Speaker 1: Already and this is the daily This is the Daily os.
Speaker 1: Oh now it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily Ohs. It's Monday,
Speaker 2: the seventeenth of November. I'm Elliot Lourie.
Speaker 3: I'm Emma Gillespie.
Speaker 2: When we talk about colts, we tend to picture the
Speaker 2: classic images a doomsday group in the desert or a
Speaker 2: fringe religious sect that feels totally disconnected from everyday life.
Speaker 2: But here in Australia, cults are a current and pressing
Speaker 2: issue in our communities, so much so that the Victorian
Speaker 2: Parliament has now launched an inquiry into colts and other
Speaker 2: coercive groups. In today's podcast, you're going to hear from
Speaker 2: Claire Heath MacIvor. She established an advocacy organization called the
Speaker 2: Survivors of Coercive Cults and High Control Groups after she
Speaker 2: left behind the life she was born into a high
Speaker 2: control group in Eastern Victoria.
Speaker 3: Elliott, this is such a fascinating topic to be talking
Speaker 3: about today, and I think you really nailed it with
Speaker 3: your intro when you said that cults can feel like
Speaker 3: this kind of really far away concept or the stuff
Speaker 3: of true crime podcasts and docos, But it is a
Speaker 3: very real issue currently being discussed in Victoria, and Claire
Speaker 3: is one of many former cult members who are now
Speaker 3: working with the Victorian government as it tries to understand
Speaker 3: more about these groups. Before we jump into her story,
Speaker 3: can you tell us a little bit more about this
Speaker 3: parliamentary inquiry?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So earlier this year, the Victorian government
Speaker 2: announced that they'd be holding their own inquiry into cults
Speaker 2: and high control groups. It's important to note that those
Speaker 2: terms are kind of used interchangeably because cults have a
Speaker 2: very intense stigma attached to them, so they try to
Speaker 2: word it a little bit differently sometimes, but we will
Speaker 2: hear throughout the podcast those two terms kind of used
Speaker 2: in the same way. But basically, an inquiry gives the
Speaker 2: public an opportunity to have input into issues that are
Speaker 2: before parliament. This particular inquiry has already heard from several
Speaker 2: survivors as well as advocacy groups, trauma experts, and religious groups.
Speaker 3: Okay, and why is it happening right now? Why has
Speaker 3: the government in Victoria decided that now's the time.
Speaker 2: Look, there's a lot of problems that they're trying to
Speaker 2: solve here. One of the main ones is that we
Speaker 2: don't have a legal definition here in Australia for what
Speaker 2: a cult is.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: On top of that, they're also trying to fill in
Speaker 2: the gaps that are in existing legislation to help better
Speaker 2: crack down on cult activity in the state. But the
Speaker 2: reason that they're holding the inquiry right now is off
Speaker 2: the back of a massive surgeon reports of high control
Speaker 2: groups operating across the state. One of the more high
Speaker 2: profile cases that helped trigger the inquiry came from the
Speaker 2: Geelong Revival Center, which is a Pentecostal doomsday church based
Speaker 2: just outside of Melbourne. We've also seen a lot of
Speaker 2: cases of young people being targeted by cults. The inquiry
Speaker 2: has actually heard that universities and shopping centers have become
Speaker 2: hunting grounds for these sorts of recruiters for these cults,
Speaker 2: and this month we've actually seen leaders from the state's
Speaker 2: universities appear before the inquiry to try and help the
Speaker 2: government put together a response.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the way that this has impacted young people, the
Speaker 3: university recruitment stuff that has emerged is super fascinating. That
Speaker 3: gives us a bit of a picture of the inquiry itself.
Speaker 3: But today we're going to hear from Claire, Can you
Speaker 3: tell us a little bit more about her?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Claire was born and raised in the City
Speaker 2: Builders Church, which is also in Victoria. Her father is
Speaker 2: actually a pastor in the church, and Claire has been
Speaker 2: ostracized from her entire family and also her former community
Speaker 2: for almost a decade now. She told me about how
Speaker 2: hard it's been to adapt to a new life on
Speaker 2: the outside, as well as some stories from her experience that,
Speaker 2: while shocking, are actually pretty commonplace amongst cult survivors. You'll
Speaker 2: hear more from her in just a second, but I
Speaker 2: do want to preface this interview with just a quick
Speaker 2: content warning because we do discuss various forms of abuse
Speaker 2: throughout the chat. If you're not feeling up to it,
Speaker 2: then maybe come back for tomorrow's deep dive, but without
Speaker 2: further ado. Claire, thank you for joining the Dai they Os.
