THE RELIGIOUS TRAUMA COLLECTIVE
BREAKING THE SILENCE IN CLOSED RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES: A SURVIVORS STORY OF SILENCE, SYSTEMS AND RECOVERY
Sam Sellers and Nicole Meyer


CONTENT ADVISORY - THE DETAILS OF THIS INFORMATION INCLUDE THEMES OF SEXUAL ABUSE AND MAY CAUSE UPSET AND RAISE DIFFICULT MEMORIES AND EXPERIENCES. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO STOP READING OR NOT READ (THIS IS NOT SMC, YOU DO NOT NEED TO DO ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH). IF YOU DO READ, PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU INVITE DOING SOMETHING POSITIVE AFTERWARDS LIKE GO FOR A WALK, CHAT WITH A FRIEND / FAMILY MEMBER YOU FEEL SAFE WITH AND TRUST IF YOU NEED SUPPORT. IF YOU ARE NOT IN SMC ANYMORE, REMIND YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE NOT THERE. IF YOU ARE STILL WITHIN SMC AND THE DETAILS BELOW RESONATE WITH ANYTHING YOU ARE EXPERIENCING KNOW THAT YOU ARE NOT ALONE. AND REMEMBER THAT WE ARE HERE AND YOU CAN REACH OUT TO US VIA THIS FORUM ANYTIME IN SAFETY AND CONFIDENTIALLY.

~ Michele Lunan


This is a Religious Trauma Collective interview featuring Nicole Meyer, a survivor of abuse perpetrated by Malka Leifer. The discussion explores child sexual abuse in high-control religious communities, barriers to disclosure, the challenges of navigating legal systems, and the lifelong process of recovery and advocacy.

CORE THEMES

1. SILENCE AND ABUSE IN CLOSED RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES

A central argument of the interview is that abuse can thrive in highly insulated communities where authority figures are respected unquestioningly and where protecting the community's reputation may take precedence over protecting individuals. Nicole explains that many survivors remain silent because disclosure can lead to social consequences, stigma, and further harm rather than support.

Key issues identified include:
• Fear of community judgment.
• Lack of visible support for survivors.
• Cultural pressure to remain silent.
• Protection of institutional reputation.
• Social shame attached to victimhood rather than perpetration.

2. THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION AND AWARENESS

Nicole discusses how limited sex education and a lack of language around abuse can prevent children from recognising harmful behaviour. She argues that children need knowledge, vocabulary, and permission to speak up before disclosure is possible.

The interview highlights:
• The role of education in prevention.
• Teaching children to recognise inappropriate behaviour.
• Empowering children to report concerns.
• The importance of open conversations about safety.

3. HIGH-CONTROL SYSTEMS AND SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY

A significant section examines how abuse is enabled when perpetrators occupy positions of spiritual or community authority. Nicole explains that such figures often influence every aspect of community members' lives, creating dependency and making resistance extremely difficult.

She describes:
• Religious leaders as role models and trusted guides.
• The confusion created when a trusted spiritual figure becomes an abuser.
• Extensive control over personal decisions, relationships, careers, and life choices.

4. NAVIGATING THE LEGAL SYSTEM

A substantial portion of the discussion focuses on survivors' experiences with police, courts, and legal proceedings. Nicole stresses that survivors are often unprepared for how difficult and restrictive the process can be.

Challenges include:
• Trauma affecting memory and statements.
• Lack of trauma-informed responses.
• Court proceedings being highly structured and restrictive.
• Survivors not being able to tell their full story.
• Lengthy delays and uncertainty.

Nicole repeatedly emphasises that legal processes are designed for accountability, not healing.

5. RE-TRAUMATISATION DURING COURT PROCEEDINGS

The interview provides a detailed account of how legal processes can intensify trauma.

Examples include:
• Public reporting of sensitive information.
• Exposure to media coverage.
• Adversarial defence tactics.
• Being accused of dishonesty.
• Emotional instability caused by postponed hearings and legal uncertainty.

Nicole stresses the need for strong support systems throughout legal proceedings because the process can be profoundly destabilising.

RECOVERY AND HEALING

LIFELONG RECOVERY

A major theme is that recovery is not a destination but an ongoing process. Nicole rejects simplistic narratives that suggest survivors become fully "healed" after legal proceedings or therapy. Instead, she describes recovery as a series of healing moments that grow over time.

LONG-TERM EFFECTS DISCUSSED INCLUDE:

• Hypervigilance.
• Trust difficulties.
• Emotional triggers.
• Parenting challenges.
• Trauma-related coping behaviours.

FINDING VOICE THROUGH ADVOCACY

Nicole explains that public advocacy and sharing her experiences on social media became important parts of her healing journey. Speaking openly helped reduce shame and simultaneously provided support and validation to other survivors.

THE INTERVIEW PRESENTS STORYTELLING AS:

• A way to reclaim agency.
• A method of challenging shame.
• A means of helping others.
• A pathway from surviving to thriving.

SUPPORTING SURVIVORS

The discussion includes practical reflections on how families, friends, therapists, and communities can respond to disclosure.
Nicole identifies the most helpful response as:

"I believe you."

She contrasts this with harmful responses such as:
• Questioning why survivors did not stop the abuse.
• Suggesting they were somehow responsible.
• Focusing on their actions rather than the abuser's.

TRAUMA-INFORMED THERAPY

Nicole argues that effective therapy begins with connection and safety rather than disclosure or treatment techniques. She emphasises that survivors must never be pressured to trust before they are ready.

Her priorities for therapy are:
1. Human connection.
2. Safety.
3. Respect for boundaries.
4. Survivor-paced trust building.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND SYSTEMIC CHANGE

Towards the end of the interview, the focus shifts from individual recovery to community reform.

Nicole argues that meaningful accountability requires:
• Public support from community leaders.
• Visible advocacy for survivors.
• Educational initiatives.
• Clear reporting pathways.
• Support for affected families.

She emphasises that leaders, particularly religious leaders, possess significant power to reshape community attitudes by moving shame away from survivors and onto perpetrators.

OVERALL MESSAGE

The discussions central message is that abuse in high-control religious environments is sustained by silence, institutional protection, fear, and lack of education. Meaningful change requires survivor-centred support, community accountability, improved awareness, and leadership willing to challenge harmful systems. While recovery is ongoing and often lifelong, the interview concludes with a message of hope: individual acts of courage, education, advocacy, and support can accumulate into significant cultural change.

KEY TAKEAWAY

The is ultimately a story about breaking silence, speaking truth despite resistance, holding systems accountable, and building communities where survivors are believed, supported, and protected.

KEY CHALLENGES SURVIVORS FACE

Based on Nicole Meyer's experiences and observations, survivors of abuse in high-control religious communities face multiple interconnected challenges:

1. FEAR OF DISCLOSURE AND SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES

Many survivors fear that speaking out will worsen their situation rather than improve it. They may face judgment, stigma, loss of community support, or changes in how others perceive them. In close-knit communities, concerns about reputation, family status, and belonging can discourage disclosure.

2. LACK OF EDUCATION AND AWARENESS

Some survivors lack the language, knowledge, or education needed to recognise abuse when it occurs. Nicole describes how limited sex education and a lack of discussion about abuse can prevent children from understanding that harmful behaviour is wrong or from knowing how to seek help.

3. POWER IMBALANCES AND HIGH-CONTROL ENVIRONMENTS

Perpetrators may hold positions of spiritual, educational, or community authority. Survivors can experience deep dependence on these figures, making it difficult to question, resist, or report abuse. The authority afforded to leaders can create confusion and intensify the betrayal experienced by survivors.

4. NAVIGATING THE LEGAL SYSTEM

Survivors who report abuse often encounter significant challenges within legal processes, including:
• Having difficulty recalling events due to trauma.
• Limited opportunities to tell their full story.
• Delays, postponed hearings, and uncertainty.
• Interactions with professionals who may not fully understand trauma.

5. RE-TRAUMATISATION DURING COURT PROCEEDINGS

Nicole describes legal proceedings as emotionally demanding and, at times, re-traumatising. Survivors may face public exposure of deeply personal experiences, aggressive defence strategies, repeated questioning, and prolonged uncertainty throughout the legal process.

6. EMOTIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT

Long after abuse has occurred, survivors may experience:
• Hypervigilance.
• Anxiety and fear.
• Self-doubt.
• Persistent emotional distress.
• Ongoing efforts to make sense of their experiences.

7. THE BURDEN OF RECOVERY

Recovery is portrayed not as a single event but as an ongoing process. Survivors often continue dealing with the effects of abuse long after legal proceedings have ended. Healing requires support, self-reflection, coping tools, and sustained effort over time.

8. HARMFUL RESPONSES FROM OTHERS

Survivors may encounter disbelief, victim-blaming, or questions that imply responsibility for the abuse. Nicole identifies questions such as "Why didn't you stop it?" as particularly damaging because they shift focus away from the perpetrator's actions.

9. DIFFICULTY BUILDING TRUST

Abuse can damage a person's sense of safety and trust in others. Nicole notes that survivors may need significant time to develop trust, even in therapeutic settings, making connection and safety critical components of support.

OVERALL INSIGHT

The interview highlights that survivors often face challenges on multiple levels simultaneously: personal trauma, community pressures, institutional failures, legal obstacles, and the lifelong work of recovery. Throughout the discussion, Nicole emphasises that being believed, supported, and connected to safe people can make a profound difference in a survivor's healing journey.



RECOMMENDATIONS EMERGING FROM THE INTERVIEW

FOR RELIGIOUS AND COMMUNITY LEADERS

• Make clear, public statements supporting survivors and condemning abuse.
• Create opportunities for open discussion about abuse, mental health, and survivor support rather than keeping concerns hidden.
• Shift shame away from victims and place responsibility on perpetrators.
• Develop clear reporting pathways and ensure community members know how concerns should be reported.
• Provide practical and emotional support to affected families in the same way communities respond to other major crises or illnesses.

