By Janet McIntyre
“Love” is the word Ed Strachar preaches. Love cures, love heals, love is the solution life’s problems - bad knees, depression, cancer. Pretty much everything that can go wrong, he can sort with love.
“You follow?” he asks. Not really. But I'm trying.
Love in itself is not a quite enough. You need thousands of dollars too. Just tap in your Visa details, unload several grand, and "soul healer” Ed Strachar will gladly connect to your spiritual vibrations - over the internet - diagnose your darkness and direct you to the loving spirits who will cure you. Easy.
But all this talk of love makes me uncomfortable.
I’m sitting face to face with him in the chill, late hours of an Arizona afternoon. The ragged red mesas are getting darker, his voice is rising like thunder. He yells, thrashes his arms, and curses, frustrated by my inability to grasp his theories about how witchcraft causes so much human misery - and - my suggestion that that he could have brainwashed a New Zealand woman called Anna Godfrey, leading her to take her life.
"Excuse me? Excuse me?... I brainwashed her? What f****** planet on you on?... Come on, you can't be that stupid, Janet McIntyre.
"You can't really be that accusative, you can't really be that unbalanced, unfair, improper or medically completely ignorant."
I’m not exactly feeling the love.
I’m wondering if Anna Godfrey felt anything like this through her five-month connection with Ed Strachar.
Unlike me, she paid plenty for his advice - almost $24,000, an inheritance from her parents - to be “healed“ by Strachar. Unlike me, she was overcome by the grief of losing both her parents and struggling to find relief from her pain.
And, while for a time she seemed happy to vouch for him in a testimonial she posted, she certainly felt Ed's nettle when she was helpless to overcome the demons he said possessed her.
"Get them off yourself. Do it now," he commanded. "Stop pretending to be so helpless." At one point he offered her "a free kick in the ass" if he paid her $1500 for a "tune up".
It’s impossible to know for sure the final thoughts of people who are driven to take their lives. But the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists told me the most unhelpful thing you can do for anyone in such a vulnerable state is to tell them to snap out of it.
"The treatment of depression is complex", says president Dr Kym Jenkins. "It needs to be a holistic approach, taking into account medication, talking therapy and social therapy."
She couldn't comment on how "soul healing" could play a role.
The Coroner never contacted Ed Strachar. At Anna’s inquest the healer got off with a few stern words and barely a dent in his voracious self-belief. He is carrying on the work he says has helped thousands of people around the world. Maybe he can fix dicky knees and crook necks. Maybe it's the sheer force of his personality that convinces people of his healing power.
But in the name of love - the love of all those who lost Anna Godfrey from their lives - I hope he stays clear of desperate, vulnerable people whose lives he could harm.
As the Coroner said: “If only the appropriate care had been available to Anna she might still be alive today.”
SHARE ME