EXCLUSIVE
A rape victim has slammed a church for giving her ruthless attacker a key ministry role after he served jail time for molesting her up to seven times a day.
Joy Harris endured four decades of torment at the hands of her sex-addict, firebrand Baptist preacher husband Larry Harris at their family homes in both NSW and Queensland.
He used warped interpretations of the Bible to justify repeatedly raping her before she finally summoned the courage to report his vile acts to police.
The disgraced pastor was sentenced to five years in jail in Queensland in January 2017 after pleading guilty to two counts of rape but released after just 20 months.
He was then charged with seven further offences, relating to the sexual assault and abuse of his then-wife while working as a church leader on the NSW South Coast in 2003, and sentenced in February to another five years behind bars.
But far from being shunned by the Baptist community for his heinous crimes, Ms Harris said she was shocked to learn he had retained the full support of his church between sentences – and even given a key prestigious role overseeing one of its ministries.
To her further disbelief, a church leader has also branded her ’embittered’ for speaking out and accused her of ‘fishing for drama’.
Reverend Andrew Otte, who leads the seaside Clontarf Beach Baptist Church, north-east of Brisbane, dismissed Ms Harris’ concerns about their support for her violent ex, saying it was ‘none of her business’.
Joy Harris says she was raped up to seven times a day by her firebrand preacher husband Larry Harris (pictured together above) before she found the strength to flee and report his vile crimes to Queensland police
Reverend Andrew Otte says it is none of Joy Harris’s business what his church does
Joy and Larry Harris first arrived in Australia with their young family as missionaries in the 90s
‘Larry has been a fantastic member of our church and – through his ministry – he’s done some incredible work in the community,’ Rev Otte told Daily Mail Australia.
‘He was never a “leader” in our church, that’s not a word I’d use to describe him.
‘But even if our church did put him in a leadership position – despite him being convicted of rape – what’s it got to do with her?
‘That’s our church’s choice… and if she still thinks he’s dangerous, that says more about her than it does about him.
‘She’s probably just embittered and happy to find fault with Larry. It’s really none of her business – she’s just fishing for drama now.’
CHRISTIANITY CORRUPTED
Ms Harris first met her ex-husband as a teenager while growing up in the United States, where they bonded over their shared love of Christianity and the Bible.
But she said the man she once loved became a monster after drifting towards a radical, hardline form of the religion that espoused ‘traditional’ values.
By the time they relocated to Australia with their young family as missionaries in 1991, she said he had become an insatiable and aggressive sex addict.
After settling in Nowra, they established their own church as part of the breakaway Independent Baptist movement and presented outwardly as the perfect family.
But behind closed doors, Harris subjected his wife to near-constant abuse, allegedly raping her ‘up to seven times a day’ and threatening her with illegal firearms he hid around the house.
‘He thought the more often he had sex, the more of a man it made him,’ Ms Harris said.
‘He didn’t care if I wanted to have it or not – or if I was in any pain – it was all about him.’
She said he used a corrupted interpretation of Ephesians 5:24 to rationalise his increasingly violent sex crimes and ‘God-like’ status within their family home.
The passage reads: ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.’
‘Larry insisted this meant that wives had to submit to whatever their husband’s willed and that their husband’s voice was the voice of God within his family,’ Ms Harris said.
‘Looking back now, I still can’t believe I let myself get in that position (where I believed it), and where he knew I would just take it because I wanted to please God.
‘The Bible does teach us to submit to one another… that give and take is necessary in any close relationship.
‘But men like Larry twist it to mean their voice equals the voice of God and wives are servants, almost the property of men.
‘If anything, God says the husband is to protect the wife and to be willing to give his life for his wife and to cherish her. That’s the exact opposite of what Larry did.’
Joy Harris has received the enduring support of her son Jason since revealing her abuse
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Ms Harris credits her son, Jason, with helping her find the courage to finally escape her abusive husband in 2011 and go into hiding in north Queensland.
‘A week after I fled, I filed for a protection order (against Larry),’ she said.
‘In the next month, I got two phone calls from detectives urging me to make a police statement, but I wasn’t emotionally healthy enough until February 2013.
‘The (Independent Baptist) church always taught us it was “us-and-them” when it came to police.
‘But the detectives, victims-assist people and solicitors all showed remarkable kindness – they believed me.’
By the time Ms Harris detailed the abuse to detectives, her ex-husband had become a regular fixture at Rev Otte’s church services.
He remained an active parishioner throughout an ensuing police investigation and the church continued to support him even after he pleaded guilty to rape.