FOR PARENTS AND COMMUNITIES

• Educate children about body safety, boundaries, and abuse so they can recognise concerning behaviour and seek help.
• Promote awareness and prevention rather than only reacting after harm occurs.
• Create environments where children feel safe raising concerns and adults know how to respond appropriately.
• Challenge assumptions that abuse "could never happen here."

FOR SURVIVORS NAVIGATING REPORTING OR LEGAL PROCESSES

• Seek as much support as possible before and throughout legal proceedings.
• Use tools such as journalling, trusted support networks, and self-care practices to manage the emotional impact.
• Understand that court processes are focused on accountability, not healing.
• Hold onto personal truth and lived experience regardless of legal outcomes or procedural limitations.

FOR THERAPISTS AND SUPPORT PROFESSIONALS

• Prioritise connection, safety, and trust before trauma processing or disclosure.
• Maintain professional boundaries while fostering genuine human connection.
• Allow survivors to proceed at their own pace and avoid pressuring disclosure.
• Recognise that abuse often creates profound disconnection from self, family, and others, and that rebuilding connection can be central to healing.
FOR FRIENDS, FAMILY, AND ALLIES
• Respond to disclosures with simple affirmations such as: "I believe you" and "I support you."
• Avoid victim-blaming questions that imply the survivor could have prevented the abuse.
• Demonstrate support for survivors publicly and consistently, not only when someone discloses abuse directly.
• Recognise that many survivors remain silent and may be observing how others respond to abuse-related issues.

FOR RECOVERY AND HEALING

• Encourage safe sharing of experiences, whether with one trusted person or wider communities.
• View healing as an ongoing process rather than a final destination.
• Recognise and celebrate small "healing moments" and personal progress.
• Support survivor agency, choice, and voice as important elements of recovery.

KEY STRATEGIC MESSAGE

The interview consistently advocates a three-part approach:
1. Prevention through education and awareness.
2. Accountability through clear reporting and leadership action.
3. Recovery through survivor-centred support, belief, connection, and ongoing healing.

These recommendations are presented as necessary for breaking cycles of silence and creating safer communities for children and survivors.

THE RELIGIOUS TRAUMA COLLECTIVE

Cults, Coercion & Change: Inside the Victorian Parliamentary
Inquiry

WITH ELISE HEERDE, CLARE HEATH-MCIVOR & RYAN & CATHERINE CAREY

CONTENT ADVISORY - THE DETAILS OF THIS INFORMATION MAY CAUSE UPSET AND RAISE DIFFICULT MEMORIES AND EXPERIENCES. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO STOP READING OR NOT READ (THIS IS NOT SMC, YOU DO NOT NEED TO DO ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH). IF YOU DO READ, PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU INVITE DOING SOMETHING POSITIVE AFTERWARDS LIKE GO FOR A WALK, CHAT WITH A FRIEND / FAMILY MEMBER YOU FEEL SAFE WITH AND TRUST IF YOU NEED SUPPORT. IF YOU ARE NOT IN SMC ANYMORE, REMIND YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE NOT THERE. IF YOU ARE STILL WITHIN SMC AND THE DETAILS BELOW RESONATE WITH ANYTHING YOU ARE EXPERIENCING KNOW THAT YOU ARE NOT ALONE. AND REMEMBER THAT WE ARE HERE AND YOU CAN REACH OUT TO US VIA THIS FORUM ANYTIME IN SAFETY AND CONFIDENTIALLY.

~ Michele Lunan

This report summarises a panel discussion hosted by The Religious Trauma Collective on the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into cults, organised fringe groups, coercive control and survivor-led advocacy. The conversation centred on the lived experience of survivors, the advocacy that contributed to the establishment of the inquiry, the need for behaviour-focused law reform, and the importance of survivor-led services, education, research and institutional accountability.

The speakers emphasised that the inquiry is not directed at judging religious or ideological beliefs, but at identifying and responding to harmful conduct, including manipulation, exploitation, abuse, coercion, isolation, shunning, financial control, suppression of autonomy and institutional failure. A recurring principle throughout the discussion was that freedom of religion, belief and association must not be used as a shield for abuse, deception, exploitation or harm.

1. BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

The discussion took place in the context of the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the recruitment methods and impacts of cults and organised fringe groups. According to the Parliament of Victoria, the inquiry is examining cults and fringe groups in Victoria, the methods used to recruit and control members, and the impacts of coercive control, with a final report due by 30 September 2026. The inquiry has invited written submissions, questionnaire responses and public hearing evidence from people with lived experience and relevant expertise.
The discussion shows that the inquiry emerged from sustained survivor advocacy, particularly from former members of high-control religious environments and allied organisations seeking legislative and systemic change. The speakers described the inquiry as a significant moment because it placed survivor testimony, coercive control, institutional accountability and public policy reform onto the formal parliamentary record.

2. PARTICIPANTS AND ORGANISATIONS REPRESENTED

The session was hosted by Elise Heerde of The Religious Trauma Collective. The discussion included Clare Heath-McIvor, Ryan Carey and Catherine Carey, each of whom spoke from lived experience and advocacy roles connected to survivor networks and law reform efforts.

• The Religious Trauma Collective was presented as an organisation contributing mental health knowledge, survivor support, education and professional insight into religious trauma and coercive environments.

• Stop Religious Coercion Australia was described as a survivor-led organisation focused primarily on legislative change, supported by education, survivor support and engagement with frontline services.

• Survivors of Coercive Cults and High Control Groups was described as a law reform and survivor advocacy body working across policy, education, survivor services and government engagement.

• The Australian Cult Survivors Network was described as a community space for survivors of cults and high-control groups, including people born into groups, recruited as adults, or affected as family members and secondary victims.

3. ORIGINS OF THE ADVOCACY CAMPAIGN

Ryan and Catherine Carey described leaving a Pentecostal doomsday group in Geelong and becoming determined to prevent similar harm from continuing. Their advocacy developed from a desire to translate survivor experience into practical legislative reform. Catherine identified the relevance of coercive control frameworks, particularly from domestic and family violence law, to the dynamics of high-control group environments.

The Careys described meeting with local political representatives and later the Victorian Attorney-General. They prepared carefully for these meetings, bringing survivor accounts, examples of coercive practices, briefing materials and clear evidence of the harms experienced within high-control groups. They stressed that the credibility and emotional force of survivor testimony was central to gaining political attention and momentum.

Clare Heath-McIvor added broader political and policy context, including her experience with a politically engaged dominionist religious group, media scrutiny of religious and political influence, and her background in political campaigning, communications and policy development. She explained that the advocacy needed to be belief-neutral and behaviour-focused, because religious freedom and freedom of association are important rights that should not be conflated with permission to harm.

4. KEY THEMES FROM THE DISCUSSION

4.1 SURVIVOR-LED CHANGE

A central theme was that meaningful reform must be survivor-led. The speakers argued that survivors understand the nuance, psychological mechanisms and long-term impact of coercive control in ways that external observers often miss. Survivor leadership was described as essential for developing law reform, service design, education, research and public messaging that accurately reflects the realities of cultic and high-control environments.

4.2 GROUP-BASED COERCIVE CONTROL

The speakers distinguished group-based coercive control from intimate partner coercive control. While both involve patterns of domination and control, group-based coercion can operate through institutional authority, collective surveillance, social isolation, shunning, financial pressure, control of sexuality and gender roles, information management, spiritual manipulation and fear of leaving. The speakers argued that government and service systems need a distinct framework for recognising this type of harm.

4.3 RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND HARM PREVENTION

The panel repeatedly emphasised that freedom of religion, belief and association must be protected. However, they also argued that these freedoms do not include a right to defraud, exploit, abuse, deceive or cause psychological harm. The preferred policy approach was not to judge beliefs, define unpopular religions as cults, or maintain a public list of cults, but to focus on harmful behaviours and patterns of coercive control that can occur in religious, ideological, political, commercial, wellness, social or other group settings.

4.4 INSTITUTIONAL GAPS AND SERVICE FAILURES

The speakers described a significant gap between survivor experience and systemic recognition. Survivors often encounter police, mental health providers, social services, legal systems and government agencies that do not understand cult dynamics or group-based coercion. This can leave survivors repeatedly explaining their experiences, being disbelieved, or being triaged out of systems that do not recognise the seriousness of the harm.

4.5 THE WEIGHT OF TESTIMONY

The panel reflected in detail on the emotional burden of preparing submissions and appearing at public hearings. Speakers described the process as sacred, exhausting and deeply significant. They emphasised that parliamentary testimony was not an opportunity for personal promotion, but an opportunity to speak for survivors who could not safely or publicly speak for themselves. The formal recording of survivor stories was identified as a major achievement in itself.

5. EVIDENCE, DATA AND INQUIRY PARTICIPATION

The discussion referred to the scale of participation in the inquiry, including written submissions, questionnaire responses and public hearings. The Parliament of Victoria has reported that the inquiry received 317 questionnaire responses. The panel also referred to significant written submission activity and the development of a survivor-informed policy paper endorsed by hundreds of supporters.

Clare Heath-McIvor summarised questionnaire findings discussed in the session, including high levels of reported psychological harm, restrictions on personal freedoms and experiences of abuse. The data was presented as evidence that cultic and high-control environments can produce serious, measurable and ongoing harm, and that the harms are not limited to unusual beliefs or isolated personal conflicts.

