People in Glass Houses Read online

  It hurt. I felt cheated. One of the supermen just got shot or shot himself and we didn’t know why. How’s his family, for God’s sake? Where were the anecdotes about his relatives? Where was his little nonna now?

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ I was asked. ‘God’s forgiven him. It’s none of our business.’ How did they know God had forgiven him? Were they there? I was sure he was sorry now. But did his being sorry mean it was none of our business? There had been no coming clean. Why make an announcement unless it’s to come clean? Why not just stay dirty? I couldn’t figure it out. Why wouldn’t they name what he had done? What was ‘a pattern of immoral behaviour’? Surely a plain old affair wasn’t a pattern? That didn’t make sense.

  It was a Hillsonger, Saskia, sick of my endless questions, who sent me to Pastor Philip Powell’s website, and there I found the answers. On a message board, people were discussing this very issue. Christians themselves were arguing back and forth about what Pat Mesiti could have done and why no one was discussing it.

  Soon after, it hit the press. The Sydney Morning Herald ran several stories on the million-dollar ministry that had to be shut down. I got more from the Herald than from asking people at Hillsong who were there. Prostitutes and phone sex. We never found out who paid for it all.

  I investigated a lot more of that site. There were lots of articles about Hillsong. The webmaster, Philip Powell, was a preacher himself who had been on the AoG National Executive until 1992 and had left on principle. He spent the next ten years telling people what he’d seen then and what he now saw in the church.

  I had read the article on Frank some time before. The penny just hadn’t dropped. A couple of months later, however, I went back to it. This time I mentioned it to Jewels.

  ‘I know I’ve been away for a while,’ I said, ‘but I didn’t know Frank got in trouble too. How come you never mentioned Frank?’

  She said that she’d never heard.

  Odd. There on the internet in black and white was a lengthy article on the history of the Houston family. The writer suggested that Frank had not moved to Australia on the basis of a vision but to escape disciplinary action after some bad behaviour. It was written there as if it were old news.

  Not so. Jewels called her friend Megan to check it out. Megan was Brian’s personal assistant. When Jewels called back, she said Megan had told Pastor Brian, who had responded immediately.

  ‘I’m going to resolve this thing this weekend,’ he had said.

  This sounded like good news. It had been three months since the last scandal. I was ready to sit through another morning service. Time for another trip to Pleasantville.

  The message didn’t set the stage for what was about to happen.

  By this time, it seemed, Brian didn’t know what sort of foundation to lay. The rumours were that Frank Houston had been involved in paedophilia.

  It’s not like there wasn’t a precedent. Australia had just had an identical scenario unfold in the Anglican Church. After the Archbishop of Brisbane had been appointed governor-general, he faced allegations of failing to act on cases of sexual abuse by church workers.

  The public was furious at what had happened and demanded the GG’s resignation. The climate had changed. Sex offenders were not the only ones being held accountable in the clergy. It was those in high authority who had looked the other way or kept their secrets who were judged even more cruel.

  Brian Houston would have to have been living in a cave to miss the news. The GG was an old friend of the prime minister’s, and the revelation was an embarrassment to all concerned, as well as the church. The pre-terrorist witch-hunt for paedophiles had been on for years. Now the public were informed that these weren’t isolated incidents: it had taken a broad network of powerful people to cover up the unspeakable acts, first admitted in the Catholic Church and then by the Anglicans.

  During that time I was doing a TAFE course on therapy with children who have been sexually assaulted. It was a year-long course, and elaborated on some theories I had covered in social work. Predator and prey. The ongoing preventative research was on the process of grooming, the way in which a predator sets up its prey. Studies with offenders reveal a consistent pattern. A perpetrator can’t risk the victim telling someone. A child is thus prepared and groomed. This takes time but perpetrators, who are patient, are willing to wait for years for an opportunity. Often, a perpetrator will set up where children are, at schools or youth groups or in a family role. The child’s trust needs to be gained.

  They are made to feel special, more special than others. They are given gifts, and told they are the favourite.

  Gradually, the perpetrator starts introducing new behaviour to confuse the child, who isn’t sure whether a touch is accidental or not. Boundaries are eroded so slowly that by the time an act of clear violation takes place the child is too often uncertain, guilty and appreciative of the positive attention to resist. If they do, threats of harm may follow. The perpetrator hopes a child will be too frightened or confused to tell anyone. A single act of abuse can set the dynamic and become familiar, intertwined with love and affection.

  The prey is caught in a trap set by a much more skilful predator.

  Brian Houston stood on stage that day in November 2002 to describe what he later told the press was the hardest time of his life. He also told the media that he had been completely open and honest with his church and had used words like ‘predator’ and ‘sex offender’. That simply didn’t happen, at least not on that day.

  I was sitting still this time, objectively, as it were. I hadn’t really known Frank. It was different from the way it had been with Pat.

  This time I was watching without the same emotion.

  Brian began swiftly. ‘About two years ago, George Aghajanian received a phone call from someone making some allegations about my father. I did the toughest thing of my life and went around to my father and confronted him. He broke down and confessed that the allegations were true.

