Dawid Volmer Moved to Australia Because God Spoke to Him Very Clearly and Told Him to Come.

By Tim Clarke
West Australian
November 7, 2015

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/30022601/demons-ruled-abusive-preacher-dawid-volmer/

[with video]

He did not have a job or any means to support his family when he got here. But he left Singapore and came to Perth anyway, with his wife and two daughters, on the word of the Lord.

In reality, his inner demons were a lot stronger and louder and more persuasive.

This week, those demons that had chased the South African-born Christian since childhood led him into prison as an inmate and an outcast — from his family, from his church and even from the general jail population, which he had once preached to and prayed for.

His crimes — involving the repeated sexual abuse of a teenage girl who was “offered” to him by her own father — have shocked the nation.

How he came to commit them combines his own abusive father, drugs, sex addiction and a double life spanning many years and four continents.

Raised in a Christian household, the young Volmer was also surrounded by rage and rape.

Having to watch his father physically and sexually abusing his mother, and being abused himself at age six and eight, left emotional scars that never healed.

Turning to drugs as an adolescent in a bid to combat his loneliness and bullying at school, he tried to take his own life at 16. But with the support of his mother and stepfather Volmer recovered, and his late teens culminated with a compulsory year in the South African army.

His thrills were generated by jumping out of planes and other adrenaline sports. But they were not enough to fill what Volmer described as an “emptiness ... burning in the depths of my heart” or to replace the illicit thrill the drugs provided.

Then, suddenly, the chemical highs were replaced by spiritual ones, coinciding with his marriage, aged 24, to his wife Lee.

In his book The God Standard, which he published in 2012, Volmer outlines his battle between his faith, his life and his wife, whom at one point he describes as a “Christian extremist”.

“The standards she adopted from God meant that I would not be able to listen to the latest music because of its sexual references or its raunchy music videos,” he wrote.

“Her standard meant the men’s magazines I had with the semi-naked women on the cover would need to go. Our marriage went through severe difficulty, but my wife continued to pray for me for over five years.

“The void inside me grew bigger each day and I continued to lash out at my wife.”

The Carramar Community Centre used by convicted sex offender Dawid Volmer. Picture: Megan Powell.

That rebellion revolved around sex with other women, an appetite which gradually became insatiable, a habit that began to need daily feeding.

From South Africa, the Volmers, who now had two daughters, moved to South Carolina in the US in 2008, where the increasingly vocal Volmer preached at local elementary schools and in prison. Another move to Singapore was followed by Volmer’s message from above to relocate to Perth.

He listened. But the long-held demons were also included in Volmer’s considerable baggage.

The move to WA proved fruitful, with Volmer establishing himself as the boss of WA’s Prison Fellowship — which reached out to prisoners with Christian compassion and wisdom — and being appointed the new pastor at the ACTS church in Carramar.

His sermons at his Banksia Grove home were contemporary, his outlook positive. Volmer even reached out and garnered contact at a ministerial level, meeting Corrective Services Minister Joe Francis.

But his secret, his “sexual double-life”, was also intensifying, with the online classifieds website Craigslist the means to his deviant ends.

Ads from “Dawid”, offering “sexual massaging” services, began appearing in the seedier sections of the site. One of these was answered by another father from the northern suburbs, who told Volmer his daughter — whom he insisted was 16 — would like to have a massage.

Volmer’s meeting days later with the father and daughter in a Joondalup park revealed to him there was no way the girl was 16. But he also had no way to control himself.

In a Perth hotel room, early in 2014, Volmer abused the girl as her father watched. Her tears during the ordeal prompted angry words from her father. And they failed to deter Volmer, whose fantasies about the girl continued for more than a year, until he contacted her father again via the messaging service Kik.

“You knew your behaviour was illegal and detrimental to the girl, you fantasised about sexual interaction with her and your desire for sexual gratification enabled you to cross the line,” Judge Mark Herron said.

Volmer crossed the line twice more earlier this year, each time going further in his depravity.

Volmer's wife had a profound religious influence on him.

And for that he will serve at least eight years and six months in prison, after admitting to crimes which his former church yesterday described as “unspeakable”.

“The 10-year sentence of Dawid Volmer is not unexpected in light of the gravity of the charges he faced,” said Peter de Fin, who runs the ACTS church in South Africa.

“Although Volmer may have confessed his unspeakable sins to God, he must now face the consequences determined by the legal system.”

Yesterday, at the shops next to the community centre where Volmer based his church, there was a mixture of shock and disbelief at the descent of the local preacher. Former parishioners voiced similar emotions.

And experts in the field of child abuse, and its long-term effects, voiced their sympathy for the young victim — while airing doubts about whether Volmer could ever be truly free of his unnatural sexual desires.

“This young girl is going to have to live with this for the rest of her life, and for someone to have done what he has done to her, and not just once, 10 years is a drop in the ocean really,” said Carol Ronken, a criminologist and director of research and policy development at Bravehearts.

Through his lawyer Nick Scerri, Volmer tried to apologise for his actions, while simultaneously admitting the words “feel empty and powerless ... because ... sorry will not undo the damage that he’s caused”.

But the full extent of that deviancy also remains uncloaked.

A court psychologist reported Volmer was still “unable to specify the exact nature and extent of your deviant sexual behaviour because of a fear of hurting your wife further”.