When Elise finally reported her abuser, she was threatened and told to ‘forgive him’

Elise Heerde was threatened with job loss when she summoned the courage to report a pastoral care leader who stalked and sexually assaulted her at Hillsong church.

He was then asked to forgive the man who abused him. Senior clergy at the Pentecostal megachurch where he was working at the time warned him not to go to the police and not to “embarrass God’s church.”

Clergy also attempted to reframe the grooming and sexual abuse the mother-of-one endured as a “relationship” and then endangered her further when she told her perpetrator that she had reported him.

The 39-year-old, who had been a devoted Hillsong congregation member and staff member for years, was devastated.

Legally unnamed man Spent Convictions Act, Hillsong was tasked with providing pastoral care and support after Heerde asked the church for help after years of overwork and personal tensions.

In a written submission to the Victorian government’s inquiry into cults and fringe groups last October, Heerde described how he groomed, stalked and psychologically, emotionally and sexually abused her.

He also described how he found out where she lived, sent her screenshots of her house on Google Maps, and paralyzed her with fear by bombarding her with messages every hour.

“It was a big decision to go public with my personal story,” Heerde said.

“It was such a relief to finally have a safe space where I could say exactly what happened without the church having to sue me for telling the truth.”

Heerde now joins a growing number of survivors calling for coercive control laws to be extended to religious settings, fringe groups and cults.

Currently, criminal coercive control laws are mostly used in domestic violence cases, but Heerde wants the laws to be expanded to cover extreme religious sects and high-demand groups.

As previously reported by this masthead, expansion of coercive control laws It could allow “cult-like” leaders to be held accountable with more authority.

Coercive control refers to a persistent pattern of controlling, threatening, or degrading behavior.

Heerde said she was subjected to a form of coercive control during her time at Hillsong, and that when she disclosed sexual abuse, she was threatened, blamed for the abuse, and silenced by confidentiality agreements and non-disparagement clauses in her staff contract.

“This experience was not only traumatic, it was emblematic of the institutional betrayal, gender-based power imbalance, and coercive manipulation that has pervaded Hillsong and, I believe, Hillsong around the world,” Heerde said.

“It showed that even in the face of serious criminal conduct, the priority is never truth, justice or care.

“The priority was to protect the reputation of the church, discredit the victim, and maintain power at all costs.”

In recent years, Hillsong’s reputation has been rocked by scandals, including allegations of child abuse and sexual assault. racial discrimination and claims excessive labor exploitation of young volunteers.

Heerde eventually sought help from the police and reported the sexual abuse.

Court documents seen Age Heerde’s perpetrator was charged with sexual assault and pleaded guilty in the Bendigo Magistrates Court in 2021.

He was given a good behavior certificate and no convictions were recorded.

But months later, after a court appearance, he left Hillsong and quietly moved to another network of more than 100 Christian churches and organizations; This network was unaware of the sexual abuse crime it committed.

There, in his senior safeguarding and professional standards role, he counseled vulnerable church members and trained pastors on how to deal with complaints of abuse.

“I was horrified,” Heerde said. “Perpetrators are allowed to move on to the next location while continuing to endanger victims.”

He wants an end to “cover-up practices” among religious organizations that have allowed perpetrators to move from church to church for years.

Heerde’s abuser was appointed support officer at his new church for a Melbourne man who made a historic complaint to the church.

She said she panicked when she learned about the support worker’s past.

“It was like being re-traumatized in a way because this man was a predator who handled harassment complaints at a cult level,” he said.

A spokesman for the church that appointed Heerde’s abuser said the organization appointed an outside law firm to conduct a thorough investigation as soon as it learned the man had committed a crime.

He said the man was no longer an employee of the church or an approved pastor and any abuse was unacceptable..

“This has no place in our society” [the church network] “He acknowledges his impact on the lives of those he influenced, their families and friends.”

“[The church] Exercises due diligence and carries out appropriate police checks as part of employment policy.”

Heerde’s abuser is listed on the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission as a public servant of another church in Melbourne.

Heerde currently works as a mental health practitioner specializing in healing from religious trauma and cults.

He estimated there were thousands of cult victims in Victoria fleeing highly controlling religious groups, and told the inquest last year they included “hundreds” of people linked to Christian megachurch Hillsong.

Each week, he hears from people whose experiences mirror his own, including tactics like “love bombing” used to recruit new worshipers and what he describes as obedience and fear disguised as faith, creating a disturbing pattern of coercive control.

As co-founder of the Religious Trauma Collective (Australia/New Zealand), Heerde works to raise awareness of the prevalence and increasing threat of group-based coercive control, particularly among faith-based organizations and cults.

“The first thing we really want people to understand is that cults are not about faith,” he said.

“This is a matter of persistent, patterned coercive tactics that amount to total control over multiple areas of a person’s life.”

Heerde is also calling for the appointment of an independent commissioner to oversee all elements of such laws.

It mirrored measures in other countries, including Austria, where there is a federal office for sect affairs.

“This is not a trivial issue,” he said. “These are not isolated behaviors but systemic tactics of group-based coercive control operating openly within socially legitimized mainstream institutions.”

A Victorian government spokesman said the government would carefully consider all recommendations in the final report of the parliamentary inquiry.

“All forms of coercive control are insidious, abusive and manipulative,” he said. “We stand side by side with the surviving victims and remember their pain.”

The Hillsong church did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Domestic Violence Counseling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732), Lifeline 131 114.

Start your day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.