  ‘I immediately stepped aside and let the investigators from the National Executive do their job. My father was found guilty of “serious moral failure” and his credentials were taken away from him.’ (At this point I was waiting for the punchline, and had a near-irresistible urge to yell out like the boys used to do in the old days, ‘What did he DO, Brian?’) ‘This has devastated my family.

  We haven’t told our daughter yet, but the boys know and they’re doing okay. My son came into my room the other night, and he said, “Dad, I still love Jesus.”

  ‘You know, my dad loved God. And while he was deeply repentant for the mistakes he had made, it didn’t change his love for God.’

  Once again, Brian took Bobbie’s hand and asked the church to pray for them and for their family, given the ordeal they had just been through.

  That was it. The entire congregation responded by giving Brian and Bobbie Houston a standing ovation.

  Rather than a huge statement from the pulpit, this was a tiny one. There was no demand for righteousness, no zero tolerance stance on abuse of children. There was no plea for forgiveness from those wronged, no promise that the giant congregation would join together to prevent this from ever happening again.

  That policies would be put in place so that everyone in leadership understood the signs and their responsibilities.

  There wasn’t even a naming of the crime, simply an appeal for prayer for the Houstons.

  My blood skipped from boiling to mercury. Watching people get had is upsetting at the best of times; watching them applaud a cover-up was heartbreaking. To digest having a paedophile for a patriarch so readily is no mean feat. How do you get people to comply like this?

  At exactly the same time as I was furious, I was as peaceful as daybreak. I had never felt so close to God. Hillsong was boasting a 12,000-strong congregation at the time. All I could hear in my head was ‘12,000 people are wrong and I’m right’. I knew that I understood nothing of God, but that Jesus was nothing like this.

&n
bsp; And if he was, I didn’t want to play at all any more.

  I felt little and insignificant. I was out of place. I had not been invited, and yet I was sitting there with the greatest liberation fl y-ing through my heart. I felt freer than the whole room put together. I felt born again.

  I ran up to my lecturer the next time I saw her. ‘Is it possible,’ I dared, ‘to groom an entire congregation?’ There seemed no other way to explain the standing ovation. ‘Of course it is,’ she answered.

  Had Brian done it on purpose? Who knows? Perhaps he had simply learnt at his father’s knee how to get trusting people to comply with his demands. Except his father’s dynamics had affected individuals. Brian’s decisions were to affect multitudes.

  HOLD ME, THRILL ME,

  KISS ME, KILL ME

  Chapter 12

  WALK THIS WAY

  When you meet the friendliest people you have ever known, who introduce you to the most loving group of people you’ve ever encountered, and you find the leader to be the most inspired, caring, compassionate and understanding person you’ve ever met, and then you learn the cause of the group is something you never dared hope could be accomplished, and all of this sounds too good to be true—it probably is too good to be true! Don’t give up your education, your hopes and ambitions to follow a rainbow.

  —Jeannie Mills, Six Years with God: life inside Rev. Jim Jones’ temple (1979)

  Vilma Ryan didn’t feel like she was being recruited. The 68-year-old elder of the Wiradjuri people had seen mission managers come and go. She was working in the Riverstone Aboriginal Community Association (RACA) in Sydney’s west when a young Indigenous girl working for Emerge, Hillsong’s welfare arm, invited her to their neighbourhood centre.

  At the meeting the director of Hillsong Emerge, Leigh Coleman, a welfare worker and Louise Markus (Hillsong member and local MP) were all present. They spoke to Vilma about a joint application for a government grant for RACA. Vilma knew that without Hillsong’s name, the association alone could never be awarded a substantial amount.

  Through the course of the conversation, Vilma was wary. She remembers continuing to try to find what was behind their enthusiasm. They looked like mission managers, she thought, but maybe they were different. They seemed very understanding.

  While talking, Vilma opened up about her daughter, whom she had lost years previously to drugs, leaving behind a young child and a truckload of grief. Still, she didn’t trust these strangers. She asked them in a number of ways about their personal ties with the church. How long have you been in Hillsong? How did you get involved in this religion? What has happened in your life to turn you to God?

  Vilma says they avoided answering until she confronted them directly. ‘I’ve been upfront with you,’ she said. ‘Why can’t you be upfront with me?’

  Leigh Coleman looked nervous. He glanced at Mrs Markus and the Emerge worker. He told Vilma he’d spent time in Kings Cross in the seventies at the same time her daughter was there as a drug user, he presumed. Then he became a Christian and Look at Him Now.

  Vilma was surprised by his willingness to discuss these things in front of the others. She felt there was common ground with the new breed of mission manager and thought maybe these ones weren’t so bad.

  Vilma concedes being impressed by the way the representatives from Emerge treated her and other employees at RACA.

  They were taken to dinner at the Superdome in Sydney’s Olympic Park, but they never talked about God. They didn’t force their Christianity down the throat of the Indigenous people. They were much easier to work with than Vilma had anticipated.

