Speaker 1: True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
Speaker 1: waters that this podcast was recorded on. Oh hi, there,
Speaker 1: it's your host, Claire Murphy, and today I'm bringing you
Speaker 1: a powerful episode from our archives that you might have missed.
Speaker 1: Perfect for some extra weekend listening. It's an episode where
Speaker 1: Jemma Bath interviewed Laura McConnell, who grew up in a
Speaker 1: fundamentalist cult with no name. Along with no official title.
Speaker 1: The group also claims to have no registration around the world,
Speaker 1: no formal hierarchy, and no official place of worship. According
Speaker 1: to Laura, it's this secrecy and denial that has allowed
Speaker 1: abuse to flourish within the community. In this episode, she
Speaker 1: exposes what she witnessed and experienced inside the group she
Speaker 1: calls the Truth.
Speaker 2: This episode contains discussions of sexual assault and mental health struggles.
Speaker 2: Please take care while listening. It's nineteen in Melbourne and
Speaker 2: Laura McConnell is sifting through photo after photo on a
Speaker 2: microfish at her university library, searching for old newspaper clippings.
Speaker 2: She's only six months into her new life after escaping
Speaker 2: an ultra conservative cult known as the Truth. After feeling
Speaker 2: uncomfortable in her world for years. Laura made the enormous
Speaker 2: decision to stop believing and move away from her community
Speaker 2: in western New South Wales. But in her world, that
Speaker 2: meant saying goodbye to her family, her friends, everyone she's
Speaker 2: ever known. She thought if she left, she'd die. That's
Speaker 2: what she was told. But here she still was, and
Speaker 2: something was bugging her. Laura grew up believing that two
Speaker 2: teenagers from her community, Norella and Stephen, died in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two because they listened to the rock band Nirvana.
Speaker 2: That's what she'd been told, but the story has niggled
Speaker 2: at her over the years. Something doesn't feel right, and
Speaker 2: she's keen to investigate. Eventually, she stumbles across an article suicide.
Speaker 2: The siblings had taken their own lives because they didn't
Speaker 2: want to live within the confines of their strict religious
Speaker 2: upbringing anymore. Wow, she'd been lied to. What else were
Speaker 2: they lying about? As Laura continues to reflect and research
Speaker 2: the life she left, she realizes something. The world she
Speaker 2: grew up in was a cult guilty of numerous crimes,
Speaker 2: crimes that went unspoken, crimes that were normalized by those
Speaker 2: around her. Grooming sexual abuse, domestic violence, spiritual abuse, financial abuse.
Speaker 2: She realizes another thing too. These crimes she witnessed were
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly affecting one half of the group, the women, women
Speaker 2: who grew up with nowhere to run, no path to freedom,
Speaker 2: and no voice of their own. I'm Jemma Bath and
Speaker 2: this is True Crime Conversations a Muma mea podcast exploring
Speaker 2: the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people
Speaker 2: who know the most about them. But this month, instead
Speaker 2: of looking at specific criminal cases, we're focusing in on
Speaker 2: the people behind the scenes of crime in the eyes
Speaker 2: of the community she left. Laura McConnell is a true
Speaker 2: simply because she doesn't believe anymore. But she hasn't gone quietly. Instead,
Speaker 2: Laura is very loudly and very proudly trying to get
Speaker 2: the word out about the dangers of the truth. She
Speaker 2: doesn't want the children and teenagers growing up inside to
Speaker 2: believe what she did, that there's no way out. She
Speaker 2: wants to be the inspiration. She wishes she had someone
Speaker 2: who followed a different path. Perhaps what makes the truth
Speaker 2: so dangerous is its secretiveness. It has no proper name,
Speaker 2: no official places of worship, and no doctrinal statements other
Speaker 2: than the Bible itself. Instead, everything is passed down in
Speaker 2: person from generation to generation. There are no priests or ministers. Instead,
Speaker 2: those in charge are called workers. They encourage members to
Speaker 2: spend their lives proving their worth to God and Jesus,
Speaker 2: often through acts of suffering. Today's guest grew up in
Speaker 2: the Truth before making her escape at the age of nineteen.
Speaker 2: Laura joins us. Now, Laura, how do I even refer
Speaker 2: to this group or church that you grew up in?
Speaker 2: Is it true that there's not really a name for it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is so they claim to have been started
Speaker 3: in the beginning, so they claim not to have a name,
Speaker 3: and in fact they claim not to have any registrations
Speaker 3: around the world, no formal kind of church, hierarchy, no name.
Speaker 2: So for the purposes of this interview, how should we
Speaker 2: refer to it? How do you refer to the group?
Speaker 3: I personally call them the Truth because that's what I
Speaker 3: grew up, calling them the Truth or the Friends or
Speaker 3: the Way. In Australia, I think internally and people who
Speaker 3: have left call it the Truth. In America and the
Speaker 3: US they use that less. They say the two boy twos.
Speaker 3: But I'm Australian, So I tend to use the truth brilliant.
Speaker 2: We'll call them the Truth. You said it started at
Speaker 2: the beginning. Apparently, apparently, can that be pinpointed back to
Speaker 2: a I'm going to say man, because I assume it's
Speaker 2: a man, a man, a place, a person, a country.
Speaker 3: It will be no surprise to anyone outside the Truth
Speaker 3: to learn that, in fact, it was not started by
Speaker 3: God or by Jesus. It was started by a man
Speaker 3: in Ireland in the late eighteen nineties, William Irvine, and
Speaker 3: then spread to other parts of the world from there.
Speaker 3: Came out of a very interesting time in Ireland where
Speaker 3: several fundamentalist groups came out at the same time. The
Speaker 3: Jehovah's Witnesses, the Exclusive Brethren, and also the Truth came
Speaker 3: out of this time in Ireland as well. So it
Speaker 3: was a time of quite a lot of our people
Speaker 3: and where people were searching for something different to mainstream Christianity,
Speaker 3: and these fundamentalist groups sprung up. The Truth happens to
Speaker 3: be quite a secretive version of it, which doesn't share
Speaker 3: a lot of its background and claims to have no name,
Speaker 3: for instance.
Speaker 2: And they call themselves a religion. Is that what they are.
Speaker 3: They refer to themselves as a non denominational, loose group
Speaker 3: of Christians when pushed, so you have to push quite
Speaker 3: hard to get that information from them. And part of
Speaker 3: that is that none of us are really taught anything
Speaker 3: else about Christianity outside the group, so we can't, as
Speaker 3: lay people, usually even explain what our beliefs are or
Speaker 3: where they fit within the Christian spectrum of beliefs, or
Speaker 3: in fact, within the spectrum of religion full stop. Because
Speaker 3: we're not taught anything. We're kept quite in the dark
Speaker 3: about not only our beginnings and our belief structure, but
Speaker 3: also about what other Christianity even is. So at a push, yes,
Speaker 3: they're described as very loose, home based Christians who read
Speaker 3: the Bible and are dictated to by the Bible, and
Speaker 3: that's really all they can tell you about where they
Speaker 3: sit in the Christian spectrum.
Speaker 2: So I guess my next question was what are the beliefs?
