(Image: Private Media)

This is the second of three stories in a Crikey investigation into a federal government-funded rehab facility with close ties to Hillsong — and how taxpayers are paying for a deal set up by the Morrison government. Read the first here.

Washing Brian Houston’s Audi was not the kind of therapy Jacob Harrison had in mind when he entered the Pentecostal-linked rehab facility one80TC to treat his alcohol addiction, but that’s what he found himself doing — an unpaid volunteer worker at Hillsong’s annual conference.

Glitzy up front, with the great global pastor Houston on stage, the conference was packed to the rafters at Sydney Olympic Park. But it came with its share of grungy behind-the-scenes jobs. 

“You get there at six in the morning and you’re working like a dog all day,” Harrison said. “Generally we were in the motor pool all day, cleaning the cars as they came in. The international guests that were coming in had sparkly cars. I had to pay special attention to Brian Houston’s Audi; I had to clean that inside and out,” he told Crikey.   

The path to cleaning Houston’s Audi began months earlier when Jacob, then 33, was leaving the psychiatric ward of a Sydney hospital. 

“I came to one80TC direct from a psych ward — a gay man with a working knowledge of Christianity garnered from Monty Python,” he said. 

One80TC’s website highlights that its treatment conforms with government-backed standards. It says it follows NSW Health drug and alcohol residential rehabilitation guidelines and meets the demands of the Australasian Therapeutic Communities Association industry body. It says it is accredited under a quality management system known as ISO 9001:2015 and that it adheres to “stringent reporting requirements” under its federal grant agreement.

Jacob Harrison found that his first six weeks at the facility were helpful — but then it changed.  A lot of religious “therapy” was in store. Ultimately it did his head in.  

A steady diet of Hillsong 

“We had to go to Hillsong at least twice a week, but as it was pretty much the only time we were allowed out, we were kind of happy to go,” he said.

“One of my first Sundays at Hillsong, the subject of the sermon happened to be the power of speaking in tongues. I thought it was going to be a lecture  But no, it was the real thing, and we were all going to do it now.  

“This was a really frightening experience. The Hillsong campus holds about 5000 people, I believe, all of them putting their hands up and shouting in the air. It’s pretty confronting for someone that’s, well, just fragile in general and very new to all this.”

Harrison quickly learned that the best way to cope was to blend in. 

“I started reading the Bible and having discussions about it and stuff. And I was putting my hands up and waving around them around like I just didn’t care. The more you do that, the more you show an interest, the more little freedoms and little things they let you get away with.”

Secular books were banned. Instead, Harrison was left to read religious tracts such as “How to Prophecy” which he believes had been handed down to the facility from Hillsong College.

According to Harrison the “therapy” took the form of staff members having “kind of thought bubbles”, which they shared. 

“That’s how Pentecostalism works. You and I might have a thought bubble come into our head and go, ‘Hmmm, that’s interesting. I might write that down’. They’ll think it’s divine intervention, that ‘God has put this thought in my head, I must share it’. It’s like the rules of magic apply,” he said.

Ultimately what Harrison calls the 24/7 bombardment of religion upended his own sense of reality, with disturbing consequences.

“The music of Hillsong is mostly all that you’re hearing. You also heard people’s clearly psychiatric illnesses being described as possible messages from God. This came from one80TC employees who should have recognised that people needed psychiatric care or some kind of higher level of care. But instead they were validating these voices people were hearing as being messages from God.

“I’d been cut off from my own tribe. The magical thinking had started to make me question my own beliefs, and my own sense of reality. And when that happened, that’s what freaked me out.”

After six months Harrison left one80TC and checking himself into a secular rehab clinic.

One80TC’s website contains heartfelt video testimonials of lives changed by the organisation’s therapy. The “turnaround” stories are typically told with a positive of finding oneself and a new “season” of happiness in God. The stories of addiction are harrowing and speak of a need for community. 

But that’s not how it worked for Jacob Harrison.

“Look, everyone’s entitled to their belief,” he said. “That’s cool. But it’s not cool to kind of enforce that, especially on vulnerable populations, especially when they’re seeking treatment.”

Next: the lack of regulation and the underfunding of rehabilitation.