Inside Anglican Catholic Mission Community: Secretive religious cult with communes across Australia
A secret religious cult with communes across Australia dictates when and what its member can eat, with one follower revealing she lost 30kg on the strict diet. LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
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A secretive, religious cult operating in communes across Australia is subjecting members to extreme rules that dictate what and when they eat, how much they exercise, demand they hand over all their assets and punish those who don’t obey.
A three-month The Sunday Mail investigation has laid bare for the first time the inner workings of the group – known as the Anglican Catholic Mission Community.
The rules state members are given just one set of clothes and are required to be fluent in an ancient language, while university education is considered “brainwash”.
Children are to be homeschooled in a strict religious education, which is not recognised in the Australian curriculum.
Explosive court documents reveal for the first time the shocking rules and doctrines members must live by and the punishments they face for disobeying commands.
The documents, filed in the Queensland Supreme Court as part of a dispute over the group’s multimillion-dollar property portfolio, also detail the level of control the leader of the cult has over its members who need to seek permission to leave or eat outside the compound.
The rules specify gender-based jobs – women are encouraged to work in the fitness industry or be chefs and bookkeepers. Men are encouraged to work in trades.
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The court documents reveal there are about 100 adults living under the rule of the ACMC, plus many children, who live across compounds in NSW and Queensland.
Their diet is strict with ex- members telling how they often foraged in bins for discarded food left by cafes and other eateries.
The cult – formerly known as the Jesus People of North Queensland – is ruled by men, with the leader called the “reshan”.
Women in the group must wear a headscarf and are not allowed to make complaints against the reshan. All members are expected to speak quietly and laughing is discouraged.
The group, under its former leader who is now deceased, has a history of domestic violence. Several former members told The Sunday Mail they had witnessed women – including pregnant women – being abused under the former leader, who was in charge until 2015.
This included a pregnant woman being slapped to the ground, a woman who was beaten so badly she had to be hospitalised, a woman whose head was rammed into a tree and another who was dragged by the hair.
Six former members were interviewed about their time in the group, as well as several people who helped members leave and dozens of others connected to the group.
Most former members asked not to be identified for fear or out of concern for the impact it would have on their lives today.
EXTREME RULES
They live under a strict set of rules outlined in a number of documents called The Customary, the Proposed Rule of Life and The Golden Thread written by the group’s founder, the late Daniel Landy-Ariel.
The same set of rules were presented by the current leader to explain the cult’s way of life in the court battle.
Rules include that members are banned from owning any personal property and must hand over all their possessions when they join.
They must take on a biblical name and men should have only blue-collar trades, while women can be chefs, personal trainers or bookkeepers to “free up male members from office duties”.
Tertiary education is against the rules, saving the brethren from “university squander and brainwash”.
Children are to be homeschooled, mostly in religion and “preferably using Accelerated Christian Education, published by Protestants in the USA”.
“Materials and doctrinal statements are adjusted to suit our orthodox Anglican Catholic ‘heresy’,” the Customary states.
“We do not wish our children to be “brought up” in antichrist secular or purporting-to-be-religious schools.”
A judge ordered one young girl in the cult attend a mainstream school after finding her education progress was poor, court documents relating to a custody dispute show.
The reshan is also known as the “superior general”.
“Our particular Theocratic rulership/authority takes the form of an autocracy...the last word resides with Reshan,” the rules state.
Punishments in the group range from isolation to expulsion.
Women are not allowed to hold any positions of power, must wear headscarves and eat separately to men.
“Reshan will allocate a female missioner (married or single) … to keep him informed of what she and or others may see as current problems or disorder,” the Customary rules.
“Why allocate a female? No female can become Governor and therefore there will not ensue any ‘competing for the job’ manoeuvring.”
Women are also not allowed to make complaints about the reshan of a personal nature.
“Any accusation of a woman against Reshan for obviously ‘personal’ and emotional reasons will not be received,” the document says.
Community members must pray three times a day, homosexuality is banned, as well as contraception.
“Homosexuality is a sin and the duly repentant of homosexuality may be received,” the document says.
“The only sexuality condoned by the community, for the community, is heterosexuality.”
Members must also learn to speak and read in Aramaic, an ancient Biblical dialect considered to be the language spoken by Jesus.
STRICT DIET
Community members are forbidden from eating any food while away from the commune without approval from a superior and mealtimes within the properties are set at a strict schedule, with missioners called to the table by an audible “signal”.
The document also details what is to be eaten for each meal, stating breakfast on non-fasting days is “a bowl of brown rice, layered by a portion of scrambled egg, a scoop of sultanas and another of mixed dried fruit and wetted with either skim milk or full cream milk”.
Breakfast must be finished by 6.30am followed by two hours of exercise.
“On some farms we have large homemade washing machines propelled by pushbike and these are also seen as exercise (for ladies in priority, as they prefer, but also for men and older children),” the Customary states.
