I was trapped in a cult & forced to give all my money to leaders who made me watch bizarre hot tub videos
The Sun, UK/October 13, 2024
By Ryan Merrifield
A cult victim has described how brain-washed members donated all their money and were subjected to bizarre ‘teaching’ videos of the sect's leaders in hot tubs.
Richard Turner was ironically working for a modern slavery support charity tied to the ominous Hope City Church when he was inadvertently drawn into its dark web.
More than a decade after his first encounter with the church in a hotel in Liverpool, the 41-year-old is still coming to terms with his trauma.
Now rebranded as C3 Hope after an internal investigation saw founder Dave Gilpin resign and leave the country in 2020, the church still has multiple branches across the North of England.
However, C3 has completely distanced itself from its previous iteration and is under new leadership - while Mr Gilpin has criticised the probe report as "incomplete".
Richard, originally from Merseyside but who now lives in York, is the son of a Church of England vicar.
In a bid to support other cult survivors and help them recognise when they are being manipulated by such coercion, he has agreed to share his story.
Richard began working for City Hearts charity - now replaced by Causeway - in 2013, then tied to the church’s trust.
He was in a vulnerable place and easily latched onto the group’s teachings.
Some of his work line managers were pastors, and so it was an easy trap to fall into.
The group used a technique Richard referred to as “love bombing”, telling you how great you are and how pleased they were you’d joined them.
But quickly, members’ self-esteem was broken down to the point they felt worthless without such ‘love’.
Richard even began to starve himself for weeks becoming ill in a confused bid to feel closer to God, before being humiliated by the leaders for being “too obsessive”, despite that being their teachings.
At one stage he was dating a long-term member who had been advised to cut off her own mum - and the couple were even assigned ‘accountability partners’ who reported back everything they did whilst together.
They weren’t allowed to ever kiss and were forbidden from ever sleeping in the same building.
Richard was housed with several other members for a time, and they would report back on anything he did - and would often go snooping in his room when he was out looking for further fuel for the leaders to use.
Richard told The Sun: “The messed up thing about cults is they break you and then blame you for being broken.
“That’s why it’s hard to recover because you still think it’s your fault.”
He added: “Any sense of weakness in me they weaponised to make it look like I was bad.”
Even when he first went to a meeting in a conference room at the Aldelphi Hotel in Liverpool, he knew something wasn’t quite right.
He said: “I sat in a service and they were asking for money, and the way they were talking about money - something in my head said ‘you know this isn’t right’, but I also felt safe and happy, so thought it must be okay.”
Hope City was a prosperity teaching church, Richard explained. “They teach you that God wants you to be rich and you invest money in the church and God will give you the money back.
“You can see how that works because the church becomes very wealthy,” he added.
It wasn’t just small donations the leaders wanted - on top of 10% of a member’s salary they encouraged “reckless giving”.
“You give when you can’t give, to the point where it’s scary,” said Richard.
What is Hope City Church?
Hope City Church was founded in Sheffield in 1991 by Dave and Jenny Gilpin.
The couple had moved to the UK from Brisbane, Australia, where they had been part of the Assemblies of God church.
They formed what was initially called The Hope of Sheffield Christian Church, which went on to open branches in Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, Sunderland, Birmingham and Lancashire - and later in London and cities across Europe.
Hope City has been linked to the movement of evangelical-style churches in Australia, most successful being Hillsong Church.In 2020, the Senior Pastors of the church resigned due to allegations of racism. After this, a rebranding took place to C3 Hope and different branches became autonomous under their own local leaderships.
However, each church remains under the governance of the Trustees of Hope City Church.
He said he’d been warned about such prosperity churches from mainstream Christianity, and to avoid them.
He recalled someone boasting about handing over £15,000 - and others were giving so much they couldn’t afford to pay for food.
One couple, both pastors, after having a baby, were talking about how the church’s needs must come before their infant’s.
Richard shudders to think how much he gave, but by the time he fled the shared accommodation, he was just about penniless.
He would handover money whenever he could from his small wages - regularly giving at least £100 a month for the three years he was involved, but at other times bigger sums.
The organisation - which, in its current form is still headquartered at a ‘megacentre’ in Sheffield - in its previous guise would also run ‘Dream Offering’ events, which Richard describes as “money making scam conferences”.
“Everything was all about not being stingy and that God loves a generous giver. It was all conditioning,” said Richard.
During one such three-day Dream Offering event in Sheffield, in which attendees paid for accommodation, he said: “My mind was empty and I gave them £300 cash. I wasn’t even critically analysing my own finances anymore.
“There was all this talk of abandonment and trusting in God. You’d be like ‘this is for God’, you get to the point where you’re not thinking anymore.”
'WHERE DID THE MONEY GO?'
But now that he’s stepped away from it, he said laughing: “I wonder now where the heck all the money was going to?
“It’s hard to read the label on a bottle if you’re inside the bottle. You don’t see it for what it is, it’s confusing, it’s blurred, it doesn’t make sense.
“It’s all messing with your head.”
At the height of his time with Hope City, Richard was working there through the charity four days a week, and then attending midweek and Sunday services.
Those meetings at the Adelphi were more like rock concerts, he recalls.
“The hotel had two big screens at the front, and a stage with lights. There was a smoke machine. It was loud.”
Even now, he admits: “It was exciting to be in, like Hillsong. It felt so good to be there. Everyone was saying ‘Richard, it’s so good to have you here’, you got such a high from the love bombing.”
The chairs were all in lines and attendees would wait outside in ‘atmosphere’ before ushers told them where to sit.
