No, the Exclusive Brethren have not ‘taken over’ Peebs.Net! We are not writing this with loaded bound versions of Bruce Hales’s so-called ‘ministry’ held to our temples.
It is not often that we can point to something the Exclusive Brethren state publicly and agree with the statement. The statement we want to support as being the Truth was spoken by Mr. Athol Greene, the Father-in-Law to the current leader of the Exclusive Brethren, Bruce D. Hales.
David Marr writes from Australia’s The Age:
“You won’t change us,” he says, fixing me with his old eyes.
“You. Won’t. Change. Us.”
http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-exclusion-brethren-20090710-dg2n.html?page=-1
This statement by the self-described ‘spritual advisor’ to the reclusive Bruce Hales is historically accurate. Athol Greene is right that the Exclusive Brethren have been intransigent and steadfast in ripping apart families for almost 50 years.
Many find it extraordinary that a group who consider themselves the pinnacle of Christianity have so little concern for the family unit. Even the Bible that they profess to read so frequently states solemnly “What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” Matt 19:6 – Mark 10:9 And yet, over the years, the Exclusive Brethren are directly responsible for not only breaking marriages, but breaking relationships between parents and children, children and grandparents, sibling and sibling … The intransigence of which Daniel Hales, brother to Bruce Hales, and Athol Greene seem so proud has resulted in misery, divorce, pain and suicide.
As any Christian knows, the words of Jesus Christ carry a great deal of weight! If Jesus defends the sanctity of marriage so strongly – and the Exclusive Brethren ignore such an injunction so frequently – what does this say about their true level of Christianity? The answer also lies in the words of Jesus Christ: “By their fruits then surely ye will know them.” Matt 7:20
From both a Christian or secular viewpoint the Exclusive Brethren have left a trail of tears and blood.
A new thread in the Peebs.Net Community Forums is starting to pull back the covers on some of the Family Ripping that has taken place as covered by the media over the years. It is an extraordinary series of charges and the implications and human cost is immense.
Husband Sees Sect Family; Returns Alone – The Age (Apr 19, 1962)
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=mB0RAAAAIBAJ&sjid=yMUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4981,2702760&dq=exclusive-brethren
Sect Calls Police To Hall Scuffle – Brethren Eject Man at Meeting – The Age (March 31, 1962)
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=1bAUAAAAIBAJ&sjid=UrsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7015,4546692&dq=exclusive-brethren
No Trace of Wife, Children – The Age (25 April 1962)
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=nB0RAAAAIBAJ&sjid=yMUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5997,3260394&dq=exclusive-brethren
Mother Gets Three Children Back from Sect Father – The Age (Jul 10 1962)
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_VIRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XJUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7033,1172539&dq=exclusive-brethren
… other postings may be found throughout the Peebs.Net Community Forums.
The statement by Athol Greene may be correct historically. It is up to us to change the accuracy of this arrogant and chilling statement. Governments, Family Court judges and Municipalities – please do your homework before making decisions about this group!
The words ‘Due Diligence’ are a duty, not an optional guideline.
No, the Exclusive Brethren have not ‘taken over’ Peebs.Net! We are not writing this with loaded bound versions of Bruce Hales’s so-called ‘ministry’ held to our temples …
It is not often that we can point to something the Exclusive Brethren state publicly and agree with the statement. The statement we want to support as being the Truth was spoken by Mr. Athol Greene, the Father-in-Law to the current leader of the Exclusive Brethren, Bruce D. Hales.
David Marr writes this week from Australia’s The Age:
“You won’t change us,” he says, fixing me with his old eyes.
“You. Won’t. Change. Us.”
This statement by the self-described ‘spritual advisor’ to the reclusive Bruce Hales is historically accurate. Athol Greene is right that the Exclusive Brethren have been intransigent and steadfast in ripping apart families for almost 50 years.
Continue reading »
July 11th, 2009
Victory . . . Brethren elders Daniel Hales, left, and Athol Greene. "You're probably not in a position to realise the happy lives our children have." Photo: Kate Geraghty
You would be forgiven for assuming the toothy smile of Daniel Hales and the self-satisfied smirk on the face of Athol Greene (Father-in-law to Daniel’s brother Bruce Hales) was as result of some joyous moment in their spiritual lives. In fact, their good humor comes from the fact they have gained an outrageous ruling in Australia’s Family Court that prevents an excommunicated member from seeing his eight children.
We reproduce a David Marr article from the Australian Press that sums up the anger resulting from the Family Court ruling. The intransigence and arrogance of the group that Kevin Rudd described as “an extremist cult and sect” comes out in a quote from the following article.
“You won’t change us,” he says, fixing me with his old eyes. “You. Won’t. Change. Us.”
The Exclusion Brethren
by David Marr
July 11th, 2009
A father’s price for quitting his marriage was to lose contact with eight children left behind in the Exclusive Brethren. David Marr caught up with sect defenders.
