Oh dear.
I reached p157 and Clive's post with links to "Sam's interview". Interview starts off very bitty with sound cutting out but settled down after a bit, so persevere if you decide to listen to it. His description of how he joined SMC matches what I had seen of the Greenock Friday night progression - fun youth club for primary kids, younger secondary kids, then heavy sessions for students. I was hit hard in my gut at the 53 minute marker.
P157
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Clive () August 21, 2023 04:11AMCheck out this interview with "Sam" - who was in the Pudsey group.
"Hello and welcome to The Cult Vault's first ever live in-person interview. I am chatting with long-time friend Sam. I was completely unaware that he had experienced this until I started diving into the podcast and Sam informed me that he himself had experienced such coercion."[
www.youtube.com]
I am so relieved I left of my own free will when I could at the end of high school, before Hugh Black died, before DR was given the platform for Wednesday night specials at summer camps. I am grateful the extent of the spiritual abuse meted out to me and my peers was social isolation and humiliation, attempted control of thought and behaviour through all of our school years, overly much physical punishment (by parents, but encouraged as a good child rearing practice in a Christian household by HB to parents). This concurs with Archbishop Laud's assessment early on in this forum:
P30
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Archbishop Laud () August 25, 2011 04:51PM
[[i]I would suggest that Mr Black's background in the Exclusive Brethren explains much about what is wrong with Struthers. He claimed to have been liberated from it when he was baptised in the Holy Spirit, but I am not sure the liberation was thorough enough. I think he imported most of their doctrines and forms of life straight into Struthers, which can, as a result, be classified as a a kind of Pentecostal Exclusive Brethren. Or rather Pentecostal Exclusive Sisterhood -- because brothers are very much in the background there.[/i]
also see
P146
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ThePetitor () October 27, 2017 07:02PMan interview about the Exclusive Brethren, which was the church Hugh Black was brought up in. I think there are some interesting parallels here[
www.independent.co.uk]
It was in the 80s that repeated descriptions of supposed deliverances began to be given week in, week out, but as a child and teenager, I did not have to experience outright terror before and during the "meeting". This is very very serious, and must be surely be causing mental illhealth and imbalance, encouraging one to snitch tidbits of gossip against another in the hope that you remain in favour and are not similarly publicly humiliated. The snitching and public humiliation, shaming and bullying sound like historical Communist purges.
Sam's interview describing a "camp" around 2008 almost identically matches Free@Last_sometimes description of a Wednesday night at "camp", which I infer to be around 2018 from the timeline described, a full 10 years later!
p174
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Free@Last_sometimes () April 23, 2024 07:58AM
And boom. Wednesday night. A tap on the shoulder came. In a room of 400ish people, I’m pointed out. And it’s not discreet, I was middle of the congregation and the wee helper had to squeeze past loads of people. I sat and cried. Absolutely ashamed. My friend hugged me and told me it would be ok. That I could be fixed. This was a good thing.
If this all began after Hugh Black died, then we are talking
20+ years of a different scale of spiritual abuse, something much darker and more de-stabilising than the 70s 80s version. Alison Speirs won relaxation of social humiliation and clothing rules when she was given leadership, but this deliverance obsession being mainstreamed into "meetings" has ramped up psychological terror and control instead. Which generation has had it harder I wonder?
I would suggest that there is a pattern established that the worst accounts of the non-safeguarding adult and children have DR as part of the story. CovLass first explosive post in 2010, Lintar123 posts, also early on, and numerous recent posts of witnesses all name DR as the bullying leader in their traumatic experience.
And that leader is now listed on Companies House as the "person with significant control". This is not right.As I said in my first post, it is up to the "good people" in Struthers who have professional knowledge around safeguarding, whistleblowing, corporate governance, risk assessment to step up and ask for, demand even, change. Accountability and safety. This is the hugest ask ever, I know, I really do, with massive personal, family repercussions and ostracisation. It would be the end of your current life as you know it, but you will have done the right thing. A thought out strategy and emotional support will be needed! Ask an external organisation for help. Take your time to get it planned as well as you can but DO IT. [
thirtyoneeight.org]