Ben Harvey’s week inside Australia’s toughest drug rehab centre, Shalom House

Veteran journalist and Sunday Times columnist Ben Harvey has gone inside Australia’s hardest drug rehab centre, living for a week with the country’s most desperate addicts as part of an eye-opening TV documentary.

Harvey immersed himself in controversial rehabilitation centre Shalom House, shaving his head like all new residents and sleeping each night surrounded by former gang members, drug dealers and everyday addicts who are trying to get clean.

The investigation, which will air Sunday night on the Seven Network’s Spotlight program, seeks to answer the long-running question of whether Shalom’s tough-love rehabilitation program is a religious cult.

Shalom founder Peter Lyndon-James challenged Harvey, 48, to spend a week inside the Swan Valley rehab centre, on Perth’s north-eastern outskirts.

“I am more than happy for you to come over and pull me apart,” Mr Lyndon-James told Spotlight.

“Just tell it as you see it.”

For seven days Harvey lived and worked with 160 recovering addicts, from alcoholic primary school teachers to heroin junkies and meth dealers.

He was inducted into the program the same way as any new resident would be, forfeiting his phone, answering a barrage of personal questions about his health and use of alcohol and drugs, and completely cut off from the outside world.

Most days started before 5am, with each day filled with hours of physical work punctuated with bible readings, prayers and church services.

As residents grew to trust their new room mate they quietly divulged harrowing stories of life on the street.

“Over 25 years of journalism I have been in some confronting situations,” Harvey said as the Spotlight episode was prepared for airing.

“I have been inside bikie clubhouses, interviewed contract killers and reported on the ground after terrorist attacks. Those experiences were nothing compared to a week inside Shalom House.”

Shalom prides itself on being a rehab centre of last resort and the toughest facility in Australia.

Mr Lyndon-James, who was one of the country’s most prolific child criminals before graduating to become a career drug dealer, turned his life around after finding God.

He created Shalom House 12 years ago, catering to addicts who had nowhere else to go after burning every bridge in their lives.

“They come to me when they realise it’s either Shalom House or four other choices — an emergency department, a psychiatric hospital, a prison or a morgue,” Mr Lyndon-James said.

The 53-year-old is locked in a Mexican stand-off with the WA Government over where to house his army of addicts, who come from all over Australia and as far away as Europe.

The handful of properties Shalom runs are full-to-bursting, with up to 18 people living in four-bedroom, two-bathroom houses on the eastern outskirts of Perth.

He is also often attacked for forcing addicts to become Christians, an accusation he says is ludicrous.

“We are very clear that we are a faith-based organisation,” he said. “People are free to leave any time they want if it is not the right rehab service for them, and they often do.”

Spotlight airs Sunday at 8.45pm on Channel 7 and 7plus