The Esther Foundation: What really went on at Perth church rehab accused of abuse

In just over a month’s time the women and girls who attended a now notorious Perth rehab facility will finally have their day in court. Some have waited 15 years and more for this moment. Most thought it would never come and that, in any case, no one would ever believe what they had to say. But the time of reckoning has arrived for the Esther Foundation and its founder, the self-styled Pentecostal preacher, Patricia Lavater, who for years was hailed for her work turning around the lives of girls who were in the most desperate of straits. A parliamentary inquiry is set to examine exactly what went wrong inside Esther Foundation — so wrong that scores of its former residents years later recall their ordeal with a mix of horror and loathing. How bad was it? This is what one woman, now 33, had to say of her time there as a teenager: “The abuse was so much that I felt no one would believe me or believe this would be going on in Australia and the 2000s,” she said. “I never understood how people cry tears of relief, until reading what others have been through. And I have never felt such relief as sitting in my car silently crying . I can’t describe hearing someone speak about my unspeakable story. “That place and those people can only be described as darkness.” Yet all the while Mrs Lavater and her ever-growing foundation were the darlings of Perth’s power networks, attracting donations hand over fist. Politicians flocked to support her work, prominent among them former premier Colin Barnett. Only three years ago Prime Minister Scott Morrison arrived in person at Esther’s residential facility in Kalamunda to announce a $4 million grant to the religion-based foundation on the eve of the last Federal election. Mr Morrison’s office won’t comment on why he pledged the taxpayer money. But well-connected Perth philanthropist Dr Ros Worthington, is not so coy. She became an Esther ambassador in 2018 but pulled back when she came to know what was really going on. She feels now that she was “totally hoodwinked” by Ms Lavater and she supports the Government’s inquiry to the hilt. “I want to say that I stand beside each and every one of the women as they have bravely stepped out and told their stories. I hold their hand and I continue to love them,” she said. Former world champion marathon swimmer Shelley Taylor-Smith, who was the foundation’s inaugural patron until stepping down in 2012, told The Sunday Times she was “massively relieved” the Government had started an inquiry. Ms Taylor-Smith revealed that she had been aware of stories of abuse at Esther but had felt bound to keep the confidences of the women who told her. “My heart has been heavy for a decade,” she said, adding that she wanted to co-operate with the inquiry. Just how Mrs Lavater got away with it for so long, convincing politicians and business leaders of the righteousness of her cause, is quite a story. HUMBLE BEGINNINGS Esther Foundation’s rehab work with girls began under Pentecostal pastor (the late) Phil Howell and his wife, Jeanette, who ran the New Day ministries in Perth in the mid-1990s. The WA government’s community services department referred teenage girls who were in trouble of some sort to Esther House (as it was known then) for temporary accommodation. One woman who arrived there as a 14-year-old with nowhere to turn remembers feeling grateful and horrified at the same time. Esther gave her love and care that she had not known — but it came with religious strings attached. “I was told not to mix with anyone who did not share their particular Christian beliefs. This included my friends and family. They told me that if I mixed with non-church people I would go to hell. It was incredibly isolating,” she said. “I still have a vivid memory of being in church with Patricia Lavater where she was speaking in tongues to me and trying to get me to speak in tongues.” Now in her early 40s the woman has no doubt about what she had walked into. “It was a cult,” she said. The story would be repeated again and again as Esther Foundation morphed into an ever bigger and better known organisation, run under the tight control of Mrs Lavater and her husband, Rod. Together the two charmed Perth society and its political elite. They had a compelling story to tell of turning around the fortunes of wayward girls and young women, all done with a dose of tough love and old-fashioned discipline. Mr Lavater’s personal story was also pure gold in marketing terms. He had gone off the rails because of a heroin addiction and had spent time in prison for fraud he committed to feed his addiction. But his wife and the church had saved his soul. Or so they said. Esther set up its own cafe and an op shop as well as a catering business called The Cater Girls — all to provide opportunities for the young women to learn work skills. The