Eye-witness Account - Mercy Ministries

When I accepted a place at Mercy Ministries, I had no idea that I was walking into a cult. As a regular church goer, I had heard a lot about Hillsong. I had most of their CDs with Darlene Zschech's image on them, so when I heard that Hillsong were involved in Mercy Ministries, and that Darlene was actually the CEO of Mercy Ministries at the time, I had no reason to doubt that they were a legitimate organisation. In my mind, Hillsong afterall, had a good reputation.

Going to Mercy Ministries was by no means an easy decision, and not one I took lightly. I was studying at University and was under very good treatment at home. But the promise of a Christian program with 24/7 care by qualified professionals who could treat mental illness, for free, seemed too good to just ignore.

Before applying, I had contacted the Mercy Ministries office in Sydney to find out as much as I could about the program. I was told that the staff caring for the young women were qualified to treat mental illness and that the counsellors were all qualified also. Armed with that information, and a print out about their program, I went to family, my (Christian) counsellor and doctor and discussed my option to go into treatment at Mercy Ministries with them. The main drawcard for me was definitely that I could have access to qualified professionals 24/7 whenever I needed them, and also that the program was Christian. It sounded much too good to be true, and unfortunately, it was.

I went into the program with the perception that I knew what I was getting into. All coversations with Mercy Ministries staff up to that point, and indeed all of their advertising materials, presented Mercy Ministries as a Christian live in treatment centre where professional treatment, coupled also with Christian teachings, assisted young women to recover from their illnesses. In actual fact, the picture painted in my mind of what Mercy may be like, and the kinds of treatment they may offer, was very far removed from the reality of what the program was.

When I got to Mercy Ministries I had the Resident's Handbook thrust into my hands. I remember reading it and wondering why they were suddenly taking away any independence and self management I had. It is true that I went into the program seeking treatment for my illness, which I was coping with but at the same time I knew it was holding me back. I had been responsible for seeking support from professionals in the past, I was studying at University, and yet it seemed like Mercy Ministries were trying to revert me into being totally dependent, totally controlled, and a child who was not trusted to make her own responsible decisions. There is no doubt that residential treatment centres need basic rules to keep things running smoothly, but this went well beyond basic rules, even down to telling residents what to wear (eg no trousers allowed at church.) As time went on, I also found that there were many "unwritten rules" also, such as no speaking with volunteers about the day to day running of the house.

Mercy Ministries soon arranged for my Centrelink payments to be deposited into their account. I was a little suprised that they would advertise that the program was provided at no charge to the young women, and claim that they needed more donations to be able to treat the young women, when in fact they were taking significant payment for their services from the young women themselves. I wasn't too upset though, afterall, I think it is only fair for a young woman to pay her own way, and I held on to the promise that I was going to be treated by qualified staff.

I did feel that Mercy Ministries might have been taking advantage of well meaning members of the public when asking for donations, however back then their advertising campaign wasn't as large as it is today. You could sit down and have a coffee without being splashed with Mercy Ministries propaganda with false promises about their program, and asking for more money.

As time went on, it became apparent that the staff caring for me were not qualified to treat medical and psychiatric illness at all. I learned that some of them had been to Bible College. By this stage, I was very confused about the kind of program that Mercy Ministries was. I had been forbidden from being treated by my own counsellor from home, the only counselling allowed was to be done by Mercy Ministries counsellors, and I had been there for perhaps one and a half or two weeks, and I had still not met my counsellor yet. Surely she would be qualified, as promised.

As you can probably guess by now, the counsellor turned out to be unqualified and unregistered.

By this stage, I had given up so much to be at Mercy Ministries - tying up loose ends at home (after all, I was told to expect to be at Mercy Ministries for approximately 10 - 12 months), turning down job opportunities, deferring my University studies and directing all of my payments into Mercy Ministries' account. I had invested so much, that I didn't feel I could just go home, even though in hindsight I wish I had have. The indoctrination, even after a short while, had taken its toll.

