Sydney ex-member of religious sect Providence claims last 10 years of her life was a ‘waste’
A seemingly small moment during a match of tennis made this Sydney woman realise that the person she cared about most was a “fake”.
News.com, Australia/May 31, 2022
By Alex Turner-Cohen
A Sydney woman claims she spent 10 years living a lie in a religious fringe group operating in Australia which was founded by a convicted rapist.
For a decade, Lucy* was a member of a Christian sect known as Providence.
It’s a South Korean sect also called Jesus Morning Star, Christian Gospel Mission, the Bright Moon Church, the Global Association of Culture and Peace and Setsuri that preaches the Second Coming of Jesus has already happened.
A now 77-year-old Korean, Jeong Myeong-seok, founded Providence in 1978, proclaiming he was the messiah.
Jeong was sentenced to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting several female followers. He was released from jail in 2018.
The religious group has reportedly been operating in Australia since 1997 with “temples” currently in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide.
“There were red flags, but they breadcrumb you, they really do it slowly like you’re a frog in a simmering pot,” Lucy told news.com.au. “I felt like I’d lost everything after I got out.”
It comes just a month after news.com.au exposed how Providence opened up a church in the heart of Sydney near several major universities, at 4/173-179 Broadway, Ultimo, as well as claims the group is using a uni society as a “front group” to recruit people, an allegation denied by Providence.
Providence has spread to more than 50 nations, with 200,000 members and 400 churches worldwide, including several Australian capital cities.
Lucy, now in her 30s, became a Providence believer when she was a 21-year-old university student in Sydney in 2007.
She thinks her dysfunctional relationship with her family, coupled with breaking up with a boyfriend and becoming a binge drinker, made her lonely and more susceptible to religion.
After coming along to a bible study session, she soon became enamoured with Providence.
“There was no stability within me at all, the appeal of Providence was the structure that they had,” she said. “They set the tone for your life.”
This included what to eat, what to wear, what to do with her time and even where to sleep, according to Lucy.
Lucy was required to wake up at 4am and pray every morning with all the members “because it was a time that god listens to our prayers”.
And of course, sex, drugs and alcohol were a no-no, she said, and your thoughts had to be purified “all the time”.
“We were all living in this penthouse together with four bedrooms and two people in each bedroom, two single beds in each room, even a mattress on the floor. I slept on the floor for three years,” she said.
She couldn’t wear black clothes nor could she consume ramen or coffee, and had to dress nicely for Sunday service.
Women in the group were also taught that they were brides of god and by extension, the brides of the sect’s leader and messiah, Jeong.
“I was contributing to something that I didn’t realise was so sinister,” Lucy added.
Doubts creep in
Lucy says her mental health was worsening but she didn’t go to a psychologist as she was encouraged to listen to more sermons and pray to get better.
“I was mentally damaged,” she admitted.
Quitting the sect did not seem like an option: “The sermons threatened me with spiritual death, I’d go to hell if I left.”
When she finally broke away from Providence in 2017, she had blanked a large part of her time there as a way to cope with her experiences within the church.
Currently, the church deals with mental illness by importing “special holy water” from South Korea for sick members to “drink by the millimetre” to improve their condition, according to a member who left Providence last year and who spoke to news.com.au in March.
After Lucy’s anxiety and depression reached a point that she could no longer ignore, she questioned the sect and distanced herself from it.
“But I wanted to make sure my 10 years in there hadn’t been a waste,” she said.
The tennis incident
With the rape convictions surrounding the messiah, Jeong, as well as allegations he sent sexually explicit letters to members including Australians she knew, Lucy decided it was time to meet him face-to-face for peace of mind about her decision to leave.
She flew to Providence’s South Korean compound where Jeong lived in a mansion. There, she spoke with the so-called messiah and shook his hand.
She stayed for several weeks. When she watched Jeong play a game of tennis against one of his worshippers, she had an epiphany.
Although Jeong was in his mid-70s at the time, spectators celebrated every time he hit the ball, as if he was Ash Barty.