The Exclusive Brethren has enjoyed sweet victories in the Family Court before, but none sweeter than this. Despite all that is now known about the methods of the Brethren, the court has denied a father in Tasmania any access to his children for reasons that boil down, essentially, to this: he left the sect.
Six years of litigation in the case of Peter and Elspeth had won the father about six weeks’ access to the youngest of his eight children. Now the court has ordered he is to have no contact at all. The tough rule that holds the Brethren together – cross the sect and you will lose your children – has been given the imprimatur of the Family Court.
Brethren prayed and paid for this outcome. Members of this prosperous sect believe in separating themselves from the “iniquity” of the world. They live, eat and socialise only with each other. Computers and television are regarded as instruments of evil. Ruling the church of about 40,000 souls worldwide is a Ryde businessman, Bruce D. Hales, known as the Elect Vessel.
“The way of life among the Brethren is very, very close,” says Athol Greene, one of the sect’s most senior elders, the spiritual adviser and father-in-law of Hales. He intersects his bony fingers: “The thing is close knit. Dovetail joints.”
Greene paints an idyllic picture of life among the Brethren. But when followers fall out with their leader or break from the sect, things can turn nasty. The principal weapon the sect has used to maintain its discipline over the last 50-years is to separate the troublesome from their children.
It happened to Greene. When he was expelled for 18 months years ago he lost all contact with his children. “I was unfit for fellowship,” he explains. This teaching hasn’t changed. “It’s the truth. It’s the truth. That’s the basic foundation of assembly discipline.” Greene insists his treatment was neither brutal nor cruel. How did he get back to his children? “The Brethren felt I was repentant and they restored me.”
Children are a particularly handy weapon because of Brethren rules on faith and marriage. The “guilty party” in any divorce must leave the sect. Two Brethren can’t divorce and remain Brethren. Nor can one parent turn their back on the Brethren and expect the marriage to survive. “It’s dreamboat stuff to imagine you could leave the faith and not leave your marriage,” Greene explains. “My wife couldn’t go on with me as if nothing was the matter if I quit the Brethren.”
Peter left Elspeth and the Brethren in 2003, aged 46. Three of his vast brood were still children. After a three-year battle in the Family Court, he was granted limited access to the two youngest. In a 100-page judgment, Justice Robert Benjamin declared the steps taken by the Brethren to discourage the children from seeing their father “psychologically cruel, unacceptable and abusive”.
That finding still stands. “A review of the authorities shows that these difficulties have been going on for 30 years under the Family Law Act,” Benjamin told elders of the sect. “It must surely not be beyond your intellect and wit to find a dimension in your beliefs so that they may reconcile with the law of this country and the need for children to know both of their parents.”
He threatened the mother, one of the children and one of her children-in-law with prison for failing to facilitate access. The children were brought to the father for three weekends and one week of the school holidays in early 2007.
Deeply troubled, they wrote heartbreaking letters objecting to the visits. One wrote of the horror of staying in the father’s “itchy, bitchy, witchy, fitchy house overnight”.
Meanwhile, as emerged in court, the Brethren had deposited $50,000 in the account of the mother to help her fight the orders. One source told the Herald that Elspeth’s battle was a big issue at the highest levels of the Brethren. The mother visited the world leader in Sydney and he flew to see her in Tasmania. She was prayed for and money poured into a fighting fund.
“I can’t say it was funded by the church,” says Daniel Hales. “It was funded by individuals.” Individual members of the church? “Well, I suppose it’s not going to be funded by members of some other church.”
The Brethren detachment from the world doesn’t stand in the way of robust engagement in business and litigation. They pride themselves on being law-abiding in all their affairs. “It’s part of your tenet of fellowship,” says the younger Hales. But the Brethren also pride themselves on fighting to the death. They never give up.
The Peter and Elspeth case saw the Brethren mobilising both QCs and prayer. “We would always just pray that God’s will would be achieved,” Hales says. And what might God’s will be in this case? “That the little children should be preserved from the world,” Greene answers.
The Brethren see themselves fighting for the best outcome for the children: to remain as far as possible sequestered within the fellowship of the Brethren. “You’re probably not in a position to realise the happy lives our children have,” Greene says. “And if there is any break in upon it, they feel it intensely. And some of them resent a father who is trying to take them away from a happy life.”
The child’s wishes are “the end of the story”, Hales says. He acknowledges that the law says otherwise. But Brethren don’t hold to the idea of divorced parents sharing 50:50 in the upbringing of their children.
“It might be quite good to have some contact,” he says. But not the secular view of equal contact? “No,” Greene says. And Hales adds, “We respect right and wrong.”
Despite Benjamin’s finding of obstruction, they insist the Brethren do nothing to block court orders. They deny familiar allegations that the Brethren coach children to write letters of protest. They have good news for the very few estranged parents who do have access to Brethren children: they are now allowed to eat together.