I was even starting to question my own belief system. Several times, the staff would tell me that I was doing things wrong. Apparently, if I didn't raise my hands during slow Christian songs, I wasn't worshipping God properly. If I didn't say Amen when somebody else prayed, I was being uncooperative and stubborn (nevermind that at the church I was used to going to, only the person praying said Amen. I had no idea that anyone expected me to say it when I was not the person praying.) It was as if the staff had made it their mission to undo any 'wrong' things I was doing as a Christian, so that they could make us do things their way - the only 'correct' way in their eyes.

Staff often talked about how young women go to Mercy Ministries to be "re-programmed" from their old lives, old beliefs, old selves. They would talk about Mercy Ministries taking the world's trash and making treasure from it. It did hurt a little. I never considered myself to be trash. I was a person with an illness, and I was pro-actively seeking treatment. I wasn't trash!!

I want to talk a little about the counselling at Mercy Ministries. I would see this unqualified counsellor once a week for about 40 minutes. Some weeks counselling was missed. The sessions normally opened with a prayer and with the counsellor asking me a few questions such as, who I got on best with out of the staff, and who I got on best with out of the other young women. She would then take the Restoring The Foundations folder and read a couple of pages to me. I often then had to read a prayer out loud. Usually the session ended there for the week. It took me a little while to discover (due to the secrecy of the counselling sessions) that each young woman, nomatter their illness or issue, was treated by the very same Restoring The Foundations materials. A young woman had to work her way through the folder during her counselling sessions before she could be termed a "Mercy Ministries Graduate."

I had severe panic and anxiety, which caused dizzy spells, cold sweats and difficulty in breathing. Before going to Mercy Ministries I was under very good care by doctors and a qualified counsellor, who had helped me to manage my illness by making a list of things that help me to get through the episodes. Some of these things were, sitting quietly in a comfortable chair while closing my eyes and picturing a calm place, being alone to meditate, or taking a short nap.

I tried to manage the panic attacks as best I could at Mercy Ministries. On my second day at Mercy Ministries I could feel an impending panic attack, so I tried sitting with my eyes closed and picturing a calm place, only to be disturbed by a staff member who told me indignantly "no sleeping was allowed" during the day. I attempted to let her know that I wasn't sleeping, and was trying to cope with the panic, however she was not interested in "excuses" as she called them. Obviously, with the "no sleeping in the day allowed" rule, I was not going to be allowed to have a nap when the panic attacks hit. And according to Mercy Ministries, meditating was evil. I did try substituting "meditation" for "quiet prayer", however, at the time the staff did not permit me to go anywhere in the centre to be alone to pray.

It was a very confusing time and it made me wonder how I was going to be able to manage my illness, especially given that I was in a much more stressful environment than I was in when I was home.

1) Removed from the medical care of my doctors
2) Removed from the care of my qualified Counsellor
3) Removed from my family, friends and church
4) Removed from my studies and work opportunities
5) Prevented from managing my illness the way I had been taught to by my doctors and counsellor.

Even going to staff during a panic attack was considered taboo. I was accused of "acting for attention." It was obvious that the staff had little to no knowledge of how to help me, or how to let me help myself. Occassionally they would spare me the accusation that I was attention seeking, and instead they would tell me to go and read a book called God's Creative Power, or read the Bible. They did not seem to understand, or take seriously, that I was suffering from a real illness that needed real intervention so that it could be managed.

When reading God's Creative Power and the Bible didn't prevent further panic attacks, a staff member told me to sit down in her office, and she shut the door.
I was told that seeing as I was not improving, she believed that it was demonic forces that were causing the symptoms I described. I was told that the "world" may call it an illness, but they are wrong. She said that the "world" does not have the power of God, and that only Mercy has the power of God and knows the truth - that demons cause what the world calls mental illness, and that only prayer and treatment from Christians can heal somebody of it. I was told that Mercy Ministries was the only place that could help me, and that the "world" with all their qualifications has already failed me. A couple of days later, I was forced to have an exorcism.

Two staff members, one of them being my Mercy Ministries counsellor had me in a room with them. They shut the door and pulled the curtains so that nobody could see in, then had me stand in the middle of the room while they laid hands on me, and cast the demons out of me one by one, calling them by name. They spoke loudly, then quietly, then loudly again, alternating between speaking in tongues and speaking in English. I wanted to cry. I didn't understand why they were yelling. I was so frightened. At one point, one of the staff members tried to reassure me "Don't worry," she said. "I am angry at Satan, not at you."

