encouraged them to tell him
about his brother’s illness. The Brethren denied he had been excluded for Facebook use and said he left of his own accord.
Brethren keep religiously to the edicts passed down to them by Mr Hales, who is considered the voice of the holy spirit on
earth. Travel is limited to overseas church meetings and occasional visits to relatives, often booked through a Brethrenrun
travel agency, and members are encouraged to shop with a voucher scheme which pays a rebate to the group’s schools of up to
9 per cent of the £60 million spent in 2014.
Telephones and computers are purchased from a Brethrencontrolled
company called UBT, which charges abovemarket
prices, including £450 for a BlackBerry on a 24month
contract costing £84 a month. Internet access on UBT computers,
known as Wordex machines, is restricted.
Female followers are required to wear skirts and headscarves or a hair ribbon and must sit at the back during religious
services.
The Brethren’s leadership exercises tight control on everyday life. Documents seen by The Times reveal that in 2013 the sect
collected data on how many members had been diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections or had had abortions.
In recent years the group has made great efforts to show that it is an outwardfacing
and charitable organisation. Many
members donate to charities such as the British Heart Foundation and several have testified to their happy lives on the sect’s
website.
The Grace Trust, the biggest Brethren charity with a £70 million income, gives thousands of pounds in grants to 24 charities
not associated with the sect. However, more than 99 per cent of the trust’s £27.9 million grants last year were reserved for
other Brethren charities, schools and meeting halls.
One member claimed that money from UBT in Australia was being used to build up large cash reserves in advance of the end
of the world, which the Brethren believe is imminent. The member said that Mr Hales had declared that the Rapture — when
Brethren will leave the earth — will occur in 2022. This is denied by the Brethren.
A Brethren spokesman said members enjoy a “wellbalanced
and happy lifestyle” which, like other faith communities, seeks to
avoid the “influences and excesses which blight society”.
[no link available for this article; it was originally published behind a subscription wall]
Inquiry at sect schools that banned books
ReplyDeleteby Billy Kenber and Alexi Mostrous, The Times, UK March 18, 2015
The funding of British faith schools run by an extreme religious sect is under investigation by the taxman over multimillion pound gift aid claims, The Times has learnt.
The Exclusive Brethren operates 34 schools under a restrictive regime that segregates boys and girls during break times at secondary school, has banned books, including JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and uses textbooks with passages on evolution torn out.
The private schools, which cost £30 million a year to run and are funded through a complex web of Brethren-controlled charities, have made repeated applications for free school status. So far none has succeeded but David Cameron has pledged to open another 500 schools in England over the next five years, increasing the possibility of a successful application.
The Times revealed yesterday that the charity regulator struck a deal with the Brethren to grant them charitable status after the Brethren’s Australian leader privately called for “extreme pressure” to be applied to William Shawcross, the commission’s head.
Last night, Sir Stephen Bubb, chief executive of Acevo, which represents charity chiefs, called on the Charity Commission to explain why it had secured millions of pounds a year in tax breaks for the Brethren despite finding that their practices caused harm and broke up families.
“Mr Shawcross needs to give a full account of how the decision was arrived at and what kind of pressure was put on him,” Sir Stephen said. “This is about the independence of the regulator.”
Crispin Blunt, the Tory MP, said: “The Charity Commission appears to have bowed to pressure and not conducted a full review.” Gavin Shuker, vice-chairman of Christians in Parliament, described the Brethren’s practices as “essentially cultish”.
“Very quickly here in parliament they managed to get an enormous number of MPs saying this was a religious liberty question,” he said. “We’re a parliament that doesn’t do much diligence, we just wade in without even a Google.”
Revenue & Customs is examining whether the Brethren have wrongly claimed thousands of tax rebates on parental donations that help fund their schools’ £30 million-a-year operation. If HMRC finds against the single Brethren school under investigation, tax relief of up to £4 million a year across all the sect’s schools could be at risk.
Brethren schools typically record above-average results and most have glowing inspection reports. “The national curriculum is followed in all schools,” the Brethren spokesman said. “There is no [central] policy requiring textbooks to have pages removed or stuck together. The PBCC [Plymouth Brethren Christian Church] does not contradict scientific views of the age of the Earth.” He admitted, however, that individual schools retain discretion over what is taught and how.
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The Times can also reveal that Brethren schools secretly introduced school fees four years ago, despite claiming in brochures and accounts filed with the Charity Commission that its schools were free. The fees, which parents were told were obligatory, were recorded as “voluntary income” in an arrangement that will raise further questions about the schools’ financial structure.
ReplyDeleteA 2011 letter announcing the introduction of yearly “fees” of £1,500 per child stated that fees were “an essential principle of righteousness in our administration” and that “an invoice will be issued direct from the individual schools shortly”.
Parents at one school were later warned that “fees should be regarded as an obligation in the same way as paying your electricity and other household bills”. Yet accounts filed by the school trusts said they were “non-fee paying”.
The spokesman said that in 2011 “a modest sum” had been requested from parents. It was initially described as a fee but subsequently changed to “parental contribution” on legal advice.
Although schools can claim gift aid on “voluntary contributions”, a Brethren spokesman insisted that no school had claimed tax relief on this element of funding. He accepted, however, that tax inspectors had questioned gift aid claims made on donations from parents.
“Such issues as there have been derive from uncertainty about the correct application of the rules,” he said. “Other faith schools are also currently being investigated by HMRC over gift aid.”
HMRC would not comment on this claim and it is unclear if it relates to the same funding structure used by Brethren schools.
The Charity Commission described its process toward the Brethren as “searching and robust”.
[no link available for this article,it was published behind a subscription wall]
The class that was scared of biology
ReplyDelete‘They thought it was linked to the Devil’
by Alexi Mostrous and Billy Kenber, The Times March 21 2015
Life at Britain’s 34 Brethren schools appears idyllic. Numerous inspection reports praise the quality of teaching, the well-behaved pupils and the comprehensive facilities.
Academic results at the schools run privately by the Exclusive Brethren, also known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, are excellent, with 83 per cent of pupils obtaining five A*-C grades in English and maths, compared with a 56 per cent national average. And yet the schools have another, more controversial side.
Eight former teachers at Brethren schools, most of whom left in the past two years, variously claim they were required to use science textbooks with pages ripped out, that boys and girls were prevented from talking to one another outside class and that bullying, racism and homophobia were endemic.
Under the auspices of the Focus Learning Trust, the Exclusive Brethren community spends about £30 million a year educating members away from the moral dangers of the outside world. Children do not attend university to avoid the evils of “campus life” so the sect has been forced to employ outsiders to teach at its schools.
One science teacher at a Brethren school in the north described how she was looking forward to teaching the 30 pupils about biology, chemistry and the principles of evolution only to discover that they had been taught to be deeply suspicious of scientific principles.
“They were scared of biology,” the teacher, who has since left, claimed. “They were very negative when you mentioned it. They associated it with the devil.” She claims that she was instructed to remove large numbers of pages from textbooks.
“There were things removed from everything I taught. They took out everything to do with sexual reproduction, including hormones, fertility, birth control, and removed anything to with evolution.”
A male teacher at another Brethren school, who left in 2013, made similar claims. “Anything that showed the Earth as being 4 billion years old was removed or glued together,” he said. The same thing happened with pages about contraception while “anything that showed gay relationships as being normal was defaced in that way as well”.
In 2003, Focus Schools issued a “guiding principles” document which stated that the “theory of evolution is regarded as a falsehood.” The Brethren said its schools now taught evolution as a “valid scientific theory” but accepted that individual trustees retained discretion over what was taught and how.
The Times has obtained a 2013 list of almost 800 books deemed unsuitable for Brethren children, including several Roald Dahl works, Michelle Magorian’s Goodnight Mister Tom, and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
Brethren elders take the most sensitive classes, such as PE and religious education, known in Focus schools as Bible Studies, where pupils are played tapes of Bruce Hales, the secretive Australian accountant who runs the sect from Sydney. A handout given at one Bible Studies class compared western life expectancies of 75 to 80 years with “heathen countries in Africa and Asia [where] the average life is only 35-45 years”. The Brethren said they did not recognise this document, it was not in current circulation and the life expectancy information was “stated as a general fact, and no conclusions drawn”.
continued below
Members of the sect do not attend university and instead go to work at a Brethren business. Elders have previously described going to university as “evil”, although in recent years distance-learning courses for school leavers have been offered in business-focused subjects.
ReplyDeleteThe current parents’ handbook for a Brethren school in Derbyshire, states that “teachers are to refrain from influencing students on matters of tertiary education apart from what is arranged and promoted by the UBT Organisation [the Brethren’s global business supplier and advisory service]”.
The Brethren denied that its central policy “requires textbooks to have pages removed or stuck together”. A spokesman said the big bang theory was explicitly mentioned in the science “support manuals” used by teachers and insisted that the National Curriculum was followed in all schools.
There was currently no “central guidance” on what fiction may be used in the schools, the spokesman said.
The curriculum at Focus Schools is narrower than many mainstream schools, with a focus on business and accounting skills, although inspections have not raised concerns about this.
Brethren boys generally study woodwork and metalwork, while the girls take needlework and cooking, according to two former teachers. The Brethren said there was “no policy” requiring boys and girls to be taught separately, although at secondary level they are kept apart at break and lunch times.
Pupils endure commutes of up to two hours each way on Brethren minibuses, with boys seated at the front and girls at the back.
Susan Turner, a former head teacher at Sefton Park School until 2006, said: “The children I taught were largely happy and well-balanced, but if you didn’t fit the mould, if you were a girl that wanted more than being a wife or mother or a secretary, life was difficult.”
“It is not the Brethren people who are at fault,” Ms Turner said. “It is the system which governs their lives, and the people at the top who control every aspect of their lives. It is made almost impossible to leave because it means leaving behind family, friends and financial support, with very little likelihood of ever seeing them again.”
The Brethren said that Ms Turner was not a credible witness. They said that school trustees were advised in 2006 that she was guilty of professional misconduct. A letter sent to Ms Turner subsequently assured her that “the complaints [against her] were not upheld”, that she was “not accused of anything by the school” and that the school was “prepared to provide a reference to any prospective employer.”
Mrs Turner said she did not accept that her actions helping a student who was experiencing difficulties within the Brethren were inappropriate and she resigned because she felt she would continue to help anyone who requested her assistance. She was subsequently employed by the Brethren to teach German at another location.
The Brethren provided testimonials from teachers and head teachers praising the quality of education at their schools. One head teacher said that sensitive subjects such as the big bang theory and stem cell research were not treated as “taboo subjects ” but had to be taught “in a way that doesn’t undermine the nature of the faith school ethos”.
In his experience, Brethren pupils did not use foul language, fight, damage property, smoke, use drugs or attack staff.
Teachers and former members who spoke to The Times, however, claimed that Brethren children were often intolerant of anyone who was different from their own largely white, Anglo-Saxon community.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/education/article4388726.ece
Three Exclusive Brethren Case Studies
ReplyDeleteThe Times, UK March 18, 2015
Case study 1: Running away from home and family was only way out
Emma Hewitt: “Anything’s better than having a Brethren life"
Emma Hewitt, a quiet and determined 25yearold, escaped from the Brethren in February last year. After weeks of secretly communicating with an exBrethren couple using an “unauthorised” mobile phone, she sneaked out of her house to meet them while her mother and sister were at church and her father was in the shower.
Running down the drive, she bundled herself into the back of the couple’s car, put her head down and was driven away to hide at their home hundreds of miles away. When she shut the door, she knew that under the Brethren’s strict regime she might never speak to her parents again, but she had reached a point where it was a sacrifice she was willing to make.
“Anything’s better than having a Brethren life. It was the only way out.”
The sect dominated every part of her life, with a church elder running the fixings business she worked in alongside her father, sister and brother. Business and religion were closely mixed. Although Brethren members worked alongside nonBrethren employees, the latter were normally confined to warehouse roles, she says. “You don’t engage in conversation with them unless it’s to do with work.
They haven’t been given the light. It’s as if you’re a level above.”
Three years ago, she says, her parents were “shut up” for admitting to owning an “unauthorised” computer. Their children, who were aged between 20 and 24, went to live with another Brethren family who were neither relatives nor, according to Ms Hewitt, close family friends.
“The only communication we could get [with] our parents would be through the priests.” Eventually, after six weeks, the family was reunited without explanation.
A Brethren spokesman accepted that Ms Hewitt’s parents had been “shut up” but denied that it was because of an “unauthorised” laptop. They say she lived with close family friends with the consent of her parents.
Ms Hewitt now works as an accounts assistant and has a partner.
Case study 2: Punished for visit to see fireworks
Mark Ghinn, 50, who was withdrawn from in 1984, was made to stand in the garden as a young child while his father, who was also kicked out, came into the family home to fetch cutlery and blankets. On another occasion, his whole family was shut up for going to see fireworks in Hyde Park.
continued below
When he was 19 Mr Ghinns mother was separated from her family in the night and his father attempted suicide. He did not see his mother for close to 20 years after he was withdrawn, with letters and gifts returned unopened. The Brethren accepted that Mr Ghinn was treated poorly but denied he was prevented from seeing his mother.
ReplyDeleteMark Elliott, 57, who left in 1989, described how the Brethren did not tell his wife that her sister, who had remained a member, had died. When Mr Elliott’s own father died in 1994, more than 40 Brethren attended the funeral, removed the coffin from the hearse, and conducted their own service. When his father’s partner tried to leave flowers she was shouted at and chased away. The Elliotts are now seeking compensation from the Brethren. The Brethren say this is an attempt to embarrass the church.
The key question for the Charity Commission, reviewing its 2014 decision to grant charitable status to Brethren meeting halls, is whether anything has changed.
Case study 3: Gay man ‘treated like sex offender’
Craig Hoyle, a 25yearold former Brethren member from New Zealand who was withdrawn in 2009, was told by Bruce Hales in 2007 to “never accept” his homosexuality, he says today.
Mr Hoyle says that he was sent to live in Australia and claims he was instructed to seek help from Mark Craddock, a doctor who was also a Brethren member.
Dr Craddock prescribed him Cyprostat, a hormonal suppressant commonly used for sex offenders or people with advanced prostate cancer. He gave Mr Hoyle a year’s subscription, which would have had the effect of “chemically castrating” him. Mr Hoyle stopped after a few weeks. Dr Craddock was later severely reprimanded and found guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct by the New South Wales Medical professional standards committee.
A Brethren spokesman said that neither the church nor Mr Bruce Hales “condoned or requested the action taken by Dr Craddock”.
Mr Hoyle claims that while in Sydney he met Hales several times. “Hales famously said that we shouldn’t sing any music by Elton John or the Beatles. Yet when I went out for a meal with him he sang Candle in the Wind standing by a piano.” The Brethren deny this.
On his return to New Zealand, Mr Hoyle claims that Brethren elders shut him up for the “defilement of young people” after admitting to his brothers and sisters that he was gay.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article4383927.ece
Excommunication from Exclusive Brethren costs man his family
ReplyDeleteby OLIVIA WANNAN, The Dominion Post May 18 2015
A former member of the Exclusive Brethren has revealed life inside the insular religious group - and that the price of leaving was his family.
Wellingtonian Robin McLean said he was excommunicated from a local chapter several years ago, an act that lost him everything - life with his wife and children, his business and his faith.
"I can't talk to my wife. She won't answer my phone calls. She won't open the door for me," he said.
"[The last time I visited] my youngest son answered the door and I told him, 'I hardly recognise you'. My boy had changed into a man. It just shows you, all the wasted years."
The 58-year-old was born into the church community, also known as the Plymouth Brethren, and enjoyed his upbringing. Like many, he did not question the growing number ofedicts the church leaders prescribed for their followers.
"You could not eat with someone who was not in the same church as you. So if someone in your family was not in the church, you could have nothing to do with that person. Overnight it wrecked families."
Pets were banned, and for many years, modern technology like cell phones and computers had to be avoided, he said.
"Ladies had to wear their hair down their back with a scarf. There were rules about everything."
McLean thought the ban on living and eating with anyone who was not a current Exclusive Brethren member - even if they were a close family member - was a social restriction of cult-like proportions.
The restriction put anyone who left the organisation and therefore everyone they knew, particularly those who were excommunicated against their will, through hell, he said.
"I've gone public on behalf of all the other guys - we think there are about 40 currently - in the same situation as me ... and on behalf of two guys who committed suicide in the 1980s [after being excommunicated]."
As McLean got older, he could not reconcile the actions of one church leader with his Christian morals - especially the discovery of that leader with the naked spouse of another church member.
continued below
McLean took his concerns to his wife and his priests and his ongoing challenges of the Brethren's rules and political practices meant his local church decided to "withdraw" from him, he said.
ReplyDelete"They'd excommunicated me, just like that. My family had gone to live somewhere else the night before, because they were concerned about me. They never came back.
"If I went home now, my wife would be shut up - she wouldn't be allowed to see anyone - and my kids would have to leave home. That's the separation rule."
A written statement from the family said McLean began to live a lifestyle "completely at odds with the values the couple had once shared".
The family said, rather than McLean being kicked out, the decision was his.
"Robin chose to leave his wife and family and pursue his own life. There has been no edict issued by the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church that Robin cannot see his family."
McLean said the small community's withdrawal brought a pain he would not wish on his worst enemy.
"All your support is taken away from you. That's a terrible feeling.
"I saw my GP more than once a week. She basically saved my life. I had no one else to talk to. I didn't have another friend in the world."
A few hundred Exclusive Brethren members lived in Wellington, he said.
McLean hoped the Brethren leaders would realise forcing families to separate was too callous to continue or that governments would force the group to cease. "They've got to amend their disciplinary practices so they don't cause detriment and harm."
A public relations firm representing Australasian Exclusive Brethren said no member of the organisation would be available to comment on McLean's claims. However, a church spokesman responded to emailed questions on the separation rule.
"It is unlikely a wife would wish to eat a meal with her husband if he has left fellowship. However ... that does not mean all contact ceases, especially where care is required, such as responsibility for elderly parents or children."
Even while observing the rule, Brethren still interacted with the wider world through work, business and the communities they lived in, as well as former members, he said.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/68554351/excommunication-from-exclusive-brethren-costs-man-his-family
I was raised in a religious cult
ReplyDeleteNew book Joy and Sorrow details life in the Exclusive Brethren
NEWS.com.au AUGUST 27, 2015
·
FOR the first 25 years of her life, Joy Nason lived in constant fear of “God’s wrath” — to the point where death was a better option than confessing her sins.
The Neutral Bay woman has opened up about her childhood as a member of the Exclusive Brethren church in her book Joy and Sorrow.
The book goes into depth about growing up in a family that belonged to an evil cult and how she is “surviving and thriving” after escaping.
She was born in England and her family migrated to Australia in the 1950s. She said while her parents were kind, the Brethren’s grip on the family only tightened.
Edicts included no television, no toys, no pets, no contact with outsiders and a intimidating culture of confessing sins.
Nason did manage to get a job in an office, but she wasn’t allowed to socialise and ate her lunch alone.
“The worst part was the fear — the fear of being a sinner and being punished by God,’’ she said.
As a young woman, she once snuck out to go to the movies. “You weren’t allowed to go to the movies,’’ she said. “I was terrified for months I would be found out.”
Nason escaped when she was 25, but said it took her years to throw off the nightmares and shackles of fear that God would strike her dead.
Part of the reason she left to seek sanctuary with a former Exclusive Brethren member was her fear of not being a fit and proper person for the church.
She writes in the book that she had ``become a brainwashed soul, living in dread of God’s wrath’’.
“Time after time I would shake so much sitting next to my mother in the meetings, I was sure she would notice,’’ said Nason.
“I was terrified that my sins might warrant a confession and figured I’d rather die than let this happen.’’.
However, Nason says her only real “sin” at the time was a desire to experience the outside world.
Nason was well aware that by leaving the Brethren she would be cut off from her family (except for three of her seven siblings who had left the Brethren) and may never see her parents again.
When her mother died, it was made very clear to Nason that she could not attend the funeral..
Earlier her father had been excommunicated from the cult for questioning their ideas and separated from his wife.
“It broke his heart,’’ says Nason.
While she craved a normal life, Nason said some of her life had been less conventional, including three marriages. She did carve out a career as a senior TAFE teacher and administrator after obtaining a university degree — another pursuit banned by the Brethren.
Nason said turning 70 was a milestone of great pride and no small defiance of the Brethren’s prediction that life ends at three score years and ten.
Nason says the Exclusive Brethren was renamed the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church in 2014 and now has about 40,000 followers living mainly in the UK, USA, New Zealand and Australia.
She was inspired to write it by Neutral Bay author Peter FitzSimons, who urged would-be writers to tell their stories.