“They’d be cheering him. Every. Single. Shot. I’m standing there thinking ‘This is ridiculous’,” Lucy said.
In that moment it hit her. “I could tell he was a fake, it was all a sham,” she said.
It prompted her to opt out of the sect for good.
As a uni student, Lucy was living off meagre payments from Centrelink’s Austudy scheme for many years while in the sect.
However, she says she was expected to give away a minimum of 10 per cent of her money to support the church in a practice called a tithe.
“Even though it was like $50 a week, that’s a lot for a person on Austudy,” she said.
There was one religious member who “made it unbearable for people there. The stress we were under because of this person, it was extreme.
“If you didn’t tithe, [the member] would say ‘Why didn’t you tithe for this week?’ If you were one minute late to the service, [they would] call you out.”
News.com.au understands the person Lucy is referring to is not currently a pastor at the church.
During her 10 years in Providence, Lucy estimates she gave away between $15,000 and $20,000 to the church — money she doesn’t expect to see again.
“All that time, money and effort,” she lamented. “I felt like I’d lost everything after I got out, career-wise, time, spending precious time with my family.”
Providence opens church in Sydney
In March, news.com.au revealed Providence bought a Sydney office suite at 4/173-179 Broadway and turned it into a church, with renovations finishing earlier this year.
A church spokesperson confirmed the purchase of the property, but denied its purpose was to recruit young members from nearby universities.
News.com.au understands this is Providence’s first property in NSW but they also bought another building five years ago in Melbourne, at 7 Rakaia Way, Docklands.
Former members claimed that Providence recruited people – particularly young women – through “front group” university societies, doing photo shoots or modelling gigs, conducting surveys or inviting potential recruits to organised sport.
A dance group in UTS and a student society at Sydney University were reportedly used to indoctrinate people into the sect, according to an ex-believer.
Providence admitted some members had created the Sydney University society but rejected claims it was used to bring non-religious people to their cause.
The church “does not have any ‘front’ groups that operate in universities or elsewhere,” a spokesperson said.
A former member of the religious sect called Liz appeared on SBS in 2014 claiming she had been encouraged to write intimate letters to Jeong while he was imprisoned.
She said he regularly replied with explicit contentMia herself was recruited while at university and moved into a share house with other followers after several months of getting to know Providence.
One of the senior church members who also resided in her shared accommodation kept apprised of everyone’s weight, their eating regimes and even their sleeping habits.
“We were encouraged to only sleep a maximum of four hours a night,” Mia said.
The rest of the time normally reserved for sleep was meant to be spent praying.
“Some people would get up at one, two or 3am, we’d generally have the morning service [after that],” she continued.
“The [church leaders] also said to skip breakfast, which might not sound like a big deal, but [when you’re waking up that early] you could go up to 10 hours without eating.
“Your ability to think critically is massively reduced.”
The senior member living with Mia also wanted a number of women in their share house to lose weight.
“She monitored everything about us, she was saying ‘You need to lose weight’, she was trying to micromanage that, she knew all of our weights, she was trying to get everyone to be perfect,” Mia explained.
Mia now studies psychology to help former sect members like herself and believes what she endured were “techniques they used to break your mind down”.
News.com.au understands the person Mia lived with is no longer involved in the Sydney or Canberra congregation of Providence, nor are they currently a pastor.Mia knew her mother was concerned she had become involved in a religious fringe group and when she brought this up with the church leaders, they had a plan.
“They said to invite your parents over,” she said. “You’d have one service with your parents, then the actual service after.”
During the ‘fake’ service, South Korean paraphernalia would be removed from the church and there would be no references made about Jeong being the messiah.
But Mia’s mother was not convinced so she ended up bringing in a ‘deprogramming’ expert as her daughter’s mental health worsened.
She paid for Rick Ross, founder of the Cult Education Institute, to fly into Australia from the US and stay with the family.