Speaker 1: It's my pleasure.
Speaker 2: So I want to start off really broad today. We're
Speaker 2: talking about cults for anyone that's maybe not exactly sure
Speaker 2: what is a cult.
Speaker 1: A cult can be any group, essentially, any group that
Speaker 1: has these combination of characteristics. Usually a cult has a
Speaker 1: central charismatic leader, usually a bit narcissistic who commands a
Speaker 1: lot of obedience and a lot of adoration and adulation.
Speaker 1: A cult usually has a transcendent belief system, so the
Speaker 1: one kind of higher truth or the one path to enlightenment.
Speaker 1: They also have systems of influence by which people are
Speaker 1: indoctrinated and brought into the group. Often these are quite
Speaker 1: deceptive from the outset and get more serious as you
Speaker 1: come into the group, and they have systems of control
Speaker 1: once you're in. A lot of people think that cults
Speaker 1: are just religious or pseudo rel We think of sort
Speaker 1: of white doomsday cults, but it's just not the case.
Speaker 1: Cults can be any type of group. There's yoga cults,
Speaker 1: there's Buddhist cults, hard labor cults, there's you know, multi
Speaker 1: level marketing cults. Even it can be all sorts of groups.
Speaker 2: And you, yourself, are a survivor of a cult. Can
Speaker 2: you tell us a little bit about your experience?
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, my group. You know, it's still uncomfortable to
Speaker 1: call it a cult, even though i've you know, it
Speaker 1: definitely fits the definition, but it was it's a Christian
Speaker 1: church that exists further out on the fundamentalist edge. We're
Speaker 1: a dominionist group, so We believed that God had sent
Speaker 1: us to take dominion of the seven domains of society.
Speaker 1: It's a common evangelical doctrine, but the control and an
Speaker 1: influenced methodology within that group is what makes it quite
Speaker 1: quite a standout in that area. We were very, very
Speaker 1: interested in politics and had concentrated efforts to infiltrate particularly
Speaker 1: the National Party and the Liberal Party in Victoria. Were
Speaker 1: also quite well known for our attitudes towards LGBT people.
Speaker 1: My ex husband is a gay conversion therapy survivor, and
Speaker 1: even though gay conversion therapy is outlawed, you know, in
Speaker 1: a lot of places, it's broader than just therapy. It's
Speaker 1: actually gay conversion practices, sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts.
Speaker 1: There can be anything from prayer and exorcism to homophobia
Speaker 1: from behind the pulpit to all sorts of things. And
Speaker 1: we were in an arranged marriage, you know, some of
Speaker 1: these ideas are quite deeply held within these groups. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was our group, still very involved in politics,
Speaker 1: and my parents actually run that group and I am
Speaker 1: sadly estranged from them and my four siblings.
Speaker 2: At what point in your experience did you start to
Speaker 2: sort of have questions or thoughts about the fact that
Speaker 2: you may be in a cult. What was the moment
Speaker 2: that sort of made you realize.
Speaker 1: So there had been moments over the years, probably from
Speaker 1: when I was around sixteen, that I was visited by
Speaker 1: that discomfort, especially when it came to abuse that I
Speaker 1: suffered or that other people suffered, and the way that
Speaker 1: that was handled that made me feel really really uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I was aware that people in the community felt it
Speaker 1: was a cult, which was also deeply uncomfortable. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't until the eleventh of November twenty fifteen, when I
Speaker 1: found out I was pregnant with our first child, but
Speaker 1: it's actually our fifth pregnancy that my husband had a
Speaker 1: fight with my dad and thus began the process of
Speaker 1: our shunning. And it's a deeply painful memory. But also
Speaker 1: I just don't think that I would have been able
Speaker 1: to carry that pregnancy to term if I had been
Speaker 1: in that high stress environment. Shunning isn't fun, but at
Speaker 1: least I knew I wasn't bringing a child into that world.
Speaker 2: And we're talking today because the Victorian Parliament has launched
Speaker 2: a inquiry into colts. Yes, why do you think they've
Speaker 2: launched it. Now that is.
Speaker 1: A loaded question. I mean, I can only assume to
Speaker 1: me like I've had my hearing in front of the inquiry,
Speaker 1: and I've found the committee to be really deeply invested
Speaker 1: in this, and that seems to not be a partisan thing.
