mercysurvivors » abuse

Mercy Ministries, exorcisms and ex-gay treatment report by The Freethinker

mercysurvivors — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 03:25:34 +0000

The Freethinker has published an article covering the situation at Mercy Ministries.

Mercy Ministries exorcism books leaked

mercysurvivors — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 03:10:32 +0000

This article can be viewed here.

Tim Brunero
16 November 2008

Handbooks allegedly used to perform exorcisms on sick girls at the controversial Mercy Ministries residences in Sydney and on the Sunshine Coast have been leaked to LIVENEWS.com.au.

Mercy Ministries, which is bankrolled by the Pentecostal Hillsong Church, has previously denied performing exorcisms on residents.

The documents, obtained clandestinely by a girl who “escaped” the group’s clutches, shows counsellors how to rid ‘demons’ from girls struggling with anorexia, depression and drug addiction.

Mercy Ministries’ activities hit the headlines in March this year when former residents claimed they were subjected to exorcisms, were cut off from friends and family and had to sign over their Centrelink payments to the group.

Some of the young women say they had little or no access to the promised psychologists and other mental health professionals but were instead counselled by bible studies students whose solution to all problems was prayer.

Earlier this year the then head of Mercy Ministries, Peter Irvine, said exorcisms were not practised at the residences. Mercy Ministries has been forced to shut their Sunshine Coast residence.

“There’s no exorcism, no driving out of spirits it’s not how the program works,” he told Today Tonight’s Marguerite McKinnon earlier this year.

But the handbooks tell a different story and corroborate accounts given to LIVENEWS.com.au by former residents of Mercy Ministries.

In the handbook, under a section entitled ‘Identifying Additional Demons’ those practising the exorcism are advised to ask the demon’s name, but not for any more details.

“They sometimes talk: they may threaten the person or you. They have been know to say, ‘I am going to kill you,’ and other unsavoury phrases. Command them to be quiet in the Name of Jesus,” the book advises.

Later, the book, Restoring The Foundations, published by an American Christian group, warns those exorcising demons to be firm.

“The minister’s attitude is one of commanding,” it reads.

“He needs to be firm and prepared to press in. He does not need to be loud. (Demons are not deaf.) The ministers’ commanding attitude resembles that of a person speaking to a little “yappy” dog commanding him to go home and stop barking.

“We also want the ministry receiver to set his will to resist and then command the particular demon or grouping of demons to leave him, in Jesus’ name. This is repeated until the demons are gone.”

Later in the book, those performing the exorcism are given more complex techniques in a subheading called ‘What to do With Obstinate Demons’.

Later a list of ‘Scriptures that Demons Hate’ is provided.

“But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you,” is one such passage singled out.

The emergence of the exorcism handbook lends weight to other claims made by girls who went through the Mercy Ministries program.

Megan Smith (not her real name), who spoke to LIVENEWS.com.au earlier this year, said her panic attacks only got worse.

“I was self-harming,” she said.

“I was cutting my arm with anything I could get my hands on – scratching with anything from my nails to paper clips.

“I never really had a problem with self-harm beforehand. When you tell them about self-harming they said I was trying to get attention and I was taking their valuable time away from girls with real problems.”

Finally, she was subjected to an exorcism.

“The counsellor gave me a list of different demons – demon of anger, demon of unforgiveness, demon of pride, there were lots of them and I was told to go away and circle the demons I had in me or around me,” said Smith.

“I was really scared… they cast demons out of me, one by one, and they became quite excited and animated during the process, and spoke in tongues.

“It was the counsellors and myself and they put their hands on me and started praying one by one for each of the demons that were on the list to be cast out of me.

“After each demon was cast out I had to say ‘I confirm the demon of X has been cast out of me in the name of Jesus and is unwelcome to return.’

“The whole time I was there, all I heard was that I’m demonic.

“Even after the exorcism, when I had the next anxiety attack, I was told that they had already cast the demons out, so therefore I was obviously either faking it, or I had chosen to let the demons come back, in which case I was not serious about getting better.

“They kept telling us that the world can’t help us, professionals with all their ‘worldly qualifications’ can’t help us, only Mercy could because only they have God’s power.

“So when I was kicked out for being ‘demonic, unable to be helped, not worth a place at Mercy’ and because I had taken too long to pray to become a Christian… it left me worse than I had ever been before in my life.

“They told me I would never get better now because I had blown my chance. I started cutting my arms and wrists more than ever, with their voices echoing in my mind as I did it.”

Suicidal and self-harming after being removed from the program, which she now thought was her only hope, she went to see a “proper psychologist to prepare me to go back to Mercy to help me fit in better.”

“The psychologist had never heard of them but told me to stay away from them… that person helped me more in the 40 minute session – really listening to me and understanding me.”

LIVENEWS.com.au has contacted Mercy Ministries for comment and is still awaiting a response.

Hillsong: Exorcism in the suburbs

mercysurvivors — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 02:13:30 +0000

Live News journalist Tim Brunero has written an opinion article. It can be viewed here.

