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.

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

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’.

“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.”

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.

.

Exorcisms and other faith-based cures have been blasted by the peak body for mental health professionals who have made a stern warning about the potential dangers associated with them.  The Sydney Morning Herald reports allegations have been revealed of incorrect treatment of several troubled young women by the Christian group Mercy Ministries.  Mercy Ministries, which is linked to the Hillsong Church and benefits from fundraising and sponsorship by coffee chain Gloria Jeans, is not in any way affiliated with the Catholic religious order, the Sisters of Mercy.

On its website, Mercy Ministries claims to treat women aged 16 to 28 years old by “providing homes and care for young women suffering the effects of eating disorders, self harm, abuse, depression, unplanned pregnancies and other life controlling issues.”

But three former patients told the Herald the programs involved “emotionally cruel and medically unproven techniques”, such as exorcisms and “separation contracts” between friends.

The girls reportedly left the centre suicidal after being told they were possessed by demons.

The newspaper report also claims Mercy Ministries received the women’s Centrelink payments during their residential stay.

Mental Health Council of Australia spokesman Simon Tatz says it is important people receive treatment that is evidence-based, for instance psychiatry and certain drug treatments.

“It’s about getting people into treatments that are proven to work,” Mr Tatz said.

The original video which appeared here on You Tube was removed.

With thanks to the Sydney Morning Herald and You Tube usernames ‘hillsongchurch’ and ‘butterflysarahmac’, this video now appears in its original form on the Sydney Morning Herald website here.

The peak body for mental health professionals has issued a warning on the potential dangers of faith-based cures for mental health problems.

The Sydney Morning Herald has revealed allegations of incorrect treatment of several troubled young women by the Christian group, Mercy Ministries, which is linked to the Hillsong Church.

On its website, Mercy Ministries claims to treat women aged 16 to 28 years old by “providing homes and care for young women suffering the effects of eating disorders, self harm, abuse, depression, unplanned pregnancies and other life controlling issues.”

But three former patients told the Herald that the programs involved “emotionally cruel and medically unproven techniques”, such as exorcisms and “separation contracts” between friends.

The girls reportedly left the Mercy centre suicidal, after being told they were possessed by demons.

The newspaper report also claims Mercy Ministries received the women’s Centrelink payments during their residential stay.

Mental Health Council of Australia spokesman Simon Tatz says it is important people receive treatment that is evidence-based, for instance psychiatry and certain drug treatments.

“It’s about getting people into treatments that are proven to work,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Federal Human Resources Minister Joe Ludwig says the allegations regarding Centrelink are being investigated.

Meanwhile, coffee chain Gloria Jean’s says it will continue its sponsorship and fundraising of the Mercy Ministries program.

A spokeswoman says the company was told the allegations were unfounded.

The Hillsong Church and Gloria Jean’s Coffee are under fire for failing to provide young women suffering severe illness with adequate medical attention during their time at Mercy Ministries.  According to a Sydney Morning Herald investigation, the women signed up to months at the secretive ministry – supported by the Hillsong group and sponsored by Gloria Jean’s Coffee – which offered them no medical or psychiatric care.

The alleged victims say they’ve been forced to undergo years of psychological and psychiatric treatment as a result of their time at the ministry.  They are also complaining that the program required them to sign over all their welfare benefits.  The Mercy Ministries website claims it “exists to provide opportunities for young women to experience God’s unconditional love, forgiveness and life-transforming power. 

“It does, however, promise support from “psychologists, general practitioners, dietitians, social workers, (and) career counsellors”.

But the women say no professional care was offered at all, in favour of Christian counselling and “expelling demons”.

Naomi Johnson, who was 21 and suffering from anorexia when she entered the ministry, told the Herald that the ’treatment’ she received was extremely damaging and subsequent professionals had trouble getting anything out of the group.

“The first psychologist I saw rang and spoke to Mercy.  She wrote to them over a period of time, just trying to get answers.  They were very evasive; they avoided her calls.  Eventually she got some paperwork, some case notes, from them.”