Speaker 2: Are there any I guess looking back, you could probably
Speaker 2: pinpoint them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're told that there really are no rules, a
Speaker 3: bit like the name thing. There's really no rules. Your
Speaker 3: spirit led, So you're led by the Bible, right, you
Speaker 3: read the Bible and you'll interpret it and the people
Speaker 3: around you, the men around you. Normally, we'll interpret the
Speaker 3: Bible for you. We had a very literal interpretation of
Speaker 3: the King James Bible, a very conservative, very extreme, fundamentalist
Speaker 3: interpretation of the King James Bible. We are led to
Speaker 3: believe that women should be tightly controlled in terms of
Speaker 3: their dress and their appearance. We are taught to keep
Speaker 3: ourselves separate from the world, which is also something common
Speaker 3: in fundamentalism in general, as is control of women and
Speaker 3: children and girls. The core beliefs are really very extreme
Speaker 3: in terms of women's sexuality, gender appearance, that we should
Speaker 3: be modest at all times, and a lot of that
Speaker 3: is dictated to us by elder men in our family
Speaker 3: and families and communities. And you know, things like TVs
Speaker 3: and radios and pop music when I was growing up
Speaker 3: were forbidden. It is a little looser these days. Although
Speaker 3: most people don't have a TV openly, They will have
Speaker 3: it in a cupboard where it can be shot away
Speaker 3: and hidden. Lots of people now have computers and the Internet,
Speaker 3: but that was also forbidden when I was growing up.
Speaker 3: I live very sheltered lives, so there's this idea that
Speaker 3: we are in the world, but we are not of
Speaker 3: the world. So we don't consume things in the world
Speaker 3: the same way that mainstream Christians do. We are in
Speaker 3: this world, living in it, but we don't consume things
Speaker 3: the same way.
Speaker 2: And is it a I guess, a belief that the
Speaker 2: world is going to end one day? Is that part
Speaker 2: of it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, while again we don't openly discuss that, as
Speaker 3: a lot of other Christian groups do, that you know
Speaker 3: that there is going to be this end of the world.
Speaker 3: That is basically a lot of the control is about
Speaker 3: in the group in that they really fundamentally believe that
Speaker 3: Jesus is going to return at any moment, and he
Speaker 3: is going to select from the people in the world
Speaker 3: the best or a certain group of people who have
Speaker 3: behaved in a very certain way, coincidentally the way that
Speaker 3: they have interpreted the Bible inside the truth, and he
Speaker 3: will nominate those people to go back and be in
Speaker 3: heaven and everybody else is going to hell. Ultimately, when
Speaker 3: it boils down to all of this behavior and all
Speaker 3: of this control that happens within the group is a
Speaker 3: terrible fear about the world ending any minute, and all
Speaker 3: of us going to help.
Speaker 2: Is there a date.
Speaker 3: Are we working towards the ru fortunately or unfortunately, I
Speaker 3: don't know. When you do a lot of research into
Speaker 3: cultic groups, even the ones that have a date, the
Speaker 3: date moves constantly and nobody says, oh, by the way
Speaker 3: that date's moved, maybe this is a croc of shit.
Speaker 3: But even the ones that do have a date, nobody
Speaker 3: ever seems to do anything with it. But no, there
Speaker 3: is no date. It's just imminent any second Jesus is returning.
Speaker 3: And we literally live in fear that we're going to
Speaker 3: turn around the corner as a woman wearing a pair
Speaker 3: of jeans, and that Jesus is going to magically reappear
Speaker 3: and see us in a pair of jeans and be
Speaker 3: like off to hell for you.
Speaker 2: Wow, Just how big is this group? Because it doesn't
Speaker 2: have a name. From my understanding, there's no real places
Speaker 2: of worship, there's no church or anything like that. It's
Speaker 2: very elusive. So how is this able to spread? How
Speaker 2: big is this group?
Speaker 3: So there has been a lot of turmoil in the
Speaker 3: past couple of decades. Certainly in Australia there was a
Speaker 3: lot of people who left in the nineties, there was
Speaker 3: a big falling out in Canada in the late nineties
Speaker 3: as well, and a lot of people fell away. It
Speaker 3: is very hard to get an understanding of how many
Speaker 3: people are in the group worldwide because with no registered entity,
Speaker 3: there's not a lot of records that people can act,
Speaker 3: especially people outside the group like myself. We sort of
Speaker 3: believe that a group of people who've left a sort
Speaker 3: of the opinion there used to be around two hundred
Speaker 3: thousand worldwide. There is probably more like fifty thousand now.
Speaker 3: I would say, perhaps even less. There is a big
Speaker 3: reckoning happening in America at the moment, with a lot
Speaker 3: of abuse alligations coming to light, and I would say
Speaker 3: the number is falling rapidly by the day. Yeah, when
Speaker 3: I was growing up, I would have said there was
Speaker 3: around fifty thousand here in Australia, but I would say
Speaker 3: that number is ten now at a guess. But you're right,
Speaker 3: there's no church buildings. So the truth believes that church
Speaker 3: buildings are worldly, and that we worship in family homes.
Speaker 3: So we worship in the living rooms and the laundrooms
Speaker 3: of our community. Of one of the more senior men
Speaker 3: or families in our community will hold that we have
Speaker 3: got a history of using things like scout halls and
Speaker 3: school libraries and want not to have services on a
Speaker 3: Sunday afternoon to try and encourage outsiders to attend. Once
Speaker 3: a year there is a large event called the convention,
Speaker 3: and there is a ground that is owned by a
Speaker 3: wealthy family. For instance, in a state, that could be
Speaker 3: old church property, but in theory there is no church
Speaker 3: property and no church buildings.
Speaker 2: So in Australia, are there some common towns or states
Speaker 2: where there are more people inside this group?
Speaker 3: Yes, there are. Again, I've been out now over twenty years,
Speaker 3: so I think it has changed a little since my
Speaker 3: childhood in terms of where people congregate together. But like
Speaker 3: a lot of fundamentalist groups, not just Christianity but also
Speaker 3: Judaism and Islam, families and communities tend to congregate together
Speaker 3: in similar suburbs, in similar towns, And I think there
Speaker 3: can be a bit of a misconception that people from
Speaker 3: cultic backgrounds live in kind of compounds, you know, but
Speaker 3: that's really often not the reality. We just tend to
Speaker 3: congregate together in family groups and community groups because often
Speaker 3: our work is very intertwined. Our families work in family businesses,
Speaker 3: and money is very tied up in each other's lives
Speaker 3: and investments and work. So personally, my own community comes
Speaker 3: from rural New South Wales, and there are certainly family
Speaker 3: groups that congregate together in places like Doubo, places like
Speaker 3: a Mudgykawer, rural places outside the major centers. That's not
Speaker 3: to say there are also not large family groups in
Speaker 3: Sydney and Melbourne and large urban areas. There are, but
Speaker 3: my own personal experience of the group is more rural.
Speaker 2: So using your community as an example, does that mean
Speaker 2: your family lives in one house in a normal neighborhood
Speaker 2: in the street, and then all of the other families
Speaker 2: involved in the truth are also descending on that same neighborhood.
Speaker 3: My personal experience is actually of a farming family. So yeah,
Speaker 3: my family had farms all within a similar region, and
Speaker 3: we all shed farm machinery. And this is also common
Speaker 3: with most fundamentalist groups. With businesses, they share employees, they
Speaker 3: share family members to work, they share tractors. In rural communities,
Speaker 3: they all work on each other's farms. So yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean I come from an environment where our farms were
Speaker 3: all next door to each other, or at least down
Speaker 3: the road from each other. The ones who did live
Speaker 3: in town live within the proximity of each other in
Speaker 3: a community so that they can get to each other's
Speaker 3: houses easily on Sundays for services. So yeah, we have
Speaker 3: our own space and our own homes, but we are
Speaker 3: also very close and everything is shared, you know, in terms,
Speaker 3: not everything, but lots of things are shared resources.
