In the UK a jury convicts Chris Brain, founder of Sheffield’s Nine O’Clock Service, of rape and further indecent assaults on women in his congregation. Prosecutors drop obstruction cases against 14 residents of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light community in Crewe, Cheshire.

The High Court in England blocks a bid by trustees to strip the president of the Hindu Yogi Divine Society of his powers over its UK charity.

In Italy carabinieri arrest Bruno Antonio Malatesta, the self-styled “Maestro” of a yoga community in Almese, west of Turin, on slavery and sexual violence charges. A Bulgarian court remands a Spanish “shaman” held near Kalofer after a liquid seized at his retreat tested positive for mescaline.

Romanian police search the homes of a defrocked priest accused of running an unlicensed chapel in Botoșani county. In Ireland a former garda is spared jail for coercive control of his wife.

In France the head of the Eiffel Tower’s operating company is to step down after female staff were sidelined during a visit by monks of the Hindu movement BAPS. A Paris City Hall inquiry finds no explicit request to exclude women.

Germany’s independent abuse commission in Münster sets out demands after a study of spiritual abuse in Catholic communities. Spain’s Pontifical University of Salamanca opens a postgraduate diploma on psychological abuse and cults.

Le Figaro interviews Jean-Yves Camus on Alain Soral as an ideological guru, and Belgium’s La Libre reports on the People’s Mojahedin (MEK), an exiled Iranian opposition group. A French comparison site ranks cult documentaries on Netflix.

RedUNE is taking papers and registrations for a November symposium in Madrid on coercive groups. The University of Lille is seeking adults for an anonymous online study of psychological experience after belonging to a group.

Beyond Europe, the mayor of Richmound, Saskatchewan, steps down after years of conflict with Romana Didulo’s Queen of Canada group. Peter Thiel likens effective altruism to a cult, a minister at James Talarico’s Texas church calls evangelical churches “almost cult-like”, and Iran’s Press TV marks 14 years since the US delisted the MEK.

Read the full summary >>>

Christopher Brain "dominated and abused his position" to sexually assault a "staggering number of women from his congregation", a court heard.

A former Church of England priest who ran a rave-inspired "cult" group has been found guilty of rape and indecent assault.

Christopher Brain, 69, had already been convicted of multiple indecent assaults while leader of the Nine O'Clock Service (NOS), part of a radical group of the Church of England in Sheffield, between 1986 and 1995.

The "vibrant church" services for young people included a live band and light shows - but the group became a cult with Brain at the centre, Inner London Crown Court was told.

The priest set up a "home base" team, known as the "Lycra Nuns", to care for him and his wife and daughter at home, the prosecution said.

At Inner London Crown Court on Friday, he was convicted of one count of rape and four counts of indecent assault.

He was previously convicted of 17 counts of indecent assault against nine women and found not guilty of another 15 charges of indecent assault.

Read full article >>>

More coverage:

• How rapist priest exploited charisma to abuse his 'cult-like' congregation, BBC, 3 Oct 2026
• Statement from Bishop of Sheffield following the retrial of Chris Brain, Anglican Link, 2 Oct 2026
• Leader of Christian ‘abuse cult’ guilty of rape, Telegraph 2 Oct 2026
• ‘Shame on Church of England’, says victim of former priest guilty of rape, Irish News, 2 Oct 2026
• 'Cult' priest guilty of rape and assault of women, BBC 2 Oct 2026
• Nine O’Clock Service priest who ran 'cult' group found guilty of rape and indecent assault, Independent, 2 Oct 2026

In the UK the Inner London Crown Court opened the retrial of Chris Brain, former Church of England priest and leader of Sheffield’s Nine O’Clock Service. In the Czech Republic police charged the head of AllatRa’s Czech branch with inciting hatred against journalists. In France investigators pursued Thierry Casasnovas over a forged doctor’s stamp, and Le Parisien returned to the polygamous Pécourt brothers of Berck-sur-Mer.

In the Netherlands a couple described years inside Shincheonji. On Réunion the Catholic diocese warned against Abouna-Aera.

In Germany a Münster study of spiritual abuse took in the Christusgemeinschaft and the dissolved Totus Tuus. Scotland’s When Prophecy Fails drew a Guardian review.

France Télévisions prepared Féminin sacré on cult drifts in the sacred-feminine wellness market. In Italy la Repubblica opened on “medici guru” after the Pietralata family tragedy.

