A decapitated doll and a prayer for my death: The many, many threats of the Exclusive Brethren

This article is part of our Behind the Headlines series, where Age reporters reveal unforgettable moments in their careers.See all 13 stories.

A letter landed in my inbox last year that gave me a strong burst of nostalgia. It was a legal threat from the defamation lawyer who also represented Bruce Lehrmann and Ben Roberts-Smith. This time he was working for the leaders of a religion, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church.

I’d sent questions to the church asking about the affairs of its “Man of God”, Bruce Hales, after the raid last March by the Australian Tax Office on companies run by church members. The letter from Sydney solicitor Mark O’Brien said the question was defamatory and the Hales family was considering suing.

It made me nostalgic because, by a conservative count, this was the 13th threatening legal letter I’d received over the years from the sect formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren.

“Elect Vessel” of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church Bruce D. Hales, left front, preaching in the United States.

The PBCC, founded by former priest John Nelson Darby in the 1820s, instructs its members in official ministry to hate the rest of us because we contaminate and defile them. But even though its members do not vote, the church lobbies conservative politicians to its own benefit and does very nicely out of the welfare and charity systems, government grants and federal funding for its schools.

At the heart of PBCC theology is the desire to be separate from the world. Its global leader, Sydney-based Hales, preaches that the Brethren assembly – attended by about 50,000 people – is the “highest court” which has “the power [from God] to overrule other judgments”. Even so, the Brethren are willing to use the worldly courts to shut down those they perceive as enemies. This includes not just journalists but also their own often traumatised former members.

My first legal letter from the Brethren came in 2006, the morning after a photographer and I tried to attend its (rate-exempt) public place of worship in Melbourne during a church service. We were seen off the premises by three burly Brethren men.

Afterwards, a young church member drove his car at us, stopping centimetres from our shins. The following morning, we received a legal letter accusing us of trespass.

Thus motivated, I embarked on what turned out to be a long career of writing about Hales, his world-wide flock and the political influence they like to wield “under the radar”. It led to a book, Behind the Exclusive Brethren, and plenty more legal threats. One in 2015, from another Sydney solicitor, described me as a “professional defamer of members of the Exclusive Brethren church, including Mr Hales”.

Exclusive Brethren gather at a Universal Fellowship meeting with Bruce Hales in Ermington, NSW, in April, 2024. The man pictured is not Bruce Hales.Credit: Rhett Wyman

That letter came after I’d sent questions to Hales about his preaching that a mentally troubled young member of his flock, Braden Simmons, should 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,” Hales told his global audience. “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.”

In Hales’ eyes, Simmons’ crime was sending occasional emails to his sister, who had left the Brethren fold. Simmons had breached the doctrine of separation.

After I published that story, the Brethren circulated their monthly Prayer Agenda, asking the “saints” to pray that: “Journalists who are publishing defamatory material against Christians may be silenced.”

Other letters have warned me off breaching Victoria’s racial and religious tolerance act and of defaming the church’s schools, which receive $40 million a year in federal funding.

Twice the church acted on its threats and took legal action. Both lawsuits came after I wrote in 2016 about how it had covered up the sexual abuse of children. One of the sources for that story was the church’s former spokesman, Tony McCorkell, who went on the record to admit he’d done some of the dirty work involved in the cover-up.

Former Exclusive Brethren spokesman, and whistleblower, Tony McCorkell.Credit: Paul Harris

As those cases against me and The Age and Herald made their way through the courts, Australian Brethren assemblies prayed for the “removal” – the deaths – of McCorkell and me. But in case God’s wrath was not enough to tip the scales, the PBCC also took earthly precautions.

It paid McCorkell to stay silent.

Three days after the defamation writ lodged, a senior church elder, now its spokesman, Lloyd Grimshaw, signed an agreement to pay McCorkell $920,000 over 10 years to keep his mouth shut.

Impatient for the money, McCorkell renegotiated the deed for cash upfront and received $275,000. It prevented him from providing any information about the church to one person – me, Michael Bachelard. It also purported to prevent McCorkell from giving evidence in the defamation case.

When I approached the Brethren for comment on the story at the time, they responded with, predictably, a legal warning – this one suggesting I might be in contempt of court. I wrote about the payment anyway – and the other bribes proposed by the church over the years to keep me quiet. The court case was ultimately settled.

A church spokesman now says they have “never paid anyone to not speak to anyone else”, and that the deal with McCorkell was for “services”.

Worse was to come, though. One morning a couple of years after that story, I opened a parcel mailed to me at The Age office. Inside was a small, blonde female doll. Its head had been ripped from its shoulders. It came with a note which named the victim survivor of the sexual abuse I’d written about and said she had “BETTER NOT”.

I can only surmise that the young woman was contemplating further legal action against the church over her treatment. The PBCC is not part of the national redress scheme for victims of institutional sexual abuse, so suing would have been her only option for compensation. I reported the apparent death threat against the woman to the police. I still do not know if anyone was found responsible.