Young women suffering mental illness were treated with Bible studies and exorcisms as part of a secretive ministry linked to Gloria Jean’s Coffees and the Hillsong Church.

Troubled young women signed over months of their lives to Mercy Ministries, which offered them little or no medical or psychiatric care, the Sydney Morning Herald investigation found.

Three former ministry residents have blown the whistle on the program, claiming they were independent young women when they entered, but came out broken and suicidal, believing – as ministry staff had told them – that they were possessed by demons and that Satan controlled them.

These women have since been forced to undergo years of intense psychological and psychiatric care to overcome their treatment at the ministry.

Membership at the ministry required residents to sign over any Centrelink benefits, and it is believed the group also received a carers payment to look after the women, the Herald reported.

The Mercy Ministries website says the group takes in women aged 16 to 28 and offers them support from “psychologists, general practitioners, dietitians, social workers, (and) career counsellors’’.

However, the three residents who have spoken out about the ministry said no professional medical services were provided, and instead the program focused on prayer, Christian counselling and expelling demons from in and around the young women.

“Mercy Ministries staff address the issues that the residents face from a holistic client-focused approach; physical, mental, emotional.  The program is voluntary and all aspects are explained comprehensibly to the residents and no force is used,’’ ministry executive manager of programs Judy Watson told the Herald.

Mercy Ministries, sponsored by Gloria Jean’s and supported by the Hillsong Foundation, say they have a 90 per cent success rate from their programs.

Rhiannon Canham-Wright … attended a Mercy Ministries program.
Photo: Kate Geraghty

Ruth Pollard
17 March 2008

They call themselves the Mercy Girls.  And after years of searching they have found each other.

Bound by separate, damaging experiences at the hands of an American-style ministry operating in Sydney and the Sunshine Coast, these young women have clawed their way back to begin a semblance of a life again.

Desperate for help, they had turned to Mercy Ministries suffering mental illness, drug addiction and eating disorders.

Instead of the promised psychiatric treatment and support, they were placed in the care of Bible studies students, most of them under 30 and some with psychological problems of their own.  Counselling consisted of prayer readings, treatment entailed exorcisms and speaking in tongues, and the house was locked down most of the time, isolating residents from the outside world and sealing them in a humidicrib of pentecostal religion.

At 21, Naomi Johnson was a young woman with a bright future, halfway through a psychology degree at Edith Cowan University, working part-time and living an independent, social life.

Yet she was plagued by anorexia.

With her family’s modest means and her part-time job there was no way she could afford to admit herself into the one private clinic in Perth that specialised in adults with eating disorders.

They had no private health insurance, and there were no publicly funded services in the state.  So after much research Johnson found a link to Mercy Ministries on the internet.

Months passed as she devoted herself to going through the application process, pinning all her hopes on what appeared to be a modern, welcoming facility, backed by medical, psychiatric and dietitian support.

She flew to Sydney, thousands of kilometres away from her family and friends, and entered the live-in program.

Nine months later she was expelled, a devastated, withdrawn child who could not leave her bedroom, let alone her house.

Nine months without medical treatment, nine months without any psychiatric care, nine months of being told she was not a good enough Christian to rid herself of the “demons” that were causing her anorexia and pushing her to self-harm.  After being locked away from society for so long, Naomi started to believe them.  “I just felt completely hopeless.  I thought if Mercy did not want to help me where do I stand now?

“They say they take in the world’s trash, so what happens when you are Mercy trash?”

Two months after she had been expelled from Mercy’s Sydney house (her crime was to smoke a cigarette) Johnson ended up in Royal Perth Hospital’s psychiatric unit.  From there she started seeing a psychologist at an outpatient program two to three times a week.

“Even now, three years on, I don’t socialise widely, I don’t work full time, I don’t study full time.  Even now there is still a lot of remnants hanging around from my time at Mercy.

“The first psychologist I saw rang and spoke to Mercy.  She wrote to them over a period of time, just trying to get answers.  They were very evasive; they avoided her calls.  Eventually she got some paperwork, some case notes, from them.”