6. PROPOSED POLICY AND SYSTEMIC RESPONSES

The speakers proposed a range of reforms designed to recognise, prevent and respond to group-based coercive control. The proposals focused on accountability, survivor support, education, research, training and stronger institutional coordination.

• Recognition of group-based coercive control: Develop legal and policy frameworks that identify patterns of domination and harm across multiple areas of life.

• Independent oversight: Establish an independent commission or similar body capable of receiving reports, coordinating across agencies and ensuring that allegations are not lost between departments.

• Survivor-led services: Fund services designed and delivered with survivor expertise, including case coordination, advocacy, mental health support and exit support.

• Specialist training: Train police, social workers, mental health practitioners, legal professionals, child protection workers and family violence services to recognise cultic abuse and group-based coercive control.

• Research partnerships: Support Australian-specific research through universities and survivor organisations to build an evidence base for future policy and practice.

• Public education: Develop awareness campaigns to help the public identify coercive group dynamics, understand risk factors and respond appropriately to people who may be affected.

• Financial accountability: Review charitable status, tax concessions, grants and public funding where organisations are credibly associated with coercive, exploitative or abusive conduct.

• National expansion: Use the Victorian inquiry as a foundation for state-by-state and eventually national reform.

7. SURVIVOR SUPPORT AND COMMUNITY MESSAGES

The speakers closed with messages of support for survivors and people still inside high-control groups. They encouraged survivors to reach out, even if they are unsure whether their experience “counts” or whether they are ready to tell their story. The discussion recognised that recovery may begin with listening, observing, joining a survivor community quietly, or speaking privately with someone who understands.

The panel also stressed that both primary and secondary victims matter. People directly controlled by a group, as well as family members, partners, children and others harmed by separation, shunning or relational fracture, may all be affected by cultic abuse. The speakers rejected the idea that survivors are gullible or foolish, instead framing cult recruitment as a process that often targets people seeking meaning, belonging, purpose and connection.

8. CONCLUSION

The session presented the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry as a landmark opportunity to recognise cultic and high-control group harm in formal public policy. The speakers argued that the central issue is not belief, religion or ideology, but patterns of coercive behaviour that undermine autonomy, safety, dignity and wellbeing. Their advocacy calls for a coordinated response that combines law reform, specialist services, survivor-led research, public education and institutional accountability.

Overall, the discussion conveyed both the gravity of survivor testimony and the hope generated by collective action. The report highlights a clear message: survivors should not have to navigate recovery, advocacy or legal systems alone, and governments should ensure that rights to belief and association are upheld without allowing those rights to become a cover for coercion, exploitation or abuse.

Thank you so much Wise Piglet (Michele). There is so much here. And very well organised with sub-headings to assist communication. I've copy and pasted to elsewhere and will take time to read and reflect. This is an amazing resource you have pointed us all toward.

A further instalment......... we will all be able to relate to this one as so many of us have shared the exact same on here. It is so reassuring to know that others on the other side of the world are helping many find the language and words for our lived experiences, validating our experiences too and a framework for recovery.

The abuse and harm you experienced in SMC was real, it wasn't a figment of your imagination, it wasn't just you........we now get to choose not to allow them to rob and steal us of our individual and collective power.

SHUNNING: THE COST OF CONDITIONAL BELONGING
WITH ELISE HEERDE AND JODIE KNELL

CONTENT ADVISORY - THE DETAILS OF THIS INFORMATION MAY CAUSE UPSET AND RAISE DIFFICULT MEMORIES AND EXPERIENCES. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO STOP READING OR NOT READ (THIS IS NOT SMC, YOU DO NOT NEED TO DO ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH). IF YOU DO READ, PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU INVITE DOING SOMETHING POSITIVE AFTERWARDS LIKE GO FOR A WALK, CHAT WITH A FRIEND / FAMILY MEMBER YOU FEEL SAFE WITH AND TRUST IF YOU NEED SUPPORT. IF YOU ARE NOT IN SMC ANYMORE, REMIND YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE NOT THERE. IF YOU ARE STILL WITHIN SMC AND THE DETAILS BELOW RESONATE WITH ANYTHING YOU ARE EXPERIENCING KNOW THAT YOU ARE NOT ALONE. AND REMEMBER THAT WE ARE HERE AND YOU CAN REACH OUT TO US VIA THIS FORUM ANYTIME IN SAFETY AND CONFIDENTIALLY.

~ Michele Lunan



This discussion reflects a lived-experience account of shunning, excommunication and religious trauma in a high-control religious environment. It identifies key mechanisms of harm, the psychological and relational effects described, and the recovery factors that support rebuilding after exit.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The discussion presents shunning as a powerful mechanism of coercive control. Rather than functioning as ordinary disagreement or natural relational distance, shunning is described as an organised practice in which family connection, friendship, reputation, belonging and spiritual safety are made conditional on obedience to group authority.

The speaker’s account shows that shunning operates on several levels: as a threat before exit, as punishment during exit, as narrative control after exit, and as a warning to those who remain. The emotional effects described include grief, shame, anxiety, hypervigilance, moral injury, family rupture, fear of abandonment, identity disruption and difficulty trusting others.

The discussion concludes that shunning is harmful because it weaponises human needs for attachment, safety and belonging. It also identifies recovery themes: unconditional support, trauma-informed counselling, honest storytelling, peer connection, local community participation, restored personal choice and the development of relationships that are not controlled by fear.

1. CONTEXT

The discussion is a conversation hosted by the Religious Trauma Collective. The guest, Jodi Nell, describes being born and raised within the Geelong Revival Centre, a high-control Pentecostal environment in which her family had deep generational roots. She explains that the group shaped her family life, social world, spiritual identity and sense of safety.

The account is significant because it does not present the group as simply and uniformly negative. Instead, it shows how genuine belonging, friendship, certainty and happy memories can coexist with control. This complexity is central to understanding religious trauma: the harm is often embedded within relationships and communities that also provided meaning, identity and love.

2. DEFINING SHUNNING AND EXCOMMUNICATION

In the discussion, shunning refers to deliberate social exclusion: ignoring, cutting off, withdrawing affection, removing people from group spaces, and treating former members as spiritually or morally dangerous. Excommunication refers to the more formal version of this practice, where a person or family is publicly or officially marked as outside the group.

The discussion distinguishes between explicit and implicit shunning. Explicit shunning involves direct instruction from leadership. Implicit shunning occurs when members understand the expectation without needing a formal order. Both forms are harmful because both create exclusion, fear and relational punishment.

3. SHUNNING AS COERCIVE CONTROL

The discussion repeatedly frames shunning as a mechanism of coercive control. The speaker describes it as one of the most effective tools used by the group because it made the cost of disagreement or departure extremely high. Members knew that leaving could mean losing family, friends, social identity, reputation and spiritual belonging.

Several control mechanisms are evident: discouraging close relationships outside the group, portraying outsiders as dangerous, teaching that leaving leads to ruin, threatening loss of family contact, controlling the narrative about former members, and presenting relational cruelty as spiritual love. Together, these mechanisms make the group feel like the only safe place while making departure feel catastrophic.

4. THE ROLE OF BELONGING AND DEPENDENCY

One of the strongest themes in the discussion is the power of belonging. The speaker describes the group as her whole world: her family history, friendships, faith, routines and social identity were all located there. This meant that leaving was not simply a change of belief; it was the loss of an entire social ecosystem.

This dependency was intensified by teachings that discouraged outside connection. When members are taught not to build deep relationships outside the group, the group becomes the primary source of emotional, practical and spiritual support. Shunning then becomes especially damaging because it removes nearly every support at once.

5. KEY PSYCHOLOGICAL AND EMOTIONAL IMPACTS

5.1 GRIEF AND SOCIAL DEATH

The discussion depicts shunning as a form of social death. People are not merely disagreed with; they are treated as if they no longer exist. This is shown through social media disappearances, removal from group chats, silence after bereavement and the loss of extended family relationships.

5.2 ANXIETY AND HYPERVIGILANCE

The speaker describes shaking after encounters with former community members, even when those encounters are outwardly polite. This reflects the body’s threat response to social danger. The discussion highlights that exclusion is not experienced as a minor social discomfort but as a profound threat to safety and belonging.

5.3 SHAME AND MORAL INJURY

A major emotional burden in the discussion is shame. The speaker struggles with having once participated in the same system of shunning that later harmed her family. This is an example of moral injury: the distress that arises when someone realises they were involved in actions that conflict with their values, often under pressure from a controlling system.

5.4 IDENTITY DISRUPTION

Leaving required the speaker and her family to reconstruct identity, belief, values and community. The discussion describes the process of sorting doctrine from dogma, reassessing inherited teachings and learning to live without the certainty once provided by the group.

5.5 FAMILY RUPTURE

The discussion identifies family rupture as one of the most painful effects of shunning. The speaker states that shunning destroys families by splitting marriages, parents, children, grandparents and extended relatives. The loss is especially severe because family ties carry attachment, history and identity.

6. EFFECTS ON CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE

The discussion shows that children are particularly vulnerable to shunning. The speaker’s children were removed from youth group chats and activities, and one child reportedly received a message encouraging him to run away from home to return to meetings. These experiences illustrate how shunning can reach beyond adults and directly affect children’s safety, attachment and social development.
The likely impacts for children include fear of abandonment, reduced self-worth, mistrust, anxiety and confusion about whether love is conditional. The speaker’s repeated commitment never to shun her children is therefore a significant recovery theme: it replaces conditional belonging with relational safety.

7. NARRATIVE CONTROL AND CHARACTER ASSASSINATION

The discussion emphasises that shunning prevents fact-checking. Once former members are cut off, current members cannot easily hear their side of the story. This enables leadership to control the narrative, label former members as dangerous, rebellious or spiritually corrupt, and justify continued exclusion.
Character assassination intensifies the trauma because it attacks a person’s moral identity. The speaker describes the pain of being cast as the villain after a lifetime of trying to be good, faithful and helpful. This contributes to shame, anxiety and the urge to apologise even when simply telling the truth about harm.