Beyond Europe: Utah’s suit against the Mormon Stories podcast; Julia Molchanova’s first public account of Epstein’s cult; Argentina’s “sanadores egipcios” trial; Katie Hobbs’s campaign ad tying Andy Biggs to FLDS; and a $24 million Ohio judgment against Dove Outreach.

Read the full summary >>>

Have you listened to the podcast or watched the the film yet? I highly recommend both.

I have to make a public confession. I was disturbed to see a course being run by Richard Grannon and Mark Vicente on the subject of cult recovery. I spoke out about, what I thought about at the time, the inappropriateness of this at the time. I was wrong.

In the past week, I have done a 180° turn on this. I think Grannon, Vicente and Traquair are to be applauded. Grannon has every right to speak on this subject. I hope to hear more from him on this in the future.

Watching the film and listening to the podcast has shaken me from the cognitive dissonance I was under; I considered Vaknin an expert.

Traquair will change your mind on that!

The leader of the controversial Unification Church has been sentenced to two years in prison for bribing South Korea's former first lady and other political funding offences.

A court found that Han Hak-ja's church gave Kim Keon Hee, the wife of ousted president Yoon Suk Yeol, two Chanel bags and a diamond necklace, together worth 80 million won ($57,900; £42,500).

Earlier this year, Kim was sentenced to 20 months in jail for accepting bribes from the church.

Han, the 83-year-old widow of the Unification Church's founder Sun Myung Moon, had repeatedly denied the allegations, calling them "false".

A special counsel team appointed to the case said Kim received the luxury products from the church between April and July 2022, in exchange for business and political favours.

The prosecutors said the probe was the first time the authorities have confirmed the church's attempt at buying influence in politics, and released photos of $19m (£14m) worth of cash found in Han's personal safe.

South Korea's former first lady admitted to receiving Chanel bags, but said she later returned them without using them.

Kim made a public apology when she appeared for questioning last August: "I am truly sorry that a nobody like me has caused concern to the people."

The Unification Church, known formally as The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, was founded in South Korea in the 1950s by Sun Myung Moon, who proclaimed himself the messiah.

Read the full piece >>>

More news coverage >>>

EDIT: Korean TV News has been covering this extensively today, including joint reports on the joint investigation into the Unification Church and Shincheonji Church of Jesus (SCJ) Cult and its leader Lee Man-hee.

See more of Reckless Ben's Cult investigations here

The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald say they have seen evidence that Exclusive Brethren elders paid far-right operators to disrupt the 2025 election. On Friday that allegation sat before a parliamentary committee. A church director called it a lie. He did not deny members at the polling places.

The Exclusive Brethren, a closed Christian fellowship, have had a place in the 2025 federal campaign that has been on the public record since last year. Members turned up in unusual numbers at polling places, often in Liberal shirts, in seats the Coalition needed.[1] In June 2025 The Age reported that Bruce Hales had recorded a short message and sent it only to members, on a private church video site they log into to watch meetings and leadership recordings. The paper said he told them to staff polling places each day, keep members turning out to work those tables, and talk to voters as they arrived.[2] On Friday 21 August 2026 that record reached parliament. What arrived with it was sharper than a turnout story.

That morning The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald alleged that church elders had paid far-right operators, in cash and by PayID, to disrupt Labor, Greens and independent campaigns.[3] The papers say they have seen leaked messages and records of those payments. They are standing those documents up. Lloyd Grimshaw, a director of Plymouth Brethren Christian Church in Australia, the registered charity, appeared by video before the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and called the reporting a “complete lie.”[4], [5]

The committee was also asking about the tables outside the school or hall where Australians vote. Volunteers in party colours hand how-to-vote cards and try to win the last few metres. That is organised campaigning at the vote. It is not stuffing ballot boxes. It is not the same as paying far-right operators, including people named in the hearing as neo-Nazis, to follow candidates and heckle the Prime Minister. Grimshaw did not deny that members had been at the polling places.

He said:

>I’m not denying that many of our members from the church got involved. I wouldn’t deny that there was obviously some coordination—of course there must’ve been—amongst those members. But what I can assure you is that it certainly wasn’t coordination or direction from the church.[6]

He said members had coordinated. He said the church had not directed them. The sitting’s Proof Hansard, the official transcript, is uncorrected.

Video: Lloyd Grimshaw, JSCEM, 21 August 2026. Members coordinated. Not, he said, the church.

Elders, far-right operators, neo-Nazis

The hearing was an inquiry into the 2025 federal election. The committee’s brief already included aggressive conduct, obstruction, intimidation, and how political material is authorised. Chair Jerome Laxale put that investigation to Grimshaw in the first minutes.

