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 »
June 28th, 2009
In Australia’s The Age today, Michael Bachelard author of the acclaimed ‘Behind the Exclusive Brethren’, presents a heartbreaking report that proves beyond doubt that the Exclusive Brethren cult will go to any length to rip families apart.
In an astonishing judgement in Melbourne, Justice Brown allowed the cult to legally prevent their excommunicated father from having anything further to do with his two children. As is usual in these cases, the Exclusive Brethren spared no effort or cost in their legal campaign:
“… The Exclusive Brethren paid for the mother, Elspeth, to hire one of Melbourne’s top family court QCs, Noel Ackman, as well as a junior barrister and a solicitor… “
Read the full article in todays Sunday Age:
Ex-Brethren father loses battle for children
The Age
Michael Bachelard
June 28, 2009 – 12:00AM
A grieving father’s only contact with his Exclusive Brethren children will be permission to buy their photographs from the sect’s school, as long as they are not there at the time, a Family Court judge has ruled.
Justice Sally Brown has comprehensively ruled against the father, who can be known only as Peter, denying him any contact with his son, 15, and daughter, 10, after a five-year court battle, waged mostly in their home state of Tasmania.
After spending $100,000 winning court orders in 2006 for access, then trying unsuccessfully to enforce them, Peter could only afford to represent himself in the most recent retrial.
The Exclusive Brethren paid for the mother, Elspeth, to hire one of Melbourne’s top family court QCs, Noel Ackman, as well as a junior barrister and a solicitor.
The church’s “doctrine of separation” prevents people who have left the fold having any relationship with those still inside, including their own children.
Early in 2007, Justice Robert Benjamin sentenced the mother and two male relatives to four-month suspended jail sentences for failing to encourage the children to go with their father. These sentences were overturned on appeal.
Justice Brown’s judgment, delivered in Melbourne on Thursday, ruled for the Brethren mother because during the course of the case the children’s relationship with the father had broken down, and there was no prospect of re-establishing it.
The judge blamed the father for this, saying that his attempts to make sure that earlier court orders were obeyed had alienated the children from him and that parts of his application were “cruel and punitive” towards the children.
The mother fell ill with a recurrence of breast cancer after Justice Benjamin’s ruling in 2007, and the “family narrative” blamed the father for this.
“It is clear that the mother attributes responsibility for the recurrence of her cancer, at least in part, to the trauma she experienced when sentenced,” Justice Brown said. Whether or not this was true was “less relevant than its currency in the home”.
The daughter had “taken on board” this message and had torn up and returned a card her father had sent her, saying if he wanted her to be happy “he should just leave us alone”.
However, she rejected the father’s suggestion that the Exclusive Brethren had prompted this behaviour, despite evidence over many years that the sect encourages young children to reject their lapsed parents.
In 2006, a court-appointed psychologist described the Brethren’s attempts to turn the children against Peter as “psychologically cruel, unacceptable and abusive” to the children and at “the highest end of psychological abuse”.
But Justice Brown’s views on the Brethren were generally positive: their religious conviction was as “vital to them as the air they breathe”, and “they perceive a life lived outside their faith as unsustainable”. She questioned whether it was their policy to remove children from non-Brethren parents, quoting a report to her that said that “the church says in its publication this is not the case”.
Justice Brown said it was false to think, as the father did, that this case was “a duel between law and religion”.
The father said the few times he had had contact, the children had “warmed up” to him, but the opinion of a court-appointed consultant, Ineke Stierman, was that the daughter’s “youth and courtesy explain her relatively polite responses”. As for the son, one visit had ended with him curled in a foetal position in the cubby house and refusing to eat.
Having “nothing to do with them now might show ultimate caring”, Ms Stierman recommended.
Justice Brown accepted that the result of her judgment was that “the children will not spend time with anyone who speaks positively about the father”.
The father had applied for custody of both children but late in the case changed his position, asking for custody of his daughter and access to his son. The judge condemned this as “indicative of a significant lack of understanding of the children’s needs” .
The mother’s application was to have custody of the children until she died, following which they be cared for by an older sister and her husband.
Although Justice Brown did not rule on what would happen after the mother’s death, she agreed the children needed support by their extended family “during these traumatic years”, that the girl had bonded with her older sister, and that this must take priority over any relationship with the father, or “any questions about the Exclusive Brethren’s compliance with court orders”.
Although Ms Stierman suggested contact of “an hour or two, once or twice a year”, Justice Brown said she could see no benefit to that. Instead, Peter could, at his expense, be provided with a copy of their school reports, photos and newsletters as long he obtained them at a time when any family members “are not likely to be on the school premises”.
Asked by The Sunday Age if he had a message for his children, Peter, who himself grew up without a father because of the Brethren’s doctrine of separation, said: “I just want them to know I tried my best.”