Tim Brunero
26 November 2008

Mercy Ministries kept saying there were no exorcisms.

The Hillsong-backed group seemed prepared to cop the charge that they forced sick girls in their Mercy Ministries residential program to sign over their Centrelink payments.

They seemed comfortable admitting that while they advertised girls would have access to psychiatrists and other health professionals, in fact, the only treatment they were really offered was housework and bible study.

But they didn’t want to own up to the medieval practice of exorcisms.

And you can’t blame them. Who would want to admit they had been trying to cure anorexia, drug addiction and other problems with such hocus-pocus?

They’d already lost high-profile sponsors like Rebel Sport, Bunnings and LG after news of their activities broke earlier this year.

But the girls I spoke to earlier this year when the scandal hit the headlines were unequivocal – they had been exorcised.

And now they believe they have hard evidence – documents, taken from a Mercy Ministries residence by a girl who “escaped” the program, that give instructions on how to exorcise demons.

The documents, provided to LIVENEWS.com.au, are highly disturbing.

Under subheadings like ‘Identifying Additional Demons’ and ‘What to do With Obstinate Demons’ detailed instructions are given on how to rid a possessed person.

Later, the book, Restoring The Foundations published by an American Christian group, warns those exorcising demons to be firm.

“The minister’s attitude is one of commanding. He needs to be firm and prepared to press in. He does not need to be loud. (Demons are not deaf.) The ministers’ commanding attitude resembles that of a person speaking to a little “yappy” dog commanding him to go home and stop barking,” says the book.

Megan Smith (not her real name) told me in March after her condition worsened at the group’s Sunshine Coast residence and she began self-harming she was exorcised.

“The whole time I was there, all I heard was that I’m demonic,” she said.

“They kept telling us that the world can’t help us, professionals with all their ‘worldly qualifications’ can’t help us, only Mercy could because only they have God’s power.”

It sounds unbelievable that this group funded by a large influential church could be so irresponsible to think they could cure serious illness with prayer.

It’s one thing to con your flock to tithe a chunk of their income to the church, to pass off concerts as worship, to be browbeaten by charismatic preachers like Pastor Brian Houston, and to finish each service by laying hands of the sick and speaking in tongues.

It’s another to endanger vulnerable young women.

You might find it hard to believe.

But having grown up in the Hills district when Hillsong was just getting its patter down you can be assured this church is as crazy as it sounds.

Having been to one of their ‘HSC Hype’ study camps for Year 12 students, where they tried to brow-beat kids into becoming born again and stories about exorcism were de rigour – I have no doubts these stories are quite true.

Knowing as I do that Brian Houston’s first book was the decidedly un-Christian tome You Need More Money I find it easy to believe the claims of the many girls I have spoken to.

I believe former residents, who refer to themselves as “Mercy survivors”, when they say the group has recently attempted to remove their critical clips from YouTube and has attempted to remove references on Wikipedia to the recent controversy.

At the end of the day, you can’t blame Mercy Ministries for trying to deny there were exorcisms at their centres.

But when people start coming forward with exorcism handbooks, you’d think you’d admit the game is up.

LIVENEWS.com.au contacted Mercy Ministries for comment. They are yet to respond.

Interview with Mercy Survivor “Sarah Mac”

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

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

All seven parts of the interview can be heard below.

The original interview can be found here.

Mercy Ministries update: The PR battle moves to YouTube

mercysurvivors — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:40:15 +0000

Caleb Hannan, journalist from the Nashville Scene, has written another item on Mercy Ministries with regard to their false DMCA claims on You Tube in an attempt to censor criticism of their organisation.

Click here to view the article.

Mercy Ministries counseling and the casting out of demons

mercysurvivors — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:11:26 +0000

Mercy Ministries advertise that they offer “professional support from psychologists, dieticians, general practitioners, social workers, counsellors and program staff who all contribute to provide daily education for the young women” in their care. They also claim that the program is “provided at no charge to the young women.”

Mercy Ministries promotional brochure obtained from a Gloria Jeans Coffees outlet in NSW, 2007 (click for larger.)

Imagine a young woman’s horror then, as she enters the program and finds that she has no contact with psychologists, mental health professionals or social workers, and that the only counselor she is permitted to see during her time at Mercy Ministries is unqualified and unregistered. In Australia, despite advertising that the program was free (presumably to attract more donations from the public,) Mercy Ministries charge the girls for their services from a girl’s Centrelink sickness benefit (welfare cheque).

Let’s discuss the type of counseling offered to young women in the Mercy Ministries program. Mercy Ministries advertise that they offer “Christian based counselling” however, they do not go into specifics when describing the type of counseling given, nor the qualifications of their “counselors.”

Mercy Ministries use a counseling program known as “Restoring the Foundations.”

Our purpose is not to argue the virtues of such a counseling program when it is being used with a person’s informed consent; rather to explore whether Mercy Ministries is being upfront about the types of practices being used in the ‘counseling’ they are performing, and whether a young woman who goes to Mercy Ministries seeking the promised professional treatment, is properly informed before she walks through the doors.