The papers’ allegation is a paid disruption operation. Sherryn Groch, a reporter at The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, later told ABC 7am that the operators were given candidates’ locations, including the Prime Minister’s, and were used to follow, heckle and film. She said the stunts included far-right figures ambushing Anthony Albanese in a hotel lobby.[7] That is journalism. It is not a finding of the committee. Grimshaw’s denial does not cancel the documents the papers say they have seen.

Grimshaw’s first long answer was that the church made no donations or support, “in any way,” to parties or third parties. He said:

>Without names, it doesn’t even meet a threshold of gossip.[5]

He did not know Laurence McIntyre, whom the papers named as one of the far-right figures and who had heckled Albanese at a Brisbane clinic on the first day of the campaign.[8] ABC News repeated McIntyre’s name on the day of the hearing.[9] Grimshaw said he had never heard of Chris De Bruyne or Morgan C Jonas either.[5]

Dr Monique Ryan, the independent member for Kooyong, then put named neo-Nazi interruption on the record. Harrison McLean, a former Proud Boys member, at a Kooyong event on 23 April 2025. Matt Trihey, whom she described as a known neo-Nazi, at Friends of the ABC on 24 April. Joel Davis, whom she also called a known neo-Nazi, at Kew pre-poll on 30 April, at an antisemitic action. Grimshaw had never heard those names either. The church, he said, rejects antisemitism:

>Never funded one cent to any political cause or party or candidate.[10]

The committee did not produce bank records on Friday. Friday did not prove that anyone paid far-right operators. Grimshaw saying he had never heard the names does not close that story. The papers still say they have seen the messages and the payment records. Ryan putting named neo-Nazis on the Hansard is why those records are not a sideshow to how-to-vote cards.

The charity and the fellowship

Grimshaw’s “church” is a small secretariat: website, Bible literature, the phone number on the building. The fellowship, he said, is 82 unincorporated assemblies, “no constituent governing document other than the Holy Bible,” operating autonomously. The people in party shirts at the polling places were, he said, private citizens volunteering. The charity, on his account, had not sent them.

Senator Corinne Mulholland told him former members did not describe the church that way. They had told the committee that church is leadership “from Mr Hales down,” not the person who opens the mail. Grimshaw’s reply was that those witnesses were ex-members. Discounting people who have left does not settle who the church is. Families already know that once you are out, you do not count.[11]

She also pointed to geography. Similar campaigning, similar signage, similar tactics, from Perth to Ipswich. She asked him:

>This committee is supposed to accept the argument that there was no level of coordination of those members from the church.[6]

Grimshaw said he understood it was hard to accept. He then repeated that the charity had not directed them.

Janja Lalich, a sociologist who has spent more than thirty years on high-control groups, has interviewed Exclusive Brethren in Britain and seen clients raised in Plymouth Brethren congregations in Canada. On the podcast Blackballed in July 2022 she said the doctrine of separation keeps members as far from “the world” as possible; they will not eat in the same restaurant room as outsiders, or go into non-Brethren homes:

>There’s an incredible, extreme isolation.[12]

If the rest of the world is wicked, and you may not eat in the same room as it, a polling place is not a small chore. It is other people’s tables, other parties’ colours, officials, cameras, and voters you are not allowed to have in your house. Members still turned up in numbers, in Liberal shirts, in seats the Coalition needed. Grimshaw’s answer is that they chose it as private citizens. A fellowship that polices contact with outsiders does not flood the most public metre of an election as private whim. Either members were sent, or the separation rule was lifted for the campaign. Isolation, on Lalich’s account, is the rule indoors. The campaigning is the exception the street is meant to see.

The recording, and who was not there to answer

Global Media Stream is a private website. Members log in, with credentials tied to the church’s business-advisory firm, and watch recordings the public cannot see: meetings, and messages from leadership.[13] Grimshaw told the committee it was a meeting archive. In June 2025 The Age reported that Bruce Hales, whom the paper called “man of God,” had recorded a short message two weeks into the campaign and that it went out to members on that site. The paper said he told members, including their families, to staff polling places each day and speak to voters as they arrived. After that recording went out, The Age said more members appeared at the tables.[2] On Friday the committee asked who would take responsibility for those words.

The quoted words, Grimshaw said, were a Bible reading, five words from an hour, selective and misinterpreted. Mulholland did not accept that. She said:

>It’s a little hard to accept that was misinterpreted, Mr Grimshaw, when that was a direction that was given from the church leadership and people in very high positions, including members of the Hales family.[14]

She interrupted while he was still explaining the Bible reading.