After the exorcism, I was told that I shouldn't have any more symptoms because the demons that were causing them had been cast out. Although I am embarrassed to admit it, I held on to what they had said. I wanted to believe them. That I had been healed, that I wouldn't have any more symptoms, that they had "fixed" me. And I was okay, for about two days.

When the next panic attack hit, being unable to manage it the way I had been taught by my doctors, I went to staff to ask for help. The symptoms were really bad. They took me to their office, closed the door, and proceeded to tell me about how disappointed they are in me. I was told that they had already cast the demons out of me, therefore if I was having any symptoms now, it was for one of two reasons. 1) I was acting for attention, or 2) I had knowingly and willingly invited the demons back into me.
I was devistated. I couldn't work out what I had done wrong. Maybe I wasn't a good enough Christian? Maybe God didn't want to heal me? Maybe I really did have demons inside of me???

The exorcism messed me up, a lot.

I started to question who I was, what I was, I didn't know what I believed and didn't know what to think. Were my thoughts my own thoughts? Were they the thoughts demons were putting into my head? Was I truly as evil as the staff had said I was? On top of all of this, I wasn't allowed to discuss it with family members or friends.

I had gone into Mercy Ministries as an educated, independent young woman who had an illness and was seeking treatment. I came out a real mess. I had reverted back to being a child, totally dependent, very, very fragile and believing that somehow the illness I had was my own fault.

Since coming out of Mercy Ministries, I have been able to seek proper treatment from qualified people, and they have really helped to turn things around for me. I had a lot of things to deal with - not just my illness, but the effects that Mercy Ministries had on me psychologically. It took a long time to even get to the point I was at before I went into Mercy Ministries, but today, I am an overcomer.

"mercy ministries" cult abuse
mercy ministries australia

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

Mercy Ministries Australia at it again

A SECRETIVE ministry with direct links to Gloria Jean's Coffees and the Hillsong Church has been deceiving troubled young women into signing over months of their lives to a program that offers scant medical or psychiatric care, instead using Bible studies and exorcisms to treat mental illness.
Government agencies such as Centrelink have also been drawn into the controversy, as residents are required to transfer their benefits to Mercy Ministries. There are also allegations that the group receives a carers payment to look after the young women.
Mercy Ministries says 96 young women have "graduated" from its program since its inception in 2001. But many have been expelled without warning and with no follow up or support.
Three former residents who have felt the full force of Mercy's questionable programs are blowing the whistle on its emotionally cruel and medically unproven techniques, detailing abuse including exorcisms, "separation contracts" between girls who became friends, and harsh discipline for those who broke the rules.
Naomi Johnson, Rhiannon Canham-Wright and Megan Smith (Megan asked to use an assumed name) went into Mercy Ministries independent young women, and came out broken and suicidal, believing, as Mercy staff had told them repeatedly, that they were possessed by demons and that Satan controlled them.
Only careful psychological and psychiatric care over several years brought them back from the edge.
Taking in girls and women aged 16 to 28, Mercy Ministries claims to offer residents support from "psychologists, general practitioners, dietitians, social workers, [and] career counsellers". These claims are made on its website, and the programs are promoted through Gloria Jean's cafes throughout Australia.
But these former residents say no medical or psychological services were provided - just an occasional, monitored trip to a GP, where the consultation takes place in the presence of a Mercy Ministries staff member or volunteer.
Instead, the program is focused on prayer, Christian counselling and expelling demons from in and around the young women, who say they begged Mercy Ministries to let them get medical help for the conditions they were suffering, which included bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders and anorexia.
When Fairfax Media asked Mercy Ministries representatives whether they told young women that the symptoms of their mental illness or eating disorders were due to demonic activity and that residents were forced into exorcisms, they offered no denial.

