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ANGE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

When starting out at university, it’s normal to want to meet new friends and establish a community.

But for some young Australians, that formative time has led them down the path of a secretive and extreme religious sect, that some former members describe as exerting ‘mind control’ and taking over their lives.

So, who’s behind this group? And how are Australians being impacted?

Today, contributor to The Saturday Paper Aleisha Orr, on the story of Nathan and the ‘doomsday cult’ that changed his life.

It’s Wednesday, March 20. And a heads up, we have re-voiced Nathan’s conversation with Aleisha to protect his identity.

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ANGE:

Aleisha, you've been looking into a story about a young guy in Perth. Who is he, and where does this story start?

ALEISHA:

Yeah of course, so, Nathan, it's not his real name, we're using a pseudonym just to protect his privacy. He's a 23 year old guy from Perth. It was actually his father who put me in touch with him. He was studying at the University of Western Australia, he was in his first year of university, so he'd only been on campus a little while. It was, yeah, it was just a normal day on campus for him when another guy came up to him. Nathan assumed, as you would, I guess, that this person was a university student. They approached him and asked him if he would answer some questions as part of a, sort of, survey. So Nathan didn't really ask many questions about the survey, he thought he was just being helpful. So he didn't realise that the answers he would provide then, they might be used in any sort of manipulative way in the future. He thought he was providing data.

ANGE:

And okay, so what happened exactly? What kind of questions were in this survey that you're talking about?

ALEISHA:

So this survey, there was a lot of questions in there just about his background, his life, where he came from, his family and especially it mentioned faith. And Nathan happily told him that he was Christian, you know, that he wasn't, like, overly religious, but he grew up as a Christian. By the end of the survey, the two exchanged contacts and this person was texting him quite often.

Audio excerpt – Nathan:

“From that moment, you know, he kept trying to reach out to me, for probably for a couple of weeks.”

ALEISHA:

So, yeah, I spoke to Nathan about his experiences, but in this audio we've had to just change his voice to protect his privacy.

Audio excerpt – Nathan:

“And he sent a lot of text messages. Even, you know, sometimes I’d just ignore his texts but then he kept on persisting, and he put a lot of effort into his texts to me, trying to, kind of, check up and see, like, how I was going.”

ALEISHA:

Eventually he said that he ended up agreeing to come along to some event, the details were vague, it was sort of a Bible study group. There was no specific mention of who'd put it on, and it was held in a rented building in the city in Perth, but there was no signage or anything to indicate if it was a particular church or who was even funding it. And Nathan, he actually said that the group's interpretation of the Bible, it sort of piqued his interest. He... they, sort of, looked at the Bible differently and everyone was so warm and welcome at the event. And, after that, he ended up signing up to do this eight month course.

So Nathan was going along to these Bible classes, but these weren't your average Bible classes. It was very extreme in having to spend all your time focussed on it. You had to memorise different verses, read long sermons or watch recordings of long sermons, and then they had to provide their reflections. You had to have your whole mind focussed on this religion, these beliefs. And it was only after this 8 month course that Nathan heard this word Shincheonji. He found out he was part of Shincheonji.

ANGE:

And so what is that, Aleisha? Can you tell me more about it. Where does it come from?

ALEISHA:

So Shincheonji, has its roots in Korea. It was founded back in 1984. Experts refer to it as a cult, it's been called a doomsday cult.

Audio excerpt – Speaker (Translation):

“Todays’ 100,000 graduation ceremony of class 114 is to congratulate the graduates who learned the revered word, understood the true meaning and became God’s children. Today's event will proceed in the order of…”

ALEISHA:

It has more than 200,000 followers around the world. Its founder, Lee Man-hee he's actually been involved in other groups which have been referred to as cults.

Audio excerpt – Speaker (Translation):

“Please, everyone, look at the screen. Chairman is moving to get on to a helicopter from Chengdu. Chairman got on to the helicopter to come here to Daegu Stadium.”

ALEISHA:

What this group believe, they believe there's a day of judgement coming, and they believe everyone who's not a member of Shincheonji that they will be destroyed. So you're in or you are out.

Audio excerpt – Speaker (Translation):

“And so, our nation, everybody, must become one. And, when God looks at us, we have to be a nation that is beautiful. And when it's beautiful, that's when God will quickly want to come. Amen.”

ALEISHA:

So Nathan told me that those taking part in the Bible course, they were told not to share a context with others in the group before they graduated. They were constantly just told that were they would get the answers when they were ready. And they were made to feel special, like they were part of something bigger, so they didn't need to ask those questions.

Audio excerpt – Nathan:

“They kind of plant this idea that using your own way of thinking is very dangerous. So, you become very submissive to your teachers. You know they teach that, don't rely on your own thoughts. God loves obedience, so you need to be obedient to your teachers. So you end up asking your teacher's everything. Like, this is the mind control part. They control your own decisions.”

ALEISHA:

They were even sort of taught to defend it against others, they're taught not to trust information from outside of the church. As well as, like, being told that the internet is poison.

Audio excerpt – Nathan:

“You're taught that Satan is in the media. And he's all over the internet. Like, the internet equals Satan basically. So you're not allowed to go on any internet. You were actually taught, if you go onto the internet, you will poison yourself and you'll kill your spirit.”

