Church leader demands details of young female members’ sex lives

Celeste was young when her church found out she’d had sex outside of marriage. What happened next left her traumatised and disgusted.

Former female members of secretive and hard line Australian religious sect have told of being interrogated about their sexual encounters by their “creepy” elderly and puritanical pastor.

For the past 65 years, pastor Noel Hollins has controlled the lives of thousands of members of the Geelong Revival Centre and its more than 20 affiliated churches around Australia and the world.

The Pentecostal network, which believes the end of the world is imminent and that only its

members will be saved, is an oppressive environment for girls and women.

Women are forbidden from initiating a relationship with a male, must wait to be chosen by a “brother” in the church for marriage and move to where he lives.

There are rules on what women can wear and how much skin they can show. Those known to have had sex before marriage cannot wear white.

Women are also often discouraged from higher education or working after they wed.

Although Hollins, who died in April aged 93, constantly instructed followers to avoid the internet, mainstream music and much of the movie industry because they encouraged “loose living”, young women from his church said he took a peculiarly intense interest in their sexual activity.

Paster Noel Hollins, controlled the lives of thousands of members of the Geelong Revival Centre. Picture: Supplied

Celeste, a mother of two who spent time in the GRC throughout her childhood, teens and 20s, told a new investigative podcast LiSTNR’s Secrets We Keep: Pray Harder of having to confront Hollins alone in his office after he’d found out she’d had sex outside of marriage with a man not from the church.

“I had a meeting with pastor, and I had to tell him in detail about the sex. Not just that I’ve had sex. What position? How many times? Where did he ejaculate,” she said.

“I don’t know if it’s some sort of sick fantasy or if it’s his way of scaling your level of trampy-ness.

“He called me a tramp. He said ‘how do you know you don’t have AIDS from this’? Like, he

wanted every detail.”

Celeste told the podcast, which details the harrowing stories of alleged abuse and violence

encountered by several former members born into what they say is a cult, that Hollins expelled her from the church for a period of time as a punishment.

A female relative of Hollins, who is referred to in the podcast under the pseudonym of Stacy,

said she was also interrogated by him about her unapproved sexual encounters in her early 20s, including her alleged rape at the age of 18.

“I personally was asked some very uncomfortable questions about the sex itself and I said that I was not comfortable answering those questions.

“But I was told that it was really important that I did answer it, and I felt pressured. And so I did answer those questions,” she said.

“As far as I’m aware. I’m not sure if men get the same treatment.”

When Stacy admitted that her first sexual encounter with this man was an alleged rape, she

said Hollins showed no empathy.

“The pastor was told that it was in fact rape. But that didn’t change my sentence whatsoever. I was still out for a year and I still had to marry him,” she said.

Stacy did not marry the man and never returned to the church after her 12-month ban.

Another former female GRC member, Natalie Murphy, said she was forced to meet one-on-one with Hollins during her late teens to discuss a sexual encounter.

“It was really creepy. He could have just asked if I’d had sex and it would’ve been a yes or no.

“But he went on and on about who did what to who and where,” Murphy said.

Hollins repeatedly declined to answer questions or be interviewed before his death.

His successor as leader of the GRC network of churches, Brian Griggs, has also refused to answer questions about the church’s teachings.

The interviews in this [podcast] series were recorded during Pastor Noel Hollins leadership of the Geelong Revival Centre. During production, Pastor Noel died. The experiences and allegations raised do not relate to the current leadership of the GRC.

Natalie Murphy, former GRC member was also questioned by Hollins about her sex life. Picture: Supplied

According to Hollins’s rules, young men and women in the church who wished to “pair off” first had to notify him or their direct pastor.

Couples were not allowed to be alone together without a chaperone for a period of time. They

also had restrictions placed on how often they saw each other, how often they spoke over the phone and were forbidden from “any movie-style kissing”.

Celeste said the pressure to be “the perfect wife and mother” was immense, creating an environment of constant judgement and surveillance.

When she returned to the church as a single mum in her 20s, she had to wait 9 months before being eligible to be approached by a man in the church.

“You never approach a brother and you never talk to a brother one-on-one without there being a married couple around. It’s just not the right way a woman acts,” she said.

She said life for young girls in the church had a clearly defined path.

“So you grow up. There’s no big push on education because it’s just not a woman’s world. You have to go to school. It’s the government. It’s rules. But don’t dream about university because that’s not what’s happening for you.

“What’s happening for you is a brother’s going to choose you. You’re going to get married,

you’re going to have children, you’re going to stay home and you’re going to please your

husband, keep house, make sure he’s always happy, raise your children, fellowship with other sisters, and be a good wife. And that is the extent of your life.”

Leaked audio recordings from inside the church group reveal the guilt-trips placed on working

women.

One pastor declared in 2016 that mothers who did not make their children lunch, or relied on childcare, were missing “their calling” and not loving their children properly

“She hasn’t got time to consider the care for her husband. The care for her children. Making

them lunch … and that child gets picked up (at) six o’clock from a child care centre, or five

o’clock, whatever time might be. Where’s the care shown to that child? Where is the love?

“The word speaks about the last days being without natural affection, and that child will grow up without knowing what it really is to be loved and to be cared for.”

The recordings also show the highly gendered stereotypes demanded by the church hierarchy,

with women tasked with all domestic chores.

“They’re stuck in child care centres from a very early age, and so, so the mother gets home and has to do some vacuuming, maybe cooking, maybe buys takeaway, whatever the case might be. Still the washing still has to be done. The ironing still has to be done,” the pastor said.

“Maybe the husband does some of that stuff around the household and they end up sharing

those chores. They might get done a bit faster.

“But then that takes away the thought of the husband of what he is meant to be considering about his household. He is meant to be at home, looking over, considering the ways of the household, making sure all things are in order, but instead he’s too busy running around with a vacuum cleaner.”

The pastor also took aim at the way many working women chose to dress.

“Most of those women who are off to work in some place doing some job outside the home. You watch them, they are dressed up. They’ve got the makeup on and the stilettos and all the rest of it, the short skirts … beauty is vain … they are absolutely deceived, and it’s the mark of the world.

“Sadly, you know, you see mothers in the world today, many mothers, you look at the way their children act, or the way the mothers act, wanting maybe to be seen by other men…”.

Secrets We Keep: Pray Harder, a podcast documentary series investigating life inside Australia’s oldest and most hard line Pentecostal church, is out now. You can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.