Speaker 1: It seems to be right across the board, Labor, Liberal Nationals,
Speaker 1: for which I'm deeply thankful. A couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: one of the goats of Australian analysm Richard Baker, started
Speaker 1: working with survivors of the Geelong Revival Center and he
Speaker 1: started working with them on a podcast series called Secrets
Speaker 1: We Keep Pray Harder. But it actually got benched for
Speaker 1: a few years because some members of the Geelong Revival
Speaker 1: Center leadership were actually up on charges related to child essay,
Speaker 1: so that had to wait. And then when it was launched,
Speaker 1: Ryan and Catherine Cary, who led the charge on that podcast,
Speaker 1: they were working with Chris Cousins, who is an MP
Speaker 1: out in that area, and Chris really just deeply cared
Speaker 1: about this so helped them get an inquiry up. And
Speaker 1: the data that's come out is so compelling in terms
Speaker 1: of like ninety five point nine percent of respondents on
Speaker 1: the survey said that they'd suffered psychological harm, something like
Speaker 1: eighty five percent said limitations on personal freedom and fifty
Speaker 1: two point four four percent said physical or essay abuse.
Speaker 2: You mentioned a survey conducted by the Parliamentary Inquiry which
Speaker 2: revealed some trends about cult survivors and their experiences there.
Speaker 2: One of the more interesting ones that I was looking
Speaker 2: at was how people are recruited into cults. Can you
Speaker 2: maybe talk us through what are some of the more
Speaker 2: common practices?
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, this is really interesting because it seems to
Speaker 1: be the same right across the board. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people think, oh, you know, there's there's kids
Speaker 1: that are born into cults and it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: child abuse is rife, and we need to absolutely take
Speaker 1: that seriously. But there's this thought that, you know, whatever
Speaker 1: consenting adults do when a cult is up to them.
Speaker 1: The thing is nobody consents to join a cult. You
Speaker 1: don't rock up and somebody hands you a flyer and says, hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to this cult. We're going to control every aspect
Speaker 1: of your life. It's just not how it happens. What
Speaker 1: will happen instead is you'll be invited to you know,
Speaker 1: a social gathering, you might be befriended by one or two extras.
Speaker 1: They might start to love bomb you, which is intoxicating.
Speaker 1: But you'll be invited to then do courses and it
Speaker 1: might seem really innocuous. It might be a course about
Speaker 1: you know, authentic manhood or masculinity, and the MANI sphere
Speaker 1: is a huge concern with regard to that. It might
Speaker 1: be a course about you know, women's empowerment or politics
Speaker 1: or philosophy. It might be about recovery from abuse. And
Speaker 1: then you start sharing your more intimate secrets with this mentor,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden there's emotional buy in
Speaker 1: and then the energy that you'll be putting into the
Speaker 1: group through volunteer work or more courses or stuff like that.
Speaker 1: It starts to increase as your connection to your friends
Speaker 1: and families decrease. And then you'll have a moment where
Speaker 1: it might be like, Oh, your friends and your family
Speaker 1: don't really understand where your real family where your real friends.
Speaker 1: This is the one truth. Hey, why don't you invest
Speaker 1: in this opportunity or invest in this course, or invest
Speaker 1: in whatever. So nobody consents to join a cult. They
Speaker 1: consent to go to a barbecue or go to a
Speaker 1: fun group, or go to a personal development course, and
Speaker 1: it's like boiling that frog degree by degree, and it's
Speaker 1: not until the water's boiling and it's too late to
Speaker 1: escape easily that people usually realize they're in a cult.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back with more of today's deep dive
Speaker 3: right after this.
Speaker 2: And there's a bit of a running joke, for lack
Speaker 2: of a better term, about this one area in Melbourne
Speaker 2: CBD Melbourne Central or Emporium where people say, you know,
Speaker 2: if someone comes up to you and as being nice
Speaker 2: to you right away, because they're likely recruiting you into
Speaker 2: a cult. Yes, why do you think that's taking place there?