Lunch is homemade muesli, milk, yoghurt and sometimes a “portion of nuts”, as well as two pieces of fruit.
For dinner, community members are served “clean, lean animal or bird flesh” with brown rice and vegetables, as well as bread.
There are also stringent rules about how and when children should engage in sport and recreation.
“On our farms in the afternoon of the Sabbath … we may resort to the volleyball and basketball courts for an hour or so before sunset,” the document states.
Some time may also be allocated for adults to take children bushwalking, with refreshments and bibles in their packs, or swimming or fishing.
“The concept is not amusement but good fellowship and healthy exercise,” the Customary rules.
Those who are “obstinate, disobedient or proud” or who “habitually transgress” are punished quietly at first, publicly a second time and excommunicated if they fail to fall into line.
LEAVING
Excommunication involves the community member eating alone, with nobody being allowed to approach or speak to that person until they obtain a pardon.
The reshan can expel a member at any time “if he feels this is expedient for the spiritual welfare of the community”.
The same document says that anyone who chooses to leave will be given $1000, no matter how much they brought with them.
“They will receive $1000 only, or the current equivalent value of the money (if they so desire it) or the equivalent in goods and services,” it says.
Past members who spoke to The Sunday Mail did not receive any money when they left, with most effectively running away.
FORMER MEMBERS
One former member, Melbourne woman Madeline Hardess, revealed her family hired an organisation specialising in mind control to extract her from the group after they became concerned for her welfare.
She told how she lost 30kg in the first two months living in its Sydney commune as a result of the stringent exercise regimen and the severely-restricted diet, saying there were expectations on how women’s bodies should look.
She said this included pornographic-like posters being hung on the walls of the Sydney commune where she lived with mothers and their young children so women knew “this was the optimal body you should obtain”.
Ms Hardess said her two years with the cult from 2002-2004, during Daniel’s leadership, were spent working to the point of exhaustion, collecting discarded fruit and vegetables from commercial bins, cooking, cleaning and washing for the men and spending hours at train stations and beaches attempting to recruit new members.
She said she only became receptive to leaving after her partner at the time became angry with her when she did not prepare a meal for a group of men quickly enough, leaving her “terrified”.
“He just got so furious at me in front of everyone and I had already seen pretty horrific domestic violence by then of women being dragged by their hair, so I was pretty terrified,” Ms Hardess said.
“All the women knew that once you got married, you knew whether you had a good one or a bad one because you got hit or dragged.”
Another former member, who lived with the group prior to 2015, said she knew many women who remained traumatised by their experiences in the community
“I’m all for getting the information out there that might prevent someone else from getting into the same situation,” the woman, who the Sunday Mail will call “Farrah”, said.
“The level of trauma is so long-lasting and unresolvable. The women that I’ve stayed in contact with, who left the group, they’re still undergoing trauma. There’s still fear of retribution.”
Other court documents obtained by The Sunday Mail detail numerous allegations of domestic violence at one of the group’s Queensland properties.
“(One former member) recalls that a community member had seen the (deceased) leader (Reshan Daniel) beat his second wife with a brick and (the member) had assisted in attending to her wounds. (The member) said she also witnessed the leader holding his first wife and kneeing her repeatedly in the stomach,” the documents state.
The legal document, which discussed whether a 14-year-old girl should remain in the community, debated whether the Queensland compound is a “destructive cult” or “nurturing and supportive environment that teaches Christian ideals”.
THE CULT LEADERS
In another document penned by Daniel, called The Golden Thread, he denies allegations aired by past members during a legal hearing.
“A number of reprobates conjured up some ‘first-hand’ stuff … and some who spoke of my brainwashing techniques,” he wrote.
“It was, of course, total fabrication.”
When The Sunday-Mail visited the group’s Watsonville commune, we were unable to speak to any current missioners. However, one member handed over a phone number for “Arthur” who he said would speak on their behalf.
The phone number was listed on court documents as belonging to Mr Bar-Roka.
Cult Consulting Australia director Raphael Aron, who was involved in helping Ms Hardess leave, defined a cult as “an organisation which asks for subservience to a human being on a level which really denies them their own personal individuality and personal choices – where the guru or the leader or the master is really very much in control”.
Mr Aron, who is used as an expert witness in legal cases involving cults and high-demand groups, said they use former cult members to help extract people.
“(People in cults) actually go through changes. They become different. And parents will often say, I just don’t recognise my son or daughter anymore … there’s nothing there, (nothing) left between the two of us,” he said.
“So to me, the personality change is critical in making that assessment as to what’s actually going on.”
The group recently underwent a leadership coup to oust Daniel’s son, Nathanael, who was handed the role of Reshan following his father’s death in 2015.
Nathanael was in Germany pursuing a career in modelling and acting when he was voted out in a leadership takeover by community member Asaph Bar-Roka.
Do you have a cult story or know anything about the ACMC? Contact kate.kyriacou@news.com.au
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