[tense music]
- [Interviewer] Why did you, start to take in the children?
- [Anne] Over 21 years, 28 young people
went through our hands.
- [Interviewer] Why did you do it?
- I love children.
- [Sarah] Once she became the leader of the cult,
and could get whatever she wanted,
one thing that she wanted was,
lots of little children.
- [Roland] She was preparing us for,
when the time happens, to re-educate the world,
what's left of it.
- [Interviewer] How many are your natural children?
- [Anne] There were eight or nine.
We never told them they weren't ours.
- We were all children who had no identity whatsoever.
- They were stolen children.
Phoney adoptions that were organised by sect members.
- I'm wondering if you got any comment
to make now about the children?
[static scratching]
- [Robert MacLellan ] Shots are being fired through windows.
Car tyres have been slashed.
There are death threats.
- Auntie Anne sucked, as much money out of people
as she possibly could.
- [Reporter] Yesterday, seven members
of Anne Hamilton-Byrne's sect,
pleaded guilty of defrauding the Commonwealth.
- I know that Muktananda practiced black magic.
That's why Anne was there - to learn more about it.
- [Lex] There were so many bizarre stories
about who she was.
- [Roland] I didn't even know
that Auntie Anne had another name.
[dramatic music]
♪ Waiting for redemption ♪
♪ Like a dog expecting a reward ♪
♪ Is this the endless board of nothing ♪
♪ Or the coming of the Lord ♪
♪ Come on, give me a sign ♪
♪ Show me my love is real ♪
♪ All safe in another town ♪
♪ Is this part of the deal ♪
- [Leeanne] When I ran away I felt a lot of grief,
and a lot of heartache and a lot of guilt
for leaving the kids in that situation.
I actually went in with the police
when the raid happened so that the children realised
that it was okay.
[door banging]
I remember my heart pumping the whole time and thinking,
"God, how are the children going to look at me?"
- [Small Child] They're takiing us somewhere!
It'll break Mom and Dad's heart.
- [Anouree] We were ushered out quite quickly
out of the house,
and up to the bus, at the end of the our driveway.
- [Ben] Then it's all go, we're being driven away.
And I remember as we go down the road,
I think it began to dawn on me,
this was actually the end of it.
I was going to do everything I could to never go back.
- [Announcer] At the weekend, six children were seized
from a property owned by The Family.
Five of the children appeared
in the Melbourne Children's Court
under care and protection applications.
[dramatic music]
[suspenseful music]
- [Bryan Cussen] Perhaps a week after they had been rescued
from Lake Eildon, I went to Allambie to meet the children.
I remember walking into the room,
and there was just this enormous buzz.
It was as if the children were birds
that had been freed from an iron cage.
They were just totally in flight.
[children chattering]
- I remember things like being able to do the dishes,
and this was exciting and wonderful.
Being able to go and get food whenever I want to.
Being able to learn to ride a bike.
- How we'd all have dinner together and laugh,
and lots of food, and watch TV.
- They said you can eat as much as you want.
Well, I said, "My stomach is only a certain size."
[laughs]
[children chattering]
- There were a team of people working with the children.
Police, medical people, and myself as a counsellor.
I was asked to work with those 10 children
to identify who they really were, because
they've grown up believing
that they were all the children
of Anne Hamilton-Byrne and Bill Hamilton-Byrne.
[cars whirring]
They were barbecues and outings, and trips to Luna Park.
We reached out to the children from our hearts.
But as I sat down one-to-one with the children,
I realised that there was some pretty dark stuff
that they were dealing with.
- [Ben ] All that you've known, is suddenly removed,
and you're looking for a foundation.
You're looking for things that are familiar.
You're trying to find things that are solid.
- [Charlotte] Trust was a big issue.
Could we really trust these policemen
and these other people that we've never seen
before in our lives,
that they were going to look after us,
and make Eildon go away, make Anne and Bill go away,
make the Aunties go away?
- They'd grown up with a perverse fairy tale.
They had been systematically deprived
of the truth for their entire lives.
[tense music]
It was quite a tangled web of birth certificates,
deed poll name changes, and affidavits in regard
to adoption that I had to sort through.
Once I had the records gathered together,
I then went back and sat down individually with the child.
- [Leeanne] I was absolutely devastated that I wasn't
who I thought I was.
I was very devastated by the betrayal, I think.
[birds chirping]
- [Sarah] I went down to the births and deaths,
and asked, "Can I please have the birth certificate
of Sarah Hamilton-Byrne?"
And I got back this piece of paper saying,
there is no such person as Sarah Hamilton-Byrne.
And then I thought, oh, okay.
