The sister of Victorian Liberal MP Renee Heath has described their father’s church as a “cult” and told an inquiry that so-called “gay conversion” practices may still be occurring in the state.
Clare Heath-McIvor, daughter of City Builders church pastor Brian Heath, told the parliamentary inquiry into cults and organised fringe groups that leaders of some churches in the New Apostolic Reformation movement, of which her father’s church is a part, believe “God’s law” overrides the state’s.
“Practices like ‘gay conversion’ therapy, which is properly called sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts, even though that is illegal … I have grave concerns that it’s still happening because, according to them, the government of God is higher,” Heath-McIvor said.
“This practice, even though it has been proven to be only harmful and has been classified by the UN as torture, still goes on in places like this.”
Heath-McIvor also told the inquiry she was aware of women in the church who had been raped but had been discouraged from going to police for the same reason.
“I’ve also heard from survivors who were raped, who then told my mum and dad about that rape, and were told that they cannot have an abortion if [it] is a product of rape, that they cannot report that to the police, because we don’t trust the government of man. We trust the government of God,” Heath-McIvor said.
She told the inquiry this occurred on “more than one occasion”.
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Practices that seek to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity have been banned in Victoria since 2022.
Led by the legislative assembly’s legal and social issues committee, the inquiry is not examining specific religious groups or their beliefs but rather the methods they use to attract and retain members – and whether those practices amount to coercion that should be criminalised.
Heath-McIvor stressed that “not all churches are cults” but she said the City Builders Church was a “high-control group”.
“We didn’t look ‘culty’. We were mostly nice and friendly and pretty affable, at least on the surface,” she said.
She said her father took over the church, located in Sale in eastern Victoria, when she was about eight or nine, describing it as an “unremarkable evangelical church up until that point”.
Home-schooled from year 1 through to year 12, she said she worked at McDonald’s from the age of 14 alongside other teenagers from the church – a group dubbed “the God Squad” – and was required to give 20% of her pay to the church as tithes.
One of Heath-McIvor’s earliest memories of resisting the church was when she was about 16. She said she was “hauled out into the car park and made to repent” during one of her father’s sermons because she “wasn’t jumping in worship”.
She said she was “literally surveilled” and had attempted to leave several times but wasn’t able to. On one occasion, she was sent to a “sister church”, where she was placed in an “abusive situation”.
“When I disclosed these to dad, he said, ‘Don’t come home till it’s fixed. This is on you. Don’t ruin the work,’” she said.
“So I was basically put in the path of my abuser again and again and again.”
Heath-McIvor and her husband left the church in 2016. She told the inquiry they had married six years earlier in an “arranged marriage to a ‘gay conversion success story’.”
In 2019, she helped her husband come out as gay, and their marriage ended in 2020.
She has since helped set up the Victorian Cult Survivors Network and has called for the establishment of an “independent monitor” to oversee a register of known cults, citing “coordinated efforts to infiltrate political parties and centrally control an agenda”.
She said she will “likely never recover” from the damage sustained by the church.
“The loss of family is something I grieve every day, and we can’t be reconciled due to the cult divide,” Heath-McIvor said.
A spokesperson for City Builders said the church had been “living under the cloud of serious false allegations and related nationwide media coverage for several years”.
“Since learning that these claims have now escalated to a parliamentary inquiry that could lead to law reform in Victoria, we felt compelled to correct the record,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“Our church has lodged a submission to the inquiry providing evidence that thoroughly disproves the accusations against us. We will now let this process run its course.”
Submissions to the inquiry are yet to be made public.
The inquiry also heard from Laura McConnell from the Two by Two Christian sect, with most of her evidence given in private.
She said the group had “endemic levels of [child sexual assault], family violence, financial control and coercion”.
“In my own life, over a 10-year period in my childhood, 75% of the ‘Workers’, or clergy, who came into my community now have allegations of abuse against them; 50% of them abused me,” McConnell said.
“I recall being sexualised and expected to protect myself from predators from around the age of eight years old. I experienced abuses and cover-ups from both men and women in the Two by Two community.”
She said the group was not even a formally registered religious organisation, meaning survivors were unable to access the National Redress Scheme.
The Victorian Liberal party and Renee Heath declined to comment.
Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available in Australia at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380