Speaker 2: If you're not allowed to do worldly things, it's almost
Speaker 2: like you're living in the world, but you're in your
Speaker 2: own little world. Does that mean people from the truth,
Speaker 2: They're not nurses, they're not police officers, they're not members
Speaker 2: of society. They're working in more private, kind of family
Speaker 2: run businesses.
Speaker 3: It does always surprise me how many there are working
Speaker 3: in worldly professions, but they make a very deliberate effort
Speaker 3: to stay separate. Right, So, there are teachers, and there
Speaker 3: are nurses, and certainly for women, there's only very few
Speaker 3: professions where women can really work outside the home because
Speaker 3: they tend not to be able. I mean, our hair
Speaker 3: is so weird, our clothing is so weird. We don't
Speaker 3: have a lot of shared vocabulary with the world outside
Speaker 3: of our community. We're a little bit creepy and freaky.
Speaker 3: So it is quite hard for us to integrate, especially
Speaker 3: women who look very different. Men can often mainstream they
Speaker 3: wear demure clothes and suits and slacks and polo shirts.
Speaker 3: But they can actually kind of mainstream a little bit
Speaker 3: easier than women can. So a lot of women work
Speaker 3: in jobs they can fit around their family commitments and
Speaker 3: our church commitments. There are teachers and nurses. But yeah,
Speaker 3: things like hairdressing is off limits. Things that bring us
Speaker 3: into contact with too much worldliness is really off limits
Speaker 3: for us.
Speaker 2: I've got to ask, because you've used the term weird
Speaker 2: to describe dress and hair, paint a picture for me.
Speaker 2: What kind of things were you allowed to wear and
Speaker 2: what did your hair look like back then?
Speaker 3: Well, think of the Mormons in Utah. You're they're right,
Speaker 3: except probably not quite as uniform. When I was growing up,
Speaker 3: women liked more floral dresses. But certainly there is a
Speaker 3: preoccupation with being modest. So this idea that you can't
Speaker 3: show your neckline your shoulders. When I was growing up,
Speaker 3: things like toe cleavage wear an issue. So you couldn't
Speaker 3: wear sandals because toteviage.
Speaker 2: Sorry toe cleavage, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Toe cleavage was seen as being immodest, and like dresses,
Speaker 3: you know too long, we're seen as worldly. Too short
Speaker 3: was seen as immodests. So there's this very like mid
Speaker 3: calf length sort of everyone has this standard mid calf
Speaker 3: length kind of dress. Trousers, as read in the Bible
Speaker 3: are seen as man's clothing, and women are not allowed
Speaker 3: to be men, so no trousers or no genes. Women
Speaker 3: are not allowed to dress like men. And we're not
Speaker 3: allowed to cut our hair. Certainly, by the time in
Speaker 3: twelve or thirteen, mostly our hair is pulled back into
Speaker 3: kind of a bun because to have it too flowy
Speaker 3: and too showy is to be too worldly.
Speaker 2: So were you homeschooled because of all of this or
Speaker 2: were you in mainstream schools?
Speaker 3: Most truth kids, in fact, all the ones I know of,
Speaker 3: go to mainstream schools. It is a bit like the
Speaker 3: rest of our ideology, whereas we're in the world, not
Speaker 3: of the world, so we're said to school, but we're
Speaker 3: very much taught to be very careful about what we believe,
Speaker 3: and in line with a lot of the secretive nature
Speaker 3: of the group, we're not very open about our belief
Speaker 3: systems with the schools and with the teachers, but we
Speaker 3: are taught that things like dinosaurs are fake, and that
Speaker 3: we we taught at school that are not real, and
Speaker 3: we just have to sit there and we have to listen,
Speaker 3: and then we go home and we pray for those
Speaker 3: people to be converted and to understand that what they're
Speaker 3: teaching is false. So we are sent to school, but
Speaker 3: we are also taught that the things we're learning at
Speaker 3: school are not true, and that we just have to
Speaker 3: do it. Like lots of things, we have to do
Speaker 3: it because to survive in the world until the world ends,
Speaker 3: we need to participate in This.
Speaker 2: Was that confusing as a child.
Speaker 3: Horribly horribly, very isolating, and we weren't really allowed to
Speaker 3: make friends with people at school because they were seen
Speaker 3: as worldly, and we weren't really allowed to participate in
Speaker 3: extracurricular activities or birthday parties or have close friendships with people.
Speaker 3: So it was very lonely. And in fact, I often
Speaker 3: think that being homeschool might be nicer, because then at
Speaker 3: least we'd be with our I mean, I was lucky.
Speaker 3: I came from a very large family. I had siblings
Speaker 3: and I had cousins, and I had lots of other
Speaker 3: kids around me, lots of kids. I think, you know,
Speaker 3: in smaller families or maybe one or two siblings. It
Speaker 3: can be very isolating to be a child from the truth.
Speaker 2: How did your family find themselves as part of this group.
Speaker 3: My family been in for a very long time. On
Speaker 3: my maternal side, I am fifth generation, fourth generation born
Speaker 3: inside I think my father's side, or on my paternal side,
Speaker 3: i'm third generation. Wow, So my family has been in
Speaker 3: a very long time, which further entrenches the issues which
Speaker 3: I'm sure we'll touch on later about leaving. Because you
Speaker 3: don't have any contacts outside the group. Everything you know,
Speaker 3: everyone you know and love is inside the group. In
Speaker 3: a nutshelle, I believe my family, which I think is common,
Speaker 3: was preyed on because they were poor and because they
Speaker 3: were rural, because they had experienced loss and trauma and poverty.
Speaker 3: They were preyed upon by people in the group and
Speaker 3: love bomb, which is also something that happens with cultic
Speaker 3: and high control groups. They love bomb people who are
Speaker 3: going through periods of distress and who are finding it
Speaker 3: difficult and not getting what they need, you know, through poverty,
Speaker 3: through the social security system, through loss and grief and whatnot.
Speaker 3: My family had been in a very long time.
Speaker 2: Did you have a happy childhood.
Speaker 3: That's the hardest part for me in reconciling my life
Speaker 3: in general, is that in lots and lots of ways,
Speaker 3: I had the most beautiful childhood. You know. I came
Speaker 3: from a farm where I was given free reign to
Speaker 3: be and to do, and there was no one to
Speaker 3: judge me. But you know, I was riding motorbikes in
Speaker 3: a dress and riding horses in a dress, and running
Speaker 3: and jumping and skipping, and I had all these cousins
Speaker 3: and a very big, close knit family. And I think
Speaker 3: as a young child, I had a very idyllic life
Speaker 3: until I sort of got to about eight, when I
Speaker 3: really then had to start behaving more and more like
Speaker 3: a truth girl. You know, I really had wonderful childhood,
Speaker 3: very carefree, very practical. You know, I worked with my
Speaker 3: father and my grandfather around the farm. From the earliest age.
Speaker 3: I rode motorbikes. Being a girl from the truth didn't
Speaker 3: hold me back until I was about eight, and then
Speaker 3: I realized, oh, okay, there's a behavior that's expected of
Speaker 3: me now. And that's really when things got very hard
Speaker 3: pretty much from then on.
Speaker 2: Was it also because you started to look around and
Speaker 2: realize that other kids were doing things you weren't allowed
Speaker 2: to do, or that perhaps boys were doing things that
Speaker 2: you weren't allowed to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. So then I started looking around
Speaker 3: and going, why don't I know anything about TV shows
Speaker 3: like all the girls around me? Why don't I know
Speaker 3: anything about pop music like all the other girls around me?