This program is far from the typical example of “Christian based counseling” as Mercy Ministries describes it.

Sections within this counseling program are entitled:

Sins of the Fathers and the Resulting Curses
Ungodly Beliefs
Soul/Spirit Hurts
Demonic Oppression

Source: What is Restoring the Foundations Ministry?

More about Restoring The Foundations can be read here

Many former residents have spoken about exorcisms (the casting out of demons) that were performed on them during their counseling sessions at Mercy Ministries. Mercy Ministries Australia has categorically denied performing any such practice.

Let’s have a closer look at some of the Restoring the Foundations counseling materials that are worked through during counseling sessions at Mercy Ministries:

Click for larger

Dozens of young women who were treated at a Mercy Ministries facility have come forward to speak out about the abuse and neglect they experienced during their time in the program. These women come from a variety of different experiences. While many of these women chose to leave the program due to the lack of much needed medical treatment, others were dismissed with no follow up, and others have ”graduated” from the Mercy Ministries program.

If one thing remains clear, it is that Mercy Ministries’ claims that 95% of young women who enter their program “successfully graduate,” or that they come out unscathed from their experiences, is nothing close to the truth.

Mercy Ministries Australia’s response on television program Today Tonight:

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

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

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

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

Kind regards,

Marguerite McKinnon
Journalist
Today Tonight

Mercy Ministries update from Australia

mercysurvivors — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:49:07 +0000

On 2 October 2008, the Nashville Scene published a follow-up to their article printed the previous day. This follow-up provides an update about the Mercy Ministries situation in Australia, and can it be viewed here.

In March, Australian daily the Sydney Morning-Herald broke a story about the Mercy girls—ex-members of Mercy Ministries, a Christian counseling home headquartered in Nashville. The Mercy girls claimed spiritual and emotional abuse at the hands of inexperienced and unqualified counsellors. In every case, they said, Mercy’s “treatment” left them worse for wear. Four months later, the Scene was contacted by a man who’d enrolled his daughter in the Nashville home. After doing some digging, he’d found the Australian headlines and a handful of blogs from American graduates claiming the same abuse. It is their experiences that comprise the meat of this week’s cover story, “Jesus Rx.” Today we learn that the backlash against Mercy in Australia is growing. v”Madeline,” an anonymous blogger who runs a Mercy support group, called from Down Under to tell us that more than 30 girls, nearly 1/3 of the total who’d been treated in Australia, have reached out to her for help. It’s a number that promises to grow, both here and abroad, with increased scrutiny of Mercy. But unfortunately, it doesn’t mean everyone is getting help. vMadeline also called to tell us that one former Mercy girl had taken her life last week. One more thing we’d be loathe to leave out re: Mercy. The main thrust of “Jesus Rx” comes from Jennifer (now India) Wynne. Wynne graduated from the original Mercy home in Louisiana, worked in Nashville, and lived for a time with Mercy founder Nancy Alcorn in a Brentwood condo. She was eventually fired after admitting to kissing a girl in the home. For years afterwards, Wynne was counseled to sue Mercy. What they’d done was illegal, she was told. She should be compensated. But Wynne says she never took legal action because she still believed Mercy could help some girls. It’s a paradox that some ex-Mercyites are forced to deal with. While their own experiences were traumatic, they also know some who were indeed “saved,” an idea that’s backed up by a cursory search on Google or Facebook groups. It doesn’t change what happened to them, or the strength in their conviction that Mercy’s practices need to be overhauled. It’s just another example of life stubbornly refusing to deal in absolutes.

Jesus RX: The untold tale behind Mercy Ministries one-size-fits-all prescription for recovery

mercysurvivors — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:39:30 +0000

The original article appearing in The Nashville Scene can be viewed here, and an accompanying Mercy Ministries Update from Australia (copied in a seperate piece) can be viewed here.

Caleb Hannan
1 October 2008

Jennifer Wynne didn’t know what to make of the woman standing in front of her. For two weeks, she’d heard the other girls in the house talk about how the woman was intimidating, how she didn’t put up with any crap, how she’d cut you down just as soon as look at you.

It was 1994 in Monroe, LA, and Wynne had just turned 18. In her previous life she’d been a minor member of the Latin Kings, the gang that ruled her hometown of Queens, N.Y. The Kings gave her respite from the cramped apartment she shared with her sister, mom and mom’s boyfriend, one in a line of men that took an uncomfortable interest in her.

By age 12 she was drinking. Two years later she was going to school armed with a 9mm pistol. When her best friend tried to leave the gang, it was Wynne who delivered the punishment: a knife to the gut.

She knew where her life was headed. The signs were all around her in friends who ended up dead, in jail or trampled by dope. It was a cliché, the ending to the story that everyone saw coming, and she was living it. Until she decided not to.