"Well, who am I?"
[dramatic music]
- [Lex] The only way that we could at that point in time,
establish the true identity of the children,
of these young people, was to try and locate
their natural mother and natural father,
and then take blood samples.
It was one of the first times in Victoria,
where DNA was used to match blood to prove parentage.
[soft music]
Just imagine saying to somebody, fancy saying to woman,
"Do you remember giving birth?"
"Do you remember that in this year, particular year,
did you give birth?"
[knock on the door]
Straight away you're bringing up, in some cases,
some traumatic memories.
And then trying to track down the father.
And then saying to this guy,
"I think you've got a child."
"What?"
Bang.
It didn't leave a very nice taste in your mouth,
but you had to do it.
[dramatic music]
[keyboard tapping]
In the 70s we didn't talk about unmarried mothers.
Young girls, 16, 17, who fell pregnant,
often weren't seen for months on end.
And then they would appear back
in their normal lives and communities.
And they would've gone through their pregnancy.
No one knew that they had given birth.
But the child had been passed over.
[women chattering]
- When women went to the hospital then, if they were single,
and they go for their first appointment,
their card was marked with an "A",
which meant they were to see the Almoner,
who was the social worker.
And from that moment on, the assumption was
that the child was available for adoption.
If they tried during that time to question
the notion of adoption, they were shut down.
They were basically told that,
"There's no way you can keep this child."
- [Sarah] In the late 60s, there wasn't supporting
mothers pension and things like that.
And particularly if you came from a religious family,
it was still a great shame to have a kid out of wedlock.
My biological mother was made to sign an adoption form.
And then during my birth, a pillow was put over her head.
She was given made tranquilisers.
And as soon I was born, I was taken away instantly.
She wasn't even allowed to look at me.
[baby crying]
- Most mothers who talk about this say something like,
"I heard a cry, then I heard a door slam."
And that's the child being taken out.
The idea was, if you see the child,
it'll be even harder to part with them.
[footsteps tapping]
- [Archival Narrator] This couple have been waiting
11 months to adopt a baby boy.
Today is the first time they will see him.
Now they must wait patiently for the fulfilment
of the 30-day consent period.
If the mother of the baby,
decides to revoke her decision,
this couple would have to give him up.
But this distressing situation rarely happens.
This little illegitimate bundle, will become legitimised.
By adoption, this child will escape
the handicap of its birth.
His real mother will almost certainly
never set eyes on him again.
And with all the love he can expect from his new parents,
he may never feel the loss.
In this case, one woman's loss could turn out
to be somebody else's gain.
[car whirring]
[Interviewer] John Mackay, was one of those who
adopted a child
and let Anne Hamilton-Byrne, look after him.
- Anne and Bill wanted to construct a family,
of these children, to rear them as a family.
I think for very good psychological reasons.
They've been able to provide a stable environment
with a lot of love.
- [Interviewer] Something that you weren't able to do?
- That's true, I wasn't able.
- I wanted to ask him if he knew,
after he handed that child over,
what had happened to that child?
The brutality it experienced.
Marie Mohr's my name, Dr Mackay.
I'm wondering if you've got any comment to make now
about happened to the children?
Why won't you have...
[static scratching]
Is that all you've got to say, Dr Mackay?
After what you put those kids through.
There's no need for that, Dr. Mackay.
- [Reporter] You raised them under the name,
Hamilton-Byrne?
You arranged for passports in that name?
- We did.
- [Reporter] Even though that was not their legal name?
- Well, yes, but we did it honourably we thought.
Quite honourably.
- [Reporter] Why?
What was the purpose of it?
- Because it's easier, if you're going overseas,
into England, to get treatment for the children,
when it's all in one family.
If they are in one family.
- [Bill] We wanted them to be a family.
- You see?
- A loved family.
[rewind play]
- If they are in one family.
- We wanted to be a family.
- You see?
- A loved family.
[dramatic music]
- [Lex] When you're investigating a crime,
you've got to keep an open mind.
But as the investigation went on,
in my mind she was becoming more clinical, more cold.
It was about Anne, and no one else.
[tense music]
There were so many bizarre stories about who she was.
We had to drill down and get the facts.
That's part of the chase,
establishing "Who am I actually dealing with?"
- Well, I didn't know anything about her background
until the late 80s when all the
news reports started coming out.
I didn't even know that Auntie Anne had another name.
I think it was Evelyn or something, wasn't it?
- [Leeanne] She told us that she came from some royal family.
[laughs]
- We, as children, thought she was beyond
the Queen of England.
She'd even spent time with the Queen,
having cups of tea.
- She was a singer, she was an opera singer.
