Thoughts on she who shall not be named! Its so cruel to name so let's avoid it!
Did Harry Potter mention we know who?
The following is being shared as it's what we younger folks know is truth as experienced.

1: She was a bully of the lowest order.
2 She used to brag about "Bringing the
church down".
3 She used to criticise the Black family.

4: She bullied the some in the Ex Vestry now known as Gents toilet!
5: Her daughter lamb chops was so rude &
cruel, not be in pleasant to her 2
2 pupils!
6: SWSNBN mantra , " You Will Break
To My Will". You Will BREAK"!
7: She sponged from church funds!
8: Heard some believed their prayers were
answered and indeed celebrated. Her departure had been long prayed for by a faithful band!!
Oh Rensil Gran remembers you well,
Be careful of blabber, not to be trusted, we know.

Have an amazing weekend.

Some practical "warning signs" regarding a potentially unsafe group.


1. Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability ie leaders, partners and their Besties!

2. No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry. Questions, what are they?

3. No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financial statement.
They do share this now to the last penny so no more ice cream for sychophant, aww aww!
4. Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions. No one is that daft, well not in Falkirk.

5. There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil. True all leavers are hisdy fitters! LOL well we do remember one major hisdy fitter from two years ago!!

6. Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.

7. There are records, books, news articles, or television programs that document the abuses of the group/leader. Being well looked into by certain people!

8. Followers feel they can never be "good enough". Yeah that was true prior to seeing the light and leaving behind the Vestry, treatment chamber now converted gents 1 cubicle bog!! LOL

9. The group/leader is always right.Big Big yes to that 24 hrs a day. " l know God and am where l am because l broke. What do you bring to this party, well let me tell you nothing! Nothing, Nothing unless You Break. Break break, shatter in pieces before me. Do You Understand? I will break you then remake you and that will give you reason to go on!

10. The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible. See above.

And o, oh when is the BBC doc, just thought l would get there first!?

Mirmac,
It would appear that you are "having a go" at someone who is a contributor to this forum. You frequently refer to them as "Blabber". Am I correct? I find this to be very unkind and passive-aggressive which is not what this forum is about. You know, you could be adding more hurt to someone who is already suffering. Might be an idea to quit with the sly jibes, afterall, we are ALL victims who have deemed this forum to be a safe place; free from all judgement.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2025 06:21PM by Mulberry.

Here we are once again.

Warning -- avoid personal attacks.

This is not about attacking people that post here. It's about Struthers Memorial Independent Pentecostal Church.

Please stay focused on the topic of this thread.

Does anyone know if Struthers still claims to be a holiness church?

Do they still claim the leadership have attained a higher level of holiness and that is why they are the ones called to be on the platform? Do they still tell people they must look ever inward to search out more hidden sin and act proudly claiming they themselves have done so?

The reason I ask is that the present leadership seem to see themselves aloof from even a basic level of “holiness”; or perhaps we should call that good behaviour or integrity. They seem to fail at the very basics.


Telling the truth seems to be an unfamiliar land to them.

Either it is hidden or covered up, such as the cost of the shares scandal, fake reports for many years that the subsidy for the school was low and the head teacher received no salary. Also hidden is last years 31:8 report on the Falkirk Bairn rape cover-up allegations and the report on whether people were harmed and damaged or abused by their time living in the Mrs Spiers run communal houses. And what action has the executive ever taken to discipline a branch leader if they failed to follow the church policies the directors seem to so love producing? For example in the last few years have they always reported domestic abuse allegations to the police as their own policy requires?

How can a “holiness” church in good conscience hide the truth about these things from the public and even its own members? The more sinister question is why would they even try to? If the truth absolved them they would undoubtedly publish it in a heartbeat so:

It looks like they have dirty secrets.


Lets take one of these examples. Falkirk Bairn bravely shared on here just over a year ago her terrible experience and then both her formal complaint and the Struthers executive response – based on the investigation conducted by 31:8.

The response claim was that no one remembered anything. It was all so long ago! How can ageing leaders be expected to remember a rape allegation involving 2 people in their congregation?

Well for starters they can completely 100% be expected to. No pastor on earth would legitimately forget that. In this case more so since the accused man remained in the memory-challenged leaders congregation for 15 more years and she conducted his marriage. And secondly it would require us to believe the leader mentioned it to no one else who might still have a functioning memory and could confirm or deny knowing of the original allegation.

To say this was forgotten strains credibility to the limit. It sounds like utter nonsense. It sounds like lies. It sounds like a cover up. It sound like false witness is acceptable from the mouth of a Struthers leader if it aims to “protect” the church. In this case “protecting” means it aims to make the church reputation seem better than it is if the truth came out. It seeks to make the church leadership appear to be producing better disciples than they actually are.

So lies and cover up or holiness? Struthers can’t be both.


Hence the question. Is Struthers still claiming to be a holiness church?

Or is it a church built on lies, cover ups, lack of accountability, failure to act within its own policy guidelines and failure to address the past such as it was invited to do by applying the scriptures quoted in the Pauline Anderson letter?