"Mercy Ministries staff address the issues that the residents face from a holistic client-focused approach; physical, mental, emotional. The program is voluntary and all aspects are explained comprehensively to the residents and no force is used," the executive manager of programs, Judy Watson, said in response.
Throughout its website, decorated in hot pink tones with images of happy young women who have been "saved", Mercy claims to offer its residential programs free. Yet the services are not free - young women on unemployment benefits are "asked" to sign them over to Mercy, while others are asked to make a donation for expenses.
Mostly funded by Gloria Jean's Coffee - which said last night it did not plan to change its sponsorship arrangements - and supported by the Hillsong Foundation, Mercy Ministries says it has a 90 per cent success rate, but when asked to provide evidence of the program's outcomes, Ms Watson said that research was under way and not yet available.
Not only does Mercy Ministries appear unconcerned by the allegations, it is mounting an aggressive expansion campaign. Peter Irvine, its former managing director, now director of corporate sponsorship, confirmed it was opening houses in Adelaide, Perth, Townsville, Newcastle, Melbourne and another Sydney house, in the southern suburbs.
Ms Johnson spent nine months in the Mercy Ministries house in Glenhaven before she was expelled. Close to committing suicide and her eating disorder worse than ever, she was admitted to a psychiatric unit and has spent three years trying to recover from her ordeal.
Ms Canham-Wright and Ms Smith tell similar stories from their time in the Sunshine Coast house, and all continue to suffer from the effects of Mercy Ministries' unconventional program.
They are concerned that as more houses are due to open, more women will be put at risk, partly because there is a desperate shortage of affordable services for people with mental illness.
"This could be really dangerous .. Mercy has the potential to be inundated with people … [who will] fall for the advertising and out of desperation reach for Mercy," Ms Johnson said.
"Here in Perth people with eating disorders are very limited when it comes to treatment. When you reach 18 there are no government-funded inpatient treatment options for anorexia, except for a general public psychiatric ward where there is no expertise on these issues."
The federal Minister for Human Services, Joe Ludwig, said the Government would investigate. "I am very concerned about these serious allegations, and I have asked Centrelink to investigate its payment arrangement," he said.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission and the Queensland Office of Fair Trading have also indicated they will investigate if they receive complaints from the women.
Allan Fels, dean of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government and former chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, said if Mercy Ministries had made false claims about its services it would be in breach of the law and could face injunctions, damages and fines. "Both the federal Trade Practices Act and the relevant state fair trading acts would seem to apply to the situation since income is being received by Mercy Ministries. Both laws prohibit misleading and deceptive conduct."

Ruth Pollard
March 17, 2008
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/03/16/1205602228832.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Mercy Ministries
"mercy ministries"

Mercy Ministries Australia linked to abuse claims

THEY call themselves the Mercy Girls. And after years of searching they have found each other.
Bound by separate, damaging experiences at the hands of an American-style ministry operating in Sydney and the Sunshine Coast, these young women have clawed their way back to begin a semblance of a life again.

Desperate for help, they had turned to Mercy Ministries suffering mental illness, drug addiction and eating disorders.

Instead of the promised psychiatric treatment and support, they were placed in the care of Bible studies students, most of them under 30 and some with psychological problems of their own. Counselling consisted of prayer readings, treatment entailed exorcisms and speaking in tongues, and the house was locked down most of the time, isolating residents from the outside world and sealing them in a humidicrib of pentecostal religion.

At 21, Naomi Johnson was a young woman with a bright future, halfway through a psychology degree at Edith Cowan University, working part-time and living an independent, social life.
Yet she was plagued by anorexia.

With her family’s modest means and her part-time job there was no way she could afford to admit herself into the one private clinic in Perth that specialised in adults with eating disorders.
They had no private health insurance, and there were no publicly funded services in the state. So after much research Johnson found a link to Mercy Ministries on the internet.

Months passed as she devoted herself to going through the application process, pinning all her hopes on what appeared to be a modern, welcoming facility, backed by medical, psychiatric and dietitian support.

She flew to Sydney, thousands of kilometres away from her family and friends, and entered the live-in program. Nine months later she was expelled, a devastated, withdrawn child who could not leave her bedroom, let alone her house.

Nine months without medical treatment, nine months without any psychiatric care, nine months of being told she was not a good enough Christian to rid herself of the "demons" that were causing her anorexia and pushing her to self-harm. After being locked away from society for so long, Naomi started to believe them. "I just felt completely hopeless. I thought if Mercy did not want to help me where do I stand now?