Mercy Ministries made the psychologist sign a waiver that she wouldn’t take these notes to the media before they would release them.  Johnson has signed no such waiver and, months ago, she posted her notes on the internet, almost as a warning to other young women considering a stint at Mercy Ministries.

Yet for so long she just wanted to go back to the Sydney house, because they had convinced her that Mercy was the only place that could help her.

“It is difficult to explain, in a logical sense.  I know how very wrong the treatment, their program and their approach is, but the wounds are still quite deep, and even though I know that they were wrong, there is still a part of you that just even now wants to be accepted by Mercy.”

In the northern suburbs of Perth, in a large, one-storey home bordered by a well-tended cottage garden, the Johnson family is attempting to pick up the pieces of a life almost cut short by Mercy.

With two fox terriers at her feet and doors and windows shut against the relentless Western Australian heat, Johnson – a small, delicate young woman with a razor sharp mind – unveils a sophisticated, nuanced interpretation of her time in the Sydney house.

Careful and articulate, her struggle with the horror of her descent into despair at the hands of Mercy is only evidenced by the occasional tremor in her hands and voice as she describes her experience.  She was sharing the house with 15 other girls and young women, with problems ranging from teenage pregnancies, alcohol and drug abuse, self harm, depression, suicidal thoughts and eating disorders.

“There were girls who had got messed up in the adult sex industry – a real range of problems, some incorporating actual psychiatric illness, others just dealing with messy lives, and the approach to all those problems was the same format,” Johnson says.

Counselling involved working through a white folder containing pre-scripted prayers.

“Most of the staff were current Bible studies or Bible college students, and that is it, if anything.  You just cannot play around with mental illness when you do not know what you are doing.  Even professionals will acknowledge that it is a huge responsibility working in that field, and that is people who have six years, eight years university study behind them.”

And while there was nothing that was formally termed “exorcism” in the Sydney house, Naomi was forced to stand in front of two counsellors while they prayed and spoke in tongues around her.  In her mind, it was an exorcism.  “I felt really stupid just standing there – they weren’t helping me with the things going on in my head.  I would ask staff for tools on how to cope with the urges to self harm … and the response was: ’What scriptures are you standing ..our Bible.”

Johnson had grown up in a Christian family; her belief in God was not the issue; anorexia and self harm were.  “A major sticking point was when they told me I needed to receive the holy Spirit in me and speak in tongues, to raise my hands in worship songs and jump up and down on the spot in fast songs.  I told them that I really didn’t understand how jumping up and down to a fast song at church was going to fix the anorexia, and yet that was a big, big sticking point, because it showed I was being resistant, cynical and holding back.”

Her mother, Julie Johnson, watches as she talks, anxious about the effect of her daughter’s decision to tell her story, yet immensely proud of her courage.

“Naomi was very determined to find somewhere that could help her. We didn’t have private health cover, so our resources were limited, so she searched the net and came across Mercy Ministries,” Julie Johnson says.

“It sounded very promising … she went off to Mercy a very positive young lady who finally had some hope that she was going to come back completely free of this eating disorder.”

And the family was excited, too, pleased that there was someone who could help their daughter beat anorexia.  “But unfortunately it didn’t work out that way.  They gave her hope and told her they would never give up on her but … in the end she got quite distraught that she was never able to please them.”

Johnson sent her parents a letter telling them she was not very well and that she was very confused with the kind of program Mercy Ministries was running.

“I called and spoke to her counsellor in person,” Julie Johnson said.  “She told me that Naomi was lying to me, that Naomi was just rebelling … she was making the wrong choices.”

But instead of taking her mother’s concerns on board, the staff punished Naomi for disclosing anything about her time at the Sydney home.

“They told me that what happens in Mercy stays in Mercy, that what happens between the staff and Naomi stays at Mercy.  It is not let out to the family,” Julie Johnson said.  “We were isolated, we were not involved in her progress at Mercy, we were just excluded and yet we were a family that wanted to be behind her and they wouldn’t allow us to be.”

