Magnificat Meal Movement
Richard Salbato
The tiny hamlet of
This once thriving
town fall into what appears a ghost town because of a woman named Debra Geileskey, now Debra Burslem. In the early 1990s Debra and her husband, Gordan, ran a real-estate business and bought their own
property as investments. But they were
$300,000 in debt. Then Debra started
having apparitions and visions. Her
husband left her and is now living with another girl and keeping her in court
with countless lawsuits.
But Debra Geileskey, now Debra Burslem,
never missed a beat in her claims to having apparitions and vision, which claim
that The Second Coming of Christ will occur in this ghost town of Helidon. Nothing, absolutely nothing, about Debra
would convince anyone that she is having apparitions except for her great
salesmanship from her history of selling real-estate.
And yet, because of
the stupid spiritual pride of people, Debra has convinced enough people to
amass a fortune of $3,500,000 Australian dollars in at least 20 properties,
including homes, apartments, shops and farms and is said to own 10
companies. She also owns 5 Mercedes Benz
and uses "slaves" without pay to do all the work, cooking, cleaning,
farming, driving, and even as body guards.
Followers of the
cult are encouraged to join the commune as "slaves" for a year and
follow strict prayer routines. The cult's head group in
Her cult's name
refers to the Magnificat, the prayer of the Virgin
Mary, and Meal refers to the Last Supper, although no Orthodox Catholic would
call the Mass or Communion a meal.
How did this
divorced woman fool so many people?
Former founding
member of the cult, Mr Mack said,
"Debra is a very
dangerous woman. Her attraction is that she is offering something better. She
is a clever saleswoman. She sold real estate and now she's selling her cult to
people. I blame the Catholic Church because a lot of people are getting
disenchanted with it.
"So I can
understand why people would want to come here and follow Debra. She is a
powerful woman and very convincing. I was sitting in a private house one day
with a visiting Fillipino priest and she told us she
was seeing a vision of the Virgin Mary and began having a conversation with Our
Lady.
"I was
convinced, and so was everybody else in the room. I couldn't feel any presence,
but Debra was such a good actress, we totally believed it at the time. Looking
back, it was astonishing how somebody sitting that close to you can deceive you
so successfully.
"She certainly
had myself and the priest fooled. She's not crazy, it
was all acting."
Things did not
quite add up, though, when the priest later investigated one of Geileskey's so-called "miracles" when communion
wafers seemed to appear in a bowl overnight from nowhere.
"She was
claiming miracles that weren't miracles. She presented this incident as the
multiplication of the loaves, you see. People believed it.
"When the
priest checked, he realized some of the wafers were stale. They turned out to be
leftover wafers she must have planted there to claim her miracle. The priest
realized something wasn't right and challenged her. Three times he tried, then Debra claimed he was a pedophile and was being led by
the devil."
Geileskey portrays herself as being
at the Spiritual epicentre of a global movement with
advisers in the
15-year-old Irish leukaemia victim, Nora Hanley, from Kilrooskey,
Co Roscommon was buried, weeks after her mother's quest for a "miracle
cure" from Geieskey. While staying in the cult commune, Nora
stopped taking her medication and vital blood units. At least six other members
of the cult have died after they ceased taking medication for serious illnesses
when Geileskey encouraged them to swap to herbal
remedies she sells, according to former members of the cult.
Magnificat Meal Movement leader Ms
Debra Burslem (formerly Geileskey)
has placed herself above the law marrying couples without legal authorisation.
Journalist and TV
crews descended on the town of Helidon, west of Brisbane, for the rumored mass
suicide but the only injury of the day was a smashed camera flash when a
photographer got in the way of hired security guards.
Geileskey had written in a diary she
had a vision revealing she would be dragged from a wooden two-story building,
tied to a pile of sticks and set on fire by a priest on September 9, 1999.
The funeral pyre
vision prompted police to set up a 24-hour watch in case Geileskey
initiated a mass suicide of her blue-red clad followers, known as slaves. Of course, nothing happened.
A cult leader, who
claims to have visions of the Virgin Mary, is selling home loans and slimming tablets to raise money for a cathedral.