businesses also generated income for the foundation. But unknown to the wider public — and, apparently, the foundation’s business and political backers — Esther’s treatment of girls and young women was far from the professional image projected in its marketing. Girls who entered the facility for drug and alcohol addiction or for mental health issues were subjected to a regime of religious-based “treatment”, in line with Mrs Lavater’s beliefs. Cara Phillips arrived at the Esther Foundation in 2004 and remained there for five years. Like many — but not all — Ms Phillips came from a strict religious family. She was tagged as a rebellious girl who had trouble with authority. “Patricia’s solution was to order me to walk behind her and to not speak for two months,” she said. “If I wanted a cup of tea then I had to pray to God and God would tell Patricia that I wanted tea.” ‘PRAYING OUT’ THE DEMONS Under Mrs Lavater’s regime, girls as young as 14 were forced to undergo exorcisms for any number of problems including the alleged “sin” of homosexuality. The girls were also subjected to all-night prayer sessions where they were forbidden to sit down. Or they might be ridiculed and humiliated by the group during sessions known as “the hot-seat”. Claire Crawford was 15 when she arrived at the foundation having been sent there by her “cultish Pentecostal” parents because she was self-harming and struggling with eating issues. Esther, she said, was “one of the most foreign experiences I’ve ever been a part of”. “There was nothing evidence-based about the treatment,” she said. “There was no actual therapy such as cognitive behaviour therapy or the like. We would go to these church services and we would be expected to stand in them for hours and hours and have our demons cast out of us. “The entire program was that we had demons in us. And that’s what the therapy was — there was no psychiatric care.” Lydia Taylor was a resident of the Esther Foundation from the age of 16 to 21. She arrived there because her life at home became “impossible” after her mother parted from Ms Taylor’s Indigenous father and took up with another man. She said she was told that she had “Aboriginal demons” and that these had to be cast out through prayer. Melissa Camm entered Esther when she was 14, after a family breakdown. “You were forced to participate in three to four church meetings a week,” she recalled, “some going for all hours of the night. If you’re unwilling to stand, suddenly a group of people will be yelling and trying to perform an exorcism for the demons that they considered were forcing you to rebel. “If you resisted this you would be forcibly held on the floor, having your stomach pushed on by Patricia Lavater as many ‘spoke in tongues’ over you. The only way to make it stop was to comply and scream as though your demons were being released.”. Ms Camm tells another common story — that of being denied prescription medications for physical or mental conditions. “There was no psychiatrist to oversee these stops in medication. In fact all the workers were either self-appointed ‘prophets’ or ex-members of the program,” she said. Over nearly 20 years, former Esther residents have told remarkably consistent stories of being isolated from friends and family, being forced to surrender their possessions, and only being allowed to read Christian literature and listen to Christian music. They also recall the intimidation and threats of reprisals should they attempt to leave. “Everything about Esther was about complete control,” Ms Camm said. “Control over our minds, our faith, our money, our health, our sexuality, and for some girls even their ethnic roots. All of this while claiming to be saving our lives, and if we left (which I couldn’t because I was a minor), we’d be attacked by the Devil. “The hardest part of all? You truly didn’t understand what was happening because you were so cut off from the world. No access to radio, news, TV, friends, and phones, and only very limited access to your family. So it’s not until you’ve left, and sometimes years after, do you realise what you’ve been through. Sadly some girls lost their lives in that time and they will never get the redemption they deserve.” These accounts of life in Esther might sound like they are of another era yet similar stories have persisted. Jasmin Brennan entered Esther in 2018 at the age of 15, suffering from anxiety, depression and an eating disorder. “We saw how Patricia Lavater warped the truth all the time,” she said. “The horrific acts and allegations I have been reading about are not only true, but the majority would just be your average Tuesday.” THE EDIFICE BREAKS APART The facade of the Esther Foundation began to crack in 2019 when a new general manager took over. By mid-2020 Mrs Lavater and her husband were gone. But Ms Phillips, who has led the fight for justice and accountability for former residents, believed