This is the second of three stories in a Crikey investigation into a federal government-funded rehab facility with close ties to Hillsong — and how taxpayers are paying for a deal set up by the Morrison government. Read the first here.
Washing Brian Houston’s Audi was not the kind of therapy Jacob Harrison had in mind when he entered the Pentecostal-linked rehab facility one80TC to treat his alcohol addiction, but that’s what he found himself doing — an unpaid volunteer worker at Hillsong’s annual conference.
Glitzy up front, with the great global pastor Houston on stage, the conference was packed to the rafters at Sydney Olympic Park. But it came with its share of grungy behind-the-scenes jobs.
“You get there at six in the morning and you’re working like a dog all day,” Harrison said. “Generally we were in the motor pool all day, cleaning the cars as they came in. The international guests that were coming in had sparkly cars. I had to pay special attention to Brian Houston’s Audi; I had to clean that inside and out,” he told Crikey.
The path to cleaning Houston’s Audi began months earlier when Jacob, then 33, was leaving the psychiatric ward of a Sydney hospital.
“I came to one80TC direct from a psych ward — a gay man with a working knowledge of Christianity garnered from Monty Python,” he said.
One80TC’s website highlights that its treatment conforms with government-backed standards. It says it follows NSW Health drug and alcohol residential rehabilitation guidelines and meets the demands of the Australasian Therapeutic Communities Association industry body. It says it is accredited under a quality management system known as ISO 9001:2015 and that it adheres to “stringent reporting requirements” under its federal grant agreement.
Jacob Harrison found that his first six weeks at the facility were helpful — but then it changed. A lot of religious “therapy” was in store. Ultimately it did his head in.
A steady diet of Hillsong
“We had to go to Hillsong at least twice a week, but as it was pretty much the only time we were allowed out, we were kind of happy to go,” he said.
“One of my first Sundays at Hillsong, the subject of the sermon happened to be the power of speaking in tongues. I thought it was going to be a lecture But no, it was the real thing, and we were all going to do it now.
“This was a really frightening experience. The Hillsong campus holds about 5000 people, I believe, all of them putting their hands up and shouting in the air. It’s pretty confronting for someone that’s, well, just fragile in general and very new to all this.”
Harrison quickly learned that the best way to cope was to blend in.
“I started reading the Bible and having discussions about it and stuff. And I was putting my hands up and waving around them around like I just didn’t care. The more you do that, the more you show an interest, the more little freedoms and little things they let you get away with.”
Secular books were banned. Instead, Harrison was left to read religious tracts such as “How to Prophecy” which he believes had been handed down to the facility from Hillsong College.
According to Harrison the “therapy” took the form of staff members having “kind of thought bubbles”, which they shared.
“That’s how Pentecostalism works. You and I might have a thought bubble come into our head and go, ‘Hmmm, that’s interesting. I might write that down’. They’ll think it’s divine intervention, that ‘God has put this thought in my head, I must share it’. It’s like the rules of magic apply,” he said.
Ultimately what Harrison calls the 24/7 bombardment of religion upended his own sense of reality, with disturbing consequences.
“The music of Hillsong is mostly all that you’re hearing. You also heard people’s clearly psychiatric illnesses being described as possible messages from God. This came from one80TC employees who should have recognised that people needed psychiatric care or some kind of higher level of care. But instead they were validating these voices people were hearing as being messages from God.
“I’d been cut off from my own tribe. The magical thinking had started to make me question my own beliefs, and my own sense of reality. And when that happened, that’s what freaked me out.”
After six months Harrison left one80TC and checking himself into a secular rehab clinic.
One80TC’s website contains heartfelt video testimonials of lives changed by the organisation’s therapy. The “turnaround” stories are typically told with a positive of finding oneself and a new “season” of happiness in God. The stories of addiction are harrowing and speak of a need for community.
But that’s not how it worked for Jacob Harrison.
“Look, everyone’s entitled to their belief,” he said. “That’s cool. But it’s not cool to kind of enforce that, especially on vulnerable populations, especially when they’re seeking treatment.”
Next: the lack of regulation and the underfunding of rehabilitation.