Over the course of three days while Mia was staying at her mum’s recovering from a medical episode, Mr Ross successfully “deprogrammed” her.
“For a while I was very hostile, to me he was satanic. I was trying to block out what he was saying,” Mia said.
He started by talking broadly about other religious sects before zeroing in on Providence itself.
“At the end of the first day he shook me,” Mia said.
“I remember being so angry and confused, I parked the car near an oval and just screamed, it was impossible to process what’s happening.”
In a panic, she contacted a church member who tried to get her to leave in the middle of the night and fly to Melbourne.
Luckily, Mia didn’t and by the third day she had well and truly left Providence.
“Mum really saved my life,” Mia said, believing her mental illness would have deteriorated to a point of no return had she stayed.
“You are so conditioned, you’re encouraged to think in the binary. This is the good way of thinking, this is the bad way of thinking.
“I think for me, I’m against everything that religion stands for.”
, such as “your white skin arouses me” and “your vagina would look pretty”.
A Providence spokesperson denied this at the time.
‘Cheshire cat smiles’
Mia*, another former devotee of Providence, met Jeong while he was in jail during her two-year stint at the sect.
“They were incredibly strict,” the Canberran said to news.com.au, recalling her experience at the sect from a decade ago when she was in her late teens.
“We had to keep this Cheshire cat smiles on our faces, we couldn’t have negative thoughts, we were supposed to be incredibly happy because we’d found the truth.”
In what she describes as a “wild” incident, she was made to lie to and hide from her worried parents before boarding a flight to South Korea to meet Jeong.
Her roommates, who were also church members, “made me hide in a closet while my father knocked at the door,” Mia recalled. “When one of them opened it, they pretended they couldn‘t speak any English, and said I wasn’t there.
“As soon as my parents left, they put me in the back seat of the van, covered me in a blanket and drove me.”
She was taken to an apartment in Sydney where she stayed for several days before travelling to South Korea and was instructed to tell her family she was in Perth.
Although she only met Jeong once face-to-face on her trip, she continued to communicate with him through letters.
Mia attended modelling groups in Australia and church members would take photographs of all the women. These pictures would then be sent to Jeong.
He would write back and pick out the girls he deemed prettiest, according to Mia. These women would then be targeted so that they could eventually join Providence.
In one letter Mia kept a digital copy of, it read: “Catch Bonnie and Ursula. Let’s make them stars like you guys.
“Animals catch things with their teeth, but people catch people with the word: the Holy Son told me that, and he told me to teach you that.”
It was signed off as ‘Anyoung’ which Mia says was how Jeong signed his letters.
Mia herself was recruited while at university and moved into a share house with other followers after several months of getting to know Providence.
One of the senior church members who also resided in her shared accommodation kept apprised of everyone’s weight, their eating regimes and even their sleeping habits.
“We were encouraged to only sleep a maximum of four hours a night,” Mia said.
The rest of the time normally reserved for sleep was meant to be spent praying.
“Some people would get up at one, two or 3am, we’d generally have the morning service [after that],” she continued.
“The [church leaders] also said to skip breakfast, which might not sound like a big deal, but [when you’re waking up that early] you could go up to 10 hours without eating.
“Your ability to think critically is massively reduced.”
The senior member living with Mia also wanted a number of women in their share house to lose weight.
“She monitored everything about us, she was saying ‘You need to lose weight’, she was trying to micromanage that, she knew all of our weights, she was trying to get everyone to be perfect,” Mia explained.
Mia now studies psychology to help former sect members like herself and believes what she endured were “techniques they used to break your mind down”.
News.com.au understands the person Mia lived with is no longer involved in the Sydney or Canberra congregation of Providence, nor are they currently a pastor.
Mia knew her mother was concerned she had become involved in a religious fringe group and when she brought this up with the church leaders, they had a plan.
“They said to invite your parents over,” she said. “You’d have one service with your parents, then the actual service after.”
During the ‘fake’ service, South Korean paraphernalia would be removed from the church and there would be no references made about Jeong being the messiah.