Joy and Sorrow is available online as an ebook and in print from booktopia.com.au and Pages & Pages in Mosman.
http://www.news.com.au/national/i-was-raised-in-a-religious-cult-new-book-joy-and-sorrow-details-life-in-the-exclusive-brethren/story-e6frfkp9-1227499803951
Exclusive Brethren leader Bruce Hales says man in torment should kill himself
ReplyDeleteby Michael Bachelard, Sydney Morning Herald September 19, 2015
The Australian man who leads the Exclusive Brethren has said a mentally tormented young member of his flock would be better to "get a shot of poison" and "finish yourself off" than talk to members of his own family.
Bruce D. Hales is the wealthy Sydney-based global leader of the controversial, 45,000-strong Christian sect, whose word is regarded by his followers as infallible gospel.
Members do not vote, but were at one point meeting regularly with former prime minister John Howard.
At a recent meeting in the United Kingdom, Mr Hales was asked about how a 25-year-old man with "mind trouble" should be dealt with, because he was in contact with "opposers" – people who have left the Brethren. The "opposers" in question are understood to be members of the man's own family who have already left the Brethren.
Mr Hales said "having links" with them was "rotten poison", and that the poison had got into the young man, who is from New Zealand.
Despite having been told that the man was "in what would appear to be torment at times," Mr Hales told the meeting it would be better for him to kill himself.
"He might as well get a shot of – what's the best thing to kill you quickly? ... What's the stuff? Cyanide? No, not cyanide," Mr Hales says.
"Arsenic. How do you get arsenic into you? ... He'd be better to take arsenic, or go and get some rat poison or something, take a bottle of it."
Mr Hales then appears to contradict himself: "Now I'm not advocating him doing that but ... that would be better, to finish yourself off that way [rather] than having to do with the opponents of the truth."
He also makes a play on words with the name of the young man's initials, BS, suggesting he was referring to "bullshit", then adding, "send the bastard back [to New Zealand]".
"My wife is going to be worried what I'm going to say next, but listen, I haven't even had half a drink, not even a quarter ... probably an ounce maximum, so this is not brought on by drink," Mr Hales said.
Exclusive Brethren are notoriously heavy drinkers. One of the sect's seminal moments was when a former world leader, James Taylor Junior, got riotously drunk and started abusing his flock and talking nonsense in the church service. The following day he was also found in bed with the naked wife of one of his flock – an incident that split the Brethren.
Former members have compared Mr Hales' recent outbursts to those alcohol-fuelled antics.
In another meeting recently, Mr Hales, a wealthy Sydney-based office furniture magnate, was asked about traitors and said they would "get shot in the army ... [or] shoot yourself in the foot before you get shot in the head".
An Exclusive Brethren spokesman told Fairfax Media the comments should not be given a "literal interpretation", and had been taken out of context.
"Mr Hales makes it very clear he is not advocating any person taking poison or committing suicide. He is using a common, everyday metaphor ... It is hardly unusual for a preacher or minister in any religion to warn a congregation to avoid people who extol certain beliefs and that those beliefs are 'poison'."
The spokesman denied Mr Hales was drunk at the time, or an alcoholic.
The sect's website says that young people are "made to feel wanted".
The spokesman said Mr Hales' advice was about "how to assist a young man who is unhappy ... That could only be interpreted as being made to feel welcome".
For help call:
Lifeline 131 114
beyondblue 1300 224 636
http://www.smh.com.au/national/exclusive-brethren-leader-bruce-hales-says-man-in-torment-should-kill-himself-20150918-gjpwpk.html
TV lifestyle star Rosemary Stanton’s dark childhood in secretive Exclusive Brethren religious sect
ReplyDeleteThe Daily Telegraph March 15, 2016
Rosemary Stanton opens up on her childhood in the 'Brethren'
TV nutritionist and lifestyle star Rosemary Stanton has revealed the lasting trauma of growing up in a secretive religious sect, the Exclusive Brethren.
Dr Stanton said that 40 years after escaping she still had trouble looking in the mirror from being told vanity was a sin and being banned to play with other children.
“I had been brought up in this very strict religious sect,” Dr Stanton told A Current Affair.’It’s really wrong to subject children to that.’
She finally fled the sect that had controlled her young life when she was 20, along with her sister and eventually her whole family.
Dr Stanton first came to prominence in 1972 when she was handpicked by Ita Buttrose to write a monthly health and nutrition column in Cleo magazine.
From there she went on to appear on every morning and daytime television program in the country - becoming a household name.
But had it not been for her childhood spent in the Plymouth Christian Brethren Church, more commonly now known as the Exclusive Brethren, she might have become a sport star or doctor instead.
“I had been brought up in this very strict religious sect,” Dr Stanton told A Current Affair.
“You weren’t supposed to go to concerts, you couldn’t be in school plays.”
Growing up, Dr Stanton and her siblings were not allowed to play with other children.
“It was a very exclusive group, we weren’t supposed to have anything to do with other people,” she said.
“We weren’t supposed to read books, we didn’t have make-up, we had to have long hair, we weren’t allowed to wear boys clothes like jeans or long pants or any of those sorts of things.”
The Stanton family did not even own a television.
Like so many others who are different at school, she was bullied. But not just by students.
“We had some teachers who seemed to think that we were these odd strange little religious children and they sort of treated us differently,” she said.
“I felt robbed and cheated. At 17, I was told I couldn’t go to uni. Girls in that sect can’t go to uni in case they’re put in a position above men.’
Eventually, at age 20, she decided it was time to leave the sect that had controlled her life.
“I had made the decision to leave, my sister had made the decision to leave. But when it actually came to the crunch, the whole family decided to leave,” she said.
“To this day, I think anybody who treats a child differently because of their parents’ beliefs needs to take a long hard look at themselves.”
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/sydney-confidential/tv-lifestyle-star-rosemary-stantons-dark-childhood-in-secretive-exclusive-brethren-religious-sect/news-story/f793e7701714b1d6e0d0154f60298bc7
Former Brethren allege high rate of abuse in New Zealand
ReplyDeleteby BEVAN HURLEY Stuff.co.nz April 24 2016
Four out of ten former Exclusive Brethrens who responded to a study looking at traumatic experiences growing up in the sect say they were sexually abused as children in New Zealand.
The study, carried out by a former Brethren, found 18 of 44 participants claimed they had been sexually abused as children.
The figure was significantly higher than the worldwide average, which found around 27 per cent claimed they had suffered child sex abuse.
It's the first piece of academic research into allegations of abuse suffered by members of the church.
Researcher Jill Mytton, from the United Kingdom, believes levels of child sexual abuse in the former member population are much higher than in the general population.
"That appears to be particularly high in New Zealand though, and this warrants further investigation."
Mytton said she could not be sure who the abusers were in every case, but those who had spoken to her said that their abusers were members of the Brethren.
Mytton said said she came under attack by the Brethren and her study was suddenly cancelled by her UK-based university after the Brethren made legal threats.
"I was in the process of finding out about that when legal action by the Brethren halted the research. The university who were hosting the research pulled the plug I assume because they feared a lawsuit."
The Brethren commissioned three academics, professors from the University College London and Warwick University, who severely criticised Mytton's research.
In a statement, church spokesman Doug Watt said: "Jill Mytton's research has been widely discredited and she has a personal vendetta against the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church.
"The church, like all other decent individuals and organisations, is appalled with sexual assault of any sort. Where we discover such incidents we have and will continue to take appropriate action."
Fairfax has spoken to three former Exclusive Brethrens members who say they experienced child sexual abuse.
None had taken their cases to the police, and each said they had felt powerless to confront their abusers, who they claim were family members or elders within the church.
One woman, who now helps other Brethren who are trying to leave the church, said she was "dreadfully abused" as a child.
"I ran away from home and I tried to kill myself and I still see people coming out who have suffered years and years of abuse. Every other church has safeguarding. I have had young girls in my home who have been dreadfully abused and have been alcoholics in their early 20s."
After high profile sex abuse cases against senior Brethren members in 2009, the church promised to introduce a new code of care for complainants.
Requests this month for a copy of the code of care or any information about how the Brethren treats alleged victims of sexual abuse were refused.
continued below
Jill Mytton said her research had found Brethren who left the sect showed higher levels of psychological distress that the general population including depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress symptoms, and interpersonal problems.
ReplyDelete'SPIRITUAL ABUSE'
A former Exclusive Brethren member has described feeling 'violated' by two sect leaders who were investigating allegations of sexual impropriety by an older Brethren member.
The woman said as a 16-year-old girl she was taken to a room and questioned by two sect leaders, or 'priestlies' as they were known.
She says the treatment by church elders was worse than the experience itself.
"I look back and I go that is an incredible violation. If you're vulnerable, it's an incredibly vulnerable position to be put into."
The woman said she had already begun to question Brethren teachings, for which she was subjected to extreme psychological abuse by church elders.
She says she was told: "you're mental, you're evil, you're possessed."
"It's spiritual abuse. It's appealing to the highest power that people can believe in. Twisting of scripture to force submission of women."
The woman said she met the Exclusive Brethren world leader Bruce Hales as a teenager, at a time when she was already doubting it's teachings.
She was particularly nervous, as she'd been taught in Brethren folklore that Hales could read minds.
"I was looking at him thinking he's a lying, conniving emperor with no clothes on. He just looked at me with the same greasy smile that he looked at everyone. Clearly he didn't have a clue what was going on in my mind."
She was excommunicated at age 21.
"It was a bit like jumping out of a plane into a big black hole."
Still in her 20s, she's now managed to establish a career and found a partner, and says she has says has been able to fulfil many of her life wishes since leaving the sect.
"It's wonderful to be free of that control and to be able to grow as a person the way that I believe I was meant to be."
But she is torn by never being able to see her family again.
"I'd love to see them free, there are amazing men and women in there -full of talent and potential. One of the most horrible things they're doing is to restrict people from being all that they can be. In all seriousness there are so many amazing men and women.
"They're not enjoying it and yet they can't conceive of another way of life. They don't know how to break down the fear."
SEX ABUSE CASES
* Clive Allen Petrie, 74, of Nelson, was found guilty in 2009 of nine charges of indecent assault, as well as inducing a girl under 12 to perform an indecent act.
* William David McLean, 44, of Levin, was jailed for three years in 2012 for raping a woman over an 11-year period.
* Fairfax is aware of three other recent or pending criminal sex abuse cases against former or current Brethren members.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/78883222/Child-sex-abuse-widespread-in-Exclusive-Brethren-research-claims
Former Exclusive Brethren members hit with dawn raids, legal suits after speaking out against the secretive Christian sect
ReplyDeleteby BEVAN HURLEY Stuff.co.nz Aug 09 2020
A former Exclusive Brethren who was once told to drink rat poison by the church’s Supreme Leader is one of several former members fighting legal action after speaking out against the church. Bevan Hurley reports.
On June 30 this year, Braden Simmons attended an informal session with the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care.
He would later tell friends he was there to share his story about his mental struggles during his time as an Exclusive Brethren, and in particular an incident involving the church’s Supreme Leader Bruce Hales, a man who is looked on by members as the embodiment of the Holy Spirit on earth.
Eleven days later, two lawyers, a private investigator and a forensic expert showed up at Simmons’ Mangere Bridge home just before dawn. They had a court order to search every electronic device in his home. The order was made ‘without notice’ – meaning Simmons had no clue what was coming.
The tense exchange was captured on mobile phone. Simmons is informed he has no choice but to allow the investigators into his home or face contempt of court charges.
Footage shows them going room by room, asking everyone present to hand over laptops, mobile phones for inspection.
An independent, court-appointed solicitor was on hand to explain to Simmons that his former boss Peter Bishop, understood to be one of the church’s top elders in New Zealand, and employer Rock Solid Holdings were making a series of serious claims against him in a civil action before the Auckland High Court.
Doug Watt, a spokesperson for the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church (PBCC), which the Exclusive Brethren now refer to themselves as, said yesterday the church knew nothing about Simmons’ appearance at the inquiry.
“The first the PBCC heard that Mr Simmons took part in a Royal Commission is from you, today. That said, since then we have asked around and understand Mr Simmons had told a few church members about his intention to do this.”
He'd be better to take arsenic or go and get some rat poison’
Braden Simmons was in the midst of a ‘mental torment’. It was 2015, and the then 25-year-old Exclusive Brethren had only known life inside the closed confines of the church.
From home to school to work, social life to religious instruction, every aspect of his life was based around the church.
As a member he was not allowed to eat, form friendships or communicate with outsiders, except to do business with them.
And next to God is the Supreme Leader, also known as the Elect Vessel, or Man of God, Bruce Hales, who’s every utterance is treated as absolute gospel.
Simmons had quit his job with commercial property developers Euroclass and travelled to Europe and on to the United Kingdom. While staying with a Brethren family, word reached his hosts that he was in contact with an ‘Opposer’, the name given to former members who have left the Brethren.
Bruce Hales was asked about this at a Brethren gathering in Sutton, south London, on June 9, 2015.
During a lengthy ministry, which was published in one of the church’s booklets, or white papers, and distributed to Brethren around the world, Hales said it would be better for those who were in contact with ‘Opposers’ to drink rat poison, or arsenic.
“The trouble with your fellow is he's got poisoned. He might as well get a shot of - what's the best thing to kill you quickly? What's the stuff? Cyanide. No, not cyanide. Arsenic. How do you get arsenic into you?
“I was going to say he'd be better to take arsenic or go and get some rat poison or something, take a bottle of it. Now I'm not advocating him doing that, but you might as – that would be better to finish yourself off that way than having to do with the opponents of the truth.”
continued below
Hales later says his wife is going to be worried what he might say next. “But listen, I haven't even had half a drink, not even a quarter... probably an ounce maximum.”
ReplyDeleteHe goes on to appear to make fun of Simmons’ initials, saying: “Well I think we've hit the nail on the head. This... is a lot of BS.”
The incident was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Times of London, and Stuff. Simmons was not identified. But inside the church, it was widely known who Hales was referring to.
When asked about the rat poison comments in 2016, the church said Hales’ words as a metaphor and not to be taken literally.
“Mr Hales did not say any person should drink rat poison. Mr Hales was using a metaphor to illustrate... the effect on a person coming into contact with another person whose beliefs and values are different from their own and potentially damaging.
“It is hardly unusual for a preacher or minister in any religion to warn a congregation to avoid people who extol certain beliefs and that those beliefs are ‘poison’.”
Asked whether there was any concern about the imbalance of power, spokesperson, Doug Watt, said yesterday the church had not changed its position.
Friends of Simmons have told Stuff he was ex-communicated after objecting to the ‘rat poison ministry’, and felt that a man who would say such things could not be the Man of God.
‘Are you Mr Simmons’?
At around 7am on July 11, Rob McLean was woken by a loud knock at the door.
McLean was staying in a spare room at Simmons’ Mangere Bridge.
“I poked my nose out the window and there was a whole crowd of people looking outside. Quite serious looking people in trenchcoats and umbrellas. This is the middle of winter and it’s dark. I couldn’t believe my ears or my eyes. One asked 'Are you Mr Simmons?"
Outside was senior counsel Zane Kennedy, an experienced litigator and former partner at MinterEllisonRuddWatts, his junior solicitor, Hannah Jaques, court-appointed independent solicitor Mihai Pascariu, a private detective and another specialist forensic investigator.
McLean began filming, capturing the intensely awkward, and at-times confrontational scene.
Pascariu, appointed by the court as an impartial adjudicator, asks to come inside to explain what was happening.
The court appointed solicitor explains the nature of the search order, while Simmons phones his lawyer, seeking advice.
He’s told if he refuses to comply with the order, he’ll be in contempt of court.
Simmons just has enough time to take a shower before the search begins.
The other lawyers and investigators are eventually let inside. McLean filmed as they went room-to-room, threatening to call the police on them.
“It was like something out of a crime movie. It’s out of this world. And this is New Zealand in 2020. People can’t get their head around the fact that there is such a law that allows individuals to do a dawn raid without any notice.”
McLean was ex-communicated by the church about 10 years ago. He's also been caught up in an increasingly rancorous legal dispute and is not allowed to see his family.
He says it seems like it’s a common tactic of the Brethren’s to use their enormous wealth to entangle former members in endless litigation.
Stuff made legal representations through counsel Robert Stewart to publish details of the civil case.
After a hearing at Auckland High Court on July 22, Justice Tracey Walker allowed the parties to be named, but said the allegations and other details cannot be published.
Watt, the PBCC spokesman, said yesterday: “The proceedings you mentioned have been brought by an independent company, Rock Solid Holdings and associated parties, not the church.
“Yes, the owner of Rock Solid Holdings is a member of our church, but his religious affiliation is entirely beside the point as will be obvious from the nature and details of the claim.
continued below
“I’m also curious to know if he was Catholic or Jewish, would you be asking those churches about this legal issue?”
ReplyDeleteWatt said the church had never discouraged former members either explicitly or through legal channels not to take part in the Royal Commission.
In another case, an 83-year-old Palmerston North man is fighting an application to the High Court by the Exclusive Brethren’s commercial arm Universal Business Team, or UBT, seeking access to his records and emails.
His alleged wrongdoing? Unauthorised use of an Exclusive Brethren directory.
Peter Harrison was kicked out of the church in 1982 and immediately estranged from his wife, four sons and church members.
Over the years of continued forced estrangement from family members, Harrison occasionally attempted to call the Brethren's extreme practices to account by writing to senior elders, but to no effect.
On March 9 this year, Harrison received legal documents from the UBT alleging a ‘breach of confidence’, alleging he had used a church directory to send letters to members of the church in Australia.
The case is due before the High Court in Palmerston North later this month.
His barrister Steven Price, said: “It will be for the court to decide, but we'll be arguing that this application is heavy-handed and unnecessary.”
Price said Harrison had tried to explain to the Brethren that the letters were sent out by another person, and he hasn’t ever had a copy of the 2015 address book in question in his possession.
“He's stressed and feels bullied. He can't quite understand how he can be said to have done anything wrong here. He feels like they're punishing him for speaking out against him.”
The Brethren have also pursued litigation against former members, media companies and academics in Australia and the United Kingdom in recent years.
Watt, the PBCC spokesman, said the church doesn't pursue legal actions lightly nor unless they have advice that they have a proper basis to do so.
“UBT is using normal legal processes to request information to determine if our intellectual property has been compromised.
“We have a perfectly reasonable right to protect our property from infringement or theft, regardless of the age of the people who might be involved.”
The true word of God
On its website, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church says its beliefs are that the “Holy Bible is the true Word of God and we believe we are each called upon to live a life in accordance with its instructions”.
“We hold the same faith as every true Christian and as such we believe spiritual growth arises when the teachings of the Bible are applied to daily life.”
But those words ring hollow for Braden Simmons’ sister Lindy Jacomb.
Growing up in the Brethren, Jacomb had always been spiritually curious.
And as she grew older, Jacomb found it more and more difficult to reconcile the teachings of the Brethren with what she read about in the bible.
She didn’t understand why she couldn’t become a teacher or a nurse, professions expressly forbidden by the Brethren. She had questions, and eventually could no longer keep hiding her doubts about the group. She also wrote down several pages of questions and sent them to Bruce Hales.
continued below
Jacomb says this was seen as ‘challenging’ the Man of God.
ReplyDeleteShe began to receive visits from church elders, two men, who would take her into a room and apply extended pressure to change her thinking.
“It's you with two older men alone in a room, I look back in horror at it now, it's just what we thought was normal. My parents eventually came to me and said ‘there's no place for you under our roof’.”
At the age of 20, Jacomb found herself completely alone. Then, in 2008, the Brethren were banned from using computers or the internet. She recalled someone mentioning the name of a relative who’d been kicked out of the church before she was born, and used the 018 national directory system to find them.
“A wonderful couple took me in even though I was a stranger, and have become like real parents to me.”
Jacomb’s adopted parents walked her down the aisle when she got married, and are loving grandparents to her son.
She says: “You have to start again figuring out what you believe, trying to figure out what is truth. I have decided that I do believe in Christianity but it looks very different from the Brethren's version of Christianity.”
She studied a Bachelor of Theology and is now a pastor at the Karori Baptist Church, her continuing faith is something of a rarity among former Brethren.
“A lot of people come out of the Brethren very broken and vulnerable, so traumatised by what's been done to them in the name of religion that they don't want to touch it with a 40-foot pole.”
Jacomb is supporting her brother Braden and Peter Harrison through their litigation.
She says it appears the Brethren engage in legal action and threats to quieten down former members from speaking out about their experiences.
“How on earth have they got to where they’ve got to where they think it's right to sever children from families, husbands from wives, and grandparents to grandchildren.”