An apparent death threat mailed to Michael Bachelard after he wrote about how the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church covered up child sexual abuse. The note had the name of a victim-survivor on it. We’ve obscured it for legal reasons.Credit: Michael Bachelard

The church spokesman said, to his knowledge, the police had never contacted the church about this threat. They were “very sad to hear that something like that may have happened”.

Leaving the Brethren is a difficult and fearful undertaking. Making accusations against it is even more hazardous. Some former members report being followed by private detectives after they have left. They also have a (very real) fear that their former co-religionists will strip their assets and their families from them.

Sometimes the PBCC has been able to persuade worldly authorities – including police, lawyers and the courts – to help them.

In recent years – in the UK, Europe and New Zealand – judges have granted extraordinary powers under what’s known as “Anton Piller” orders, allowing lawyers working for companies owned by senior Brethren members to mount pre-dawn raids on former members.

These orders authorise lawyers to force their way into people’s houses, conduct compulsory searches and seize documents and devices. One target of such a raid was Braden Simmons – the young man for whom Hales recommended rat poison.

By 2020, Simmons had been kicked out of the church and joined his sister in the free world. On July 11 that year, lawyers and IT specialists working for two Brethren-linked business forced their way into his Auckland house. Businessmen, who were also senior elders of the church, had convinced a New Zealand judge that Simmons had hacked their business computers and obtained an archive of confidential notes about church members’ affairs. He had not.

Lawyers and investigators working for the Exclusive Brethren in a predawn raid at the house of former member Braden Simmons in 2020.

The raid was an extraordinarily aggressive legal tactic, intrusive and intimidating. The case was settled recently, but the mystery remains whether the “worldly” courts should have authorised elders of an extremist religious sect to take this extraordinary action against a young man who had escaped it.

The church spokesman said the case had “nothing to do with the church”.

A few years ago, NSW Police were persuaded that another former Brethren member, Craig Stewart, should be prosecuted under the criminal law.

Stewart had lost his family, business, livelihood and social circle when the Brethren excommunicated him. It’s called being “withdrawn from”. After recovering from a suicide attempt, Stewart was threatened with homelessness. He approached various Brethren elders via email asking for a financial settlement to help him survive life on the outside. He threatened to talk to the media or go on hunger strike if no settlement was reached.

His answer was to be hauled through the criminal courts by a NSW police prosecutor.

The charge was “stalking or intimidation with intent to cause fear of physical or mental harm”. Stewart’s so-called “victim” in the case was a senior member of the Brethren hierarchy – a family member of Bruce Hales – whom Stewart had copied in to his emailed pleas.

NSW police pursued the prosecution despite internal advice, obtained by this masthead after an FOI battle, that “there does not appear to be any direct threats” from Stewart against the man.

“There were requests for money made as [Stewart] claims he is about to loose [sic] his housing however no threats of violence as a repercussion of non-payment,” the police advice said.

Stewart was charged by police and, at one point, arrested and briefly held in custody in a Surry Hills correctional facility.

Eventually, with Stewart representing himself and cross-examining Hales’s family member, the case was thrown out by a magistrate. Stewart’s campaign had been a legitimate attempt to avoid homelessness, the magistrate said, and police should never have brought the charges.

NSW police defended their prosecution, saying in response to questions from this masthead that the lack of actual threats was irrelevant and they had “relied upon the volume of … emails, phone calls … and voicemails as being intimidatory”. The church spokesman described Stewart’s pleas as “sustained online and direct harassment” and said the charges also had “nothing to do with the church”.

Quote from John S Hales, the former leader of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church and father of Bruce Hales. Quotes of the day are circulated to employees of Brethren companies as “daily inspiration”.

Legal action is not the only response you can get when writing about this church. Bald denial is popular too. After a recent story about the church’s practices, its spokesman, Melbourne-based businessman Lloyd Grimshaw, responded in an opinion piece saying it was “frankly ridiculous” that its leading family would be referred to by royal titles. This is despite leader Bruce D. Hales telling his flock in 2011: “Royalty is in the [Brethren] assembly.”

“We’ve been led by men that have reflected kingship,” Hales said in 2007. “Princes would reflect kingship, coming down to our area of our local assemblies.”

The PBCC spokesman said: “For goodness’ sake Michael, that is a reference to God not Mr Hales and it comes from the bible not us.”

A recent service of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church showing women at the back of the room, men at the front.

Grimshaw also wrote it was “disgusting [and] untrue” to say women in the church are treated as second-class citizens. “Women in our church run businesses, run houses and run themselves ragged!”

Hales, though, preaches to the flock that women should be “subject to” their husbands, and diligent in the “drudgery” of housework. They sit at the back in church services and, unlike men, do not preach. In business they are not permitted to be in a position of authority over a man.

The church spokesman quoted bible verses saying wives should be subject to their husbands “in every thing”. Though women sat in “different parts” of the church, they were not second to men, “they just play different roles”.

This is a brutal church and I’ve been writing about it for 18 years. As the tax office investigates the financial affairs of companies that have helped make it and its leaders phenomenally wealthy, I intend to continue writing, despite the threats.

And I hope that worldly authorities – including politicians, police and the courts – are taking notice. Perhaps one day they will develop at least some scepticism when approached by these corpulent Christians in clean, white shirts.

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