Secretive sect Twelve Tribes’ Picton farm targeted by police search warrant
A secretive sect has been targeted in a police operation, with a search warrant executed on an idyllic farm nestled in Sydney’s southwest outskirts.
Macarthur
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Police have raided a secretive fundamentalist Christian sect, with a search warrant executed on an idyllic farm nestled in Sydney’s southwest outskirts.
Peppercorn Creek Farm, a 9ha site located near Picton, is owned by the religious community Twelve Tribes, which also has communes in Katoomba and Coledale, near Wollongong.
Swarms of uniformed and plain-clothed police officers attended the idyllic farm site from the morning into the early afternoon on Tuesday.
“Officers from Blue Mountains Police Area Command are conducting a planned police operation at an address in Picton,” a NSW Police spokeswoman said.
A man working opposite the farm said police had been inside the property since he arrived about 8am, and spent the best part of the day at the site.
About 90 members live communally in Twelve Tribes’ properties across Australia, including Peppercorn Creek Farm, which has a large Georgian-style home under construction.
A former member of the commune Or Mathias recently revealed to the Sunday Telegraph his earliest memory of growing up at the Twelve Tribes commune was being beaten on the buttocks with a bamboo stick.
“As far as I am concerned they shouldn’t continue operating,” the 26-year-old said.
Inside the sect, conventional medicine is shunned, women must be subservient to men, children are to be homeschooled and marriage is forbidden out the group.
Members must relinquish all properties, possessions, wealth and “sovereignty” on joining to become “true disciples”, and live like members of the early church.
The group has been dogged by allegations of child beating and child labour abuses overseas, one of the most high profile cases in Germany 2013, when a documentary showed children in a local branch being beaten so badly, the government removed them.
Former members of the Twelve Tribes say it’s a work camp which takes advantage of free adult labour, which the church denies.
On the sect’s website, it states normal agriculture activities take place around Peppercorn Creek Farm.
“If you were to take a walk around our farm you may see goats being milked, chickens being fed, the vegetable garden being cared for, children swimming in the creek or being taught, the busy kitchen producing wholesome food and the endless pile of dishes, the firewood being cut, the lawns being mowed etc. etc.,” the website stated.
No charges have yet been laid in relation to the search warrant.