Video: Mulholland to Grimshaw on the Hales-family stream. JSCEM, 21 August 2026.

Senator Steph Hodgins-May asked whether Bruce Hales is what the church calls the Elect Vessel. That is the name members use for their worldwide leader. Grimshaw would not give him the title. It belongs, he said, to Paul in the Acts of the Apostles. He did recognise Hales as a senior leader, with “no official appointments or titles.” Inside the fellowship, members still use Elect Vessel for the man whose messages they watch. Grimshaw did not admit that name on the Hansard.[15]

He said he cannot speak for Bruce Hales. He still offered what he called Hales’s views:

>the views that I’m offering now about his position.[15]

A director of the registered charity cannot answer for Hales’s recording.

On Blackballed in July 2022, Lalich said that in a group of this kind loyalty runs first to the leader:

>For families, in a cult, there can only be one loyalty, and that’s to the leader. And that includes parents and children.[12]

Hodgins-May said the source of the Hales recording was anonymous “for fear of repercussions.”[16] Laxale asked Grimshaw to take away a request for the audio, or a transcript, and answer later in writing. Grimshaw would take the question. Some of it, he thought, was “covered by copyright et cetera.” Asked whether he would provide it, or was not sure, he said:

>I’m not sure at this stage whether I can provide it, but I’m happy to take the question on notice.[17]

That is avoidant. It is evasive. It is not a witness answering a straightforward request.

Video: Chair asks for the Hales tape. Grimshaw: copyright, not sure, on notice.

Hodgins-May asked the committee to invite Hales so he could say whether the comments attributed to him were genuine, and what he meant by them. She told the chair:

>I don’t know if I’m going to get much further with Mr Grimshaw on that.[16]

Laxale said the committee can consider that at its next meeting. He did not name a date. No invitation has been issued. It is not a summons.

Leaving him unheard, after a recording the papers have reported and a source who stayed anonymous for fear of repercussions, would be the committee stepping back.

Video: Hodgins-May asks that Hales be invited. Laxale parks it for the next meeting.

If they invite him, they are asking whether those comments were direction, and whether members acted on their own. If they do not, Friday leaves Hales unheard, and only a minute of audio in dispute.

They will not own the tables

The church’s written submission to the inquiry cited a survey of members. Grimshaw said they ran it because of media reporting, and to prepare for Friday. They asked whether people had volunteered at the 2025 election, and what that experience was. They did not ask how volunteers came to be in Liberal target seats. Sixty-one replies came back. He did not survey the church’s 16,000 members. In the submission, and on Friday, he called the volunteer turnout a “strong showing.”[18] He said members were outraged after the Prime Minister used the word cult, and that this spurred them to volunteer. Laxale noted that Albanese’s comments were on 29 April and that pre-poll voting had started on 22 April. Grimshaw said the comments were a spur, not the start.

Senator Carol Brown, Labor, asked who those 61 people were, and how the church had reached them. The submission had also said “senior members of our church” volunteered. She asked who those senior members were, and what office they hold. Grimshaw named two of the Hales family as examples, and said they had acted “off their own bat.”[19] Who counts as senior, he said, is “subjective.” Brown said:

>you’re being very vague.[20]

Shayne Neumann, a Labor member of the committee, then asked about the seats. Witnesses had already told the inquiry that Brethren volunteers had turned up in particular House seats, including Kooyong, Bennelong, Bradfield, Goldstein and Neumann’s own seat of Blair. He listed more. Those, he said, were Liberal target seats: places the Coalition needed. He asked who had sent members to those polling places. Grimshaw said he did not know. If you volunteer for a party, he said, the party tells you where to go. Neumann asked whether, in the survey, Grimshaw had asked members how they happened to be in those seats. Grimshaw said no. He had asked whether they volunteered, and what their experience was. He had not asked who they were supporting, or how. A body that can ask members whether they were abused at polling places chose not to ask how they came to be, in unusual numbers, in the seats the Liberals needed.

Grimshaw spent much of Friday on what happened to volunteers at the tables: they were called a cult, filmed, abused. That can be true. It does not answer who sent members, in similar numbers and similar dress, to polling places in seats the Liberals needed. His explanation for why they were there was outrage at the Prime Minister’s language. The committee was asking who organised the turnout. Those are different questions. Friday got an answer on the outrage. It did not get who organised the tables.