- [Rebecca] We had a castle somewhere in Europe,
and you know, quite la-di-da, really.
Anne was the direct, she was Jesus incarnate,
the descendant of God.
And we were, descended from the House of David,
which apparently was Jesus' bloodline.
[tense music]
- When we were older, and we actually found out
that she was a railway yard worker's daughter.
And her mother was a mental patient in a hospital.
It was really quite a sad story.
I think that she was trying to portray
this perfect life, and this perfect family,
something that she didn't have.
- [Sarah] The father was absent a lot of the time.
Anne was placed in Brighton Orphanage a couple of times.
She came from an extremely impoverished background,
and she was put into a very rich suburb
where she could sort of see, very privileged children
walking past to their private schools.
And I think she had fantasies that she'd get that somehow.
[tense music]
- [Lex] One thing you learn as a detective,
is that official documents don't lie.
We turned to the service record
of Anne's first husband, Lionel Harris, who was a corporal
in the Australian Air Force, for information.
[tense music]
We discovered that two years after Judith was born,
Lionel applied to leave the air force,
because he was worried about his wife's mental health.
He said, she was very abnormal to her child,
and her behaviour was very strange.
In the only official diagnosis we have,
of Evelyn's mental health,
her doctor described her as depressed,
and neglecting Judith.
He feared, she'd inherited her mother's mental instability,
and may give way.
[tense music]
Two years later, Lionel is a car salesman
And they have moved to Sydney.
[cars whirring]
[brakes screeching]
[crash banging]
[sombre music]
In 1955, a single woman couldn't adopt a child.
It seemed that Evelyn's dreams of a larger family were over.
But Evelyn didn't give up.
She had cosmetic surgery and elocution lessons,
and she changed her name.
A new person, Anne, emerged from the tragedy.
- [Sarah] Once she became the leader of a cult,
and could get whatever she wanted,
one thing that she wanted was lots of little children.
Lots of little perfect little children,
in perfect little dresses,
with perfect little blonde hair.
- I made her pregnancy clothes.
- [Lex] Tell us about her pregnancy clothes.
- Yes.
- [Lex] Do tell.
- Yes, all right.
I can actually draw it if you've got a piece of paper,
I'll draw you
- Just explain to me.
Yeah, well it went on a yoke, very full sleeves.
I made hundreds of them for years.
- [Lex] How many pregnancies do you think
she would have gone through?
- Well, it seemed to go on for years, Lex.
That I was making these clothes.
- [Lex] Why?
- She seemed to be pregnant all the time.
Just one after the other,
plus she had the triplets, she told me.
- [Lex] Did you ever see her actually pregnant?
- [Margaret] I never felt her stomach.
- Anne told me one night that three of the children
were her triplets, that she'd had them.
She just looked me straight in the face and said,
"I had these three children."
I'm thinking, "You didn't have those three children.
"You must think I'm a bloody idiot to tell me that."
[laughs]
But I just said, "Oh, yes, okay."
Agreed with her.
She's not somebody you argue with.
[dramatic music]
- Anne Hamilton-Byrne's age,
meant they couldn't be her children.
She'd had a hysterectomy years before
some of these children were born.
It wasn't difficult for people that actually questioned it.
- [Ben] The truth is, we weren't their children.
So while they created that construct, we weren't.
[children laughing]
- We were all children who had no identity whatsoever.
Didn't know our own parents, really.
Our identities were carved out by one person,
to suit them.
My dad was Bill's son.
So that obviously, Bill was not my father,
but my grandfather.
My mother and father met in Newhaven,
which is a mental institution.
Dad could see that he was unable to look after me.
And of course Bill said, he would be able to.
[sombre music]
- I feel so, so sorry for my dad,
because he really didn't have a choice in the matter.
- [Michael] They had been looking after Anouree,
because Treena had become pretty unstable.
They put a bit of paper in front of her to sign.
- [Interviewer] Who was the guardianship to go to, Anne?
- [Michael] Dad and Anne.
At the time I can remember thinking,
"She couldn't be in a better place."
[sombre music]
- [Peter Spence] Most of the time in my career,
I actually didn't take stuff home with me,
but this case I did.
My wife actually became very involved with the kids as well.
It's almost like they become part of your family, I guess.
- I remember as a 15 year old,
the surreal experience of knowing Anne wasn't my mother.
And then who was?
They speak of winning the lotto,
think of the exact opposite.
It was Auntie Joy.
Yeah, it wasn't good.
She said, "Listen, you're an embarrassment to me,
don't bother turning up on the door,
I'll close the door in your face."
So that terminated any possibility
of a mother/son relationship very quickly.