The Exclusive Brethren declined to comment, saying it was a private family matter.
Michael Bachelard
The Age
Source: http://www.theage.com.au/national/exbrethren-father-loses-battle-for-children-20090627-d0lc.html
This is most certainly not the first time that the Australian Family Court has caved in under the pressure tactics of the cult. Retired Chief Justice of the Family Court Alistair Nicholson has spoken openly about the tactics the cult uses in the past:
Stephen Crittenden: Isn’t part of the problem that the Family Court has with the Exclusive Brethren, just the simple fact that the Exclusive Brethren don’t recognise the validity of the court, of the laws, and that there’s just a general sense, a problem of members of the Exclusive Brethren defying court orders?
Alistair Nicholson: Yes, and I think they can be dealt with by the usual method of punishment of people who do defy court orders. There’s no problem about that.
Read the full transcript on ABC: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2007/1871059.htm#anchor1
In 2007, ABC’s Four Corners broadcast ‘The Brethren Express’ (http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2007/s2057172.htm) where some superb investigative journalism dug into the finances of the Exclsuive Brethren cult. Former Chief Justice Nicholson was interviewed again. You can watch his extended interview and the full program on the Brethren Express website: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20071015/brethren/default.htm
June 28th, 2009
In Australia’s The Age today, Michael Bachelard author of the acclaimed ‘Behind the Exclusive Brethren‘, presents a heartbreaking report that proves beyond doubt that the Exclusive Brethren cult will go to any length to rip families apart.
In an astonishing judgement in Melbourne, Justice Brown allowed the cult to legally prevent their excommunicated father from having anything further to do with his two children. As is usual in these cases, the Exclusive Brethren spared no effort or cost in their legal campaign:
“… The Exclusive Brethren paid for the mother, Elspeth, to hire one of Melbourne’s top family court QCs, Noel Ackman, as well as a junior barrister and a solicitor… “
Read the full article in todays Sunday Age:
Ex-Brethren father loses battle for children
The Age
Michael Bachelard
June 28, 2009 – 12:00AM
A grieving father’s only contact with his Exclusive Brethren children will be permission to buy their photographs from the sect’s school, as long as they are not there at the time, a Family Court judge has ruled.
Justice Sally Brown has comprehensively ruled against the father, who can be known only as Peter, denying him any contact with his son, 15, and daughter, 10, after a five-year court battle, waged mostly in their home state of Tasmania.
After spending $100,000 winning court orders in 2006 for access, then trying unsuccessfully to enforce them, Peter could only afford to represent himself in the most recent retrial.
The Exclusive Brethren paid for the mother, Elspeth, to hire one of Melbourne’s top family court QCs, Noel Ackman, as well as a junior barrister and a solicitor.
The church’s “doctrine of separation” prevents people who have left the fold having any relationship with those still inside, including their own children.
Continue reading »
The Exclusive Brethren Today
The following letter was written by the peebs.net Community to Jackson Wells, Public Relations Consultants to the Exclusive Brethren. It summarizes the Exclusive Brethren today and provides many important insights into the cult. We reproduce it in full.
Jackson Wells recently signed up another group that many would consider fall into the same category as the Exclusive Brethren, The Church of Scientology in Australia.
Mr Benjamin Haslem
Jackson Wells Pty Ltd
PO Box 1743
Neutral Bay NSW 2089
June 30th, 2009
Dear Mr Haslem
We wish to respond to your recent article in the web publication “The Well”, Issue 36, Autumn 2009, entitled “Into the Light: understanding the Exclusive Brethren”.
Whilst the above title implies that your brief is to shine some much-needed light onto the activities of the Exclusive Brethren, we believe that this is the last thing they would want. Until recently, they have always preferred to keep a low profile, with good reason. Instead, it appears that they wish to counteract their negative image from the public scrutiny they have attracted in recent times – purely through their own actions – by engaging your company to create a “positive spin”. Unfortunately, even a company of your stature will have great difficulty in achieving this objective.
We take issue with your assertion that “outrageous and false claims” have been leveled against the Brethren by “mostly tabloid” media outlets and a “handful of disaffected former Church members”. Firstly, we are surprised that you regard serious newspapers such as “The Age” and “The Australian” (your former employer) as tabloid. Secondly, the contemptuous term “handful” is nonsense, and sounds suspiciously like part of a previously reported statement of a Brethren spokesman.
We are a community of people, most of whom have intimate knowledge and personal experience of the Exclusive Brethren doctrine of extreme separation, which has caused many hundreds of families worldwide to be torn apart over the past 50 years. As a result, people have been forced to spend the rest of their lives apart from their families, with all the pain and trauma that that entails. Some have even been driven to suicide, as the following link shows:
Continue reading »