  The submission for the grant went in after many hours of work with Emerge’s professional writer. RACA openly shared its information with its newfound partners. The last Vilma heard was that the application had been unsuccessful. Only weeks later did she fi nd out that a second, very different application, one that RACA knew nothing about, had gained approval. Hillsong’s new submission writer used ideas and letters of support without RACA’s permission, and competing with seventeen other community groups had received $414,479 in the National Community Crime Prevention Program out of $1,700,000 being allocated. The successful grant contained statements RACA would not have endorsed such as Hillsong Emerge’s assertion that the local area was ‘overrun by gangs of aboriginal youth’.

  When Vilma confronted Leigh Coleman, she says he told her he would write RACA a cheque for $280,000 not to make a fuss. (Hillsong Emerge said later that Coleman promised funds ‘as an act of good faith’.) ‘I don’t sell my soul for $280,000,’ Vilma told me. She contacted every media outlet and member of parliament who took an interest. After NSW Labor parliamentarian Ian West supported her plight and the issue was raised in federal parliament, the federal justice minister removed the funding from Hill-song Emerge in February 2006.1

  RACA ended up with nothing, but Vilma remains undeterred. ‘I felt as though I let this white man, Leigh Coleman, into our community and he dudded us, but he did it through me,’ she told the Koori Mail. Instead of hiding, though, Vilma is committed to preventing Hillsong repeating their mistakes. If it can happen to her, she says, it can happen to anyone.

  Vilma’s experience is not uncommon. The Moonies are trained in exactly the same way, as are all cult devotees. Recruitment success ultimately depends on the quality of personal interaction with could-be members. The recruiter first learns something about the potential recruit. Then, to demonstrate that they have shared interests, the recruiter mirrors their target’s opinions. So, when an invitation to a workshop or a dinner is extended, it seems that the recruiter has something genuine to offer, based on the apparent compatibility of their beliefs or interests.

  Recruitment is vital for AoG church survival. The Hillsong church-planting DVD encourages everyone to ‘plant a church, plant a church, plant a church’ in the same way greenies might tell everyone on earth to plant a tree. The most curious statement is this: ‘If we don’t plant churches the church will die.’ You don’t hear the Dalai Lama saying this, but the AoG aren’t kidding. Sure there are 18,000 people at Hillsong, but it’s unlikely that they’re the same 18,000 for very long at all.

  The average membership of an AoG church is around two years. The turnover is large and constant. There are also a significant number who stay for around three months before the infatuation dies. The pattern is similar to any love affair. Psychologists have long advised people to refrain from marriage or heavy commitments before two years have elapsed. This is because the ‘in love’ feeling wears off after time, the neurochemicals stop, and the participants are left with the reality of another human being.

  Another myth that abounds in AoG churches like Hillsong is that every seat is being occupied by a brand-new believer, who once was lost but now is found. Instead, the huge volume of attendees is also made up of an unmeasurable number of people who had a Christian upbringing, already know the stories and join Hillsong as a perceived extension of their own beliefs.

  In evangelical circles this form of poaching is called ‘fleecing the flock’. Youth rallies and healing services are particularly useful in attracting curious strays or disillusioned visitors from mainstream, established churches. In country towns, where competition for pew-sitters is fierce, recruitment from other Christian groups is essential for numbers, growth and any reported success.

  ‘They must be stupid’ is the reason given for cult involvement from many on the outside. Only the mentally ill, gullible or lonely would ever find themselves in a cult. Up close, nothing could be further from the truth. Most people are recruited at home by a family member.

  Everyone is susceptible to the recruitment techniques of cult members, because cult members are trained to work with everyone. Central to recruitment training is the ability to home in on personality traits and sensitive issues in individuals. Members are generally matched to the demographic that will respond best to their own. Once an individual (or group) is engaged in a conversation with someone w
ho they feel relates to them, they are open to recruitment techniques. Apparently hellfire and damnation as an introduction wasn’t having the mass appeal intended. The new fundamentalist Christian is your new best friend. Even before you know they’re a Christian! That’s because their recruitment techniques are more sophisticated than ever.

  Hillsong has literally countless courses, programs and community services currently in place all over Australia and the world.

  Whatever the shopfront sign says, the doors are open to get the maximum number of customers into the church building that funds it. Once you’re in the building, it’s much easier to get you saved. Your membership can’t be activated until you’re born again, but the recruiters don’t tell you that initially. They tell you about an art class, or a mothers’ group, or a lifestyle course they go to where the people are friendly, particularly to newcomers. This is called ‘love bombing’ according to cult psychologist Dr Margaret Singer. The flooding of attention, flattery and companionship is not as spontaneous as it seems but is rather a means to smother recruits and new members and to offer them acceptance. As Ian West MP explained in the NSW parliament: ‘I am also concerned about some practices at Hillsong in regard to “shining”, which is an intense and concerted show of feigned affection by a group of people towards an individual whom they seek to recruit or otherwise influence.’

  The people who are the most likely to get into such discussions with strangers are overwhelmingly people who are going through some sort of transitional stage in their life. This is why university evangelism is so strong. Eighteen-year-olds with freedom are often able for the first time to create their own belief systems. The next most common time in which an adult converts is after a relationship breakdown. While anyone can be seduced by a charismatic personality, recruitment is much more probable if you were questioning your own truth anyway.