"They say they take in the world’s trash, so what happens when you are Mercy trash?"

Two months after she had been expelled from Mercy’s Sydney house (her crime was to smoke a cigarette) Johnson ended up in Royal Perth Hospital’s psychiatric unit. From there she started seeing a psychologist at an outpatient program two to three times a week.

"Even now, three years on, I don’t socialise widely, I don’t work full time, I don’t study full time. Even now there is still a lot of remnants hanging around from my time at Mercy. "The first psychologist I saw rang and spoke to Mercy. She wrote to them over a period of time, just trying to get answers. They were very evasive; they avoided her calls. Eventually she got some paperwork, some case notes, from them."

Mercy Ministries made the psychologist sign a waiver that she wouldn’t take these notes to the media before they would release them. Johnson has signed no such waiver and, months ago, she posted her notes on the internet, almost as a warning to other young women considering a stint at Mercy Ministries.

Yet for so long she just wanted to go back to the Sydney house, because they had convinced her that Mercy was the only place that could help her.

"It is difficult to explain, in a logical sense. I know how very wrong the treatment, their program and their approach is, but the wounds are still quite deep, and even though I know that they were wrong, there is still a part of you that just even now wants to be accepted by Mercy."
In the northern suburbs of Perth, in a large, one-storey home bordered by a well-tended cottage garden, the Johnson family is attempting to pick up the pieces of a life almost cut short by Mercy.

With two fox terriers at her feet and doors and windows shut against the relentless Western Australian heat, Johnson - a small, delicate young woman with a razor sharp mind - unveils a sophisticated, nuanced interpretation of her time in the Sydney house.

Careful and articulate, her struggle with the horror of her descent into despair at the hands of Mercy is only evidenced by the occasional tremor in her hands and voice as she describes her experience. She was sharing the house with 15 other girls and young women, with problems ranging from teenage pregnancies, alcohol and drug abuse, self harm, depression, suicidal thoughts and eating disorders.

"There were girls who had got messed up in the adult sex industry - a real range of problems, some incorporating actual psychiatric illness, others just dealing with messy lives, and the approach to all those problems was the same format," Johnson says.

Counselling involved working through a white folder containing pre-scripted prayers.
"Most of the staff were current Bible studies or Bible college students, and that is it, if anything. You just cannot play around with mental illness when you do not know what you are doing. Even professionals will acknowledge that it is a huge responsibility working in that field, and that is people who have six years, eight years university study behind them."

And while there was nothing that was formally termed "exorcism" in the Sydney house, Naomi was forced to stand in front of two counsellors while they prayed and spoke in tongues around her. In her mind, it was an exorcism. "I felt really stupid just standing there - they weren’t helping me with the things going on in my head. I would ask staff for tools on how to cope with the urges to self harm … and the response was: ’What scriptures are you standing ..our Bible."
Johnson had grown up in a Christian family; her belief in God was not the issue; anorexia and self harm were. "A major sticking point was when they told me I needed to receive the holy Spirit in me and speak in tongues, to raise my hands in worship songs and jump up and down on the spot in fast songs. I told them that I really didn’t understand how jumping up and down to a fast song at church was going to fix the anorexia, and yet that was a big, big sticking point, because it showed I was being resistant, cynical and holding back."

Her mother, Julie Johnson, watches as she talks, anxious about the effect of her daughter’s decision to tell her story, yet immensely proud of her courage.
"Naomi was very determined to find somewhere that could help her. We didn’t have private health cover, so our resources were limited, so she searched the net and came across Mercy Ministries," Julie Johnson says. "It sounded very promising … she went off to Mercy a very positive young lady who finally had some hope that she was going to come back completely free of this eating disorder." And the family was excited, too, pleased that there was someone who could help their daughter beat anorexia. "But unfortunately it didn’t work out that way. They gave her hope and told her they would never give up on her but … in the end she got quite distraught that she was never able to please them."

Johnson sent her parents a letter telling them she was not very well and that she was very confused with the kind of program Mercy Ministries was running.

"I called and spoke to her counsellor in person," Julie Johnson said. "She told me that Naomi was lying to me, that Naomi was just rebelling … she was making the wrong choices."
But instead of taking her mother’s concerns on board, the staff punished Naomi for disclosing anything about her time at the Sydney home.

