‘This has to be made an example of’: a former Esther resident goes on the record

This is part four in a series. For the rest of the series, go here.

Former residents of the Pentecostal-linked Esther Foundation which received a $4 million grant from Scott Morrison before the 2019 election mostly spoke anonymously to Crikey. Until now. 

Lydia Taylor tells Crikey that what happened “can’t be allowed to go without being confronted”. 

“This has to be made an example of,” she said. “I would call myself a Christian but their version of Christianity is not mine. What they do is not Christianity. They twist the Bible.”

Other women have spoken anonymously worried that identifying themselves might jeopardise their new lives. One cited how hard it was for those raised in conservative Christian homes to speak against the church: “We’re raised to be martyrs for Jesus if needs be. It might be dramatic but that is literally what we’re talking about.”

Taylor was a resident of the Esther Foundation for five years, from the age of 16 to 21. She arrived there because her life at home became “impossible”. Her mother had parted from Taylor’s Indigenous father and taken up with a man who she felt had little sympathy for her.

“My mum was doing her best and loved me but the environment was not healthy for me,” she said. “Esther wasn’t great, but home was worse.”

Taylor says she was told by some Esther staff that she had “Aboriginal demons”. 

“A couple of the workers said they saw an ‘Aboriginal spirit’ over me … On multiple occasions I was told I had to burn my possessions that might have a worldly spirit on them. There were also regular prayer nights that went for hours.

“They would say to me that as an Aboriginal I was incoherent but I would say that their charismatic Pentecostal crap is totally incoherent.”

Taylor alleges there were attempts to break her connection to her heritage so she could assimilate the foundation’s Christian beliefs. On many occasions, Indigenous residents were not allowed to speak in any Indigenous languages and were forbidden from speaking to each other in order to break “ungodly soul ties”. 

She says the Esther Foundation presented her as a token Indigenous success story to the public as part of marketing efforts: “I felt more like a race than a person and my identity was a collective of ideas and representations, rather than the individual.”

Now 30 she says she still bears the scars of her time at the Esther Foundation from 10 years ago.

“The emotional baggage it’s given me is incredibly heavy,” she says. “I fear death. I fear hell. I’m scared to my core. I learnt to fear more than I learnt to believe.”

During her time at Esther, Taylor studied for a diploma in Christian ministry at the Harvest West Bible College in Perth which, she says, was open to a variety of religious beliefs.

“I’m not in the Pentecostal loop any more,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned that conservative white Christian stuff is skewered now. I believe in the individual, the individual’s rights and the individual’s respect within their own belief systems.” She now works at an Aboriginal legal centre in Perth. 

The Esther Foundation’s founder, Patricia Lavater, has denied allegations that there were attempts to drive out “Aboriginal spirits”. Burning possessions, she said, was symbolic and applied only to any stolen goods the girls might have brought in. 

At the same time she conceded that some allegations might be true but suggested this might be because she “wasn’t always there” to supervise staff: “A lot of the girls who were successful under the program stayed on as staff and weren’t qualified.” 

Lavater and the foundation parted ways in early 2020, six months after a new CEO took over and reviewed the foundation’s practices.

It said then that it was exploring “Indigenous and cross-cultural training opportunities” for the future.