Dr Monique Ryan, the independent member for Kooyong, asked why dozens of people identified as Brethren had spent weeks in her inner-Melbourne seat, which has no Brethren congregation that she knows of. She told the committee she had photographs and video. The women, she said, were dressed alike:

>All the girls wore black tennis skirts and black leggings.[10]

They repeated the same line, “make Australia happy again,” and “clearly had a script” at pre-poll. They were not from the local community, she said, and were reluctant to say more. Matching outfits and a slogan at the Liberal tables is not the same as Joel Davis, the neo-Nazi she had named at Kew. Ryan put both on the record that day: the Brethren-identified booth volunteers in Kooyong, and Davis at Kew. Grimshaw’s method was the same for both: he did not know the names, and he would not accept the identification.

Video: Ryan on Kooyong: black tennis skirts, a script, not from the community.

Andrew Gee, the independent member for Calare, put the booth conduct in his own seat on the record. Members of the church in National Party shirts, he told Grimshaw, had followed candidates from polling place to polling place to intimidate them, and had crowded around candidates on the booths. On election day at Bathurst Public School they had filmed him talking to his volunteers; the volunteers were so upset that a complaint was made to the Australian Electoral Commission at that booth. Those three examples, Gee said, were experiences he had had at the hands of Grimshaw’s members. He called the behaviour “disgraceful and reprehensible,” and “an affront to the operation of free and fair elections.”[21]

Grimshaw said he did not support poor behaviour and had no knowledge of what Gee described. He asked what test had been applied to decide the people were Brethren, and whether there had been “definitive identification.” Dress was not membership: “Were they wearing a badge to say they were Brethren members, or did they just happen to be wearing a green T-shirt? The assumption is they were Brethren.” The group is easy to recognise in the street until the question is whether the church is responsible. Then, on his account, identification is an assumption. Gee put the places and the AEC complaint on the Hansard. Grimshaw’s reply was still: prove they were members.

After lunch the committee heard a different witness. Advance Aus Ltd is a campaign organisation, founded in 2018. It is not a church, and it is not the registered charity Grimshaw sat for. Vicki Dunne, a former Liberal member of the Australian Capital Territory parliament and its former Speaker, appeared as Advance’s chair. She told the committee Advance had spent the 2025 election campaigning in seats the Greens held or wanted, after campaigning against the Voice referendum in 2023. The committee did not call Advance as a stand-in for the Brethren. It called a professional campaign organisation that had been a third party on the same 2025 trail. The inquiry was into electoral conduct and campaigning. Advance fields volunteers, picks target seats, and runs how-to-vote work of the kind under examination. Dunne said Advance was independent of the Liberal Party. She also said it was not responsible for other groups that looked similar at the same polling places.

Brethren members in party shirts, Advance’s field campaign, Rapid Relief Team breakfasts for Coalition MPs, and the far-right operators the papers say elders paid are four different things. They can turn up in the same election. That does not make them one organisation. Advance being in the room does not answer the payment allegation, and it does not answer who sent Exclusive Brethren members to Liberal target seats.

Breakfast does not answer the payments

The week after the hearing, no bank records of the alleged payments to far-right operators were produced. What the papers reported instead was a Brethren-linked charity serving breakfast to Coalition leaders.

Rapid Relief Team is a major sponsor of Pollie Pedal, a Coalition cycling fundraiser. Michael Bachelard, of The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, reported that breakfasts ran every day of an eight-day tour that set off from Toowoomba on Saturday 22 August. Among the riders were Angus Taylor, who leads the Liberal opposition in federal parliament, and Tony Abbott, a former prime minister and, at the time, the Liberals’ federal president.[22] Twenty-four hours after Grimshaw called the committee’s questions “bizarre,”[19] Rapid Relief Team was feeding them as if the week were ordinary. The papers’ own headline on that hospitality sat it “days after Nazi revelations.” Breakfast does not answer the payment allegation. It shows how quickly the Coalition can sit down again.

What happens when someone leaves

The sitting will not restore a parent, a child, or a marriage. It did put how the group works onto the official transcript.

In public, “the church” cannot coordinate, cannot control private affairs, and cannot own the people at polling places. Families already know the other answer: when someone is cut off, it is never “the church” that did it. It is the Lord’s will, their choice, a test, the world. Parliament was offered a charity secretariat. Relatives have been dealing with the fellowship.

On the same Blackballed interview, Lalich described what happens when someone leaves a group of this kind:

>If they leave, they lose everything. They’re shunning, no one will ever talk to them again. They lose their families, they lose their job. It’s very extreme.[12]

For children born inside, she said:

>that’s all they know. It’s their entire world.[12]

Newspapers often describe the Exclusive Brethren as a wealthy sect. Many members are not. Grimshaw put small family businesses and mortgages on the record. What holds the group together is not a pile of money. It is rules, teaching, and the cost of leaving. The person on a polling-place table is not the same as the charity director who appeared on Friday, and neither is the same as the operators the papers say elders paid.