8. RECOVERY AND REBUILDING

The discussion does not present recovery as simple or linear. However, it identifies several protective factors that supported rebuilding after shunning.
• Unconditional family support: The speaker identifies the support of parents, spouse, sibling and immediate family as central to preserving mental health.
• Counselling: Professional support helped address shame, people-pleasing, anxiety and the ongoing effects of rejection.
• New communities: Choir, school networks, sporting clubs, volunteering and local friendships provided new sources of belonging.
• Honest storytelling: Speaking openly, when safe, created genuine connection and helped others feel less alone.
• Peer connection: Reconnecting with other former members challenged the idea that all who leave become bitter or broken.
• Choice and autonomy: Recovery involved learning that it is possible to try communities, leave them, pause, say yes or say no.

9. KEY FINDINGS

1. Shunning functions as both punishment for those who leave and deterrence for those who remain.
2. Isolation before exit increases the harm of shunning because outside support has often been discouraged.
3. Shunning is frequently justified as love, discipline or spiritual protection, which can obscure its harmful effects.
4. The emotional impacts include grief, shame, anxiety, hypervigilance, moral injury and identity disruption.
5. Children and young people may experience shunning as abandonment, social rejection and conditional belonging.
6. Narrative control sustains shunning by preventing current members from hearing former members’ experiences directly.
7. Recovery is supported by unconditional relationships, trauma-informed care, community rebuilding and restored autonomy.

10. RECOMMENDATIONS

FOR SURVIVORS

• Seek trauma-informed counselling where possible, particularly with practitioners who understand religious trauma, coercive control and complex grief.
• Build new relationships gradually and safely through peer groups, local community activities, volunteering or online support.
• Recognise that grief, anxiety and distrust are understandable responses to relational betrayal.
• Practise choice by trying new spaces and leaving spaces that do not feel safe.
• Separate the group’s labels from personal worth; being called dangerous, rebellious or broken does not make those labels true.

FOR FAMILIES AND FRIENDS

• Offer steady, non-pressuring contact and practical support.
• Avoid minimising the loss with statements such as “just move on.”
• Respect the survivor’s pace and privacy, especially where remaining family ties may be at risk.
• Validate complexity: good memories and real harm can coexist.

FOR FAITH COMMUNITIES

• Reject formal or informal expectations that members cut off family or friends for leaving, questioning or disagreeing.
• Protect freedom of conscience and freedom of association.
• Encourage healthy relationships outside the group rather than isolating members from wider support.
• Avoid dehumanising language about former members or critics.
• Establish independent safeguarding and accountability structures.

11. CONCLUSION

The discussion demonstrates that shunning is not a minor relational disagreement or a natural consequence of different beliefs. In high-control religious environments, it can become a structured system of coercive control that weaponises love, belonging and family connection. Its harms are profound because it attacks the foundations of human safety: attachment, identity, community and freedom of conscience.

At the same time, the discussion offers a recovery narrative. Survivors can rebuild relationships, find new communities, reclaim personal choice and discover that safety and kindness exist outside controlling systems. Recovery may involve grief and long-term work, but it can also involve joy, agency, truthful storytelling and unconditional love.

CONTENT ADVISORY - THE DETAILS OF THIS INFORMATION MAY CAUSE UPSET AND RAISE DIFFICULT MEMORIES AND EXPERIENCES. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO STOP READING OR NOT READ (THIS IS NOT SMC, YOU DO NOT NEED TO DO ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH). IF YOU DO READ, PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU INVITE DOING SOMETHING POSITIVE AFTERWARDS LIKE GO FOR A WALK, CHAT WITH A FRIEND / FAMILY MEMBER YOU FEEL SAFE WITH AND TRUST IF YOU NEED SUPPORT. IF YOU ARE NOT IN SMC ANYMORE, REMIND YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE NOT THERE. IF YOU ARE STILL WITHIN SMC AND THE DETAILS BELOW RESONATE WITH ANYTHING YOU ARE EXPERIENCING KNOW THAT YOU ARE NOT ALONE. AND REMEMBER THAT WE ARE HERE AND YOU CAN REACH OUT TO US VIA THIS FORUM ANYTIME IN SAFETY AND CONFIDENTIALLY.

~ Michele Lunan

THE TRAUMA REILGIOUS COLLECTIVE (KNOW KNOWN AS RELIGIOUS TRAUMA AND CULTS, they’ve just updated their name)

HOLY HURT. UNDERSTANDING SPIRITUAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAUMA AND THE PROCESS OF HEALING

WITH JANE KENNEDY AND DR HILLARY MCBRIDE

This is from a conversation with Dr Hillary McBride and provides a structured synthesis of the session’s central ideas, clinical significance and practical implications for people recovering from spiritual or religious trauma, as well as practitioners supporting them.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The conversation explores spiritual trauma as a profound rupture in trust, meaning, connection and embodied selfhood. Dr McBride distinguishes spirituality from institutional religion, describing spirituality as an inherent human capacity for connection, aliveness, meaning-making and relationship with what feels ultimate or sacred. From this perspective, spiritual trauma is not merely harm that occurs in a religious setting; it is harm that fractures a person’s deepest sense of safety, goodness, belonging and trust in themselves, others, the world and the sacred.

The session also presents healing as embodied, relational and non-linear. Rather than framing recovery as a return to a previous self, the conversation emphasises post-traumatic remaking: the gradual, courageous process of discovering or forming a self where one may never have been fully permitted to have one. Grief, community, nature, body trust and relational safety are presented as central pathways through which this remaking can occur.

1. CONTEXT AND PURPOSE OF THE CONVERSATION

The interviewer begins by locating Dr McBride’s work within her own story of faith shift, divorce, perimenopause, professional stress and the loss of familiar spiritual coping mechanisms. This personal introduction is not incidental; it models the session’s larger themes of witness, tenderness and the healing power of being met with language, care and hope during a period of disorientation.
The conversation’s purpose is both explanatory and pastoral in the broad sense: it gives language to spiritual trauma, describes common internal and relational patterns, and offers a hopeful account of recovery that does not require certainty, compliance or a return to former religious structures. It is particularly relevant for survivors of high-control religious environments, therapists, counsellors, spiritual care practitioners, clergy, group facilitators and anyone supporting people through deconstruction, loss of faith, reconstruction or religious disaffiliation.

2. DEFINING SPIRITUALITY

Dr McBride defines spirituality as a core dimension of human experience rather than as something owned by religious institutions. Spirituality is described as an embodied and innate movement towards expansion, connection, meaning, aliveness and relationship with Ultimate Reality. It includes the impulse to ask what is true, what makes us feel alive, what connects us to ourselves and others, and where we experience awe, creativity, music, nature, intimacy or shared meaning.

This definition is important because it separates spirituality from religion without dismissing religion. Religion may be one possible container or expression of spirituality, but spirituality itself belongs to the person. The distinction is especially healing for people whose spiritual longing has been controlled, shamed or co-opted by harmful systems. It allows survivors to consider that what was harmed may not be their spirituality itself, but the structures, beliefs or authorities that distorted it.

3. UNDERSTANDING SPIRITUAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAUMA

The conversation frames trauma as a wound: a rupture, fracture or disconnection. Spirituality is associated with connection and expansion, while trauma is associated with fragmentation and overwhelm. For this reason, Dr McBride argues that all trauma has a spiritual dimension because trauma disrupts a person’s assumptive world: their felt sense that life is meaningful, that they are worthy, that the world is safe enough, and that goodness can be trusted.
Within that broader claim, the conversation identifies a more explicit category of spiritual or religious trauma. This may occur when harm is caused by someone closely associated with religion or spirituality, such as a leader, mentor, teacher, parent or other perceived stand-in for the divine. It may also occur when harm is justified by religious beliefs, caused by spiritual practices, interpreted by survivors as having been caused by religion or God, or when post-traumatic responses become bound up with God, religion or spirituality.

A key complexity is that spiritual trauma can occur even when the survivor retains some form of faith, and it can also lead to a cascading loss of trust in religion, spirituality, community, self and the sacred. The discussion resists simple categorisation: spiritual trauma may involve doctrine, family systems, abuse of power, purity culture, fear-based theology, coercive authority, shunning, gaslighting, gendered harm, moral injury, or the interpretation of suffering as divinely intended.

4. COMMON THEMES AND INTERNALISED MESSAGES

Several recurring themes are named in the conversation. Survivors may internalise beliefs such as: I am bad; I cannot trust my body; I cannot trust myself; I am dangerous; I am untrustworthy; the world is dangerous; people outside my religious group are unsafe; or no one can be trusted. These beliefs often arise in contexts where a person’s inner world has been dismissed, demonised or subordinated to external authority.

Behaviourally, the transcript highlights perfectionism, people-pleasing, chronic shame, compulsive guilt, outsourcing moral authority, panic around spiritual triggers, phobias linked to churches or religious language, and purity dynamics that can migrate into other domains such as politics, food, ethics or identity. One important insight is that survivors may reproduce high-control patterns even after leaving the original system, especially if certainty, purity and moral policing remain the only available templates for safety.

5. ISOLATION, COMMUNITY AND RELATIONAL HEALING

The conversation gives significant attention to loneliness after spiritual trauma. For many people, religious communities provided an automatic social structure: weekly gatherings, shared rituals, ready-made intimacy, prescribed roles and clear expectations. When those communities become unsafe or are left behind, people may not only lose belonging; they may discover they have never learned how to build relationships outside that structure.