Speaker 2: And is there a certain target that these cults are
Speaker 2: going after?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do know that the Shinchyanji cult, which is
Speaker 1: particularly insidious, is recruiting on university campuses a lot. You
Speaker 1: often see street preachers down at the Burke Street mall
Speaker 1: and intersections like that. Essentially, cults are looking for people
Speaker 1: who are in the crosshairs of big transitions in life,
Speaker 1: whether that is adolescence where the apron strings are loosening,
Speaker 1: you're more interested in your friend group, You're trying to
Speaker 1: find your place in the world. You might want to
Speaker 1: find your tribe, find your meaning, your purpose. There's also
Speaker 1: during that late high school and early university you're idealistic
Speaker 1: and you might be going through your first big breakup
Speaker 1: or something like that. There's other risk factors that they
Speaker 1: look for. It might be the diagnosis of an illness
Speaker 1: or the death of a family member, divorce of parents,
Speaker 1: your own divorce, moving house. These periods of transition, these
Speaker 1: periods of loneliness ideal times for cults to come in
Speaker 1: and be your meaning in life, to come in and
Speaker 1: be your tribe, or come in and replace the family
Speaker 1: or close relationships that you've lost. So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that would be my theory, my hypothesis of why they'd
Speaker 1: be targeting a certain age group and in the city and.
Speaker 2: For those people that do full victim to these recruiting practices.
Speaker 2: Can you to walk us through what it's like once
Speaker 2: you're in cider cult.
Speaker 1: All for I don't like using the term mind control
Speaker 1: of brainwashing, but there's you know that's there, that pressure
Speaker 1: to conform to the group, that pressure to learn their language,
Speaker 1: their ways of thinking, and to represent that in the community.
Speaker 1: By the time I was about fifteen, I was getting
Speaker 1: up early in the morning to do my homeschooling. I
Speaker 1: was then helping school my younger brothers and sisters. I
Speaker 1: was then doing house chores, babysitting. I was then going
Speaker 1: to McDonald's my mission field, to work my shifts. And
Speaker 1: then I was usually at church doing various different things,
Speaker 1: sort of five six afternoons or evenings per week, and
Speaker 1: that six or fifth or sixth evening would be spent
Speaker 1: reaching out to people. Later on, I was running businesses
Speaker 1: and use discipleship programs, and I was fairly typical of
Speaker 1: the level of volunteerism that was required there. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you asked me, I would have said I was happy.
Speaker 1: But I've been on antidepressants since I was nineteen, and
Speaker 1: I have PTSD like many people who have escaped cults,
Speaker 1: but we hide those in cults, and consequently, when we exit,
Speaker 1: a lot of us end up with autoimmune disorders because
Speaker 1: our body is just so pathologically tired. A lot of
Speaker 1: us end up with these significant, you know, chronic illnesses.
Speaker 1: But that's a consequence of just having to go, go, go, go,
Speaker 1: and constantly represent and constantly be happy and joyful and
Speaker 1: peaceful while squashing all the rest down. Disempowerment of women
Speaker 1: is huge, and so too is conformity to gender or
Speaker 1: sexuality norms. So unfortunately, change in suppression practices, which is
Speaker 1: the proper name for sort of your gay conversion stuff,
Speaker 1: still occurs in a lot of.
Speaker 2: Groups you mentioned. There are some really concerning details around
Speaker 2: psychological manipulation, forced labor, sexual assault. For people who are listening,
Speaker 2: they might be thinking, if you're experiencing all those terrible things,
Speaker 2: why wouldn't you just leave? Why wouldn't you get out?
Speaker 2: What would you say to that?
Speaker 1: It's the same as asking a person in an intimate
Speaker 1: partner violence situation, why don't you just leave? For some people,
Speaker 1: it's not just somewhere they go once a week for
Speaker 1: a course. It is their social circle. It may be
Speaker 1: their marriage and maybe their children. It maybe their family members.
Speaker 1: It may have replaced their family members. They may have
Speaker 1: their employment, housing, or support system in that group. That
Speaker 1: group may possess a whole of their personal information. It's
Speaker 1: common for persecution complex or in us versus them complex,
Speaker 1: to be really built into that group as one of
Speaker 1: the control or influenced strategies. We're often terrified of the
Speaker 1: outside world and often hard to know where to start.
Speaker 1: I've had people tell me of having absolute meltdowns over
Speaker 1: how to open a bank account, how to get their
Speaker 1: birth certificate or passport, what to pack in an escape,
Speaker 1: who to call to escape? Can you trust that person?
