A WA “life coach” with thousands of followers is teaching clients that sex attack victims secretly desire assault, cancer is caused by out-of-balance perceptions and that rapists should not be condemned because they teach us to “love our unloved parts”.
Following The Sunday Times story that revealed Balcatta life coach Mitch Behan was telling victims of sexual assault to be grateful for the “love the universe had shown them”, a number of his former followers have come forward to air their concerns.
The Sunday Times has also obtained a 300-page manifesto where Mr Behan, the founder of MJB Seminars, reveals the extent of his bizarre teachings.
In the book, titled Student, Teacher, Prophet, MJB states that rape and murder are not bad and that rapists “assist us in learning to love our unloved parts”.
“Most people assume rape and murder are bad. But they are neither. And when we label them, we judge them,” it says.
The book also says assault victims will try and “recreate” their abuse if they do not become grateful.
“If you are resentful of a past experience you will continue to recreate it again in order to experience the same sensory input from it,” it says.
“For example, if you were sexually abused as a child, one of your hidden desires may be to recreate that scenario again, i.e. being taken against your will in order to experience the love in it.”
It also says that people who have been sexually abused need to realise they too have abusive traits.
The book instructs MJB “facilitators” to ask victims of childhood sexual assault questions such as, “When have you ever forced someone to do anything they didn’t want to do sexually?”
Mr Behan, who admits to having no qualifications, claims to use quantum physics in a “process of equilibration” that can help anyone be grateful for negative events, such as sexual abuse, and fix their “lopsided perceptions”.
Despite describing the events as “personal development seminars”, the book reveals that behind closed doors they are an alternative religion and believe that it is the “true will of God for man to equilibrate” and that “quantum physics makes praying real”.
Cancer, the book states, is caused by “black and white thinking” and can be cured through equilibration.
“The only way you will ever get rid of cancer is to love it. You love it by equilibrating it, and therefore coming grateful for why it came into your life and what it is there to show you,” it says.
“Most Western medicine’s objective is to fight the disease, this is why hospitals kill more people than they heal.”
The individuals who came forward to The Sunday Times said they were not aware of the nature of MJB’s teachings when they signed up for their seminars, which cost up to $7000 each.
They said they were required to write an oath swearing not to talk about the activities of the seminars. The Sunday Times approached Mr Behan for comment.
‘Unwanted advances’
ONE woman, who asked to be identified only as Jessica, said she suffered unwanted advances from one of MJB’s facilitators, Dean Powell, during one-on-one counselling sessions.Mr Powell now runs his own “counselling” business, which also uses the “quantum shift process”.
Jessica said she spent $10,000 attending MJB courses between 2009 and 2011. She said that when she told Mr Behan about Mr Powell’s behaviour he said it was common for psychologists to marry their patients and joked she should “invite him to the wedding”.
She then had to spend an hour talking about the positives of Mr Powell’s unwanted sexual advances while doing the “process of equilibration”.
In an email exchange with Jessica discussing the incidents, Mr Powell admits he “did cross the line”.
Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia guidelines state: “Sexual relationships between the client and counsellor can never be acceptable and constitute unethical behaviour.”
Jessica, who was 23 when she signed up for MJB’s seminars, said she didn’t understand the nature of their teachings.
She said they led her to believe it was her fault that Mr Powell, who was aged in his 40s, was pursuing her.
She said she was asked to sign up for the second course before the end of the seminar, when she was feeling exhausted and “broken”. “It’s fine if people want to believe what they’re teaching and it’s fine if it helps people. But they need to be made accountable and they need to be made transparent,” Jessica said.
Mr Powell was approached for comment.