At age 17, Wynne escaped to a treatment facility in upstate New York, but only lasted a month. The women there were twice her age and the counselors were unprepared to see past the manipulative charms at her disposal. Half Puerto Rican and half French, with dimpled cheeks plumped by baby fat and Betty Boop eyelashes, Wynne was the worst kind of confidence artist: the one who understands how good she really is.

Life at the center was easy but it wasn’t progress, and Wynne actually wanted to get better. One day she heard about a woman in Louisiana who ran a home called Mercy Ministries. It only took in girls her age and didn’t charge a cent. With $17 and a trash bag filled with hand-me-down cotton dresses, Wynne headed south.

For three days she rode a Greyhound, sleeping in bus depots and shrugging off seat mates whose heads would loll sleepily onto her shoulder.

She arrived in Monroe in the middle of the night to a room full of strange girls who thought she talked funny. The house was next to a paper mill and stunk of processed pulp. Wynne wondered if she’d made the right choice. Then she met Nancy.

Down a narrow hall walked a smiling, bleached blonde holding a sheltie. Nancy put her free arm around Wynne’s shoulders. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

Growing up, Wynne’s mom had barely acknowledged her presence, let alone hugged her. Now this woman she’d been told to fear was making her feel truly welcome. That she belonged.

“I felt like God had put her in my life to be that mother to me,” says Wynne. “I thought she was my savior.”

Nancy Alcorn grew up in Manchester, Tenn. She dreamed of playing college basketball until a serious knee injury derailed those hopes.

After graduating from Middle Tennessee State University, Alcorn worked for eight years as the athletic director at Tullahoma women’s prison. She grew close to the inmates she counseled, but became disillusioned with the state’s attempts at rehabilitation.

The problem, as Nancy saw it, was that Tennessee was focusing on changing behavior rather than getting to the root causes: the painful circumstances that sent girls running from dysfunctional homes. Their lack of self-worth and security was what brought them to the state’s care. Alcorn thought she could do better.

In 1983, a friend convinced her to come to Louisiana. Struck by the number of kids in need and the lack of resources to help them, Alcorn bought a small home and began what she hoped would be an alternative to secular treatment. Her goal was simple: to help young women in trouble gain control over their lives using Christian-based counseling. And she’d do it without charging a dime or taking donations with strings attached. Alcorn looked to the Bible—James 2:13—for her program’s name: “For judgment will be merciless to one who shows no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.” With that, Mercy Ministries was born.

Twenty-five years later, Alcorn’s vision spans three continents. Mercy’s headquarters on Old Hickory Road in Brentwood opened in 1996, followed by two homes in Australia, and one apiece for St. Louis, Great Britian, and New Zealand. They treat everything from eating disorders to girls suffering from sexual abuse, and they’ve grown entirely through private donations and fortuitous connections with music and sports celebrities.

Christian quartet Point of Grace has sold over 5 million records. But when Alcorn met them in the early ’90s, they hadn’t released an album. Singer Shelley Breen remembers being impressed by Alcorn’s devotion to young girls. They were the same girls who came to Breen after concerts asking for help and advice.

“They’d say, ‘My boyfriend’s pressuring me to have sex’ or ‘I did drugs and I’m not sure if I should do it again,’ ” she says. “We were just feeling really inadequate at the time. We’re not counselors; we just sing.”

Alcorn provided the guidance. She and select Mercy graduates were invited to tour with the band. They’d set up a literature booth at shows. And before Grace sang “The House That Mercy Built,” a tune penned in honor of Alcorn’s group, a graduate would arrive on stage to provide her testimony.

In 2001, Point of Grace invited Alcorn to meet Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher and his wife Juli. Prior to the AFC devisional game against the Baltimore Ravens, Alcorn and the Titans prayed together in the team chapel. Later, Juli took a tour of the Nashville headquarters, establishing a relationship that would eventually net Mercy $10,000 for every Titans win, courtesy of the Fishers.

The full scope of Alcorn’s influence in Nashville was on display in April, during Mercy’s 25th anniversary celebration. Hosted by Breen and Titans’ center Kevin Mawae, the show featured some of the biggest acts in Christian and gospel: Natalie Grant, chart-topping sister act BarlowGirl and headliner CeCe Winans. Under a white tent on LP Field, hundreds of guests danced the night away, sipping champagne and raising a toast to Alcorn and the program she’d started from scratch.

Unbeknownst to the celebrities that night, Mercy’s polyurethaned image was beginning to stain half a world away.

A month before, Australia’s Sydney Morning-Herald published an exposé of “the Mercy girls”—young women who claimed Alcorn’s homes turned them from merely damaged to suicidal. Entrusting their recovery to untrained counselors barely out of Bible college, the Mercy girls said that exorcisms and speaking in tongues took the place of treatment, that expulsion was the punishment for peeing without permission, and that DVDs featuring the testimony of former gays were peddled as a cure for lesbianism.

When the Mercy girls failed to get better, they were told it was a lack of faith, not credentialed staff, that was holding them back. Moreover, Mercy was cashing their welfare checks, violating Alcorn’s edict to provide treatment without charge.