Healing in relationship therefore requires both courage and skill. Survivors may need to learn how to disclose gradually rather than through confession, how to build trust without surrendering boundaries, how to tolerate risk while protecting themselves, and how to seek connection without recreating coercive forms of community. The transcript names the tension between longing for deep conversation and fearing the very kinds of relationship that were once harmful.

The idea that wounding happens in relationship and healing also happens in relationship is central. This does not mean survivors must immediately return to intense community. Rather, healing may be supported by many forms of relational presence: therapy, friendship, safe groups, authors, podcasters, teachers, nature, animals, creative collaborators and ordinary low-pressure spaces such as book clubs or shared activities.

6. IDENTITY AND THE POST-TRAUMATIC REMAKING OF THE SELF

The conversation raises a crucial question: how do people recover a self they may never have been allowed to have? Dr McBride discusses the limitations of the word “healing” when it has been weaponised, associated with compliance, or used to imply that pain should disappear. She also considers the language of “recovery”, while noting that complex trauma survivors may object that there is nothing simple to recover if a coherent self was never permitted to develop.

The phrase “post-traumatic remaking of the self” captures a more spacious process. Instead of returning to a former wholeness, survivors may gather the fragments left by trauma and make something new. This remaking is not presented as a neat sequence of steps. It is described as an emergent, embodied and relational process grounded in the possibility that something sacred, alive and irreducible remains within the person despite trauma.

Grieving becomes part of this remaking. Mourning the self means looking back at what happened, feeling the impact of the injury, and responding accurately to one’s own pain. This act of truth-telling can itself become a sign of selfhood: the self sees the wound, bears witness to what was lost, and begins to offer the recognition that was missing at the time of harm.

7. GRIEF AS TRUTH, SAFETY AND REPAIR

Grief is presented as both frightening and necessary. Many survivors fear that if they begin grieving, they will drown in it. Dr McBride explains that this fear often reflects a lack of early relational experience in which pain was safely accompanied from beginning to end. Without a body memory of someone steady staying present through distress, grief can feel endless and dangerous.

Safe grief requires embodied and relational support. A person learns that grief rises and falls by having the experience of feeling it with someone who is not overwhelmed by it. Over time, the body learns that grief can be trustworthy. It may remain painful, but it can also feel right, truthful and honouring. In this sense, grief is not only a symptom of loss; it is a pathway to reality, self-compassion and restored connection with love.

The discussions account of grief challenges forms of spirituality that bypass pain. Grief is connected to eros, passion, love, longing and aliveness. To grieve what was lost is to honour what mattered. This makes grief central to the remaking of the self: it names what was taken, validates the depth of harm, and opens space for what may now become possible.

8. EMBODIMENT AND RECLAIMING THE BODY

Embodiment is defined broadly as the lived experience of being a body shaped by the world. This includes pleasure, pain, dissociation, numbness, fear, intuition, movement, memory, posture, fatigue, desire and aliveness. The point is not to achieve a perfect relationship with the body, but to notice what one’s embodied reality already is.

For survivors of spiritual or religious trauma, embodiment is especially significant because the body may have been demonised, ignored or treated as an obstacle to spirituality. Dr McBride reframes the body as a truth-teller rather than a problem. Panic, shame, shutdown and longing are not evidence that the body is wrong; they may be evidence that the body remembers what happened and is trying to protect, signal and guide.

Embodied healing may begin very simply: noticing thirst and drinking water, recognising tiredness, moving when energy needs expression, dancing, lifting, walking, sensing the heartbeat, eating in ways that support wellbeing, or treating the body as a someone rather than a something. Reclaiming the body is therefore also reclaiming agency, pleasure, intuition, care and spiritual access.

9. THE ROLE OF NATURE, STRUCTURE AND THE UNKNOWN

The discussion recognises that leaving high-control systems can create profound disorientation. People may long for order, structure and certainty because these offer relief from internal chaos. This longing is not pathologised. Instead, the conversation asks whether the structures people reach for are different versions of what harmed them, or whether they provide enough coherence to support freedom, experimentation and growth.

Nature is presented as one such non-coercive source of stability. Trees, seasons, mountains, ocean and sky can offer consistency, scale, rhythm and containment without hierarchy or control. Nature allows both predictability and change: leaves fall, winter comes, spring returns, fruit appears. This can help survivors tolerate uncertainty while sensing that change does not necessarily mean collapse.

10. CLINICAL AND PASTORAL IMPLICATIONS

For practitioners, the conversation suggests that spiritual trauma work must attend to more than belief content. Clients may need support with nervous system responses, body trust, relational repair, shame, authority, grief, boundary formation, identity, community rebuilding and spiritual meaning. The practitioner’s role is not to replace one authority structure with another, but to support agency, consent, curiosity and internal trust.

Therapeutic and pastoral spaces should be especially careful not to reproduce coercive dynamics. This means avoiding pressure to forgive, return, believe, disbelieve, heal quickly, define outcomes prematurely or perform progress. Instead, helpers can provide steady relational presence, validate the complexity of harm, support embodied regulation, encourage gradual experimentation and honour the client’s pace.

The session also underscores the importance of language. Survivors often describe relief when someone names what they have experienced. Language can reduce isolation, clarify patterns and restore dignity. However, language should remain invitational rather than prescriptive, especially where words such as healing, recovery, spirituality, God, body or community may carry traumatic associations.

11. PRACTICAL TAKEAWAYS

• Spirituality can be understood as an innate human movement towards connection, aliveness and meaning, not as something owned by religious institutions.
• Spiritual trauma fractures trust in self, others, the world, the sacred and one’s own body.
• Common effects include shame, perfectionism, people-pleasing, mistrust of the body, fear of authority, compulsive guilt and difficulty making decisions without external approval.
• Leaving a harmful religious system may also mean losing community, identity, language, rituals and social structure.
• Healing requires relational safety, not just private insight or correct ideas.
• Grief can become a pathway to truth, self-witnessing and repair when it is supported and safely accompanied.
• The body is not the enemy of spirituality; it may be the place where truth, memory, desire and agency return.
• Nature, movement, creative practice and low-pressure relationships can provide non-coercive forms of structure and connection.
• Recovery may be less about returning to who one was and more about remaking a self with honesty, tenderness and freedom.

CONCLUSION

The conversation offers a compassionate and clinically rich account of spiritual trauma and healing. Its central contribution is the insistence that the wounds of spiritual trauma are not merely intellectual or doctrinal; they are embodied, relational, existential and communal. Therefore, healing must also be embodied, relational, existential and communal. The discussion invites survivors and helpers to move away from control-based models of repair and towards tenderness, truth, grief, agency, connection and the slow remaking of a life that can once again feel alive.

RedRoad Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thank you so much Wise Piglet (Michele). There is
> so much here. And very well organised with
> sub-headings to assist communication. I've copy
> and pasted to elsewhere and will take time to read
> and reflect. This is an amazing resource you have
> pointed us all toward.


That's a great idea RedRoad to have them in the one place. More to come :-)

INDOCTRINATED: HOW CONDITIONING REALLY WORKS

RELIGIOUS TRAUMA AND CULTS

ELISE HEERDE, ADAM ELMASRI AND TRISTAN PHIPPS

CONTENT ADVISORY - THE DETAILS OF THIS INFORMATION MAY CAUSE UPSET AND RAISE DIFFICULT MEMORIES AND EXPERIENCES. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO STOP READING OR NOT READ (THIS IS NOT SMC, YOU DO NOT NEED TO DO ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH). IF YOU DO READ, PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU INVITE DOING SOMETHING POSITIVE AFTERWARDS LIKE GO FOR A WALK, CHAT WITH A FRIEND / FAMILY MEMBER YOU FEEL SAFE WITH AND TRUST IF YOU NEED SUPPORT. IF YOU ARE NOT IN SMC ANYMORE, REMIND YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE NOT THERE. IF YOU ARE STILL WITHIN SMC AND THE DETAILS BELOW RESONATE WITH ANYTHING YOU ARE EXPERIENCING KNOW THAT YOU ARE NOT ALONE. AND REMEMBER THAT WE ARE HERE AND YOU CAN REACH OUT TO US VIA THIS FORUM ANYTIME IN SAFETY AND CONFIDENTIALLY.

~ Michele Lunan

The discussion features lived-experience reflections from Adam Elmasry and Tristan Phipps, alongside practitioner framing from the host, Alyse understanding how indoctrination operates, how it affects identity and decision-making, and what recovery can involve.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The conversation presents indoctrination not as a single doctrine or isolated teaching, but as a comprehensive system that shapes identity, belonging, morality, emotions, relationships, and the capacity to trust one’s own judgement. Across different religious backgrounds, the speakers describe strikingly similar mechanisms: repetition, fear, reward, shame, social reinforcement, suppression of doubt, and the internalisation of authority. These mechanisms do not usually appear to insiders as coercion; they are commonly experienced as truth, love, safety, certainty, and belonging.

A central conclusion is that leaving or questioning a high-control environment is rarely a simple intellectual choice. It may involve profound grief, fear, social loss, family rupture, identity collapse, and the difficult task of rebuilding self-trust. Recovery is described as non-linear and ongoing: it may include distance from the group, professional support, advocacy, anger, grief, joy, re-learning boundaries, reconnecting with the body, and developing tolerance for uncertainty.

1. CONTEXT AND PARTICIPANTS

The session is part of the Religious Trauma Collective’s online event series and focuses on indoctrination and conditioning within high-control religious settings. The host frames the topic through both personal experience and professional practice, noting that while these experiences feel deeply personal, they are often systemic and patterned.