The situation came to a head when Johnson returned to the Sydney house after spending Christmas with her family in Perth.  She was told she had been seen smoking at the airport and that she was being expelled from the program.  Naomi phoned her mother in tears, and the staff informed her they were putting her on the next plane back to Perth.

“She was distraught; she was an absolute mess; her life was in danger.  I could hear it, she was capable of anything, the anxiety was so extreme … she was just out of control,” Julie Johnson said.  “I said to them, ’There is no way you are going to send her back on her own, she is suicidal. You will deliver her to me at the airport when I can get a flight over’.”

Mrs Johnson flew to Sydney to collect her daughter.

“She went into that place as a young lady and came back to us as a child.  She was very confused, like she was 12 or 13.  She shut herself in the bedroom and thought she was nothing but evil.  Her self-esteem went down.  She thought, ’I may as well die.”’

Johnson, now 24, and her mother, know how close the end had been.

The executive manager of programs with Mercy Ministries, Judy Watson, is proud of the organisation’s achievements, and rejects the claim that there are no staff qualified in psychiatry, psychology or counselling.

It appears that there is one registered psychologist at Mercy’s Sydney house, although the Herald understands that the little contact she has with the residents is around scriptures, not psychological care.  She did not respond to a request for an interview.

In a written statement, Watson said: “Mercy Ministries counselling staff are required to have tertiary education and qualifications in counselling, social work or psychology.  Staff also participate in externally provided supervision from psychologists.”

Yet she was unable to detail what qualifications each staff member had, or how many had qualifications beyond their one registered psychologist.

On the allegations that young women are denied medical and psychiatric care, Watson had this to say: “Residents’ mental and physical health concerns are taken very seriously, and appropriate treatment is made available.

“Mercy Ministries provides a range of services to young women in the program.  Mercy Ministries provides services through either health professionals employed by Mercy Ministries, subcontracted to provide services to residents at Mercy Ministries, or taken to specialists at their practice.”

Rhiannon Canham-Wright and Megan Smith (not her real name) are two others who have suffered at the hands of Mercy Ministries, this time in the group’s Sunshine Coast house.

Smith had also been at university before she went into the Mercy Ministries house.  She had been diagnosed with anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder, and thought a residential program with medical and psychiatric care would help get her illnesses under control.  Yet almost from the moment she arrived she began to struggle.

Sitting in the courtyard of a cafe in a large, central Queensland town, as storm clouds gathered above, she told her story in a soft, quiet voice.  Like Johnson, she is fiercely intelligent and articulate, focused and determined.  She described her mental illness growing quickly out of control the longer she was subjected to the cruel, illogical treatment in the Sunshine Coast house.

“I was pulling my hair out – it’s a condition called trichotillomania,” said Smith, now 29.  “However, it wasn’t bad before Mercy.  I let the staff know about it because suddenly it had got a lot worse.  Instead of taking me to the doctor to where I could have got assessed and got some medication, they just told me to forget about it.”

Her condition worsened without treatment, but she had no way of getting any medical care because the house was locked down most of the time.

“To take the rubbish bin out to the footpath we had to get special permission.  If we stepped over the boundary we were kicked out of the program because it was treated as absconding.  Even to go to the toilet or brush our teeth we had to have specific permission.  It was such a sterile environment.  We were not allowed to talk about our feelings, there was no family support, no friend’s support, and no professional support.”

Before long, Smith began to harm herself in other ways.  Again she alerted the staff to her concerns.  They reprimanded her for wasting their time, calling her a “fruitcake”, she said.

“The [staff member] said I was attention seeking, bringing negative energy to the environment and taking her valuable time away from girls who really need her.

“With this particular staff member, I know she had issues in the past, because she used to talk about it with the girls. She was open about it because she thought that was how God qualified her for the work that she did.

“But she had mood swings and anger problems.  She would go from calm and normal to aggressively angry very quickly.”

Again, there was no medical treatment, just Bible studies and prayer reading, relentless cleaning and many rules that were often only revealed to residents when they broke one of them.

