St John’s Cathedral demands Stan scrub footage filmed in Brisbane church from sex-work reality series

The Anglican Church has demanded footage filmed inside Brisbane ’s St John’s Cathedral be removed from a Stan reality series staying producers misled the Dean about the nature of the program.

The Diocese says the production was presented to Dean Dr Peter Catt as a documentary exploring faith and the experiences of someone previously excluded from religious communities because of sex work, but the finished program instead featured adult-content creators and a filmed religious ceremony inside the cathedral.

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The footage filmed in the 125-year-old Cathedral appears in episode six of Turned On: Dirty Sexy Money, Stan’s reality series following people working in the adult-content industry.

Stan describes the program as a glimpse inside the “controversial and opulent world” of the “global top 1 per cent of adult content creators”, featuring some of the industry’s biggest names, including UK performer Lily Phillips, who has built a large following on OnlyFans.

Phillips rose to international notoriety after a widely publicised “101 men in a day” stunt and has also been linked to the wider controversy surrounding fellow “sexfluencer” Bonnie Blue and attempts to target young men during Gold Coast Schoolies.

In the episode in question, Phillips seeks to reconnect with her faith before taking part in a ceremony at St John’s.

The footage shows Catt inviting the group to the altar and asking Phillips a series of questions including whether she turns to Christ, renounces evil and repents of her sins.

The group is also participates in Holy Communion, with images from the ceremony appearing in promotional material for the program, according to anti-pornography campaigner Melinda Tankard Reist, who raised questions about the use of the cathedral in a social media post.

Tankard Reist questioned how the cathedral came to be involved, including whether the archbishop had been consulted, what arrangements were made with the production for filming and whether the church received any payment.

In a letter dated August 20, Brisbane Archbishop Jeremy Greaves told diocese members said he was “shocked by the content, nature, and intent of the program”, which he said did not align with the faith and values of the diocese.

He apologised on behalf of the dean and cathedral chapter for the “distress and anger” caused by the decision to allow the cathedral to be used as a backdrop for the program.

According to the archbishop, the producers’ original pitch was fundamentally different from what appeared on screen.

He said the program had been presented as a documentary exploring “faith, intention, and life’s complexities” through the experience of a person who had previously been excluded from faith communities because of past involvement in sex work.