Speaker 3: And you know, then you know, I started to essentially
Speaker 3: be sexualized really by the truth, which is like, you know,
Speaker 3: you can't run and jump like that in that dress.
Speaker 3: You need to be sitting down and you're being modest,
Speaker 3: or you'll never be able to get married. No one
Speaker 3: will want to marry you, you know. And that was
Speaker 3: a threat held over me pretty much from the age
Speaker 3: of eight, that if you don't sit down and behave
Speaker 3: and if you don't set a good example, no one's
Speaker 3: going to want to marry the girls in our family
Speaker 3: because you're a bad influence.
Speaker 2: Was there an age you were expected to be married
Speaker 2: by and was arranged marriage part of the truth.
Speaker 3: The truth is a very small group of people, even
Speaker 3: at its biggest when I was growing up, and so
Speaker 3: marriage was something constantly talked about because to find somebody
Speaker 3: to marry, which I think is common with fundamentalist groups
Speaker 3: can be quite a problematic thing because, like we're all
Speaker 3: related often and so you know, we're constantly on the
Speaker 3: lookout for someone that might be able to marry our
Speaker 3: daughters because they're not a second or third cousin. So
Speaker 3: you know, it was always a topic of conversation. A
Speaker 3: lot of my cousins married very young, or at least
Speaker 3: met their spouse very young at you know, fourteen fifteen
Speaker 3: and were married at sixteen seventeen eighteen. So you know,
Speaker 3: while there was never an expectation said outright by either
Speaker 3: of my parents that I would get married, that was
Speaker 3: what was expected of me by our community and by
Speaker 3: our family, and you know, I watched that happen around me,
Speaker 3: you know, like it was just an expectation. I never
Speaker 3: felt comfortable with it personally, and it wasn't ever what
Speaker 3: I wanted, But also didn't really feel, certainly before the
Speaker 3: age of about fourteen, that there were any choices. I thought,
Speaker 3: that's just the way it had to be. And the
Speaker 3: other thing is that the roles for women and girls
Speaker 3: are so tightly defined you literally have no other job sometimes,
Speaker 3: like what else are you going to do other than
Speaker 3: get married and have babies, or you can go and
Speaker 3: be a preacher, which we call a worker, and that
Speaker 3: never appeared to me either. So I didn't want to
Speaker 3: be a preacher or a worker, and I certainly didn't
Speaker 3: want to get married and have children, which is really
Speaker 3: old what led me out of the group.
Speaker 2: You're listening to true crime Conversations Behind the Scenes of
Speaker 2: Crime Special with me Jemma Bath. I'm speaking with Laura
Speaker 2: McConnell about growing up in the fundamentalist religious cult The Truth.
Speaker 2: Up next, Laura exposes the crimes she witnessed and experienced
Speaker 2: during her time in the sect and how she eventually left.
Speaker 2: What did marriage in the Truth look like? I guess
Speaker 2: this is the point where we start to touch on
Speaker 2: a bit more of the crime aspect of the truth,
Speaker 2: because domestic violence was that an accepted part of marriage.
Speaker 3: I think it's not even just marriage. I think all
Speaker 3: of our families are violent, coercive, abusive places. And that
Speaker 3: hurts me to say, because they come from that community
Speaker 3: and that is my culture. But I come from a
Speaker 3: culture of embedded violence. I come from a culture of
Speaker 3: endemic sexual abuse. In endemic coercive control, endemic spiritual abuse,
Speaker 3: people abuse their children physically. I think that has gotten better.
Speaker 3: But you know, growing up, all of us would smack
Speaker 3: our dolls constantly because that's what we saw happening around us.
Speaker 3: Kids around us were smacked constantly. There's just sexual violence
Speaker 3: and grooming and abuse was just endemic. And it wasn't
Speaker 3: just in marriages. It was within family groups. It was
Speaker 3: our preachers or workers grooming and abusing girls. Sometimes boys,
Speaker 3: but in my experience, a lot of girls. And you know,
Speaker 3: our distrust of the world outside allowed that behavior and
Speaker 3: still allows that behavior to flourish because we do not
Speaker 3: trust even as leavers, we do not trust authority because
Speaker 3: we're taught to fear the outside world. There's also no
Speaker 3: structures inside the group to enable us to report it anywhere.
Speaker 3: We have no registered clergy, we have no registered organization,
Speaker 3: we have no employee processes to talk about clergy who
Speaker 3: are abusive. So the group itself, it's not only just
Speaker 3: spousal violence, it's violence across the board in terms of abuse.
Speaker 2: What did you know about sex? Was that something that
Speaker 2: was taught to you? Because I can imagine when you
Speaker 2: go into a marriage as a young woman and you're
Speaker 2: expected to have sex. Were you taught that you were
Speaker 2: allowed to say no, for instance, or.
Speaker 3: We have no concept of sexual education and absolutely no
Speaker 3: concept of consent. Roles for women and girls are very
Speaker 3: clearly defined, and to step outside of them results in
Speaker 3: back lagin, results in more violence in different ways. You know,
Speaker 3: you have spiritual violence of Bible versus being used to
Speaker 3: coerce you, of you being called bitter or being called immodest,
Speaker 3: or being told that you have a bad spirit for
Speaker 3: raising issues. You know, and that's not just family violence,
Speaker 3: that's all kinds of issues. As a woman girl, your
Speaker 3: role is to be subservient. Your role is to follow
Speaker 3: what you've been told and towards the interpretation of the Bible,
Speaker 3: and not to ask too many questions. I was very lucky,
Speaker 3: I think, in that I came from a farming background,
Speaker 3: I knew what sex was. I knew a lot more
Speaker 3: than a lot of other kids around me because of
Speaker 3: the family I came from. My own parents also were
Speaker 3: not probably as conservative around sexuality and sex as a
Speaker 3: lot of other parents around me. So you know, in
Speaker 3: lots of ways, I was lucky. But no, we are
Speaker 3: taken out of things like sex education. We are not
Speaker 3: allowed to do things like learn about dancing about music,
Speaker 3: about dinosaurs. You know, like the list of things were
Speaker 3: not allowed to know about it is never ending.
Speaker 2: You've mentioned grooming or like childhood sexual abuse. What can
Speaker 2: you tell me about how that kind of emerged in
Speaker 2: the communities in Australia. I know that there was a
Speaker 2: more high profile case that actually made the news with
Speaker 2: two preachers from your own community.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we have a very very big entrenched problem
Speaker 3: preachers or our workers being perpetrators of abuse, of abusing power.
Speaker 3: And then they are not only perpetrating sexual abuse, they're
Speaker 3: also porptrating spiritual abuse by controlling people and controlling how
Speaker 3: people report abuses to authorities. And as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: there is quite an awakening happening in the US at
Speaker 3: the moment about exactly how bad the issue is of
Speaker 3: our workers being involved in sexual abuse and CSA or
Speaker 3: childhood sexual abuse. I think there is just a massive
Speaker 3: misuse of power. These people are not trained. They offer
Speaker 3: themselves to be preachers. They don't go through a formal training.
Speaker 3: They often just shadow an older preacher or worker for
Speaker 3: a time and that's how they learn behavior. They're in
Speaker 3: an environment where they think that women and girls are
Speaker 3: subservient to them and that they have control over them.