• Adam Elmasry describes growing up in the Coptic Orthodox faith as an Australian Egyptian. Faith was not merely a belief system for him; it was his identity, moral compass, purpose, social world, and interpretive framework. He later studied biblical studies and textual criticism, experienced a faith crisis, lost his faith, became an activist and YouTuber, and wrote a book about deconstruction and religious trauma.

• Tristan Phipps describes being born and raised in New Zealand as a fifth-generation member of the Two by Twos, also known as the Church with No Name, the Friends, the Way, or the Truth. After leaving, he spent many years wanting distance from religion, before later returning to the topic through advocacy and support work around religious trauma, control, and awareness.

• Alyse, the host, identifies her own background in fundamentalist Christianity and a Pentecostal high-control mega church, including work on staff and in Bible college settings. She now works as a mental health practitioner supporting people recovering from religious trauma and cultic environments.

2. DEFINING INDOCTRINATION AND CONDITIONING

The speakers describe indoctrination as a process that becomes normalised because it begins early, repeats constantly, and is embedded in relationships, worship, family life, social expectations, and community belonging. It is not introduced as one possible perspective among many. Instead, it is presented as reality itself: the truth, the right path, the way to safety, the source of moral certainty, and the condition for belonging.

Tristan highlights repetition as a central mechanism. Messages about being special, chosen, fortunate, and part of the only right group were repeated until they became part of the background of life. Rules about appearance, behaviour, association, and belonging were reinforced until they felt normal. Adam similarly explains that indoctrination shapes not only what a person thinks but how they think. It builds the lens through which reality is interpreted.

Alyse adds that indoctrination often presents itself as love, truth, safety, and belonging. This makes it especially powerful for children, whose developmental needs are oriented toward attachment, approval, and security. For adults recruited later, indoctrination may involve the gradual dismantling of critical thinking and personal defences through belonging, certainty, emotional intensity, and group pressure.

3. CORE MECHANISMS THAT MAINTAINED OBEDIENCE

The discussion identifies several recurring mechanisms through which obedience was maintained. These mechanisms worked together, making the system self-reinforcing and difficult to recognise from inside.

• FEAR: Fear of hell, divine punishment, moral failure, loss of community, disappointing God, or being spiritually unsafe reinforced conformity.
• REWARD: Approval, belonging, praise, status, certainty, and the feeling of being chosen made obedience psychologically rewarding.
• REPETITION: Sermons, meetings, Sunday school, family conversations, peer groups, and community rituals repeated the same worldview until it felt undeniable.
• SHAME: Doubt, difference, non-attendance, or perceived spiritual failure were framed as evidence that something was wrong with the individual.
• EXTERNAL AUTHORITY: Leaders, preachers, workers, scripture, and group doctrine were positioned as more trustworthy than the individual’s own judgement.
• SELF-POLICING: Over time, external control became internalised.

Participants described becoming both follower and enforcer, monitoring their own thoughts, desires, doubts, and choices.

Adam summarises this pattern as a mixture of fear, reward, and repetition. Tristan adds that attendance itself became a badge of honour: the more meetings one attended, the more committed and spiritually safe one appeared. Missing meetings meant missing the message, falling behind, or being perceived as spiritually unwell. This created a cycle in which participation became both social proof and spiritual obligation.

4. HANDLING DOUBT, QUESTIONING, AND DIFFERENCE

The conversation strongly emphasises that doubt was not generally treated as curiosity. It was treated as danger, weakness, rebellion, spiritual deficiency, or contamination. Tristan explains that in his group, doubt meant a person was not reading enough, praying enough, attending enough meetings, or possessing the right spirit. Adam describes a similar pattern: questioning in the approved direction could be rewarded, but questioning the foundations of the belief system was treated as a threat.

This produced a powerful inversion: the problem was never framed as the doctrine, the institution, or the system. The problem was framed as the person asking the question. Doubt became evidence of weak faith, demonic influence, poor prayer life, a wrong spirit, pride, rebellion, or moral failure. Over time, this taught individuals to hide, suppress, manage, or fear their own thoughts.

The host connects this to groupthink and isolation. People were often told they were the only ones asking these questions, while everyone else was supposedly peaceful, happy, and aligned. This intensified shame and self-doubt, making people wonder whether there was something uniquely wrong with them. Such dynamics can make critical thinking feel dangerous and self-betraying.

5. EFFECTS ON IDENTITY AND BELONGING

The discussion shows that indoctrination affects identity at a deep level. Adam describes his faith crisis as an identity crisis. His worldview was structured around an “us versus them” division, and belonging to the group was not simply something he did; it was who he was. His relationships, marriage, community, moral framework, and sense of meaning were tied to the system. Leaving therefore felt existential rather than merely intellectual.

Tristan describes feeling lost and caught between worlds. His family context allowed more contact with ordinary life outside the group than some others experienced, which created both relief and conflict. He had experiences that felt normal and enjoyable outside the church, while also remaining tied to a system that discouraged such connections. This produced confusion about where he belonged and who he was.

Alyse notes that high-control environments may also create identity by providing certainty. The group offers ready-made answers to complex questions, including moral, spiritual, social, and even global events. This certainty can feel calming, especially in adolescence or during frightening events. However, leaving later can feel disorienting because curiosity, ambiguity, and uncertainty have not been safely practised.

6. DECISION-MAKING, AUTONOMY, AND SELF-TRUST

The discussion repeatedly returns to the loss or distortion of autonomy. Adam explains that he did not necessarily experience himself as having no autonomy because the framework had been internalised. He monitored his own thoughts and desires from within the system, becoming both follower and enforcer. This illustrates how high-control environments can make obedience feel self-chosen, even when the person’s internal world has been shaped by coercive conditioning.
Tristan describes decision-making as partly available and partly restricted. Some choices were his, while others were clear “no-go” areas. Later, outside the group, he had to learn that choices could be made without assigning moral danger to every action. Mistakes could be treated as ordinary human learning rather than shameful evidence of spiritual failure.

Alyse frames this as the rebuilding of self-trust. Survivors may need to relearn how to recognise their own feelings, tolerate bodily signals, make decisions without external approval, and manage decision fatigue. When a person has been trained to defer to leaders, doctrine, family, or community, even small choices can trigger hypervigilance, guilt, or fear of punishment.

7. WHAT WAS HARDEST TO UNLEARN

Adam identifies the hardest part as unlearning guilt, fear, self-doubt, and the habit of outsourcing judgement to an external authority. For him, the central task was not merely rejecting particular doctrines, but reclaiming the ability to search for answers, trust his own reasoning, and make decisions from within himself.

Tristan identifies several interconnected areas: moralising ordinary choices, checking whether actions were approved, suppressing self-expression, avoiding risk, people-pleasing, and learning boundaries. He describes the exhausting habit of scanning the room to determine whether something was acceptable, rather than trusting himself. Boundaries, in particular, were difficult because high-control groups often teach that certain leaders, family members, or authorities are entitled to access, compliance, and trust.

The host connects these experiences to broader recovery work: reconnecting with intuition, rebuilding bodily awareness, reducing black-and-white thinking, and learning that emotions and physical sensations can be sources of information rather than enemies to suppress.

8. DISRUPTING THE CONDITIONING

Neither Adam nor Tristan describes deconditioning as a single sudden moment. Adam experienced years of cracks that he suppressed until moving to Australia exposed him to a much wider range of people, beliefs, relationships, cultures, and identities. A dualistic worldview formed in a narrower environment could not adequately explain the complexity of the world he was now encountering. The decisive shift was not one event, but gradually giving himself permission to question without immediately shutting the questions down.

Tristan describes a growing sense of being trapped, unhappy, and aware that there had to be more than the life offered by the group. He also names the importance of recognising that some teachings and behaviours were hurtful and not okay. The host describes a similar process of “seeing behind the curtain”: noticing things that could no longer be made acceptable, even if it took time before leaving became possible.

9. RECOVERY AND DECONDITIONING

Recovery is presented as layered, ongoing, and individual. Tristan’s first stage was distance: putting the experience in a box, choosing life outside the group, and not wanting to analyse it. He later recognised residual anxiety, overthinking, and behavioural patterns that needed attention. Professional help became an important part of recovery, including support for anxiety and strategies for understanding and managing his inner world.

Adam’s recovery was more turbulent. Losing faith led to the loss of his marriage, social circle, and stability in family relationships. He describes dark moments, including the importance of mental health support. At the same time, he also describes intellectual and emotional liberation: the freedom to think without fear and rebuild identity outside the old framework. His account highlights that recovery can include both profound grief and profound freedom.

The host emphasises that grief and anger can coexist with joy, calm, new relationships, and renewed agency. Survivors may grieve God, community, family, certainty, identity, and lost time. They may also experience relief, self-discovery, and the ability to make choices without guilt. Recovery is therefore not a linear movement from harm to happiness, but an unfolding process of reclaiming selfhood.

10. COMMON MISUNDERSTANDINGS

• “HIGH-CONTROL GROUPS ARE ALWAYS OBVIOUS.” Adam stresses that high-control environments often do not look high-control from inside. They may feel like truth, family, love, and spiritual safety.
• “ONLY UNINTELLIGENT PEOPLE ARE INDOCTRINATED.” The speakers reject this strongly. Indoctrination is not a failure of intelligence; it is the result of environment, identity formation, belonging, and psychological conditioning.
• “PEOPLE CAN JUST WALK AWAY.” Tristan explains that leaving may involve shunning, excommunication, family rupture, social loss, shame, and fear. The cost can be enormous.
• “IT IS ONLY ABOUT RELIGION.” Tristan notes that many rules are not theological at all but are about control: clothing, relationships, social contact, behaviour, food, and personal expression.
• “FAMILY DISAPPOINTMENT IS MINOR.” The transcript highlights how painful it can be when love, approval, and belonging appear conditional on compliance.