"They told me that what happens in Mercy stays in Mercy, that what happens between the staff and Naomi stays at Mercy. It is not let out to the family," Julie Johnson said. "We were isolated, we were not involved in her progress at Mercy, we were just excluded and yet we were a family that wanted to be behind her and they wouldn’t allow us to be."

The situation came to a head when Johnson returned to the Sydney house after spending Christmas with her family in Perth. She was told she had been seen smoking at the airport and that she was being expelled from the program. Naomi phoned her mother in tears, and the staff informed her they were putting her on the next plane back to Perth.

"She was distraught; she was an absolute mess; her life was in danger. I could hear it, she was capable of anything, the anxiety was so extreme … she was just out of control," Julie Johnson said. "I said to them, ’There is no way you are going to send her
back on her own, she is suicidal. You will deliver her to me at the airport when I can get a flight over’."

Mrs Johnson flew to Sydney to collect her daughter.

"She went into that place as a young lady and came back to us as a child. She was very confused, like she was 12 or 13. She shut herself in the bedroom and thought she was nothing but evil. Her self-esteem went down. She thought, ’I may as well die."’

Johnson, now 24, and her mother, know how close the end had been.

The executive manager of programs with Mercy Ministries, Judy Watson, is proud of the organisation’s achievements, and rejects the claim that there are no staff qualified in psychiatry, psychology or counselling.

It appears that there is one registered psychologist at Mercy’s Sydney house, although the Herald understands that the little contact she has with the residents is around scriptures, not psychological care. She did not respond to a request for an interview.
In a written statement, Watson said: "Mercy Ministries counselling staff are required to have tertiary education and qualifications in counselling, social work or psychology. Staff also participate in externally provided supervision from psychologists."

Yet she was unable to detail what qualifications each staff member had, or how many had qualifications beyond their one registered psychologist.
On the allegations that young women are denied medical and psychiatric care, Watson had this to say: "Residents’ mental and physical health concerns are taken very seriously, and appropriate treatment is made available.

"Mercy Ministries provides a range of services to young women in the program. Mercy Ministries provides services through either health professionals employed by Mercy Ministries, subcontracted to provide services to residents at Mercy Ministries, or taken to specialists at their practice."

Rhiannon Canham-Wright and Megan Smith (not her real name) are two others who have suffered at the hands of Mercy Ministries, this time in the group’s Sunshine Coast house.
Smith had also been at university before she went into the Mercy Ministries house. She had been diagnosed with anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder, and thought a residential program with medical and psychiatric care would help get her illnesses under control. Yet almost from the moment she arrived she began to struggle.

Sitting in the courtyard of a cafe in a large, central Queensland town, as storm clouds gathered above, she told her story in a soft, quiet voice. Like Johnson, she is fiercely intelligent and articulate, focused and determined. She described her mental illness growing quickly out of control the longer she was subjected to the cruel, illogical treatment in the Sunshine Coast house.
"I was pulling my hair out - it’s a condition called trichotillomania," said Smith, now 29. "However, it wasn’t bad before Mercy. I let the staff know about it because suddenly it had got a lot worse. Instead of taking me to the doctor to where I could have got assessed and got some medication, they just told me to forget about it."

Her condition worsened without treatment, but she had no way of getting any medical care because the house was locked down most of the time.

"To take the rubbish bin out to the footpath we had to get special permission. If we stepped over the boundary we were kicked out of the program because it was treated as absconding. Even to go to the toilet or brush our teeth we had to have specific permission. It was such a sterile environment. We were not allowed to talk about our feelings, there was no family support, no friend’s support, and no professional support."

Before long, Smith began to harm herself in other ways. Again she alerted the staff to her concerns. They reprimanded her for wasting their time, calling her a "fruitcake", she said.
"The [staff member] said I was attention seeking, bringing negative energy to the environment and taking her valuable time away from girls who really need her.

"With this particular staff member, I know she had issues in the past, because she used to talk about it with the girls. She was open about it because she thought that was how God qualified her for the work that she did.

"But she had mood swings and anger problems. She would go from calm and normal to aggressively angry very quickly."

