Brethren charity sues woman allegedly abused by an elder

The Exclusive Brethren’s Australian-based charity, the Rapid Relief Team, is suing a former member who escaped the church aged 17 after what she says was years of childhood sexual abuse.

The former member, Cheryl Bawtinheimer, has complained to police in her home town in Canada that she was sexually abused between the ages of about three and 12 by an elder of what’s now known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church.

In the past four years she has, with other former church members, produced a podcast on YouTube called Get a Life: Ex-Cult Conversations. The podcast focuses on what they say is widespread abuse and mistreatment within the church, which is run out of Sydney by so-called “Man of God” Bruce Hales.

Now the Rapid Relief Team (RRT), the church’s public-facing charity, alleges Bawtinheimer infringed its copyright in some of those videos. The Brethren charity is demanding a jury trial in California, unspecified financial damages, and that a number of Bawtinheimer’s videos be taken down.

The RRT attends natural disasters and other large events – including the police line at a recent murder investigation – to hand out refreshments to emergency service workers.

In Victoria over summer, they served food and chatted to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has previously called the church a “cult”. They claimed on a Facebook post this demonstrated Albanese was “showing support for our community”.

A number of Bawtinheimer’s podcasts have criticised the RRT, claiming it’s intended not for any real charitable purpose, but to put a positive gloss on an otherwise brutal church. As part of these videos, the charity’s Kookaburra logo, “Cookie”, has flashed up on screen.

The church’s charity claims in a legal filing obtained by this masthead that Bawtinheimer’s actions have caused them material loss and damage. The lawsuit was filed in the district court of northern California, where YouTube is based.

The RRT has demanded all videos mentioning the charity be removed, and that Bawtinheimer pay them any profits derived from the videos, as well as “monetary relief”. YouTube has already removed seven videos in response to complaints.

“They want everything gone,” Bawtinheimer said. “If they get a judge in their favour, they’ll get rid of everything. One video had 336 views, the other had 160 or something. We don’t make any money on this. We’ve made a few hundred dollars total on YouTube. It’s a classic intimidation tactic to try to shut me up,” she said.

Bawtinheimer said her long-time alleged abuser was photographed in 2023 wearing an RRT uniform. “One of the charity’s volunteers in Canada was a man who sexually trafficked me – and now this charity is suing me,” Bawtinheimer said.

The Rapid Relief Team was set up in 2013 at the same time as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church successfully argued to the British charities regulator that it should keep its tax-free status because it was serving a genuine public benefit.

The RRT is described by critics and many who have left the church as an attempt to rehabilitate the Brethren’s poor global reputation, which includes separating families, treating women as second-class citizens and preaching hatred of non-believers.

Leaked church documents also reveal that one of the charity’s driving purposes is to “engage with a person of influence or status at a local level”.

Court documents show the Kookaburra logo, Cookie, was bought by the charity in September last year. The purchase occurred soon after Bawtinheimer’s husband confronted her alleged abuser at his home in Canada.

In that videotaped confrontation, the abuser appeared at times to acknowledge his crimes. Bawtinheimer has reported the alleged abuse to local police, but no arrest has been made or charges laid.

Three months later, in December, the Australian charity’s California-based lawyers, Brown Rudnick, started issuing copyright demands to YouTube to remove Bawtinheimer’s RRT videos. YouTube’s copyright takedown policy uses a three-strike system geared towards removing allegedly infringing content and penalising creators.

Three active copyright strikes within a 90-day period results in a YouTube channel being terminated, all videos being removed and a ban on creating new channels.

“They want the channel scrubbed of RRT,” Bawtinheimer says.

One video RRT has already succeeded in taking down is by former church member, New Zealand-based Lindy Jacomb, who runs her own charity for people escaping “high demand religious groups”. In Jacomb’s video, the logo, and one of RRT’s catch lines, “compassion in action” flashes onto the screen as Jacomb recalls the “profound trauma of being excommunicated from this church and the ongoing separation from family and community”.

She calls for RRT to collaborate with her own charity, Olive Leaf Network, in helping those who leave the church.

“I would like to say to the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church and to the Rapid Relief Team: how is it that you can give out branded bottled water and soap to strangers, and yet we, former members from your church community, are left branded with trauma. What are you going to do about us?”

The copyright complaint means Jacomb’s video is no longer available on YouTube.

An RRT spokeswoman did not answer a series of questions from this masthead because the matter was before the courts.

“We will not be commenting at this time on active legal proceedings, other than to confirm that this action relates solely to the protection of RRT’s copyright work,” the spokeswoman said in a statement.

“Like any responsible organisation, RRT has taken steps to protect itself from its own brand being infringed which undermine the efforts of our hardworking volunteers.”

Asked specifically about targeting an alleged sex abuse victim, the spokeswoman said: “RRT takes any allegation of abuse very seriously and would always encourage appropriate involvement of the authorities.”

The RRT has tax-free status as a charity in Australia. Its financial report to the Australian Charities and Not-for profits Commission are overdue, but the previous year’s accounts show it had a $4.3 million cash surplus.

Businesses in Goulburn whose owners run RRT, were raided by the Australian Tax Office in 2024. There is no suggestion that the raids are connected to the RRT or its work. The ATO investigation into the Brethren’s vast financial “ecosystem” – which includes businesses, investment vehicles, charities and schools – is ongoing.

Taxpayers have given it $680,000 via federal government grants since 2020, paying for mobile coffee machines, cooking equipment, lighting towers and other equipment. The largest grants, of up to $22,000 each, were paid under the Morrison government’s heavily rorted Commonwealth’s “Stronger Communities” scheme.

Church members donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to right-wing activist group Advance during the last federal election, and the church’s leaders ordered thousands of its members to man polling booths in support of Peter Dutton’s election campaign.

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