When asked about the traumatising impact of separation, and whether the church regretted any of its actions, PBCC spokesperson Watt said: “The fact is, sometimes people leave churches and that certainly isn’t unique to us. Just like other religious communities, if one member leaves the group, the dynamic changes and people and their families can react in different ways.
“It is up to individual families as to how they manage and respond to these situations. I will say very strongly that the church will always support its own members, and the church would never stand in the way of families communicating with each other.
“At the end of the day, we are Christian, and it’s our desire to live alongside our local communities and to act with kindness and compassion.
“So no, while I cannot guarantee that every Brethren member has done everything right over our 100 years or more of history, I know from experience that the vast majority of Brethren are very good people trying to do very good things.”
continued below
Rebranding as the PBCC
ReplyDeleteThe shift to being known as the PBCC is an attempt at a rebranding exercise, say former members of the church.
The church engages in some community outreach through efforts such as the Rapid Relief Team, which hands out food and essential supplies at the scenes of natural disasters and emergencies.
The Rapid Relief Team has also actively sought media attention for its efforts delivering food to parcels to south Auckland.
A global organisation, its New Zealand branch received $908,000 in donations last year.
That’s dwarfed by the tens of millions in annual donations to the National Assistance Fund, one of the richest charities in New Zealand, whose trustees are Brethren elders.
Filings with the Charity Register show it’s received $353 million in donations since 2010. In its best year, ending 20 June 2019, it received more $60m.
The National Assistance Fund’s stated purpose is to “source and apply resources for the benefit and wellbeing of persons in NZ through promoting the understanding and practice of the Christian faith”.
“We contribute to the well-being of NZ society by supporting the provision of… Educational facilities operated on principles consistent with the Christian faith.”
Yet, as one former member points out, non-Brethren are not allowed to attend their churches, prayer meetings or enrol in their schools.
The charity shares its address in the Hamilton suburb of Te Rapa with UBT Accountants, which is part of the sprawling group of companies under the UBT umbrella. UBT being the company that is suing Peter Harrison for misuse of its directory.
Peter Bishop, who is suing Braden Simmons, is a director of NAF Trustee, a corporate trust which manages the National Assistance Fund charity.
When approached for comment, Simmons said: “The actions that have been taken have impacted many people, whom I care about beyond words. For this reason I have no comment to the media.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300063194/former-exclusive-brethren-members-hit-with-dawn-raids-legal-suits-after-speaking-out-against-the-secretive-christian-sect
Exclusive Brethren told to 'create a crisis' to generate profits
ReplyDeleteby Craig Hoyle, The Post November 18, 2023
Leaked documents reveal how the pursuit of money is driving the secretive Exclusive Brethren, with one insider saying the sect has effectively become a “pyramid scheme”.
The religious group, which practices an extreme form of social isolation from wider society under its “doctrine of separation”, has an aggressive focus on maximising revenue from members and wider society, and current and former members said large sums of money were flowing upward towards world leader Bruce Hales.
The Sunday Star-Times can also reveal that incoming prime minister Christopher Luxon has had ongoing contact with senior Brethren since speaking at one of their seminars in 2016, and is not ruling out a similar appearance as prime minister.
The National Party has a chequered history with the Exclusive Brethren after the church tried to get the Don Brash-led National Party elected in 2005, and were outed for being behind pamphlets attacking the Greens.
At one of the latest international business conferences held in Sydney in September, Brethren members were told to have an “investor mindset” and given detailed instructions for how to generate profits, including taking financial advantage of crises.
Brethren leaders took that instruction a step further, telling attendees: “We may need to create a crisis.”
Academics and former members who reviewed notes from the seminar were particularly concerned by that suggestion.
“It’s just a massive red flag,” said Sara Rahmani, a lecturer in religious studies at Victoria University’s School of Social and Cultural Studies.
The seminar was organised by Universal Business Team (UBT), a Sydney-registered company that describes itself as a “global consultancy group” providing “services and advice” to about 3000 Brethren-owned businesses in 19 countries, with a combined revenue of more than NZ$12.6 billion.
In a written response, a spokesperson for the Exclusive Brethren, who have rebranded themselves as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church (PBCC), said statements made at the seminar “were presentations to members of the church, not from it” – however a review by the Star-Times found speakers were senior members of the church, including relatives of Hales.
UBT holds regular seminars for Brethren members, and the Star-Times previously reported on a 2016 event held at Vector Arena where guest speakers included then All Blacks coach Steve Hansen, Victoria Cross winner Willie Apiata, and then Air NZ chief executive Christopher Luxon - who is now in coalition talks to become Aotearoa’s next prime minister.
A spokesperson for Luxon said UBT “was a longstanding corporate customer of Air NZ”, and he spoke about leadership and the national carrier’s business strategy in his 2016 address. He was not paid for his appearance.
Luxon stood by his decision to speak at the Brethren conference, the spokesperson said, “and he possibly would do so again”.
In response to a question about whether Luxon has had subsequent contact with the Brethren, its members or subsidiary organisations, the spokesperson said he maintained relationships “with many people from his Air NZ days”.
“Since entering politics, he has occasionally met [senior Brethren leader] Caleb Hall, the UBT CEO who he knew from his Air NZ days, for coffee.”
UBT, which Luxon’s spokesperson described as a “large and successful small business network”, funnels profits back to various Brethren causes as charitable donations, with large sums of money flowing between sect halls, education trusts and the sect’s National Assistance Fund.
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Membership of UBT is theoretically voluntary for Brethren business owners, but Peter Hart, who was excommunicated in 2020 for questioning the leadership of Hales, said in reality that was not the case.
ReplyDelete“[As a small business owner] people put pressure on me to be part of UBT, and I said ‘oh, I thought it was optional?’ And they said ‘yes, it’s optional, but you should be doing it’.”
Most Brethren business owners took the easy route and went along with UBT membership, Hart said, resulting in an enormous flow of cash to the organisation.
“It was morally wrong to me that you should have that pressure put on you to join a business group as part of your church.”
Beginning around 2010, UBT undertook a review of all Brethren-owned companies worldwide, grading them into a traffic light system: green for good, orange for those needing work, and red for those that should be ditched immediately.
Hart’s company, which was struggling at the time, was graded red, and he was ordered “to close the business down and work for other Brethren”.
“All the red cases got sent to Bruce Hales to look at, and that was his advice.”
Hart ultimately declined to sell his medical products business, managing to slow the process down enough until revenue picked up - no thanks, he said, to UBT and Hales: “It was very poor advice that they gave me.”
The Sydney seminar notes make repeated references to Hales and his predecessors, including his father, directing members to obey his instructions.
“They are doing the thinking for us and we just need to do the doing,” reads one reference to the so-called Great Men. Another reads: “The key is to always follow, don’t be independent and think I know better.”
Rahmani, the religious studies lecturer, who reviewed the notes, said the overall messaging appeared to be about consolidating control and “maintaining legitimacy”.
“Linguistically, they elevate these Great Men’s position and sainthood by drawing parallels between them and God, and then them and Jesus … The central theme is obedience.”
Michael Lee, an associate professor of marketing at Auckland University, explained that a strong emphasis on business was a common theme among conservative religious groups.
“That’s the one area that they can comfortably educate their members in, and do well in,” he said. “But the business focus gets a bit disturbing when it’s ‘we should create crises for the benefit of others’.”
Lee, who also reviewed the seminar papers, said some of the advice was “pretty good”, such as promoting the importance of healthcare and having an abundance mindset, although the patriarchal language throughout “wouldn’t normally fly in this day and age for mainstream companies”.
Lindy Jacomb, a former Brethren member who founded the Olive Leaf Network to help people escape high-demand religious groups, said the Exclusive Brethren emphasis on profit had been turbocharged under Hales.
“Prosperity gospel theology teaches that personal and financial wellbeing is the highest sign of God’s favour, and God’s favour is seen primarily through financial prosperity,” said Jacomb, who is now trained as a Baptist pastor.
“It does seem like the Brethren are increasingly teaching this kind of vision of life.”
The leaked seminar notes lay out a focus on health and wealth, with members told to care for their physical wellbeing for the sake of profit.
“We need to be as healthy as possible to be a good employee,” read the notes, which were distributed widely within the Brethren community.
Rahmani said it was concerning when groups equated physical health with morality, “suggesting that people who are sick are sinners, and therefore deserving”.
A diagram from the UBT seminar in September shows how the Brethren are focusing on multiple aspects of members' lives.
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The sect is even more assertive in extracting money from regular society. “Take it from them because it doesn’t belong to them anyway,” said Hart, recounting the Brethren attitude toward non-members. “They can be quite ruthless.”
ReplyDeleteHales has previously told members to have “an utter hatred of the world”. Lee, the associate professor of marketing, said fostering a position of “us against the world” was a recognisable business practice.
“When Apple was a very niche product, that was their selling idea - us, the special, the unique, those who know better, the enlightened ones, versus the masses … They feel like they’re part of this group that is persecuted or special, and if they were to leave, they’re leaving behind their band of brothers.”
The September seminar notes include common business terms such as “whale hunting”, which refers to the practice of targeting high-value potential customers. Attendees were also told they should “understand why we won when Covid hit” - an apparent reference to the billions scooped up by Brethren-run companies in lucrative PPE contracts with the UK government at the beginning of the pandemic.
Brethren business owners who become wealthy are often elevated to positions of leadership within the sect, with Jacomb saying it appeared material success had become more important than “spiritual depth of understanding”.
“It’s really concerning if people can reach positions of spiritual leadership due to their financial status,” she said.
The Brethren are scrupulous about keeping as much money as possible circulating within their own community. Recently, members were surveyed worldwide about their property holdings and mortgages - the results showed that Brethren held about US$13.2b (NZ$22.1b) in private property assets, and owed US$4b (NZ$6.7b) in mortgage debt.
Subsequent teachings at an October conference called Strive 2024 – held across three continents in Sydney, Australia; Birmingham, UK; and Westfield, New Jersey - suggested the Brethren needed to take a “creative approach”, with a proposal that richer members buy equity in the homes of those with mortgages to “free them from the bank”.
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Members are also being encouraged to sign up for the Personal Prosperity Plan (PPP) - a newly-released wealth management system “adding structure and a plan into our affairs”, with financial control extending from the business realm into personal lives.
ReplyDeleteThe plan is available for “every willing individual globally”, and pushed as a “massive win” for Brethren businesses. Leaked notes from Strive 2024, which was attended by hundreds of New Zealand Brethren, suggested each Brethren student should be signed up for a PPP by the time they left school.
In a statement provided to the Star-Times, a spokesperson for UBT said the PPPs were “aimed at enabling business owners to care for their employees in a meaningful and long-lasting way by encouraging them to be aware about their finances, caring for themselves and caring for others”.
“Obviously, it is up to employers and employees if this is taken up.”
In their written statements, neither the PBCC nor UBT responded to a question about how members were expected to balance personal choice against the sect’s instructions to follow leaders’ orders. A current member of the Brethren said there was a clear feeling that “those who reject it will be left behind”.
Jacomb said the growing financial web was “undoubtedly making it much harder for members to leave”.
“You can’t be employed outside of the Brethren ecosystem, which was and still is a barrier, but now there are all these other financial areas of your life tied in - your mortgage, your insurance, your superannuation - that add layers of complexity to extracting yourself.”
And there are signs that not all members are happy with being encircled financially. A source told the Star-Times that when the mortgage survey was distributed the return rate was 89% - meaning one in 10 members did not comply.
“I think there would be a number of people who are really uncomfortable with the direction that things are taking under Bruce Hales’s leadership,” said Jacomb, adding that non-compliance by some members was “a really bold step”.
“We know that they will be being closely watched.”
Craig Hoyle is a former member of the Exclusive Brethren. His book, Excommunicated: A multigenerational story of leaving the Exclusive Brethren, published by HarperCollins, is available now. RRP $39.99.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/a/nz-news/350113380/exclusive-brethren-told-create-crisis-generate-profits
Members are also being encouraged to sign up for the Personal Prosperity Plan (PPP) - a newly-released wealth management system “adding structure and a plan into our affairs”, with financial control extending from the business realm into personal lives.
ReplyDeleteThe plan is available for “every willing individual globally”, and pushed as a “massive win” for Brethren businesses. Leaked notes from Strive 2024, which was attended by hundreds of New Zealand Brethren, suggested each Brethren student should be signed up for a PPP by the time they left school.
In a statement provided to the Star-Times, a spokesperson for UBT said the PPPs were “aimed at enabling business owners to care for their employees in a meaningful and long-lasting way by encouraging them to be aware about their finances, caring for themselves and caring for others”.
“Obviously, it is up to employers and employees if this is taken up.”
In their written statements, neither the PBCC nor UBT responded to a question about how members were expected to balance personal choice against the sect’s instructions to follow leaders’ orders. A current member of the Brethren said there was a clear feeling that “those who reject it will be left behind”.
Jacomb said the growing financial web was “undoubtedly making it much harder for members to leave”.
“You can’t be employed outside of the Brethren ecosystem, which was and still is a barrier, but now there are all these other financial areas of your life tied in - your mortgage, your insurance, your superannuation - that add layers of complexity to extracting yourself.”
And there are signs that not all members are happy with being encircled financially. A source told the Star-Times that when the mortgage survey was distributed the return rate was 89% - meaning one in 10 members did not comply.
“I think there would be a number of people who are really uncomfortable with the direction that things are taking under Bruce Hales’s leadership,” said Jacomb, adding that non-compliance by some members was “a really bold step”.
“We know that they will be being closely watched.”
Craig Hoyle is a former member of the Exclusive Brethren. His book, Excommunicated: A multigenerational story of leaving the Exclusive Brethren, published by HarperCollins, is available now. RRP $39.99.
Fleecing the flock: Exclusive Brethren businesses raided by Tax Office
ReplyDeleteThe politically connected sect known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church preaches a “hatred” for the world. Women are treated as second-class citizens and homosexuality is not tolerated.
by Michael Bachelard, The Sydney Morning Herald MARCH 23, 2024
The Australian Tax Office conducted an extraordinary unannounced raid this week on the global headquarters of businesses run by the conservative Christian sect the Exclusive Brethren searching for evidence of misuse of funds by high-net-worth individuals in the church.
Global leader and Sydney-based “Man of God” Bruce D. Hales had travelled overseas at the time of the raid, but former members of his flock believe he has returned to hold meetings this weekend.
The sect, now known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church (PBCC), is a closed organisation which preaches a “hatred” for people outside the church. Women are treated as second-class citizens and homosexuality is not tolerated.
Its followers, known to each other as “saints”, believe Hales is “so close to the Lord Jesus that he can feel his heartbeat”.
Hales, who travels the world in a $20,000 per hour private jet, tells his flock to “charge the highest price to the worldly people” – including governments and other businesses – in a doctrine known as “spoiling the Egyptians”. In 2002 he preached: “The world is there for our using up of it … the world is there to take what we want from it, and leave everything we don’t want. Spoil the Egyptians as quick and as fast as you can.”
Starting on Tuesday, Australian Tax Office officials swept into an address in the “Precinct” in Herb Elliott Avenue in the Sydney suburb of Olympic Park, and raided the head offices of a number of Brethren-run companies and its school system, OneSchool Global. Investigators confiscated documents, computers, phones and other material.
The ATO declined to comment on the raid, saying it could not discuss details of the tax affairs of any individual or entity. However, a document obtained by this masthead shows the raid was an “access without prior notice” visit run by the ATO’s Private Wealth – Behaviours of Concern section, which is within its Wealth program.
A senior staff member of the Brethren’s “parent company”, Universal Business Team, or UBT, downplayed the raid in a note to staff as the organisation “working with the ATO to support with a regular audit”.
But ATO documentation confirms it conducts access without prior notice raids “only in exceptional circumstances including suspected tax evasion, fraud, secrecy or concealment, and where we have a reasonable belief that documents may be disposed of, altered or destroyed”.
This masthead has also learned that businesses in Goulburn whose owners run the Brethren’s public-facing charity, the Rapid Relief Team, were also raided by the Tax Office on Tuesday.
Church spokesman and Melbourne businessman Lloyd Grimshaw said the church “does not operate any businesses or occupy offices at the location where the ATO has visited”, but added there were “a lot of members of our church, including senior members, who work really hard to build profitable businesses”.
He did not answer a question about whether the church would co-operate with the Tax Office investigation.
A spokesperson for UBT said the company had “always sought to abide by the rules set by Australian Taxation Office, and of course we are cooperating fully with their current information gathering process.”
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This masthead has spoken to six former members of the religion who believe the Tax Office investigation was examining what the church calls its “ecosystem” – a complex web of interwoven businesses and tax-free entities including charities and schools. The sources cannot be identified because they fear retribution against their families who are still inside the sect.
ReplyDeleteThe MySchool website shows that between government funding of about $40 million last year as well as millions in tax-exempt donations from the flock and its attached businesses, each Brethren student’s education is funded at between $30,000 and $50,000.
However, they are prevented by their religion from going to university, and young Brethren women are destined, after a short stint in family businesses, to be married with children.
The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church
The church, which beg in the 1800s in the UK but is now led by Hales from Sydney, preaches a radical doctrine of separation from “worldly” people. The doctrine allows its Brethren members to do business, but they are forbidden from eating, drinking or socialising with their non-Brethren neighbours.
They are also banned from listening to radio or watching television and their access to the internet is strictly controlled by one of the companies raided this week, the Universal Business Team.
But the church and its members have donated to and extensively lobbied conservative governments internationally, most famously campaigning actively for the re-election of the Howard government in 2004 while trying to conceal their involvement. They work hard to keep political donations secret.
They have also been highly successful at winning government contracts, including recently lucrative contracts for the supply of COVID tests.
A Brethren man can never be subservient to a woman, which means no woman can be an executive. A senior international business executive, speaking on the basis of anonymity, said this has made it increasingly difficult for Brethren companies to pitch work to clients with diversity requirements.
The doctrine of separation also means that members who step out of line on either religious or financial matters can be excommunicated. Former member Craig Stewart said he had lost his family, home and business when he was “withdrawn from”. Recently, the fact that his father died was kept from him and the rest of the Brethren congregation for almost four weeks.
“The normal PBCC funeral service was not held and my father’s body was secretly taken an hour away, from Katoomba to Penrith, and buried. His resting place beside my mother, his wife of over 60 years, is empty,” Stewart said.
Stewart, who runs a Facebook page “Exclusive Brethren / PBCC the truth about Bruce D Hales”, said the church had also held special prayer meetings to pray for his “removal from this earth”. “My sons and grandsons, down to as young as five, are praying for my demise because I have publicly spoken out about the practices in the PBCC under Bruce Hales,” he said.
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Ben Woodbury, another former member, said he left because he was gay, which made living in the church “the most traumatic thing in my life to date”. He was later excommunicated.
ReplyDelete“I live a very peaceful life now and sometimes the juxtaposition between my two lives, inside the Brethren and out – I feel like a foreigner in my own country. It was so toxic.”
He said church leaders had told him his only option was to become a “straight converted Christian man”, which would involve “total submission to our brother, Bruce Hales, and to the Lord and Christ”.
Woodbury is known as @excultboy on TikTok and has posted about his experiences. “I used to get a happy birthday text from my mum every year ... and now I’ve gone public, they’ve been told not to have anything to do with me at all,” he said.
https://www.tiktok.com/@excultboy/video/7241152213941226754
The ecosystem
The purpose of the PBCC’s “ecosystem”, as stated in internal documents sighted by this masthead, is to “maintain the Community’s lifecycle”, but particularly to provide funding for the Brethren’s schools which are reserved for the church’s students.
Ordinary Brethren individuals and businesses are strongly encouraged to spend their money with companies run by the church leaders, such as consulting firm Universal Business Team (UBT).
Documents produced for a recent “Strive” forum to advertise these projects to the PBCC’s flock say UBT turns over up to $500 million a year. The profits, according to the documents, are “invested in” 124 Plymouth Brethren schools and other charities such as public-facing charity the Rapid Relief Team.
But one insider, speaking on condition of anonymity for his own safety, said the commercial enterprises appeared to make considerably more money than was distributed to the charities.
“I think the Tax Office will be looking at where all the money actually goes.”
The insider said UBT charges Brethren businesses between $30,000 and $150,000 for two hours of consulting, but most of the consultants are working for free “thinking they’re doing it for the testimony of Bruce Hales”, meaning the gross profits of the business were about 80 per cent.
In the recent “Strive” forum the ecosystem’s purpose was said to be “striving towards securing our financial future so we can fund our way of life, indefinitely”. UBT, whose offices were raided, is described in the documents as “our parent company”.
“Our leadership team comprises members of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church and professionals from the wider community,” the documents say.
It is also the central company from which members rent phones and computers. These are fitted with Brethren approved software, including a program called Streamline 3 which means UBT administrators can monitor the browsing history and GPS location of Brethren members and remotely capture images of their screen.