Again, there was no medical treatment, just Bible studies and prayer reading, relentless cleaning and many rules that were often only revealed to residents when they broke one of them.
"I went to a residential place that said they help people with mental illness using qualified professionals, [instead] going there took away my help. Even the GP they took me to to get my prescriptions filled was their GP, who they said had been specifically chosen because they were supportive of ’the Mercy way’. I wasn’t allowed to talk to the doctor by myself; they had a staff member or volunteer with us at all times."

Asked to name the most valuable thing she learned in Mercy Ministries, she said, without hesitation and with much mirth: "cleaning".

"I am no domestic goddess, so I needed all the help I could get."

In both the Sydney and the Sunshine Coast house residents were prohibited from talking about their past, what brought them to Mercy, their struggles and problems.

"We were threatened with being kicked out if we did disclose anything," Smith said. "It was a lot to do with control and manipulation, and it just shows that they did have that power over us. We could have talked and rebelled but we were so scared of them and just so desperate for help.
"I was really sucked in. That was my world; it was locked down 24/7, so anything the staff said I believed to be the truth."

By the time Smith was expelled from Mercy, three months into her six-month stay, she was a mess. She was locked in a room and told she was not worth helping, she said, then driven to the airport and left alone to wait for a flight to her central Queensland home.

A family member met her at the airport. He had been told, incorrectly, by Mercy staff that Smith had chosen to leave. He was unprepared for the state she was in when she arrived.

"She was extremely upset. She didn’t want to come back at all … she was in a real mess," said the relative, who did not want to be identified. "I was extremely fearful that she was likely to commit suicide. It was an extreme shock that this ministry we all had decided was the real deal had turned out to be a worse problem … it left her in a worse state than she had ever been in before."

For two years just keeping her alive became a full-time job, he said. "Whenever she was alone for any length of time it was always a fear that she may not be alive when you got back. When you did get back there were quite a lot of times when she had a knife and she had been scratching her wrists."

Since then Smith has received effective psychological care and is no longer at risk of self-harm or suicide. After more than a year of searching the internet, she found one other woman who had been at Mercy, using the social networking site Facebook. That is Canham-Wright, 26, another former resident of the Sunshine Coast house.

Canham-Wright, now living in Darwin with her daughter, 1, and her partner, describes every day as a struggle since she was thrown out of Mercy, after living there from July 2003 until the following March.

She had gone into Mercy Ministries just after her 21st birthday following a drug overdose and suffering bipolar disorder. Soon after she was in conflict with staff over her regular medication.
Canham-Wright has asthma, and yet she was prevented from having her ventolin with her at all times, she said.

"Every time I had an asthma attack they told me to stop acting … I was punished, I had to do an assignment about why God believes that lying is wrong.
"I was told, ’You still have demons to battle with. Satan still has a huge control over your life. That is when the exorcism and the prayers over my life started."

She got to the point where she no longer knew herself or what she believed in.
"They would call me into their office, saying that I was just make-believing and trying to get attention, and they would start praying over me. They would always pray for Satan to be dismissed out of my body."

Every night there was a prayer meeting. "When someone wanted to have something prayed about in particular, we would all have to lay hands and the staff member … would perform an exorcism."

You will find a donation box and pamphlet in every Gloria Jeans store soliciting donations for Mercy Ministries. "Your spare change helps transform a life," the pamphlet reads.
Yet few who donate to Mercy understand they are giving money to fund exorcisms in a program that removes young women from proven medical therapies and places them in the hands of a house full of amateur counsellors. Its literature claims to have a 90 per cent success rate - yet nowhere does it publish any results.

The allegations by Johnson, Canham-Wright, Smith and others indicates the program cannot lay claim to such a success rate.

The internet is littered with other young women making similar allegations about the Mercy Ministries program.

One young woman wrote in January: "I have been to Mercy Ministries - I have seen so many girls hurt and abused there, it is really sickening. Many girls are also kicked out and leave there far worse off than before they went to get help."

Another replied: "Mercy Ministries operates off the grid, and therefore can abuse and harm young women who go there."

And yet Mercy continues to operate without the scrutiny of government authorities, under the radar and with impunity.

Ruth Pollard
March 17, 2008

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