If it is building a church on secrets and lies, while publicly claiming to be specially holy, we can only conclude that, biblically, the outlook cannot be good.

Mirmac and Syderhunter, welcome to the forum. There seem to have been few folks join us recently and it can at times be hard to keep up with all the new contributors. Sorry if I have missed any.

To be honest, I have not commented a great deal as I struggle to follow some of the more recent posts. I think you perhaps have to know a fair bit about different individuals before it is easy to work out exactly who it was that said what about whom. It all seems a bit complex to me.

It is great that we have different views – I have said that before and will continue to say it – and it is great that we can come on here to share a bit about our experiences in relation to Struthers no matter what form these experiences take but, speaking for myself, the thing I have found most valuable on this forum are the testimonies of people who have come on and shared their personal stories and hurts and in doing so have shown their vulnerability.

Covlass, Happy Survivor, Amazing Grace, Daisy, Lintar, FalkirkBairn and many, many others have come onto this forum and shared a bit of their personal experience. That is a brave thing to do. It takes courage, compassion for others and a willingness to reveal their own vulnerability. I want to thank these people for being brave enough to share their personal stories so that others can perhaps gain a bit of comfort and a sense that “they are not alone”.

That has been one of the most common comments on this forum over the years – people coming on to talk about their own experience and to thank other contributors for the help they have given by being vulnerable and sharing their own pain. One of the most common opening comments has been along the lines of, “I am so glad I found this forum as I now realise I am not alone”. I find these personal stories are one of the most powerful ways to help people in this way.

I really don’t want to single out any individual as I have benefitted from so many testimonies, but I do want to say that I hold Falkirk Bairn in the highest regard in that respect. Thanks FB for coming on here and being willing to share a very personal story. Sharing these private matters and showing your own hurt and vulnerability is a brave and selfless thing to do. In all my dealings with you, I have found you to be honest, open, trustworthy, caring and selfless, which is very far from the way the leaders of Struthers behave. Thanks for your wiliness to share your experiences, even when they are painful, and indeed for your personal support to me in difficult times. From what I see, it is very clear that your motivation is never to boost your own ego, but is for the benefit of others, and is often at great personal cost. Struthers leaders would do well to learn form that example of selflessness.

Joe0202, welcome to you as well. It is not really surprising that non-struthers folks can become interested in the stories here, as they are in many ways, “stranger than fiction”. I am sure there are quite a number of stories people could tell about “big Hughie’s” activities in places other than the church, especially the school.

I remember stories he would tell about how he would give someone a telling off then “accidentally” stand on their foot, putting more and more pressure on it while waving his finger in their face and not allowing them to speak. I often wondered not only about that act, but about what he would do if confronted about it. Would he just lie about it, saying he was not aware? How did lying fit with his theology?

I guess it comes back to the fact that there simply wasn’t any theology, the only doctrine was he was right and had to be obeyed.

I do have one other school story that I tell with permission of the teacher mentioned below.

When Mr Black first became HT of Greenock High School, there was a shortage of physics teachers, and none could be found for the school. There was however a physics teacher at Greenock Academy so that teacher was asked to take 2-hour evening classes in Higher Physics at Greenock High in the evening. This physics teacher was a Christian who I think attended the local (open) brethren and ran the SU group in the Academy. He also invited the young folk from the Academy to Christian groups and activities. Unsurprisingly, some of the folk in his Greenock High School evening class got to hear of this and also wanted to attend these Christian meetings.

Which was fine… until Mr Black got to hear of it. He turned up at the evening class the next week and demanded that the physics teacher stopped inviting them and that he give an undertaking that none of these young people would attend these Christian activities, insisting that the only message they would hear was from him. The teacher of course did not understand this and tried to reason with Mr Black, but he was having none of it. The teacher (CEH if anyone remembers him – he went on to be a HT, have a prominent position at a national level, then go into the ministry) ultimately said that if Mr Black was going to insist on that, then he no longer had a physics teacher. The teacher said he had never seen anyone so angry in all his life.

Is that not crazy – an allegedly Christian headteacher wanting to ban a Christian teacher from inviting people to Christian activities? Arrogance and narcicism.

Thank you Petitor for noting that people have posted about their experiences which have been truly hurtful.

It is so important for people to be able to do that .

No need to incite .


I apologise because I think this post appeared somewhere else .

Your welcome.

That is the purpose of this message board.

What The Petitor describes of Mr Black’s clumsy involvement with people attending Christian activities other than Struthers, rings true.

There was an expectation that church attendance, if someone was returning to their home or student town say, must be somewhere he had had a connection.

So someone might find a large, lively student youth group in a mainstream church and be happily going along until he found out when they returned to the mother church for conferences. He’d take them aside, advising of a small group he’d ministered to at some point, strongly recommending they stop attending the lively place.
These are others’ stories to tell but they did happen.

What that young person would then find is they were then commuting many miles to attend a small house group usually with older people and no youth.

Divide and rule.