A member of parliament declared Mercy “a particularly bad example of a money-making cult.”

Alcorn’s response was swift. She claimed Australia was a rogue operation, underfunded and running independent of her control. The home was shuttered and an oversight board formed to prevent future incidents. This was not how Mercy did things in America, she said.

But a handful of women back home disagreed. While the Australian press devoured the scandal’s juiciest morsels—the money and the exorcisms—several former Nashville graduates were drawn to the familiar stories of neglect: the threats of expulsion, and the use of prayer as a substitute for psychiatric care.

The fissure created by the headlines Down Under provided a crack in Mercy’s previously solid facade. It was enough of an opening for once-silent Nashville graduates to feel comfortable coming forward with stories of their own.

In 2000, Oklahoma native Jodi Ferris entered Mercy’s Nashville home. She’d spent most of her college life battling bulimia, binge-eating at night and exercising six hours the next day to burn it off. A Mercy graduate suggested that Christian counseling might benefit Ferris more than the secular treatment she’d tried in the past.

Upon entering, Ferris was forced to give up her doctor’s prescribed nutritional guidelines. Stripped of the tools she’d previously relied on, Ferris struggled to restrain herself during her first week when Mercy hosted an all-you-can-eat buffet for the Super Bowl. In place of her dietary how-to, Ferris’ counselor—a woman she’d later find out had no experience with eating disorders—suggested an alternative to the scientific care that helped control her urges.

“She told me to let the Lord determine my meal plan,” she says. “Which was hard the night we only had jalapeno poppers for dinner.”

For treatment, Mercy gave Ferris a binder called Restoring the Foundations (RTF), a scripture-based doctrine associated with charismatic Pentecostalism. Her first assignment was to write down the sins of any relatives or ancestors. According to RTF, a lapse in conduct, such as premarital sex, could invite in an evil spirit that might curse a bloodline for generations.

The final step was to cast out the demons, a process that sometimes involved the bedrock of charismatic Pentecostalism: speaking in tongues.

John Altum remembers the day his daughter told him about the tongues. He enrolled her at Mercy right after the Australian story broke. She told him about some weird gibberish her housemates were speaking when they got excited. She was hoping it might happen to her one day.

“She talked about ‘getting her tongues’ like it was her period,” he says.

Ferris was a smart 22-year-old, a rehab veteran with most of an English literature degree. This tactic—call it the exorcist method—was new. So was the secrecy.

Unlike other recovery centers, Mercy didn’t allow the girls to tell each other why they enrolled. Some girls told anyway, and Ferris discovered that Mercy was a one-size-fits-all treatment program, asserting that the evil forces that kept her chained to a treadmill were no different than the ones that caused housemates to turn their arms into railroad tracks. In Mercy’s eyes, a demon was a demon, no matter what you were suffering from. Ferris recalls one girl who was almost like a zombie.

“She was completely out of it,” she says. “She was fine if she was sitting in one place, but the minute we had to get up and move somewhere, you’d have to hold her hand and lead her.”

According to Mercy brass, the girl’s soul was broken into pieces, an explanation Ferris interpreted to mean schizophrenia. One morning she saw the girl standing next to the second-floor railing. Ferris ducked into the kitchen, then heard a crunch like a car crash. The girl had jumped onto the stone foyer below.

As paramedics took the girl away, Alcorn provided damage control. She’d raced down to the home from her nearby condo to gather everyone upstairs. No one was to speak of what happened, she ordered. If anyone on the outside found out, the Devil could use it to keep her from helping more girls.

That weekend, during the hour reserved for the girls to call home, Alcorn stationed a counselor nearby to ensure her order was kept.

Rebecca was at Mercy during the same time. She says that Alcorn played favorites, indulging obedient staffers with trips to a resort in Florida and firing those who contradicted her. The joke among the girls was that there was no point in learning an assistant’s name. They’d always leave after a few weeks of abuse.

“They advertise an unconditional love,” says Rebecca, “but Nancy is the most conditional person I’ve ever met.”

And the favoritism didn’t end with the staff. Rebecca was close with Jenny, the first Australian girl flown to Nashville. At the time, Alcorn was hoping to open a home in that country, so it was important that everything went smoothly. Rebecca and Jenny were allowed special privileges.

On Sundays in the fall, they had an open invite to watch Titans games with Alcorn. When she dropped them off back at the home, Alcorn encouraged them to lie about where they’d been so that the other girls wouldn’t get jealous. Rebecca was also one of the few people entrusted with the care of Alcorn’s two shelties.

“She loved those dogs more than anyone else,” she says.

But the extra duty came with a hazard. One day Alcorn called Rebecca, furious that she’d forgotten to ask an important question of the vet caring for one of her dogs.

“If God can’t trust you with this,” she screamed, “then you don’t deserve to go to school.”

Alcorn had promised to send a recommendation letter along with Rebecca’ application to a Bible college. Now that Rebecca had failed her, Alcorn reneged on her commitment.

