Claire Crawford went to hell and back at Esther House. Why isn’t it shut down?

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

Claire Crawford was barely 15 when she arrived at the Esther Foundation in Perth. She was sent there by her “cultish Pentecostal” parents because she was self-harming, “sort of depressed” and struggling with eating issues and they knew others who had attended the foundation’s treatment facility, Esther House. 

“It was one of the most foreign experiences I’ve ever been a part of,” she says. “There was nothing evidence-based about the program. There was no actual therapy such as cognitive behaviour therapy or the like. We would go to these church services and we would be expected to stand in them for hours and hours and have our demons cast out of us.

“The entire program was that we had demons in us. And that’s what the therapy was — there was no psychiatric care.”

Crawford’s stay was relatively brief — a mere five months. Others were in the Esther program for years. She says she left Esther House more traumatised than when she went in.

Prophet Caren

One night involving senior staff member and chaplain “Prophet Caren” has stayed with her.

“Caren was the prophet of the program,” she says. “So if she heard from God she would give messages to the girls through [Esther’s founder] Patricia Lavater.

“I wasn’t standing up in church one day. I was just tired. Patricia came up to me and said that Caren had a vision or a prophecy from God she wanted to give me. So Caren came over and said: ‘I have to tell you that you’re going to hell.’

“So I’ve kind of carried that forever. I’m not a Christian any more. I wouldn’t call myself a religious person, but it was the stress on a teenager of having someone say that you’re going to this place forever, you know, this eternal damnation.”

(Crikey has been told by other residents that standing up at a church session for hour upon hour was a requirement.)

“One of the most disturbing things that ever happened at Esther House which really affected me was we were told that if we ever left the program, that a sexual spirit would find us and we would be raped or we would be killed because that had happened to previous girls.

“So after leaving Esther House I really did believe for a period of time that these really bad things could happen to me to the point where I was medicated, because I thought that people would kidnap me or would try and take me.”

The death of a friend

For Crawford the breaking point was the death of her friend Emma, who had been in the Esther program for a long time.

“After she left the program and after I left the program, we lived in Melbourne … We moved here to get away from Esther. Emma had so much trauma that she hadn’t worked through and such a serious drug problem but she honestly just believed that all she had to do was pray. 

“She would just say to me all the time, ‘Claire, I just need to pray more’ or ‘I just need to read my Bible more.’ And because of that, she would be in and out of Esther House all the time. She eventually had a baby and when her baby was about one Emma died of a drug overdose.”

Crawford believes Emma’s death could have been prevented if she had received medical treatment. 

“She had a very serious drug problem and she was extremely mentally unwell, but she had been told for many, many years that her problem was that she didn’t graduate from the program.”

The escape

Crawford managed to escape while attending an Esther camp where, she recalls, the prayer sessions were even more intense than usual,

The camp happened to be near to where her parents lived. In the middle of the night she ran out into the bush: “I didn’t have a phone or anything. I just ran out and my parents knew to meet me there.”   

Crawford has two young children and has built a life with her partner, but she remains part of a close group of former residents. 

“I would call them my sisters because we really went to hell and back together,” she says. “And we created these really strong bonds because of our experiences at Esther. And I guess to see them still struggling, to see myself still struggling as a result of religious abuse is really devastating.

“To me it’s really wild that Esther House hasn’t been shut down.”