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The charities
ReplyDeleteOne of the charities funded by the ecosystem, the Rapid Relief Team (RRT), is described by Woodbury as an attempt to rehabilitate the Brethren’s poor global reputation, and to help its lobbying of politicians.
In a recent Brethren conference, Strive 23, one of the Rapid Relief Team’s aims for the year was that: “Every locality to engage with a person of influence or status at a local level”.
Woodbury, a former Rapid Relief Team volunteer, said it seemed to be a “cleverly co-ordinated PR instrument” of the church.
Other charities are set up, some with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of funds, with the ability to give loans for housing, to fund Brethren travel for religious meetings, and to help the Brethren poor. Though many are constituted to help the “general community in Australia”, the only beneficiaries are members of their own church.
The Brethren are also establishing their own supermarkets, Campus and Co. Many stores are based on the school grounds and they are staffed by unpaid Brethren women and charge a premium to the flock for their groceries. Brethren members are expected to make a certain percentage of their weekly purchases through Campus and Co.
It is dangerous for PBCC members to question their leaders on these matters, or to fail to comply with orders, because the punishment for questioning the Man of God can include being “withdrawn from” – excommunicated.
Bruce Hales, who has led the church since his father died in 2003, has become increasingly wealthy in recent years, as have his sons.
In 2022, this masthead reported that Gareth Hales bought a two-hectare, $9.5 million house in the NSW holiday destination of Dural, set behind a gated entry with a tennis court, heated swimming pool and a golf driving range.
A few months earlier, Nerolie Hales, the wife of Dean, spent $7.5 million buying a 4116 square metre home in Epping, in Sydney’s north-western suburbs. And another senior Brethren man, Gavin Grace, of Ballarat, broke the Dural house price record, paying $14 million for a resort-style mansion, which he bought without a mortgage.
COVID contracts
The New Daily reported last year that Gareth and Charles Hales were suppliers for more than $1 billion worth of contracts for COVID-19 personal protective equipment in the UK via Unispace Global Limited, and Dean Hales was linked to a network of companies that won more than $30 million in government contracts to supply COVID tests to Australian governments.
And a Brethren company, Westlab Pty Ltd, owned by another senior Brethren man, Gavin Grace, won tenders with the Department of Health between August 2020 and August 2022 worth a combined $106 million to supply rapid antigen tests.
Bruce Hales, who is an accountant, was listed as the “independent auditor” on Westlab’s accounts.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/fleecing-the-flock-exclusive-brethren-businesses-raided-by-tax-office-20240321-p5fe6r.html
Plymouth Brethren: Man who grew up in church ‘cult’ attempted suicide three times upon leaving due to trauma
ReplyDeleteIreland Live May 24, 2024
A man born into a church he described as a “cult”, where he claims he was sexually abused by a member and was not allowed to listen to CDs, go to restaurants or date women before proposing, attempted suicide three times upon leaving because of the trauma.
John “Gilli” Gilliland, 35, a commercial director who now lives in Northallerton in North Yorkshire, was born into the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church (PBCC), a subset of the Christian evangelical movement, in a different part of the country.
The PBCC is commonly referred to as a “cult” by ex-members – although the group denies being a cult, and instead refers to itself as a “mainstream Christian Church”.
Because of his traumatic experiences while in the PBCC, he now goes by “Gilli” instead of John, as he associates his birth name with his “past life”.
The dad of three, while in a Brethren specific school, claims the staff glued pages of books together which they thought went against the church’s teachings, which the church has denied, and when mobile phones were introduced, he believes the church “monitored” all correspondence.
From around the age of 14 to 20, Gilli claimed he was sexually abused by a member of the church – it took him around 10 years to accept the abuse had happened because of the “stigma”, and he has not reported it to police.
Gilli left the church in 2012, aged 24, to be with a non-church member and now has no contact with his family but has adjusted to life in the “outside world”, now identifying as having no faith.
Gilli told PA Real Life: “It’s not something I’m exactly proud of, but at the same time I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve had three suicide attempts just because you hit rock bottom… and (from) the trauma.
“A lot of that is related to thinking you’re not good enough because you’re going against the (church’s) rules and the impact of losing everything you’ve ever known – your life is so, so structured, and so strict, when you leave, and that structure just goes.”
Gilli was born into the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, which he and many other ex-members refer to as a “cult”, a claim which the Church denies.
Gilli claims the teachings were based on “biblical teachings but twisted to suit their own agenda” – for example, he said he was not allowed to learn about sex education in school nor attend public places such as cinemas and restaurants.
He attended a mainstream school up until Year Six where he says he was bullied by his peers for being in the church and always had to turn down invitations from friends to play after school because of his religion.
Gilli was homeschooled in Years Eight and Nine by an ex-teacher who was a Brethren member and then attended a Brethren specific school until he finished Year 12.
He remembers it being very restrictive, claiming the staff at his school glued together pages of books that they deemed inappropriate or that went against the church’s teachings.
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At home, his upbringing was very strict, and Gilli recalls every element was controlled by the church.
ReplyDeleteHe explained: “There isn’t one area of your life where you’re not given either some instruction or advice on what to do, from the time that you’re told that you should wake up in the morning, how much of the Bible you should read in the day, what time you should be at work, what time you should be home from work.
“You have a church service every day in the evening Monday to Friday, as well as Saturday morning and four times on a Sunday…there was no freedom of choice.”
From around the age of 14 to 20, he alleged he was sexually abused by a member of the church, and that the alleged abuser is protected by the church – a claim the church has denied.
“Obviously, it’s a horrific thing to go through but I think the thing that’s probably the hardest part is the fact that the abuser is still protected, and still is protected and probably will be for the rest of our lives,” he said.
“I didn’t know what sexual abuse was for a long time, even after I left.
“I didn’t want to let myself believe that I had been (abused) because of the stigma that was attached to it.
“There was some part of me that was guilty for having had it done to me… my reason for not telling the police is that it’s not something that anybody else has ever witnessed apart from the abuser and myself.”
Throughout the years, Gilli barely went against the rules – he claims the “most rebellious” thing he ever did was buying a copy of the Abba Gold CD.
He claims all pre-recorded music was banned in the church, which is something the church has denied, and he even remembers people removing the radio from their cars to avoid hearing it.
“Sometimes you might not even necessarily get discovered, it will just be that your conscience will break you and you’ll get rid of it (the CD) because you think you’re not supposed to have it,” he explained.
“I think maybe one or two other times I brought a mobile phone (when I was 20) and again, I wasn’t supposed to have it and I was made to smash it up.
“Eventually they did start introducing mobiles, but it was all through the church’s central business, you’d pay extortionate rates, and everything was monitored.”
He also remembers being taught that cohabiting and sex before marriage was sinful, and he was not allowed to date people – he had to instead meet someone and almost instantly propose to them.
He said: “So it was difficult to form relationships… you can’t exactly blame anyone for turning down your proposal.
“I was rejected by a couple of people but it wasn’t rejection as the outside world knows it.”
But, at the age of 24, when working for a business owned by members of the church, Gilli began developing romantic feelings for a colleague, who was not a member of the church, and the pair began dating in secret – after three months, he decided to leave the church to be with his girlfriend.
“I basically had a choice to make – I could either end the relationship or I would have to leave and I chose to follow my heart,” he explained.
“I wasn’t going to end a relationship just because of rules and I wasn’t going to be told I shouldn’t fall in love.”
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Gilli officially left the church on December 27 2012, and to begin with he was “scared (he) would be struck down” by doing things that were prohibited by the church, but eventually adjusted to a life where he could watch television and attend concerts.
ReplyDeleteHe vividly recalls going to his first “big gig” to see Gary Barlow and being overwhelmed with the atmosphere, and being “so confused” when watching programmes such as The Jeremy Kyle Show for the first time.
Gilli has since gone on to have three children, who he has not “pushed religion on”, and identifies as having no faith.
He also continues to have no contact with his family who are still members of the church.
He said: “They’re always going to be your parents but genuinely, I would say I don’t know my parents any more, I don’t know what goes on in their daily lives or how they are in terms of their health.
“I guess there’s an element of it where you have to compartmentalise that section of your life because if you didn’t, you’d just end up sitting in a corner rocking.”
Gilli now helps host a podcast, Get A Life, speaking to other ex-members of the church, which he said has helped him process the trauma.
For more information, visit: www.youtube.com/@getalifepodcast.
A spokesperson from the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church said: “Mr Gilliland chose to leave our Church many years ago, a decision that we fully respect. As Christians, we are sad to learn of the challenges he has experienced and wish him only happiness and contentment for the future. However, his description of life as a member of our Church does not in any way reflect our beliefs, practices or the common experiences of our members.
“Our Church is driven by care and compassion. This is exemplified by the many thousands of independent members of our Church who are significant contributors to the local communities where they live, work and worship. We are committed to putting compassion into action, and many of our members actively support charitable activities both within their communities and to support those impacted by international crises.
“In line with our Christian beliefs, we treat the safety and wellbeing of our members with the utmost importance and have robust safeguarding policies and practices in place to keep our community safe. We see any form of abuse as utterly abhorrent and strongly encourage anyone, including Mr Gilliland, to report any criminal activity to the police.
“Our commitment to protecting the wellbeing of our members also extends to helping those who are facing issues with their mental health to access professional help and guidance. Indicative of this commitment, the charitable arm of our Church also runs initiatives and campaigns dedicated to combating harmful social stigmas around mental ill health.
“At the end of the day, our members are Christian and will seek to act with kindness and compassion. We wish Mr Gilliland well and our offer of care and support for Mr Gilliland remains enduring.”
https://www.ireland-live.ie/news/family/1509731/plymouth-brethren-man-who-grew-up-in-church-cult-attempted-suicide-three-times-upon-leaving-due-to-trauma.html
Why Guardian Australia is investigating Exclusive Brethren schools
ReplyDeleteThe sect’s OneSchool Global network has received generous support from Australian taxpayers while tightly controlling students and discouraging tertiary study
by Sarah Martin, The Guardian July 7, 2024
In the early 1990s, the Exclusive Brethren – now called the Plymouth Brethren Christian church – set up its own private schooling system.
Now known as the OneSchool Global network, the Brethren schools have 120 campuses across 20 countries teaching almost 10,000 children. In Australia, the schools operate in six states with 31 separate campuses serving their followers.
The Australian schools have benefited from generous taxpayer support – more than $130m in taxpayer funds has flowed to them in the past five years, in line with the commonwealth funding arrangements for non-government schools.
But little is known about the culture within these institutions.
A Guardian Australia investigation has sought to find out what is happening behind the gates of the OneSchool Global schools, to question whether the Australian taxpayer should be directly supporting an ethos that appears at odds with many of the values of modern Australia.
This question is particularly relevant at a time when public, secular schools are so desperately in need of funds.
The investigation has uncovered a culture in which the education of students is tightly controlled and monitored. Former OneSchool Global teachers told Guardian Australia that studies are restricted and many books are banned. Students are discouraged from attending university.
Former staff and students report concerns about child welfare and a culture of surveillance that they say intrudes on the lives of students even when they are not at school.
They say the church is intimately involved in most aspects of school life, with each campus linked to a trust controlled by male members of the Brethren community.
The notoriously secret Brethren sect is led by the Sydney-based accountant Bruce Hales, a millionaire who is known as the church’s “Elect Vessel” and “Man of God”.
Earlier this year Hales declared that “the devil is trying to get into our schools” as he urged his followers not to take the OneSchool Global network for granted.
In a ministry message given by Hales in the US in March, published in the sect’s so-called “white books” and seen by the Guardian, Hales says members should value the importance of impressions “early in our lives”.
“It will hold us, hold us against the power of the world, it will hold us against the power of worldly persons,” Hales said.
“Our children, in the main, generally go to schools that we try and run. The devil is against them,” Hales said, according to the ministry.
“We have to be very watchful in regard of our schooling, take nothing for granted. As soon as we take something for granted, the devil has already got a hold.”
https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jul/08/why-guardian-australia-is-investigating-exclusive-brethren-schools
Years at Exclusive Brethren school were ‘darkest moments of my life’, former student says
ReplyDeleteBen Woodbury says school run by sect was not a safe environment for him, with limited access to external counselling services
By Sarah Martin, The Guardian July 7, 2024
Students in need of psychological support at schools set up by the Exclusive Brethren sect cannot access external counselling services without getting approval from up to a dozen members of the school and church community, according to multiple former staff members.
The school says the approval process is to ensure that students “are provided with the right type of school-funded support for their individual needs”.
But former teachers and students of the Brethren’s OneSchool Global network – which operates 31 campuses in Australia, teaching 2,500 students – say the new policy undermines confidentiality for students struggling with mental health problems at the school who need help.
Ben Woodbury, a former student of the Brethren school previously known as MET school in Sydney, said he never felt safe at school. After a suicide attempt, Woodbury left the sect and has since come out as gay. Being gay is forbidden in the Exclusive Brethren, which is now known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian
“[My school years] were the darkest moments of my life. I felt so isolated and so alone and I knew that one day I would have to decide how and when and where I would end my life because there was no escape.”
He says he did look for help but “the schooling is set up in such a way that mental health was not considered as something you could come forward and talk about”.
Woodbury says he also experienced sexual harassment by other students at school but said he felt there was no way to confidentially report incidents, and no access to external counselling services when he was there. He left the school in 2009.
He said he did not feel it was a safe environment. “Any type of access to the outside world was so heavily monitored and restricted, and if you tried to Google Beyond Blue it came up as a restricted site.”
The organisation uses Sydney-based The Resilience Centre as the external provider for mental health services for students needing psychological support, and runs sessions for students at all campuses nationwide using Zoom.
But multiple former staff members have confirmed that any request by a child for the counselling service required the approval of up to a dozen individuals within the school and Brethren community under a new policy introduced last year.
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Previously, students could be referred without this requirement. One former teacher described the new policy as “a worrying backwards step”.
ReplyDeleteParents of the affected student, several Brethren members who hold senior positions within the school and multiple other senior figures up to the level of regional director of education must all now be given details of the student wanting support and the reasons for the request. They then decide whether to approve the counselling request, Guardian Australia understands.
A specific need must be identified for the counselling to be approved and any issue related to a household or community matters are unlikely to be successful.
Former teachers who have spoken to Guardian Australia on the condition of anonymity have raised concerns about student welfare in the schools, saying the new system makes it difficult for students to access support.
Sources also say that demand for support is high, with services expanding to four days a week and long waiting lists for appointments.
A spokesperson for OneSchool Global said “there is no higher priority at OneSchool Global than the safety and wellbeing of our students”.
He said students actively promoted positive mental health with “a designated student-wellbeing role as part of our student leadership teams”.
“All our teachers undergo mandatory training to be able to support students, and students also undergo child protection training, focused on self-awareness and supporting their peers,” he said.
When asked about the approval process for therapy, the spokesperson said that “no student has been declined confidential counselling support where they have requested it”.
“What we do have is an approval process designed to ensure our students are provided with the right type of school-funded support for their individual needs,” the spokesperson said.
“We are proud of the quality of education we deliver, thanks in a large part to our dedicated 2,000 teachers and volunteers, providing an environment in which our students and whole school community can thrive.”
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Exposing the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren
ReplyDeleteThe Exclusive Plymouth Brethren Christian Church is a highly secretive & extremely wealthy 'Cult'. At Open & Candid we bring you the latest stories from this controversial cult.
A Brief Overview
The Exclusive Plymouth Brethren maintain strict separation from the outside world, with practices including avoiding non-members, limited media access, and restrictions on education and employment outside their community. Brethren members typically work for community-owned businesses, marry within the sect, and require approval for major life decisions from church elders.
Concerns about the Brethren include reports of abuse, coercion, and family separation. Community meeting rooms, funded by donations and operated under registered charities, host multiple daily gatherings, despite community sizes often not justifying the large spaces.
The Brethren manage around 200 UK charities with assets totaling £300-£400 million, supporting various community needs. Business-wise, they own over 1,500 companies in the UK, with an estimated annual turnover of £4 billion, some of which benefited from large government contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
OneSchool Global, their education arm, charges around £3,750 per pupil annually, with support for financially challenged families. Each school operates under a registered charity, often running a local convenience store staffed by unpaid female Brethren members to fundraise.
Critics accuse the Brethren of controlling members' lives, making it difficult to leave, and using legal means to stifle criticism. Ex-members report abuse, mental health issues, and manipulation by church leaders. Despite not voting, the Brethren have been involved in political lobbying, primarily supporting conservative parties globally.
The Brethren's insular practices, wealth, and exploitation of charitable status raise questions about their impact on members and wider society. Allegations of coercion, separation, and abuse underscore concerns about their societal contribution and treatment of members.
READ MORE at: https://www.openandcandid.com/plymouth-brethren.html
In tiny Neche, North Dakota, a ‘cult’ rules
ReplyDeletePlymouth Brethren has long called Neche, North Dakota, home. But global scrutiny has cast a spotlight on the church and its powerful position in a small rural town on the border with Canada.
By C.S. Hagen, Forum News Service August 10, 2024
Editor's note: This story is part one of a five-part series examining the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, its beliefs, practices and its role in the North Dakota town of Neche, population 344.
NECHE, N.D. — In 1979, Rob McLean’s life felt full of promise. He was 22 years old, engaged, and eager to start a business. Before he began the rest of his life, however, he had to make a pilgrimage from his New Zealand home to tiny Neche, North Dakota.
McLean was born into the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, a little-known religious sect — one he calls a cult. He was making the 8,000-mile trip to Neche (rhymes with itchy) because it was a holy site for the Brethren, headquarters and home to its “universal leader” at the time, James H. Symington. The trip was “just one of the things we had to do. And I didn’t want to,” McLean said.
Tucked away in McLean’s suitcase were several white envelopes filled with cash, which he guessed contained about $600 New Zealand dollars — tribute bound for Symington. McLean was fearful of a face-to-face meeting with Symington, which came sooner than he expected. Symington — the “elect vessel,” the “man of God,” and a Neche pig farmer — happened to be on the same flight in an economy seat.
“I wandered down the aisle and gave them to his wife, who thanked me, and I got out of there. I was scared of the guy because he had so much power,” said McLean. To him, Symington was more important than Jesus because he had a direct conduit to God.
“He was a scary person, just because of his presence, and also because he had the power to excommunicate anyone he wanted,” he said. “During his reign a lot of families and marriages got broken up and a lot of Brethren fathers and husbands got excommunicated. I likened him to Leonid Brezhnev, the communist in Russia.”
McLean returned to his seat and continued his holy expedition to Neche and meetings filled with believers from around the world, all bringing similar white envelopes. The indoctrination went on from morning to night, over bottomless glasses of Johnny Walker Red Label Scotch whisky – according to McLean: “the cult drink of choice at the time.”
Neche — a town of 344 on North Dakota’s border with Canada — was improbably the seat of power for the Plymouth Brethren for nearly 17 years, from 1970 until 1987, and remains a historic site for the group, which has about 54,000 members worldwide. The organization has hidden in plain sight, rarely attracting attention until recently, when some of its operations were investigated and raided by tax agents in the United Kingdom and Australia.
Interviews that Forum News Service conducted with 25 people, including Brethren members and 13 former members from Neche and elsewhere, found that they consider the Plymouth Brethren not only a cult, but a “religious mafia” that rules by fear. According to former members, despite its worldwide charitable activities, the Brethren has left a legacy of broken families, abuse and a growing financial ecosystem that is being investigated across the world.
Despite multiple efforts, Forum News Service was denied face-to-face interviews with Brethren leaders or entry to its Neche meeting hall. A Brethren representative did respond to emailed questions.
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The Plymouth Brethren rejects former members’ claims it is a cult and says the organization is “guided by the truth of Holy Scriptures,” a spokesperson told Forum News Service.
ReplyDelete“It is disappointing and can be quite difficult to hear when we are referred to like this (as a cult), we have families we care for, schools to go to and businesses to run just like everyone. In an increasingly secular world, we recognise that observance of faith is misunderstood and those with little experience or religious values are often afraid of the unknown,” the Brethren spokesperson told Forum News Service.
“While we [recognize] there will be misconceptions, to be referred by such terms as ‘cult’ or ‘sect’ is really intolerant and can be quite upsetting for the individuals and families in our church,” the spokesperson said.
The word cult has been used in English for more than a century, and is defined as: “A socially deviant group that uses undue influence to create obedience and dependency,” according to Stephen Kent, a retired university professor from Alberta, Canada, who is considered an expert in alternative religions.
Simplified, a cult is a “group that exerts excessive control over members,” said Kent, who stopped short of labeling the Brethren as a cult, but added that the Brethren meet all the aspects of the definition of a cult.