- Are you a follower of Mrs Hamilton-Byrne's?
- I'm a friend of Mrs Hamilton-Byrne.
- Do you believe she's a teacher?
- I believe that she is just
a great friend of mine, all right?
- I was adopted legally by Trish and Don Webb.
And then once they got me,
they handed me over to Anne.
And I know for a fact that my mother actually
started looking for me when she married my stepfather.
So she'd been looking for me probably a year
after I had been adopted out.
And she tells me that it was like,
that something was missing.
- At the birth, we've got a doctor who's a sect member,
a midwife that's a sect member,
a social worker that's a sect member,
and the head of the sect,
standing outside the hospital.
And within a period of 15 to 20 minutes from birth,
child born, child taken.
[baby crying]
- I was born at Royal Women's Hospital.
And Auntie Anne had all the people working there.
That's how she obtained some of us kids.
I was just handed over.
I'm sure my mom was coerced to give me up,
and I don't believe that she really wanted to.
'Cause why else would you revoke the adoption three times?
And then they can't find me.
The legal system goes, "Where is this baby?"
- I mean, I knew Roland wasn't my biological brother.
I was told that Roland was to be presented
as the child of Don Webb and Elizabeth Whitaker.
And I was also told at the very outset
that if Roland ever discovered that he was adopted,
he would kill himself.
And I guess I believed that.
So I was was very, very careful.
Never, ever, ever to tell Roland he was adopted.
- Lex de Man gave me the option to leave The Family,
for me to become award of the state.
So, I had to make a decision then and there,
what I wanted to do.
And I had to make the decision to stick with my family.
Because I couldn't see a future, being taken away.
My loyalty was with my mom and dad, and Auntie Anne,
and that was very strong.
[tense music]
- Roland wasn't the only child we were worried about.
Anne and her followers had bought up
a lot of the houses in Ferny Creek.
Many of them had swapped partners
so they were living with children who weren't their own.
There were allegations of rampant drug use,
and harsh discipline.
- My mother gave birth to me at 16,
so, you've got one child looking after a baby
with absolutely no support from her own family.
[birds chirping]
Going forwards to 1970,
my mother had married one of the cult members.
I came home from school one day, I was about 10.
My mother was almost in a coma, I couldn't rouse her,
and I became very concerned.
I called the neighbours.
And then, Elizabeth Whitaker was sent up.
Elizabeth Whitaker was a registered nurse,
one of Anne Hamilton-Byrne's lieutenants.
I was told, that my mother had been put in hospital.
And, it may be some time before I see her.
Elizabeth, presented as a very friendly, caring woman.
She said, "Oh, look, you can come and stay with me."
[keyboard tapping]
I was just told, "Well, she's a bit unwell,
and she's not a very good mother,
and look, you've got all those lovely people here,
all those aunties, and uncles,
and their nurses and doctors.
They'll look after you, you'll be fine."
[birds chirping]
About a year after that, round about 1971
[name bleeped] pulled me aside one day and he said,
"I'm going to give you a healing on the weekend."
And he said, "I'm going to put a scarf around your head.
I'm going to give you psilocybin,
and you're going to see pretty colours."
Then I was in a completely different world.
[suspenseful music]
I felt pressure on my chest, and I felt hands on me,
down towards my genital area, then around the back.
For the next few days I've had bleeding from my anus,
and I had a lot of pain round that area.
I know that he sexually assaulted me
in some way, form, or shape.
[keyboard tapping]
- I don't think at first anyone in the authorities
realised the complexities of the sect.
And so, they thought they were perhaps dealing with
a child abuse case, and they were.
But I don't think they realised the layers underneath that.
[water splashing]
- I really don't believe anyone knew what to do.
This was the first time they had a group of
x number of kids coming out of a completely
controlled environment,
and trying to interface them into the world.
[dogs barking]
- [Marie] We took the girls back to their prison.
For them it brought back memories of terror.
- When we'd be naughty,
they'd lock us in the shed for the night.
- [Marie] The night?
- [Kids] Yeah.
- Well, the police knew I knew a lot,
so they wanted to pick my brains.
Because by then, I'd done dozens of stories on the sect.
I spent a lot of time with the kids.
They became visitors to my house.
Some of them lived with us for years.
I do remember one of my bosses saying to me at one stage,
"Are you a social worker or a journalist?"
And I said, "Well, at the moment
it seems I'm a bit of both."
[tense music]
- For years I had believed that there was no escape.
I had been brought up to fear and expect
the worst of the outside world.
I had been taught that police
and other outsiders would hurt us.
And that men would want to rape us.