Geileksey also conned followers that
she had been instructed by God to follow what she called the Eucharist diet. For
14 months she claimed to have lived on nothing but "holy" wafers and
water. Except on 33 days when God told her to eat normally. As the diet
progressed, observers became puzzled as to why she hadn't lost weight. Then her
secret was discovered: The chubby Geileskey had been
covertly feasting on take-away pizzas, biscuits and fizzy drinks, which were
discovered in a cupboard by an MMM member who quit the
group soon afterwards.
Toowoomba Catholic Bishop William
Morris declared the group a cult in 1996 and an investigation by the
"Its initials
MMM should really stand for Make More Money," he said.
MEMBERS of the Magnificat Meal Movement religious group had excommunicated
themselves from the Catholic Church and could not receive communion, Toowoomba Bishop William Morris says.
"Any
attendance by Magnificat Meal members at Mass can
only be understood as a protest against the Church and not as a genuine desire
to pray with the Church," Bishop Morris said in a letter to parishioners.
"In those
circumstances, they could not possibly expect to receive communion."
Members and Ex-members
Mr Haughey,
42, is believed to have pledged most of his money to Geileskey
and the MMM. But while Geileskey enjoys the high life
of regular trips to America, world travel and cruises around Queensland in a
fleet of Mercedes Benz cars with personalised number
plates, brainwashed sect "slaves" like Mr Haughey and his wife work the land like dirt-poor farmers
or help out with cooking and cleaning duties and mass.
Geileksey tells her slavish followers
that the Virgin Mary wishes them to hand over their money and sign over
property. She is seen being chauffeured around Helidon in Mercedes cars bearing
the number plate CORMA 1, 2, and 3. The special plates stand for the title she
gives the Virgin Mary: "Co-Redemtrice, Mediator
and Advocate." Geileskey also states her special
interest is to shelter young girls "to protect their virginity."
Former member of
the cult, Australian Dawn O'Brien said devoted followers had donated hundreds
of thousands of dollars to the cause after Geileskey
declared Christ would return to Helidon when the building was completed.
"People gave her that money to build a basilica? not
to buy property for herself. It's disgraceful," said Mrs
O'Brien. "What about all the people who gave her a third of their houses
and have now left and want their money back?" Since setting up her cult in
a former convent in Helidon, Geileskey and her
followers have bought up dozens of homes in the town and will not let anybody
open up new businesses.
Author Wally Maggs, Debra Geileskey's former
ghost-writer who denounced the cult in 1999, said yesterday it was possible
that a parent could have been urged not to relinquish the child to avoid
"suffering terrible things".
"Debra tells them the people on the outside are living in a wicked
world. She works through fear," Mr Maggs said.
"This would be an enormous threat to her."
Irish Cult Specialist
Mike Garde, a cult specialist who advises the archbishop of
"Exit
counseling from a cult is important because if people process their experiences
they are more likely to recover in a shorter time. If they pretend it never
happened they can feel guilty for leaving and they can be left with terrible
trauma," he says.
So far, however, Garde has had no success in extricating any people from the
cult. "It's a slow process but I'm determined, I won't give up," he
says. "The danger is Debra lives between reality and fantasy - she is not
living in the real world," he said. "Just because the movement is
jelly-like at the moment, the potential is there for catastrophe."
Recruits from Other False Cults
The MMM first began
to recruit Irish members when it approached a tour of pilgrims at Medjugorje.
Retired architect
Frank Mack, who met Geileskey at a charismatic
prayer meeting in
"People like
Debra know how to plumb the depths. It's not new. There have been many, many
frauds before her and there will no doubt be many, many in the future.
"And they are very corrosive and very damaging to religion. It puts people
off."
I am Special
There
are two major reasons for people getting involved in stupid cults like this one
and both are sins. First is
falling for the statements of the seer that they are special and called by Our
Lord or Lady to be special, or the remnant or the only ones to be saved or just
to be personal friends of someone who talks with God. Second is like the
first but the making themselves important by being associated with someone who
talks with God and therefore using God to make themselves important to the
world. Both, feeling that they
are special to God and special to the people around them because they are
special to God, are sins. We are
all special to God but no one is more special than any other. God loves the
sinner as well as the saint. But the
secret to sainthood is to take the back seat in your mind and all saints
feel un-special.
Former MMM members claim they
lent Ms Geileskey money for one of the
Many thanks to Claire Monsour for exposing
this movement. She even helped those who were taken in by it, and financed those who
exposed it.
Richard
Salbato
Most
information taken from: http://www.esatclear.ie/~dialogueireland/a2z/mmm/