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Mercy Ministries admits claims were false

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:35:58 +0000

Mercy Ministries admits claims were false

RUTH POLLARD INVESTIGATIONS EDITOR

December 17, 2009

FORMER directors of Mercy Ministries yesterday admitted the evangelical Christian organisation had engaged in false, misleading and deceptive conduct by wrongly claiming their residential care programs were free and included support from psychologists, dietitians, general practitioners and counsellors.

The admission is part of an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ruling, after an 18-month investigation into complaints from former residents who were forced to undergo exorcisms and use prayer to treat serious health problems such as bipolar disorder and anorexia.

Targeting girls and women aged 16 to 28, Mercy Ministries also claimed – on its website and in advertising material distributed in Gloria Jeans cafes around the country – that its program was free, yet a Herald investigation revealed residents had to sign over their Centrelink benefits during their stay.

The ACCC ordered the former directors to pay $1050 to each of the 110 young women who took part in their programs from January 2005 to June last year, the total being $118,154. They have also agreed to attend annual trade practices compliance training for three years.

”Given the vital role charitable organisations have in our society, and the trust placed in them, it is imperative that their conduct is of the highest standard, especially in their dealings with vulnerable and disadvantaged members of our community,” the ACCC chairman, Graeme Samuel, said yesterday. ”Misleading conduct of this kind is a matter of serious concern.”

Hillsong Church said in October it had cut ties with the group. At the same time, Mercy Ministries announced it was closing its Sydney home, citing ”extreme financial challenges and a steady drop in our support base”.

The article can be found here http://www.smh.com.au/national/mercy-ministries-admits-claims-were-false-20091216-kxl4.html

Bad publicity brings Mercy Ministries undone

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:20:34 +0000

Bad publicity brings Mercy Ministries undone

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/news/audio/pm/200910/20091028-pm-6-mercy-ministries.mp3

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

MARK COLVIN: A controversial counselling centre linked to the evangelical Hillsong church says bad publicity has eroded its funding to the point where it’s now shutting down completely.

PM understands that the consumer watchdog the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) has been investigating Mercy Ministries. The reason: media reports that young women seeking psychological and medical support were instead essentially enrolled in a bible program. Some young women say they couldn’t leave the treatment centre and that staff would “exorcise” them. But Mercy Ministries denies those claims.

Meredith Griffiths reports.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: According to its website, Mercy Ministries is a Christian organisation that helps young women suffering from eating disorders, self-harm, abuse, addictions or pregnancy. But around March last year, stories began emerging about what was going on inside the program’s residential treatment centre in the Sydney suburb of Baulkham Hills.

TANYA LEVIN: The women had been promised they would see a team of doctors and psychologists and dieticians to work on the issues that they had come into Mercy Ministries with and when the women arrived at Mercy Ministries, they found out over the course of time that there was actually no professional intervention, the only intervention they got was from a Pentecostal Christian perspective.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Tanya Levin is a social worker who the women contacted because they knew she was also a former member of the large Pentecostal church, Hillsong which supports Mercy Ministry. Mr Levin says she’s since been in touch with 15 to 20 of Mercy’s clients.

TANYA LEVIN: They learnt that they had been brought in for reasons of sin. They needed to repent, the needed to become born again. Oftentimes, this involved exorcisms.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: She says the women weren’t allowed to leave the centre.

TANYA LEVIN: It seems that with the extreme levels of deprivation, isolation, the women had to submit their Centrelink payments so that they had very little of their own money.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The women’s complaints have not gone unheard. PM understands that the Australian Competition and Consumer Competition has been investigating Mercy Ministries for more than a year. Now Mercy Ministries has announced it will cease operations in Australia because it’s no longer financially viable.

The executive director, Margaret Stunt, says the bad publicity has had an effect on donations. Around the middle of this year, it lost the support of one of its biggest funders, the coffee chain Gloria Jean’s which used to advertise the service in its branches.

That’s where 26-year-old Sarah Goodson heard about Mercy Ministries. She was disappointed to hear it’s shutting down.

SARAH GOODSON: It literally saved my life.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Last year she spent eight months at Mercy’s residence in Baulkham Hills being treated for anorexia. Sarah Goodson says she went to the doctor a lot in that time, and saw a dietician every two weeks. She says the clients had a choice about whether or not they signed over their Centrelink benefits and they were free to leave every weekend.

During the week, could you physically leave the property if you wanted to?

SARAH GOODSON: No because mainly the program runs during the week and that’s when you’re getting counselling and working on the issues that you have.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Sarah Goodson says she was never exorcised and she never witnessed one.

Was there a lot of biblical influence though?

SARAH GOODSON: Yeah. Because it’s a Christian-based program and because when you first enter that program you know that it’s a Christian-based program.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The Hillsong church released a statement last night saying it’s cutting ties with Mercy Ministries to protect the reputation of the church.

EXTRACT FROM STATEMENT (voiceover): Hillsong is not under investigation but a number of key people from Hillsong church over the years have been involved in Mercy Ministries. It is wrong that anything Mercy Ministries may or may not have done could overshadow so much of what we as a church stand for: loving God and helping people.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The church’s leaders have encouraged people to assist any investigation into Mercy Ministries and says Hillsong will now be developing tighter guidelines about what other organisations its staff can work with.

MARK COLVIN: Meredith Griffiths.