Esther needed to do more than simply move the Lavaters on. The foundation’s board, she believed, needed to make full and frank public disclosures about the abuse which had occurred. “Former residents had informed the board of what happened. Speaking up when you have been conditioned that you are evil and possibly going to hell for doing so takes a lot of courage,” she said. Ms Phillips informed other Pentecostal pastors in Perth about what had happened but received no response. So she decided to go public and expose the inner workings of Esther through a special investigation by online news site Crikey. She was then joined by other former residents. The trickle became a flood. There is now a Esther survivors Facebook group with over 270 members. Along the way the darkest of Esther’s secrets have begun to emerge. As well as the psychological, emotional and physical abuse, serious allegations have emerged of the sexual abuse of girls in their early teens. The victims of the assaults, now women, are deeply scarred and want justice. Earlier this year the Esther Foundation apologised for the years of abuse and vowed to do better. But it was too late. Last week the foundation announced it was going into voluntary administration after suffering “significant reputational damage” and a loss of funding. As stories of abuse mounted, WA Minister for Community Services Simone McGurk moved to establish a parliamentary inquiry into Esther. Its remit, Ms McGurk said, was to come up with recommendations to make sure that the abuse which occurred at Esther could never happen again. “What really strikes me is how vulnerable those women and sometimes young women were,” Ms McGurk told The Sunday Times. “There was one person that was as young as nine, who was taken to the facility.” The five members of the State Parliament’s Education and Health Standing Committee will be running a groundbreaking inquiry. They will be hearing intensely personal testimony from people who have suffered extreme trauma. Many will want to protect their identities. Many continue to suffer untreated mental health issues, exacerbated by their time at Esther. Ms McGurk, who has seen the testimonies of more than 50 women, said the committee would ensure witnesses were given proper support. There is the question, too, of the government’s relationship with Esther. The WA community services department sent wards of the State to Esther to be cared for. Juvenile justice authorities also sent girls to the facility rather than to prison. The State provided the Esther Foundation with residential property at a peppercorn rent for several years. “It’s not only the Federal Government that’s got the questions in terms of the operational funding, but clearly there were successive State governments who didn’t ask the right questions, and I think we do have to be prepared to face that, and look at if we can improve,” Ms McGurk said. Significantly, the inquiry will delve into the issue of religion-based abuse, perhaps for the first time ever in an Australian parliament. How contentious might that become? Already Mrs Lavater has been defended by Pentecostal fellow travellers who have been holding prayers for her. And for Shelley Taylor-Smith the inquiry marks a sobering watershed. She became Esther Foundation’s patron after being introduced to Mrs Lavater by former premier Colin Barnett at an Esther function. “There was a plethora of media and business identities there. It was a real who’s who of Perth,” she recalled. “I had arrived back in Perth and wanted to be involved in projects for young women. And here was this great model. I thought, ‘Wow’. This was a program that had a success record. I was so excited by it.” But as time wore on Ms Taylor-Smith saw some red flags with what she witnessed at the foundation. “I felt my values and integrity were being compromised,” she said. Ms Taylor-Smith quietly stepped away from her role as patron but she continued to mentor some of the young women. She also coached an Esther swim squad and was told what was happening inside the foundation. “They were harrowing stories,” she said. “But I couldn’t pass on any detail because I had been told in confidence by the women.” Ms Taylor-Smith said she had shed “many tears” over the fate of the young women. She had also voiced her concern to members of the Barnett government without breaking confidences. She added, in another remarkable twist, that she hoped she would be subpoenaed by the parliamentary committee, “so I can tell my truth”. “I don’t want this to be political,” she said. “This is about young women’s lives. Now they’ve got a voice and it’s time for justice.” The Sunday Times approached Mrs Lavater for comment. LIFELINE 13 11 14 David Hardaker is Investigations Editor at Crikey.

The Esther Foundation: What really went on at Perth church rehab accused of abuse

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