By Jordan Baker and Perry Duffin
A Christian pastor who founded a controversial drug rehabilitation centre for men accused of serious crimes – which once treated former game show host Andrew O’Keefe – has been arrested and charged with faking reports about patients’ drug use.
Ross Pene, 68, who claims links to Hillsong and C3 pentecostal churches, was arrested by officers from Strike Force Toopuntul on the site of the now-defunct Connect Global centre in Port Stephens on Wednesday, and faces five charges relating to perverting the course of justice.
Connect Global founder pastor Ross Pene at the rehab centre on the Mid North Coast.Credit: Nine News
“It was uncovered an employee of the facility was allegedly issuing fraudulent reports about patients’ drug use who were required to be at the facility drug-free as part of their bail undertaking,” police alleged in a statement. The charges relate to five patients.
Sources with knowledge of the investigation say detectives working with the taskforce, part of the anti-gang squad Raptor, were looking into allegations of doctored urinalysis tests. Rehabs usually require participants to remain off drugs, and use urinalysis to enforce the rule.
Ross Pene, 68. was arrested by police on Wednesday morning.Credit: Police media
In December, a Herald investigation revealed concerns about lax security at the Mid North Coast facility, which had become a popular alternative to prison remand for men accused of serious offences such as drug trafficking, violence, and firearms charges.
If its clients were convicted, time spent at the centre – a former tourist resort with a pool and tennis court – could count towards their sentences.
Addiction-ravaged O’Keefe became a client after being accused of holding a sex worker by the throat (the charges were dropped). So was real estate high-flyer turned Dover Heights stabber Matthew Ramsay, before he was sent back to jail for wandering off and getting high while on bail.
A parade of alleged high-level drug dealers has also cycled through the “Oyster Barn” common room.
Local police were concerned about the number of bail breaches at the facility. The council had also refused to grant it permission to operate as a group home, although the Land and Environment Court partly overturned the council’s decision.
Andrew O’Keefe meeting Pastor Ross Pene as he checks into rehab at Connect Global.
In early January, an alleged drug importer Hussein Chamas allegedly fled the centre. He was arrested soon after by Australian Federal Police on a $200,000 yacht off the Northern Territory, on his way to freedom in Indonesia.
The rehab shared the site with private cabins, often rented to single parents desperate for accommodation amid the region’s housing shortage. Between 2017 and 2020, some of the cabins were also used as emergency accommodation for children in state care.
Connect Global’s board decided in late January to begin winding up the charity in the wake of the Herald’s exposé, which prompted an urgent and yet-to-be finalised review by the NSW attorney-general. The charity is in administration and its charity status has also been revoked.
Pene, 68, a Harley-riding New Zealand-born pastor, established Connect Global in 2013. He has worked with addicts around Newcastle for decades; the Connect Global website described him as a visionary.
Pene had also performed weddings, funerals, christenings and “spiritual stuff” for bikies and has entertained the Finks and Bandidos for afternoon tea, he told a court last year.
The former Fisherman’s Village tourist resort in Port Stephens was used as a rehab centre by Connect Global.
Connect Global, a registered charity, purported to be heavily Christian; the intake agreement said all church-related activities, particularly the Sunday service, were mandatory.
For years, judges have allowed defendants to be sent there despite council’s refusal to grant permission, often on the strength of Pene’s testimony in court; one described being “extremely impressed” by the program and the pastor’s “obvious commitment to it”.
Pene was arrested at the Swan Bay site, where he was still living, on Wednesday, and taken to Raymond Terrace Police Station. He was charged with five counts of “do act etc intending” to pervert the course of justice relating to five patients.
He pleaded not guilty in Raymond Terrace Local Court on Wednesday afternoon, where he was granted bail.
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