- Well, when I ran away it was very difficult,
because we weren't taught anything about the outside world.
I didn't even know how to cross a road.
I remember going to the bank,
and asking them if I could borrow $50,
to go and buy clothes.
So, I mean they must have thought I was really weird.
- I was made award of the State and
I struggled,
Failed HSC, got a job, got sacked from it.
I'd been quite suicidal, very depressed.
I was starved of love.
You open doors to things, in pursuit of that love.
I had to be very careful,
that I didn't fall into another cult.
- I was in and out of a psych unit,
because I wanted to kill myself.
And sometimes the anger was so deep,
I'd be - you're standing up,
and you're storming around the house going,
"I can't calm down, I can't calm down."
Because I just didn't know.
And you'd stop and you'd.
[yelling]
at the floor.
You know, you just...
I can't actually articulate the strength of it.
- I feel as though Anne and the other members
of the sect stole my childhood.
I resent not being allowed to go to a normal school,
and not being allowed to form normal relationships.
- Do you want to stop for a while?
Or do you want to keep trying to go?
- I'll keep going.
[keyboard tapping]
- You could see, they wanted something done
about what had happened to them.
But, you didn't really want to expose them to
the pressures and the trauma of having to relive all that
and give evidence in a witness box.
- The black three cornered cane was one of the most feared.
- You couldn't hear those stories without it affecting you,
if you had any heart at all.
And that's why the police, did become so involved.
They wanted justice for those children.
- [Anne's voice] We've been blown up all over the place
the place now.
You think about it, you've got enough brains
those of you who are left.
Every rebuff is a challenge.
So I'm saying to you, go forward.
All the powers of darkness, rise up,
and try to overwhelm us.
But, I have done my best and I'm still there.
Those who are devoted to me, realise this,
and they are united with me.
Many retreat back into their darkness.
And that's what's happened,
to those who have left.
Self-interest, doesn't make you seek.
No, I'm not half nuts....
- We knew that she had committed crimes.
We knew that, we needed to get her back in this country.
We knew that we had to get her before a court,
for everyone involved in this sect to see,
that no one is above the law.
[dramatic music]
- Mum, just was blindly,
following everything that she said and did.
She met Albert Baker.
He was another sect member, and she ended up marrying him.
[women chattering]
It was really a bigamous marriage,
because she was actually still married to my father.
- [Bill] Albert! smile you're on camera now.
I think that's enough of that.
- How did Anne Hamilton Byrne,
come to have control over the lives of nearly 30 children?
Well, she could never have done it
without the grownup members of her so-called Family.
This report, from Marie Mohr.
- [{Marie]} Photographer, Alan Crisp,
a sect member for over a decade.
"Is Anne still your guru?
Even though, you know the children were locked away now.
Is she still your guru Alan?"
- Get lost Marie.
Get bloody lost.
Other members include general practitioners,
Dr Christine Fleming and Dr John McKay.
- She targeted the people that she wanted.
And the people that she wanted, had either money
or had expectations of money.
Everyone had a job.
But then they came home,
and then she had tasks for them to do.
And people were working, you know, 16 hours a day.
And working, and working, and overworking
to the point of exhaustion.
And nothing was ever quite right or never enough.
Pretty much standard brainwashing technique.
[Reporter] Yesterday, seven members of Anne Hamilton
Byrne's sect, pleaded guilty of defrauding the Commonwealth
over total of $195,000.
- No comment.
- [Reporter] The three of those women,
Helen Buchanan, Elizabeth Whitaker, and Margot Maclellan
were among the women Anne Hamilton-Byrne ordered
to look after the children locked away on the sect's
Lake Eildon property.
Mum had done a lot of illegal stuff with Auntie Anne,
or for Auntie Anne.
She was charged and put in prison for Social Security fraud.
She was pissed off about it.
But, Auntie Anne was her guru.
So she stood by her thick and thin.
[suspenseful music]
Auntie Anne sucked as much money out of people
as she possibly could.
Anybody who joined The Family, had to pay dues.
Money to go and do the meditation,
money to go and do the yoga,
money to fund this, money to fund that, you know.
Auntie Anne very rarely put her own hands in her own pocket.
[suspenseful music]
- We estimated Anne's wealth
to be around $50 million.
To be a member of the sect, you had to donate part of your
wages to Anne, and that included the Aunties
They actually had to pay Anne the privilege
of caring for the children,
socalled 'caring' for the children at Eildon.
Anne was ambitious.
She wanted to expand the cult.
So she bought several properties in Australia, and England,
and also near Hurleyville,
A town in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York.