The 71-year-old was welcomed back into the church after being released from prison, participating in a church counselling group for ‘individuals battling pornography or sexual addiction’ in 2020 and joining its ‘pantry ministry’.
The convicted rapist was eventually allowed to run the ministry – which distributed food parcels and spiritual advice to the needy – ‘for about a year’ before he was hit with further historic assault charges in NSW.
In handing down his sentence, Judge Ian McClinton said the former pastor had abused his pious standing in the community as the head of the Shoalhaven Baptist Church and used his twisted religious views to disguise his crimes.
‘Offences of domestic violence and sexual assault within marriage are often hard to detect (and) under-reported,’ the judge said in handing down his sentence.
‘Clearly that intersects with the need for a great deal of denunciation about violence with domestic relationships.
‘The offender at the time justified his violent abuse of Ms Harris by some form of rigid adherence to an unenlightened creed.
‘(But) constant reference and justification by way of quotes from the Bible doesn’t excuse the actual reality of the fact he engaged in an abusive relationship.’
Joy Harris was devastated to learn her serial rapist husband was running a church ministry
‘BELITTED AND BETRAYED’
For Ms Harris, her husband’s second five-year prison term was a vindication of her decade-long fight for justice.
But she said she felt ‘belittled and betrayed’ that Rev Otte – and a dozen members of his congregation – had written to the judge, imploring him to go easy on her abuser.
‘It was really distressing. Larry’s pastor fully supported him, as did his church members,’ she said.
‘They all wrote letters that spoke highly of his character and the charitable work he’d undertaken providing food and counselling to the vulnerable and the needy.
‘When I think about all the years of abuse I suffered… and how he used the Bible to justify raping me, it’s really painful to hear that he’s going around giving spiritual advice and that members of a church are singing his praises.
‘Knowing everything he has done, and his need for power and control over women, why does he need to be held up as a good and wise man in church.
‘He’s neither of those things. He’s a convicted rapist who used the Bible to excuse his disgusting crimes.
‘What does that say to members of the congregation and the community that this church thinks a rapist is an appropriate person to be counselling anyone?’
Rev Otte denied Harris had ever been in a ‘counselling’ position with his church.
But he said the disgraced preacher had been ‘changed by God’ and was no longer the vile predator who once abused his ex-wife.
‘I wouldn’t use the word “counselling”,’ he said. ‘The only thing he used to do (in his ministry) was give food to the homeless.
‘He is certainly not that same person now, and he has certainly changed, which is the kind of thing I wrote in my letter to the court.
‘We never knew him at the time he committed those horrendous offenses, and we were totally surprised to learn of his history.
‘The tragedy and horror (of all of that) all relates to what he did back then, but when you meet him now and see the person he has changed into – and I believe he has been changed by God – it’s a miracle.
‘For his ex-wife or family to take offence to that, what’s their purpose?
‘It sounds like they have a lot of malice … but I don’t think (Joy Harris) appreciates how different he is now. She clearly hasn’t spoken to him for a long time.
‘She’s just being malicious … and I wonder, if she is someone who is so malicious, whether she’s the one who deserves to have a role in church.’
Jason Harris, who now leads his own church in Queensland, says his father is yet to repent
SHAME OF THE FATHER
Not everyone is as convinced Larry Harris is a changed man, or that he has undertaken any genuine soul searching.
His son Jason, who supported his mother after she fled the family home, and now ministers his own church in Cairns, refuted any suggestion his father had truly repented for his sins.
‘There has been zero change in my father – zero – that’s the scary part,’ he said.
‘He is still the exact same predator that treated my mum like a sex slave for decades.
‘We were all shocked and upset to hear he was helping ‘vulnerable’ people and that he was providing counselling to them or advice or whatever you want to call it.
‘I have no problem with anyone letting him into their church or letting him serve the congregation – he can mow the lawn, he can serve as an usher – but don’t put him up on a pedestal as a honourable man with an ministry.
‘My father has a decades-long pattern of harming vulnerable people; criminal convictions; a record of being removed from such positions again and again after causing harm.
‘Rev Otte was my father’s pastor before he served his first prison sentence and remained his pastor after his release. He knows what happened.
‘The church always does this thing where they describe you as “bitter” if you speak out. That’s their way of saying you shouldn’t be discussing something.
‘But my father’s a violent sex offender who has been found guilty in two states now of rape. So let’s not pretend he’s good man deserving of any sympathy at all.
‘If you want to feel sympathy for anyone, feel it for my mum.’