Disappointing Alcorn meant swift consequences. But sometimes punishment meant more than just a lost piece of paper.

Christy was the second Australian girl flown to Nashville. Struggles with anorexia had left her so weak doctors warned her heart might give out during the long flight over. Months after coming to Mercy, Christy was still dangerously underweight and looked nothing like the picture of success Alcorn hoped would help her open the new home Down Under. Christy’s parents were concerned over her lack of progress. Alcorn came up with a temporary solution.

She told the girl she’d have to fatten up or leave. Then Alcorn put her in the care of a trusted friend for two weeks around Christmas. There she devised a strict diet of thrice daily ice-cream-and-protein milkshakes. The results were immediate: Christy returned to Mercy 20 pounds heavier. Her gain may have been short-lived—within months she was back to a sickly 70 pounds—but it was enough for her parents. They received a smiling photo of their daughter, post-milkshake diet, courtesy of Alcorn.

“I’m just amazed she didn’t die,” says Rebecca.

But being too skinny was a minor sin in the Mercy catalog. Looking lesbian was a major crime.

Alcorn admonished girls for wearing their hair short, despite keeping her owns locks in a shoulder-length bob. If girls got too close they were forced to sign a separation contract that prevented them from being alone together. Mercy didn’t advertise itself as a gay-repair ministry, but some girls enrolled to be cured of their “disease.”

One day a big donor took a tour of Mercy and thought one of the girls seeking to be “fixed” was a boy. Alcorn was so embarrassed she bought the girl a new wardrobe. By the end of the afternoon, she guaranteed there would be no more confusion thanks to the girl’s new shirt: “I Heart Boys.”

For the girls at Mercy, it wasn’t hard to guess why Alcorn overreacted. Her speeches routinely boasted of the virginity she’d kept into her 50s. She attributed it solely to the sacrifice she’d made in order to build her ministry. But Rebecca, Ferris and the other girls had another guess as to why Alcorn remained single.

“It was a running joke,” says Rebecca, “because everyone knew that Nancy was gay.”

B y the time Jennifer Wynne graduated from Mercy’s Louisiana home, she had the kind of relationship with Alcorn she wanted from the start. The two bonded over basketball. After a time first names were no longer necessary; mom and daughter would do just fine.

Wynne was planted firmly in Alcorn’s inner circle. Her picture graced ministry brochures and she went to Bible college with help from Alcorn. She toured with Point of Grace, working Mercy’s booth and bringing in thousands of dollars a night with her reformed-gangbanger testimony. When she came to Nashville she stayed in Alcorn’s condo—though she wasn’t the only one there.

While Wynne was in Dallas, Alcorn told her about Lisa, a nutritionist at the Nashville home. Lisa had been gay for 17 years, said Alcorn, but now she was straight. Which made it all the more puzzling to Wynne when Alcorn would shut her door at night with Lisa in the bed behind her. Wynne wasn’t sure exactly what was happening. She just knew that every once in a while Alcorn could be counted on to rush into her room in the middle of the night, frantically begging Wynne to pray with her that Lisa wouldn’t leave.

Thus began a pattern. Lisa would threaten to go and Alcorn would buy her something. First it was a Range Rover. Then a newer Range Rover. And finally a house in Belle Meade. When Alcorn’s pastor caught wind of the relationship, he offered a remedy reminiscent of Alcorn’s own prescription for preventing lesbianism: a separation contract.

Suddenly Wynne’s job title changed. At 20 years old, she was already Mercy’s youngest intake director, the second-highest gig in the house. Now she was also Alcorn’s alibi.

Wynne was dragged along to local coffee shops to witness Alcorn and Lisa’s “accidental” run-ins. They’d leave together afterward. Meanwhile, Wynne was hiding a secret of her own.

At a Point of Grace concert she’d met a girl named Marcia, who later enrolled in the Nashville home. The two began spending all their time together. Eventually they kissed.

Wynne was distraught. Mercy was everything to her, and everything about Mercy said her relationship with Marcia was wrong. Keeping it a secret was worse. Wynne felt like a criminal.

“I had disappointed God and Nancy,” she says. “Which wasn’t hard to do since they were basically the same person in my eyes.”

Overcome with shame and overwhelmed by her double-duty in Nashville and on tour, Wynne came clean and tendered her resignation. But Alcorn wouldn’t accept it. She said she couldn’t quit and accused her of doing more than just kissing Marcia.

The executive director of the Nashville home gave Wynne a rubber band. She was to put it around her wrist and snap it whenever she had a gay thought. She broke it the first day.

The ax finally fell a week later, when Alcorn caught Wynne calling Marcia during a Kentucky stop on the Point of Grace tour. Alcorn was furious. She told Wynne to pack her stuff. Wynne cried the whole way back to Nashville while Alcorn berated her from behind the wheel.

“Why can’t you just go to a gay bar in secret?” Alcorn demanded.

When they got home, Alcorn watched Wynne pack up her things. She threatened to call the cops if she ever returned and told her that she’d taped every conversation between Wynne and Marcia.