The article can be found here http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2009/s2726767.htm

RUTH POLLARD INVESTIGATIONS EDITOR

October 28, 2009

ALLEGATIONS of widespread abuse at Mercy Ministries group homes appear finally to have caught up with the fundamentalist Christian group, which has announced it will close its Sydney home on October 31, citing ”extreme financial challenges and a steady drop in our support base”.

”We are no longer financially viable,” reads a statement from Margaret Stunt, a former Hillsong Church staff member from London appointed as executive director of Mercy Ministries in April.

The announcement came less than a week after the group said it had completed extensive renovations to its Sydney home, including a new kitchen, carpets, light fittings, staircase and deck, painting and landscaping – all funded with donations totalling more than $100,000.

Given that the organisation will close, it is unclear who will benefit from the renovations. A staff member at Mercy Ministries said she was unable to comment.

Targeting girls and women aged 16 to 28, Mercy Ministries claimed – on its website and in promotional material distributed in Gloria Jeans cafes around the country – that its programs included support from ”psychologists, general practitioners, dietitians, social workers, [and] career counsellors”.

Instead, the program prevented the residents gaining access to psychiatric care, choosing to focus on prayer, Christian counselling and exorcisms to ”expel demons” from the young women, many of whom had serious psychiatric conditions such as bipolar disorder, anxiety and anorexia.

A Herald investigation last year revealed the women who entered the program were required to sign over their Centrelink benefits and were virtually cut off from the outside world, except for a weekly trip to the local Hillsong Church for worship.

At the time, Mercy Ministries’ then chief executive, Peter Irvine, was quick to dismiss their claims, implying that the victims of the group’s unorthodox and dangerous treatments were not telling the truth.

Since then Mr Irvine has sent an apology to the women featured in the Herald’s articles. ”I would like to apologise for the statements that I made to the press in March 2008. I did not accurately reflect the situation and I regret my comments,” he wrote.

News of the closure was greeted with relief by its former victims, who cautioned that the group was still operating in New Zealand, the US and Britain.

”It is amazing that our little voices speaking out could make a dent against organisations as big as … Mercy Ministries,” said Naomi Johnson, one of the women who blew the whistle on the abuse.

”After all the lies they told about us, this is what we hoped – that Mercy Ministries would be closed so that other girls would not get hurt.”

In June last year, Mercy Ministries announced it had closed its Sunshine Coast home ”due to strategic and resourcing issues”.

Hillsong Church was quick to distance itself from the organisation it had supported – both financially and with key staff and executive officers – since its inception in 2001. ”Hillsong Church has cut ties with Mercy Ministries around the world following an [Australian Competition and Consumer Commission] investigation into Mercy Ministries,” said a statement released by the church last night.

A spokeswoman for the ACCC, one of the many investigatory bodies to which the women complained, would not comment or confirm an investigation had taken place.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/mercy-ministries-home-to-close-20091027-hj2k.html

Deconverts Reports

admin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 03:07:35 +0000

“Earlier tonight I received a comment on one of our earlier articles readers which covers the abuse of women in the Hillsong-supported “Mercy Ministries” programme that one of the videos we linked to has been removed from YouTube in an apparant attempt to censor the voice of abused women, unhappy with their treatment at Mercy Ministries, via a false claim under the DMCA. The reason for the removal appears to be as a result of a malicious copyright “Take Down” claim by “Mercy Ministries International” as an attempt to censor the voices of some of the women who were psychologically damaged by their programme. This “programme” claims to help desperate women with drug addiction, mental illness and eating disorders. The truth is that women end up far more troubled, and far worse off than when they started.”

To read more click here.

Mercy Ministries Ex Resident is Interviewed

admin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 04:40:42 +0000

“Sarah”, who spent eight months in one of the Australian Mercy Ministries homes, recently spoke with G’Day World’s Cameron Reilly. She recounts some of her experiences such as being denied prescribed medication, being manipulated and disciplined, being forced to have cold showers and having her welfare benefits (Centrelink) signed over to Mercy Ministries.

All seven parts of the interview can be heard below.

The original interview can be found at http://gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com/2008/10/21/gday-world-352-sarah-macs-mercy-ministries-experience/

Australian Today Tonight Report Featuring Rhiannon

admin — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 02:28:24 +0000

Australian television program Today Tonight featured a story on Mercy Ministries on March 17th 2008.

An excerpt from a letter recieved from television program Today Tonight on March 20th 2008:

In the days since Today Tonight did a story on Mercy Ministries, we have been inundated with responses, so much so it’s raised serious questions about the figures we received from Mercy Ministries claiming to be the total number of girls who graduated and “failed”.

Executive Director of Mercy Ministries Peter Irvine claimed since the organisation began in 2000, 96 women had graduated, 6 failed and only 2 had come forward to complain… Since our program aired, a greater number of women have since contacted our program citing mistreatment by Mercy Ministries.

These girls did not receive professional treatment whilst in the care of MM, they were denied such help and instead were put in the care of people whose only training was from an in-house program – a far cry from the medically based expertise needed to treat serious problems of sexual abuse, drug addiction, and psychological trauma. It also contradicts the program guidelines outlined on the website. Even the website acknowledges that such conditions need professional help…

Kind regards,
Marguerite McKinnon
Journalist Today Tonight