Speaker 3: And so, yeah, we have a very endemic issue of
Speaker 3: men in our community, not just workers, but also senior men,
Speaker 3: elders in families being abusers of generations and generations and
Speaker 3: then teaching the men under them and around them how
Speaker 3: to be abuses. That's the reality. It's endemic. And you know,
Speaker 3: I've been screaming quite loudly about how bad it's been
Speaker 3: for you know, eight odd years, and been shut down
Speaker 3: a lot by my own community as well as the
Speaker 3: leave of community in lots of ways, because people don't
Speaker 3: want to talk about how bad it is. But there
Speaker 3: is a lot of us who were abused by our
Speaker 3: preachers or workers, and not only abused, but also observed abuse.
Speaker 3: Because the reality is that children in groups we know
Speaker 3: we saw other children experiencing and being roomed as well.
Speaker 3: That's the reality.
Speaker 2: So this is something that happened to you personally? Yeah, correct,
Speaker 2: how have you grappled with that?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 2: As an adult looking back that experience.
Speaker 3: For me, it's very hard because I often feel a
Speaker 3: lot of survivor guilt because I grew up understanding a
Speaker 3: lot about sex and I also then went on to
Speaker 3: study at university and to work in areas involving family violence.
Speaker 3: I always thought that I got off pretty lucky because
Speaker 3: I wasn't raped. I felt like one of the luckiest
Speaker 3: people in my family because there were so many people
Speaker 3: in my family in particular, who were abused to experienced abuse.
Speaker 3: I just felt like the luckiest kid going around. And
Speaker 3: then in the last few years, I had this realization that, like,
Speaker 3: I can probably need two hands to count the number
Speaker 3: of times where I was groomed and where I was
Speaker 3: sexually assaulted, where I was put in situations where senior
Speaker 3: men were touching me, where senior men were putting their
Speaker 3: hands places I did not want their hands, or having
Speaker 3: sexualized conversations with me, were exhibiting sexualized behavior like rubbing
Speaker 3: themselves against me. And all of a sudden, I have
Speaker 3: this realization. In the last couple of years, Laurie, you
Speaker 3: were sexually abused. You were like, you might not have
Speaker 3: been raped, but that's fucking abuse.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 3: And not only that, I saw that same behavior happening
Speaker 3: on my cousins, on other people around me. So not
Speaker 3: only did I experience it, but I also realized how
Speaker 3: much of it I'd seen and it was so endemic
Speaker 3: and so normalized that we didn't think it was abuse.
Speaker 2: How old were you do you remember that kind of
Speaker 2: stuff starting or can you not remember when it started?
Speaker 3: I can't remember when. My earliest instance is around eleven, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, you know that's the reality. It's like it
Speaker 3: probably didn't start then. It's just probably the first time
Speaker 3: I realized what.
Speaker 2: It was, which is terrifying that these kids don't even realize.
Speaker 3: No, And I'm also up against that when it comes
Speaker 3: to raising awareness. You know, That's also why I get
Speaker 3: so much pushback because people are like, why is she
Speaker 3: making so much noise about this? Like we weren't raped,
Speaker 3: It's not that bad. Like, Okay, I think maybe most
Speaker 3: of you haven't really clicked about what abuse is.
Speaker 2: So these two workers from your own community, what were
Speaker 2: they accused of doing and what happened to them? Are
Speaker 2: they in jail?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So Chris Chandler and Ernie Barry two men that I
Speaker 3: came across. Actually, they came to my community when I
Speaker 3: was around thirteen or fourteen, and yeah, one of them
Speaker 3: was involved in allegedly sexually assaulting me. Let's just go
Speaker 3: with allegedly. Both those men are dead, so it's a
Speaker 3: little easier for me to have this conversation and to
Speaker 3: be a little more transparent about the things that have happened.
Speaker 3: But both of those men were found guilty, and actually
Speaker 3: there are far more victims of those men than have
Speaker 3: actually ever made it to court because of the way
Speaker 3: the community really just most of us are just so
Speaker 3: terrified of the legal system, and in lots of ways
Speaker 3: we have a right to be because our experiences don't
Speaker 3: fit neatly into a mainstream legal system. You know, it's
Speaker 3: pretty hard to take a group with no name to court,
Speaker 3: and preachers who don't have an employment record and can
Speaker 3: say that they're not preachers of anything, because that's what
Speaker 3: we're up against, right Like I think Chris did spend
Speaker 3: some time in jail, I don't think that any Barry
Speaker 3: did spend any time in jail. They were both found guilty,
Speaker 3: but again, the number of cases that could have been
Speaker 3: brought against them is nowhere near the number they were
Speaker 3: found guilty of. Because people in our community are just
Speaker 3: too terrified to speak up comes with extreme consequences. Often,
Speaker 3: you know your own family will disown you, often shun you.
Speaker 3: People in your community across the street to avoid you.
Speaker 3: People will undermine you. You are left with nothing. You
Speaker 3: are left with no money and no home and no family.
Speaker 3: So yeah, while those two were found guilty, they were
Speaker 3: not felt guilty by nearly as many cases as they
Speaker 3: should have been. I think Chris spent a small amount
Speaker 3: of time in jail, but not nearly long enough. And
Speaker 3: I don't think only spent any time in jail if
Speaker 3: my recollection is correct.
Speaker 2: What can you tell us about the death of two
Speaker 2: teenagers in the nineties that once again you knew about
Speaker 2: or you'd been told about. But what were you told
Speaker 2: about them growing up on? What happened to them?
Speaker 3: And that realin Stephen Henderson died when I was I
Speaker 3: think twelve maybe thirteen, and their's is a very sad story.
Speaker 3: They suicided out near Kinglake in Victoria, and they wrote
Speaker 3: a note or at liszt Norelle did, saying that they
Speaker 3: didn't want to attend our church anymore and they didn't
Speaker 3: feel they had any choice but to attend, and they
Speaker 3: were being forced to attend. Those details were very much
Speaker 3: kept from certainly the children in the community, but I
Speaker 3: suspect also the adults, and we were told that they
Speaker 3: died because they had listened to Nirvana and they had
Speaker 3: had too much worldly influence. Yeah, you know, and we
Speaker 3: believed that, like we believe that these poor kids had
Speaker 3: died because of Nirvana, not because actually they had tried
Speaker 3: to say to their mother that they didn't want to
Speaker 3: attend the church anymore, and that they had been forced
Speaker 3: to attend. It wasn't until many many years later, like
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe eight or nine years later, that
Speaker 3: I realized and looked up in the newspaper actually and went, oh,
Speaker 3: my god, they didn't die because of Nirvana, which just
Speaker 3: seems like lunicrous now. But you know, often people inside
Speaker 3: these groups live in an alternate reality. Like we drip
Speaker 3: fed information. We're told information from a very specific viewpoint,
Speaker 3: and we're not told the truth about things. Everything was distorted,
Speaker 3: you know, and even the Ernie Barrier Chris Chandler stuff,
Speaker 3: you know, when I was growing up and Chris and Ernie,
Speaker 3: the conversation started to happen about the fact that they
Speaker 3: had been charged. You know, we were told that the
Speaker 3: people who charged them, you know, were bitter people, they
Speaker 3: were people with very bad mental health issues. And we
Speaker 3: were lied to about why these cases were brought about,
Speaker 3: like people have just not told the truth about these
Speaker 3: criminal cases.
Speaker 2: Obviously we've just touched on a few cases. But are
Speaker 2: these crimes or alleged crimes that are being repeated over
Speaker 2: and over and over again in communities not just here
Speaker 2: but throughout the whole world that you can see.