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of levels here, and you can't
Speaker 1: just sort of call a hotline or google something and
Speaker 1: go great, now I'm exiting like it's a really it's
Speaker 1: a tricky process. For me, it was maybe I can
Speaker 1: fix this. Maybe I can just show them what's wrong,
Speaker 1: to show them the problems here, and maybe we can
Speaker 1: fix this. You still love them, and I still love them,
Speaker 1: And there's this double bind every time I speak out,
Speaker 1: because I'm speaking about my mum and my dad and
Speaker 1: my sisters and my brother, and I know that every
Speaker 1: time I speak, they're cringing and they're going like they'd
Speaker 1: be at home going why won't you stop attacking as,
Speaker 1: why won't you shut up? And I'm here going I'm
Speaker 1: not attacking you. I'm trying to stop people from suffering
Speaker 1: the same damage that people in cults everywhere suffer. And
Speaker 1: it's really really tough. So we should never ever look
Speaker 1: at a as somebody who's in a cult or trying
Speaker 1: and failing to escape, or trying to escape and succeeding
Speaker 1: and struggling to integrate into the world. We should never
Speaker 1: look at them and go, why didn't you do this earlier?
Speaker 1: I was terrified. I was so terrified and couldn't imagine
Speaker 1: the world a different way. It was my family, it
Speaker 1: was everyone I'd ever trusted, And years on, I still
Speaker 1: tango with that grief and that fear to be quite honest,
Speaker 1: and that those ties to home. But I've got a
Speaker 1: really beautiful life now that is authentically mine, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm able to recover. I'm able to live authentically as me,
Speaker 1: even though my personality, my desire to think and lead
Speaker 1: and contribute in my own way, to be my kind
Speaker 1: of flamboyant self, was really squashed within my upbringing. So
Speaker 1: even for me, reclaiming self and getting to know myself
Speaker 1: has been a journey. But also rule Number one of
Speaker 1: Colt Club is you're not a cult. Nobody ever thinks
Speaker 1: there are cults, like, don't call it a coult Like.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot for that moment to click that yeah,
Speaker 1: you're actually you know, problematic and it's not a comfortable
Speaker 1: recognition when you do.
Speaker 2: I wanted to end by thinking about the f a
Speaker 2: little bit. You've got this inquiry on it at the moment,
Speaker 2: humidly there's going to be some recommendations made at the
Speaker 2: end of it. What kind of changes can the government make?
Speaker 1: This is a really interesting one because many cult inquiries
Speaker 1: or inquiries into groups like this have happened in different
Speaker 1: jurisdictions and they've all been hamstrung on. But freedom of
Speaker 1: religion and belief, freedom of association, and these are valid things.
Speaker 1: So we really need to change the framing here and
Speaker 1: we need to start talking about coercive control in group settings.
Speaker 1: We're also suggesting to government, recommending to government that they
Speaker 1: have a independent commissioner for cults and high control groups.
Speaker 1: Reason being just in Victoria alone, there's thirty different areas
Speaker 1: of law, thirty different acts, and there's something like twenty
Speaker 1: one different government departments that may hold a single area
Speaker 1: of cultic abuse in their remit. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: how on earth do you coordinate this. You know, when
Speaker 1: Peter doesn't know what Paul's doing, you need an independent
Speaker 1: commissioner to do that. You need it to be independent
Speaker 1: because if it's tied to a minister and you end
Speaker 1: up with a far right minister at the head of
Speaker 1: that it could be axed because it's a challenging concept
Speaker 1: for those far right or even indeed really really far
Speaker 1: left groups. So we need it to be independent so
Speaker 1: it can coordinate things like research, education, public health style campaigns,
Speaker 1: support for survivors, exit strategies, and of course civil and
Speaker 1: criminal recourse for victims. So that's what we want.
Speaker 2: Heculus, Claire, thank you so much for joining us at
Speaker 2: the Daily ODS.
Speaker 1: My absolute pleasure.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much Elliott for unpacking that one today,
Speaker 3: a really interesting and important conversation, and of course a
Speaker 3: huge thanks to Claire for sharing her story and joining
Speaker 3: us at the Daily OS. The inquiry is continuing in Victoria.
Speaker 3: Full report and recommendations are you by September next year.
Speaker 3: We will keep you posted in the meantime. That's all
Speaker 3: we've got time for today, But if this episode has
Speaker 3: raised any issues for you, twenty four to seven crisis
Speaker 3: support is available through Lifeline on thirteen eleven fourteen. For
Speaker 3: family and sexual violence support, you can contact one eight
Speaker 3: hundred respect on one eight hundred seven three seven seven
Speaker 3: three two.
Speaker 2: My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 2: Banjelung Calcottin woman from Gadighl country.
Speaker 1: The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on
Speaker 1: the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to
Speaker 1: all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations.
Speaker 2: We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries,
Speaker 2: both past and present.