Controlling cults face parliamentary spotlight amid push for new laws

How cults and “organised fringe groups” recruit and coercively control their members will be examined in a Victorian parliamentary inquiry.

A referral to the Legal and Social Issues Standing Committee passed state parliament’s lower house on Thursday morning following a push from Geelong Labor MP Chris Couzens, who is also a committee member.

Ex-Geelong Revival Centre members Ryan Van Lar, Gary McPherson, Catherine Carey and Ryan Carey at Parliament House after a briefing Attorney General Sonya Kilkenny.

It comes after an investigative podcast, LiSTNR’s Secrets We Keep: Pray Harder, and reports by this masthead  exposed extreme teachings and severe punishments inside the Geelong Revival Centre, a mysterious and strict Christian church which several former members likened to a “cult”.

Couzens has met with former GRC members and recently arranged for a delegation to see Attorney General Sonya Kilkenny to explain the extreme control the church exerted over members.

This included the power to forbid members from contact with a loved one who had left or was expelled from the church.

Pastors in the GRC and its network of affiliated churches across Australia also ban women from initiating intimate relationships and dictate where members can live.

With the GRC preaching the end of the world is imminent, members are reluctant to challenge the church’s leadership for fear of being expelled. Under the church’s teachings, anyone put out of “fellowship” loses their salvation.

Couzens said it was important the inquiry’s recommendations address the coercive control issues raised by former church members.

“There is a lot of work ahead, but this validates the ex-GRC members coming to me and the Attorney General asking for something to be done,” she said.

Coercive control has become a criminal offence in many Australian states in recent years but only in the context of domestic partner relationships.

Survivors from extreme religious and high-demand groups want criminal coercive control laws expanded to include “cult-like” leaders so they can be held accountable.

Former GRC member and founder of lobby group Stop Religious Coercion, Ryan Carey, welcomed the inquiry, saying government oversight was needed to protect members of high-demand religious and other groups who were effectively held hostage by the threat of separation from their loved ones.

Rationalist Society of Australia executive director Si Gladman said common practices within religious cults and high-demand groups included shunning, prohibition on young people pursuing tertiary education, financial coercion and restrictions of women posed a danger to the “fundamental rights and freedoms of many Australians”.

Gladman said he hoped the Victorian inquiry would encourage action in other jurisdictions.

The GRC and the broader Christian revival movement in Australia have thousands of members. Their practices and teachings have attracted public attention in recent years through the prosecution of a repeat child sex offender at the GRC and the manslaughter convictions for members of a break-away revival group in Toowoomba known as “The Saints”.

In February, the leader of Toowoomba’s “Saints”, Brendan Stevens, was sentenced to 13 years jail for the manslaughter of eight-year-old Elizabeth Struhs.

A diabetes sufferer, Elizabeth was found dead at her home in January 2022 after her parents, both members of Steven’s church, denied her access to her insulin on the belief that God would save her. Jason and Kerrie Struhs were jailed for 14 years.

Although the GRC and the Toowoomba group share similar religious beliefs, there is no formal connection between the groups.

The Victorian inquiry is due to provide recommendations by September next year.