Inside the fellowship this week the message writes itself: the Prime Minister said cult, Labor is attacking faith, Senator Matt Canavan called the inquiry a witch-hunt. Public attack has historically tightened this group, not opened it. That noise does not mean a relative was imagining the control. Cutting someone off, what the fellowship calls withdrawal, did not start with last year’s polling places or with the papers’ payment story. A person who leaves, or who will not keep the rules, is treated as gone: no table, often no speech, often no job in a family business. Parents and children have lived that cut for decades. The alleged cash to far-right operators, and breakfast on Pollie Pedal, sit on top of that separation. They are not the first harm. “The registered charity did not do it” is the answer the committee got. It is also the answer families get.

Friday did not call people who have been cut off, the children, or the spouses still inside who do not fully believe. Mulholland’s former-member evidence was waved off as ex-members. That silence is how the system works. It is also a failure of the sitting.

What happens next

Friday left the papers’ payment allegation in parliament, neither proved nor cancelled; named neo-Nazis on the Hansard that a director said he had never heard of; a nationwide volunteer turnout with no institutional owner on the record; and a request to invite Bruce Hales, parked with no date named. The committee should get the recording, or a written explanation of why it cannot be produced, and it should test the papers’ payment trail as evidence rather than as a director’s insult.

A charity director cannot dispose of a recording that was never his voice, and he cannot close a payment story he says he has never seen. What the committee does next will show whether it treats that as enough, or whether “of course there must’ve been” is allowed to remain the last word on the tables, while the neo-Nazi allegation sits unanswered on the money.

Notes

1. “Brethren zealots forgot religion and politics don’t mix”, Sydney Morning Herald editorial, 20 August 2026.
2. Michael Bachelard and Max Maddison, “‘Game On’: The minute-long message that unleashed the Brethren’s election machine”, The Age, 7 June 2025.
3. Sherryn Groch and Michael Bachelard, “Exclusive Brethren secretly paid far-right activists to perform stunts disrupting the federal election”, Sydney Morning Herald / The Age, 20 August 2026.
4. Proof Hansard, Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, 21 August 2026 (uncorrected). Sitting recording, Parliament of Australia.
5. Proof Hansard, pp. 2–3.
6. Proof Hansard, p. 6.
7. Sherryn Groch, interviewed on ABC 7am, 24 August 2026.
8. Matthew Knott, Paul Sakkal and James Massola, “Fringe anti-immigrant figure disrupts Albanese as climate activists target Dutton”, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 March 2025.
9. Holly Tregenza, “Plymouth Brethren Christian Church denies paying influencers to harass election candidates”, ABC News, 21 August 2026.
10. Proof Hansard, pp. 9–10.
11. Proof Hansard, p. 7.
12. Janja Lalich, interview on Blackballed, 8 July 2022, YouTube.
13. Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, “Our network”.
14. Proof Hansard, p. 8.
15. Proof Hansard, p. 21.
16. Proof Hansard, p. 22.
17. Proof Hansard, p. 17.
18. Proof Hansard, p. 25.
19. Proof Hansard, p. 24.
20. Proof Hansard, p. 23.
21. Proof Hansard, pp. 27–29.
22. Michael Bachelard, “Brethren feed Angus Taylor, Tony Abbott days after Nazi revelations”, Sydney Morning Herald / The Age, 23 August 2026.

Originally published on Freedom Times

Spotify / Apple Podcasts

Marina Klauser’s four-part documentary Le faiseur d’anges, on the Methernitha cult and its founder, Paul Baumann, is being shown on Swiss TV channel RTS2 tonight, and the French-language version is already on Play Suisse.

Baumann, known inside the group as “Vatti”, was convicted in 1976 at Thun of sexual offences against minors and sentenced to seven years. He died in 2011, aged 94. Methernitha still exists at Linden in the Bernese Emmental.

RTS2 is due to show the four parts on Monday 24 August (Tonight), from 20:40 Swiss time (CEST). Further parts follow at 21:30, 22:25 and 23:20. Télé 7 Jours listed repeats on 30 August from 22:55, and in the early hours of 31 August.

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In Scotland the Court of Session authorised treatment for two Jehovah’s Witness children after their parents refused blood. In Malta a Valletta court again adjourned the case of a 15-year-old from Bari, held over a school bomb alert.