“It is the case that groups that exercise excessive control over their members and have unusual beliefs are going to get called cults. It's been an accepted term in the English language for 150 years or so,” Kent said.
The Brethren traces its roots to the 1800s and to Plymouth, UK. Once called the Exclusive Brethren, it is a conservative, male dominated religion , which tightly controls and monitors members' behavior. Practicing one of the strictest forms of Christianity, they believe the Bible is the supreme authority for church doctrine, and that they must keep themselves separate from the outside world and non-members.
Former members say most Brethren are born into the religion, and they’re told from childhood that they are special. And while the Brethren claim they have no clergy hierarchy, they have historically followed the directions of consecutive universal leaders whose word is law.
Breaking the rules can lead to harsh punishment, including being ostracized by family members. Anyone found to be varying from rules can face excommunication, which some say also means eternal damnation.
While the Brethren reject claims they are a cult, the group’s practices fit many categories outlined by another leading expert on the subject, Steven Hassan, in the BITE Model of Authoritarian Control. Hassan developed the model to describe cults’ methods to recruit and maintain control over people.
Current Brethren practices, according to former members and the sect’s own statements, check off several boxes listed under Hassan’s BITE Model, including areas of behavior, information, thought and emotional control.
The ‘chosen people’
How the Brethren arrived in Neche isn’t known, although there are newspaper stories as early as 1895 that mention Brethren members near the town. The Christian group began in the 1820s after growing dissatisfied with the Anglican Church in England. Wanting to focus on a person’s direct relationship with God, its members began meeting for what they call Lord’s Supper, or communion, and formed their first permanent meetings in 1829.
By the middle of the 19th century, members began immigrating to the Americas, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, according to the group’s website. They’ve always been discreet, choosing to remain outside the mainstream, and rarely recruit new members, according to former members.
“I was one of God’s chosen people and so I was better than anyone else,” said Richard Marsh, a former Brethren member who said he’s living in hiding from the Brethren in Canada.
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The Brethren has managed to stay out of the public spotlight despite scandals and splits, including the Aberdeen incident, a sex scandal in 1970 involving former “universal leader” James Taylor Jr., who was accused of sexual assault. Taylor served as leader until his death in 1970, when leadership was turned over to James H. Symington.
ReplyDeleteSymington was worth more than $10 million when he died in 1987, the equivalent of $27,646,919 in 2024, according to his will, which was obtained by Forum News Service. During a tax investigation of the former universal leader in the 1970s, which did not result in any charges, he hid his cash in jars in the fruit cellar, according to a descendant.
Some “universal leaders” like Symington, who ruled from 1970 until 1987, were considered tyrants who split families apart, several former members said. The former Brethren leader is dead, but he left a long-lasting legacy as well as many Symington family members — all related — in Neche, and who own 265 properties across the county, according to Pembina County government records.
Recently, the Brethren has chosen to slowly emerge from the shadows. In 2019, the charitable arm of the Brethren called the Rapid Relief Team, or RRT, was featured in news articles after serving lunches to federal employees during a government shutdown.
Raid, investigation raise concern
Neche — whose population is approximately half Brethren, half non-Brethren — may be in a remote rural North Dakota town, but is not isolated from the group’s problems that have recently made headlines across the world.
Brethren-linked companies make up a global organization with finances tied to Australia, where an ongoing investigation began in March this year after SWAT-like agents from the Australian Tax Office raided Sydney-based Universal Business Team, or UBT, which is a company that offers services to about 3,000 Brethren-linked businesses. Shortly afterward, UBT’s Australian accounting firm, UBTA, announced to clients that it had closed.
Spokespeople for the Brethren told Forum News Service that “UBT is in full cooperation with all requests for information from the ATO and has not been advised of any principal changes that will be required of the entity” and that UBT North America is not affected by the ATO investigation.
Across the Tasman Sea in New Zealand, the Brethren — along with other faith-based institutions — have been under scrutiny for two years by a Royal Commission of Inquiry investigation. The commission, which is similar to a Senate hearing in the U.S., is exploring how people in care were abused by institutions meant to protect them.
Since the current universal leader, Bruce D. Hales, replaced his father in the position in 2002, the organization has acquired great wealth : A total of about $65 billion, according to Damian Hastie, a researcher with Open & Candid – an organization focused on investigating corruption in government contracts.
It is an age of prosperity for the Brethren. Reporting by Forum News Service and others indicates that decades of those white envelope donations have built an internal financial ecosystem that, according to former members, controls nearly all aspects of members’ lives. The Brethren also won more than $4 billion in competitive government PPE contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
‘I was told my dad is the devil’
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When non-Brethren Neche residents are asked about the Brethren, an awkward silence usually follows. Then, they start by saying the group’s members are good neighbors.
ReplyDeleteYears ago, children in Neche called the Brethren “bings,” because families had so many children. “Bing, bing, bing,” said Neche resident Pam Gizinski, motioning to the different heights of multiple children.
Once a holy site attracting pilgrims, the town is quieter than it used to be. When Gizinski first moved to Neche in 1985, Brethren children would preach at a street corner along Main Street. “Worldly” children would respond by blaring rock ‘n roll music from boom boxes while on riding bikes, she said.
While the international crowds in Neche are lacking today, the town hums with the sounds of renovation, large trucks and construction. The old school is closed, but offices like Bordertown Retail Systems in Neche are being remodeled to make room for more space, said Ian Symington, sales manager and a member of the Plymouth Brethren.
Across the world in New Zealand, Craig Hoyle knows Neche as a historically important Brethren town. Hoyle is a former member of the Brethren who left in 2009. He told Forum News Service and Australian news outlet Fairfax Media that he was prescribed chemical castration medication when priests and the current universal leader Bruce D. Hales learned he was gay.
“Huge numbers of Brethren were going through Neche at that point. Quite an impact on a North Dakota town,” said Hoyle, who spoke to Forum News Service through Google Chat.
At CVR Industries USA, Inc., a family-owned trailer remodeling company in Neche, Kristi Sharp, administrative manager, said many of her customers are Brethren members.
“I don’t have a problem and I don’t believe in their beliefs. They’re very willing to help us out. Always friendly, positive. They have been good for the town,” Sharp said.
Carl Symington, a farmer and a member of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church in Pembina, North Dakota, came out of his house — glass of whiskey on ice in hand — when Forum News Service arrived at the Brethren’s Pembina Meeting Room on June 25.
At first, he hesitated to answer questions, but eventually agreed. When asked about the importance of Neche as a historically sacred site, he replied that the town wasn’t important.
“We don’t place a lot of value on locations here because we’re looking for a heavenly city. We live our lives here and some people call us the Exclusive Brethren, but we believe in being separate from the world so we can maintain the values our forefathers taught us,” Carl Symington said.
Stuart Symington wears many hats: mayor, fire chief and president of CVR Industries USA, Inc. He took his family out of the Brethren in 2001 because “We felt that we were looking for something different,” he said.
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He works hard to stay impartial as mayor of Neche.
ReplyDelete“It’s got its challenges, definitely. In the main, the Brethren help out a lot. There are some Brethren in the fire department, and during floods they definitely do their part to help us,” he said.
“On the other side of things I know there are people who are bitter against them and that’s hard to deal with because at times they look at me like I’m giving them a break or whatever, but I’m simply just trying to do the right thing for the town,” Stuart Symington said. “Everyone as a citizen should be treated equally and I don’t try to let my past affect my job as mayor.”
Much of the town’s success is due to Brethren members, Stuart Symington said. With about half the population belonging to the Brethren, members control most of the businesses in the town, he said.
“Per capita this is one of the most industrious towns in North Dakota. A fair bit of it would be the Brethren, they often stick together, they work together and it helps produce that industriousness, right?” Stuart Symington said.
Today, massive $800,000 houses, called “McMansions” by local residents, are being constructed by the Brethren alongside houses that are little more than $20,000, according to data from Pembina County Assessor Zelda Hartje.
Gizinski lives across the street from two of the newly-constructed homes and has mixed feelings about the Brethren.
“They’re very nice people and they keep to themselves. When we had the big flood in ’97, they made all the food and laid sandbags,” said Gizinski.
Gizinski said she’s annoyed that Brethren members have their own grocery and liquor store called Campus & Co. nearby, where she isn’t allowed to shop. Instead, Neche residents must travel to Cavalier, Pembina or Grand Forks, North Dakota, about 100 miles away, for groceries.
“The thing that bothers me is they have that shop here. It’s not right,” Gizinski said.
Gizinski and other non-Brethren residents in Neche are upset about a recent $5 million dike proposal that the town’s mayor said the Brethren supports. Others don’t like the possibility their property taxes might rise with the recent additions of the large homes.
Another Neche resident scratched his head when asked about the Plymouth Brethren, saying he knew them only as Symingtons, and kept his distance.
Damian Symington, the mayor’s son, was a child when the family left the Brethren.
“I was born in it. When I was little I would get picked on by some of the Brethren kids because of who I was and because we left,” Damian said.
“I was told my dad was the devil, so I went home and told my mom that my dad was the devil,” said Damian, chuckling. “Now I understand that it was all just the hurt that they would have felt for someone willing to leave their church.”
But not everyone in Neche believes the Brethren are that harmless, or their presence in the town is not a concern.
Once, shortly after Gizinski moved to Neche, a little Brethren girl came up to her and told her she was going to hell because she was wearing shorts. Gizinski laughed as she recalled the memory, but grew more serious when she talked about Brethren who want to leave.
“They put the fear in them and they’re afraid to leave,” Gizinski said. “That makes me wonder, what are they trying to hide?”
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In Brethren ‘cult,’ claims of fear, control and excommunication
ReplyDeleteNeche, North Dakota, may be a small, but former members of the religion dominating the town describe an environment dominated by a ‘universal leader’ and based on fear, family and finances.
By C.S. Hagen, Forum News Service August 11, 2024
Editor's note: This story is part two of a five-part series examining the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, its beliefs, practices and its role in the North Dakota town of Neche, population 344.
NECHE, N.D. — After more than 20 years away from her hometown of Neche, North Dakota, Carman Drever discreetly backed her car into a friend’s driveway in the town so passersby from the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, an isolated religion whose members dominate the town, would not see her out-of-state Kentucky license plate.
Despite her caution, she was spotted. Being of “royal blood,” granddaughter of a former universal leader who ruled the Brethren world in Neche from 1970 to 1987, she knew they’d find her. Throughout the day, as she sat with Forum News Service for interviews at the town’s Pioneer Park, members of the Brethren stopped their pickup trucks nearby to watch.
When a red pickup passed by, Drever turned her head to look. It was her uncle. She hadn’t seen him since before her excommunication, or in Brethren terms, “withdrawn from” — separated from everything she grew up with, family, church, friends and property.
“They look so miserable, you know? Like they’re in a thundercloud bent over the steering wheel. I’m like, really? If you were the chosen people, you should be the happiest people,” said Drever, alluding to the Brethren belief that they are God’s favorites.
Drever left the Brethren in 2004, eight years after she moved with her family from Neche to Maple Creek, in Saskatchewan, Canada. While there, she began to realize that she belonged to an organization that sought to control every aspect of her family’s life. To her, it was a cult.
Forum News Service conducted interviews with 25 people, including members and 13 former members, to better understand the Plymouth Brethren and its role in Neche, a town of 344 on the Canadian border.
Those interviews aligned closely with Drever’s experiences, revealing how the Brethren controls its 54,000 members worldwide through what former members describe as “Three Fs: fear, family and finances.” From the cradle to the grave, they say, nearly every aspect of group members’ lives are manipulated and controlled.
Promoting feelings of guilt, instilling fear and phobia indoctrination are all aspects that lend credence to claims that the Brethren is a cult — as outlined by cultic expert Steven Hassan’s BITE Model of Authoritarian Control — a four-part checklist on how cults recruit and maintain control over members’ behavior, thoughts, information and emotions.
Stephen Kent, a retired university professor from Alberta, Canada, and an expert in alternative religions, said he is familiar with the Brethren, which he called the Exclusive Brethren.
“The study of these controversial groups is controversial,” Kent said, adding that some are sympathetic and others, like him, stop short of calling the Brethren a cult.
“They do the greatest harm to their members and former members and impose minimal harm to the outside,” Kent said.
“And people on the inside cannot question the edicts from leadership. If a leader is considered to be a man of God then what that person says is absolute truth and any deviation from it can lead to severe punishment including shunning,” said Kent.
Despite multiple efforts, Forum News Service was denied face-to-face interviews with Brethren leaders or entry to its Neche meeting hall. A Brethren representative did respond to emailed questions.
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The fear
ReplyDeleteAmong the three “Fs” — fear, family and finance — the first F is the fear of loss, the outside world and eternal damnation, all of which are emotions that former members claim are rampant among Brethren communities, called localities by members.
Such fears are groomed into Brethren members across the world, former members say, adding that they’re taught how to act, how to think, what to wear, what to drink and how to hate by the sect’s “universal leader” — always a man. His directions are inspired gospel; to disobey is to be disloyal.
In 2006, a group of Brethren churches in the UK lost their charitable status, which affected their meeting rooms across the country. Although their status was eventually reinstated, investigators with the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee defined the role of the Brethren’s leader during a lengthy debate.
“This international leader is known variously as ‘the man of God’ and the ‘Paul of our day’ and his word is obeyed to the letter. He is given ‘gifts’ of thousands of pounds/dollars from meetings around the world, and is deferred to in every facet of the lives of his adherents,” the House of Commons reported.
In a September 2023 business conference speech obtained by Forum News Service, a Brethren member named Richard Lynes said the Brethren’s universal leaders, or “great men,” should be elevated and you would gain “great [favor] if these men knew your name. (It) Is like having your name written in the Book of Life.”
For further proof of the universal leader’s control, Drever pointed to speeches made — published in booklet form, and obtained by Forum News Service — by Hales, at a 2014 seminar in Westfield, New Jersey, where he told members they must surrender unconditionally to his authority.
“Let every soul be subject to the authorities that are above him. For there is no authority except from God; and those that exist are set up by God. So that passage refers to the area of God’s direct government in the assembly (Brethren), and then also his area of indirect government; that would be government that exists in the world,” Hales said.
“I’ve seen ministry where Bruce has put himself in the place of Christ. And that, to me, is one of the scariest parts of the whole system, “ Drever said. “When you start to take the place of Christ, and you’re drawing people to you instead of leading them and ministering them to go to Christ, I had a huge issue with that. I think it’s extremely dangerous and it’s the exact definition of a cult.”
A spokesperson for the Brethren said they have a non-hierarchical structure and no formal appointments to any position.
“We do recognize ‘elders’ who provide leadership and pastoral care for the congregation,” the spokesperson said.
Carl Symington, a farmer near Pembina, North Dakota, spoke with Forum News Service. He said he knows Bruce D. Hales, the Brethren’s universal leader, personally.
“I’ve met him many times and he has never told me what to do,” Symington said. “He is like if I had an older uncle to be counted on and to check in with me. We don’t consider ourselves a hierarchy; we are more like a family.”
When asked whether some people’s claims are true that Hales is put on a pedestal similar to Jesus Christ, Symington shook his head.
“I don’t agree with that at all, putting Bruce on a pedestal. Christ took the place of a servant, and that’s the place our leader takes. He’s trying to serve,” Symington said.
But former members claim the universal leader and his family are often referred to as “royalty” or the “royal family.”
Former Brethren member Richard Marsh, who is from the UK and now lives in Canada, said the leader’s role has long been established, including under Drever’s grandfather, James H. Symington, universal leader from 1970 to 1987.
“It’s trained into you from birth that the man of god is sacred. My mother would not say what would Jesus do, she would say ‘What would Mr. Symington do?’”
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The family
ReplyDeleteThe second “F” is family, which the Brethren uses to control someone who strays from their teachings, or as leverage to keep people in line, Drever said.
Drever’s departure from the Brethren began when she questioned decisions made in Maple Creek, where she lived in Canada. She discovered children and teenagers were being excommunicated — separated from their parents and siblings — for swearing or stepping on a Bible.
“We watched 18 kids literally get ‘thrown out’ (of the Brethren). Maple Creek is a very harsh country. It is Saskatchewan. It’s cowboy country. They lost a lot of young people just due to accidents, and now they had 18 more deaths, really, because these are people that are taken out of families,” Drever said.
“It’s literally like the death of a child, and watching these mothers go through this, and I’m sitting there with my five little kids looking around … thinking, ‘This is wrong,’” Drever said.
Marsh, the former Brethren member, explained the process of excommunication. The first step is to be “shut up,” which means banned from church meetings and isolated from family and friends, like solitary confinement. A ban has no time limit, and could lead to the final step of being “withdrawn from,” or excommunicated, which can result in divorce and complete isolation from family.
“To a brainwashed mind that believes they are the chosen ones with a special place in heaven means sheer terror,” Marsh said. “If you’re kicked out of the Brethren, your life is over. Lost. Satan has taken over your life.”
Drever took her concerns to the Brethren’s then-universal leader, John S. Hales (father of the current leader, Bruce D. Hales), with her discovery about excommunication of children, which angered local leadership in Maple Creek. For the next few years, every day, she was denounced before the congregation. Being a woman, she was not allowed to speak out in her own defense, Drever said.
“Every night, it was a different one. I was the pillar of salt,” said Drever, referring to Lot’s wife, who, according to the Bible, turned into a pillar of salt for disobeying God. “I was, I mean, every naughty lady in the Bible. I was her.”
After one particularly heinous berating, she stepped outside the meeting hall, or church, with her husband.
“It was raining outside. I remember sticking my arms up and I said, ‘Do you see those drops sizzling? I’m not a pillar of salt,’” Drever said.
Soon after the “pillar of salt” meeting, Drever and her family left their house, their business, and moved to Winnipeg, but the abuse followed them there. The principal of the public school her children attended — which enrolled Brethren children at the time — called her into the office.
“She said, ‘Do you realize your children are being bullied? I’m not talking about just ordinary bullying because we deal with that on a classroom level. I’m talking about your kids being singled out, being hit, physically punched, being provoked, being name called,’” Drever recalls the principal telling her.
“I remember looking at my husband and saying, ‘I can’t, I can’t do this. I cannot raise five kids knowing that their mother — who is a little feisty — is eventually going to say something that is going to get them into trouble,” Drever said.
Not long after, Drever, her husband and five children left the Brethren and moved south to Kentucky. Her family was excommunicated, but she considers their escape lucky, as many families end up split and broken.
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Judy Symington Harlow, a former Brethren member who left when she was 20, married an “outsider” shortly after she left the group. She had no one to walk her down the aisle.
ReplyDelete“I had the family I married into, but none for myself. I knew that none of my family would come. My mom, she was black and white and never, never talked to me again,” Harlow said.
“I think that if I had married in (the Brethren) and had to take my family out, I would have struggled with that a lot because families that have done that leave some of them in and some of them out,” Harlow said. “It’s a mess, so, so tragic and so, so sad.”
The Brethren has left a trail of broken families because of a separation doctrine that the sect adopted in the 1960s as a means to control people from leaving, said Drever.
“It means, if you don’t go to the breaking of bread with these people, you can’t live with them. You can’t eat with them. You can’t talk to them. It is like this harsh, physical separation that they brought in, and that is when they started to separate husbands and wives,” she said.
The doctrine of separation is so unbending that when Drever’s youngest brother — who delivered the Grand Forks Herald newspaper at the time — was excommunicated, all Brethren members in Neche were ordered to cancel their subscriptions to avoid corruption and contamination.
The Brethren spokesperson rejected the characterization of excommunication by many former members. He told Forum News Service isolation practices are “family decisions. Our church does not make determinations on which family members should stay in contact with each other and in which circumstances.”
The spokesperson said there is “no truth to these claims” that the Brethren rules its members by fear, and the basis for fellowship is a weekly “Lord’s supper,” or Sunday communion together. Meetings are also held daily either in meeting rooms or online over Zoom.
“This does not mean that we hold ourselves as superior to our fellow men, women and children. We live and work harmoniously alongside them, in the mainstream of society,” the spokesperson said.
“Our practice of separation does not preclude interaction in the broader community. We help our neighbors and they help us,” the spokesperson said.
Carl Symington, the current Brethren member, said he is aware of stories of separation from former members.
“But they can always come back,” Symington said. “We just want to live a simpler life. There’s not even a local person that tells me what to do. And it doesn’t matter which denomination you are from, you come and ask for help, we will help,” Symington said.
Stephen Kent, the retired Canadian professor considered an expert on alternative religions, stopped short from calling the Brethren a cult, but said the Brethren’s separation doctrine violates international law accepted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948.
“Splitting families and denying parents access to their children is an international violation of the rights of the child. Even for adults, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says, ‘No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his [honor] and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks,’” Kent said.
