Mercy Ministries' claims are misleading

PETER Irvine has recently made a number of incorrect and misleading statements in the media, and I was saddened to see that he has also attempted to mislead the Bendigo community.
I am quite concerned that if Mercy Ministries does attempt to open one of its residential facilities in the Bendigo region, more girls may be subject to abuse and exploitation while they are in the care of the program.

It is disturbing to see that rather than investigating the very serious allegations made by several women who have been in the Mercy Ministries program, Peter Irvine, a director of Mercy Ministries Australia, would deny the claims, and instead of investigating the abuse, would attempt to put blame on the victims.

Statements attributed to Peter Irvine, such as that a couple of the girls do have psychological issues and they make a lot of things up (The Advertiser, March19) only go to show that this man should probably not be working with mentally ill or vulnerable young people at all.
Staff most certainly did trap girls in rooms, physically preventing them from leaving the room, therefore "locked in a room" is the phrase that some journalists have used.

Peter Irvine has claimed there are no locks on the doors at the Mercy Ministries houses (The Advertiser, March19), but we have provided The Advertiser with photographic evidence of locks on the bedrooms. These locks were for security purposes.

The act of casting out of demons certainly was performed on you young women by staff at Mercy Ministries. I would definitely call that act an exorcism.

In some recent media, Mercy Ministries has reported that their program is 95 per cent successful. A few days later it has claimed a 90 per cent success rate.
However, the number of Mercy Ministries survivors who have come forward, telling of their experiences, indicates that Mercy Ministries cannot lay claim to such a success rate.
It also indicates that Peter Irvine was misleading the public when he claimed that only six young women had “failed” the program.

I am deeply, deeply concerned that Mercy Ministries is planning to expand its program, seemingly without investigation into the abuse experienced by former residents.

Peter Irvine has stated that he does not want to make changes to the program, and that Mercy Ministries has nothing to apologise for.

I would never tell a young person not to go to Mercy Ministries.
If they truly believe that this type of program will assist them, I do not want to urge them not to go. Some young women have come forward and said that they have been helped by the program, so perhaps it does work for some. However, I would urge any young woman who is considering going into the program, and her family, to go in with their eyes open, and to get out if they experience the abuse and cult-like control and manipulation that other girls who have previously been in the program have experienced.

Mercy Ministries survivor

16 April 2008

http://bendigo.yourguide.com.au/news/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/mercy-ministries-claims-are-misleading/1224090.html