Wynne moved back to Dallas and tried to reconcile, sending Alcorn yellow roses for Mother’s Day. The next day she got a call from Alcorn telling her she’d put the bouquet in the foyer just so Marcia would have to pass by it every day. She also had another message to deliver.

Alcorn had found Wynne’s secret correspondence, a love letter without a return address she’d tried to sneak to Marcia. She’d been tipped off by the postmark from Texas. On Wynne’s answering machine, Alcorn let her know exactly where she stood with Mercy.

“You’re dead to us,” she said.

Jodi Ferris left Mercy after seven months. The final straw came when her counselor told her she couldn’t continue until she heard the voice of God inside her head. She tried for a couple weeks with no luck.

“I thought I wasn’t Christian enough,” she says.

For a time, Ferris kept up with Mercy. She asked for a recommendation for a church near her new home in Minnesota. She even donated money. But when she started to reconnect with old friends, those who referred to her experience at Mercy as “that time she joined a cult,” her opinion changed.

Every couple months she’d check MySpace and Facebook to find girls from the program. Last year she found Rebecca. They started talking about coming out with their Mercy experience. Then Australia broke.

Ferris started a blog called “Mercy Ministries of America: Truth Will Out,” one of a half-dozen online screeds against the group. The title is superimposed over a cropped photo of Alcorn, her head tilted and face frozen in Stepford Wife smile (mmoa2.blogspot.com).

“What’s bothered me for so long is thinking how young some of the girls were,” says Ferris. “I was an adult, but in Nashville we had girls that were 13. Mercy is medically negligent and they should know what they’re getting into.”

Mercy says that’s just not true. Its own survey of nearly 400 graduates revealed that 93 percent believed Mercy had changed their lives for the better. Christy Singleton, Nashville’s executive director, insists no one is being deceived or pressured into doing anything they don’t want to do.

“Mercy Ministries is up-front about its foundation as a Bible-based Christian organization,” she writes in an email. “Mercy does not encourage nor discourage speaking in tongues.”

Though the group refused the Scene‘s interview requests and would only take questions in writing, it categorically denies that Alcorn is gay. It also relayed a terse message from Lisa claiming the allegations were “false and hurtful.”

Jennifer Wynne knows better. After getting kicked out of Alcorn’s condo, she dropped her given name in favor of the country in which she was conceived: India. Then she joined the Marines so that someone else could do the thinking for her. But the pain of losing a mother twice was too much.

Three times Wynne tried to kill herself by swallowing pills. After the last attempt, she woke up in a hospital room two weeks after downing a trio of aspirin bottles, unsure if she’d wrecked her kidneys for life.

When asked to describe how she came back from the brink, Wynne condenses it down to a simple moment.

“I saw my 4-year-old nephew smile and knew I wanted to live,” she says, sitting in an Antioch Starbucks.

She went to therapy, found a gay-friendly church, and reconnected with her family. It took years, but Wynne finally got to the point where being gay didn’t mean betraying God.

“The whole time I was at Mercy I had blinders on,” she says. “For years, I was looking straight ahead, thinking I was the worst person on Earth. Then I took them off and everything got clear.”

Last year, she finally gathered the strength to return to Tennessee. She knows Alcorn denies ever having a lesbian relationship or running a gay-recovery ministry. But that doesn’t phase her. She saw all she needed to see on her second day back in the state.

“We go into this coffee shop,” she says, smiling. “The same one where Nancy used to take me so she could bump into Lisa, right? And guess who walks through the door?”

She beams at the thought of the punchline. Nancy didn’t say a word when she saw Wynne that day. Nancy didn’t need to. Her face said it all.

“She was white as a sheet.”

Interview with past resident of Mercy Ministries of America

mercysurvivors — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:06:53 +0000

The original interview can be found here.

The original You Tube links containing the interview were removed due to false DMCA claims made by Mercy Ministries. (Further information on this can be found here and here and here).

Part 1 of 5

Interview with past resident of Mercy Ministries of America: Part 1 of 5

Part 2 of 5

Interview with past resident of Mercy Ministries of America: Part 2 of 5

Part 3 of 5

Interview with past resident of Mercy Ministries of America: Part 3 of 5

Part 4 of 5

Interview with past resident of Mercy Ministries of America: Part 4 of 5

Part 5 of 5

Interview with past resident of Mercy Ministries of America: Part 5 of 5

How to cure anorexia with exorcisms

mercysurvivors — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:56:34 +0000

The original article can be viewed here.

Tim Brunero
18 July 2008

Exorcisms to cure mental illness and drug addiction, locking vulnerable people away from friends and family, prayer as a solution to all problems – sounds like psych ward from last century. But actually it’s just the ‘Mercy Way’.

The once mighty ‘Mercy Ministries’, a secretive outfit that purports to treat young women with mental illness, is now in serious trouble.

Bankrolled by controversial Pentecostal group the ‘Hillsong Church’ and Hillsong-aligned Gloria Jean’s coffees the group has been the subject of a number of complaints to authorities. They’ve already closed one of their two facilities.