One time an usher became angry because Richard wanted to break the line and sit at the back.
“They wanted all the seats filled at the front for the photos on the website,” he said.
He laughs now remembering the sermons given.
“It’s all very emotional language, designed to make you feel, not think,” he explained.
“You come away feeling inspired and good but you have no idea what they’ve been saying. ‘You’re going to have a breakthrough’, loads of spiritual jargon, it’s almost hypnotic.
“It’s designed to make you feel certain emotions but not get any actual message from it.”
The pastors were worshipped like gods, with members calling them “Prophet”.
“They had a ‘you must submit to the leader’ type of teaching.
“There was strange occasions when I was told not to speak to other Christians from other churches.
“There were video teachings played where the pastor was in a hot tub, with all the young male leaders standing in their shorts.”
Richard became more deeply involved when he began a relationship with another member - who he understands is still in the cult today.
“The control stepped up 100%,” he recalls. “Loads of rules around the relationship like you’re not allowed to kiss them, you’re not allowed to sleep in the same building.
“You must submit to the leaders and the relationship eventually fell to pieces.
“She’d been in it a lot longer and was feeding it back to the leaders what we were doing. “There was a weird circumstance where she dropped off the face of the earth.”
“I tried to contact her and there was no reply and then got a letter from her, but it was typed and had someone else’s handwriting on it and the church stamp,” he said, laughing.
“It said ‘I’m accountable to the leaders, you must be accountable to the leaders’.
“A creepy cult letter, it looked like they were controlling her. I tried everything I could to get in contact with her.”
'MIND F***'
But rather than simply leaving, he ramped up his participation in the group.
“After the break up, my mindset was ‘I’m going to prove I’m committed’, it was a mind f***.
“I ended up living with four guys, other members, for the last six months.
But ultimately, it was an awful experience. “They were whispering about me in the house. I’d come home and realised they’d been in my room.”
It was Richard’s parents who eventually saved him. “There was just a point where my dad said ‘move home’, so I grabbed my stuff and bolted,” he said.
He stayed off sick from work for months, holed up at his mum and dad’s.
“I was really frightened of them, I was frightened of resigning,” he said.
However, he did have a relapse and tried attending meetings again, briefly.
He said he decided to be upfront and tell them he thought his ex-girlfriend was being controlled and was told it was in his head before being ostracised.
“They gaslit me and said I was imagining it,” he recalled.
And with everyone stopping acknowledging him at all, he had no choice but to leave again.
“It got to the point, the leaders just wanted rid of me, I was so disobedient. They shunned me, even though I was still attending. People stopped talking to me.
“They made my life a misery until I left.”
After having been off sick for so long he even found his job role with the charity had been changed.
“They removed responsibilities, it was constructive dismissal,” he said. He resigned by email.
“I got one sentence back: ‘You could have told us sooner’.”
Richard had a lucky escape.
“My experience was only the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “There was a lot more going on than I knew.”
INVESTIGATION
An investigation a few years later, resulted in founder Gilpin - who Richard met on just two occasions - returning to Australia.
A report produced at the time claimed members "often felt controlled, manipulated, coerced and even threatened at times" by the spiritual leader.
And other leaders felt “pressure to conform and strongly encouraged to protect the honour of the leadership at every eventuality”.
It added that the church "vilified those with opposing viewpoints", reports The Tribune.
Unfortunately, Richard’s time with cults wasn’t over yet.
As he tried to deal with the trauma caused by Hope City, he turned to an informal “underground exorcism” sect called ‘Servants’ Group’, which operated under the guise of the Church of England.
He said it simply “reinforced the trauma”.
The group encouraged members to rid themselves of certain possessions because they could carry bad energy.
“I was so traumatised and confused, I thought it’s not worth the risk so just got rid of everything,” he said.
“All I had left in my mum and dad’s house was my bed and my TV.”
Now Richard is in a much better place.
He trained as a teacher, completing his PGCE at Staffordshire University, before doing a Masters degree in the Psychology of Coercive Control at the University of Salford in 2018.
Having relocated to York, he is now a Digital Youth Worker for Spectrum Gaming.
And in 2019 set up tothinkagain.co.uk - a cult recovery counselling service.
GAME HAVEN
Earlier this year, he launched Game Haven, a gaming community for cult survivors.
Richard said: “One of the problems in the field is all the support is based around trauma groups and I just felt like the missing link in the support was the social aspect.
“One of the big problems with cults is creativity - fun, hobbies, it’s useless to cult leaders unless they can warp it to promote themselves.
“One thing that disappears in a cult is fun and it’s a big thing for people reclaiming their identity when they’ve been in them.”
He continued: “I do this for a living, with autistic kids, I work for a charity and we run online gaming communities for autistic kids.
“I was just sat one day thinking why on earth don’t I just set something up for former cult members because when they get out they are just so lonely and can’t connect with people and even if they do they have that sense of ‘I don’t fit in, there’s some part of me I need to keep hidden’. So it just made sense.
“I’ve been running my consultancy practice for six years, I just married the two things together.”
Church founder Mr Gilpin told The Sun: "The internal report made by the rebranded church was an incomplete report because of Covid restrictions, and written up in a time of massive cultural friction with huge tensions in the black community right across Britain.
"To be more fair and accurate it needs to be revised and reissued.
"The church in Liverpool came under the central charity but was led locally by its own pastors.
"I received no reports at all of heavy handling or financial pushiness during the years you’ve outlined (or any other years).
"It’s a matter for the C3 Board to investigate."
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