The controversial Danish Christian group Faderhuset has announced it is closing down. In a press release posted on its website the sect’s founders stated that a hate campaign had forced their hand and they were closing their church on Lolland Island.
Expounding on the smear campaign allegations, the website says it began when Faderhuset co-founder Ruth Evensen stood for local elections as the candidate for Det Frie Lolland political party. The statement added that the cancer had spread on Facebook and the social website was packed with innuendo, half-truths and downright lies.
The statement continued by saying Faderhuset’s church had blended with its natural environment and caused no issues with residents of the locale. The statement finished off with the claim that the scurrilous allegations had wiped out a peaceable co-existence among free people.
Ruth Evensen and husband Knut launched Faderhuset in 1990. Since its founding, the church has been rocked by numerous allegations from one-time members that it was manipulative and had neglected children. Despite the allegations, not one of the Faderhuset group has ever been charged with a crime or appeared in court.
Faderhuset achieved a certain notoriety in Denmark with its dealings over the Ungdomshuset Culture Centre. According to the Copenhagen Post, the sect purchased the structure in 2001 from local authorities.
Faderhuset took the building’s occupants, a cabal of far-left militants, to court five years later and won the right to evict them. The activists were then evicted by police. The eviction triggered a series of riots over the winter of 2006. The following March, Faderhuset had the building demolished and then put the site up for sale.