- [{Narrator]} This is Swami Muktananda,
the head of a multimillion dollar empire,
and described by his followers as
one of the most significant figures in contemporary,
spiritual life.
Based in India, he travels the world
recruiting adherents, showing people the way.
- [Joan] In the seventies, there were quite a few yogis,
coming over to the West, and attaining a lot of
money, and fame, and power.
But he was one of the biggest.
I mean, he was followed by a lot of celebrities.
There were ashrams and centres, all over the world.
Thousands and thousands of devotees.
While I was on tour with Muktananda,
Anne Hamilton-Byrne showed up.
[dramatic music]
She had her whole entourage with her,
of these small children, with dyed blonde hair,
and identical bows in their hair.
She was like this spider,
[laughs]
with all these little baby spiders.
It was one of the strangest things I've ever seen.
[laughs]
She had a lot of money.
I don't know where she got it.
But she bought a property very near the Ashram.
And they would come stay there.
- We'd go to the Ashram, every afternoon.
So Anne could show us off to,
the Swami Muktananda clan,
in order that perhaps,
one or two of them at least would transfer over to her cult.
- She was jealous.
I mean, she was the Messiah.
She should be followed by, all these many beautiful people!
But I got this sense, that,
Anne was there to get power from Muktananda.
And Muktananda was there,to show up Anne.
He gave her the name, Ma Yoga Shakti.
Ma Yoga Shakti means "the great mother Shakti".
I mean, it was like he was making a joke out of her.
People would sit in meditation,
and he'd go around, and either swat you with
this big peacock feather wand.
He was practising all these ancient techniques.
That if you do them enough times,
you actually attained powers to take over someone.
I know that Muktananda, practised black magic.
I believe that that's why Anne was there to be around him,
and to learn more about it.
- [Leeanne] Anne told everybody that she had certain powers.
She would put a curse on people, if they did anything wrong,
or something that she didn't like.
She used to have these little blocks of ice,
where she'd put people's names in the freezer.
Any of the police that were involved in trying to help us,
she would put their names in the ice.
- [{Police]} And what would happen if their names
were in the ice?
- She would do something evil to them,
and they would suddenly fall sick.
The only person that could saved them would be her.
- [{Anne's voice]} The fact is, that the enormous
majority of people, do not want this knowledge.
The fact is, they would like to see me dead
- Anne cursed me because I betrayed her.
Betrayed the cult motto of unseen, unheard, unknown.
And dared to tell the police what was happening
to the other children.
And once I betrayed her, I was the Judas.
Every Messiah has to have a Judas, I guess
- What effect would that have a curse on you?
- I thought I going to die because
I'd done the statement.
- How did you believe you'd die?
By what means?
I don't know. I just knew I was going to.
Because you can't betray your master and expect to live.
- A young man dared to criticise, and disagree with Anne.
She says, "You've turned away from the light.
You are going to die of a heart attack."
So what did he do?
He went home and had a heart attack.
[dramatic music]
No one thought they were going off worshipping the devil.
People have been used to thinking of evil as being ugly
whereas it's not.
It looks beautiful.
It can use everything, even love,
to get it's own way to get power.
- [{Bill]} That's beautiful.
Now that's really beautiful.
Right, honey?
- Beautiful boys.
- [{Bill]} Stay like that for awhile.
It's beautiful.
- [{Margaret]} She was lovely to me, and kind.
Something that my mother would never be, you know?
- [{Police]} Who was this?
- [{Margaret]} Anne.
- [Anne] Beautiful boys for the children- oh how lovely.
- I'd never had so much love poured on me, really, you know.
Because I was an incest child,
and I just had never experienced love.
- She wasn't giving love.
She was offering it, and then taking it back.
That's how she made those poor Aunties.
At Eildon, do these appalling things to children.
She broke their spirit.
[sombre music]
- Sometimes she'd look at you,
and you thought she really loved you.
I don't know.
It's hard to say just how devoted we were to her,
and how much we hung off every look.
And every thought she had about us.
We wanted so much for her to love us.
But I don't think she ever really did.
[chuckles]
- I took it on myself, to talk to one of the psychiatrists
who'd dropped out of the group.
And I said, "What would you say Anne is,
medically speaking?"
And he said, "Well, she's a psychopath."
She was intuitively, diabolically,
able to see into people.
[dramatic music]
- [{Lex]} In the 1950s and 60s,
medical and military circles were experimenting
with LSD as a truth drug.
Even the CIA and the KGB were involved.
Psychiatrists in The Family would have told Anne
about its potential, to dig deep into the minds
of her followers.
[dramatic music]
- She found out everything.
People under the drug,
went back to their childhood,
they told all their secrets, good and bad.