Politiken published Noah Rosendal’s memoir of Faderhuset, the Danish Christian group. Beobachter returned to Oskar Muggli, the Swiss cult leader. European listings carried Marina Klauser’s documentary on Methernitha.

Emily Watson told Variety the School of Economic Science in London tried to stop her Oscar-nominated part in Breaking the Waves. RTBF and La Libre reported a Scientology-linked stall at a city-subsidised festival in Brussels. BBC London published a year-long sextortion account.

See the full european cult-news summary here >>>

More Pearl Clutching by the Election Interfering Family Destroying Cult!

See the video of the Plymouth Brethren (aka Exclusive Brethren) Cult's lackey being grilled over Far-Right interference in Democracy here!

----

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has described revelations that a secretive Christian sect had paid far-right agitators to disrupt the 2025 election campaign as “a fundamental change to our democracy”.

But the sect behind the campaign, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, stonewalled queries about the intervention when questioned before a parliamentary committee investigating the election.

Church spokesman Lloyd Grimshaw said it was “bizarre” that they had been called to give evidence, and criticised the story in this masthead that exposed the revelations, which detail a secret “influence operation” to disrupt Labor, Greens and teal candidates at the last election.

“We’re put in an extraordinary position, and no church would do that in this country, and we’ve been forced to do it because of all this media reporting,” he said.

Burke, who has the Australian Federal Police in his ministerial portfolio, said the report in this masthead “deals with the concept of people being paid to engage in physical intimidation”, adding, “Australia hasn’t had that before, and we shouldn’t.”

Asked if he wanted to see a police investigation, the minister said he first wanted “to watch what comes out in this parliamentary inquiry” now being conducted by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.

When pressed by MPs on the committee about Brethren members turning up en masse to campaign for the Liberals during the election, Grimshaw insisted that his church had no involvement in any aspect of the campaign. Any such activities were simply the “private affairs of its members”, not the church, he said.

Church spokesman Lloyd Grimshaw said it was “bizarre” that they had been called to give evidence, and criticised the story in this masthead that exposed the revelations, which detail detailing a secret “influence operation” to disrupt Labor, Greens and teal candidates at the last election.

He denied being personally part of chat groups between Brethren elders and right-wing figures to organise up to a dozen stunts where agitators, including affiliates of neo-Nazis, ambushed politicians, including the prime minister, at campaign events.

“I’m not aware of being on any chats,” Grimshaw said.

Read the full story here!

[Watch this post for a link to a draft-transcript of the hearing expected later today, before the official transcript on Monday]

Elders of a wealthy Christian sect [Exclusive or Plymouth Brethren] secretly paid bundles of cash to far-right activists for an “influence campaign” to disrupt Albanese government appearances during the last federal election.

An investigation by this masthead has uncovered a digital trail of evidence revealing how the church, formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren, mobilised far-right figures around the country to track and heckle candidates from Labor and the Greens, along with independents, as part of a wider multimillion-dollar campaign for then-Liberal leader Peter Dutton.

When far-right influencer Laurence McIntyre yelled at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese about immigration on the first day of the election campaign, it looked like just a random attack from the fringes of politics.

But it was one of almost a dozen far-right stunts this masthead has traced back to the Brethren’s dirty tricks campaign. That includes – six political and church sources say – when the prime minister was twice ambushed in his hotel lobby by far-right figures boasting of being fed “private intel” on his location. The church categorically denies any involvement.

Leaked communications, insider accounts and social media footage now reveal the extent of the Brethren’s role in the 2025 election, as a spokesman for the sect, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, prepares to give evidence on Friday to a parliamentary inquiry examining the scandal.

Four sources independently referred to a “duffel bag of cash” provided by senior Brethren members to a key right-wing figure who flew around the country helping coordinate the “influence campaign”.

Read the full article here

Already the Plymouth Brethren Cult have responded during this morning's Senate hearing

LIVE NOW! Will they or won't they? Is PBCC Cult-leader Bruce Hales Chicken? 🐔

On Friday morning (Thursday Evening - TONIGHT - for Europe & USA) Eastern Australia Time (Canberra) the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church Cult are to appear in front of the Australian Parliament's Joint Standing Committee for Electoral Matters' Inquiry into the 2025 federal election.

The Cult has chickened out of attending previous hearings, but this week have stated they will be there.

They have been called along with the Advance lobby group (a far-right unhinged political/religious group) who have received large donations from the Plymouth Brethren (aka Exclusive Brethren) cult.