“I went to a residential place that said they help people with mental illness using qualified professionals, [instead] going there took away my help.  Even the GP they took me to to get my prescriptions filled was their GP, who they said had been specifically chosen because they were supportive of ’the Mercy way’.  I wasn’t allowed to talk to the doctor by myself; they had a staff member or volunteer with us at all times.”

Asked to name the most valuable thing she learned in Mercy Ministries, she said, without hesitation and with much mirth: “cleaning”.

“I am no domestic goddess, so I needed all the help I could get.”

In both the Sydney and the Sunshine Coast house residents were prohibited from talking about their past, what brought them to Mercy, their struggles and problems.

“We were threatened with being kicked out if we did disclose anything,” Smith said.  “It was a lot to do with control and manipulation, and it just shows that they did have that power over us.  We could have talked and rebelled but we were so scared of them and just so desperate for help.

“I was really sucked in.  That was my world; it was locked down 24/7, so anything the staff said I believed to be the truth.”

By the time Smith was expelled from Mercy, three months into her six-month stay, she was a mess.  She was locked in a room and told she was not worth helping, she said, then driven to the airport and left alone to wait for a flight to her central Queensland home.

A family member met her at the airport.  He had been told, incorrectly, by Mercy staff that Smith had chosen to leave.  He was unprepared for the state she was in when she arrived.

“She was extremely upset. She didn’t want to come back at all … she was in a real mess,” said the relative, who did not want to be identified.  “I was extremely fearful that she was likely to commit suicide.  It was an extreme shock that this ministry we all had decided was the real deal had turned out to be a worse problem … it left her in a worse state than she had ever been in before.”

For two years just keeping her alive became a full-time job, he said.  “Whenever she was alone for any length of time it was always a fear that she may not be alive when you got back.  When you did get back there were quite a lot of times when she had a knife and she had been scratching her wrists.”

Since then Smith has received effective psychological care and is no longer at risk of self-harm or suicide.  After more than a year of searching the internet, she found one other woman who had been at Mercy, using the social networking site Facebook.  That is Canham-Wright, 26, another former resident of the Sunshine Coast house.

Canham-Wright, now living in Darwin with her daughter, 1, and her partner, describes every day as a struggle since she was thrown out of Mercy, after living there from July 2003 until the following March.

She had gone into Mercy Ministries just after her 21st birthday following a drug overdose and suffering bipolar disorder.  Soon after she was in conflict with staff over her regular medication.

Canham-Wright has asthma, and yet she was prevented from having her ventolin with her at all times, she said.

“Every time I had an asthma attack they told me to stop acting … I was punished, I had to do an assignment about why God believes that lying is wrong.

“I was told, ’You still have demons to battle with. Satan still has a huge control over your life.  That is when the exorcism and the prayers over my life started.”

She got to the point where she no longer knew herself or what she believed in.

“They would call me into their office, saying that I was just make-believing and trying to get attention, and they would start praying over me.  They would always pray for Satan to be dismissed out of my body.”

Every night there was a prayer meeting.  “When someone wanted to have something prayed about in particular, we would all have to lay hands and the staff member … would perform an exorcism.”

You will find a donation box and pamphlet in every Gloria Jeans store soliciting donations for Mercy Ministries.  “Your spare change helps transform a life,” the pamphlet reads.

Yet few who donate to Mercy understand they are giving money to fund exorcisms in a program that removes young women from proven medical therapies and places them in the hands of a house full of amateur counsellors.  Its literature claims to have a 90 per cent success rate – yet nowhere does it publish any results.

The allegations by Johnson, Canham-Wright, Smith and others indicates the program cannot lay claim to such a success rate.

The internet is littered with other young women making similar allegations about the Mercy Ministries program.

One young woman wrote in January: “I have been to Mercy Ministries – I have seen so many girls hurt and abused there, it is really sickening.  Many girls are also kicked out and leave there far worse off than before they went to get help.”

Another replied: “Mercy Ministries operates off the grid, and therefore can abuse and harm young women who go there.”

And yet Mercy continues to operate without the scrutiny of government authorities, under the radar and with impunity.