A South Korean cult has been accused of recruiting vulnerable young Australian women at shopping centres to be brainwashed and then sent abroad.
The victims were told they were the ‘spiritual brides’ of Jung Myung Seok (JMS), the self-proclaimed second coming of Jesus Christ and messiah of the Providence church he founded in 1978.
But JMS is a convicted rapist and the women were sent to his Wolmyeongdong compound not for any spiritual reasons, but to allegedly be sexually assaulted.
The recruiters are reportedly told to find tall, slim white women for JMS, and two Australian survivors, Liz and Amy (not their real names) have spoken out to warn others to be aware they could be targeted too.
Amy was recruited while on her way to meet a friend to go bowling at Melbourne Central shopping centre, she told Channel 7’s Spotlight program.
‘All of a sudden, somebody tapped me on my shoulder, I turned around and two girls were smiling at me … they asked me to do a survey about my faith,’ she said.
Amy was 22 at that time in 2014 and had a growing interest in Christianity. The chance encounter would change her life for the worst.
‘I believed that this was a almost an elevated version of Christianity because that’s how they pitched it to me,’ she said.
Liz had just finished Year 12 when she was approached at the Canberra Centre and thought it ‘sounded really fun and exciting’.
‘I was on a gap year, so I was looking to travel, I was working part-time, and I was also thinking about what I was going do with my life.
‘I was in a really good position to be susceptible to psychological coercion, and they definitely took advantage of that.’
The young women attended bible study classes and lecturers and eventually moved into cult houses in Australia, where their lives were strictly controlled, including getting up at 2am every day to pray to JMS.
In time, their physical and mental resistance was worn away and the people they thought of as friends told them they were ‘faith stars’.
Hellbound and Down 