“Critics might bring up the use of church-funded custody battles that make disfellowshipped parents unable to utilize the legal system because of the costs. So, both adults and children have their human rights violated,” Kent said.
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The finances
ReplyDeleteThe third “F” is members’ finances, which are intertwined in the Brethren’s ecosystem. According to former members, if a person leaves the Brethren, they lose their house, job, bank accounts, and more.
When they were excommunicated, Drever’s family lost their farming tool business plus all their investments in the family farm, their house and extended family members, most of whom they have not seen in 22 years.
As control continues to tighten within the Brethren, the fear of losing all earthly possessions is more real than it was when Drever left, she said.
Young people live with their parents before marriage. They’re required to work for a Brethren-linked company, and employers control how portions of their money are spent, Drever said.
Members are expected to tithe — give 10% of their income to the church — and anyone who doesn’t comply is shunned, Drever said.
“The increase in entanglements rolled out by the Hales regime (the Brethren’s leader and his family) has made it almost an impossible mission to leave the group now,” Drever said.
The control over Brethren finances starts on the walls, which are meant to be sparse and clean, with only approved decorations, Drever said.
Everyone is encouraged — which in Brethren terminology means dictated by the universal leader Bruce D. Hales — to purchase items like a canvas painting of the “seven great leaders,” depicting the church’s first leader, John Nelson Darby, to the current leader, Hales. Cost: $350 to $450.
Other aspects of daily living, such as a cell phone or a computer for business, is also tightly restricted and are to be purchased from the Universal Business Team, or UBT, which is a company run by Brethren members that offers services to about 3,000 Brethren-linked businesses.
An older Samsung S23 phone costs $1,625 on the Brethren website, and $759 on Samsung’s website. Microsoft Office Professional 2016 on the UBT website costs $587, while on other legitimate websites the program costs less than $30.
Although organizations like the Universal Business Team, or UBT, which was recently raided by the Australian Tax Office, is not technically part of the church, companies like UBT work in the church’s interests providing services to about 3,000 Brethren-owned companies in 19 countries.
A spokesperson for the Brethren also told Forum News Service there is a distinct separation between church and business, and that the church does not employ anyone.
Former members describe UBT as the Brethren’s financial arm. Last year, according to a screenshot of the UBT website, the company described itself as being owned by the Brethren. Later, they reported it is a global consultancy group providing services to Brethren-owned businesses with a combined revenue of more than $12.6 billion (New Zealand dollars).
Adam Speed, head of communications for UBT America, told Forum News Service that he investigated the screenshot and that it was an error on the website. “To confirm, UBT has never been owned by the PBCC at any time,” Speed said, declining to comment on other related questions.
The Brethren also has no legal, financial or other interests in businesses controlled by the group’s members, another Brethren spokesperson told Forum News Service.
“In addition, our partners such as UBT are not owned and operated by the church," the spokesperson said. "Instead, they have been set up and are run by church members for the benefit of other church members and non-members."
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Church with ties to tiny ND town dogged by reports of abuse
ReplyDeleteFormer members say the Plymouth Brethren church with ties to tiny Neche, North Dakota, sustains a culture of abuse and harassment, punishes those who report it, and protects abusers
By C.S. Hagen, Forum News Service August 12, 2024
Editor's note: This article contains descriptions of sexual abuse that may be disturbing to some readers. It is part three of a five-part series examining the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, its beliefs, practices and its role in the North Dakota town of Neche, population 344.
NECHE, N.D. — When Ilona Lyons was five years old, her mother bought her a light pink nightgown. Gifts were rare within the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, an isolated religious group whose members dominate the small town of Neche, North Dakota; they didn’t celebrate holidays like Christmas, and her family wasn’t wealthy.
“I loved that nightgown, but I only wore it for a few days because I was molested when I was wearing [it],” Lyons said. “And then all of the sudden I quit wearing it because I hated it.”
What followed was years of molestation by young Brethren members in Neche, Lyons told Forum News Service. Her first abuser, around 30 years old at the time, has died, but the rest are still alive and have never answered to police or to elders within the Brethren for their crimes because she never reported the abuse, Lyons said.
“I knew it would have been my fault. It’s always the woman’s fault. I often wondered why as a little girl … I remember just being so scared,” Lyons said.
The Plymouth Brethren — with about 54,000 members globally — has a long history of sustaining a culture of abuse, which has led to splitting families apart, according to interviews that Forum News Service conducted with 25 people, including current members and 13 former members. Substantiated and alleged abuse within the Brethren has drawn scrutiny of the group’s actions by authorities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK.
Reporting abuse to secular authorities is forbidden under the Brethren’s “why prosecute a case with the unjust” interpretation of the Bible, and abuse is rarely reported to elders because at best victims are told to simply forgive, according to former members.
Despite multiple efforts, Forum News Service was denied face-to-face interviews with Brethren leaders or entry to its Neche meeting hall. A Brethren representative did respond to emailed questions.
Via email, the Brethren refuted allegations that it allows abuse among its members, telling Forum News Service that it takes claims of abuse seriously and has policies in place.
“We find any form of abuse totally abhorrent, and we have robust safeguarding policies and practices in place to deal with situations should they arise. We encourage anyone that has been a victim of abuse to contact the local police,” the Brethren spokesperson wrote.
That claim differs from the experiences of former members as told to Forum News Service, as well as reports published elsewhere, specifically in the UK, about how claims of sexual abuse are treated.
Bruce D. Hales, the current universal leader of the Brethren, has told members to respect the police, but keep them at arm’s length, according to his published works obtained by Forum News Service.
“It’s much better to be arrested by Christ than [to] be arrested by the officers of the law. So we want young persons to submit. We don’t want them to get into the hands of the earthly authorities. Our young people don’t belong in the hands of police, they’re not for us,” Hales is quoted as saying.
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Stephen Kent, a retired university professor from Alberta, Canada, and an expert in alternative religions, said that abuse within closed communities brings terrible harm.
ReplyDelete“When abuse happens in a closed community like in Neche, very rarely, if ever, are authorities brought in to investigate and/or lay charges. Because of the group’s perspective of the outside world being evil and sinful, they will handle the issues in house if they handle them at all,” Kent said.
“Sometimes they don’t get handled because leaders are involved in the alleged abuse incidents. So consequently, the abuse perpetuates. There is no justice. And the harm, physically, mentally and sexually, is just extraordinary,” Kent said.
Investigation patterns
The Brethren — along with other faith-based institutions — has been under scrutiny for two years by a Royal Commission of Inquiry investigation in New Zealand. The commission, which is similar to a Senate hearing in the U.S., is exploring how people in care were abused by institutions meant to protect them.
Former members of the Brethren from around the world have reported abuse, and those reports need to be investigated further, said Jill Aebi-Mytton, a former Brethren member who later became a psychologist.
From Kent, England, Aebi-Mytton was 16 years old when her family left the church, but growing up in what she calls the “Plymouth Brethren cult” shaped the rest of her life.
As a psychologist, she gravitated toward understanding the human psyche behind cults.
“In 1990, I began to really look into who this group was and what its impact on leavers (those who left) is,” Aebi-Mytton said.
She started her research with a quantitative study of the mental health of those who left the Brethren.
“Yeah, we have trauma, and it is likely that sudden loss of community support interacting with the sudden loss of family, especially close ones [is a main reason for trauma]. What people talk about on Facebook is the loss,” said Aebi-Mytton, speaking of her fellow Brethren “survivors.”
In a second round of research in 2010, Aebi-Mytton found that 27% of participants in her study who were former members of the Brethren said they had been abused as children. She believes the percentage could have been higher because the study, which was approved by a university ethics committee, lacked questions that she is now trying to answer.
“From this, we cannot assume that therefore 27% of all former members were abused and certainly not 27% of current members, which is what the Brethren claimed I have said,” she said.
Coming forward to report abuse takes courage, Aebi-Mytton said.
In the Brethren, “Everything gets pushed under the carpet and of course that adds to the trauma. You’re brave enough to report it and in some cases they blame you. That happens in normal life, but in a cultic group it can be institutional,” she said. “Additionally, people may believe that God is punishing them. And you’re a woman, you need to suck it up. The amount of trauma is gobsmacking, isn’t it?”
“Some of the stories are too painful and the survivors are unable to tell them or report them. I was fortunate, I wasn’t abused in that way,” she said.
‘The toolbox’
Decades after leaving the Brethren, Cheryl Bawtinheimer Hope found out she was known as “Satan’s child,” because she was born on Halloween.
The irony of the nickname isn’t lost on Hope. She underwent years of sexual abuse and trafficking in Saskatchewan, Canada, before she was forced out of the Brethren, Hope said.
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Like almost all members, Hope was born into the Brethren, growing up in the town of Maple Creek, Saskatchewan. When she was three years old, her father suffered a life-threatening accident after he fell from scaffolding and she was moved to a relative’s house. Children were often sent to neighbors or relatives if there was a family emergency or if parents were on the road to excommunication, which in Brethren terms comes in two steps: being “shut up,” isolated but still a member, and then “withdrawn from,” a process that rips many families apart, Hope said.
ReplyDelete“The very first night he helped himself,” Hope said of her first abuser. Forum News Service has chosen not to name the alleged abuser until charges are filed, but the man is still alive, although elderly now. Hope claims that other people she knows have also filed reports against him in the past.
“He had a toolbox that he used to ‘fix’ children, abuse little girls. It was his job to fix little girls and he made me believe that I needed to be fixed,” said Hope, recalling the metal toolbox — peeling paint — that clanged loudly when shut. Inside, he kept candies, including Smarties, a red-handled screwdriver and bite-marked pencils.
“Fixing me was his game and anything I was doing was helping my dad. If I showed any kind of anything a little child would show, I had to be fixed and the toolbox came out,” Hope said.
“He would use money out of his pockets … and if I was acting out when I was with him anywhere, he'd jingle his change in his pockets and it would shut me up. He would even do it at church when I was nearby,” Hope said.
“He knew how to scare me,” she said.
Some of Hope’s claims include her saying she was used as a mule to carry drugs inside her body. She was photographed for child abuse material. She was drugged and raped repeatedly until she was about 12 years old, she said. Details of her testimony are vivid, and she disclosed much of her story on the Blackballed Podcast with James Di Fiore.
“I was sexually trafficked there and I had no intention of coming out with my story. This is a worldwide problem. We can’t just lock these people up. We need to take these people and put them through some sort of rehab. These people are sick,” Hope said, including her abuser in that characterization.“He was a sick, sick, sick man.”
Beth Seed grew up in St. Vincent, Minnesota, 18 miles east of Neche, just on the other side of the Red River from Pembina, North Dakota. Like Hope, she was sent to live with relatives, but it was when her parents were “shut up,” the first step toward excommunication from the group, she said. Almost immediately, a younger relative began sexually abusing her, Seed claimed.
Seed left the Brethren when she was 21 years old. After she was excommunicated in 2008, she saw her abuser “living his best life, married, with children, suffering zero,” and her own family “breaking bread” with him. They refused to sit down with her or her young daughter because to them, she was an outsider.
“You have a huge problem with sexual abuse that you have not dealt with. Just because you want to shut your eyes and don’t talk about it because women are nothing,” Seed said. “And yes, there are boys and men being abused in the Brethren, but not like women. It’s not the same.”
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‘Like giving God the middle finger’
ReplyDeleteCraig Hoyle, a former Plymouth Brethren member from New Zealand, can trace his lineage through the Brethren for seven generations, going back to the founders in the 1820s. When he did research into his ancestry, he also found a long line of inter-generational trauma and broken families.
From a young age, Hoyle knew he was different, but he kept his sexual orientation a secret until guilt overcame him.
“I came out as gay to the priests when I was 18 because I believed something was wrong with me and the only way I could possibly be cured was to confess my sin, as I saw it at the time,” Hoyle said.
By that time in 2008, the Brethren had moved on from the view that gays were to be excommunicated — or “withdrawn from” — immediately, Hoyle said.
“They wanted to try and help and so their motivation had moved from judgment and condemnation to a place of — while there was still judgment — seeking to help and be compassionate and of course that help and compassion can be just as detrimental if it comes from the wrong place,” Hoyle said.
Brethren “universal leader” Bruce D. Hales directed Hoyle to see two doctors, Hoyle said. The first questioned him inappropriately, asking for sordid details, he said.
“You come away from these encounters feeling dirty and ashamed. In the moment you assume it’s because of your guilt and your sin and it can take quite a long time that sort of icky feeling is not actually you, it’s them,” Hoyle said. “So I tried to run away after that encounter, it was just too much.”
But he got pulled back into the Brethren, and saw the second doctor in Sydney, Australia.
“While he couldn't cure my sexuality he was experimenting on treatments on other gay people in the Brethren, the thinking was that although my sexuality couldn’t be cured, it could be suppressed all together,” Hoyle said.
After a 10-minute consultation, Mark Christopher James Craddock, the second doctor who was also a member of the Brethren, prescribed Cyprostat, which lowers libido by reducing the amount of testosterone, and is typically used to treat prostate cancer and to chemically castrate violent sex offenders. Craddock later had his license to practice medicine stripped away due to this action, according to published reports in Australia .
As a teenager, and because he still believed in following the “man of God’s orders,” he didn’t question the prescription.
“Asking someone to say no in a situation like that is like giving God the middle finger,” he said.
‘Backstabbing’
Judy Symington Harlow left Neche, her mother and the Brethren when she was 20, but remembers near constant mental abuse she calls “backstabbing.”
“From when I was about eight or nine, someone would constantly catch me by myself and all of the sudden they’d be behind me, and they’d be saying things like: ‘You have to get right in your head, you know you’re a sinner,’” Harlow told Forum News Service after she drove from South Dakota to Neche on June 13.
“It’s every single woman, they pick on all the women until they wear us down. We’re supposed to be submissive, get married, have kids and shut up,” Harlow said. “It went on and on and on until right before I left. I called it backstabbing.”
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Another former member still living in Neche, who wished to remain anonymous because of more than 20 years of harassment from the Brethren, told Forum News Service that her house and cars had been vandalized, and then in April of 2023, she received a strange telephone call.
ReplyDelete“My husband passed away a few months earlier and I got a phone call in the middle of the afternoon from the sheriff’s department and they said they had a 911 call from my husband who was needing help,” the woman told Forum News Service.
The deputy confirmed her address, and then told her the call came from south of Neche.
“It took me a few minutes to actually catch on, but I realized a cemetery is what they were referring to. We had it investigated and the call did ping off of the Neche tower,” the woman said.
“The minute you get kicked out, you’re … you’re the enemy, I guess,” she said.
Surviving, and thriving
Ilona Lyons considers herself and her family now some of the luckier former Brethren members. Many families are torn apart when they leave. They’re taught that the church comes before family and to leave is like death, she said.
But her immediate family left together, leaving her mother, who will no longer speak to her, behind.
She knows her former abusers have frequent contact with the family she left behind.
“They get to sit and eat with my mom and they get to see my mom. She sits with my abusers all the time, and I’ve asked her that. ‘How can you sit with somebody who abused me over and over and over as a kid, but you won’t sit and eat with my daughter or me?” Lyons said.
Lyons remembered the day she realized she needed to leave. She was reading a book that she wasn’t supposed to read, “Stolen Innocence” by Elissa Wall, a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who was forced to marry when she was 14 years old.
“I remember I was lying right on my bed. I remember the sun coming in the window," Lyons recalled. "I remember lying right there and reading it and I remember putting my head down and being like… ‘I think we’re in a cult.’”
“I’m out now. I’m happy. Do I want to even spend another minute on them?" said. "I do get angry, but then I always go back to, you know what? I’m happy. I don’t even want to go back there, to that place."
In 1992, at 17 years old, Cheryl Bawtinheimer Hope left the Brethren. Like others, she went through the lectures called “priestly visits” and the scorn before her departure.
Nearly two years ago she filed a police report, went public with her story, then founded the Get A Life Podcast, which focuses on issues and the stories of former members related to the Brethren around the world.
The Saskatchewan Royal Canadian Mounted Police confirmed to Forum News Service that reports of sexual abuse have been made against the Brethren there and they are under investigation.
By the end of 2008, Craig Hoyle knew there was no future for him in the Brethren. In 2009, he began separating himself from Brethren life. He planned his escape, leaving the church first, and his home and job were later taken from him by Brethren leadership, he said.
He has never been welcomed back home or spoken to many of his family, with six siblings, since. Free of the Brethren, Hoyle is working as a journalist with the Sunday Star-Times, the largest newspaper in New Zealand.
“Fear is more of a thing for people who are still in there," Hoyle said. "It’s the three Fs that always get talked about: fear, family and finances, and those three things are keeping people in there much more so than eternal damnation.”
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Whistleblowers allege church with ND ties is replacing religion with riches
ReplyDeleteThe Plymouth Brethren is a religion exerting influence over its members finances, but it also has deep and growing business interests around the world that have drawn whistleblower accusations
By C.S. Hagen, Forum News Service August 13, 2024
Editor's note: This story is part four of a five-part series examining the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, its beliefs, practices and its role in the North Dakota town of Neche, population 344.
NECHE, N.D. — As former accountant turned “universal leader” Bruce D. Hales prepares the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church for the theoretical Rapture, his family and church members are buying up luxury properties and expanding homes around the world.
From Neche, North Dakota, to Sydney, Australia, the Brethren — an isolated yet global religious group with about 54,000 members — has poured millions of dollars into grand estates, according to data obtained by Forum News Service.
In tiny Neche, population 344, the Brethren are bankrolling home and office expansions and massive houses. Additional lavish spending by Brethren members in Australia was the subject of an investigative report by The Age , a leading Australian newspaper.
The developments are new as Brethren members once preferred to live frugally, according to former members. The church and their members now have a large financial stake in businesses, government contracts and real estate and are collectively worth about $65 billion, according to one source.
“Money in the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church has replaced faith in Jesus Christ,” said Cheryl Bawtinheimer Hope, a former Brethren member.
An ongoing financial investigation in Australia and scrutiny of the Brethren elsewhere prompted Forum News Service to learn more about the religion and its role in Neche. Interviews and research paint a picture that shows a group with a vast financial reach. The church is facing allegations of blurred lines between its religious organization and Brethren-linked businesses.
Stephen Kent, a retired Canadian professor considered an expert in alternative religions, receives information about the Brethren fairly regularly.
In 2007, elders within the Brethren told Kent that: "The Brethren would normally, on a monthly basis, give gifts to Mr. Hales as well as other people in responsible positions, and that money would be carried by what we jokingly would've called the Brethren Express,” Kent said.
“An elder (also) said that Hales used the money to assist the needy, but critics said that it was to lobby the Australian (Prime Minister John Howard) and American (President George W. Bush) governments,” Kent said.
“Another source said that he [Hales] must give his permission before members are allowed to marry, requires all members' internet access to be controlled by devices leased from a Brethren company and, most of all, does not tolerate any doubting or questioning of authority," Kent said.
Excessive time for indoctrination, financial manipulation and dependence are some of the aspects that lend credence to claims that the Brethren is a cult — as outlined by cultic expert Steven Hassan’s BITE Model of Authoritarian Control — a four-part checklist on how cults recruit and maintain control over members’ behavior, thoughts, information and emotions.
Despite multiple efforts, Forum News Service was denied face-to-face interviews with Brethren leaders or entry to its Neche meeting hall. A Brethren representative responded by email to some questions, and many of those responses are included below.
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More money in Neche
ReplyDeleteAll her adult life Zelda Hartje has worked with Brethren members.
As the assessor for Pembina County, Hartje is also the administrator of Pembina County Historical Museum, and was once a public school teacher in Neche before the Brethren began their own educational system, OneSchool Global.
She remembered the days when Neche was a religious center for the sect. When she was younger, Brethren houses were modest and smaller, she said.
Based on data alone, it’s clear something has changed. There’s more money in Neche these days. Houses in Neche can be bought for as low as $20,000, Hartje said, but new Brethren houses are the costliest ones in the county.
Two large newly-built homes in Neche are worth more than $800,000 each, Hartje said. A red two-story house near Campus & Co. store, the Brethren’s exclusive grocery and liquor store, was sold over market value of about $215,000 to a Brethren family for more than $400,000, Hartje said.
“No other home in the county has sold for that price. It’s been in the last 10 years, and those two big new ones are brand new. They’re the kind of homes you would see in a nice part of Fargo,” said Hartje, adding that in Fargo the estates would be worth well over $1 million.
Hartje said she also hasn’t seen anything from a tax perspective that raises her eyebrows yet.
Overall, the disparity between Brethren investments and non-Brethren residents is good for the town’s economic outlook, said Hartje, adding that Brethren members aren’t allowed to sleep in hotels, so they need larger houses to accommodate guests.