11. GUIDANCE FOR PEOPLE STILL INSIDE A HIGH-CONTROL GROUP

The speakers offer careful, non-coercive guidance to people who may still be inside a group and beginning to question. The strongest shared message is that questions are not weakness. Discomfort is not necessarily rebellion. Feeling uneasy about shunning, exclusion, domestic violence, denied grief, or harmful rules may be a signal worth listening to rather than suppressing.

• It is okay to question and to think.
• There is nothing wrong with having doubts or discomfort.
• Professional support can be valuable, especially confidential support that does not pressure the person to make immediate decisions.
• If a professional feels coercive or unsuitable, it is acceptable to seek someone else.
• People do not need to make impulsive decisions; they can first focus on understanding themselves and protecting their mental wellbeing.
• Members who remain inside groups are encouraged to treat those who leave with dignity, compassion, and respect.

12. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS, SUPPORTERS, AND COMMUNITIES

The disucssion has important implications for anyone supporting people affected by religious trauma or high-control groups. Support should avoid replacing one authority system with another. Survivors often need space to explore, question, and make choices without being rushed or directed. Practitioners and supporters should understand that ambivalence is normal, grief may be complex, and leaving may involve real social and material consequences.

Supportive responses should prioritise safety, autonomy, emotional validation, and informed consent. Survivors may need help rebuilding boundaries, identifying coercive patterns, tolerating uncertainty, processing grief, reconnecting with the body, and learning decision-making without shame. Communities can also play a role by offering non-judgemental spaces where people can speak openly without being pathologised or pressured.

13. KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Indoctrination often feels like truth, love, safety, and belonging while a person is inside it.
• High-control systems shape not only beliefs but identity, emotions, relationships, and self-trust.
• Fear, reward, repetition, shame, and authority can create powerful self-policing.
• Doubt is frequently reframed as personal failure rather than treated as legitimate curiosity.
• Leaving can involve grief, social loss, family rupture, fear, and identity collapse.
• Recovery is not a single event; it is an ongoing process of reclaiming agency, self-trust, boundaries, and meaning.
• Professional help can be life-saving, particularly when it supports autonomy rather than replicating control.
• People who question should be met with compassion, not shame or pressure.

CONCLUSION

The disucssion offers a detailed and compassionate account of how indoctrination and conditioning function in high-control religious environments. Despite different backgrounds, the speakers describe overlapping patterns: early formation, repeated messaging, fear-based obedience, conditional belonging, suppression of doubt, and the internalisation of authority. The report also highlights the courage required to question, leave, recover, and speak publicly about these experiences.

Ultimately, the conversation reframes questioning not as weakness, rebellion, or failure, but as a meaningful act of self-reconnection. Recovery involves grief and uncertainty, but also the possibility of freedom, integrity, renewed relationships, and a more compassionate relationship with oneself.

NAVIGATING ESTRANGEMENT AND BOUNDARIES AFTER LEAVING
RELIGIOUS TRAUMA AND CULTS
with Jane Kennedy and Lindy Jacomb.

Sadly the theme of this discussion is inherent through everyone's lived experience in SMC on the forum. The impact and consequences far reaching years and decades down the line for many of us with fractured families, friendships, connections and sense of self.

CONTENT ADVISORY - THE DETAILS OF THIS INFORMATION MAY CAUSE UPSET AND RAISE DIFFICULT MEMORIES AND EXPERIENCES. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO STOP READING OR NOT READ (THIS IS NOT SMC, YOU DO NOT NEED TO DO ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH). IF YOU DO READ, PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU INVITE DOING SOMETHING POSITIVE AFTERWARDS LIKE GO FOR A WALK, CHAT WITH A FRIEND / FAMILY MEMBER YOU FEEL SAFE WITH AND TRUST IF YOU NEED SUPPORT. IF YOU ARE NOT IN SMC ANYMORE, REMIND YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE NOT THERE. IF YOU ARE STILL WITHIN SMC AND THE DETAILS BELOW RESONATE WITH ANYTHING YOU ARE EXPERIENCING KNOW THAT YOU ARE NOT ALONE. AND REMEMBER THAT WE ARE HERE AND YOU CAN REACH OUT TO US VIA THIS FORUM ANYTIME IN SAFETY AND CONFIDENTIALLY.

~ Michele Lunan


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The conversation explores estrangement, shunning, and boundary-setting after leaving high-control religious environments. Lindy Jacomb frames estrangement as a spectrum of relational distancing, ranging from informal avoidance to severe institutionalised shunning. A central insight is that estrangement is often motivated by perceived threat: groups, families, and individuals may distance themselves from someone they believe endangers identity, purity, theology, ideology, or emotional safety. The discussion distinguishes harmful group-imposed estrangement from self-protective boundaries that may be necessary after abuse, coercion, or relational harm.

The discussion also emphasises grief, ambiguous loss, hope, and reconciliation. Estrangement is presented not simply as a practical relational issue but as a profound psychological and spiritual rupture. The person who leaves may grieve people who are still alive, mourn the loss of belonging, and struggle with hope that reconciliation might one day be possible. Lindy’s own story illustrates both the devastation of mandated separation and the possibility of reconciliation when genuine apology, changed posture, and mutual willingness are present.

CONTEXT AND PURPOSE

The session is situated within the Religious Trauma Collective’s online event and focuses on people navigating life after leaving high-demand or high-control faith-based groups. Lindy Jacomb speaks from professional experience through the Olive Leaf Network New Zealand and from personal experience as a former member of the Exclusive Brethren.

KEY CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS

• ESTRANGEMENT: A relational rupture or distancing that can occur voluntarily, involuntarily, informally, or through formal group enforcement.
• SHUNNING: A severe form of exclusion where contact is withdrawn, often as a religious or social requirement.
• SEPARATION: this term is described as a theological rationale used by the Exclusive Brethren to justify separation from those viewed as spiritually unsafe or “evil”.
• OTHERING: A process of defining someone as fundamentally outside the group, often by emphasising difference, danger, impurity, or disloyalty.
• BOUNDARIES: Protective limits that allow a person to preserve safety, identity, emotional capacity, and autonomy.
• AMBIGUOUS GRIEF: Grief experienced when a person is physically alive but relationally absent, leaving the survivor without clear closure or shared mourning rituals.

MAJOR THEMES

1. ESTRANGEMENT EXISTS ON A SPECTRUM

Lindy begins by widening the frame: estrangement is not one single behaviour. At one end are extreme forms of shunning, excommunication, disfellowshipping, and social death; at the other are softer forms of avoidance or distancing. The value of this spectrum is that it prevents simplistic judgement. It allows the reader to ask: who is distancing from whom, why, under what power conditions, and with what consequences?

2. PERCEIVED THREAT DRIVES EXCLUSION

A recurring idea is that estrangement often functions as threat management. Groups may exclude someone who is perceived to endanger doctrine, identity, family loyalty, moral purity, or leadership authority. This does not excuse harmful behaviour, but it helps explain why families and communities can act with such severity. The person who leaves may not be dangerous in any objective sense; rather, they become symbolically dangerous because their questions, choices, or autonomy disrupt the group’s worldview.

3. FAMILY ESTRANGEMENT CARRIES UNIQUE SOCIAL JUDGEMENT

Jane and Lindy identify the common social response: “But they’re still your family.” The conversation challenges the assumption that biological family bonds automatically remain loving, safe, or morally binding. Lindy argues that in some circumstances familial attachment can be profoundly damaged or destroyed by abuse, coercion, ideology, or repeated harm. This theme is especially important because survivors may experience secondary judgement from outsiders who minimise the severity of family-based religious rejection.

4. LEAVING A HIGH-CONTROL GROUP CAN PRODUCE TOTAL SOCIAL RUPTURE

Lindy’s personal account demonstrates how leaving a high-control religious group can mean losing not only a belief system but also family, community, social identity, language, rituals, and a coherent sense of belonging. Her questioning began as an attempt to understand the group’s rules and beliefs, not as rebellion. Yet questions directed toward leadership were interpreted as threat, doubt, and destabilisation. The result was excommunication and the near-total loss of contact with family and community.

5. GRIEF AND HOPE COEXIST

The conversation repeatedly returns to grief and hope. Unlike death, estrangement can leave the possibility of return open, which makes the grief ongoing and unstable. Hope may sustain a person, but “hope deferred” can also become painful when it remains unfulfilled for years. Lindy recommends learning about grief, working with grief-informed support, and recognising the need for rituals, anger, mourning, and validation even when no physical death has occurred.

6. BOUNDARIES ARE PROTECTIVE, NOT PUNITIVE

One of the most practical sections concerns boundaries. Lindy uses the metaphor of skin: healthy boundaries let some things in and keep harmful things out. She also uses protective clothing as a metaphor for varying degrees of safety. Some relationships may require “kid gloves”; others may require thick gloves, chainsaw protection, or a full hazmat suit. This illustrates that boundaries should be proportionate to the person’s vulnerability, the level of risk, and the relational context.

7. RECONCILIATION REQUIRES MORE THAN CONTACT

Lindy’s reconciliation with her father is presented as meaningful but not simplistic. Two conditions made reconnection possible: a genuine apology and visible change in posture. Reconciliation is not achieved merely by resuming contact; it requires safety, accountability, changed behaviour, and mutual willingness. The discussion strongly resists forced reconciliation and recognises that some relationships remain unsafe.

