Growing up as a close relative of pastor Noel Hollins, the all-powerful founder and leader of the Geelong Revival Centre (GRC), Stacy remembers a childhood combining privilege and pressure.
Stacy’s father, also a close relative of Hollins, was put out of fellowship by resisting the attempt to force his daughter into marriage.
And she said no one in the church’s leadership had any interest involving the police either. “It was just get married. Fix this. Keep it quiet,” she said.
Stacy’s treatment is one of many shocking revelations about the church’s expectations and restrictions on women revealed in a new investigative podcast series, LiSTNR’s Secrets We Keep: Pray Harder.
Several former female members from the church’s Geelong headquarters and affiliate assemblies around Australia likened their experience to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, which later became a popular television series.
Former GRC members claimed violent punishments were given to them as children and instances of alleged sexual abuse went unreported to police.
Leaked audio recordings capture Hollins describing gay people as having made a “covenant with death” and claiming that people of Anglo-Saxon heritage are God’s chosen people.
The GRC has been around since the late 1950s and has more than 30 assemblies in Australia and around the world, with total membership understood to be in the low thousands. It qualifies for tax-free status as a religious charity.
Former church members are speaking out in the hope that politicians will consider widening new laws making coercive control a criminal offence to include group settings such as the GRC, which they claim operates as a cult.
Under Hollins’ strict rules, women are not allowed to initiate a relationship with a man. They must wait to be chosen by a man from their assembly or an affiliate church. Their union would have to be approved by a pastor.
A woman known to have had sex before marriage is forbidden from wearing a white dress at her wedding. Single mothers will have a “brother”, the term used in the church to refer to a man appointed to oversee her conduct and that of her children.
Hollins preferred women to stay at home and not work. He also discouraged school-aged girls from pursuing tertiary education.
Natalie Murphy, now a mother of two boys, was raised in the GRC. She remembers, growing up, only ever wanting someone to choose her as their wife. Wives are often referred to as “helpmeets” in the church.
Source: https://www.theage.com.au/national/like-handmaid-s-tale-church-s-doctrine-pushed-teen-to-marry-her-rapist-20241030-p5kmjd.html#selection-3769.0-3769.204