It is bad enough that we have to suffer these overly demonstrative happy clappers constantly lobbying to change secular society in their own image. But is is completely unacceptable that that they are allowed to capture the vulnerable and exploit that vulnerability to grow membership, all funded by the bloody government. But this story is clear evidence that this nonsense is not benign. It can do real psychological damage and that objective is overtly part of the Pentecostal method. These businesses and political organisations masquerading as religions are a blight on Australian society and must be reigned in by law.
Well said. U agree totally.
It can do incredible damage in fact. I grew up gay in hardline, hardcore Pentecostal churches. First in an Assemblies of God church and when that wasn’t “Spirit-focussed” enough for my folks, to an independent even more extreme “Charismatic” church. I was also sent to independent evangelical schools. So the church was literally my whole world in those formation years.
“The world” out there was presented as fallen, evil, dark and full of hidden dangers. All the unsaved – which included everyone, even other “mainstream” Christians like Anglicans and Uniting Churchers not considered “born again” – were on the wide road to eternal hellfire. And apart from witnessing to with the aim of conversion, we were to keep away from friendship s and relationships with “unsaved” sinners. We, on the other hand, were those elected to be saved. We were the only thing that was good and holy in the world, and considered ourselves the bearers of Absolute Truth and Righteousness in a fallen world. I remember Pastors preaching maybe less than 1% of everyone who ever lived would make it to Heaven. The other 99% were really destined to burn in Hell for all eternity.
The fear of hell was constantly shoved down our throats. So was the almost inescapable danger of demonic powers lurking everywhere, hoping to suck your soul away, in everything from Madonna music videos to underwear catalogues to walking down Melbourne’s Chinatown (considered a den of “heathen” iniquity and a demonic stronghold). Exorcism was practised as a matter of course, every Sunday evening after the service there’d be people flailing and screaming on the ground in front of the stage being “delivered” from this or that evil spirit. Almost every problem no matter how small was caused demonic influence and every solution involved casting out evil spirits: from depression to lust to unemployment. I even remember someone blaming the breakdown of their fridge on its having become demon possessed. And of course, gays, lesbians and trans people were the worst, most despised, most loathed sinners of all. “Abominations”, as the Bible itself says. For homosexuals and transexuals there was pretty much no hope at all.
When I finally walked out age 17 I was a total wreck. I had zero self-esteem from years of being told indirectly I was an evil, abhorrent sinner, incapable of being loved by God for being gay. As a consequence of all that I spent years dealing with the fallout: chronic depression and anxiety, addictions, suicide attempts, unemployment and despair. It’s only now in my late 40s that I have finally been able to distance myself far enough from it all that I feel self-confident again and sure of my own reality.
The Pentecostal and Charismatic movements have much more in common with hardcore cults than with mainstream organized churches. I wish more people were aware of how dangerous they are and what damage they do. I consider what happened to me to be religious and psychological child abuse. These churches should be called out for what they really are. It’s interesting also how many of them end up in ruins due to scandal and corruption among the leadership. If you mess with Pentecostalism, you are playing with fire in my opinion.
No human should have to suffer that sort of oppression and especially not in the alleged service of god. There cults are principally built on the hatred and suspicion of all others.
Hopefully all this Hillsong nonsense and much more shall be investigated through the coming ICAC.
A Federal ICAC can’t come quick enough for me.
Chilling. That poor guy. And what part of washing an Audi is considered best practice for treatment of alcohol addiction? Or speaking in tongues for that fact.
Remove their credentials to operate as a rehabilitation facility. Religion has no place in what is a health issue.
The happy clappers dont give a stuff about anything but the money. They know theres no god or heaven or hell but selling this stuff brings in good tax free dollars. Plus they can never come back at you when they find out theyve been ripped off. Never been a warranty claim for failure to deliver heaven from a dead person. Best and longest scam on ever.
Call them what they are, the latest in a long line of industrial scale scammers.
Organised religion, like MacDonalds, a licence to print money – and own Audis, snd have slave-like labour.
A perfect analogy. Golden Arches, Golden Gates, variations on a theme.