- She would gather all that information,
and use it later to destroy people's
marriages and relationships.
I'm not aware of any marriage that survived that Family.
- [{Sarah]} The LSD was like an interrogation,
which was always trying to get down to something,
usually sexual or shameful.
- My whole life changed in 1984.
I changed personality.
Became a different person, got initiated.
I went over to England in September, October, 1984.
I was put to bed up, in the guestroom upstairs at Broom.
And then Anne gives you the LSD.
And I was put under LSD,
for a very long period of time.
I think it was, a couple of weeks at least.
- What makes you think it was a couple of weeks?
[dramatic music]
- You know, I could kind of tell the
days and nights going past,
because of the clutter of the noise underneath,
as they prepared food.
She'd just come in like every 12 hours or so.
And give me another piece,
cause I wasn't working hard enough.
- She had asked questions about your sexual thoughts,
your sexual desires, your sexual fantasies,
what you liked, what you didn't like.
Whether you were breastfed,
whether you weren't breastfed,
whether you were really homosexual,
or whether you weren't.
- We've been involved with Muktananda that,
for a few years prior to that.
And I was very attracted to him personally as a guru,
And she really, really, really wanted me to deny him,
and accept her as the living Christ.
She really hammered me on it.
Either to break me or she wanted me to be hers.
- I was just out of it, for months.
And then one day I woke up,
as I was stepping into a car,
to go somewhere with Bill.
[dramatic music]
Bill said, "Oh, you're back with us."
And it was several months after, what had happened.
I just flipped out, into some sort of psychotic state.
[eerie music]
- She seemed to use sex,
to bring out the guilt that people felt.
She would target the women in the group.
Some of them had had multiple partners.
So she would publicly name them and shame them.
It was a way of keeping them compliant.
[dramatic music]
Anne treated pregnant women very badly.
Pre and postnatal depression, was common.
And it happened to me.
She just told people that they weren't allowed
to visit me at all,
so I had no visitors.
And, you know just,
I got very depressed while I was pregnant.
I was very thin.
I was shaking all the time.
I couldn't drive.
I couldn't think.
And so she said, "Well, I'll take care of your children
because you know, you're a wreck."
And she sent me over to England for a year.
[suspenseful music]
- My children were sent up to Eildon
and the results were catastrophic.
[birds chirping]
[sombre music]
David was very, very badly treated.
He was given back to me when he was seven.
Anne said, "If he'd stayed up there, he would have died."
So she gave him back to me.
He couldn't speak.
He'd lost his speech.
David has no memory now,
of anything that happened to him before he was seven.
Nothing.
[dramatic music]
And, Matthew became very depressed.
He tried to take his life when he was 16.
He couldn't come to terms with how he felt,
his depression
and he finally succumbed.
Matthew suicided eventually when he was 20.
[sombre music]
[dramatic music]
- There was so many people that were so adversely
affected by this group.
That lost their money.
That lost their properties.
They lost their minds.
[keyboard typing]
I submitted a detailed report.
And suggested that the only real way forward
was a Royal Commission.
Where many, many of these people could,
and would come forward, and give evidence.
But, it was just rejected.
I don't even know that it went anywhere,
apart from my immediate superiors.
[dramatic music]
- The wheels of justice were just too slow.
Where was the justice for the adult victims?
Where was the justice for the child victims?
Why wasn't she made brought to account?
We got word, that she was in Hawaii.
It seemed to me it was about time that
she answered some questions.
Hello, Mrs.Hamilton Byrne.
Marie Mohr from Channel Nine.
Have you got any comment now about why you kept
those children locked away for so long?
- No comment.
- Why not?
- They weren't locked away.
- They weren't locked away?
- No, they weren't.
- No, excuse me.
- Can you explain to me how you treated
the children like you did?
And Bill, would you like to give explanations
as to your involvement
in why the children were locked away?
- I've got nothing to say to you.
- You locked up, and you stole the children.
- Stole?
- You stole them from sect members?
- Excuse me
- Got doctors to organise the adoptions.
- I'll just go and phone the police
- Excuse me.
- But why won't you give us - excuse me get with...
- Excuse me.. But why won't you
- We have legal actions.: We have been advised
to say nothing.
You have no right to be asking me those things.
- Do you think you have spiritual powers?
- I don't think, I have spiritual powers.
- We had several defamation cases brought against
us by different members of the sect, not Anne!
Anne doesn't ever do her own dirty work.
A long period of time where,
I'd be lucky to get a night's sleep without the phone going
through the night, hang up calls, hang up calls.
Just harassment campaign.