But Mia’s mother was not convinced so she ended up bringing in a ‘deprogramming’ expert as her daughter’s mental health worsened.
She paid for Rick Ross, founder of the Cult Education Institute, to fly into Australia from the US and stay with the family.
Over the course of three days while Mia was staying at her mum’s recovering from a medical episode, Mr Ross successfully “deprogrammed” her.
“For a while I was very hostile, to me he was satanic. I was trying to block out what he was saying,” Mia said.
He started by talking broadly about other religious sects before zeroing in on Providence itself.
“At the end of the first day he shook me,” Mia said.
“I remember being so angry and confused, I parked the car near an oval and just screamed, it was impossible to process what’s happening.”
In a panic, she contacted a church member who tried to get her to leave in the middle of the night and fly to Melbourne.
Luckily, Mia didn’t and by the third day she had well and truly left Providence.
“Mum really saved my life,” Mia said, believing her mental illness would have deteriorated to a point of no return had she stayed.
“You are so conditioned, you’re encouraged to think in the binary. This is the good way of thinking, this is the bad way of thinking.
“I think for me, I’m against everything that religion stands for.”
News.com.au spoke to Mr Ross who confirmed that he had done several of these ‘deprogrammings’ or interventions with Providence members.
“I have done three interventions, all in Australia, to help people leave Providence,” he said.
“Two were successful and one was not.
“Former members of Providence have complained about the deceptive [tactics] used to recruit them, harsh living conditions in the group and labour exploitation. They have also said that the extreme demands of the group often led to breakdowns in old friendships and at times family estrangement.”
$10,000 in just a couple of years
Another ex-Providence member who previously spoke to news.com.au, Samantha*, gave away about $10,000 to the church in just a couple of years.
She claimed donations were tracked in an Excel spreadsheet where the church’s finance department could ensure members paid their dues.
“We had education where if you’re not giving a tithe then you’re robbing god,” another ex-member who did not want to be named told news.com.au.
A Providence spokesperson denied that financial contributions were compulsory.
“Tithing is not compulsory and it is rarely spoken of in our sermons or teachings,” they said. “Members are free to give offerings as they please.”
News.com.au sent a detailed list of questions to representatives for Providence relating to the allegations made by former members, and made repeated requests for comment. Providence did not respond to those questions.
They said the group “is a Bible centred Christian organisation. It is a fun and family-oriented religion, and not isolationist. People searching for meaning are attracted to us for those reasons.”
They also denied they fitted the technical definition of a religious cult.
New charges brought against Jeong
On March 16, lawyers held a press conference at the Seoul Lawyer’s Hall in Jongno-gutwo alleging Jeong had reoffended since being released from prison in February 2018.
The lawyers represented two women from Australia and Hong Kong who claimed they had been molested or sexually assaulted by the Providence leader, according to local reports.
The 30-year-old Australian said she was indoctrinated into the sect’s Australian branch in 2014 when she was 22.
She alleged she had been subjected to sexual touching five times since July 2018, when she visited South Korea on a church-funded trip.
News.com.au does not suggest any wrongdoing on the part of any Australian members of Providence in relation to these claims.
Providence is “not some righteous religion, they’re an organisation that supports an actual criminal, a rapist and that is not OK, that can’t go on”, the unnamed Aussie woman stated during the broadcast.
Another woman, Maple Ying Tung Huen from Hong Kong, claimed Jeong had raped her multiple times.
“I think the task that Heaven gave me before I die is to reveal the truth so that there are no more victims. Jung Myeong-seok is absolutely not the messiah,” she said, according to a translation.
The lawyer representing both women has filed a complaint about Jeong with the National Police Agency on charges of ordinary quasi-rape and ordinary quasi-forced molestation.
Providence has strongly rejected the sexual assault claims.
In a statement shared on their website, Providence said although they wanted “to express our regret for this situation”, they denied all wrongdoing and called the allegations untrue.
*Names withheld over privacy concerns.
To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.