But Greene and Hales see access visits as a “particular ordeal” for these children who are dispatched into the world of iniquity with instructions to hold to their faith and welcomed back into fellowship “with TLC”. No wonder the kids are begrudging, Greene says: “How would you see it if you were a kid pushed into a situation like that?”
Their predicament puts Greene in mind of Daniel’s ordeal to keep his faith at the court of King Nebuchadnezzar. “He was taken away and had to get through where he was and God was obviously in it. Daniel was a great man.”
The Peter and Elspeth story is complicated by a terrible tragedy. Shortly after Peter had those few and difficult days of access in early 2007, Elspeth was found to have advanced breast cancer. When the case came back for yet another round in the Family Court, evidence was given that the mother’s illness had set in stone the hostility of the children to their father. They blamed him for the cancer.
Peter was broke and representing himself. Five years of litigation had chewed up $100,000. Elspeth had the leading family law silk Noel Ackman plus a supporting legal team. Peter wanted new access orders plus custody of his youngest child, who had turned 10.
Elspeth wanted the court to prevent him having custody of any of the children even in the event of her death.
Justice Sally Brown declared the faith of the children the “crucial factor” in the case and sided with the mother and the church. She took no account of the sect’s long history of trouble with the Family Court and did not address the role the Brethren had played – and may still be playing – in the extreme hostility of the children to visiting their father. The hostility was to be honoured: “It is not realistic to expect them to go against the … teaching of their church.”
Though she found Peter was a loving father with a comfortable home in which children could live, she birched him for his attitude to the sect; for embarrassing his children by putting birthday greetings in newspapers; for seeking custody of only one child and not two; and for claiming the Brethren had robbed his children of autonomy. Wasn’t his own departure, she asked, proof the sect allowed debate and dissent? But he was 46 when he left and his children are 15 and 10.
In a remarkable finding by a Family Court judge, Peter was even castigated for seeking to enforce the earlier orders of the court. A door that had been ajar was shut, said the judge. “The continuation of the litigation after [the mother's] diagnosis in May 2007 has driven both children from their father. In their best interests, the litigation must end.”
On June 25, Peter was refused custody and all access. Even a plan to allow him an hour or two with his youngest child each year was rejected by the judge. “Nothing in the evidence satisfies me that there would be any benefit to her in such an arrangement.” All he is allowed are “current photos of the children and [to] follow their educational progress”.
It may be that viewing this terrible and tangled situation, Justice Brown found a fair and secular outcome just too hard – too hard on the children, too hard on their dying mother, too hard in the face of the implacable hostility of the Brethren.
But her decision has reward the sect’s intransigence. Once again the Family Court has flinched.
Athol Greene insists these cases are rare and that the church will submit to the law while continuing to argue that the best outcome for these children is to remain solely within the Brethren.
“You won’t change us,” he says, fixing me with his old eyes. “You. Won’t. Change. Us.”
by David Marr
See on Brisbane Times and Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/the-exclusion-brethren-20090710-dg2n.html
http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-exclusion-brethren-20090710-dg2n.html?page=-1
To those who know the Exclusive Brethren, the smiles are chilling and a reminder of who really runs the cult. The Hales Dynasty has been in firm control since Daniel and Bruces’ father John Stephen Hales took control in 1987. Upon the death of John Hales in 2002, his son Bruce was placed in control of the extraordinarily wealthy cult. Bruce Hales, an Accountant like his father, is far less of a spiritual leader than any previous ‘Elect Vessels’. Somewhat of a recluse, Bruce Hales avoids the media and extraordinary measures are taken to prevent the leader of the over 46,000 strong Exclusive Brethren from being photographed.
David Marr is no stranger to reporting on the cult. His 2006 ‘Hidden Prophets’ remains one of the most accurate and incisive summaries of Exclusive Brethren political and business dealings.
See Hidden Prophets: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/07/01/1151174401719.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
You would be forgiven for assuming the toothy smile of Daniel Hales and the self-satisfied smirk on the face of Athol Greene (Father-in-law to Daniel’s brother Bruce Hales) was as result of some joyous moment in their spiritual lives. In fact, their good humor comes from the fact they have gained an outrageous ruling in Australia’s Family Court that prevents an excommunicated member from seeing his eight children.
We reproduce a David Marr article from the Australian press that sums up the anger resulting from the Family Court ruling. The intransigence and arrogance of the group that Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister accurately described as “an extremist cult and sect” comes out in a quote from Athol Greene below:
“You won’t change us,” he says, fixing me with his old eyes.
“You. Won’t. Change. Us.”
The Exclusion Brethren
by David Marr
July 11th, 2009
A father’s price for quitting his marriage was to lose contact with eight children left behind in the Exclusive Brethren. David Marr caught up with sect defenders.
Continue reading »
A Personal Response to ‘Into the Light’
The following letter is an individual response to the recently published Jackson Wells paper, ‘Into the Light: understanding the Exclusive Brethren’. This letter was copied to Peebs.Net by an individual who was once a member of the Exclusive Brethren cult. As far as we know, there has not been a reply.