[chanting sounds]
- Marie had of course, the private wallet of the media
empire. I worked within the bureaucracy.
You've actually got to convince your bosses.
That what you're talking about is actual -
- Not bizarre - that it's a possibility.
[keyboard typing]
[suspenseful music]
- I don't know exactly what happened,
but there's no doubt that it had to have come
from within their group.
- The matter came to me,
through anxious, and unhappy police
On a confidential basis, I mean,
I would never, even to this day, say who it was.
It was one policeman, who used me,
to say what needed to be said.
- The matters being investigated,
are most serious.
Shots, are being filed through windows.
Car tyres are being slashed.
There are death threats.
Not one charge has been laid,
because the squad concerned,
is not able to obtain permission to travel interstate,
to conduct interviews.
The police are saying, "For God's sake,
give us the resources to do the job.
Let us get on with the job."
- Around that point,
there was quite a deal of publicity.
I think that became very embarrassing to government.
And, strangely enough, all of a sudden we got,
more resources.
Computers, and analysts to assist in
getting together all this information
that went back for so long.
[dramatic music]
- [{Reporter]} Today in Melbourne,
19 year old Roland Webb,
was charged with threatening to kill
investigating police, and reporter Marie Mohr.
- The story is that, one of the police
that rioted Lake Eildon
when I took the kids, hit Mom.
You don't stuff with me and my family.
- [{Lex]} Have you got any reason why
you made these allegations?
- [{Roland]} All I wanted to do was just to leave me,
and The Family- alone.
Do you have the right to whatever religion
you want to be in?
- Is that correct?
- [{Lex]} Go on.
- [{Roland]} Tell me, is that correct?
- [{Lex]} Roland, I don't know.
- [{Roland]} You should know 'cause you're a pig.
- Sometimes I don't know when to shut my mouth.
[laughs]
This mouth has got me into trouble sometimes.
[laughs]
and like you, I don't fear authority.
- Well, I stand by my parents, and their followers.
It's a free world.
I got to follow them every inch of the way.
- Uncle Bill, he was tickled pink.
Couldn't stop talking how, I was the only person
that stood up for The Family.
So much so that he promised me $50,000 in his will,
for that very act.
- I know at the time, many of my friends outside work,
were really worried about my state of health.
It's not a nine to five job.
You're mind continues to tick.
What's the next step I'm going to do?
How's that witness going,
that I have just interviewed?
You're dealing with people that have gone through
enormous emotional trauma.
And so, when you're taking their strong,
and horrendous statements,
it's pretty taxing work.
And there were times during the task force where,
you dealt with senior people,
and they just didn't understand the impact it was having.
It was a culture in those days, you know,
"Oh you're a detective. Don't be bloody weak just move on".
- I can remember one policeman saying to me,
he wanted to see me.
He's a big tough cop.
We went into private room.
He just looked me in the eye, and he said,
" What happened to those kids is giving me nightmares."
[tense music]
- Two of the members needed their own
psychological treatment, and left the task force.
[phone ringing]
It was frustrating.
And, it was a bit depressing as well.
Just to actually have that conflict if you like.....
being close to those great young kids ..
and then not being
able to do the absolute best for them.
It should have been a royal commission.
for the benefit of those children,
and the many, many, people who are so adversely
affected by this group.
The only thing that you can do is lead by example,
and keep focused.
- We started then to piece together all the evidence
we had, where the evidence was missing, and what
we needed to do.
And where was the strongest case,
that we could find,
in a short period of time, against Anne and Bill.
We gave each alleged offender a colour,
each series of events a number,
and each victim, a letter of the alphabet.
[dramatic music]
I was absolutely totally obsessed,
and others on the team were as well.
We were getting pressured to wrap it up,
but we kept on working.
Then came the breakthrough.
[dramatic music]
The key to the activities of the cult,
laid in the brain of Peter Kibby.
He broke the code of silence, within that sect.
We just have to get Anne,
and get Bill back to Australia.
- This was a mission for him.
And he was determined to write a very horrible wrong
- [{Reporter]} Anne Hamilton Byrne and her husband William,
were arrested at their home in upstate New York.
- [{Reporter]} This morning, Victorian police had
Anne and William Hamilton Byrne back on Australian soil.
- When she was extradited back, it was all mad chaos.
I mean, I loved her to bits.
But jeez, she was a bloody trouble maker.
- [{Anne's voice]} We are winning through,
by the power of the Holy spirit.
This is the Lord God's battle.
- Whilst a large part of me didn't want to see her suffer.
I still wanted there to be justice.
- This is it.
This is the day of judgment.
Were we going to get an outcome,
that was going to be the right outcome?
[dramatic music]