Women who’ve been through its programs say the main ‘treatment’ they were prescribed were exorcisms and prayer study, supervised by bible studies students. That’s whether they were dealing with anorexia, anxiety disorders or substance abuse.

And all the time being kept virtually as prisoners – cut off from the outside world with no TV or newspapers, with severely restricted access to friends and family and made to even ask permission to go to the toilet.

Nowhere was the promised phalanx of mental health professionals, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and dieticians. Just bible studies students whose answer to all questions was more prayer.

Three former residents told LIVENEWS.com.au they were left in a worse state after going to stay at Mercy Ministries – which still operates in a house in Sydney’s Glenhaven.

Meg Smith (not her real name) says she went to Mercy because of the group’s promise of free treatment for her anxiety disorder and panic attacks.

But she quickly became disheartened after “free” meant signing over her Centrelink payments to the group and “treatment” didn’t include proper access to doctors, psychologists and social workers.

“The ‘counsellor’ I had was not qualified to treat mental illness… nobody there was. She was in the middle of a mercy ‘in-house program’ to teach her how to prayer counsel,” says Smith.

“I spent months there and the only ‘therapy’ I had was prayer readings and an exorcism.”

She paints a disturbing picture – where a group of vulnerable girls isolated in a suburban home and forbidden to leave or form friendships on pain of being expelled – followed a punishing daily routine.

A seven o’clock wake up call and a stint of cleaning was followed by bible reading.

After that came a “praise” session where the girls would stand in a circle, eyes closed, singing along to Christian music and jumping on the spot with arms outstretched.

After locked food cupboards were opened for a piece of fruit or a few tablespoons of yoghurt it was back to class – usually taking notes from audio tapes by Joyce Meyer, an American evangelist.

After lunch, homework, letter-writing and recreation were followed by more cleaning and bible study.

Smith began to get worse.

“I was having lots of panic attacks… they seemed to be getting worse at ministry,” she said.

“I couldn’t work out why, apart from being away from friends and family and my support network.

“I was self harming – I was cutting my arm with anything I could get my hands on – scratching with anything from my nails to paper clips.

“I never really had a problem with self harm beforehand. When you tell them about self harming they said I was trying to get attention and I was taking their valuable time away from girls with real problems.”

Finally Smith was told she would have to have what she describes as an ‘exorcism’.

“I was really scared… they cast demons out of me, one by one, and they became quite excited and animated during the process, and spoke in tongues.

“It was the counsellors and myself and they put their hands on me and started praying one by one for each of the demons that were on the list to be cast out of me.

“After each demon was cast out I had to say ‘I confirm the demon of X has been cast out of me in the name of Jesus and is unwelcome to return.’

“The whole time I was there, all I heard was that I’m demonic.

“They kept telling us that the world can’t help us, professionals with all their ‘worldly qualifications’ can’t help us, only Mercy could because only they have God’s power.

“So when I was kicked out for being ‘demonic, unable to be helped, not worth a place at Mercy and because I had taken too long to pray to become a Christian… it left me worse than I had ever been before in my life.

“They told me I would never get better now because I had blown my chance. I started cutting my arms and wrists more than ever, with their voices echoing in my mind as I did it.”

Suicidal and self harming after being removed from the program, which she now thought was her only hope, she went to see a “proper psychologist to prepare me to go back to Mercy to help me fit in better.”

“The psychologist had never heard of them but told me to stay away from them… that person helped me more in the 40 minute session – really listening to me and understanding me.”

Smith, who is on the mend after a long process, is not alone.

Other women who spoke to LIVENEWS.com.au described being “literally bible bashed” and supervised during limited visits to GPs and psychiatrists.

One Patricia (not her real name) says when she approached staff with problems she was asked if she had prayed about it.

“In the end I stopped going to staff members because they just didn’t seem to help me and that’s one of the things they commented on… but how can you when they’re not actually helping you?” she said.

“I went to the psychiatrist three times in eight months I was there to get medication – and I was always accompanied in the session by a staff member.

“Once I told the psychiatrist what I was feeling and when we got back to the house I was yelled at because I hadn’t told the staff there… Now I go to the psychiatrist every two weeks – that’s the kind of care you need when you’re acutely unwell.

“Four to six weeks after I got kicked out I tried to kill myself and I almost succeeded and it was because I didn’t think I could live or get better without Mercy because it was just so ingrained into me.”

Since the former clients of Mercy Ministires began telling their stories, high profile “sponsors” listed on their website have disappeared. No longer do Rebel Sport, Bunnings Warehouse or LG electronics have anything to do with with the group.

Gloria Jean’s coffees, which once had collection boxes for the groups in all their stores, and whose former managing director, Peter Irvine, was a director at Mercy, still maintains conspicuous support.

The group have closed their Queensland centre but the Sydney facility remains open for business – still without scrutiny from government authorities.

Ready to continue to dispense their peculiar kind of care to the most vulnerable.