She is very pale, very thin and very scared like a wounded animal. When she arrives at a small police station outside Melbourne all she is able to whisper is that she has escaped from the sect and they are still holding her siblings there. When the police officers ask the panic-stricken teenager about the peculiarities of the place where she was held, the girl faints.

It is August 1987. In Australia, everyone is still excited about the Kimberley killer case. In April, Joseph Schwab, a German tourist, hired an off-road car at Brisbane airport and bought three rifles, a shotgun and 3,000 cartridges. He then killed two bystanders in cold blood, and by the time he was ambushed by police, the number of his victims had risen to five.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE Many Australians accused the police of being tardy. For the authorities, another scandal would be a total failure. Officers are therefore taking the report of the teenager seriously and sending several patrols into the area as a precaution. What they report is chilling. In the middle of nowhere in the 20th century, several hundred adults and children are being held in total isolation from the outside world.

The promise of love

Such a gentle blonde with grey-blue eyes. Elegant, with impeccable manners. She looked like an angel, spoke like an angel. Perhaps it was due to her soprano, or perhaps her exceptional talent in choosing elevated words. Everything about Anne Hamilton-Byrne was extraordinary, as if out of this world. Maybe that's why so many people believed she was the second Messiah on Earth.

She is said to have been inspired by Helena Blavatsky, a Russian-born medium and advocate of the 'synthesis of science, religion and philosophy' . For Anne, the truths proclaimed by Blavatsky become a revelation.

Born as Evelyn Edwards in 1921, she grew up in the countryside, two hours east of Melbourne. Her mother, Florence, was originally from London. A few years after Evelyn's birth, she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Florence spent the last 27 years of her life in a mental institution. And Evelyn lived in successive orphanages.

When she turned 20, Evelyn changed her name to Anne and married. For love, but also with the desire to start a family of her own. She did not enjoy her marriage for long, her chosen one died in an accident a few years after the wedding. Anne was in despair. The young widow's salvation was yoga. It soon became apparent that this practice was also a cure for the sorrows of many other women from Melbourne's suburbs.

In the early 1960s, many of them were searching for answers to questions about the meaning of existence and about their marital relationships. Anne with her penetrating insight knew the answer to most questions. She was a great listener and an excellent teacher. Clever and intuitive. She knew what to say and how to say. Especially to unhappy women who were being betrayed by their husbands.

Although there was already increasing talk of women's rights, divorcees were still treated as persona non grata in Australia. Anne encouraged her female students to leave unfaithful husbands and join her. "Everyone has heard of sorceresses who could enslave people with one look. That's what happened to Anne," will later be recounted by Fran Parker, one of the now former members of the sect founded by Anne Hamilton-Byrne and called The Family.

But the most important thing was something else - it was Anne's promise of love to the person of her choice. "I've been waiting for you," - she said at the first meeting. "You are special." She made a careful selection. She selected women and men from the so-called upper echelon, from Melbourne's elite. In return for joining the group, she promised them spiritual support. In the 1960s and 1970s, having a personal guru was wildly fashionable among wealthy Australians.

The real masterstroke was to recruit the eminent Leeds physicist Dr Raynor Johnson, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne. It was Johnson who announced Anne as the new Messiah. After experimenting with LSD, he recorded in his diary that 'her face became the epitome of divinity and authority'.

Together with his wife, the doctor bought a house in Ferny Creek, the village where Hamilton-Byrne lived. The intellectual value Johnson brought to the Family enabled the recruitment of doctors, psychiatrists, lawyers, nurses and social workers seeking truth and spiritual transformation. In addition, they were mostly wealthy.

Official trailer for the documentary "The Family"

All of them attended weekly meditation sessions and sermons delivered by Hamilton-Byrne, who - hairstyled and sprayed with Chanel perfume - spoke from a purple throne and a lodge specially built for her. Her sermons were a mishmash of Christian principles, Eastern mysticism and New Age apocalyptic prophecies. Anne also encouraged the intake of dangerous amounts of LSD and other hallucinogens.

With cold and hunger

"There was one rule in the Family: do everything Anne said," recalled David Whitaker, the Family's 'baby'. "This rule also applied to what we were to think, what to wear, what to eat and who to socialise with. In return for total obedience, Anne promised to protect us from the coming end of the world."

The first babies came to Anne's Family in the early 1970s. They were usually the children of single, often underage girls who could not rely on social support in Australia at the time. Anne knew how to convince them to entrust their offspring to her. "These were children born in well-known hospitals who were handed over by midwives to social workers and then, through forged adoption papers, to Anne," reported Lex de Man, one of two detectives trying to bring charges against Hamilton-Byrne since 1987.

