FDS Insight Magazine Nov - Dec 2022

41 opportunity to change something, I’m going to try. ‘I too got locked in a room all day — unable to have food or water and interrogated for hours for something I never did — until one of the workers felt mercy for me and let me out. The issue is that most of us have been shut down for so long and basically been told to deal with it. Esther would spin it back on us and so they would say that we are the problem and they’re not.’ Patricia’s way Panton’s view is that the Esther program was built in the image of the foundation’s founder, Patricia Lavater. ‘The way the program was structured was basically to break us down and to build us up in the way she thought we needed to live, which was to be like Patricia and do things like Patricia. If Patricia bought a certain tea from a shop, everyone was buying a certain tea from the shop.’ Beth Panton (Image: Supplied) Lavater, according to Panton, considered that she ‘heard from God and knew better than anyone else’. But Panton stresses that speaking up is not about payback. ‘Breaking our silence is not about getting revenge or trying to make anyone’s life miserable. It has never been about that,’ she says. ‘It is about breaking the cycles of abuse to protect the generations to come and removing the oppression from our lives to allow us to walk free again, to know that women can get help without being threatened or abused or slave laboured just to make the foundation look good. ‘And that’s not even the half of it,’ she added. ‘They controlled every aspect of our lives: our money, our families, even social circles and relationships through the church. ‘And although we were able to leave at times, on their approval, we were still so controlled and threatened by them — it was like being in a domestic relationship where we couldn’t leave as we were mentally trapped. ‘So many have been fooled, and we didn’t even realise until we left that what they were drilling into us was some truth smothered in lies and manipulation. They had an evil hold on our lives and played it off as if it was all for God,’ she said. Esther Foundation founder, Patricia Lavater, provided a statement to Crikey in which she ‘deeply’ apologised for ‘any hurt or trauma’ caused to any individuals and offered to address issues in ‘an appropriate mediated setting’.