‘You could hit kids’: ex-members in ‘cult’ abuse claims
Callum Godde |
Former members of a fundamentalist church have lifted the lid on abuse of kids and slammed working with children checks as a sham.
Ryan Carey was born into the Geelong Revival Centre, a Pentecostal doomsday church run by pastor Noel Hollins for more than six decades until his death in April 2024.
Mr Carey, whose father was second-in-command to Hollins, said the damage from his and others’ time in the church lingers.
“I might have lived in the state of Victoria but I answered to the cult and the cult leader,” he told a state parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday.
The inquiry into recruitment and retention methods of cults and organised fringe groups was green lit in April following claims of coercive practices within the church.
Mr Carey and his wife Catherine, who joined the church at age 19, were the first witnesses to give evidence at the public hearing.
He left the group in 2020, with Ms Carey following 18 months later with their two children.
The pair have since formed Stop Religious Coercion Australia and are pushing for more regulation and oversight of such groups.
“They use friends, family and fear to control their members,” Mr Carey said.
The environments were the “most unsafe” for children, he added, pointing to the highly publicised case of a revival member being convicted of child sex abuse.
Todd Hubers van Assenraad was jailed for 22 years in 2025 after pleading guilty to abusing nine children aged six to 12 in his care from 2016.
Mr Carey said the East Geelong man worked most of his life as a Sunday school teacher and held approval to work with children.
Parents found out about the abuse and reported it to the leader but a two-and-a-half-day lag allowed Hubers van Assenraad to destroy evidence, Mr Carey said.
The working with children regime has come under intense national scrutiny in recent weeks after Melbourne childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown was charged with abusing eight kids in his care.
Children were still commonly being left alone with elders in one-on-one situations, where “anything could happen” because they believed themselves the “Oracle of God”, the inquiry heard.
“(The) working with children check is … like a BandAid on an amputee,” Mr Carey said.
Elders were “regularly” instructed to mete out physical punishment to kids, especially if they belonged to a single mother.
“If you were in Sunday school or child minding, you could hit kids and it was absolutely disastrous,” Mr Carey said.
“I speak to adults now that are still traumatised.”
Mr Carey said Hollins would preach to “spare the rod, spoil the child”, with parents encouraged to break their children in like a horse.
“I was told I had to crush my kids’ will by the time they were three to make them compliant,” he said.
Journalist Richard Baker, who investigated the church in podcast series Secrets We Keep: Pray Harder, said the use of coercive methods such as shunning were not unique to the revival system.
“The issues you’re looking at are really national,” he told the lower house committee.
The inquiry will deliver a final report to parliament by September 30, 2026.
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National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
AAP