Most of them were told by Anne that she was their biological mother. She faked successive pregnancies and told the older children that they were the new breed of masters, the chosen ones. In a few years she brought 28 children to the farm. They all wore identical outfits and had their hair bleached platinum blonde. Did they feel Anne's love? "Anne didn't give love. She offered it and then took it away, breaking hearts and souls," recalled former sect members.

Anne's children lived in a large wooden house on Lake Eildon, two hours from Ferny Creek, the Family's main base. The surroundings were beautiful but isolated. For their safety, Anne reiterated. The children were home schooled and forbidden to go outside the designated area. If they broke this rule, they were punished. Usually by hitting them with their foster mother's elegant shoe.

Anne also often delegated the administering of punishments to uncles or aunts, so as not to lose in the eyes of the children herself. The punishments varied. From forced starvation to sleeping and walking around in dirty clothes or falling asleep with the light on. Taking away food was a very important part of the control. "It is better to keep the victims weak so that they are less able to fight back," explained one former member of the Family, who was sometimes so hungry that she would eat the leaves.

Children were dosed with psychotropics. And when they reached the age of 14, they underwent formal initiation by being given LSD. For some teenagers, the effects were disastrous. They suffered from depression, personality changes and nightmares. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the children gazed at Anne like a picture. They believed she was a descendant of royalty and had numerous castles in Europe to which they would soon travel. They knew nothing of their true origins until the summer of 1987, the day police cars arrived on the farm, followed by groups of deadly serious officials asking endless questions.

A fine for hell

Some journalists believe that Anne's 'child' was Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, the once famous website for publishing (often classified) government and corporate documents. Indeed, Julian's mother's partner in the late 1970s was part of the Family. Assange himself testified as an adult that he ran away with his mother from the Family and never met Hamilton-Byrne. Many believe, however, that Assange is ashamed of his past and of the fact that his relatives also surrendered to Anne's will.

For there was hell on earth in The Family. Anne was breaking bonds, destroying relationships and driving her followers to the brink of madness. Many members of the group attempted suicide either while in The Family or shortly after leaving it.

Meanwhile, Anne's estate grew day by day, reaching £90 million. It largely consisted of property, land and cash donated by followers as donations.

Just before the police raid in 1987, Hamilton-Byrne managed to escape abroad. Extremely wealthy by then, with numerous estates in America, she went into hiding for more than two years. She fell by accident when she was caught forging false birth certificates. Unfortunately, these were the only charges Detective Lex de Man could bring against her. Along with her husband, businessman Bill Byrne, Anne was only fined.

She was never held accountable either for unlawful detention and child abuse in Australia or for extortion and forgery. She spent the last 14 years of her life in a Melbourne care home. Suffering from advanced dementia, she was unable to answer any questions. The only reparation for her victims was a book written by Chris Johnston, a Melbourne-based journalist and writer, and Rosie Jones, a screenwriter and editor, published shortly before Anne's death.

The authors managed - thanks to one of the former Family members - to visit Hamilton-Byrne at the care home. "But although she wasn't able to talk to us, it was a remarkable meeting," Johnston reported. "She was beautifully dressed in blue, had long silver hair and the charm of a former film star. However, it was noticeable that her hairline was unnaturally high due to numerous facelifts that helped her maintain the illusion of youth and immortality. The words she spoke were mostly incoherent and meaningless. Most of the time she sat trying to feed a plastic doll in her lap, "he wrote in the book.

Anne Hamilton-Byrne died three years after the book was published, at the age of 98. Her victims are still trying to find their biological parents today. However, falsified birth certificates and adoption documents mean that establishing their true origins, place of birth or sometimes even nationality verges on the miraculous. Despite this, most of them do not lose hope that they will one day find their way home.

– Maria Radzik
-Translated by Tomasz Krzyżanowski

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

Sources:

•https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/20/growing-up-with-the-family-inside-anne-hamilton-byrnes-sinister-cult
•https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10331329/Home-depraved-cult-Family-drugged-imprisoned-children-make-master-race-sale.html
•https://www.realestate.com.au/news/anne-hamiltonbyrne-olinda-homestead-linked-to-the-family-cult-sells/
•https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/from-the-archives-1987-police-raid-on-secretive-sect-the-family-20190614-p51xtp.html

Books

„The Family: The shocking true story of a notorious cult”, Chris Johnston, Rosie Jones
„Life behind the wire” Ben Shenton