“The most valuable homes in Pembina County right now are in Neche. And the others are just modest with modest people living in them,” Hartje said.
A Brethren spokesperson told Forum News Service that all businesses operate separately from the church and that the success Brethren members have had around the world can be attributed to a good work ethic.
“We can observe that Brethren families work very hard, and as a result some have become very successful, leading to their hiring lots of people and contributing significantly to the towns around them,” the spokesperson said.
Carl Symington, a Brethren member from Pembina, North Dakota, acknowledged the Brethren’s deep pockets, which works as a safety net for the church’s members, he said in an interview with Forum News Service.
“A lot of things get blown out of proportion, and our organization has a lot of support, financial support, even credit card debt support. They will help us out but on the condition that it doesn’t happen again,” Symington said.
‘Disaster capitalists’
Recently, the Brethren’s expenditures and government contracts attracted media attention, and also the scrutiny of the Australian Tax Office, or ATO, which launched a no-notice raid in March this year into what former members describe as the Brethren’s financial wing based in Sydney, known as the Universal Business Team, or UBT. Shortly afterward, the Brethren’s Australian accounting firm, UBTA, announced it was closing.
Prior to the ATO raid, Australian and New Zealand media outlets reported that Brethren members are taking advantage of tax breaks in their countries through a complicated network of charitable trusts — like the Brethren’s charitable arm known as Rapid Relief Team — and that members are told to have an “investor mindset” ready to take advantage of crises.
Hales, who travels in a private jet, encourages his flock to “charge the highest price to the worldly people” in a doctrine called “spoiling the Egyptians,” which was his direction through his 2002 published works called white books.
“The world is there to take what we want from it, and leave everything we don’t want. Spoil the Egyptians as quick and as fast as you can,” Hales is quoted as saying.
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Twenty years later, speakers at a Brethren-linked international business conference in Sydney in September 2023 lectured attendees on how to continue generating profits and take advantage of times of crisis, The Post reported late last year.
ReplyDeleteCrises like the COVID-19 pandemic, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine , both international events from which Brethren members have reaped millions of dollars, according to a Forum News Service review of available data.
Before money is made, however, Brethren members need a trailblazer to help foster good will in beleaguered markets, said Damian Hastie, a researcher and founder of Open & Candid website, which started in 2020 after he began looking into government contracts.
“The RRT and the Brethren are disaster capitalists,” he said. “Everywhere RRT is working there is a Brethren company picking up business. And that seems odd to me to have a charity that works on disasters, and then all their businesses make a profit later.”
Acting as the Brethren’s public relations branch or charitable arm, RRT provides services to areas of natural disasters, according to the Brethren spokesperson.
“When catastrophe[s] take place, the Rapid Relief Team is equipped to step in at a moment’s notice, and support emergency services with quality food and refreshments, and provide tangible support to those affected,” the RRT reported on its website.
When the global COVID-19 pandemic hit, RRT was there, helping families with food boxes. After the war between Russia and Ukraine began, RRT was also there, driving 51 trucks of food during Operation 322 – Delivering Aid to Ukraine .
“The charities associated with our church fund the Rapid Relief Team, which supports emergency first responders, the OneSchool Global school system, and initiatives ranging from donating hay to drought-stricken farmers [to] raising millions for aid in Ukraine,” the Brethren spokesperson told Forum News Service.
In 2023, the RRT supported 1,387 events, served 374,900 meals and contributed 61,533 volunteer hours around the globe, according to numbers provided by the Brethren. Of that number in the United States the RRT supported 161 events, served 24,975 meals and contributed 7,142 volunteer hours.
“The total expenditure for RRT was more than $525,000 for the year,” the Brethren spokesperson told Forum News Service.
Information provided to Forum News Service, which was leaked to Hastie by a Brethren member who attended a Sydney business conference in September 2023, called Strive Seminar, reported that Brethren businesses boasted of $46 billion in turnover, or annual income, which is nearly three times what they earned in 2014.
The accumulated wealth of the Plymouth Brethren is about $65 billion, and profit for Brethren companies in 2023 was about $6.3 billion, according to information shared with attendees during the Strive Seminar.
“They [RRT] do good work, but it’s costing them a minimal amount of money compared to their overall worth,” said Hastie.
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The spokesperson for the Brethren told Forum News Service that there is a distinct separation between church and business, and that the church does not employ anyone.
ReplyDelete“In addition, our partners such as UBT (called the Brethren’s financial wing by former members) are not owned and operated by the church. Instead, they have been set up and are run by church members for the benefit of other church members and non-members,” the spokesperson said.
But as Hastie points out: Why would UBT, the church’s financial wing, which until last year reported on its website that it was owned by the Brethren, boast of its financial earnings?
“I’ve seen examples of charities getting 500% return on their investment. All tax free. That’s where the charities are really making the money, it’s not in the meeting rooms. They’re using religion to make money,” Hastie told Forum News Service.
A spokesperson for UBT, Adam Speed, told Forum News Service that UBT profits are reinvested into the group’s school, the Rapid Relief Team and other charitable causes.
“UBT’s primary role is to provide cutting-edge business advice and services to its customers,” Speed said.
The money trail
Much of Hastie’s research is focused on the Commonwealth countries (such as Australia and New Zealand and Canada), but in the United States, Forum News Service found multiple companies with ties to the Hales family who began winning procurement bids at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
At Open & Candid, Hastie tracked Brethren member companies across the globe and found out they were awarded nearly $4 billion in COVID-19 contracts with over 85% of those contracts linked to “Bruce Hales and his family.”
In America, some of the companies with ties to Bruce Hales or his family profited from the COVID-19 pandemic, Department of Defense contracts and the U.S. Mission to Ukraine. So far, Forum News Service has not found any evidence linking businesses owned by Brethren members in Neche to government contracts.
Business dealings in the USA included:
--Brethren-linked company Unispace, an office design firm, won PPE contracts worth a total of $28 million in the United States, with $15 million in California; $11.5 million in Maryland and $2 million in Louisiana, according to research performed by Hastie and Forum News Service.
--Shortly after winning the contracts in 2021, majority shareholders Gareth and Charles Hales sold Unispace, whose parent company is Australian-based Unispace Global Pty Limited to PAG Asia Capital, an investment firm, for $300 million, according to the Financial Review.
--After the sale, billions in PPE contracts were carried over to a newly-formed Australian-based Sante Global Pty. Ltd. which was once called Unispace Health Pty. Ltd., and to other companies connected to the Hales family.
--Coulmed Products Group, LLC out of New Jersey, worked in a partnership with Sante Global, a company registered in England with the sons of Bruce Hales: Charles and Gareth Hales , as shareholders. Coulmed Products landed a deal in 2020 with the U.S. Department of Defense for disposable isolation gowns worth $152.7 million.
--In 2021, Sante USA, LLC, a subsidiary of Sante Global, won a procurement bid worth $8.1 million to provide medical gloves to Indian Health Service in Oklahoma, according to data collected by ProPublica.
--Sante USA, LLC won a total of $28.5 million in federal contracts and subcontracts to provide goods such as rubber gloves to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Indian Health Service in Oklahoma; construction services for the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support Pacific, and medical equipment for the U.S. Mission to Ukraine in 2023.
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‘We were under pressure’
ReplyDeleteSteve Simmons, a former trustee of OneSchool Global, the Brethren’s educational system, in Auckland, New Zealand, approached the Get A Life podcast team to share his experience in early 2024.
OneSchool Global has about 120 campuses in 20 countries teaching about 10,000 students, said Simmons.
Before he left the Brethren, Simmons received a directive from the Brethren in 2014 that the school needed renovations and they were to use a construction company called Unispace Global, which at the time was owned in part by Bruce D. Hales’s sons, Gareth and Charles.
Although Brethren leaders originally said the project would be done at cost, the invoice grew to $650,000 New Zealand dollars, more than three times the price it would have been from a non-Brethren licensed construction crew, Simmons said.
“They hadn’t even asked for any competitive quotes, and all proceeds were going to the Brethren,” Simmons said.
“We were under pressure,” to agree to work with Unispace, Simmons said, adding that he used to believe: “Bruce Hales is so close to Jesus Christ that he can hear his heartbeat. How could he be wrong?”
After Simmons received outside help and a different quote of $120,000 for the same project, nothing could have prepared him for the response he received after calling for a special meeting. His actions were condemned. He was accused of being disloyal to the school’s trust and to the Hales name, Simmons said.
“I had a sense there was a guillotine swinging over my head,” Simmons said.
“From that point on I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was trying to stand up for the Brethren who I was representing as a trustee,” he said.
Simmons said that similar renovation projects were forced upon all Brethren’s schools at more than 120 campuses.
“Each campus only has to launder about $600,000. All Unispace had to do was calculate a sensible cost price for the job, add $600,000 and push it through. Anyone who objected was cut out of the profits or threatened with excommunication,” Simmons said.
“Repeat the formula 135 times, and voila, $80 million has been laundered from tax exempt charitable funds donated for children, right into the pockets of Unispace directors. Everything is invoiced, the books all balance and if nobody squeals they will get away with it,” Simmons said.
A regional director for OneSchool Global in America who wished to remain anonymous because he was not allowed to speak on behalf of the educational system, told Forum News Service that OSG school boards are expected to work with established laws and regulatory standards, including contracts and procurement processes.
“OSG does not direct our schools to use any provider for the contract work they undertake. And we do expect that schools will always seek to obtain the best value for money in any contracts,” said the regional director in an email, but neglected to fully answer additional questions.
Questions were also sent to UBT departments in the USA, Australia, New Zealand and to a Brethren spokesperson as well as other OneSchool Global representatives, but they did not reply.
Simmons was “shut up” and then excommunicated from the Brethren in 2022, he said.
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Booze, lax standards, ‘prayers for death’: Neche church’s schools and culture raise concerns
ReplyDeleteThe Plymouth Brethren, with a church in Neche, North Dakota, has its own schools and inculcated a culture of control, exclusion, intolerance and alcohol, according to former members.
By C.S. Hagen, Forum News Service August 14, 2024
Editor's note: This story is part five of a five-part series examining the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, its beliefs, practices and its role in the North Dakota town of Neche, population 344.
St. VINCENT, Minn. — Just before the COVID-19 pandemic, Tori Younggren needed a job. She didn’t have a teaching degree, but administrators at OneSchool Global - Pembina Campus — about 18 miles east of Neche, North Dakota — didn’t seem to mind.
The private school with about 47 students from grades 3-12 offered to pay Younggren $150 a day, and she began teaching elementary art and physical education without many questions asked.
“I thought it was strange that I had no certificate and no experience, and they were like, ‘absolutely we’ll hire you,’” Younggren said.
OneSchool Global – Pembina Campus is part of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church’s educational system, which has three campuses across Minnesota, and globally a total of 120 campuses, all established exclusively for Brethren children. No outsiders allowed.
Among other stipulations, Younggren was required to wear a long dress to work except during gym class, a rule she could skip at times. There was also a strict separation between girls and boys, even in gym classes, and she also found out rules were often arbitrary.
Despite the curious environment, which she said became bizarre when she found church elders were often watching, Younggren developed a bond with a young female student who once drew a picture of her hero: Younggren.
“Then, the next semester she wanted nothing to do with me anymore,” Younggren said. “It hurt. I didn’t do anything. They told her something that made her not want to be around me anymore. I felt very hopeless on how I could ever have an impact.”
Forum News Service interviews with 25 people, including current members and 13 former members, revealed the Plymouth Brethren — a secretive religion with a heavy presence in Neche — mostly remains separate from society, but not when some of their beliefs or actions are challenged. It is then that they can become political, and at times pray for the deaths of those who oppose them, according to former members.
Despite multiple efforts, Forum News Service was denied face-to-face interviews with Brethren leaders or entry to its Neche meeting hall. However, a Brethren representative did respond to emailed questions.
The Brethren representative told Forum News Service that the school is not owned by the church, but does share a close relationship. The system is supported through charities, Brethren members and what former members describe as the Brethren’s financial wing based in Sydney, known as the Universal Business Team, or UBT.
Additionally, “Teachers are professionally qualified and come from outside of the community. We do not teach religion in schools, as we believe that this is best undertaken at church and at home,” the spokesperson said.
A OneSchool Global in America regional director, who wished to remain anonymous because he did not have authority to speak for the organization, told Forum News Service that the school performs background and accreditation checks on all staff. Every staff member and volunteers undergo specialized training, which was not described in further detail.
Tight control over information and propaganda are some of the aspects that lend credence to former members' claims that the Brethren is a cult — as outlined by cultic expert Steven Hassan’s BITE Model of Authoritarian Control — a four-part checklist on how cults recruit and maintain control over members’ behavior, thoughts, information and emotions.
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Making headlines
ReplyDeleteGrowing up near Neche, Younggren knew little about the Brethren except that they were her neighbors.
“We know the Brethren are here, but we try to act like they’re not here,” Younggren said. "These rural communities breed tight groups."
Younggren left the school after her mother, the principal, who helped hire her, quit, and now works at her own seamstress store in Hallock, Minnesota.
“I just got so sick of it. I felt like I was no longer making an impact and always getting in trouble,” Younggren said.
Other teachers who spoke to Forum News Service offered insights similar to Younggren’s, but declined on-the-record interviews.
Despite the Brethren’s attempts at secrecy, the OneSchool Global-Pembina Campus has made headlines locally and internationally.
In 2022, two Brethren campuses, the one in St. Vincent, along with a campus in Stonewall, Manitoba, lost a fight in federal court to keep their identities hidden after they asked the Canadian Museum for Human Rights not to show their students LGBT material during field trips.
From 2015 to 2017, the museum complied with the OneSchool Global’s requests, according to media outlets, but later promised never to adapt tours again after a CBC News report came out.
In November 2022, a judge ordered the records be released along with a 3,000-page court record detailing the dispute.
The Brethren has a long history of condemning homosexuality, and the church became politically active as early as 1993, when it openly spoke out against gays in the military. Then, in 2004 and 2005, their concerns broadened, and the re-election of President George W. Bush became “extremely critical,” according to a published report on why the Brethren become involved in politics in 2005 by Peter J. Lineham of Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand.
Under the guidance of Brethren “universal leader” Bruce D. Hales, Brethren members were urged to become involved against the existential threat to “true marriage” even though they are not allowed to vote. Dozens of Brethren members, many from Canada, wrote to Bush praising his stance against gay marriage and pleading with him to stand firm, according to letters reviewed by Forum News Service.
And in Australia, the Guardian reported that the Brethren’s OneSchool Global network of private schools received almost $30 million in commonwealth payments for educational “disadvantage” — or challenges students faced because of their social or historical background — over five years despite many being among the country’s wealthiest schools.
‘Removal from this earth’
Ben Woodbury, a former Australian Brethren member, came out as gay when he was 19. On social media, he’s known as “excultboy.”
His experience illustrates the depth to the anti-LGBT feeling and strict censorship within the Plymouth Brethren that shapes their school policies and political activism.
“I genuinely didn’t want to be gay. I was extremely homophobic toward myself,” Woodbury said. “I knew I was gay from the age of nine, and until I was 14 I thought I was the only gay person in the whole world.”
Brethren members aren’t permitted to read anything they want, Woodbury said.
However, as a young teen, Woodbury would secretly read whatever outside news he could find. One day, he stumbled across an advertisement in the back of a newspaper and found the classified section.
“I found a male seeking male advert and that’s when I realized I wasn’t the only gay person in the world,” Woodbury said.
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The trauma he endured after he came out as gay didn’t end when he left the Brethren. He has received threats through social media and emails, and he reports each case to the Brethren, who usually say the threats aren’t representative of their organization, Woodbury said.
ReplyDelete“The straw that broke the camel’s back was a phone call where I was told they were going to put me into a closet and set it on fire,” Woodbury said. “I genuinely see that all it takes is one looney thinking that he’s a Christian crusader of the Brethren doing the man of God’s work. We all used to pray for the deaths of people who spoke up. I took it seriously.”
When asked for clarification, Woodbury described further:
“That was a common thing, and it still is, praying for the removal. Removal. Removal from this earth. Death. And you got kids doing that. They would put them on a little list and pass them around,” Woodbury said.
In the Brethren’s universal leader Bruce D. Hales’ words: “Persons that have taken a position of opposition against the saints, those that have gone out from us, what happens is that they become the agents of the devil,” Hales said, which is included in the Brethren’s publications, known as “ministry,” reviewed by Forum News Service.
A spokesperson from the Brethren denied that members pray for the deaths of those who criticize them.
“From time to time, some parishioners may pray for unfair criticism and attacks against the church to stop. But as for your broader question — the answer is an absolute, unequivocal no. No that does not happen and has never happened.
“We are Christian, and we believe that you turn the other cheek when wronged,” the spokesperson said.
When asked about outsiders, a Brethren spokesperson told Forum News Service that they try to “do good to all, as opportunities arise,” and that their church is “based on the values of love, care and compassion, not fear.”
After Woodbury received the death threat, he filed a complaint with police and has a pending court case coming up. Woodbury also knows of current and former members who were physically abused, he said.
“Out of the 15 people I have helped leave so far, seven have been abused, and one to the point of rape. It’s just something you don’t talk about,” Woodbury said.
The Brethren accepted the teachings against homosexuality in an article by George Mair, which states that being gay is a sin, “which brings revulsion to most Christians,” and is a “head-on collision” between modern science (which regards it as a psychiatric illness) and Scripture, which condemns it as a sin.
‘Otherwise I am a goodie goodie’
Tori Younggren wasn’t aware that shortly before she joined OneSchool Global as a teacher, a former principal of the school, Warren Nelson Anderson, was arrested on 10 child pornography-related charges. At the time of his arrest he possessed more than 3,000 images and videos of young children being abused, according to court documents.
As principal of one of the campuses managed by the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church in the U.S. and Canada, he later pleaded guilty to receipt of child pornography in Minnesota’s Kittson County. It is unclear if Anderson was a member of the Brethren, who typically hires staff outside their community.
A search warrant was executed at Anderson's St. Vincent home on March 27, 2017, by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Investigators seized a computer and external hard drives, according to the criminal complaint.
When questioned during the search, Anderson admitted to downloading some "questionable things" and told law enforcement he had been downloading and viewing child pornography for about 10 years. He said that he had never manufactured child porn and claimed to never have touched a child.
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Anderson acknowledged to law enforcement that he knew what he was doing was wrong and said, "otherwise I am a goodie goodie," according to the criminal complaint.
ReplyDeleteThere were also no records of Anderson’s teacher’s license in the Minnesota Department of Education database, but he held positions across the globe where he had close contact with children, according to court documents.
“It’s all just a facade. They don’t care how good a teacher we are. I didn’t have a teacher's degree. You don’t have to be a licensed teacher to work there,” Younggren said. “Their textbooks are blacked out, huge pages that have black Sharpie on them. Pages have been removed. Cameras everywhere in the school. Cameras on your work computers. They could look in on your computer at any time.”
Former Brethren members reported that all technological devices are armed with spyware called Streamline 3 , which members pay for every month at the non-negotiable price of $37.
“You’re required to have UBT phones and use the UBT plan, which controls the internet,” said former member Carman Drever, adding Brethren leadership has access to phone and internet logs of its members. Additionally, the church has access to random screenshots of online activity and can track its members.
In a recent story published by The Guardian, a Brethren spokesperson said that software like Streamline 3 is “normal practice” in their schools to “prevent harmful content, malware and the like” and that the non-student version for Brethren members is not monitored, but used for preventing malware only.
‘Drink makes a strong man stronger’
While working at OneSchool Global, Younggren said she saw signs of abuse, especially related to alcohol. Drinking among students was one problem she said she wasn’t allowed to address.
“Those little kids would talk about drinking. Little kids. We had kids drinking in class, using water bottles – straight vodka. We weren’t allowed to punish them,” Younggren said, adding that she was also not allowed to fail them.
A spokesperson for OneSchool Global in America disagreed with Younggren, saying that teachers are allowed to fail students if they perform poorly and that “alcohol has never been condoned on OSG Campus grounds.”
The Brethren never were “tee-totallers,” according to former members, but rarely drank strong spirits before James Taylor Jr led the church beginning in 1959. His leadership ended in 1970, shortly after the Aberdeen incident, a sexual scandal that split the sect in two. Those that followed Taylor became the Exclusive Brethren and followed his example of favoring whiskey.
“Until James Taylor Jr. came in, hard liquor was considered sinful. He was the guy who radicalized it. Up until then it was like 100 boring, hardline sects, but he radicalized it, and he made a lot of money out of it,” Marsh said.
In the 1970s, Brethren preferred Johnnie Walker Red Label or Black Label Scotch, but their tastes have refined in recent years to Johnnie Walker Blue Label, Maker’s Mark bourbon and Chivas Regal Scotch, said Carman Drever, a former Brethren member who left in 2004.
