A Sunday school teacher who was jailed for sexually abusing nine children was protected by the leader of his fundamentalist church, after parents reported the abuse to him instead of police, a Victorian parliamentary inquiry has heard.
Catherine and Ryan Carey, former members of the Geelong Revival Centre (GRC), gave evidence at the first hearing of the parliamentary inquiry into the practices of cults and organised fringe groups on Wednesday.
The inquiry was established in April, after allegations of coercive practices at the GRC, as detailed in LiSTNR’s investigative podcast series Secrets We Keep: Pray Harder. The church has not publicly commented on the allegations contained in the podcast.
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.
Ryan told the inquiry the man had a valid working with children check at the time of the offending and described the government’s screening process as a “Band-Aid on an amputee”.
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“He was convicted last year of molesting nine kids in the Geelong community and the parents that found out reported it to the cult leader – and this was in the judgment – instead of going [to] police,” he said.
“There was a two-and-a-half day lag where this guy was able to destroy evidence – I think [there] was 12 terabytes of child pornography – because the parents didn’t do the right thing and go report this [to] police.”
Catherine said that during this time a child was also left in the care of the man. She said GRC’s leader only contacted police after learning the man had already turned himself in.
Ryan said the abuse went unreported because the GRC acted like a “state within a state” and believed its authority was “higher than the law of the land”.
He said when sexual abuse occurred within families, it was also “covered up” by the GRC and victims “blamed” by their offenders.
“The girls were always seen as the flirts and the ones that were leading the men astray, like it was never the male’s fault, which is, it’s just horrible,” Ryan said.
The podcast’s creator, journalist Richard Baker, also told the inquiry he was aware of another GRC member in Newcastle who is facing “serious child sexual abuse charges” but the centre allowed “to attend a summer camp with hundreds of families”.
“We have ... presumption of innocence and all of that. But also … wouldn’t you have an abundance of caution to say, maybe this isn’t the right environment while someone is facing such serious charges, to be in a campsite with dozens, if not hundreds of children?” Baker said.
“I find that troubling.”
Ryan also told the inquiry the environment within the GRC was “unsafe for kids”, saying it was common for young people to be left alone with elders.
Elders, meanwhile, were regularly instructed to physically punish children – especially those with single mothers.
“If you were in Sunday school or child minding, you could hit kids,” Ryan said. “It was absolutely disastrous. I speak to adults now that are still traumatised.”
Families were also instructed to discipline their children harshly. Ryan told the inquiry he was told to “crush my kids’ will by the time they are three to make them compliant” while Catherine said comparisons were made to “breaking in a horse”.
The couple have since left the GRC and founded the group Stop Religious Coercion Australia. They maintain the centre is a cult, as it uses “friends, family and fear” to control its members and isolate those who leave.
Ryan said his father was “second in charge of the cult” in Geelong and, from the moment he was born, he “answered to the cult and the cult leader”, living in a “constant state of fear” that the “world was going to end”.
Catherine, meanwhile, joined at age 19, during a period when she had experienced trauma and felt isolated and vulnerable, or “ripe to be sucked into a cult”, as she put it.
The GRC has been active since the late 1950s and has a network of more than 20 assemblies across Australia and overseas.
At its peak, the couple said the GRC had more than 650 members, though the number has since fallen to about 200.
Each working member was expected to donate at least 10% of their salary to the GRC, described as a “free will offering”.
“It’s not really free will. It’s 10% or you’re risking hell,” Ryan said.
He said some members were discouraged from seeking medical treatment, for everything from broken bones to cancer, as it was believed illness could be healed by prayer.
“I had a close friend that he was so indoctrinated he believed that God would heal him in his cancer and he passed away,” Ryan said.
The couple also allege some who have left GRC have gone on to commit suicide or died of a result of alcohol and drug abuse.
“I know of suicides in even teenage years, where kids stuck in that situation have suicided,” Ryan said. “It feels like a hopeless situation.”
Catherine added: “Not to mention ones who … because of addiction and things like that died as a result of that, from their trauma.”
Baker said since his reporting on the GRC he has heard from former members of other churches such as City Builders Church, the Plymouth Brethren, Shincheonji and Two by Twos, who have “expressed concerns around coercive control”.
He said each group followed a similar pattern.
“What we [see] is the same manifestation of severing of family relationships and increasing demands after the initial phase of what survivors have told me – from any of these ones – is that love bombing feeling of how you’re one of us now and we’re your family,” Baker said.
“Over time, that love bombing then seems to turn into a leash, a control.”
Baker and the Careys called for coercive control laws, which predominantly target domestic violence, expanded to include cults and other “high-control groups”.
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
This article was amended on 24 July 2025 to remove the name of a church Richard Baker mentioned to the inquiry. Baker has since clarified that he had misspoken.