Speaker 3: Around the world, And let me tell you, it is
Speaker 3: worse in countries like Vietnam and Malaysia and where families
Speaker 3: are poor. And I mean we touched on this earlier
Speaker 3: about my own family coming into the group. The people
Speaker 3: who come into the group now are from countries like
Speaker 3: Brazil and Venezuela and Uruguay and Vietnam, and they're from
Speaker 3: places where there is entrenched poverty. And they're sending workers
Speaker 3: or preachers from countries like Australia who have backgrounds as
Speaker 3: predators into those environments where I have absolutely no doubt.
Speaker 2: In fact, I have a lot of.
Speaker 3: Emails to suggest that these people are being preyed upon
Speaker 3: by our workers or by the Truth's workers in these countries.
Speaker 2: You mentioned before that things are starting to explode overseas.
Speaker 2: What did you mean by that? Are things starting to
Speaker 2: come out well?
Speaker 3: I think in the US and Canada, in particular, there
Speaker 3: was a preacher who died in a hotel room. In
Speaker 3: itself is very odd because we tend from the truth
Speaker 3: not to go into hotel rooms as preachers. We stay
Speaker 3: in people's homes, which is also a problem because that's
Speaker 3: where abuses are happening, because preachers are staying in our homes.
Speaker 3: So he died in a hotel and there was some
Speaker 3: incriminating evidence found on a laptop, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: some stuff got shared online in some Facebook group, in
Speaker 3: a Facebook group, and lots and lots of people in
Speaker 3: America studge to ask questions about, well, how many predators
Speaker 3: are there? Do we have a register? We don't have
Speaker 3: a registered organization, so how do we have a register
Speaker 3: of predators in the group? And it suddenly became obvious
Speaker 3: we don't. And you know, there's all these predators just
Speaker 3: roaming around in our families and communities and in our clergy.
Speaker 3: And so people are asking questions and they're not getting
Speaker 3: answers because, as we touched on before, the controlling nature
Speaker 3: of what gets drip fed in means that nobody ever
Speaker 3: gets questions answered in a way that is honest.
Speaker 2: And I guess it's hard because the police can't really
Speaker 2: charge anyone, or question anyone, or prosecute anyone unless people
Speaker 2: are willing to share what happened.
Speaker 3: Correct And you know in my own circumstances I have
Speaker 3: in the past, and in fact I have a case
Speaker 3: live at the moment to try and get a case
Speaker 3: up against somebody. But unless you have people in your
Speaker 3: community who are willing to corroborate your story, you have
Speaker 3: absolutely no evidence. And when you come from a community
Speaker 3: who is entirely secretive and who is more likely to
Speaker 3: undermine you than they are to corroborate your story, the
Speaker 3: chances of getting like a legal case up are even
Speaker 3: slimmer than they are for mainstream people. And it's hard
Speaker 3: for mainstream survivors, let alone people from a secretive community
Speaker 3: like ours.
Speaker 2: I've heard you describe the group as putting a lot
Speaker 2: of emphasis on suffering. Can you describe that to me
Speaker 2: a bit more? And I'm also particularly interested in it
Speaker 2: because I feel like what we've been talking about reporting
Speaker 2: crimes that would stop you from wanting to do that too.
Speaker 3: I talk a lot about the suffering and a lot
Speaker 3: about how I left because I couldn't stand the suffering
Speaker 3: you know, like, I have a fairly vibrant, outgoing personality,
Speaker 3: and the suffering just did me in. The reality is this, right,
Speaker 3: is that life inside fundamentals and life inside Celtic groups
Speaker 3: is actually pretty shit, especially for women and girls and
Speaker 3: for people outside being a white man. Right, if you're
Speaker 3: a white man, it's a bloody nice place to live.
Speaker 3: Everything's controlled, You've got a lot of power, you to
Speaker 3: wave it around and get people to do what you want.
Speaker 3: But if you're not a nice white man in a
Speaker 3: fundamental scroup, it's actually a really hard life. And so
Speaker 3: to counteract that, you believe that all of this suffering,
Speaker 3: that you're going through this looking different, this feeling like
Speaker 3: you are an outsider all the time because you don't
Speaker 3: look and sound and speak and have any kind of
Speaker 3: comprehension of the world outside your home, it's because you're
Speaker 3: going to heaven and everyone else is going to hell,
Speaker 3: and so you're suffering your way into heaven. I just
Speaker 3: need to suffer, and I just need to tolerate this,
Speaker 3: and I just need to put up with this because
Speaker 3: I'm going to heaven. If I don't, I'm going to hell.
Speaker 3: Like there's my alternatives, right, I've got to put up
Speaker 3: with this because in the end, my reward is in heaven.
Speaker 3: And you just have this horrible mentality of people thinking
Speaker 3: they have to put up with horrible mental health issues,
Speaker 3: they have to put up with abuse, they have to
Speaker 3: put up with families that are controlling, because the alternative
Speaker 3: is that you're going to help.
Speaker 2: It feels like a way to explain away crimes against themselves.
Speaker 3: It is bypassing is spiritual. Bypassing, right, we are using
Speaker 3: the Bible to basically enable abuse and control by men.
Speaker 4: At the end of the day, let's.
Speaker 2: Talk about you getting out. Did it start with education?
Speaker 2: I know that you went to Uni? Was that normal?
Speaker 3: In theory it started with me going to university, But
Speaker 3: I think it goes back much further than that. It
Speaker 3: goes back with me never being comfortable with my gender
Speaker 3: and sexuality role within the group, never feeling like I
Speaker 3: was looking around and thinking I fit in here. I
Speaker 3: just never fit, you know. And if i'd been a boy,
Speaker 3: I used to just wish I was a boy. From
Speaker 3: like eight or nine years old, I used to think
Speaker 3: I just wish I was a boy. I wish I
Speaker 3: could just live like they do. And that's really where
Speaker 3: it started is I just never fitted in quite like
Speaker 3: I should have. I didn't want to get married and
Speaker 3: just have children and be what the other women around
Speaker 3: me and girls around me had been. I certainly didn't
Speaker 3: want to become a worker, and so it was like, well,
Speaker 3: what are my options? You know, my own mother had
Speaker 3: been to university, but she'd made a choice to leave
Speaker 3: and have children, and then she did go back again
Speaker 3: and become a teacher, and so she did set a
Speaker 3: good example for me. But she was very much in
Speaker 3: the world, but not of the world. She was very
Speaker 3: controlled in her interactions with her colleagues. She kept herself
Speaker 3: very separate, and she didn't have a life outside the
Speaker 3: home except to turn up to work and then come
Speaker 3: home again. And I didn't want that life. I wanted friends.
Speaker 3: I wanted to experience things. I was a curious kid
Speaker 3: who wanted to make friends outside our family and community.
Speaker 3: And really I had no option at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, what was I going to do? Like, I
Speaker 3: didn't have options? And so yeah, I really just nutted
Speaker 3: down in my last couple of years of school and thought, well,
Speaker 3: if I can get some decent grades, maybe I can
Speaker 3: get out of this community, maybe I can go. So yeah,
Speaker 3: in theory university's what got me out. But you've started
Speaker 3: much much before that.
Speaker 2: How old were you when you finally said goodbye to
Speaker 2: the church.
Speaker 3: I actually didn't formally leave until I was nineteen, Okay,
Speaker 3: I kept going. I didn't know you could leave. I
Speaker 3: thought you died and went to hell if you left.