PRACTICAL GUIDANCE DRAWN FROM THE CONVERSATION

1. NAME THE LOSS: Recognise estrangement as grief, even when the people involved are still alive.
2. ASSESS SAFETY REALISTICALLY: Ask whether contact is emotionally, physically, socially, spiritually, or psychologically safe.
3. USE INTERMEDIARIES WHERE NEEDED: A trusted person can read difficult messages, help draft responses, or be copied into communication.
4. LIMIT ACCESS CAREFULLY: Share only what the other person can handle respectfully; avoid giving unsafe people sensitive information that can be weaponised.
5. CHOOSE SUSTAINABLE CONTACT: A yearly update, occasional message, or limited communication may be more sustainable than constant attempts to repair.
6. REASSESS CAPACITY REGULARLY: What was possible last year may not be possible this year, especially during personal crisis or emotional depletion.
7. BUILD IDENTITY OUTSIDE THE GROUP: Recovery involves becoming “one’s own tree” with one’s own roots, choices, relationships, and sources of meaning.
8. SEEK GRIEF-INFORMED AND TRAUMA-INFORMED SUPPORT: Survivors may need support that understands religious trauma, coercive control, ambiguous loss, and spiritual injury.

CLINICAL AND SUPPORT IMPLICATIONS

For therapists, advocates, and support workers, the discussion highlights the importance of not minimising estrangement as ordinary family conflict. Survivors may be navigating coercive control, spiritual threat, identity collapse, loss of community, and complex grief. Support should validate the reality of the loss while avoiding pressure either to reconcile prematurely or to sever relationships permanently. The most helpful posture is one that supports agency: helping the survivor identify what is safe, what is sustainable, what they want, and what they have capacity for.

The discussion also suggests that spiritual language may remain charged after leaving. Phrases that seem benign to insiders, such as “I’ll pray for you” or “bless you,” can be triggering for someone whose religious environment was coercive or abusive. Practitioners should therefore ask rather than assume what language, rituals, communities, and practices feel safe.

RISKS, TENSIONS, AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

• RISK OF FORCED RECONCILIATION: Encouraging reconciliation without safety, apology, or change may retraumatise survivors.
• RISK OF REACTIVE EXCLUSION: Survivors may understandably want to mirror the group’s rejection, but the transcript invites reflection on whether there is a sustainable middle path.
• RISK OF MINIMISATION: Outsiders may treat family estrangement as petty disagreement rather than as a response to profound harm.
• RISK OF OVEREXPOSURE: Sharing personal updates, photographs, or emotional vulnerabilities with unsafe people may lead to further hurt.
• RISK OF SPIRITUAL BYPASSING: Religious language about forgiveness, family duty, or prayer can be used to avoid accountability and minimise harm.

SUPPORTING CONTEXT FROM CURRENT LITERATURE AND PUBLIC DISCUSSION

Current writing on religious trauma increasingly recognises that high-control religious environments can produce trauma-like symptoms, identity confusion, fear, shame, and social ostracism. Recent discussion of religious trauma notes that authoritarian religion, coercive control, and victim-blaming may contribute to serious psychological distress. Research and public-facing resources on mandated shunning similarly describe enforced relational severance as a form of coercive control that can affect mental health, relationships, and recovery.

Contemporary discussion of ambiguous loss also supports the discussions emphasis on grief. Estrangement can create a loss without closure: the person is alive but relationally absent, and the survivor may have no public ritual through which to mourn. This helps explain why estrangement can feel confusing, isolating, and difficult for outsiders to understand.

The discussions reference to Miroslav Volf’s Exclusion and Embrace provides a philosophical and theological frame for thinking about difference, exclusion, reconciliation, and embrace. The key relevance here is not a simplistic call to embrace at all costs, but the idea that true embrace requires freedom, mutuality, differentiation, and the ability to release rather than engulf the other.

POTENTIAL USES OF THIS DISCUSSION

• Training material for therapists, peer-support workers, chaplains, and advocates working with religious trauma survivors.
• A discussion guide for support groups focused on leaving high-control religious communities.
• A reflective resource for individuals navigating family estrangement, shunning, or limited contact.
• A basis for developing worksheets on boundaries, grief, hope, and sustainable communication.
• A briefing document for organisations seeking to understand the social and psychological impact of mandated shunning.

SUGGESTED REFLECTIVE / DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Where does my current relationship or community experience sit on the spectrum from mild distancing to severe estrangement?
2. What threats did my former group or family perceive in my questions, choices, or identity?
3. What kinds of boundaries do I need now: physical, emotional, social, spiritual, digital, or practical?
4. What contact, if any, is sustainable rather than merely hopeful?
5. What would genuine safety and accountability look like if reconciliation were ever to become possible?
6. What grief rituals, support, or language might help me mourn losses that others do not recognise?

CONCLUSION

The conversation offers a nuanced account of estrangement after leaving high-control religious groups. It refuses both easy condemnation and easy reconciliation. Instead, it invites careful attention to safety, grief, agency, identity, hope, and relational repair. Its central contribution is the distinction between harmful exclusion imposed by a group and protective boundaries chosen by a survivor. The conversation ultimately holds two truths together: estrangement can be devastating and wrong when used as coercive control, and boundaries can be necessary and life-preserving when contact remains unsafe.

WisePiglet

Thanks for providing us with so much really helpful information. It is good to know there are people who understand these sorts of issues and there is help and support out there.

There are so many bits I could comment on, but I will restrict my thoughts to just a few. These are not necessarily the most important points, they are just specific points that have stood out to me at this time.

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LIFE AFTER FEAR-BASED RELIGION
Toward the end, Micki reflects on life after leaving. She says there is a whole world outside the religion and that people can discover who they are, create a new life, and build genuine relationships that are not based on spiritual status or religious conformity.

Both speakers emphasise that people outside high-control religion are not inherently evil, despite what they were taught. They describe finding kind, genuine people and relationships that do not rely on fear or control.

The tone becomes hopeful: although leaving and rebuilding can be frightening, it can also be freeing, creative, and life-giving.

Quote
FINDING VOICE THROUGH ADVOCACY
Nicole explains that public advocacy and sharing her experiences on social media became important parts of her healing journey. Speaking openly helped reduce shame and simultaneously provided support and validation to other survivors.

Quote
ACCOUNTABILITY AND SYSTEMIC CHANGE
Towards the end of the interview, the focus shifts from individual recovery to community reform.

Nicole argues that meaningful accountability requires:
• Public support from community leaders.
• Visible advocacy for survivors.
• Educational initiatives.
• Clear reporting pathways.
• Support for affected families.

She emphasises that leaders, particularly religious leaders, possess significant power to reshape community attitudes by moving shame away from survivors and onto perpetrators.

All interesting stuff. The real question of course remains, which is how many churches need this sort of advice provided to ex-members? Not just one or two ex-members, but hundreds of them – more traumatised ex-members than there are current members?

The AGM of the church was around this time last year so will presumably be taking place again soon. Last year there was no opportunity for questions during the meeting. There were also a number of lies including that the organisation attracted a “small number” of critics. That is factually incorrect, a downright lie. I wonder what this year’s AGM will bring. Will there even be any mention of the recently-posted extensive financial analysis and related concerns?

Will they use the same excuse that they used before, that anonymous complains cannot be addressed because they bizarrely claim that anonymous complains do not identify the issues? What a load of nonsense. If there was an equivalence between a complaint being anonymous and a complain not identifying the issues, then no anonymous complaint would ever stand.

As I said earlier (p202)

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p202 of the forum
BlessedChild
Welcome to the Forum. I suspect you will be like other Stuthers sympathisers who have come on here: you will ask a few questions and expect people to answer, but will make no attempt at all to answer any questions directed to you. You will then get fed up and stop posting. I hope that is not the case and you are happy to get involved in some serious debate, but I will not hold my breath.

So, hey, let’s play the game and give it a go.

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BlessedChild
Hi, but don't you think the point is that anonymous complaints cannot be appropriately addressed when they don't know what it's about?

What we are talking about here is anonymous complaints, we are not talking about “anonymous complains when they don’t know what it is about”.

Please re-read the posts from Friendly Face and confirm which of the two categories you thing the FF letter of complaint and follow up fit into:

1) An anonymous complaint where it is pretty clear what the complaint is about

OR

2) An anonymous complain where the recipients don’t know what it is about.

Blessed Child did not answer that question as the answer is entirely obvious, the complain was 100% in the former category, that it was an anonymous complaint where it was abundantly clear what the complaint was about.

It is also worth noting that I was absolutely right in my opening statement, that BlessedChild would, "be like other Stuthers sympathisers who have come on here: you will ask a few questions and expect people to answer, but will make no attempt at all to answer any questions directed to you. You will then get fed up and stop posting."

I have been asked to publish the following:

This post relates to a specific complaint that had been raised and mentioned on the forum. The person concerned has not accepted this is a satisfactory outcome and the matter is now subject to legal proceedings.

With regard to this matter, the reply to Pauline’s Open letter said:

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Reply to open letter by PAA
What we can say now is that we have engaged with a high-profile complaint from the Forum using the support of 31.8, a partner agency, who specialise in safeguarding advice and supporting churches with these kinds of situations. While the specifics of the complaint will remain confidential the outcome was that there was no evidence the church or individuals within it were at fault. Although we did apologise if anyone had invertedly suffered distress by their perception of anything we had said or done.

The letter received by the individual however said:

Quote
Letter received by complainant
As a church, we acknowledge your experience was not positive and want to apologise for any negative impact your attendance at church [in specific years] has had on your life.

AND

We are aware that your wish in making this complaint was to ensure that no one else experienced the same negative impact you described from your attendance [in specific years]. We reiterate our apology and hope that the actions noted above provide you with the level of assurance you were seeking.

So which is it?

“There was no evidence the church or individuals within it were at fault and “We apologise IF anyone had … suffered… by THEIR PERCEPTION.”

OR

“We acknowledge your experience was not positive and want to apologise for any negative impact", and we are changing what we do?