Most American Brethren members drink slightly less than those who live in Australia or New Zealand, but many employers have mini bars stocked full with alcohol in their places of business, Drever said.
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Some larger meeting rooms even have a lounge area that stocks alcohol, Drever said.
ReplyDeleteAlcohol is also given freely to teenagers, Drever said. Another former member, Ilona Lyons, said her son was 12 years old when he was handed his first beer to drink.
“Unfortunately, that has been a problem for as long as I remember," Drever said. "The change is now they are offering multiple beer and hard liquor options as well."
Alcoholic options are also available through Vendimia, a supplier of wine and spirits “with an ever-expanding range,” according to the website of the Brethren’s Campus & Co., a store that is exclusive to members. To find out what those options are on the Australian website, however, a UBT membership is required.
Alcohol abuse in the Brethren has apparently come to the attention of Hales, the Brethren’s “universal leader.” He has discouraged heavy drinking in his published works, which sometimes are called “the badger’s skin” to be used as a shield against outsiders, according to Marsh.
According to one passage in the “Ministry of Bruce Hales, Book 1,” he is quoted as saying: “Drink makes a strong man stronger and a weak man weaker.”
Brethren online magazines also say drinking must not be abused.
“While the Brethren do not forbid the consumption of alcohol, we emphasize the importance of responsible use and moderation,” an online Brethren magazine reported.
Hales has lectured the Brethren to drink in moderation, at the same time acknowledging that drunk driving and underage drinking was becoming a problem.
“The answer is control,” Hales said in 2002.
In 2004: “We have had these lovely young brethren who have had trouble with drink-driving charges. I think we’ve been as fair as we possibly can to them, do everything we could for them. It’s an awful thing to get into custody,” Hales is quoted in the Brethren’s ministry book.
By 2006, Hales recognized a problem among the Brethren with drinking excessive hard liquor. “Measure is needed. See, prohibition doesn’t attach to the liberty of Christianity, prohibition won’t work. But self-control will. It’s a fruit of the Spirit. It’s a crime, drink-driving is a crime,” Hales is quoted in the Brethren’s ministry book.
In 2007: “I think the young people drink hard liquor too early and too much of it. The difficulty is we live in a time of really great affluence, in the main,” Hales is quoted as saying in the Brethren’s ministry book.
Stephen Kent, the retired Canadian professor considered an expert on alternative religions, believes that alcohol consumption is one way the Brethren exerts undue influence on its members.
“It (Brethren) doesn’t allow drugs except for alcohol. There are some internal problems in the group very often from alcohol abuse, which might be a way for them to cope with the extreme stress that people feel,” Kent said. “So the use of undue influence in a variety of forms helps to create obedience and dependency upon the group and in doing so explains why many people in the outside world who know about the group consider them to be socially deviant and a cult."
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One woman’s story of leaving the Exclusive Brethren – and why she’s dedicated to helping others on the outside
ReplyDeleteby Bess Manson, The Post, New Zealand October 12, 2024
Lindy Jacomb on leaving a cult
When Lindy Jacomb left the Exclusive Brethren, it meant starting a whole new life. As she tells Bess Manson, now she’s sharing her story to help others navigate the outside world.
Plotting her exit from the Exclusive Brethren was like leaping into a black hole, says Lindy Jacomb.
The then 20-year-old had spent months considering how she would manage life in the outside world, where those on the outer were referred to by the conservative sect as ‘Worldlies’.
Knowing that leaving meant she would be ostracised by her family was monumentous, she says.
The weight of the decision “hits you like a ton of bricks”.
“It’s psychologically devastating because you know this means you’re going to lose everything.
“We all grew up seeing people being excommunicated. When I was eight a beloved aunt of mine just disappeared. They disappear from you along with photos and any talk of them. So you grow up knowing if you don’t toe the line you could disappear and you could lose everybody and they could lose you. It’s a genuine horror.”
It’s been 15 years since Jacomb made that tortuous decision to leave. She now runs the Olive Leaf Network, a charity helping others who leave high-demand religious groups. She is talking about their work at Decult 2024, a conference addressing the pervasive harm inflicted by high-control groups in Aotearoa, happening in Christchurch this month
Life for Jacomb, 36, is a world away from the strictures of the Exclusive Brethren, which number around 50,000 worldwide and about 9000 in Aotearoa.
Zoe, a rottweiler-cross, bounds around the garden, tail wagging. There are other pets too at the home she shares with her husband, Tim and their two young children high up in the heavens of Wellington. There’s another hound, Billie the border terrier, chickens, a couple of frogs. It’s a proper menagerie.
“I’d have a whole zoo if I could,” she says.
Those pets and Jacomb’s entire look - short pixie haircut, jeans - are a visible rebellion of the life she used to lead. Growing up they weren’t allowed pets, which were seen as a waste of affection and money that should be being given back into the group, she says.
She never wears skirts after years of not being allowed to wear trousers.
“I hated skirts. I hated cooking. I hated all those things that little Brethren girls were meant to be learning how to do.”
Literature was heavily restricted too, she says. Fiction was discouraged. You wonder what they would make of the Lee Child and John le Carré novels among the titles lining her bookshelves.
Looming large in her living room, though, is a cross-stitch of The Last Supper. There’s a bowl of handwritten prayers in the kitchen. Jacomb still has faith. These days she calls herself a Christian Humanist.
After she left the Exclusive Brethren she did a Bachelor of Theology to try to deconstruct Christianity, to try to figure out if there was anything she wanted to hold on to that was good.
She discovered there was good, and bad.
“The more I look at it the more that seems to be true of every spirituality, in every religion. It can be beautiful and beneficial but it can also be weaponised and it can be used to harm and control people.”
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Jacomb was a multi-generational member of the Exclusive Brethren, who now call themselves the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church after a rebranding in 2012 while they were fighting to retain charitable status in the UK.
ReplyDeleteThe third of six children, she grew up in Māngere Bridge, a hub for the sect in Auckland. Her family was committed to the Brethren ethos attending church every night and four or five times on Sundays.
The rules separating them from those outside the Brethren were many and strictly enforced. Growing up they had no internet access, no TV, no radio, she says.
She went to a secular primary school but by the time she got to secondary there was a fledgling Brethren private schooling system. It’s now OneSchool Global, a globally branded network with an ethos to uphold fundamental Christian teachings and beliefs, especially those of “purity, integrity and godliness”.
“We were not allowed to go to university or have a cup of tea with our neighbour or play with the neighbourhood worldlie children because they were ‘other’ and we were God’s ‘chosen people’,” Jacomb says.
A spokesperson for the PBCC told Sunday: “Our children are not prevented from studying university courses, however, we don’t encourage the on-campus lifestyle. That’s why many of our members choose to study online, as it both suits their career goals and is in line with our beliefs.”
As a teenager Jacomb began investigating what life in the outside world might look like. She even kept a secret locked briefcase full of questions and ponderings. By 20, she was exploring the possibility of a life away from the Brethren, while maintaining the facade of a dutiful member.
“Every single night you have to go out and listen to stuff you no longer believe in and play this part - it’s really psychologically destructive and torturous.
“You can’t bear to go and you can’t bear to stay. It’s unsustainable. I think there are a lot of Brethren living in that position.”
She got to an ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ moment, she says. The story she was being sold about God and how they were meant to live just didn’t make sense anymore.
When she was asked if she ‘believed in’ Bruce Hales, the Sydney-based world leader of the PBCC, as if he were God himself, she had to say, ‘no’.
“That’s when the brown stuff hit the fan and I was asked to leave home. I was told ‘there’s no place for you here’.”
Preparing to leave was emotionally devastating.
“It did feel like planning a suicide… I’ve described it as being like jumping out of a plane into a black hole. You didn’t know what you’re going to and all you know is that you’re losing everything you have ever known.”
There were no warm hugs or tearful goodbye from her parents when she left, she says.
Her grandmother was a different story.
“Hugging me and she whispered two things that were flickers of hope in such a dark time. She said ‘I’ll never cut you off’ whispering it so no one else could hear and ‘God is with you’ - two forbidden things to think, let alone say to someone leaving the Brethren.”
In the months after, those words would soothe her. Initially, though, she was broken.
A relative on the outside helped her find a couple to stay with who became like her surrogate family. They helped her learn how to make decisions, something she found difficult coming from a system where every decision is made for you, from what to believe to what to wear.
“Even though I was 20 I was like a child in many ways because of my naivety and lack of skills to navigate this world.”
Former Brethren member Craig Hoyle, Jacomb’s cousin and chief news director for Sunday Star-Times, says each person who leaves has watched the journey of those who have left before them. Seeing what Jacomb went through helped him prepare for his own departure six months later.
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The biggest impression was how the Brethren turned against her after she left, says Hoyle, who wrote about his own experience in his book Excommunicated.
ReplyDelete“Lindy had been so loved. To hear and see these people who had loved her dearly in a very short space of time turn around and have this disgust and hatred for her had a huge impact on me - seeing how quickly the tide could turn against you.”
When he secretly met Jacomb shortly before he left, it was clear she was happier on the outside, he says.
“You’re told that your life will be miserable and the world will chew you up and spit you out, and so to me Lindy was then, and is now, the embodiment of having a good life outside the Brethren.”
***
Last year Jacomb founded Olive Leaf Network to help former members of high-control religious groups integrate into the outside world.
Olive Leaf Network also offers training to mental health professionals who work in group coercive control, recruiting tactics, and post-cult recovery. It’s run by former members, and people close to former members. They are agnostic, Christian, straight, gay. Jacomb praises her husband Tim for the ‘incredible support’ he had given in establishing and helping to maintain the charity.
In the first year they were contacted between five and ten times a week, usually by people trying to leave a high-demand religious group, and family concerned about loved ones recruited into one.
They have fielded calls from people leaving over 20 different groups, many of them from the PBCC. Jacomb claims Olive Leaf Network has been blocked by the PBCC on members’ devices. Disputing this, the PBCC says the Church has no control over the devices their members use, or the websites that they access.
The Church also says, “Contrary to some of the myths perpetuated about us, we do not prevent former members from contacting their families. What we cannot do is force families to maintain contact with that relative. In all but the most extreme circumstances, we didn’t leave that person, they left us.”
“People who leave these groups are so often vulnerable and they really are like refugees in their own country,” says Jacomb. “Till we came along New Zealand didn’t have this kind of entity to support people through these major life transitions.”
People are hungry for spirituality and a tribe to belong to and New Zealanders need to be far more aware of the dangers of high-demand religious groups, she says.
“We are all at risk of disinformation and of going down rabbit holes and joining up with belief systems or ideologies that might promise one thing and deliver something else. We can’t be naive about it.
“Loads of these groups are using online tactics. I’ve heard of people recruiting in the aisles of K-Mart, in the malls.”
Recovery from high-demand religious groups is a long road, says Jacomb, who is still dealing with the fallout from those formative years with the PBCC.
The relationship with her mother and siblings is shattered, though she still writes them letters in the hope of reconciliation. She has reconnected with her father and one brother who have been excommunicated.
She wants people who are contemplating leaving a high-demand religious group but are fearful of the world they will be entering that there is hope for a better life on the outside.
Freedom came at a great cost, but the sky didn’t fall in when she left. It just got brighter.
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Former members describe leaving the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church
ReplyDeleteby Briana Fiore for Stateline November 18, 2024
More than 50,000 people belong to a global religious sect that has restrictions around television, eating with outsiders and attending university. Some who've left the church say they still carry the trauma of what they experienced there.
Members from that same religious group also run schools and a charity that have been given millions of dollars in funding from Australian taxpayers.
Tom Grace was aged 10 when he was told that, for religious reasons, he couldn't keep his sulphur-crested cockatoo.
He remembers the time when he was taken down to the aviary with his brother and watched as his father cut a hole in the wire.
Tom, who lives on a property outside Adelaide, thought the bird, called Cocky, would jump at the chance to spread its wings.
"We wanted to encourage him to fly," Tom recalled.
But the bird barely budged – and after two days remained behind the wire.
By the third day, it had died.
"Rather than run for the opening, [Cocky] actually retreated to the other side of the cage," Tom said.
"Looking back on it, it's really an example of what being trapped in a cage can do to an animal — and I believe it's the same with humans."
Tom often thinks of his pet parrot when he reflects on his time in the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren.
Tom's exit from the church was swift, but moving on from it has taken much longer.
Tom has never met Adelaide woman Tam Bennett, who was raised under similar influences, but they have settled on the same term: "cage".
"It was like living in a box, being in a cage," Tam said of her upbringing.
"Everything was really regimented and controlled – what you wear, what you do during your day, how you spend your evenings, what you think.
"I'm a lesbian so there wasn't any happy ending for me in there."
Tom and Tam are former members of the Brethren. Both grew up in the church, and both felt compelled to make a break.
"I just fundamentally disagreed with everything the Brethren believed and the way they control the members," Tam said.
The church, they say, has had lasting impacts on their lives, especially when it comes to family.
While they both feel liberated by the decision to leave, they are, in different ways, still living in the aftermath of that choice.
"I definitely think it's a cult," Tam said.
"It's hard to explain what it's like to live in a cult … unless you've been in a cult," Tom said.
Sneaking out before dawn
The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church was established almost 200 years ago in the United Kingdom, after splintering from the Church of England.
Members soon migrated to Australia and New Zealand, and across Africa and North and South America.
There are about 15,000 members in Australia.
"We are a bit different. Every church is. But the 'cult' term is wrong and demonstrably untrue," a church spokesperson said.
"Our church has more than 50,000 members worldwide, with normal Christian people following a normal Christian Bible with normal Christian beliefs.
"We are a global Christian fellowship that live peacefully amongst neighbourhoods all over the world."
Members live amongst non-Brethren people, but many favour suburbs and towns in which there are Brethren schools and churches.
The Brethren does not seek new recruits, because most of its members have been born into the church.
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Those who are part of the group are expected to attend daily church meetings.
ReplyDeleteIt was against such a backdrop that the then-teenaged Tam first realised she was gay.
"I just freaked out and repressed it for a very, very long time," she said.
Homosexuality, she said, was a largely "unspoken" subject that was occasionally discussed "in a horrified whisper".
"It's considered one of the worst sins that a person can commit," she said.
"If someone was unfortunate enough to be found out in being gay in the church, it would be sort of like, 'How can we fix you?'"
Accompanying those views, Tam said, were restrictive expectations about how women dressed and led their lives.
"The way the house is set up is the man is the provider, and he will be expected to go to work, and the woman will stay home and take care of the kids," she said.
"You obey your father when you aren't married, and you obey your husband when you are."
The church said its views on gender roles were based on scripture and "no different to those of millions of other Christians around the world".
It said it endorsed biblical views including "wives submitting to their husbands".
While its teachings on homosexuality and sex outside of marriage "broadly align with those of millions of Anglicans, Catholics and others", the church insisted that did not mean "we are against the LGBTQIA+ community".
"Our members, like millions of other Christians who desire to live their lives according to the teaching of scripture, believe that sexual relationships should be between a man and a woman and take place within the sanctity of marriage," the church spokesperson said.
"Whilst our belief and practice is guided by the Holy Bible, that does not in any way impact on our respect for others nor our core values of care and compassion towards everyone, including those who are LGBTQIA+."
For Tam, however, a future in such an environment was not something she could countenance.
Her departure from her family home was carefully planned. To avoid an emotional goodbye with their parents, Tam and her two brothers secretly packed their things.
"We planned it so … they wouldn't see, because we knew that it would be very upsetting for all of us," she said.
"We left early one morning, we sort of snuck out together."
'A good Brethren boy'
According to the Brethren, such actions as Tam's are uncommon.
"It's rare that people choose to leave our church," the spokesperson said.
"When that happens we are obviously sad to see them go, but wish them well.
"Of an already small proportion of church members who choose to leave, a small number of those speak unfavourably about their experience – and while that is regrettable it is hardly a unique situation for any church to find itself in."
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Now aged 71, Tom Grace is among those who have spoken "unfavourably" about childhood in the Brethren.
ReplyDelete"I was very compliant. I was a good Brethren boy — that was how I saw myself," he said.
"We weren't allowed to watch TV, we weren't allowed to listen to the radio, we didn't have any recorded music.
"We weren't allowed to eat food in front of people who were not Brethren."
When Tom was 17, his father left the church to set up a splinter group, but they still "basically behaved as though we were Brethren".
It was only when Tom faced the prospect of raising his own family in such cloistered surrounds that he started drifting away.
"My first wife and I had our eldest son, a beautiful little boy, and we just felt we couldn't subject him to that – to such a tiny future, in such a small group," he said.
"The horizons were too small."
As Tom sought to broaden those horizons, some of his siblings remained within the church's fold, causing what became a lifelong rift.
"They do shun people," Tom said of the church.
"I never spoke again to my eldest sister, I never spoke again – she never spoke to me."
The Brethren denies that it makes family members cut ties with one another.
"Contrary to some of the myths perpetuated about us, we do not prevent former members from contacting their families," its spokesperson said.
"What we cannot do is force families to maintain contact with that relative if they don't want to."
Similarly, the church insists its "doctrine of separation" is intended not to keep individuals apart, but to help them reject influences contrary to Christian principles.
"This is why we tend to avoid social media, and when we do use it, it's usually to support our business endeavours," the spokesperson said.
"What this does not mean, is that we cut ourselves off from relationships, charity, or dialogue with others outside of our fellowship."
Dialogue with loved ones is what Tom craved after leaving the Brethren behind, but the fissure in his family meant he never knew his brother was dying of asbestosis.
That experience was, he said, "quite frankly just barbarous".
"I think it was about 30 years before I really accepted the fact that our family was never going to be back together again," he said.
'The teachings of Christ'
One of the Brethren's churches sits just south of Adelaide. It is partly visible from the road and features a double-gated entrance with several security cameras.
Brethren members operate their own supermarket chain called Campus&Co, as well as an emergency response support charity called the Rapid Relief Team.
The charity, which often partners with government departments, received almost $460,000 in public money in the most recent annual reporting period and more than $580,000 the previous year.
A school network linked to the Brethren also receives taxpayer funding.
Most Brethren children attend schools administered by the OneSchool Global network, and there are more than 30 campuses across Australia.
A dozen are in New South Wales, seven in Victoria, five in Western Australia, four in Queensland, two in Tasmania and one in South Australia.
In 2022, the SA campus alone received $304,500 from the state government as well as $1,128,000 from the federal government.
According to the Brethren's website, the schools are not owned or run by the church, but "share a close relationship" with it.
OneSchool Global said government funding arrangements were entirely consistent with those involving other denominations.
"[Our] schools are funded in the same manner as any other independent school across the states in which we operate, and as a result are subject to the same processes for obtaining, and reporting on, government funding," a spokesperson said.
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The church admits that young members who wish to pursue tertiary education are "encouraged to do so online, rather than attend or live on a campus".
ReplyDelete"Where possible we choose to distance ourselves from influences which could distract from the teachings of Christ," the church's spokesperson said.
It is an arrangement that does not sit well with Tom Grace.
"The whole concept of restricting people from doing education is just really awful," he said.
"The women are compelled to, when they leave school, basically take an administrative or clerical job in one of the Brethren businesses until they get married, and they get married quite young and then basically they're mothers from that point forward."
Tom speaks from experience – when he finished school, he wanted to study law but was told he couldn't.
"My parents said, 'No, you can't go to Adelaide Uni because your sister nearly got turned away from the faith by going to uni'," he said.
That was five decades ago — but claims that young Brethren members are still impeded from attending university campuses have prompted SA Education Minister Blair Boyer to ask regulators to investigate.
"Upon being made aware of allegations against Brethren schools, I referred these matters to the Education Standards Board for their consideration," he said.
"If any breaches have occurred, I expect the Education Standards Board will take them seriously and act accordingly."
A board spokesperson said schools were reviewed at least once every five years to ensure they complied with requirements.
Beyond the Brethren
Tom was in his 40s when he decided to take up the career he'd been advised against 25 years earlier. He put himself through law school.
He has now been a lawyer for two decades and, this year, returned to university to further his studies.
He runs a hobby farm with his wife, and they are on a mission to revegetate the land.
He is philosophical about the trajectory of his life.
"The earlier people are allowed to experience freedom — and the better support they have when they begin to experience freedom — the more chance they've got of surviving and rebuilding," he said.
Tam Bennett still experiences recurring nightmares about her former life.
But she has well and truly left the Brethren behind.
Tam is today enjoying life outside the church.
"Life can be so much better than what you're experiencing," she said.
Tam has a supportive partner, is part of her local Adelaide pride group and has found an accepting workplace.
"For many, many years I didn't think I could imagine real happiness," she said.
"I never thought I could be this happy and stable."
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