Speaker 3: I didn't know anybody who left, and there were a
Speaker 3: few people around me who had left, in my extended
Speaker 3: family and community, but I never saw them again. They disappeared,
Speaker 3: and they disappeared because they were shunder ex communicated, or
Speaker 3: shamed away, or in the case of one of my
Speaker 3: extended family, they actually died. And you know that was
Speaker 3: used against us. We were told if you leave, that
Speaker 3: some accident will befall you and you will die. You know,
Speaker 3: I didn't know you could leave. I thought I just
Speaker 3: had to try and maintain this life while building another
Speaker 3: life outside of it, and somehow try and make them work,
Speaker 3: because I thought if I left, I was going to
Speaker 3: go to hell.
Speaker 2: So did you leave thinking that might happen?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did.
Speaker 2: That's a huge huch thing to take on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the reality is I was really pushed out. I
Speaker 3: was excommunicated out because my behavior and my appearance in
Speaker 3: my community. I no longer fitted with my community. Was
Speaker 3: the reality. I was going to university, I wasn't dressing
Speaker 3: the way I should have been. I had dreadlocks. Actually
Speaker 3: I refused to cut my hair because we weren't allowed
Speaker 3: to cut our hair. But I thought, like a big
Speaker 3: dreadlocks with it, and I can still, you know, get
Speaker 3: it up in a big bun. With dreadlocks.
Speaker 2: You were really working with what you could.
Speaker 3: Because working with what I had, you know. But of
Speaker 3: course I was turning up every Sunday and Wednesday and
Speaker 3: they were like, what is she? What is this?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: I was not setting the right example. So I was
Speaker 3: really pushed out of the community. I thought I was
Speaker 3: probably going to die. I was waiting to die, is
Speaker 3: the reality for a long time, you know, for six months.
Speaker 3: It was the early days of the internet. And I
Speaker 3: started searching online and found some things and started to realize, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: probably not going to die quite the way they say
Speaker 3: I'm going to. Yeah, So yeah, I left thinking I
Speaker 3: was going to die.
Speaker 2: Do you even remember the first day that you weren't
Speaker 2: a part of the group anymore? What did that look?
Speaker 3: Like I don't really remember. I remember the day I
Speaker 3: realized I was never going back. And I just walked
Speaker 3: out of a Sunday service and they'd all kind of
Speaker 3: been very strange with me. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of rituals at the end of services, like you have
Speaker 3: to shake hands with everybody, you know, you'll sit in
Speaker 3: a circle, and there's a whole lot of rituals that
Speaker 3: happen in Truth services, and I just was really uncomfortable
Speaker 3: and realizing none of them would look me in the eye,
Speaker 3: none of them would shake hands with me, none of
Speaker 3: them would let me participate in the rituals. And it
Speaker 3: had been going on for a while, for kind of
Speaker 3: a year, maybe eighteen months, but this day I just
Speaker 3: realized it had escalated and they were really pushing me out,
Speaker 3: and I felt really, really uncomfortable, you know, to the
Speaker 3: point where they were reversing away from me so that
Speaker 3: didn't have to talk to me, and basically tripping over themselves,
Speaker 3: you know, to get away from me. And I came
Speaker 3: to the end of that service and I walked down
Speaker 3: and was bucketing down with rain. As I have said before,
Speaker 3: I didn't have any money, I had nothing. Everyone else
Speaker 3: had cars, and I had to really on public transport,
Speaker 3: and none of them ever offered me a lift, which
Speaker 3: is self was weird because I came from a family
Speaker 3: in a community that like we're so tight, and you know,
Speaker 3: I would never have let anybody take public transport and
Speaker 3: would have given anyone a lift. And so yeah, they
Speaker 3: just sort of let me walk out. And I was
Speaker 3: waiting in the rain for the tram and it was
Speaker 3: bucketing down with rain, and they were all driving past
Speaker 3: me and just kind of looking the other direction and
Speaker 3: refusing to make eye contact with me, and I just
Speaker 3: sort of went, I don't think these people want me.
Speaker 3: I don't think I belong here anymore. And I just
Speaker 3: felt this deep sense of like rejection and shame and thought,
Speaker 3: I'm not coming back here anymore. I don't want this anymore.
Speaker 3: I don't know what this is, and I don't want to. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I made that decision that DA I'm never going back,
Speaker 3: never ever going back. And I was so shamed and
Speaker 3: felt so bad that I was willing to die basically
Speaker 3: because I wasn't going to participate in that anymore. And yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it was a pretty tough ond six months
Speaker 3: after that, like I had nothing.
Speaker 2: Did you have to call your family and tell them
Speaker 2: that you were leaving? What did that look like?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I did try to talk to my family
Speaker 3: about it, certainly after I'd found information online about the
Speaker 3: group and about them being cultic and about the abuses,
Speaker 3: for instance, and about Norell and Stephen Henderson as well.
Speaker 3: Like I found information about them and was like, what
Speaker 3: the hell. Like, I tried to talk to my family
Speaker 3: about it, but they would say things like, Oh, you've
Speaker 3: been taken in by the devil, you know, like the
Speaker 3: devil puts things on the internet to confuse people. Your
Speaker 3: spirit is wrong, you need to go back, and you
Speaker 3: need to repent, and you need to come back. And
Speaker 3: there was a lot of shaming and a lot of
Speaker 3: like thoughts stopping stuff. They just wouldn't listen to anything
Speaker 3: that I had to say, so I stopped really talking
Speaker 3: about it. But you know, and it also became gossip,
Speaker 3: because that's the other thing is that our communities are
Speaker 3: very close, and yeah, people just gossip about me and
Speaker 3: about my appearance and about my spirit. And then it
Speaker 3: really escalated to the point where there was kind of
Speaker 3: ostracization and I would go home to my rural community
Speaker 3: on holidays and whatever. And yeah, people from my community
Speaker 3: would cross the street to avoid me or pretend they
Speaker 3: didn't know who I was. Yeah, And you know, and
Speaker 3: I from a tiny, little rural community where these are
Speaker 3: people I've known my entire life, you know, and these
Speaker 3: are people I've known since I was born. They would
Speaker 3: just pretend they didn't know who I was.
Speaker 2: And you've described that for the most part, you had
Speaker 2: a very happy childhood with your nuclear family, but you
Speaker 2: haven't spoken to them now for many years.
Speaker 3: That right, Yeah, there was a lot of ostracization, a
Speaker 3: lot of shunning by my extended family, and not just
Speaker 3: my family, but my community as well. I think there's
Speaker 3: been hopeful things. You know, there is more and more
Speaker 3: who have come forward and made contact after leaving themselves,
Speaker 3: So that's nice. But you know, people don't realize the
Speaker 3: damage that's done to relationships and the damage and the
Speaker 3: trauma that happens. And even when people leave, it's not
Speaker 3: always happy families, you know. And these are often people
Speaker 3: who have protected abuses. For instance, even if they leave,
Speaker 3: they're still not going to go back and say, oopsie,
Speaker 3: I might have covered up for a predator for you.
Speaker 3: You know for somebody, So there's a lot of really
Speaker 3: toxic behavior. Still, yeah, there's a lot of cover ups
Speaker 3: and a lot of very damaged people, even if they
Speaker 3: leave often still not in a great place.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that your first six months were really tough.
Speaker 2: What did trying to integrate into normal society look like.
Speaker 3: I'd never worn jeans. I'd never bought a pair of jeans.
