GOING DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
A LOOK INSIDE AUSTRALIA’S MOST INFAMOUS CULT, THE FAMILY
From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate – or Charles Manson and his followers – cults have a devastating and sometimes lethal impact on those who join.
Pop culture harbours a morbid fascination with cults. Countless movies, novels, plays, podcasts and articles explore the psychology behind why people start cults and why others join them.
One of Australia’s most infamous cults was simply known as The Family.
The Family was headed by a Victorian woman named Anne Hamilton-byrne, who at her height through the 1960s until the late 1980s, ran the sadistic apocalyptic sect with hundreds of members. Anne was as beautiful and charismatic as she was delusional and dangerous.
Born in 1921 as Evelyn Grace Victoria Edwards, Anne was a yoga teacher turned cult leader who convinced her followers she was Jesus Christ reincarnated. Her ethos was simple – the world was going to end, and the only way you could be saved is if you joined The Family.
Along with her husband, William, Anne started recruiting followers from a nearby clinic. She targeted middle-class professionals, some even with medical backgrounds, and essentially ‘brainwashed’ them with her new-age ‘spiritualism’. She also acquired children through adoption scams or even through other members, and allegedly injected them with LSD, as well as beating and starving them.
All this horror happened tucked away in near secrecy not far from the busy streets of Melbourne.
Author JP
Pomare’s new novel, In the
Clearing, inspired by The Family, is the result of research into Anne and the reason why people join cults.
“I think in the right circumstances, most people are prepared to believe fantastical, ridiculous things as long as the conditions are right,” JP tells the podcast Investigates.
“As long as it’s sort of a gentle escalation. It always starts as something a lot smaller and it sort of grows. And so was particularly fascinated with The Family.”
Anne’s hold over her many members is hard to describe.
Not everyone lured into the sect spiderweb is a vulnerable and gullible person. They were intelligent, educated people who just wanted a purpose. Anne told her followers that they were going to save the world after an apocalypse.
In total, Anne had around 28 children in her care and nearly 500 members at the cult’s peak.
A mistress of deceit, Anne was able to put her followers under a spell. They handed over their money, homes and even their children.
“People were joining purely
because of Anne’s charisma, because they just believed that she had a sort of power,” JP explains.
“Everyone described her as so beautiful that you couldn’t look away, and other clichés like that, particularly the men in the cult.”
Former Detective Lex de Man, who investigated Anne for six years, explained what he believed was the true motive behind the cult mistress’ decision to start The Family.
“What it boils down to is it’s about money and, I believe, money and power for Anne,” he said.
But it didn’t last forever for Anne. In 1987, a rebellious 14-year-old member named Sarah Moore finally escaped.
Police swooped in on The Family on August 14., 1987, and the children under her spell were finally saved.
But Anne didn’t face the justice she deserved. She went on the run until police finally apprehended her in 1993 as she was hiding out in New York.
Shockingly, Anne served almost no jail time and was only ordered to pay damages to ex-members for the psychological abuse she caused.
Up until her death at age 97 in June 2019, a frail and elderly Anne Hamilton-byrne sat in her nursing home, battling dementia but likely not battling her own guilt.
When she passed away, many ex-members said it didn’t offer the ‘closure’ or emotional reparation they so desperately craved.
Her cruel control and sadism is something they can never forget.
Detective Lex, who led investigations into Anne and The Family, summed it up after her death. “Today is a great day in that she is now dead. She can rot,” he said. “The lives she affected and her evil deeds, I shed no tear. Not one drop.”