Bek Condello was 12 years old when she first spoke in tongues.
“I still don’t know what speaking in tongues is, but I wanted to fit in,” Bek, 40, tells Woman’s Day.
“I think in my childhood brain, I just manifested what I thought everyone around me wanted to see and hear. I was expecting an earth-shattering awareness or that something within me would change, but I felt nothing.”
Speaking in tongues was practised daily by members of the Geelong Revival Centre (GRC), an extreme Pentecostal church Bek’s mother joined as a teenager.
Established by Pastor Noel Hollins in 1972, he preached that God could return to earth at any moment and that non-believers would be tortured during the accompanying Armageddon.
TURNING A BLIND EYE
A Victorian inquiry into religious fringe groups and cults received 25 submissions to do with the GRC last year.
Former members and founders of Stop Religious Coercion Australia, Ryan and Catherine Carey, were the first to present evidence and spoke of the “coercive control” perpetrated on members.
They and other ex-members allege Pastor Hollins, who died in 2024, headed up a cult-like church that controlled all aspects of members’ lives, told followers to avoid conventional medical treatment and turned a blind eye to the physical and sexual abuse of children.
Bek’s mother joined the church when she was a student at university in Canberra and after meeting Bek’s father, introduced him to the extreme organisation.
“My grandparents did their best to try and get her out of it, but the more they tried, the more it pushed her into it,” says Bek.
With her parents being “especially hardcore”, Bek was homeschooled and not allowed friends outside of the GRC.
“I had no concept or understanding of what was on the outside,” she recalls.
“I’d make a friend every now and then at church, but then maybe their family would leave so I got very used to losing people. And thinking, not only have I lost my friend but they’re going to burn in hell.”
Bek also lived with the constant worry of the world ending. Even a thunderstorm was a possible sign, it was preached.
“I’d start panicking and thinking, ‘I’m not ready’. I was a very scared little kid,” she says.
“I learned to disconnect myself.”
At 10 years old, Bek summoned the courage to ask to go to mainstream school and to her amazement, was allowed – begrudgingly.
But even there she knew not to share her family’s beliefs.
“I wanted to be accepted and without anyone really telling me, I immediately worked out that it wouldn’t be cool to tell my friends about the cult,” she says.
Too terrified to express her real feelings and worries in case they were used against her, Bek never kept a diary and learned not to complain.
“My parents told me from a really young age that if you sin, if you leave the church, you’re out. You’re getting kicked out of the house. They didn’t care how old I was,” she remembers.
FAITHFUL SERVANT
But despite her intense unhappiness, Bek remained faithful to the GRC as the years ticked by.
After leaving school at 16, like other girls in the community, she married at age 22 to another GRC member she knew only superficially.
While thoughts of leaving remained constant, she couldn’t bring herself to take that step.
“I had this fear that I was going to burn in hell and worried that if I left, I’d be forever tormented and afraid. What if they were right?” she explains.
Bek finally broke away when she was 27 and, surprisingly, doesn’t regret having waited until then.
“As traumatic as the years that followed were, I’m glad I didn’t leave then because I would have got into a lot of trouble.”
INCREDIBLE LIFE
“I think I might have come running back and never left again or gone down a really slippery path. I was very naive,” she admits.
Bek left her marriage five years later, and only then was able to embrace her freedom. “When I left, I wanted so desperately to grab up a couple of people and say, ‘It’s fine out here. I didn’t die. Nothing bad happened’,” she says.
Bek hasn’t stopped travelling since then, enjoying every moment of her freedom, and has now penned a memoir.
“I never thought I’d be here,” she admits. “I just wanted to get out of a cult. I wanted to be free. And now I have this incredible life.”
Can You Handle A Girl Like Me? Penguin, $36.99