Speaker 3: I didn't know how to buy jeans. I had never
Speaker 3: been to a hairdresser and have my haircut properly, like,
Speaker 3: had a hairstyle properly. I didn't know how to use
Speaker 3: a hair dryer in my family, which is not common,
Speaker 3: Like I think my family were a bit hardcore about this,
Speaker 3: but hair dryers were seen as being worldly, so we
Speaker 3: didn't use hair dryers. So I don't know how to
Speaker 3: blow dry my hair. I'd never used makeup. I had
Speaker 3: absolutely no clue how to use makeup. I wouldn't have
Speaker 3: known what lipstick or mascara was, you know. I very actually,
Speaker 3: very rarely bought clothes knew from a store. I had,
Speaker 3: you know, a couple of times, but mostly our clothes
Speaker 3: were made within their family or within the community. So yeah,
Speaker 3: just things like shopping for clothes. I had no idea
Speaker 3: about wearing things that came above my knee. For instance.
Speaker 3: I had no idea about how to use a TV remote,
Speaker 3: like how to even know what channels are on TV
Speaker 3: like pop music, no idea about radio stations, no idea
Speaker 3: about pop music.
Speaker 2: But was learning all of this exciting or was it
Speaker 2: a bit overwhelming terrifying?
Speaker 3: Because I was also very ashamed, and so to ask
Speaker 3: for help from the people around me was very difficult.
Speaker 3: Was very ashamed. So I sort of just had to
Speaker 3: learn by stealth and by watching and by like being
Speaker 3: hypervigilant with the people around me to try and work
Speaker 3: out like how do you do lipstick? Like how do
Speaker 3: you work that remote control? And now that this is common,
Speaker 3: I think while the issues might be slightly different now
Speaker 3: there's not good deprogramming services for people when you leave,
Speaker 3: you know, it's just not good counseling that's affordable, certainly
Speaker 3: for people to go and learn how to live in
Speaker 3: the world. We're like aliens from another planet. Like we
Speaker 3: might look like other people, but we're like aliens.
Speaker 2: Have you been to the police about the alleged crimes
Speaker 2: that you witnessed or saw happen or is there no
Speaker 2: point doing that.
Speaker 3: I've raised several different cases with police on various different
Speaker 3: things that happened, and in fact, my leaving was also
Speaker 3: a very long, very violent process as well. There was
Speaker 3: a lot of abuse while I was leaving, things like
Speaker 3: leaving notes on my windscreen threatening me, things like voicemails,
Speaker 3: leaving threatening voice mails, and you know, every time I've
Speaker 3: raised cases with authorities, then experienced another round of violence
Speaker 3: and abuse. So I have not only raised it about
Speaker 3: things that happen in my childhood, but I've also raised
Speaker 3: cases for things that happened as I was leaving. It's
Speaker 3: very difficult to prove anything, and as I've mentioned before,
Speaker 3: the community is very tight knit and they protect each other,
Speaker 3: and you need a lot of evidence even to get
Speaker 3: a case up normally, and there is even less evidence
Speaker 3: when you have less people who will stand behind you
Speaker 3: and support you. And it's also part of the reason
Speaker 3: why I speak out because when I first started trying
Speaker 3: to raise awareness and started to have court cases try
Speaker 3: and get court cases up, there was nothing available for
Speaker 3: people to reference when they talked to police online about
Speaker 3: who the group was. There was nothing online for people
Speaker 3: to send to a police officer and say, this is
Speaker 3: the group I came from. This woman is talking about
Speaker 3: the group I came from. And for me, in the
Speaker 3: last kind of five years, I've just had so many
Speaker 3: people reach out and say, you know, I raised a
Speaker 3: case and I sent things I found that you've said
Speaker 3: online and I sent it to the detective and I
Speaker 3: sent it to the police and I said, this is
Speaker 3: the group.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I'm not making this up. This is the group, this
Speaker 3: is where they come from, this is their background, because
Speaker 3: it was just so little published about us, especially in Australia.
Speaker 2: Is that why you've decided to do this interview? Do
Speaker 2: you just want to keep getting the message out there
Speaker 2: for other people?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do.
Speaker 3: I want to get the message out, but I also
Speaker 3: bigger than that, I want to talk about spiritual abuse.
Speaker 3: I want mainstream family violence providers to realize how violent
Speaker 3: these groups are and how much support we need when
Speaker 3: we leave, and that deciding to leave is a very long,
Speaker 3: very violent process, and that we need support, we need housing,
Speaker 3: we need funding, and at the moment there just is
Speaker 3: not supports for people who try to leave our communities for.
Speaker 2: A bit of hope. What does your life look like now?
Speaker 3: On one hand, I have a really wonderful life, you know.
Speaker 3: I have a five year old. I have a brand
Speaker 3: called Go Kindly, a betting brand that I co founded
Speaker 3: and built. I have wonderful friends and wonderful relationships. And
Speaker 3: I'm very deeply loved in the world that I have
Speaker 3: created for myself. But on the other hands, I'm also
Speaker 3: a deeply traumatized person from the things that have happened
Speaker 3: to me, and I have to hold those things very
Speaker 3: closely and manage those things. You know, I have CPTSD
Speaker 3: as a result of the abuses and the sustained abuses.
Speaker 3: I'm very loved. I have a wonderful life, but it
Speaker 3: comes with its damage.
Speaker 2: I want our final question to kind of speak directly
Speaker 2: to people. I know it's hard to get access to interviews,
Speaker 2: but who might be listening to this. They might be
Speaker 2: members of the Truth and they want to get out.
Speaker 2: What would you say to them?
Speaker 3: I think that people need to come to the realization
Speaker 3: inside the Truth that it cannot be changed, it cannot
Speaker 3: be made safe. It is a dangerous ideology. It is
Speaker 3: an extreme ideology. It's not Christianity. You can leave and
Speaker 3: you can go and join a different church. A mainstream
Speaker 3: church and still be a Christian. You do not need
Speaker 3: to believe in the extreme ideology of the truth. It's
Speaker 3: abusive and it cannot be changed. My advice to people
Speaker 3: who reach out to me starting to have this conversation
Speaker 3: is they're usually very terrified, but is to just start
Speaker 3: gradually exploring what life outside the truth could look like
Speaker 3: and take very small steps to explore a different church
Speaker 3: quietly without anybody really knowing. To educate yourself about what
Speaker 3: supports you might need if you wanted to leave, and
Speaker 3: that's things like creating yourself your own bank account that's
Speaker 3: separate from your families. That's things like thinking about housing
Speaker 3: and at what point might you be able to get
Speaker 3: your own access to housing if for whatever reason, your
Speaker 3: spouse or your family did not want to leave with you,
Speaker 3: What would that safely look like, especially from communities like
Speaker 3: the one I came from, where leaving would mean they
Speaker 3: would cross the street and never speak to you again.
Speaker 3: What are the implications of you leaving and thinking those
Speaker 3: things through and actually going into a family violence organization
Speaker 3: and demanding that they listen to your background, because at
Speaker 3: the moment, there are not a lot of family valence
Speaker 3: organizations who understand the difficulties leaving fundamentalist groups, but you
Speaker 3: have a right to ask that they listen and a
Speaker 3: right to ask that they support you.
Speaker 2: Thanks Laura for sharing her story with us. True Crime
Speaker 2: Conversations is a Muma mea podcast hosted and produced by
Speaker 2: me Jemma Bath, with audio designed by Scott Stronik. Our
Speaker 2: executive producer is Giam Moylan.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week with a brand new episode
Speaker 1: of True Crime Conversations, Richat with former Australian Special Forces
Speaker 1: soldier Heston Russell about his childhood, his time in the military,
Speaker 1: and his infamous defamation battle with the ABC