ALEISHA:

As well as that, there's also the control of time. So Nathan described how he became sleep deprived. He committed so much of his time to the group that he would be staying out late, not getting back to the early hours, and then he would leave his house before 6am.

Audio excerpt – Nathan:

“You're sort of always under pressure to do things. You don't have time to just know even what's going on. And you’re sleep deprived. And if you don't perform well, you know, you can get rebuked and disciplined.”

ALEISHA:

By the time Nathan discovered what the group was, he was well and truly indoctrinated by that point.

ANGE:

After the break, how Nathan realised he needed to get out of Shincheonji.

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ANGE:

Aleisha, it sounds like after joining Shincheonji that it started to take over Nathan’s life. I'm wondering what his loved ones, family noticed about how he was changing.

ALEISHA:

Yeah Nathan... because I initially spoke to Nathan’s father and Nathan’s dad obviously played a large role in his story. He was talking about his son's behaviour, how he has changed over the course of the four years that his son had been involved with the group. Nathan had become aloof, he was out all hours without an explanation, or not an explanation that made sense to his parents. His father described him as a good student, that he was social. He liked to play music and he had a few instruments, but he never did those things anymore. He didn't go to the gym. He was really... yeah he was, he was just a different person with them. His parents were really concerned, they were worrying, they were thinking of all sorts of what could be going on, because they had no idea what it was. And they were so helpless. They were looking into everything. What could this possibly be affecting their son? So yeah, it was only when his parents found out about the presence of this group Shincheonji in Perth, that they realised that it was this group, it had to be this group, behind the changes they had seen in their son. They both spent months trying to, sort of, start conversations with Nathan about it. They needed to get through to him without him just cutting them off completely. So it was really touch and go for a while.

ANGE:

And how did they approach that conversation? It's not a situation parents would want to be in. So how do you convince your son to leave a group that's been called a cult?

ALEISHA:

Nathan's dad explained to me that he took Nathan on a holiday away from Perth. And that was the approach that finally sort of got through. Nathan told me that he sat down to watch a movie with his parents while he was there. And because the group had taken up every spare moment of his time, this was the first time he'd sat down and watched a movie. And with his parents. Like, he was in control of his time for the first time in years. So it was this holiday that made him rethink everything and start looking at things in a different way because he just started questioning every aspect of it. So his exit from the group was quite swift. After mentioning his concerns to another fellow group member, soon after, he got a message from one of the leaders here in Perth of the group, saying they needed to talk. And because Nathan didn't get back, I think after that, there was a realisation from the group that “no he's leaving”. Straight away he was just blocked on Telegram. So all the conversations and the groups that they usually have on Telegram, he was just blocked. There was a message that Nathan had seen that went out to anyone who he was teaching at the time, and anyone else in the group, just saying did not have any contact with this person. So yeah, he'd become poison.

ANGE:

And seeing as this has totally upended Nathan's life, I'm curious... What was Shincheonji getting out of this as a group? What's the motivation to, you know, manipulate and indoctrinate someone like Nathan?

ALEISHA:

Yeah, that's a difficult one to answer, especially considering I was unable to speak to anyone from the group. Despite reaching out to members of Shincheonji and the leaders, no one got back to me. From their perspective, I'd say that they would probably say that helping people carry out a lot of faith through the correct interpretation of the Bible. But I guess in my conversation with Nathan, he agreed Shincheonji operated in a similar way to a pyramid scheme. So I understand that there's about 1,600 followers of Shincheonji here in Australia and I spoke to the president of Cult Information and Family Support Group, Torry Cleaver, he told me that he'd been approached by more and more people, either people who'd been involved with the group or family and friends who were concerned about people who may be involved with the group. He listed them, he would say they are, sort of, the biggest threat operating in Australia at the moment. And the funny thing is, Shincheonji actually has charitable status in Australia, so it's registered through the authorities as a charity. So it's, it's recognised, but I guess, yeah, there's no religion is sort of, it's not black and white. There's so many grey areas in it.

Audio excerpt – Nathan:

“I find myself getting really demotivated easily, because I think being inside the cult, as much it was very harmful to my family and my, like, my life outside…but it gives you a sense of meaning. Because you feel very propelled to do something for God. And it's almost hard to replace that sense of meaning.”

ALEISHA:

So Nathan, he never imagined he would be in a cult. It's a little bit sad in a way, because he's trying to move on now. He needs to get back into university, he dropped out of his university course completely. He's still, you know, working through where his faith is at the moment. He strongly believes in God, but... yeah, he's lost something. He is also trying to replace the sense of meaning that that group gave him. Shincheonji was everything to him for a very long time, and now he has to build that life back up.

ANGE:

Aleisha, thanks so much for your time today.

ALEISHA:

Thanks so much for having me.

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ANGE:

Also in the news today...

Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia has criticised the ABC for airing a documentary on Monday night which he described as “the journalistic equivalent of a bowl of vomit’.

The programme, which was not produced by the ABC but was aired by Four Corners, showed Russian perspectives on the frontline of the Ukraine invasion.

And,

The Reserve Bank has kept interest rates on hold at 4.35 per cent.

Keeping the cash rate steady was widely anticipated but some economists predict that rates could be cut by the RBA in the second half of the year.

I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am. We’ll be back again tomorrow with an episode looking into the man behind the Coalition’s push for Nuclear power. See you then.

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