The man showed Gloria images of three different emojis — a dancing woman, prayer hands and an aeroplane — and asked her to choose one. She chose the prayer hands.

She says she was given a warm welcome and that the group’s friendly approach made her more open to learning about its interpretation of the Bible, so she started attending regularly.

Such methods are expected to be under the microscope as part of an upcoming inquiry into cults and organised fringe groups in Victoria.

Four and a half years passed before Gloria started to question the group’s tactics, which she now describes as controlling and manipulative.

Secrecy and promises

Lee is touted by his followers as the ‘promised pastor’ who will take 144,000 people with him to heaven on the ‘day of judgement’, which he professes will happen within his lifetime.

“I did have a lot of questions, but the teacher would always say: ‘Oh, we’ll talk about that topic in the next topic’, and obviously I’d forget about it by then,” she says.

Bearing ‘fruit’

More than half of those attending the classes were confirmed members of Shincheonji, but they did not disclose their affiliation at the time.

“The leaf will always follow the fruit wherever they go inside that classroom to make sure that the fruit doesn’t talk to another fruit.”

Attaining this knowledge is framed as imperative for salvation and used by Shincheonji to separate its followers from the general population, who are believed to have a lack of knowledge.

So followers like Gloria initially feel they are sharing God’s true teaching and doing good by bringing more people to the sect.

From ‘education’ to ‘indoctrination’

“You cannot be late to that 7am meeting. If you are late, you get scolded, you get public humiliation, you get shouted at in front of all the other members,” she says.

“If you’ve got someone who is busy all day, then they don’t have time to stop and question things, especially when you couple that with other behaviours such as controlling information,” she says.

Turning her back on the cult

“I started to see how, when members who had been there for three or four years, who started to get sick from working so much for SCJ, and then they had to take time off, they weren’t cared for.”

“[I] started to think that if it’s the kingdom of God, if it was the place where God is, why are our people not being treated well?”

How do you define a cult?

“Because people see being in cults based on what they see in the movies, like an upside-down cross … but the real cult itself looks like a normal church.”

The model draws on behaviours identified in the federal government’s report on coercive control in domestic and family violence as a basis for the criteria.

Former federal attorney-general Mark Dreyfus, in his response to a petition mentioning Shincheonji and calling for the government to legislate against coercive control by any organisation, has said this is “a matter for individual state and territory governments”.

National principles on coercive control, which were created in collaboration with the federal government to establish “a shared national understanding of coercive control”, are also specific to family and domestic violence contexts.

Inquiry’s public hearings to begin

Gloria says the group’s influence extends far beyond Victoria.

SBS News is aware of singing groups, art exhibitions and K-pop-inspired events that have all been used as social gatherings to provide opportunities for group members to ingratiate themselves with new and potential recruits.

Public hearings as part of the Victorian inquiry began last week, with a final report due no later than 30 September 2026.