During the 2025 General Election, the incumbent Prime Minister Albanese called out the Plymouth Brethren as a Cult, and pointed directly towards its involvement in election interference [See the post made that day with video of the Prime Minster calling the PBCC a Cult: https://www.reddit.com/r/cults/comments/1kaw49z/incumbent_australian_prime_minister_anthony/ ]

The Plymouth Brethren Cult have put out a statement saying they will be in attendance at the hearing.

Watch ABC Television's exposé of the Plymouth Brethren Cult broadcast last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFEIJr5rln4

Read about the Plymouth Brethren Cult's attempts to silence a Survivor of Child Sexual Abuse within the Cult: https://www.smh.com.au/national/cartoon-kookaburra-behind-church-s-attempt-to-silence-a-child-sex-abuse-victim-20260406-p5zllv.html (Cheryl Bawtinheimer is a friend of this subreddit and hosts the Get A Life podcast)

Direct Link to Committee YouTube Video Livestream

The week of 10–16 August brought significant cult and high-control-group developments across Europe and internationally.

In France, authorities and anti-cult monitors report intensifying scrutiny of the South Korean movement Shincheonji following revelations of targeted recruitment and coercive control in Paris.

In the UK, the Catholic Bishop of Northampton appeared in court charged with raping a 15-year-old girl following a pilgrimage to Lourdes, while a survivor of the Jesus Army detailed decades of systemic abuse and financial control.

In Hungary, investigators revisited a fatal 1995 dispute in Jászberény linked to the Children of God. In the Netherlands, a kung fu cult survivor published an account of 17 years under a convicted instructor in Kessel.

In Switzerland, an 80-year-old survivor broke six decades of silence regarding the coercive regime of self-proclaimed apostle Oskar Muggli, and a new documentary premiered at the Locarno Film Festival detailing abuse within the Methernitha commune.

In Germany, tens of thousands attended a Jehovah’s Witnesses convention in Hamburg amid stagnant national membership.

Read the summary here >>>

Don't forget to also get your regular cult news from https://www.cultnews101.com/ , from Rick Alan Ross' https://cultnews.net/ , and also subscribe to InfoSect's mailing-list emails https://infosecte.org/en/mailing-lists/

From this week's Observer:

>In the mid-1980s, both Booth and Glennie, who have been in James from the start, became involved in a cult, Lifewave, run by John Yarr. > >Lifewave collapsed amid the usual palavers – “our celibate guru was sleeping around” – but Booth and Glennie have continued with its meditation practice. Glennie, says Booth, “will do seven hours in one go”. > >Booth himself has transformed his meditation into dance, teaching hundreds of classes in which he leads people in movement. “We go into altered states through that,” he says. Such practices have, you feel, kept him and Glennie alive. The rest of James do not meditate.

Also an interview with Booth and Miranda Sawyer was released this morning where Booth talks about his time in Lifewave.

So now we know about the James song God Only Knows from Gold Mother.

In In re the Marriage of Acacia Jensen and Timothy Jensen, (MT Sup. Ct., Aug. 4, 2026), the Montana Supreme Court in a 5-2 decision upheld a trial court's order modifying a parenting plan for a divorced couple's three children.

The mother objected to various provisions in the modified plan, including a provision that the children not to be influenced by Liana Shanti or the Lemurian Mystery School.

According to the court, Liana Shanti is an online based spiritual teacher and mentor who promotes the recovery of suppressed memories, and who leads the Lemurian Mystery School that believe they can recover memories of their previous lives on the lost continent of Lemuria.

The modified Plan also prohibits the use of Lemurian Mystery School nicknames for the children. The court said in part:

>We turn now to the claim that the nickname restriction violated Alihana’s First Amendment and fundamental parenting rights.... > >The evidence in the record makes it clear that Liana Shanti and her group are known to encourage followers to discover and act upon false “repressed memories” of abuse. Once these false abusive memories are uncovered, followers are encouraged to sever ties with family and friends and become more closely involved in the group. Here, a preponderance of evidence shows that Alihana has engaged in embracing false memories of abuse. She has repeatedly accused Tim and her parents of abusive behavior for which no evidence exists... > >... While it is a constitutional right of a parent to provide spiritual education and teaching to their child, it is not the right of a parent to inflict abusive memories upon their child, be those memories fictional or actual. This Court ... cannot hold, then, that it is the constitutional right of a parent to expose their children to fictionalized sexual abuse....

Read the full report: https://religionclause.blogspot.com/2026/08/montana-supreme-court-parenting-plan.html